A Remarkable Kindness (17 page)

Aviva couldn't see Guy's face, but he reached for her hand and placed it back on the top of his head. She held it there, not moving.

“Aviva, can I kiss you?”

“Whatever for?”

“Because I think you're beautiful.” He raised himself and knelt by the couch.

“Maybe for a dolphin.” She gazed at the candles, feeling so full of longing and grief for the life she once had and the people she'd lost. Guy moved close to her, his lips near her cheek, and she could feel his breath on her skin as though he was whispering something important, and he then pressed a delicate kiss on her cheek.

“That was it.” Aviva pulled herself away. “One kiss. You can have all the pretty girls you want.”

“I don't imagine it's the same thing.”

“It isn't.”

“You mean the kiss?”

“I mean the everything.”

Guy looked at her. “When I was out in the water with you, alone like that in the middle of the sea, my feelings for you suddenly changed. I can't even explain it. Like the way I suddenly saw those dolphins in a different light.”

“Guy, this really isn't a good idea. You should go.”

But he kissed her again, this time on her mouth, and she felt her resistance dissolve.

“You sure about this?”

Guy nodded and got up, found the light switch and turned it off. He held Aviva against his chest. Her knees buckled but he secured her against him like a sail being tied to a mast. He kissed her ardently, his tongue exploring her mouth, and then he slowly peeled off her shirt and her bra, the loose garments dropping like blossoms. She put her arms around him and felt the rippled muscles of his shoulders, the small of his back, his curved behind. He undressed her and then drew back to look. She thought she'd feel self-conscious of her body, softened and pale and more than double his age, but he said, “Oh, wow,” in a way that made her feel it didn't matter. He was pulling her into him the way the moon pulled in the tide, making the pain inside her recede. She could take in air and not feel her breath choke her lungs. She knew she'd still have to endure a thousand and one more lonely nights, but at least she had this. The everything.

Afterward, Guy lay on the couch, cradling Aviva in his arms, her head resting against his chest.

“I remember you told me that the waves in Costa Rica run parallel to the shore,” Aviva said after a time. “Well, did you ever notice that a lot of poor cities in Israel have the word ‘hope' in their names? I tell my students not to lose their hope, but honestly, I've lost mine.”

“Please promise me you won't give up,” he murmured in earnest, caressing her hair. “It would be a terrible thing if you gave up.”

Aviva wished she could have said,
Yes,
or
I won't,
or
Don't worry about me,
but all she could do was keep her ear on his chest, listening to the beat of his young heart. “Promise me something first. Promise me that you won't be afraid no matter what you have to do. Just put your fear in a tiny compartment and close the door. Do not open that door.” She paused. “I've been there; I know.”

“I know you know, I've heard about you. But tell me something.”

“I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.”

He smiled. “Tell me something about you that nobody else knows.”

Aviva remembered reading a quote from Isak Dinesen, something about how all sorrows could be borne if they were turned into a story, so she began a story.

“Once upon a time there was a widow who happened to meet a soldier on the beach one day. They spent an evening together and she promised him she wouldn't give up, and he promised her he wouldn't be afraid.”

Aviva's voice smoothed down like the sea before dawn. She wished she could have ended the story right there. She wished the
story could have helped her bear the sorrows she had to bear. She wished the clock's hands would stop moving, but they kept turning and turning. Soon the soldier took leave of the widow because he could not stay. She knew that, but it didn't stop her from longing for what she'd just had and what she had to let go of.

Again.

E
dna Levy was not a complicated woman and she died modestly, pulling in. She had been sleeping on her side in the hospital, and her body stayed that way, curled like a snail that flipped sideways and never got up.

Rain was falling hard when the members of the burial circle gathered in the burial house. After they got everything ready, Gila poured water over Edna. The right side and then the left. Over the sheet, the women patted dry Edna's sun-spotted hands, her knobby knees, her brittle legs. They combed her hair, as gray as dusk. They dressed her in her final garments, taking great care not to disturb her. When she had been readied, Leah recited the prayers, and then Gila went outside for Charlie Gilbert. He came in, soaking wet, and helped the women lay Edna in her coffin.

