Young Jane Young(72)

It’s odd, you think, how everyone loves (hates) the girl on the mattress, but no one seems that interested in the storm.

Turn to the next page.





113


It seems as if people will never tire of news of the Girl on the Mattress, but then a bigger storm hits, one with flashier elements, like Terrorism and Apocalypse and Death and Destruction and Mayhem.

And they forget about you, more or less.

If you decide to never leave your house again and become a Boo Radley–style shut-in, turn to page 114.

If you decide to go on with your life, turn to page 118.





118


You continue with your life. Of course you do. What choice do you have really? You get out of bed. You do your hair. You get dressed. You put on makeup. You make sure to eat salads. You make conversations with waiters. You smile when someone looks at you. You smile too much. You want people to think you are a nice person. You go to the mall. You buy a black dress. You buy makeup remover. You read magazines. You work out. You avoid the Internet. You read books. You tire of salads. You eat frozen yogurt. You make jokes with your dad. You never talk about the thing that happened with him or with anyone else. You masturbate a lot. You don’t call the congressman.

You go to your grandfather’s funeral, your father’s father. You weren’t close to him the way you were to your mother’s father, but you cry anyway. He once brought you a puppet from Argentina. You don’t have any grandfathers left now. You cry. You cry too much. You suspect you aren’t even crying about your grandfather.

You go to the synagogue’s ladies’ room. You go into the stall, and you hear two old women enter the bathroom behind you. You can hear them spraying perfume on themselves. The synagogue’s bathrooms are always stocked like drugstores: perfume, but also gum, hair spray, lip balm, moisturizer, mouthwash, hair bands, combs.

“This scent is delicious,” the first woman says. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” the second woman says. “I don’t have my reading glasses, but I think it’s a knockoff of something else.”

“It’s not a knockoff,” the first woman says. “There was an uproar last year. Shirley —”





119


“Which Shirley?”

“Hadassah Shirley. Hadassah Shirley said it was immoral for the synagogue to stock imitation perfumes in the bathrooms, so now they’re all bona fide.”

“Hadassah Shirley is ridiculous,” the first woman says.

“But she does know how to get things done,” the second woman says. “And keep your voice down. Hadassah Shirley is everywhere.”

“She didn’t come today,” the first woman says.

“I noticed,” the second woman says. “Poor Abe Grossman.”

“How much do you think Abe knew?” the second woman says. Abe is your grandfather. These women aren’t related to you, so they must have been his friends. Maybe they’re just busybodies from this synagogue though.

“His mind was gone,” the first woman says. “They didn’t tell him what had happened. It’s a mitzvah.”

“A mitzvah,” the first one agrees. “If he’d known, it would have killed him.”

You are aware that they have transitioned into talking about you.

You are no longer curious about where such a conversation will lead.

You leave the stall and you step between them. “Might I borrow this?” you say. You take the perfume and you spray it all over yourself. You look at the bottle. “It’s Jo Malone,” you tell them. “Grapefruit.”

“Oh, we were wondering,” the first woman says. “It’s delicious.”

“How are you, Aviva?” the second one says.





120


“Great,” you say.

You smile at them. You smile too much.

You graduate from college a semester late.

You apply for jobs in your field – jobs in politics mainly, but a few in PR and not-for-profits.

Your most significant work experience is for the congressman, but no one from his office can write you a letter of recommendation for obvious reasons.

Still, you are hopeful.

You are twenty-two years old.

You polish up your résumé and it’s not bad. You speak Spanish fluently! You graduated with honors! You worked for a congressman in a big city for two years, and by the end of it, they were paying you and you even had a job title, Online Projects and Special Research. You once kept a blog that had more than one million hits, not that you can point anyone to this.

And people in New York City, in Los Angeles, in Boston, in Austin, in Nashville, in Seattle, in Chicago, people can’t have all heard of Aviva Grossman. The news story could not have spread that far. This was a regional story, like when you were a kid and Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine were in a tour bus crash. That story was on the news every day in South Florida. Sure, it might have been picked up nationally, too, but the obsession with Gloria Estefan and her road to recovery was regional.

You receive almost no replies to your job applications.

Finally, someone calls you! It’s an entry level position at an organization that helps children from around the world get