By the time I saw Aviva at Thanksgiving, she had lost some weight, but she was otherwise rosy and happy, so all I could think was that the employment was doing her good. Maybe Aviva has found her calling, I thought. Maybe politics is her calling? I entertained a fantasy of myself at her inauguration for some office, dabbing my eyes with a red, white, and blue silk Hermès handkerchief. Aviva was always a girl with smarts and energy, but it often went in many directions, like sun rays or a bag of marbles dropped on the floor—maybe this is just youth, though? I asked her, “So you like working with the congressman?”
Aviva laughed. “I don’t work with him directly, not really.”
“What do you do, then?”
“It’s boring,” she said.
“Not to me! Your first real job!”
“I don’t get paid,” she said. “So it’s not a real job.”
“Still, this is exciting stuff,” I said. “Tell me, my daughter. What do you do?”
“I get the bagels,” she said.
“Okay, what else?”
“They send me to Kinko’s.”
“But what are you learning?” I said.
“How to photocopy double-sided,” she said. “How to make coffee.”
“Aviva, come on, give me one good story to take back to Roz.”
“I didn’t take this job so you’d have stories for Roz Horowitz.”
“Something about the congressman.”
“Mom,” she said impatiently. “There’s nothing to tell. The congressman’s in D.C. I mainly work with the campaign staff. Everything’s raising money and everyone hates raising money, but they believe in what they’re doing and they believe in the congressman, and I guess that makes it all right.”
“So you like it?”
She took a deep breath. “Mommy,” she said, “I’m in love.”
For a second, I thought we were still talking about the job, that she was saying she was in love with politics. I realized that we weren’t.
“It’s early,” she said. “But I think I love him. I do.”
“Who is he?” I asked.
She shook her head. “He’s handsome. He’s Jewish. I don’t want to say too much.”
“Did you meet him at school?”
“I don’t want to say too much.”
“Okay,” I said. “Well, tell me one thing. Does he love you, too?”
Aviva flushed prettily, like when she was a baby and had a fever. “Maybe.”
She wasn’t saying something. It is probably obvious what she wasn’t saying, but it didn’t occur to me. She was only twenty years old, just a kid, a good girl. I didn’t believe that my Aviva could get herself mixed up in something dirty like that. I had faith in her.
“How old is he?” I asked. The worst I thought was that he could be older.
“Older,” she said.
“How much older?”
“Not as old as Daddy.”
“Well, that’s something,” I said.
“Mom, he’s married,” Aviva said.
Oh God, I thought.
“But he’s unhappy,” she said.
“My love, I can’t caution you strongly enough—please don’t get yourself mixed up in someone else’s marriage.”
“I know,” she said. “I know.”
“Do you? In this life and the next one, all you have is your good name.”
Aviva began to cry. “That’s why I had to tell you. I’m so ashamed.”
“You must end this, Aviva. This can’t go on.”
“I know,” she said.
“Stop saying ‘I know’! ‘I know’ doesn’t mean anything. Say ‘I’ll do it,’ and then go do it. Nothing has happened yet. No one knows except me.”
“Okay, Mom. I’ll do it. Promise you won’t tell Daddy.”
ON THE FOURTH or fifth night of Chanukah, I drove down to Miami to make certain Aviva had sacked the married man. I was anxious so I went overboard with offerings for Aviva’s dorm. I brought an electric menorah, and a netted bag of gold chocolate coins, and new face towels from Bloomingdale’s (I paid seven dollars per towel for in-store monogramming), and two black-and-white cookies from King’s because these were her favorite when she was little.
“So?” I said.
“Mom,” she said, “the marriage is over, but he can’t break up with the wife at the moment. The timing isn’t right.”
“Oh, Aviva,” I said. “That’s what every married man says. He will never break up with the wife. Never.”
“No,” Aviva said, “it’s true. He has a very good reason he can’t break up the marriage right now.”
“Yeah,” I said, “what?”
“I can’t tell you,” she said.
“Why? I want to hear this very good reason.”
“Mom,” she said.
“How can I advise you if I don’t know the details?”
“If I tell you the reason, you’ll know who it is,” Aviva said.
“Maybe not,” I said.
“You will,” she said.
“So tell me. What difference does it make if I know who it is? I’m not going to tell anyone. I’m a vault when it comes to you.”
“The reason is”—she paused—“the reason is because he is in the middle of a reelection campaign.”
“Oh God,” I said. “Please end this. Aviva, you must end this. Think of his wife—”
“She’s awful,” Aviva said. “You always said that yourself.”
“Then think of his sons. Think of his constituents, of the people who have voted for him. Think of his career. Think of your own! Think of your reputation! And if that’s not enough, think of Daddy and of me and of Grandma!”
“Stop being a drama queen. No one will ever find out. We’ll keep it a secret until he can get divorced,” Aviva said.
“Please, Aviva. Listen to me. You have to end this. Or if you can’t end this, put it on ice until he gets the divorce. If it’s really love, it will keep until next year.”
