Young Jane Young(14)

I say, “I would never betray you for him. For the farkakte glass guy? I would never. After all that we’ve been through together.”

Roz says, “Rachel, stop.”

So I stop.

I’m sixty-four years old. I know when to stop.





NINE





W

hen she went back to the University of Miami in the fall, Aviva decided to move off campus to a tiny studio apartment in Coconut Grove. We had a good time decorating that little place together. We did a whole “shabby chic” thing. We bought wood furniture from Goodwill and sanded it and painted it cream, and we bought faded floral sheets, and a beige quilt from an antique store, and we had a turquoise bowl filled with seashells, and gardenia and lavender scented soy candles, and we painted the walls white, and we hung sheer voile curtains. And we lucked into a genuine Wegner Wishbone chair in birch. This was before the midcentury craze, so I think we got it for about thirty-five dollars. The last thing I bought was a white orchid.

“Mom,” she said, “I’ll kill it.”

“Just don’t overwater it,” I said.

“I’m not good with plants,” she said.

“You’re twenty-one,” I said. “You don’t know what you’re good with yet.”

It was so beautiful and perfect and blank, this little place, I remember wishing I could move in with her, and I felt almost jealous of Aviva. Everything in her apartment could be exactly the way she wanted it.

It was a happy time in our relationship and a happy time in my life in general. The board had decided not to seek out a new principal, and I was made permanent principal of BRJA. They had a cocktail party for me. They served smoked salmon on toast points. Unfortunately, the salmon had turned, and though I did not eat the salmon, everyone who did got sick. I did not take this as a sign.

Roz took me out to lunch for my forty-ninth birthday. She said that I looked great and asked me what I’d been doing.

I said, “I’m happy.”

“I’ll have to try that,” she said.

I don’t know why – maybe I’d had too much wine – but I started to cry.

“Rachel,” Roz said, “oh my God, what is it? Has something happened?”

“The opposite,” I said. “Something that I thought was going to happen didn’t happen, and I feel so relieved and grateful.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Roz said. She poured me another glass of wine. “Was it your health? Mike’s health? Did you find a lump?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Aviva?” Roz said.

“Yes, something to do with Aviva.”

“Do you want to tell me? You don’t have to tell me,” she said.

“Roz,” I said. “She was having an affair with a married man, and now it’s over. It’s over, thank God.”

“Oh God, Rach, that’s nothing. She’s young. It’s the special privilege of youth to make mistakes.”

I lowered my eyes. “It wasn’t just the affair. It was who it was with.”

“Who was it, Rachel?” she said. “You don’t have to say.”

I whispered the name in her ear.

“Good for Aviva!”

“Roz!” I said. “You’re wicked. He’s married, and he’s our age, and he was her boss!”

“Well, he’s not hard to look at,” Roz said. “And we did used to joke about him being our ‘spring fling.’ Do you remember?”

As if I could have forgotten.

“Do you think Aviva could have heard us?” Roz said.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“That wife of his.” Roz was pleasantly soused. “I change my mind, good for him. Aviva’s a catch. They would have had be-yoo-tee-full babies, those two.”

“Well, it’s over now,” I said. “No babies, thank God.”





TEN





I

want to begin by saying, the accident was neither Aviva’s nor the congressman’s fault.

An eightysomething woman, driving with a suspended license and in the beginning stages of dementia, wasn’t looking when she took a left turn, and she slammed into the side of the congressman’s Lexus sedan. The old woman was killed, which meant there was an investigation. The investigation found that the old woman was at fault, and also that my daughter, who was in the passenger seat at the time, was having an affair with the congressman. This was the beginning of South Florida’s Aviva Grossman obsession. Avivagate.

But I get ahead of myself.

Before Avivagate, before the story had a name, there was a period of time when we waited for the story. We waited to see if the story would even become a story, or more precisely, if Aviva would be a character in the story. For a brief but shining moment, she was the “unknown female intern” who was traveling in the car with the congressman. We didn’t know if her name would be released, and I believe the congressman tried to keep Aviva out of it. He may be an immoral man, but he is not a cruel one. Unfortunately, interest in the story grew beyond the congressman’s power to protect my daughter. The public would not be sated until it knew who had been in the car with the congressman that night.