“Aviva,” I said.
“How’s your job search coming, Mom?” Aviva said.
It is awful what I did.
It is awful.
I had never raised a hand to that girl. I walked into the pool, my belted summer-weight cashmere cardigan getting wet and billowing around me. I pulled the floating mat out from under her. Harry Potter fell in the pool and so did Aviva.
“Mom!” she screamed.
“GET OUT OF THE GODDAMN POOL!” I yelled.
Harry Potter sank to the bottom of the pool. She scrambled to get back on the floating mat, and I pulled it out from under her again.
“Mom! Stop being such a bitch!”
I slapped her across the face.
Aviva’s expression was hard, but then her nose turned red and she wept.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was sorry. I tried to put my arms around her. She was resistant at first, but then she let me.
“Sometimes I feel crazy, Mommy,” she said. “He did love me, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” I said, “I think he probably did.”
In retrospect, I would say she was depressed.
I WENT TO my mother and I asked for advice.
“You’ve been too much of a friend to her and not enough of a mother,” Mom said.
“Okay,” I said. “How do I stop doing that?”
“You have to tell her to move out,” she said.
“I can’t do that,” I said. “She is shunned. She has no money, no job. What will she live on?”
“She is able-bodied and smart. She will figure something out, I assure you.”
I couldn’t do that to Aviva.
“And stop worrying about Aviva,” Mom said. “Try worrying about your own life. There are things to figure out there, I assure you, my daughter.”
But a few months later, Aviva did move away.
She did not consult me; she did not leave a forwarding address. I have a cell phone number. She calls me once or twice a year. I believe I have a grandchild. Yes, I would call this a sadness in my life.
How can I blame her for leaving? There was nothing for her in South Florida. These people feel as Louis the bad date felt. They know a few punch lines. They don’t think they are talking about a human being. They don’t think they are talking about someone’s daughter.
Mike and I divorced a few months after Aviva left. I would not say we had stayed together for Aviva, but in the absence of Aviva, I felt no particular connection to him. We were Aviva’s parents. I will tell you, it was no tragedy to return to my maiden name.
I run into Mike every now and again. He is remarried. Not, I might add, to the mistress. That poor woman waited and waited, only to have him marry someone else. I almost feel more outraged for her than I do for myself. The new wife—what can I say about her? She is younger than me but older than my daughter, thank God.
Should I tell you about Levin? He’s still in Congress. I think he’s managed to keep his schlong out of other people’s daughters. What a mensch.
Eleven
A month before Mom’s eighty-fifth birthday, the nursing home calls me. Mom is being transferred to the hospital. She has pneumonia, and she may not live through the night.
I dial Aviva’s cell phone number. She never picks up, but I dial it anyway. The robot voice recites her number.
“It’s Mom,” I say. “If you want to see Grandma before she dies, you may want to get on a plane to South Florida. Give me a call.”
I sit in the lobby and wait for her to call me back. I fall asleep and when I wake up, Mimmy is sitting next to me.
“Good news!” she says. “We can have the birthday party at the Boca Raton Museum of Art. The people who were using the garden for the wedding canceled!”
I say, “Mimmy, are you kidding me? Mom is on life support. Mom will probably die.”
“She’ll pull through,” Mimmy says. “She always does.”
“No, Mimmy,” I say. “She may not pull through. She is eighty-four years old. One of these days, she is definitely not going to pull through.”
“You’re a hard one, Rachel Shapiro,” Mimmy says.
“If you mean I’m a realist, then yes, I guess I am a ‘hard one,’ ” I say.
“Anticipating the worst doesn’t provide insurance from the worst happening,” Mimmy says.
The crazy thing is, Mimmy turns out to be right. Mom does pull through, and we have the party at the Boca Raton Museum of Art. Mom seems delighted as a five-year-old that we are having an eighty-fifth birthday party for her.
“Museum,” she says.
“Art,” she says.
“Wonderful,” she says.
“Rachel,” she says.
“Aviva,” she says.
I think that is what she says.
I’ve put Mom in the van back to the rehab and I’m on the way to my car when someone calls my name. It’s Louis the bad date. He’s visiting the museum with his grown son and daughter-in-law.
“Rachel Shapiro,” he says. “I have been so hoping I’d run into you. I want you to know: I would never have said it, if I’d thought that Aviva was your Aviva.”
“You finally figured it out,” I say.
“I didn’t,” he says. “I’m a dunce. I was at the synagogue for the Torah unrolling ceremony, and Roz Horowitz was there, and it came up that she was your good friend, so I asked if she knew what had happened, and she told me.”
“Roz and I aren’t good friends anymore,” I say.
“Meh, I doubt that,” he says. “Friendships ebb and flow.”
“Roz was at the synagogue?”
“She’s not doing so great,” he says. “Her husband died.”
“The glass guy died!” I say.
“A heart attack,” he says.
“Poor Roz,” I say. “I’ll have to give her a call.”
He says, “When I like someone, I get nervous and I talk too much. I was showing off for you, trying to be funny and smart, and I’m sorry, it backfired. I know I come off as gregarious, but I’m a bit shy actually.”
I don’t care.
“Obviously,” he says, “I don’t know your daughter. I know what the story on TV was, but I don’t know her. And it’s bad luck, plain and simple, that we hit upon that subject.”
“It’s not bad luck,” I say. “You asked me about my children.”
He can’t argue with that.
And then I say, “What if Aviva weren’t my daughter? Should you talk about anyone’s daughter that way? Levin was an adult man and an elected public official, and my daughter was a dumb kid in love, and he ended up fine, and she’s a punch line. So, fifteen years later, why should she have to be some alte cocker’s dating banter?”
“I am sorry,” he says. “I know I stuck my foot in it. I wish I could go back in time and rewind the tape of our date.”
“There aren’t tapes anymore, Louis. Just zeros and ones, and they never disappear.”
“You’re smart and you’ve got moxie,” Louis says. “I like a woman with moxie. At our age, can we afford not to try again? Don’t we owe it to ourselves to give this another shot?”
“I have been alone a long time,” I say. “I am fine with continuing to be alone.”
“Even so,” he says. “I think we can be better than fine.”
“I’m fine with fine.”
“You’re a tough one,” he says.
I tell him my aunt said the same thing.