The Sweetness of Forgetting

by Kristin Harmel

  The voice in Rose’s mind screamed, “I did not save you! I let you die! I am a coward!” But the words would not come to her lips, and even if they had, she knew they would be lost in the depths of this shrouded world. And so she listened, as the voice of her dear brother went on.

  “You taught me to believe,” he whispered again and again. “You have to stop blaming yourself. It was you who saved me, Rose.”

  She wondered whether this was the absolution she’d spent her life searching for, although she was sure she did not deserve it. Or was it simply one more result of the dementia that she knew nibbled at her mind? She didn’t trust her own eyes, her own ears anymore, for they often didn’t match reality or recollection.

  And when he began to whisper to her, “You have to wake up, Rose. Hope and Annie may have found Jacob Levy,” she knew that her mind was entirely gone, because that was impossible. Jacob was gone. Long gone. Hope would never know him. Rose would never see him again.

  Were it possible to shed tears in the deep, murky sea, Rose would have cried.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  On the way home from Elida’s house, I can see Annie’s eyes shining in the darkness, glinting with reflected light.

  “You have to go to New York tomorrow, Mom,” she says. “You have to go find him.”

  I nod. The bakery is closed on Mondays anyhow, and even if it weren’t, I know I can’t wait another moment. “We’ll leave in the morning,” I tell Annie. “First thing.”

  Annie turns to look at me. “I can’t go with you,” she says miserably, shaking her head. “I have my big social studies test tomorrow.”

  I clear my throat. “That’s responsible of you.” I pause. “Have you studied for it?”

  “Mom!” Annie says. “Of course! Duh.”

  “Good,” I say. “Okay. We’ll head down to New York on Tuesday, then. Can you miss school on Tuesday?”

  Annie shakes her head. “No, you gotta go tomorrow, Mom.”

  I glance at her, then refocus on the road. “Honey, I don’t mind waiting for you.”

  “No,” she says instantly. “You have to find him as soon as possible. What if we’re running out of time and we don’t even know it?”

  “Mamie’s stable now,” I tell Annie. “She’ll hang in there.”

  “C’mon, Mom,” Annie says softly after a pause. “You don’t believe that. You know she could die any time. That’s why you’ve got to find Jacob Levy as soon as you can if he’s out there.”

  “But Annie—” I begin.

  “No, Mom,” she says firmly, as if she’s the parent and I’m the child. “Go to New York tomorrow. Bring Jacob Levy back. Don’t let Mamie down.”

  After swinging by the hospital on the way home, staying with Mamie for a bit, and getting Annie into bed, I sit in the kitchen with Alain, sipping decaf coffee and explaining what we learned from Elida and her grandmother.

  “Besa,” he says softly. “What a beautiful concept. The obligation to help our fellow man.” He stirs his coffee slowly and takes a sip. “So you will go tomorrow to New York? Alone?”

  I nod. Then, feeling foolish, I add quickly, “I was thinking about seeing if Gavin would want to come with me. Just since he helped us out a lot at the beginning of this search, you know?”

  Alain smiles. “It is a wise idea.” He pauses, then adds, “You know, there is nothing wrong with falling in love with Gavin, Hope.”

  I’m so startled by his bluntness that I choke on the sip of coffee I’ve just taken. “I’m not in love with Gavin,” I protest through coughs.

  “Of course you are,” Alain says. “And he is in love with you.”

  I laugh at that, but my cheeks are hot and my palms suddenly sweaty. “That’s crazy!”

  “Why is it so crazy?” Alain asks.

  I shake my head. “Well, for one thing, we have nothing in common.”

  Alain laughs. “You have many things in common. I see the way the two of you talk with each other. The way he makes you laugh. The way that you can talk about anything.”

  “That’s just because he’s a nice guy,” I mumble.

  Alain folds his hands over mine. “He cares about what happens to you. And whether you admit it or not, you care about what happens to him too.”

  “Those still aren’t things we have in common,” I reply stubbornly.

