A Remarkable Kindness (13 page)

“We haven't been allowed to use our phones until now.” Yoni spoke in a rush, as though he was running out of time. “We're out in the
shetach.
”

“In the where?”

“Out in the field, training,” he explained. “Look, I have to take over guarding in a few minutes. Where are you?”

“Funnily enough, I'm having a cup of delicious mint tea with your mom.” Rachel smiled up at Aviva.

“As long as all is okay, tell him I'll talk to him another time,” Aviva interjected, standing up and adding over her shoulder, “I'll give you two some privacy.”

“Your mom is taking good care of me.” Rachel was sitting cross-legged on a winged armchair.

“She told me you're also great company. Anyway, I'm getting out on Friday. Can I see you when I come home?”

“Definitely.” Rachel smiled.

“Good. That's all I wanted to hear.
Yallah,
I gotta go.”

“That's it?” Rachel managed to say, but he had already hung up. She sat for a moment, relishing the phone conversation—however brief—and then wandered into the kitchen, where Aviva was sitting at the table, reading a book of poetry.

“He's okay,” Rachel told her.

Aviva nodded, not looking up.

“I like poetry, too,” Rachel said awkwardly to Aviva's bowed head.

Aviva sighed, then read out loud, “‘In the darkness with a great bundle of grief / the people march.' That's Carl Sandburg.”

“It must be hard for you.” Rachel slid into the chair across from her.

“I try not to think about the dangers.” Aviva closed the book. “The army does its best to make sure the boys are safe. But let's make a pact not to worry about him, okay? You can't pre-worry—it won't help. I just keep hoping that lightning doesn't strike the same place twice.”

“You've very brave, Aviva. My mom would really like you. I told her all about you. And when I think of what you've—”

“Look at you,” Aviva cut in with a wave of her hand. “It isn't easy being a soldier's girlfriend.”

Rachel blushed. “I never pictured myself as the kind of girlfriend who wants to bake cookies for my boyfriend, but here I am.”

“Well, come back on Friday afternoon and we can bake his favorite chocolate chip cookies together.”

E
mily!” Yoram Kluger called out in an excited voice when he spotted her wheeling Shoval and Tal in their double stroller past the hotel one steamy morning. “You, the boys, you! You look, well—”

“Well, what?” Emily snapped, stopping in front of him, squinting at his shock of white hair.

“It's nine o'clock.” He smiled the way he often smiled at disgruntled guests. “Weren't the boys supposed to be in
gan
an hour ago?”

“They're not in
gan
.” Emily pulled up the hood of the stroller to glance at her sons. Tal was bawling, his face red, tears running down his cheeks, while Shoval gripped a stuffed dinosaur to his chest, shaking his finger and shouting, “
Zeh sheli!
” Emily thought what he really wanted to say was, “This is mine and there's no freaking way I am going to give you back this dinosaur!”

Emily glared at Yoram. She was in no mood to be social. She'd been up since five, wearing a ratty pair of denim shorts with ragged fringes and a vintage UMass T-shirt with matching spit-up stains on both shoulders; she'd only stepped out of the house because she couldn't take them squabbling in the living room another second. “They've been fighting since they woke up,” Emily said. “And before that, they had fevers and were crying half the night. I don't know where they find the energy. No, I take that back. They drain it all from me.”

“You need a break,” Yoram boomed. “Come back to work at the hotel.”

“I was really hoping to find a job where I could paint.” But as Emily spoke, she knew it was useless. There were no art jobs around. Maybe she could find the very rare job in an art gallery in Haifa, but that would mean a two-hour roundtrip commute, and then she'd never get to see the boys. She felt stuck.

“Once the boys are older, you'll take up where Picasso left off!” Yoram moved sideways to block the sun from her face. “Meanwhile, work for me.”

Emily shot him a tired smile. The air, hot and fierce, buzzed. She stared at the hotel entrance, where the pink flowers on the oleander bushes looked ready to poison someone.

“Try the hotel for a few weeks,” Yoram insisted. “I have a couple of shifts. And why don't you put your kids in
gan
already? Or are you too much of a Jewish mother to let them out of your sight?”

“I just thought it would be good for them to be with me,” Emily sputtered as Tal grabbed the dinosaur away from Shoval and both
opened their mouths in unison. Emily silently counted down,
Three . . . two . . . one,
because she knew (
sure enough and iffen the creek don't rise,
as her mother liked to say) that they'd start crying. And sure enough, the boys were wailing and Yoram couldn't get in another word.

Emily had put off placing the boys in the
gan
even though the other toddlers in Peleg went there every day because, she guessed, she wanted to avoid the inevitable question of what to do next in her life. And maybe because her mother had worked long hours at Shreibman's Fine Clothing in Charleston the whole time Emily and her brother were growing up. Or was it because Boaz was out of the house so much and she was too lonesome to let the boys go?

