The Sweetness of Forgetting (42 page)

Gavin hands me a map he’s printed out from the Internet. It has a star marked toward the south end of Battery Place, and I realize with a start how close Jacob lives to Ground Zero. I wonder whether he’d been here to witness the tragedy of September 11. I blink a few times and steady myself. I look north toward the hole in the skyline where the World Trade Center used to be, and I feel a pang of sadness.

“This used to be my favorite area of the city,” I tell Gavin as we begin to walk. “I worked here for a summer when I was in
college, for a law firm in midtown. On the weekends, I used to take the N or the R train down to the World Trade Center, get a Coke in the food court there, and then walk down Broadway to Battery Park.”

“Oh yeah?” Gavin says.

I smile. “I used to look out at the Statue of Liberty and think about how big the world was out there beyond the East Coast. I used to think about all the choices I had, all the things I could do with my life.” I stop talking and look down.

“That sounds nice,” Gavin says softly.

I shake my head. “I was a dumb kid,” I mumble after a moment. “Turns out life isn’t as big as I thought it could be.”

Gavin stops walking and puts a hand on my arm, bringing me to a halt too. “What do you mean?”

I shrug and glance around. I feel foolish standing in the middle of a sidewalk in Manhattan, with Gavin looking at me so intently. But he’s staring down at me, waiting for an answer, so finally, I look up and meet his eye. “This isn’t the life I thought I’d have,” I say.

Gavin shakes his head. “Hope, it never is. You know that, right? Life doesn’t ever turn out the way we plan.”

I sigh. I don’t expect him to understand. “Gavin, I’m thirty-six, and none of the things I wanted in my life have really happened,” I try to explain. “Some days I wake up and think,
How did I get here?
It’s like one day, you just realize you’re not young anymore, and you already made your choices, and now it’s too late to change anything.”

“It’s not too late,” Gavin says. “Ever. But I know what you mean about feeling that way.”

“How do you know?” My voice is sharper than I intend it to be. “You’re twenty-nine.”

He laughs. “There’s no magical age when all your options shut down, Hope,” he says. “You have just as many chances to change your life as I do. What I’m saying is that no one’s life
turns out the way they expect it to. But it’s how you roll with the punches that determines whether you’re happy or not.”

“You’re happy,” I say, and I realize it sounds more like an accusation than a statement. “I mean, you seem to have everything you want.”

He laughs again. “Hope, do you really think I sat around as a kid and dreamed of being a handyman?”

“I don’t know,” I mumble. “Did you?”

“No! I wanted to be an artist. I was the dorkiest kid in the world; I used to insist my mom take me to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston so I could look at the paintings. I used to tell her I was going to move to France and be a painter like Degas or Monet. They were my favorites.”

“You wanted to be an artist?” I ask incredulously. We begin walking again, toward the address we have for Jacob Levy.

Gavin chuckles and glances down at me. “I even tried to get into SMFA.”

“SMFA?”

“Ah, you’re not a big art fan, I see.” Gavin winks at me. “The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.” He pauses and shrugs. “I had the grades, and I had the portfolio, but I didn’t qualify for enough scholarships to pay for it. My mom couldn’t afford it, and I didn’t want to take out tons of loans and be in debt for the rest of my life. So here I am.”

“So you just didn’t go to college?”

Gavin laughs. “No, I went to Salem State on scholarship. I majored in education, because I figured if I couldn’t be an artist, I’d be an art teacher.”

“You were an art teacher?” I ask. Gavin nods, and I add, “But what happened? How come you’re not anymore?” I bite my tongue before I add something about him being just a handyman.

He shrugs. “It didn’t make me happy. Not the way that working with my hands does. I realized that if I couldn’t be an artist in the traditional sense—let’s face it, college or not, I’m no
Michelangelo—I could create art in some form if I could make things for people. And that’s what I do now.”

“But you fix pipes and stuff,” I say in a small voice.