  “He cares about Annie,” Alain adds softly. “You cannot tell me you do not have that in common.”

  I pause before nodding. “Yeah,” I admit. “He does care about Annie.”

  “That is not something that comes along every day,” Alain says. “Think about how he helped her when we were in Paris and Rose was brought to the hospital. He was there for her. And he was there for you.”

  I nod again. “I know. He’s a good guy.”

  “He is more than that,” Alain says. “Tell me, why do you not believe in this?”

  I shrug and look down. “He’s seven years younger than I am, for one thing,” I mumble.

  Alain laughs. “Your grandmother married a Christian man, although she is a Jew. And you just came from the home of a woman who is happily married to a Christian Jew, although she is Muslim. If something as important as religious differences can be surmounted, do you really think seven years make a difference?”

  I shrug again. “Fine. But I also have a child.”

  Alain just looks at me. “Of course. But I do not understand why this is an excuse for you.”

  “Well, for one thing, he’s only twenty-nine. I can’t ask him to take on the responsibility of a teenage kid.”

  “It seems to me that you have not asked him,” Alain says, “and yet he is already here, taking on the responsibility. Is that not his decision to make?”

  I hang my head. “But my mother always put men first, you know? I always felt like I didn’t matter to her as much as they did. Her life revolved around whomever she was dating at the time. I promised myself I would never, ever make my child feel that way.”

  “You are not your mother,” Alain says after a moment.

  “But what if I turn into her?” I ask in a small voice. “What if now that I’m divorced, that’s exactly what I do? I can’t let myself go down that road. Annie has to come first, no matter what.”

  “Letting someone else in does not mean leaving Annie out,” Alain says carefully.

  I can feel tears rolling down my cheeks and am surprised to realize I’ve started crying. “But what if he hurts me?” I blurt out. “What if I let him into my life, and he breaks my heart? What if he hurts Annie? She’s been through so much with her dad; I don’t think I could bear it if I hurt her too.”

  Alain pats my hand. “It is true, that is a risk you take,” he says. “But life is about taking risks. How can you live, otherwise?”

  “But I’m happy enough now,” I tell him. “Maybe that’s enough. How do you know Gavin won’t change all that?”

  “I don’t,” Alain says. “But there is only one way to find out.” Alain stands and grabs my cell phone from the counter, where it’s charging. “Call him. Ask him to go with you tomorrow. You do not need to make any decisions right away. But open the door, Hope. Open the door to let him in.”

  I take the phone from him and draw a deep breath. “Okay.”

  Annie wakes up with me at three in the morning, and as I sip coffee at the kitchen table and read yesterday’s newspaper, she eats Rice Krispies and drinks a glass of orange juice while staring at me.

  “So Mr. Keyes said yes?” she asks. “He’s gonna go with you?”

  “Yes,” I say. I clear my throat. “He’ll be here at four.”

  “Good,” she says. “Mr. Keyes is really nice. Don’t you think?”

  I nod and look down at my coffee. “Yes, he is,” I say carefully.

  “He’s good at fixing things.”

  I give her a funny look. “Well, obviously. He’s a handyman.”

  She laughs. “No, I mean, like, he fixes people and stuff. Like he likes t
o help people.”

  I smile. “Yeah, I guess he does.”

  Annie doesn’t say anything for a second. “So, like, you know he likes you, right? You can see it, the way he looks at you.”

  I can feel a flush creeping up my neck. I’m not ready to discuss this with Annie. “Like your dad looks at Sunshine?” I make a lame attempt at a joke.

  Annie makes a face. “No, not like that.”

  I laugh. I’m about to say something else in protest, but Annie beats me to it.

  “Dad looks at Sunshine like he’s scared, I think,” she says.

  “Scared?”

  She thinks for a minute. “Scared of being alone,” she says. “But Gavin looks at you different.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask softly. I realize I really want to hear her answer.

  She shrugs and looks back down at her cereal. “I don’t know. Like he just wants to be around you. Like he thinks you’re great. Like he wants to do stuff to make your life good.”

