When We Were Young Read online

  “It was time. Doris says there’s far more to conquer. Something called Instaham. It turned her into a deer, I think. She said her skin never looked so luminous.”

  “Instagram.” Joey smiled. “We’ll do stories together, for sure, but can we save the lesson for next time? I need to sketch tonight.” The lie filled her with guilt, but Joey had to get out of there. Go to her favorite beach. Dip in the sea. Get out of her head.

  “Okay, dear. But have some strawberries first, how about it?”

  “I wish I could stay for strawberries, but I can’t today.”

  G cocked her head. She had a keen sixth sense for trouble, always trying to ferret out the illness she suspected you were keeping from her. Just earlier on the phone, Joey had coughed, and G had accused her of having bronchitis when really Joey had just choked a bit on her smoothie. “You aren’t having those panic attacks again, are you, Joey?”

  “I’m not.” Joey swallowed hard. “I promise.”

  G’s forehead released some of its ripples. “Thank God. We don’t want to go back there, no siree! I’m so excited for your wedding, darling. My robe’s all ready to go.” G had gotten it specially made for when they’d be getting ready pre-ceremony, with GRANDMAMA OF THE BRIDE in Swarovski crystals on the back. “And Grant is just wonderful. Any new moles that pop up, he said I can call him. Any moles at all!”

  Joey bit back a smile. G’s name had been lighting up Grant’s screen with increasing regularity. What Joey was to G’s computer illiteracy, dermatologist Grant was now to G’s rapid detection of new moles.

  “He’s the best,” Joey said, and gripped the evil eye charm in her dress pocket.

  Grant was the best. Really, really.

  “Good luck on your sketching, love. I’m so proud of you.” The lies were thick in Joey’s stomach now, lodged there like cement. “And we’ll do the miracle face masks again before the wedding?”

  “Definitely.”

  For G’s birthday present, Joey had splurged on a treatment that yielded baby-soft feet after sloughing off all the old skin, along with a Botox-in-a-jar face mask. Since leaving her legal career on the precipice of partnership, Joey hadn’t so much as purchased a new eye shadow—a striking contrast with her ten years in Manhattan, where she’d frequented Barneys like others did bodegas. But G deserved a special present. They’d tried the face mask after G’s birthday party, and G had pooh-poohed its actually working until after, when she’d exclaimed that she looked seventy again.

  As Joey slipped on her nude studded sandals, G put an oval, cherry-red fingernail on the glass overlay of a picture of Joey’s grandfather. “He was a beautiful boy, wasn’t he, Grandfather?”

  “Yeah. He was.” Although unwritten, the photo’s time line was plain: It was her grandfather BA. Before Auschwitz. He wore a little cap and a pensive stare. Joey had to look away. That picture only ever reminded her of the evil that had come for him after.

  “’Night, G. I love you.” Joey squeezed her grandmother’s shoulders, but G was lost in the picture and didn’t answer.

  Joey opened the door to a tidal wave of heat. She had a thought: I could tell Leo I’m not meeting him. But it was a thought almost humorous in its futility.

  Just by answering his call, Joey knew she’d pushed a boulder that was already rolling away from her, impossible to catch.

  Chapter Three

  Joey

  Florida

  2019

  The revolving door of Joey’s high-rise blew her inside the white marbled lobby. The doorman’s back was to the inky panorama of ocean that sprawled beyond A1A, his attention detained by an old man who took up far greater space in the world than his diminutive stance would suggest. As Joey recoiled at the blast of aircon on her post-sea skin, she caught snippets of conversation. She gleaned the following: A tree in a planter on a neighboring balcony had dangled its leaves against the armrest of the old man’s chair; one of the leaves had dipped dangerously close to the old man’s whiskey tumbler. And who knows what kind of chemicals they feed that thing. I could have been poisoned!

  Joey hastened into the elevator. Her phone dinged with a call. She put a hand to her heart and slowly slid out her phone. But it was only her sister, Lily. Joey silenced the ringer.