Aviva nodded in a considering way, and I thought I might be getting through to her. She kissed me on the cheek. “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.” This must be what it’s like when your child joins a cult.
I could not sleep that night. I called in sick to work, something I never do because I am never sick, and though I was forty-eight years old at the time, I went to see my own mother for advice.
“Mom,” I said. “Aviva’s in trouble.” I described the situation for my mother.
“Aviva is smart,” Mom finally said, “but she is young and she does not know what she does not know. Go to Levin’s wife. You know the woman and have a context from which you can request a meeting. The wife will talk sense into the congressman.”
“But isn’t that a betrayal of Aviva’s confidence?”
“Aviva will be hurt in the short term, but it will be a temporary hurt and it is for her own good.”
“Do I tell Aviva that I’m going to do this?” I asked.
“It’s up to you, but I wouldn’t. She will not see reason. She will not see things from your point of view, and whether or not it is a betrayal, she will surely see it as one. If you don’t tell her, in all likelihood she will never find out it was you.”
Just before I married Mike, my mother and I went shopping for bridal shoes. And I remember thinking, Why bother? Do I really need to wear white shoes? But then I saw a diamanté-covered pump with a three-inch stiletto heel. “Mom,” I said, “look at these beauties.”
“Meh,” she said.
“What?” I said. “They’re gorgeous.”
“They’re pretty,” she said. “But your dress is to the floor. No one will see your shoes. You may as well be comfortable.”
“I’ll know they’re there,” I said.
She made her signature moue.
“I’m a seven and a half,” I told the salesman.
I tried them on and determined them to be bearably painful.
“Your legs look amazing,” the salesman said.
/>
“No one’s going to see her legs,” Mom said. “Can you even walk?”
I walked.
“Those tiny baby steps. You look hobbled,” she said.
“I feel like Cinderella,” I said. “I’m going to get them.”
“These are investment shoes,” the salesman said.
My mother snorted audibly.
“You’ll have these shoes your whole life,” the salesman said.
“They’ll sit in your closet your whole life,” Mom said. “You’ll never wear them again.”
“You have shoes like these, you find places to wear them,” the salesman said.
“You don’t have to pay for them,” I said to my mother. I put my credit card on the counter.
In the car, my mother said, “Rachel—”
“Stop with the shoes already. It’s done. They’re paid for,” I said.
“No, it’s not that. I don’t know why I was so sour about the shoes. If you love them, you should have them. What I wanted to say was”—she paused, but barely—“you could just as soon not marry him.”
“What?”
“You know, I guess I mean, you could marry him or you couldn’t.” She said this casually, as if she were saying she could have either sandwiches or soup for dinner, it didn’t matter to her.
“Are you saying you don’t like him?” I asked.
“No, I like him fine,” she said. “But while I’m thinking about it, I wanted to point out to you that it’s as easy to call off a wedding as to go through with one.”
“What?”
“My point is, it’s tempting,” she said. “It is certainly tempting to continue on with something because it has already begun. Think of Hitler, Rachel.”
There was no one Mom despised more than Hitler. He was rarely invoked and when she did invoke him, it was for situations she considered most grave. “I don’t know where you’re going with this, Mother.”
“Maybe at some point, that piece of shit had doubts about the Final Solution. Probably not, he was not a man known for introspection, but you never know. But maybe at one million Jews or two million Jews, in his secret, diseased heart, he was like, ‘Enough. This isn’t solving anything. If anything, it’s creating more problems! I don’t know why I ever thought this was a good idea.’ But he’d gotten the ball rolling, so . . .”
“Are you seriously comparing Mike to Hitler?”
“No, in this metaphor, you’re Hitler, and your wedding is the Final Solution, and I’m the good German who doesn’t want to sit idly by.”
“MOTHER!”
“Don’t be so literal. It’s a story. People use stories to make a point.”
“Not you! You don’t do that. Not with Hitler!”
“Calm down, Rachel.”
“Why are you saying this? Do you know something about Mike?” This was the woman who said she didn’t know what happiness was, after all. I couldn’t imagine where this was coming from.
“I know nothing,” she said.
“You seem like you know something.”
“I know nothing,” she said. She removed a tin of French lemon drops from her purse. My mother was never without candy. “Would you like one?”
“No.”
With a shrug, she returned the tin to her purse. “I know nothing,” she repeated. “But maybe I feel that you do not always have his complete attention.”
My hands were shaking. “What else is he paying attention to?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But you are a free woman, mine daughter, and you have options. You bought the shoes, but maybe you wear them to the opera instead. They’d be great at the opera. This is the last I’ll say about it.” She smiled at me and patted my thigh. “The shoes are very pretty.”
I did wear those shoes to my wedding, and I ended up twisting my ankle on the way out of the synagogue. I limped through the entire reception. I couldn’t dance at all.
My mother’s advice had always been sound.