  I’m silent for a minute. I don’t know what to say. “Does that bother you?” is what I finally settle on.

  Annie looks surprised. “No. Why would it?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. It’s been hard for you, watching your dad move on so quickly. I guess I just want you to know that I’m not going anywhere. You’re my number one priority. Now and always.”

  I look closely at her as I say this. I want her to know I really mean it.

  She looks embarrassed. “I know,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t, like, go out on a date with Mr. Keyes.”

  I laugh. “Honey, he hasn’t asked me on a date.”

  “Yet,” she says. She pauses. “For real, he probably hasn’t ’cause you act like you don’t like him. But you can’t, like, be alone forever.”

  My thoughts from last night come flooding back in. “I’m not alone,” I say softly. “I have you. And Mamie. And now Alain.”

  “Mom, I’m not going to be here forever,” she says solemnly. “I’m going to go off to college and stuff in, like, a few years. Alain’s probably going to go back to Paris, right? And Mamie’s going to die someday.”

  I draw in a sharp breath. I hadn’t known how to broach the subject with Annie. “Yes, she will. But I’m hoping we’ll get a little more time with her first.” I pause. “Are you okay with that? With the idea that we’ll probably lose her soon?”

  She shrugs. “I’ll just miss her a lot, you know?”

  “Me too.”

  We’re silent for a long time. My heart aches for my daughter, who has already had to experience too much loss.

  “I don’t want you to be alone, Mom,” Annie says after a while. “No one should be alone.”

  I nod, blinking back tears that I didn’t expect.

  “Just find Jacob, okay?” she says softly. “You have to find him.”

  “I know. I want to find him too. I promise, I’ll do my very best.”

  Annie nods solemnly and stands up to pour her milk out in the sink and to put her bowl and juice glass in the dishwasher. “I’m gonna go back to bed. I just wanted to get up and say good luck,” she says. She walks toward the door of the kitchen and pauses. “Mom?” she says.

  “Yes, honey?”

  “The way Mr. Keyes looks at you . . .” She trails off and looks down. “I think maybe it’s kinda how Jacob Levy used to look at Mamie.”

  When Gavin picks me up at four in his Jeep Wrangler, he has a cup of gas station coffee waiting for me.

  “I know you’re used to getting up before dawn,” he says as he waits for me to buckle my seat belt. He hands me the coffee cup and says, “But I had to stop for coffee, because in my world, I’d still be sleeping right now.”

  “Sorry,” I mumble.

  He laughs. “Don’t be silly. I’m happy to be here. But the caffeine’s helping.”

  “You don’t have to drive, you know,” I say. “We could take my car.”

  “Nah,” he says. “This baby’s already gassed up and ready to go. I’ll drive.” He pauses and adds, “Unless you really want to. I just figure it’s easier this way. You can navigate.”

  “If you’re sure you don’t mind,” I say.

  We’re quiet for the first thirty minutes, except to make small talk about the route we’ll take down to New York, and the possibility we’ll hit traffic just outside Manhattan. Gavin yawns and turns the radio up when Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” comes on.

  “I love this song,” he says. He sings along with the chorus so enthusiastically that it makes me giggle.

  “I didn’t even know you knew this song,” I say when it ends.

  He shoots me a glance. “Who doesn’t know ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’?”

  I feel myself turning red. “I just meant you seem young to know it.”

  “I’m twenty-nine,” Gavin says. “Which means I was just as alive when you were when this song came out.”

  “You were what, three?” I ask. I was almost eleven in 1986. Worlds away.

  “I was four,” Gavin says. He shoots me a glance. “Why are you being weird?”

  I look at my lap. “It’s just that you’re so young. A lot younger than thirty-six.”

  He shrugs. “So?”

  “So, don’t you think I’m kind of old?” I ask. I resist the urge to add for you.

  “Yeah, you should be getting your AARP membership card in the mail any day now,” Gavin says. He seems to realize I’m not laughing. “Look, Hope, I know how old you are. What does it matter?”