Gila volunteered to remain behind after the others left.

“I had a bloody electric screwdriver somewhere but I couldn't
find it,” Charlie Gilbert said, holding a hammer and standing with Gila in the burial house. He put some nails in his mouth and reached for the lid of the casket.

Gila helped him lay the cover onto Edna's coffin. It fit like a lid on a pot. It was coffin-shaped—was there any other shape in the world like it, Gila wondered—narrow and tapered at the bottom and wide at the shoulders. The pine wood was sanded down but left unfinished. Pale and colorless.

Charlie banged a nail into the cover of the coffin while Gila held it in place. She looked down at Charlie's square, blunt nails. He had come to her house on Friday evening after her three children had gone to sleep to tell her that Edna had died. “Heard Omri's away.” Charlie ducked his head, stepping in out of the rain.

“At a beekeepers' conference in Brussels.”

“Thought you could use some company.” Charlie looked around Gila's cluttered living room. “I know Omri has some brandy hidden among his odds and sods.”

Gila and Charlie had a drink, talking quietly, and one thing led to another (Gila would think later), like a mathematical equation. In the bedroom, Gila let out a gasp that surprised her because when she made love with Omri, she was always quiet.

And now, in the burial house, Gila's face reddened with shame. Not only had she made love with a man who was not her husband, but she was also contemplating sex while poor Edna lay in her coffin. Didn't this prove the pathetic nature of human beings? Or was it a triumph, Gila wondered, a fleeting moment of love despite all of life's sadness and disappointments? She felt relieved that
Charlie was still holding the nails between his lips so he couldn't speak.

“No explanations needed,” he had told her in his tidy, self-assured British accent before he left her bed. “What happened between us will stay between us.”

Gila had no illusions about who she was or who she was destined to be. She had grown up in Peleg, married Omri, her high school boyfriend, and enjoyed her simple days as a beekeeper. She had never thought to push at the invisible seams of her life.

Her thoughts drifted to Omri. He always said that Gila was a scientific woman, too rational for irrational emotions. She never let herself go. But with Charlie, she had allowed herself a little cry, and she now knew she would go through the rest of her life remembering that one purr of pleasure that had escaped from her mouth.

“I guess that's it.” Charlie avoided her eyes, gave the wood cover a final pat, then edged his way around the coffin and out into the rain.

Gila sat down in the burial house. Edna was lucky, in a way, Gila thought. Once your life had ended, you no longer felt any pain.

I
n the late evening after Edna's
tahara
and funeral
,
Lauren made her way down the hallway of her house, lined with toys and books. She stepped into Maya and Yael's bedroom, filled with a yellow glow from their Cinderella night-light. The girls were fast asleep, breathing softly, in and out, in and out, and Lauren kissed them on their foreheads. She thought of waiting for her mother to come in to kiss her good night when she was a little girl. Earlier that day, Lauren had tried to explain to her mother yet again why she had joined the burial circle.

“So messy,” her mother had clucked. “Isn't being a nurse enough? Why would you want to see a dead woman? Let alone touch her and take care of her . . . her . . . necessities?”

Lauren knew it wasn't always pretty. When a woman died, she let everything go. Everything. But Lauren didn't gag when she took care of a dead woman, as she had done while doing dissections
in nursing school. As Lauren had held up Edna's torso, she'd taken short breaths that sustained her but didn't quite fill her lungs and waited while Aviva slid a sash under Edna's waist.

After Edna's
tahara,
Lauren stepped outside the burial house and stood under the awning. She didn't have to tell herself to breathe deeply, she just did, her nostrils filling with fresh, cool, rain-drenched air. She was aware of the transience of existence, aware of life going on all around her. She thought about how she was there before a baby let in his first breath. And she was there after a woman let out her last breath. It occurred to her that she'd been given a gift to serve as witness at birth and death, the bookends of existence.