“It doesn't look like it's good for any of you,” Yoram said loudly over the boys' cries.

Emily gave an exhausted nod and thought,
I get it, I get it.

“You can start on Thursday afternoon, evening shift,” Yoram announced, as if it were a fait accompli. “See you!”

“See you,” Emily muttered, giving in, and instead of turning left, she continued straight down the road, wheeling Shoval and Tal past the village office and along the sandy path to the toddlers'
gan
. It was a modest one-story building painted lime green, nestled in the shade of a wisteria bush that clamored up a trellis on the side of the building. When Emily stopped at the gate, the boys were already squirming to get out of their stroller. She unhooked their belts, lifted them out, and they toddled up the path toward the
gan
door.

Inside, sunlight splashed everywhere, falling on the cheerful room decorated with children's drawings and filled with toys,
crayons, paints, puzzles, books, and games. Emily found Sara Fishman, the
gan
teacher, an exuberant woman in her sixties with spiky gray hair and Mickey Mouse earrings, sitting on a children's chair in the middle of a semicircle, reading a picture book to six toddlers perched on plastic potties, their shorts pushed down around their ankles.

“Sara, I'm here with my boys.” Emily thought that if she had a white flag, she'd be waving it in surrender.

“It's about time.” Sara grinned. “I was wondering when you'd come around to it. In a few months, your boys will be old enough to sit on the potty.”

“Group toilet training! I love it!”

“Shoval and Tal will learn in no time.” Sara winked. “After all, I was the one who trained Boaz.”

“Great,” Emily replied, but she couldn't imagine Boaz sitting on a potty. She couldn't imagine him being young or silly or happy.

“S
HALOM AND
WILLKOMMEN
,
” Emily told a group of German tourists as they poured into the hotel lobby the next month. “Welcome to the Garden of Eden Ho—”

“I need a room immediately,” barked a moody-looking older man in a shiny button-down shirt, thrusting his credit card over the reception desk.

“I'll do my best to—”

“Where's a restroom?” interrupted a woman with bluish-white hair.

“And I'd like a room with a view of the sea,” said a hoarse-voiced, tall man pushing toward the desk.

“One minute and I can—”

“Please show us where the bar is,” said a man whose nose was veiny and red.

“Right this way,” announced Ali Haddad, who suddenly, magically appeared in the lobby.

Emily beamed at him. She didn't want to admit how many times he stopped to talk to her on his way in and out of the hotel where he worked as Yoram's assistant manager. Ali was a little taller and a little older than Emily; he was so bold, spry, and full of energy that she joked he must have an Eveready battery inside him. He understood her humor and liked to laugh—his deep-set black eyes glistening like a lake lit up by moonlight—and he waited for her to laugh when he said something funny in return. In the weeks since she had been back at work, he'd brought her lilies in a vase to keep on the desk (he remembered her telling him she liked their aroma) and white chocolate (“You're the only one I know over the age of ten who likes white chocolate.”), and he phoned her on her days off to find out how she was getting along.

“Follow me for Heineken and Maccabee,” she heard Ali say, watching as some of the guests trailed behind him as if he were the Pied Piper.

Emily passed out registration forms, swiped credit cards, and distributed room keys. The guests dispersed one by one, and just when she thought it was safe and the lobby was finally under control, in walked Danielle Cohen, Tal and Shoval's babysitter, wheeling the twins in their carriage. Tal was in Spider-Man pajamas, Shoval dressed like Superman: they were wide awake and ready for action.

“Hi, Danielle.” Emily glanced at her watch. “Isn't it kind of late for these guys?”

“I'm sorry,” said Danielle, wearing Naot sandals and baggy cargo shorts. “They wouldn't stop crying and I couldn't get them to sleep and I didn't know what else to do.”

Emily stepped out from behind the desk, picked up Tal in one arm and Shoval in the other, and balanced them on her hips. “That's okay,” Emily told her. “Boys, Danielle is going to take you home and get you to sleep.”

“Noooo!” Tal shouted, as if Emily had just announced that Danielle was taking them to the guillotine. Shoval looked at Tal and opened his mouth, too. Emily silently counted
three . . . two . . . one . . .
and then watched as Shoval also burst into tears. The boys clamped their legs around her, holding on tight.

“Okay, you can stay for ten minutes and then you'll go.”

“Thank you.” Danielle's sigh of relief was quite audible. She plopped herself down on the brown leather couch by the large picture window, placed the boys next to her, and took out a Hebrew version of
Where the Wild Things Are
from the diaper bag. Emily returned to the reception desk and worked, listening to Danielle read the book, and as soon as she reached the last page, the boys started whining again.

