The Sweetness of Forgetting (28)

I nod and carefully arrange the remaining Cape Codder cookies in the display case in a robin’s egg–blue box with North Star Bakery, Cape Cod written on it in swirly white letters. I tie it with a white ribbon and hand it across the counter.

“So?” Gavin prompts as he takes the box from me.

“You really want to hear this?” I ask.

“If you want to tell me,” he says.

I nod, realizing suddenly that I do want to tell another adult what’s going on. “Well, my grandmother has Alzheimer’s,” I begin. And for the next five minutes, as I pull miniature pies, croissants, baklava, tarts, and crescent moons out of the display case and pack them into airtight containers for the freezer or boxes for the church’s women’s shelter, I tell Gavin about what Mamie said last night. Gavin listens intently, but his jaw drops when I tell him about Mamie throwing pieces of miniature Star Pies into the ocean.

I shake my head and say, “I know, it sounds crazy, right?”

He shakes his head, a strange expression on his face. “No, actually, it doesn’t. Yesterday was the first day of Rosh Hashanah.”

“Okay,” I say slowly. “But what does that have to do with anything?”

“Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year,” Gavin explains. “It’s customary for us to go to a flowing body of water—like the ocean—for a little ceremony called a tashlich.”

“You’re Jewish?” I ask.

He smiles. “On my mom’s side,” he says. “I was kind of raised half Jewish, half Catholic.”

“Oh.” I just look at him. “I didn’t know that.”

He shrugs. “Anyhow, the word tashlich basically means ‘casting out.’ ”

I realize suddenly that the phrase rings a bell. “I think my grandmother said something like that last night.”

He nods. “The ceremony involves throwing crumbs into the water to symbolize the casting out of our sins. Usually bread crumbs, but I guess pie crumbs would work too.” He pauses and adds, “Do you think that might have been what your grandmother was doing?”

I shake my head. “It can’t be,” I say. “My grandmother’s Catholic.” As the words leave my mouth, I’m suddenly struck by the fact that two of the people I’d reached in Paris today suggested I call synagogues.

Gavin arches an eyebrow. “Are you sure? Maybe she wasn’t always Catholic.”

“But that’s crazy. If she was Jewish, I would know.”

“Not necessarily,” he says. “My grandmother on my mom’s side, my nana, lived through the Holocaust,” he says. “Bergen-Belsen. She lost both her parents and one of her brothers. Because of her, I got started volunteering with survivors when I was about fifteen. Some of them say that for a while, they abandoned their roots. It was hard for them to hang on to who they’d been when everything was taken away. Especially those who were kids taken in by Christian families. But all of them eventually came back to Judaism. Kind of like coming home.”

I just stare at him. “Your grandmother was a Holocaust survivor?” I repeat, trying to piece together a whole new side to Gavin. “You used to work with survivors?”

“I still do. I volunteer once a week at the Jewish nursing home in Chelsea.”

“But that’s a two-hour drive,” I say.

He shrugs. “It’s where my grandmother lived until she died. The place means something to me.”

“Wow.” I don’t know what else to say. “What do you do there? When you volunteer?”

“Art classes,” he says simply. “Painting. Sculpture. Drawing. Things like that. I bring them cookies too.”

“That’s where you’re always going with the boxes of cookies you pick up here?”

He nods. I just stare at him. I’m realizing there are more layers to Gavin Keyes than I’d ever appreciated. It makes me wonder what else I’m missing. “You do . . . art?” I ask finally.

He looks away and doesn’t answer. “Look, I know this thing with your grandmother, it’s probably a lot to take in. And I may be totally off base here. But you know, some people who escaped before they were sent to concentration camps were snuck out of Europe with false papers that identified them as Christians,” he says. “Is it possible your grandmother could have come here under an assumed identity?”

I shake my head immediately. “No. No way. She would have told us.” But, I realize suddenly, this could explain why everyone on the list she gave us had the last name Picard, while I’d always believed her maiden name to be Durand.

Gavin scratches his head. “Annie’s right, Hope. You have to find out what happened to your grandmother.”



We talk for another hour, Gavin patiently explaining all the things I don’t understand. If Mamie is indeed from a Jewish family in Paris, I ask, why can’t I just call the synagogues in Paris? Or aren’t there Holocaust organizations that help you track down survivors? I’m sure I’ve heard of places like that, although I’ve never had reason to look into them before.

Gavin explains that it’s worth trying Holocaust organizations as a first step, but that he thinks it’s unlikely I’ll find all my answers there. At most, even if I can find the names on a list somewhere, I’ll only get a date and place of birth, maybe a date of deportation, and if I’m lucky, the name of a camp where they were taken.