  She pressed the elevator button for the twelfth floor and rested against the elevator’s citrine-lacquered side, imagining how Grant would laugh over the old man’s latest tirade, the Episode of the Encroaching Tree. In their yearlong residency at Palmetto Towers, they’d witnessed a slew of poor doormen tasked with resolving various problems sparking the old man’s outrage. There was the Episode of the Noisy Air, the Episode of the Boy Who Played Very Loud Video Games, and, Grant’s favorite, the Episode of the Too-Gray New Hallway Carpet.

  At the wedding invitation place, there’d been a pinch to Joey’s knee. But babe, is the wording too gray?

  But she didn’t want to tell Grant about the Episode of the Encroaching Tree, not until she told him about Leo. She needed to tell him about Leo. Maybe she was making too big a deal of it. She’d already mentioned her boyfriend on Corfu, and Leo had contacted her wholly unprovoked. Grant would understand that Joey would need to see Leo and hear whatever he had to say that was apparently so important.

  Wouldn’t Grant understand?

  The elevator dinged. Joey walked down the brightly lit hall atop the plush, too-gray carpet. She stood outside their apartment for some time, unable to force herself over the threshold.

  In a spurt of courage, she swiveled her key and entered cold darkness. Flashes of moonlight illuminated the jumbled contents of the catchall on the entry hall table. It was intended to hold their keys—which Grant was constantly misplacing—but his were there, for once.

  “Joey?” called Grant, light now trickling from beneath their bedroom door.

  She popped into their bedroom. Grant glanced up from his phone with that light, glad look he always got just to see her.

  “Hi, babe!” He was shirtless and wearing gray sweatshirt shorts, his dark hair doing something different from normal that she couldn’t pinpoint. As he leaned over to kiss her, she could hear his favorite weatherman from the news app he favored, talking about South Florida’s heat wave.

  “Hi! I’ll just shower, ’kay?”

  “Sure.”

  She slipped into the bathroom, stripped, and stepped into the shower. Her hands roamed her skin, brushing sand as she went. It surprised her anew each return from the beach just how much sand managed to burrow into crevices. After Joey’s shower, she toweled off, rough-dried her hair, and appraised herself in the mirror—her eyes sometimes light brown, sometimes hazel; her skin its late-summer caramel; her long chestnut hair with new pre-wedding ombré highlights; her lips with their little bow, her favorite feature; and on the unfortunate end, her ears that stuck out a little bit like Dumbo.

  Leo’s coming to town, she practiced, making her voice nonchalant. It’s not a big deal.

  Oh God, a giant arrow pointed to it’s a big freaking deal.

  Joey slipped into a purple lacy lingerie set Grant liked and crept to the bedroom. It was dark, the lamps now toggled off. She slid beneath the covers and felt his warmth first on the sheets. She couldn’t go to him. Not before she told him.

  “Babe—”

  “You’re so far away,” he blurted.

  She knew to go to Grant would weaken her resolve, but her body was its own beast. It folded like origami into its nook in his right shoulder.

  “For Joey,” he’d once said, “I’ll drill a little plaque so no one takes your space.”

  “Just the right shoulder,” she’d replied, savoring how cozy her head felt there. She liked the musky scent of his deodorant. “You can chop off your left shoulder and I’ll live, but the right let’s be careful about.”

  “How did it go?” asked Grant.

  “How did what go?” asked Joey, startled.

  “You said you were gonna sketch after G’s?”

  He ran
his foot against hers, and she suddenly realized that she was capable of separating them, the two lives she’d begun to live today. The angel inside her head knocked against her skull to query what kind of person she wanted to be. But she was too tired, or too weak, to set the angel free.

  “Oh. It was fine. I went to the beach, but I didn’t get much sketching done.”

  “So you’re saying I’m about to sleep in a sandbox.”

  Joey managed a laugh. “I did shower.”

  “Somehow I predict my back’s still about to feel like sandpaper.”

  He was right. Someday someone had to teach her how to get the sand out. Maybe a YouTube video. “I’m sorry, babe.”

  “It’s worth it for your art, Jo.”

  The dark made her dark. She might have been stronger in the light.

