The Sweetness of Forgetting (68)

I open and close my mouth helplessly. I hope she’s right, but it looks like she has hundreds of numbers in front of her. It’s no wonder; I’m sure Jacob Levy is a very common name.

“So? Can I use the phone in the back?”

I pause and nod. “Yeah. As long as they’re all U.S. numbers.”

Annie grins and skips into the kitchen.

Alain smiles at me and rises to follow her. “I miss being young and hopeful,” he says. “Don’t you?”

He disappears into the kitchen behind my daughter, and I’m left standing there, feeling like Ebenezer Scrooge. When had I stopped being young and hopeful? I hadn’t been trying to rain on Annie’s parade; I simply want to help her manage her expectations. Expecting good things leads to getting hurt, I’ve found.

I sigh and go back to packaging the bakery items in airtight cases for freezing overnight. The baklava I’d made late this morning will last another couple of days, the muffins and cookies will freeze, and I should be able to recycle at least one of the strudels tomorrow morning. Our homemade doughnuts stay fresh for only a day, which is why I usually make only one variety each morning; today’s sugar-cinnamon doughnuts are nearly gone, and the remaining three will likely wind up in my daily pickup basket for the women’s shelter if I don’t have another customer in the next few minutes.

I can hear Annie in the next room chattering away into the phone, probably asking person after person whether they know a Jacob Levy who came from France after World War II. In between calls, I can hear Alain murmuring to her, and I wonder what he’s saying. Is he telling her stories of Jacob to keep her inspired? Or is he being responsible and reminding her that this might be an impossible task and that she shouldn’t get her hopes up?

I finish emptying the bakery cases and begin carrying pastries back to the industrial freezer. I set to work washing baking sheets, muffin tins, and miniature pie molds in the back, as Annie talks more loudly to be heard over the running water.

“Hi, my name is Annie Smith,” I hear her chirp into the phone. “I’m looking for a Jacob Levy who’d be, like, eighty-seven now. He’s French. Is there a Jacob Levy there like that? . . . Oh, okay. Thanks anyhow. Yeah, bye.”

She hangs up, and Alain murmurs something to her. She giggles, picks up the phone, and repeats the exact same words on the next call.

By the time I’m ready to leave the bakery and head to the hospital—after serving one last-minute customer, Christina Sivrich from the local theater group, who begged for two and a half dozen cookies she could bring in for a class party for her six-year-old, Ben, tomorrow—Annie has made three dozen calls.

“You ready?” I ask, drying my hands off on a towel and grabbing my keys off the hook by the kitchen door.

“Can I make one more call, Mom?” Annie asks.

I look at my watch and nod. “One more. But then we have to get to the hospital while visiting hours are still going on. Okay?”

I lean against the counter and listen as Annie repeats her spiel once more. Her face looks pained as she hangs up. “Another dead end,” she murmurs.

“Annie, you’re only on the third page,” Alain reminds her. “We have many more Jacob Levys to try tomorrow. And then look at all the J. Levys on your list.”

“I guess,” Annie says. She sighs and hops off the counter, leaving the list sitting beside the phone.

“Annie, don’t worry,” I say, trying to share in her optimism. “Maybe you’ll find him.”

From the withering look she gives me, I realize she’s beginning to lose hope. “Whatever,” she says. “Let’s go see Mamie.”

Alain and I exchange concerned looks and follow her out the door.





Chapter Eighteen



For the next several days, nothing changes. Mamie doesn’t stir. Gavin comes in every morning for a cup of coffee and a pastry and asks about my grandmother’s condition. Alain tags along with Annie in the morning, helps me out during the day, and huddles with her in the afternoon while she embarks on a series of fruitless phone calls. After we close for the day, the three of us trek the thirty minutes to the hospital in Hyannis to spend ninety minutes at Mamie’s bedside. The one saving grace of the whole routine is that, thankfully, the tourist season is over, so there’s relatively little traffic on Route 6 as we cross to the southwest side of the Cape and back.

In the hospital room, Alain holds Mamie’s hand and murmurs to her in French, while Annie and I sit in chairs facing her bed. Annie gets up sometimes and scoots in beside Alain, stroking Mamie’s hair while he speaks quietly. I can’t bring myself to participate; I feel strangely empty. The last person I can rely on is slipping away, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

On Sunday, I close early at noon, and Alain requests a ride to the hospital.

“Do you want to go too?” I ask Annie.

She shrugs. “Maybe later. But I want to call more Levys from my list today. Can I stay home while you take Uncle Alain?”

I hesitate. “All right. But don’t answer the door for anyone.”

“God, Mom, I’m not a kid anymore,” Annie says, reaching for the phone.

In the car on the way down to Hyannis, Alain tells me about a restaurant he and Mamie used to like in Paris, before the war. He was just a little boy then, and Mamie wasn’t even a teenager yet. The owner would always come over to the table after the meal and make special crepes for the kids, with chocolate and brown sugar and bananas. Mamie and Alain would giggle and point as the owner set the crepes flaming in front of them and then pretended he couldn’t put them out.