When We Were Young

by Jaclyn Goldis

Genres: Family Life; World War II; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

As a young bride-to-be navigates the days before her wedding, three generations of women come together in a page-turning novel full of family secrets, heart-wrenching drama, and a second chance at the love of a lifetime.

Release date: February 16, 2021

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 416

Sample

Chapter One

Corfu
2004

It was all because they went to the fancy Taverna Salto for the one-year anniversary of their first date.

They nearly opted for something more casual, a picnic in their meadow by the Old Fortress. Why didn’t Joey just insist on the picnic?

But nope, she and Leo set off to celebrate at Taverna Salto, with its distant location from the apartment building by the sea where both their families lived. Corfu Town was awash with its rusty, evening glow when, about halfway to the taverna, Joey paused by an arched stone Venetian colonnade.

“My feet are killing me,” she admitted, gazing down at her new espadrilles that were imprisoning her toes.

“Didn’t someone tell you to wear comfy shoes?” Leo’s green eyes had a laugh inside them.

“I wanted to wear my new ones. But you were right. Next anniversary, you pick my shoes.”

“Just a little farther, Jonesey.”

“FYI, another mile is not just a little farther. I think I’ll go barefoot.”

Leo’s mouth feigned a pucker, like she’d said she was going to lick the floor of an airplane bathroom. He wore flip-flops even in nice hotel rooms. But he knew Joey hated wearing shoes, especially, somehow, on Corfu. Corfu was for flitting barefoot down cobblestone streets.

“If you must, I’ll be on glass patrol.”

“You’re good to me, Winn.”

Joey kicked off her espadrilles. She felt tipsy from their earlier aperitifs, and she also felt very happy, that sometimes elusive sense of finding a home in her own skin. She’d always felt that home-ness with Leo though, ever since they were ten and their families met in the stairwell of their common apartment building. Over successive summers vacationing on Corfu, their separate families had intertwined like one. Joey and Leo were nineteen now, but she’d loved him from the first moment they’d met.

Leo smiled at Joey, a smile that said I like being good to you and I like all the weird things about you.

At Taverna Salto, the maître d’ greeted them each with a handshake. He led them to a table at the edge of a terrace bordered in lush trellises. Beneath a grass-green awning, a local string quartet was playing a set with emotive violin work. Leo pulled out Joey’s chair. Joey felt very grown-up arranging her napkin on her lap as Leo circled the table to his seat—and that was when his eyes took on a strange, startled look.

“We have to go! Now!” Leo practically leaped back to Joey’s side. He yanked on her arm, pulling her up with such force that it shot pain through her shoulder socket.

“Wha…huh?” Joey’s feet tripped over each other to balance. Her napkin slipped to the ground. She twisted to gaze back, but Leo whipped her around. “Leo? What the hell?”

On Leo’s warpath toward the entrance, they nearly barreled into a waiter. He thrust his water pitcher over his head, sending some of it sloshing out onto Joey’s shirt.

“Leo? Leo!”

The maître d’ scurried after them, calling, “Sir? Madam?”

But Leo didn’t speak, just kept his tight grip on Joey’s arm, propelling her along. She glanced behind uncertainly at one point, only catching a blurred sliver of an awning before Leo jerked her forward. Joey’s veins went Popsicle-cold. Her feet shuffled along robotically, the shock of it all churning in her head.

After Leo pulled them around a corner, Joey finally shook herself from his grip. Shook herself back to life. “Leo, seriously! What are you doing?”

Everything quieted, but it was a loud quiet—roaring in Joey’s ears. Night had cloaked the island and sent most of its inhabitants to sleep, leaving behind the pristine aura of a deserted movie set. Leo rubbed his forehead, his eyes unreadable.

“Leo, talk to me. What was that?”

“Nothing.” But his gaze bounced from the fuchsia bougainvillea adorning a balcony to a cat lolling at the mouth of a moonlit garden—anywhere but at her.

“Seriously, Leo?”

“I don’t know!” he shouted, and she staggered back. He’d never yelled at her before. Never treated her with anything but care.

“I just didn’t like the menu,” he said, softer. “Leave it, okay, Joey?” He never called her Joey either. Only Jonesey or Jones or sometimes J.

“Leo, come on. Please tell me the truth. Don’t invent something about the menu.”