He laughs. “Yeah, because that’s part of the job. But I also build decks and paint houses and install windows and shutters, and renovate kitchens. I get to make things beautiful, and that makes me happy. I think of it as making the town one giant piece of art, one house at a time.”

I stare at him, incredulous. “Are you being serious?”

He shrugs. “It’s not what I dreamed of when I was a kid,” he says. “But I’ve realized that I never really felt like
me
until I wound up on the Cape. Life doesn’t work out the way we plan, but maybe it works out the way it’s supposed to after all. You know?”

I nod slowly. “I think I do.” He made a decision to find himself, and he’s happy with what he found. I wonder whether I’ll be able to do the same someday. I’ve come to look at life as a series of closed doors; it hasn’t occurred to me until this moment that in some cases, all I have to do is open them. “I never knew all that about you,” I say softly, after a pause.

Gavin shrugs again. “You never asked.”

I look down and swallow hard.

We finally arrive at the address on Battery Place. I look up at the building, which has an older-looking brick facade and appears to be a dozen stories tall. It’s dwarfed by the buildings to the north of it, but there’s something about it that seems charming and traditional to me. I’m startled a moment later to realize it reminds me a bit of France.

“We’re here,” Gavin says. He smiles down at me. “Ready?”

I nod. My heart is beating a mile a minute. I can hardly believe we might be finding Jacob at any moment now. “Ready.”

According to Elida’s note, Jacob lives in apartment 1004, so we try buzzing that unit first. When there’s no response, Gavin shrugs and begins randomly punching units until the front door buzzes.

“Voilà,” he says. He holds the door for me as I enter.

Inside, the foyer is dimly lit, and there’s a narrow staircase straight ahead. I look around. “No elevator?” I ask.

Gavin scratches his head. “No elevator. Wow. That’s weird.”

We begin walking up, and by the time we get to the fifth floor, I’m ashamed to say I’m breathing hard. “I guess I should work out more,” I note. “I’m huffing and puffing like I’ve never climbed a staircase before.”

Gavin, who’s behind me, laughs. “I don’t know. Huffing and puffing aside, it doesn’t look to me like you’re in need of a workout.”

I look back at him, my face on fire, and he just grins. I shake my head and continue climbing, but I’m flattered.

We finally reach the tenth floor, and I’m in such a rush to see whether Jacob still lives here that I don’t even bother catching my breath before knocking on the door to 1004.

I’m still breathing hard when the door swings open, revealing a woman about my age standing there.

“Can I help you?” she asks, looking back and forth between Gavin and me.

“We’re looking for Jacob Levy,” says Gavin, after apparently realizing I can’t get words out.

The woman shakes her head. “There’s no one here by that name. I’m sorry.”

My heart sinks. “He’d be in his late eighties? From France originally?”

The woman shrugs. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“He used to live here, we think,” Gavin says. “Until at least a year ago.”

“My husband and I moved in in January,” says the woman.

“Are you sure?” I ask in a small voice.

“I think I’d notice if some old dude was living with us,” the woman says, rolling her eyes. “Anyhow, the super lives in apartment 102 if you want to check with him.”

Gavin and I thank her and head back down the stairs.

“Do you think we came all this way for nothing?” I ask as we descend.

“No,” Gavin says firmly. “I think Jacob moved somewhere else and we’re going to find him today.”

“What if he’s dead?” I venture. I hadn’t wanted to consider the possibility, but it’s foolish not to.

“Elida’s husband didn’t find a death certificate,” Gavin says. “We’ve got to believe he’s still out there somewhere.”

When we reach the ground floor, Gavin knocks on the door to apartment 102. There’s no answer, and we exchange looks. Gavin knocks again, harder this time, and I’m relieved to hear footsteps coming toward the door a moment later. A middle-aged woman in curlers and a bathrobe opens the door.

“What?” she asks. “Don’t tell me the plumbing on the seventh is broken again. I can’t handle it.”

“No ma’am,” Gavin says. “We’re looking for the super.”

