And I say, “That’s it.”
I excuse myself to go to the ladies’ room, and when I come back, I tell the waiter to pack up the rest of my paella, which is very good and way too much for one person. Some restaurants skimp on the saffron, but not La Gamba. You can’t microwave paella but it will reheat on the stovetop very nicely. I say let’s go halfsies on the check, and Louis says he was planning to pay. But I insist. I only let a man pay for me if I’m planning to see him again. Roz says this is either feminism or the opposite of feminism, but I think it’s plain manners.
We walk to the parking lot, and he says, “Did something happen back there? Did I say something wrong? I thought it was going very well until suddenly it wasn’t.”
I say, “I just don’t like you,” and I get in my car.
TWO
I live in a three-bedroom condo on the beach. I can hear the ocean and everything’s the way I like it, which is the best thing about living alone. Even when you’re married to a doctor who’s gone most of the time, he’ll still feel like he should weigh in on the décor. And his opinions are, I think I’d prefer a bed that was more masculine and Definitely blackout curtains, you know my schedule and Sure it’s pretty, but won’t it get dirty? But now my couch is white, my curtains are white, my duvet is white, my countertops are white, my clothes are white, everything is white, and no, it doesn’t get dirty, I’m very careful. I bought near the bottom of the market—I have always been lucky in real estate, if nothing else—and the condo is worth three times what I paid for it. I could sell it and make a killing, but honestly, where would I go? You tell me where I would go!
Back when I was married and back when Aviva was young, we lived across town in a Tuscan-style minimansion in Forestgreen Country Club, which is a gated community. Now that I no longer live there, I can admit that the gates always troubled me—we lived in Boca Raton; who were we keeping out? People were always getting robbed in Forestgreen anyway. The gates seemed to attract thieves. Put up gates, people will think there’s something worth protecting. But Forestgreen’s where I met Roz, who has been my best friend through some times, let me tell you. And that’s where we met the Levins. The Levins moved in when Aviva was a freshman in high school, fourteen.
When we first knew him, Aaron Levin was a lowly state senator. His wife, Embeth, was the one who made the money—she worked as in-house counsel for a conglomerate of South Florida hospitals. Roz’s nickname for Aaron Levin was “Jewish Superman” or “Jewperman.” And honest to God, that’s what he looked like. He was six feet two inches tall in New Balances, with black curly hair and blue-green eyes and a big, kind, dopey smile. The man could wear a dress shirt. He’d gone to Annapolis and served in the navy, and he had the shoulders to show for it. He was a few years younger than Roz and me, but he was not so young that Roz didn’t like to joke that one of us should try to sleep with him.
The wife, Embeth, always looked unhappy. She was thin from the waist up but frumpy on the bottom—thick calves and hips, puffy knees. How the woman must have suffered to keep her brown curly hair in that straight blond bob. Roz used to say, “In this humidity, oy vey iz mir, maintaining a hairstyle like that is nothing short of madness.”
For the record, I tried to make friends with Embeth, but she wasn’t interested. (It wasn’t just me, because Roz also tried.) Mike and I had them over for dinner twice. The first time, I made beef brisket, which takes all day. Even with the AC blasting, I was shvitzing on my Donna Karan open-shouldered dress. The second time, I made maple-glazed salmon. No big deal. Marinate for fifteen minutes, thirty in the oven, and done. Embeth never reciprocated. I can take a hint. Then when Aviva was a junior in high school, Aaron Levin ran for Congress, and they moved to Miami, and I thought I’d never see or hear from them again. You have a lot of neighbors in a lifetime and only a few of them turn out to be Roz Horowitzes.
But it’s not Roz I’ve been brooding about all day, it’s the Levins, and I’m still thinking about them when the phone rings. It’s the history teacher from the public school, wanting to know if I’m Esther Shapiro’s daughter. She has been trying to reach Mom to see if she will be able to be a speaker for Survivor Day at the high school, and Mom’s not been answering her texts or her phone. I explain to her that Mom had a fairly devastating stroke about six months ago. So, no, Esther Shapiro will not be able to attend Survivor Day. They will have to find other survivors this year.
The history teacher starts to cry—annoying, indulgent—and says it is harder and harder to find enough survivors, even here in Boca Raton, which is, roughly, 92 percent Jewish, the most Jewish place on earth aside from Israel itself. Twenty years ago, when she first started doing Survivor Day, it was easy, she says, but now, who’s left? Maybe you survive cancer, maybe you survive the Holocaust, but life’ll get you every time.
That afternoon, I visit Mom at the nursing home, which smells like a combination of a school cafeteria and death. Mom’s hand is limp and her face has collapsed on the left side. I mean, why mince words? She looks strokey.
I tell her that the indulgent schoolteacher was asking about her, and Mom tries to say something but it comes out as vowels and no consonants and maybe I’m a bad daughter, but I don’t understand. I tell her that I almost had a very good date until the man, out of the blue, insulted Aviva. And Mom makes a face that is inscrutable. And I say, I miss Aviva. I only say this because I know Mom can’t say anything back.
As I’m leaving the nursing home, Mom’s younger sister, Mimmy, arrives. Mimmy is the happiest person I’ve ever known, but she isn’t always trustworthy. Maybe this is unfair. Maybe it isn’t that Mimmy isn’t trustworthy but that I don’t trust happy people or happiness in general. Mimmy wraps her big, flappy wings around me. (When we were kids, my brother and I called arms like these Hadassah arms.) Mimmy says that Mom has been asking about Aviva.
“How precisely was she doing that, Mimmy?” I ask. Mom can’t say anything.
“She said her name. She said UH-VEE-VUH,” Mimmy insists.
“Three whole syllables? I highly doubt that. Besides which, everything Mom says sounds like ‘Aviva.’ ”
Mimmy says she doesn’t want to argue with me, because we need to start making plans for Mom’s eighty-fifth birthday party. Mimmy isn’t sure if we should have the party here, at the home that is not her home, or if Mom will be well enough to travel. Obviously, Mimmy thinks it would be better to have the party somewhere else, somewhere more scenic—the Boca Raton Museum of Art or that nice brunch place in Mizner Park or my apartment. “Your apartment is gorgeous,” Mimmy says.
I say, “Aunt Mimmy, do you think Mom would even want a party?”