Emily sat down with them on the couch. “Boys, it's time to go home. I'll call Boaz and he'll come pick you up.”

“Boaz went to check something in the groves,” Danielle informed her.

Emily nodded, not surprised. It wasn't that he didn't want to help out with the boys—he just saw the twins as her responsibility,
the way the groves and the cows were his. Emily looked out the window. A spotlight shone on the flower beds, illuminating hundreds of insects zipping through the restless, humid night. She turned back to her sons' matching, tear-streaked faces, wondering what to do next.

All at once, Ali reappeared, making her feel immediately relieved. How was it possible that he showed up whenever she needed him? He strode toward her in a pastel-blue polo shirt, dark jeans, and sneakers, his eyes beaming like strong headlights on a dark road. “What's the matter?”

“Who knows? Danielle brought them here because they wouldn't stop crying, and now they don't want to go home.”

“Shoval and Tal!” Ali knelt next to the couch. “Did you know I've known you both since you were babies? You're big guys now. Crying isn't for big guys like you. How would you like a ride in my car?”

“You don't have to do that,” Emily said.

“We'll go for a ride and then I'll drop them off at your house.”

“That's nice of you, but I'll think of something.”

“My car's right out front.”

“Do you have car seats?”

That made Ali laugh. “Your house is less than five minutes from here. I promise I'll drive very slowly, and I'll be sure to make a complete stop at the one stop sign from here to there.”

Emily blushed, embarrassed by her overcautiousness and the way he could get her to laugh at herself. “Okay. Let's go.”

Outside, Ali folded up the boys' stroller, put it in the trunk of his car, and got into the driver's seat. Danielle climbed into the
back and held out her arms, and Emily passed the boys to Danielle, or tried to, at any rate, because they clung to Emily, unwilling to be dislodged.

“Well, that was a good plan. I guess they'll have to stay with me in the hotel a while longer.”

“Why don't you get in with them and I'll drive you all around until they calm down,” Ali suggested.

“I can't leave the reception desk.”

“What's going to happen if you leave for a few minutes?” An amused expression crossed Ali's face again. “And if anyone is looking for you, you can say you went outside to check something.”

“It's good that Yoram likes you, because when he fires me, you can talk him out of it.” Emily climbed into the backseat, nestling the boys in her arms.

They drove down the curved village lane. “Shhh,” Emily whispered to Shoval and Tal as they drove past the silent cemetery. “Shhh . . .”

They passed Jacob Troyerman's kennel. “Shhh . . .”

The road hugged the shore and the sea rocked back and forth, singing its own lullaby. Emily felt the boys' bodies slacken against her, and by the time Ali looped the car around the hotel and arrived at her house, they were fast asleep.

Emily took Tal and Danielle carried Shoval, and they made their way through the darkened house, following a trail of building blocks, cars, and trucks. They laid the boys in their cribs, closed the door partway, and tiptoed out.

“Danielle, help yourself to Gila's amazing cookies,” Emily said
in the kitchen. As a babysitter for the Wallenstein kids in Charleston, Emily had loved the way Mrs. W. always encouraged her to take whatever she wanted from the snack drawers. “When Boaz comes back”—she took a cookie, hesitated, then put it back—“you can go right home. Good night, and thanks again.”

Emily then hurried toward the front door, hoping to return to the hotel before she was needed, but when she reached the living room, she stopped suddenly. The room looked like a scene. A still life. It was strange, Emily thought, it was her life. The reading lamp near Boaz's armchair (he never used the overhead ceiling light because it grated on him to pay the Israel Electric Corporation to keep a room bright), the messy table in the corner where Emily and the boys played with Play-Doh and finger paints, the stereo system with its spidery wires hanging down that Boaz had been meaning to fix. She gazed at it all, not feeling a part of it, and then she stepped outside, surprised to find Ali's car, the engine on.

“Why did you wait? I could have walked.”

“Maybe, but I wanted to drive you.”

“That was nice of you.” Emily climbed in, buckling on her seat belt though they were less than five minutes away. “Your English always surprises me.”

“I didn't have time to learn a Massachusetts accent. I wanted to stay there, but Jasmine wanted to come back.”

Emily nodded, remembering Lauren's story about Jasmine and Ali's breakup at Em-Hassan's house. Emily looked at Ali's face, half-illuminated by the streetlamps. “I like your hair pulled back to the side like that,” Ali said.

“Thank you.” Emily was surprised by his remark; Boaz hadn't even noticed.

Then Ali's cell phone rang and he glanced at the number and rolled his eyes before answering. “Yes, Yoram, the travel agent would know which airport is closest to Mt. Kilimanjaro . . . No, you don't have to call Hussein, I took care of the pool chemicals . . . Yes, I already told Svetlana to make extra goulash.”