FOUR
I left a rambling message on Embeth Levin’s answering machine. “Embeth, it’s your old neighbor, Rachel Grossman”—I was still Rachel Grossman then—“Rachel Grossman from Forestgreen Country Club, from Princeton Drive, from Boca Raton, from Florida, from planet Earth, ha ha! Anyway, I was thinking of you, and the kids”—oh God, that was one way to put it—“and when the kids were young, and I was wondering if we might have lunch, just to catch up and talk about old times.”
A week passed, and she hadn’t called me back. But why would she? She’d eaten my brisket, she’d eaten my salmon, but we hadn’t been friends. I decided to call her at her work. Her assistant put me on hold. The hold music was the Three Tenors Christmas album, and I remember sitting through at least two versions of “Ave Maria” in the time it took the assistant to return. “Embeth’s in a meeting,” the assistant said.
“Is she really in a meeting?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said.
I started to wonder if the best thing to do wouldn’t be to send her an anonymous note about the affair. But how could I be certain that she alone saw it and that it wouldn’t be intercepted by the assistant or someone even more indiscreet?
I was considering driving down to her office, which was forty minutes away in Palm Beach, when Embeth called me back.
“Rachel, hello,” Embeth said. “I was surprised to get your call. How are you? How’s Dr. Mike? Alisha?”
Normally, such an error would have insulted me (We’d been neighbors! They’d been invited to Aviva’s bat mitzvah!), but at that moment, I felt relief that she didn’t remember Aviva’s name. It meant she couldn’t know about the affair. “Aviva’s good,” I said. “She’s interning in the congressman’s office.”
“I didn’t know that,” Embeth said. “That’s wonderful.”
“Yes,” I said.
I knew there would be no better moment.
But I couldn’t ruin a woman’s marriage over the phone.
“How about lunch?” I said.
“Oh, Rachel,” she said. “I wish I could! But I’m incredibly busy with work and with the congressman’s reelection campaign.”
“It could be short,” I said. “Drinks even.”
“The soonest I could think of doing it would be this summer,” Embeth said.
I needed to invent a reason for us to see each other, something she couldn’t put off. I remembered what Aviva had said about the campaign and money. Money, I thought.
“Well, I wasn’t only calling to catch up. I thought we might discuss the possibility of a fund-raiser,” I said. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’ve recently become the principal of BRJA, and I’m always on the lookout for opportunities for our students to meet with Jewish leaders. So, I thought, wouldn’t it be marvelous if the school hosted an evening ticketed lecture with the congressman? Our students get to meet with the congressman, and we could invite the parents, too, and we could make it a real thing. It would be win-win for us and for the congressman. The Boca Raton Jewish Academy presents a Night of Jewish Leaders. Is that something you and I could discuss?”
She laughed. “The only time the zookeepers let me out is for campaign business.” Her voice was bashful. “How about lunch next Thursday?” she said.
In honor of the occasion, I bought a new suit at Loehmann’s. St. John. Black, with gold buttons and white trim. It was deeply discounted — the fabric was heavy for South Florida—and my size-ish.
The dressing room at Loehmann’s was communal, which meant the other shoppers weighed in on what you tried on.
“You look great in that,” an older woman (younger than I am now) in her bra, underwear, and a chunky turquoise necklace said to me. “So svelte.”
“It’s not really my style,” I said. “I like your necklace.”
“I got it visiting my son in Taos, New Mexico,” she said.
“I’ve heard it’s nice there.”
“It’s a desert,” she said. “If you like the desert,
it’s fine.”
I swung my arms. It felt like I was wearing armor.
“The suit looks made for you,” the older woman said.
I looked at myself in the mirror. The woman in the suit looked frumpy and severe, like a prison matron. She didn’t look like me, which was exactly the look I was going for.
When I arrived at the restaurant, Embeth was there as was Congressman Levin’s director of fund-raising, I don’t remember the exact title. His name was Jorge, and he seemed like a very nice man, but I wanted to stab him with my fork. How irritating that she had brought someone! I had to pretend to talk about a fund-raiser that I had no intention of throwing. An excruciating forty-five minutes into lunch, Embeth said she had to leave Jorge and me to continue planning the fund-raiser without her. “This was lovely, Rachel. Thanks for getting me out of the office.”
“So soon?” I said.
“We should do it again,” she said, in a tone that meant that we shouldn’t.
I watched her leave, and as she rounded the maître d’s station, I stood and said, “Jorge.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Excuse me. I have to go to the ladies’ room!” I knew I was being oddly specific, but I didn’t want him to suspect my real purpose.
“Well, you don’t need my permission,” he said lightly.
I walked at a measured pace toward the bathroom, but as soon as I was past the maître d’ and out of Jorge’s eye line, I sprinted toward the parking lot. She was still walking to her car. Thank God, I thought. I ran and I called her name like a madwoman: “Embeth! Embeth!”
The pavement was so hot it had almost turned back into tar, and my heel sank into it. I tripped and I skinned my knee.
Through my panty hose, I could see glistening flecks of pavement, embedded in my flesh like jewels.
“Rachel,” she said. “Oh my God, are you all right?”
I immediately stood up. “It’s nothing. It’s . . . the pavement is sticky,” I said. “What a klutz I am.”