She snorts. “That’s my husband, but he’s mostly worthless. What do you need?”

“We’re looking for the man who used to live in apartment 1004,” I say. “Jacob Levy. We think he moved out about a year ago.”

She frowns. “Yeah. He did. So what?”

“We need to find him,” Gavin says. “It’s very urgent.”

She narrows her eyes. “You the IRS or something?”

“What? No,” I say. “We’re . . .” And then I don’t know how to continue. How do I tell her that I’m the granddaughter of the woman he loved seventy years ago? That I might even be his granddaughter?

“We’re family,” Gavin fills in smoothly. He nods at me. “She’s his family.”

The words make my heart hurt.

The woman scrutinizes us for a moment more and shrugs. “Whatever you say. I’ll get you his forwarding address.”

My heart beats faster as she shuffles back into her apartment. Gavin and I exchange looks again, but I’m too excited to say anything.

The woman reappears a moment later with a slip of paper. “Jacob Levy. He fell and broke his hip last year,” she says. “He’d been here twenty years, you know. There isn’t no elevator, and when he got back from the hospital, he couldn’t make it up them stairs, what with his hip and all, so the landlord, he offered him the vacant apartment at the end of the hall here. Apartment 101. But Mr. Levy, he said he wanted a view. Picky, if you ask me. So the movers came, end of November.”

She hands me the slip of paper. On it, there’s an address on Whitehall Street, along with an apartment number.

“That’s where he asked us to send his final bill,” the woman says. “I got no idea if he’s still there. But that’s where he went from here.”

“Thank you,” Gavin says.

“Thank you,” I echo. She’s about to close the door when I reach out my hand. “Wait,” I say. “One more thing.”

“Yeah?” She looks perturbed.

“Was he married?” I hold my breath.

“There wasn’t no Mrs. Levy that I know of,” the woman says.

I close my eyes in relief. “What . . . what was he like?” I ask after a moment.

She regards me suspiciously then seems to soften a little. “He was nice,” she says finally. “Always real polite-like. Some of the other tenants here, they treat us like servants, me and my husband. But Mr. Levy, he was always real nice. Always called me ma’am. Always said please and thank you.”

This makes me smile. “Thanks,” I say. “Thanks for telling me that.”

I’m about to turn away when she speaks again. “He always seemed sad, though.”

“Sad?” I ask.

“Yeah. He went out for a walk every day, and he always came back at night, after dark, looking like he lost something.”

“Thank you,” I whisper, sorrow flooding through me as we turn away and head out the door. It seems that all those nights Mamie sat waiting for the stars to come out, Jacob was out looking for something too.

It takes us fifteen minutes to cross east to Whitehall Street and head south to find the address the super’s wife gave us. It turns out to be a modern-looking building that soars above the others around it. There’s no doorman, which I’m relieved about; we won’t have to explain our mission to yet one more person.

“Apartment 2232,” I say to Gavin as we head for the elevators. The doors slide open and I punch the number 22, tapping my foot impatiently as the doors close.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” I murmur as the elevator begins its slow ascent.

Gavin reaches for my hand and squeezes. “We’re going to find him, Hope,” he says.

“I don’t know how to thank you for everything you’ve done to help me,” I say, pausing long enough to look into his eyes and smile. For a frozen moment, I’m sure he’s about to kiss me, but then the elevator dings and the doors slide open. We’re here.

We race down the hall, right and then left, to apartment 2232. It’s the last apartment on the right-hand side of the hall, and as Gavin knocks, I glance out the window at the hall’s end. It’s a beautiful view, out over the southern tip of Manhattan and across the water. But I can’t focus on that now. I turn toward the door and will it to open.

But there’s no answer, no footsteps from inside.

“Try again,” I say. Gavin nods and knocks again, more loudly this time. Still nothing. I’m trying not to feel entirely deflated. But what now? “Again,” I say weakly. Gavin raps on the door
so loudly this time that the door across the hall opens. An old woman stands there, staring at us.