“I have a headache. That’s all. You’re blowing this out of proportion. Can we just be quiet for a bit? Go home?”

After some time, Joey heard herself say in a weird, foreign voice, “Okay.” Then Leo took her hand, and Joey let him squeeze away her questions.

The next morning, he broke up with her. Broke her heart. Broke her.

And she never saw him again.

Chapter Two

Florida
2019

“Thanks for coming, darling! The clickey thingie keeps getting lost.” Joey’s grandmother ushered her into her glacial foyer, a startling contrast to the thick heat endemic to August in South Florida.

“Joey, have a look at my new orchids. Can you believe they’re fake? They look expensive, don’t they?”

G walked toward the orchid pots, her rose chiffon dress twirling around her calves clad in pantyhose, her auburn wig laced with faint raspberry highlights in a fresh fluff around her tiny head.

“Wow, they really do.” Joey glanced at her phone, half expecting to see a text from Leo saying Just kidding, I’m not coming to Delray to see you after all.

But nope. Only her David Hockney screensaver stared back at her. Joey’s eyes blurred with the blues of the iconic swimming pool. So apparently Leo Winn was still coming to town. It was unbelievably surreal.

Mere minutes prior, Joey had been driving over to her grandmother’s condo along the highway that straddled the ocean, completely carefree, or as carefree as a bride can be twelve days before her wedding. Her phone had rung, identifying an unknown number. Joey never answered calls from unknown numbers—the introvert in her required time to prepare. But maybe it had been the wind whipping her hair, the contentment she’d felt. At thirty-four, life had finally slotted into place. She’d been happy, and apparently happy people answered unknown numbers. Joey had nearly swerved off A1A when she’d heard Leo’s unmistakable voice.

Leo, who’d broken up with Joey out of the blue the morning after their botched one-year anniversary dinner on Corfu. They hadn’t spoken to or seen each other in the fifteen years since. But now he’d heard about Joey’s wedding from his parents, and he was flying over from Europe with something important to tell her beforehand that, no, he couldn’t just say over the phone.

“You look beautiful, G. How was your birthday dinner with your friends?” Joey kissed G’s cheek—soft, with wrinkles in a swirl like a cyclone.

“Oh, it was nice, darling. I had the salmon. It was a little dry, but they did it with some nice mushrooms, and Doris had dolphin. Can you imagine? Dolphin, they’re serving now at the clubhouse.”

“That can’t be right. Dolphin’s an endangered species.”

“Do you think I’d make it up? Dolphin—right there on the plate.”

“Of course I don’t think you’d make it up. Dolphin! Who knew?”

The TV in the living room blared with an outburst from a Hallmark movie, the volume its usual senior-citizen high. Joey was struck by a melancholic image of G in her house all alone, watching other people get saccharine happy endings. And somehow that made Joey think of herself, in the months after Leo broke up with her, sitting on that sad brown couch in her off-campus apartment, watching Sex and the City reruns. Leo’s mom used to watch them on a loop in their Corfu apartment, and it had made Joey feel pathetically closer to him to adopt the habit.

While she’d watched, she’d eaten Cinnamon Toast Crunch from the sole bowl she owned, that received the tiniest rinse between cereal meals, meaning the same crusted-up pieces adhered eternally to its sides. She’d dyed her hair dark then, an almost blue-black that in hindsight only served to enhance her deepening under-eye circles. In the throes of her Dark Ages, Joey had hardly ever answered her phone. She’d certainly not gotten beneath anyone to get over Leo, as her girlfriends had advocated. She’d basically only left the apartment to go to an occasional class or to the supermarket, to stock up on her three essentials: cereal, milk, and cookie dough.

The memory vacuumed up Joey’s breath. “I can’t stay long, G, so let me help you with your mouse.”

G frowned. “My mouse?”

“The clickey thingie. It’s called a mouse. Remember?”

“I thought it was a moose.”

“It’s a mouse.”

G pulled out her phone in its pink glitter case and jabbed at her screen. “I’ll make a note of that. Okay, darling, let me just dash to the bathroom, and then you’ll help me find that mouse. Maybe the darn thing will answer to cheese. I have cheddar.”

As G laughed her melodious laugh and slipped into the powder room, Joey’s heart thumped in unison with the tock from the grandfather clock.

