Young Jane Young(3)

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?”

Mimmy says, “There is no one on earth who loves parties more than your mother.”

I wonder if Mimmy and I are speaking of the same woman. Once, I asked my mother if she and Daddy had been happy. “He was a good provider. He was good to you and your brother. Happy?” my mother said. “What’s that?” This is to say, I am reminded for the millionth time that it is a very different thing to be a woman’s sister than it is to be her daughter.

I say, “Mimmy, is it really the right time for a party?”

Mimmy looks at me as if I am the most pitiable person she has ever met. “Rachel Shapiro,” she says, “it’s always the right time for a party.”





THREE





S

ometime before my marriage ended, Mike and I drove down to the University of Miami to have dinner with Aviva, who said she had an announcement for us. At long last and a few semesters behind schedule, she had decided on a major: Spanish literature and political science.

Mike said that sounded impressive, but he was always such a softie where Aviva was concerned. I was the one who had to ask her what she was planning to do with a degree like that, which sounded like a whole lotta nada. I had visions of my daughter living in her childhood room forever.

Aviva said, “I’m going into politics.” The Spanish literature, she explained, was because she noticed that everyone who won elections in our part of the country spoke Spanish fluently. The political science, she felt, was obvious.

“Politics is a dirty business,” Mike said.

“I know, Daddy,” Aviva said, kissing him on the cheek. Then she asked Mike if he was still in contact with Congressman Levin. Though it had been a while since we had lived next door to the Levins, Mike had performed heart surgery on the congressman’s mother about a year earlier. Aviva hoped this connection would help her to land an entry level job or an internship.

Mike said he would give the congressman a call the next day, which he did. Where Aviva was concerned, Mike was more than reliable. She was daddy’s little girl. I find the term Jewish-American princess offensive, but if the tiara fits. At any rate, Mike talked to Levin and Levin gave Mike the name of someone in his office, and Aviva went to work for the congressman.

In those days, I was vice principal at the Boca Raton Jewish Academy, which serves students from kindergarten to twelfth grade. I had held this position for the last ten years, and one of the reasons I had not driven down to Miami to see Aviva much that fall was because my boss, Principal Fischer, had been caught shtupping a senior girl. The girl was eighteen years old, but still… A grown man and an educator should know how to keep his schlong in his pants. Eli Fischer was foolishly determined to keep his job and wanted me to advocate on his behalf with our board. “You know me,” Fischer said. “Please, Rachel.”

I did know him, which is why I told the board that Fischer should be fired immediately. While they searched for a replacement, I became the principal of BRJA, the first woman ever to hold that post, for what such distinctions are worth.

When Fischer returned to pack up his desk, I brought him a black-and-white cookie. It was a peace offering but also an excuse to see how the packing was going. I wanted him out of what was to become my office. He opened the white wax paper bag, and he flung the black-and-white cookie at my head, like a Frisbee. “Judas!” he yelled. I dodged just in time. The cookie was from King’s – six inches in diameter with an almost petit-four-like consistency. What a stupid man.