  “You don’t feel like we’re from two different worlds or something?”

  He hesitates. “Hope, you can’t go through life living by all the rules and doing what people expect of you without thinking for yourself, you know? That’s how you wake up at the age of eighty or whatever and realize life has passed you by.”

  I wonder whether this is how Mamie feels. Did she do the things she was expected to? Did she marry and become a mother only because that was the prescribed plan for women in those days? Had she regretted it?

  “But how do you know?” I ask, trying to slow my racing heart. “I mean, how do you know which rules you’re supposed to live by and which you’re not?”

  Gavin glances over at me. “I don’t think there are really supposed to be rules. I think you’re supposed to figure it out as you go, learn from experience, and try to correct your mistakes moving forward. Don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know,” I say softly. Maybe he’s right. But if he is, that means I’ve been living my life incorrectly all these years. I’ve tried to do things by the book at every turn. I married Rob because I was pregnant with his baby. I moved home to the Cape because my mother needed me. I took over the bakery because it was our family business and I couldn’t let it die. I abandoned my own dreams of being an attorney because it no longer fit under the heading of what I was supposed to do.

  Now I’m realizing that by always choosing the safe road, the one that was expected of me, I might have given up more than I ever understood. Had I left behind the person I was supposed to be too? Had I lost my real self somewhere along that road of doing everything right? I wonder whether there’s still time to figure things out and start playing by my own rules. Can I salvage the life I’m meant to have?

  “Maybe it’s not too late,” I murmur aloud.

  Gavin glances at me. “It’s never too late,” he says simply.

  We’re silent as we drive across the arching Sagamore Bridge, which spans the Cape Cod Canal. Dawn is still a couple of hours away, and I feel like we’re all alone in the world as we cross to the mainland in the darkness. There’s not another car on the road. On the inky surface of the water beneath us, lights from the bridge and from the homes on either shore reflect back up toward the sky, pointing toward the stars. Mamie’s stars. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to look at the night sky without thinking of my grandmother and all the evenings she has spent waiting for the stars to come out.

  It’
s not until we’re on I-195 heading toward Providence that Gavin speaks again.

  “What’s happening with the bakery?” he asks.

  I look at him sharply. “What do you mean?”

  He glances at me and then turns his attention back to the road. “Annie told me that she thinks something’s going on. She heard you and Matt Hines talking.”

  My heart sinks. I hadn’t realized Annie knew anything was amiss. I didn’t want her to know. “It’s nothing,” I say, avoiding the subject.

  Gavin nods and stares straight ahead. “I don’t want to pry,” he says. “I know you like to keep stuff to yourself. But I’m just saying I’m here if you want to talk about anything. I know how much the bakery means to you.”

  I gaze out the window as we begin to pass through Fall River, which looks like an industrial ghost town in the morning mist.

  “I’m about to lose it,” I say to Gavin after a while. “The bakery. That’s why Matt keeps coming by. There was a chance that some investors were going to save the place, but I guess I screwed it up by going to Paris.”

  “Is that what Matt said?”

  I nod and look out the window again.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Gavin says. “No legitimate investor would give up a promising business opportunity because someone has to leave for a few days due to a family emergency. If Matt told you that, he’s an idiot. Or he’s trying to guilt-trip you.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  Gavin shrugs. “Maybe he’s not such a great guy.”

  “Maybe not,” I murmur. It seems that the men I’ve chosen to let into my life over the years all fall into that category.

  “How do you feel about the possibility of losing the bakery?” Gavin asks after a while.

  I think about this. “Like I’m a failure,” I reply.

  “Hope, if you lose the bakery, it’s not because you’ve failed,” Gavin says. “You work harder than anyone I know. This isn’t a failure. It’s just the economy. That’s beyond your control.”

  I shake my head. “The bakery’s been in my family for sixty years. My mother and my grandmother kept it afloat through lots of ups and downs. Then it gets passed on to me, and I destroy it.”