  Joey ran a hand across Grant’s stomach, searching for the part in the corner near his ribs with the tattoo of ocean waves, which she’d first set eyes upon only a year and a half prior. The memory hit her like medicine: Grant in that knotty man bun, soaring down a big wave off Batu Bolong, so fixed in concentration at the tricks he was turning that he didn’t see her board careening at him.

  She was finding herself post-legal-career. He was there for stress release after medical boards, purely for the surf and the smoothie bowls. After a short vacation romance, they’d parted, not thinking they’d see other again, but then only months later, both in their native Florida, they’d unexpectedly reunited. That was when Joey had first contemplated something real between them. She’d had so many situationships in the years after Leo, but after leaving law, Joey had longed for something bigger. Something real. Maybe she’d finally believed she deserved it. She’d let herself accept so little after Leo because that was what she’d thought she was worth.

  On one of their first dates in Florida, she’d straight-up asked Grant where things between them were going. To her surprise, he’d flipped it on her. Asked her what she wanted.

  And Joey had said without pretense, Everything. I want everything. And I understand if that’s not where you’re at.

  And he’d said with zero hesitation, I can do everything. I want to be with you, Joey. I want everything with you too.

  “So you know how I got drinks after work with your dad? He’s stressed about his wedding speech.” Grant rubbed the crease her waist made when she curled around him. He was the first man in so long—since Leo probably—who didn’t make her tense up when he stroked her there. “He thinks your mom will overshadow him.”

  “She probably will.” Joey laughed.

  “Anyway, I think he likes me.”

  “He loves you.” It was true. And Grant was Jewish too. Yep, she’d hit the jackpot.

  Bea and Scott didn’t really care about the Jewish factor. Jewish was her grandmother’s non-negotiable. “I don’t want to have to say this, Joey, but if you don’t marry a Jew, I won’t consider you my granddaughter anymore.”

  G had first said this phrase when Joey was seven. She remembered it because she’d come out of the pool, teeth chattering, and G had been holding a towel and looking at her funny.

  Joey had said, “Okay, Grandmama. I’ll marry a Jew.” This had made her grandmother beam. She’d bought Joey a chocolate Popsicle.

  Joey turned her head to the shadow of Grant’s face. “I love you.” She ran her fingers through his hair, but instead of its usual fluffy, it felt greasy, tacky. “Did you do something to your hair?”

  “Oh.”

  “What is it?” She went for the light.

  He swatted her hand before she could flick the switch. “I bought this shampoo. It’s supposed to make it…thicker.”

  “Babe, there’s nothing wrong with your hair.” She’d seen him the other day, checking out his slightly receding hairline with a pocket mirror. She hadn’t realized he’d gotten so sensitive about it.

  “What hair? I’m losing it all. I don’t want to look bald at our wedding.” His hand froze mid-stroke, now warming her waist.

  Joey snuggled into him. “I think…babe, are you having a groomzilla moment?”

  Grant’s laugh vibrated through her. “I should shower, huh?” he said.

  “It’s a bit of an oil spill up there.”

  “Okay. I will. But first, why don’t you come here?”

  “I’m right here.”

  It always thrilled her the way two heads connected in the dark. No fumbling. No straining. A pair of lips found their mate.

  She would tell him tomorrow.

  Chapter Four

  Sarah

  Florida

  2019

  Sarah eased herself to a seat atop her powder-blue duvet and gripped her pantyhose at the waist. It had been a nice dinner with her friends, she thought. And Joey’s visit had, as always, bolstered her spirits. In all, capping off a nice birthday week. But gosh, ninety-three. Ninety-three was incredibly old.

  Sarah rolled her pantyhose down over hips that creaked as she walked, over knees diagnosed in new unpronounceable ailments each time she went to the doctor. On the TV on her dresser, two blond girls were bickering. Her pantyhose was nearly off now, dangling from one foot with its toenails painted navy blue. It was her manicurist’s suggestion. Dark polish was in fashion these days, and at ninety-three it couldn’t hurt to channel the young. But did it actually look young, or rather like someone had dropped a refrigerator on her toes?