I need to see you, Jonesey.

That’s not a good idea, Leo. I’m getting married in twelve days.

What he’d responded kept cycling around her head.

I know. That’s why I’m coming. Please, Jonesey, you need to hear this. I have to tell you why I really broke up with you.

Taverna Salto. Leo’s eyes shading over, like he’d seen something. But what? For years, Joey had relived the way he’d pulled her from the taverna, analyzing it so exhaustively that the CIA would have been impressed. She’d conjured secret lovers and fanciful conspiracies before shifting focus to herself, trying to figure out which part or parts of her hadn’t been good enough to make Leo stay with her. Finally, Joey’s best friend of twenty years, Siya, who’d occupied a front-row seat to Joey’s breakdown, laid down some harsh truth. Jo, you need to let go of the restaurant. Leo’s a textbook commitment-phobe, and you deserve someone who sees your amazingness.

Joey considered spilling all to Siya as soon as she left G’s. But Siya had married her first boyfriend, whom she’d met at age thirteen. She’d never so much as poked a toe into twenty-first-century dating. And she adored Joey’s fiancé; Siya had captained Team Grant from the start. Bottom line: If Joey were to call her best friend like she now longed to, there was little chance Siya would say, Sure, meet Leo, it will be harmless closure.

But Joey needed to confide in someone about Leo’s call. She should tell Grant. Of course she should. But she couldn’t yet fathom it. Not because she was about to embark on some affair or had lingering feelings for Leo—that was laughably off base. She adored Grant. Period, end of story. Only, Grant knew that Leo was her Big Ex, and Joey suspected he’d be more than a little wary at her agreeing to meet Leo right before their wedding.

It’s just, wouldn’t most people grab an ex-boyfriend’s attempt at closure, however long after the relationship it came? Everyone stalked their exes a little. That was basically the whole point of social media.

Joey thumbed to her Facebook app, typed in L, and immediately the search box filled him in. Leo Winn. God, Leo fucking Winn. Joey clicked on his latest picture, from three years prior. She stared at the picture as if for the first time, although it was not her first look over the years, or second, or if she was being honest, even hundredth.

It was Leo sitting on a boat with an easy smile, like the world was his, like a natural magnet for good things. His hair still hovered between blond and brown but it had that hipster vibe, the top middle flicked up, the sides shorn. His biceps were bulkier, and his face had more freckles these days. Joey peered closer, trying to deduce things in his eyes. Are you actually coming? Do I even want you to?

Oh, to hell with the lies she liked to tell herself.

I want you to come. I only wish that I didn’t.

*  *  *  

“Okay, Joey, let’s trap the mouse!”

Joey followed G to her office, past cupboards teeming with old doilies and handkerchiefs, items that meant various things to various people seventy or eighty years ago. G was from the Holocaust equivalent of the Depression era; all overflow got boxed up and relegated to a closet overrun with a lifetime of forgotten semi-treasures. The office was no different, tchotchkes on all surfaces, with an antique secretary’s desk against the wall, framed by bay windows overlooking the neighboring condo. Tricycles and playhouses now littered its overgrown lawn, but once Joey’s father had lived next door. There he’d fallen in love with Joey’s then-teenage mother, who was always twirling in roller skates.

“See.” G indicated the mouse on its pad. “Where did the clickey thingie go?”

The screen was on Facebook. How had her grandmother figured out Facebook? And why? But Joey didn’t have the energy to pry. She jiggled the mouse. “The mouse is right here.”

“But I want to find something on the Facebook. And every time I go to that box, the clickamajig disappears.”

“You mean the arrow?” Joey hovered the arrow over the search box and clicked.

“That’s all? You did it?”

“Sometimes the arrow drifts off screen so you can’t see it. You just have to jiggle.”

“Jiggle it. I see.” Her grandmother wrote it in her notes. “You’re just brilliant, darling. Oh, this has helped me out so much.”

“Of course, G. I’m still really impressed you’ve joined the computer age.” G wasn’t just her grandmother but also one of Joey’s main confidantes—the reason, in fact, why Joey had moved back to Florida. As she waded further into her as yet single, childless, career-floundering thirties, it was strangely harder to endure her grandmother’s ascension through her nineties.

“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

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

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. . .