Lauren crossed the hallway into the bathroom. She had showered right after the
tahara
, the way she did when she had time to separate herself from death and move back into life. Now, she slipped out of her clothes once more and changed into a lacy black negligee. She went into the bedroom, lit a vanilla-scented candle, and lay on the bed. Her body tingled with vibrations because David had told her earlier that he had a special evening planned for just the two of them . . .

“Since Chanukah's coming up, I have a surprise for you,” David had said in the kitchen when the girls had finished supper. She had been washing dishes at the sink and he stood behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist, and whispered in her ear. “I want to show you what Judah the Maccabee did to the special woman he captured in battle.”

“I didn't know Judah the Maccabee captured any women. I thought he was a nice Jewish boy.”

“He was a nice Jewish boy. Warrior by day . . . and warrior by night.”

“Sounds like my kind of man.”

“After the girls go to sleep, I want you to wait for me in the bedroom. Then I'm going to come in and I'm going to take my time with you.” His breath roamed over her skin. “And I'm going to do whatever I want to you.”

She had waited for David, who now entered the room soundlessly, locking the door behind him. He was in his jeans, barefoot and shirtless. He sat down on the edge of the bed where she lay on her back. He didn't touch her. He didn't have to.

“I've captured you.” He gripped both of her hands in one of his, raised her arms above her head, and pinned her down on the bed. Lauren struggled playfully to get out of his grasp but he held her, his other hand roaming over her body, smooth and electric under his touch. She held herself still, her back arching as he circled her nipples with his tongue. He slid his fingers down her belly, along the insides of her thighs, slipping a finger deep within her.

“You're mine now.” His voice was low. He snagged her like one of those fishermen on the shoreline pulling in a catch. He was warm, passionate, tender, resilient. He was so-so-
so,
as Winifred used to say. Winifred, from Barbados, had been Lauren's parents' housekeeper when Lauren was growing up, and when Winifred thought something was so good, she'd say it was so-so-
so
. There was not even a word for how good it was.

Lauren reached for David, clasping his groin. She felt as if she held all of him. She felt as if he held all of her.

He rolled Lauren onto her belly. She opened herself to him. She
was his. Roaming this way and that, he took what he liked. He gave her more in return. He sank himself inside her, filling her up.

“Lauren, don't cry,” David whispered afterward, still lying on top of her.

“It isn't out of sadness—” Lauren had been thinking of Edna Levy, and the way she would never be held or touched again.

“I love you, Laurrren.” He rolled the
r
in her name so it sounded like a ship that might have set sail with the
Niña,
the
Pinta,
and the
Santa María
.

“I love you, too, David,” Lauren whispered. “You're just so-so-
so
. . .”

They lay together in the candlelight. The rain began to fall again. It pattered against the shutters, the walls, and the roof. Lauren slipped out of David's arms and blew out the candle. She opened the bedroom door in case one of the girls had a nightmare, then settled back in bed, getting cozy as he wrapped his arms around her. A car drove down the lane of David's childhood, the headlights skating along the ceiling like a hockey puck on ice.

“I heard on the radio that it's snowing in Boston,” Lauren said.

“Really,” he murmured.

“When it snows hard at night, the city is so peaceful and quiet. Remember? It's like a hush falls over the streets.” She looked at the dresser against the wall. David's shirt hung from one of the knobs, making it look like a snow-covered mailbox. “The sun always seems so bright the morning after it snows. The light sparkles on the icicles hanging from the roofs and there are frost patterns on the windows and the roads are covered in white. Kids are throwing snowballs and everything glistens and glitters.”

“Nice.”

“It's really nice.”

“Mmm . . .” He cupped his hands around hers, gripped her tighter. As if he was scared to let her go. As if he was scared the moment wouldn't last. Then his breaths slowed. Stretched.

“I don't remember if I ever told you about the time my father drove us to Vermont on a Friday to beat a snowstorm so that we'd be the first ones on the ski slopes the following morning. But we got caught in the storm and the car got stuck on the highway. Believe it or not, we spent the whole night in the car in all that snow.”

Minutes passed. Lauren thought she was somewhere else. Then there was a clap of thunder and she remembered. “David, are you even listening?”