  The girls on TV appeared to reconcile. A man now approached them near a fence in a field. Sarah wished her volume went higher so she could hear the dialogue to figure out which of the blond girls was playing the best-friend role and which was the leading lady this leading man was eyeing.

  Then the thing Sarah had to do—tonight, if she could muster the courage—pressed upon her again.

  She went to the bathroom and made her eyes squint so she couldn’t see her nude reflection. She reached for her soft pink robe and wrapped it tightly around her waist. Then she widened her eyes just long enough to grapple for her wig, to remove both its clips. Sarah thought she could make out the man on TV saying, “I’d like that very much.” Or maybe it was, “My lawyer will be in touch.” Presumably the latter. Sarah knew how these Hallmark movies went. The man would be a developer, set to demolish the farm left to one of the blond girls as an inheritance from her estranged father. Before long, the farm would be saved and a fairy-tale love would unfold on the heels of a passionate kiss.

  Actors didn’t use tongues on Hallmark movies, Sarah had read somewhere. And one could tell.

  Oh, it was all far simpler on TV.

  Sarah started toward to the kitchen to give the counters a final wash. She did this every evening, prepare the house for morning. There had to be order in life, Sarah felt strongly. Routine. Otherwise one’s mind wandered.

  On the way to the kitchen, Sarah passed her display case, and her chest tightened. Sometimes she wished she could torch that thing—a past strapped to her like ballast. The worst were the mini statues perched so defiantly for over seventy years. There was one of Hades in white stone. Another of a surly-faced Grecian lady, a bust. Sarah called her Dagny. She couldn’t remember when that nickname had arisen, whether she or Sam had coined it. The statutes had once belonged to Sam’s mother. They’d survived the ransacking of Sam’s childhood home after he and his family were taken to Auschwitz. Her own family’s home hadn’t experienced the same fortune. It had been fully appropriated, her past eradicated.

  If only erasing the memories were that easy.

  Sarah retrieved a sponge from the side of her sink. As she rubbed it across the marble, her eyes latched onto her rosebushes. They were so pretty—bushes seemingly divided, some pink, some purple, but over time, Sarah thought they’d blended, the pink parts acquiring a purplish tint, the purple flowers now rimmed in pink.

  Sarah had arrived in Delray seventy-three years before, because Sam had a far-removed cousin who lived in South Florida and secured the permissions they needed to immigrate. But despite living i
n America the vast majority of her life, Sarah still couldn’t rid herself of Corfu’s long shadow. This she knew even more assuredly given the letter that had arrived in the mail the week before.

  Sarah set down the sponge and opened the drawer where she kept miscellaneous things. Carefully, she removed the letter from its envelope covered in foreign stamps and that familiar handwriting—a ghost in Greek cursive.

  She took the letter to her computer and navigated to the Facebook using the clicker. She clicked on his picture again. She brought her eyes closer to the screen, closer still, until her forehead brushed the monitor. She stared into those eyes. Those startling green eyes.

  Eventually, Sarah leaned back in her chair. She began to type.

  Well, hello there, Milos. Hello. Here we are then. A lifetime later, and yet I would recognize you anywhere.

  I was very surprised to get your letter last week. It arrived on a night I was going to see a movie with a girlfriend. She was calling me that night, Doris is her name, saying hurry up, and can you bring those caramel candies? This time I’d packed a box all for her so she wouldn’t have to keep interrupting me during the best parts for a candy. But then I saw your letter hidden below my water bill. And I saw it was a Greek address. No one writes me from Greece. I held the letter in my hand for a very long time, and I thought about not opening it. You understand that, don’t you, Milos? It’s not about you, but that’s a lie. It is about you. It’s about so many other things too.

  Oh, Milos. It’s all so strange considering these things at the end of a life. At the end of a life you don’t have anything to do besides put on another black outfit for another funeral and get annoyed at your friend who asks for caramel candies twenty times in a movie. You can lay down fully at the movies now. Has that come to Lefkada yet? A person could move into a movie theater here and sleep in such warmth and security.