A Remarkable Kindness (22 page)

“Where's the shop?” Emily asked after they circled the block.

“It should be somewhere around here,” Lauren muttered, walking by a Dumpster overflowing with garbage.

“You, me, navigating Akko by ourselves? I don't think so.”

“I just don't understand it,” Lauren said as they passed a shrunken, sickly woman struggling to push a disheveled man in a wheelchair. “How the hell can Jews be considered the smartest people on earth?”

“We fool everybody.” Emily stopped for a moment by a store displaying mops, brooms, sponges, jugs of ammonia, and cleaning sprays.

“And in the middle of all this mess, everyone's cleaning their houses like crazy for Passover. It's like this obsession with bad
smells that Ja—” Lauren was about to say Jasmine, Ali's ex-wife, but stopped herself. “This thing that Jumana, a nurse in the hospital, has. She says that even after she's washed the dishes in the dishwasher, she washes her plates again using bleach to get rid of the
zanacha
smell!”

Emily shrugged. “I don't think Ali is worried about
zanacha
. I'm just waiting to eat my first matzoth with butter and salt.”

“Does Ali like matzo, too?”

Emily swiveled sideways and dropped her jaw. She'd had the same look the first day she'd arrived in Peleg, when they'd stood on the beach and she'd described how Rob had left her. It was the look of someone who'd been hurt, punched in the gut. Lauren felt ashamed of herself.

“I'm sorry. It's just that—”

“Look,” Emily said. “I married Rob because I thought he was a nice Jewish boy, the perfect Mr. Right, and he turned out wrong. Then I married Boaz because I thought
he
was Mr. Right, but look how unhappy I am. So what if Mr.
Wrong
really is Mr.
Right
?”

“It's not only the matzo. Think of all you'd be giving up. And this is a heretic talking.”

“I
am
thinking of all I'm giving up. That is one thing you don't have to tell me.”

“We're lost.” Lauren studied the block of dreary stores. Then she noticed the number twelve above a door a few shops down. “
There
it is!” She headed past the streaked plate-glass window and opened the door; a bell jangled, and she inched her way through a warren of Hebrew books with embossed gold letters, placemats,
children's games, yarmulkes, key chains, mezuzahs, amulets. At the back of the dusty store stood a man with a black beard that hung like a great bib down his chest.

“Hello!” Lauren carefully tucked in her egg tray and plastic bags so they wouldn't bump into anything. “I'm the one who spoke to you on the phone two weeks ago. You said that you'd order me a mantle for the Torah and I came today to pick it up.”

“A mantle
.
” The man glowered, his black eyes set close to his bumpy nose.

“That's what my father called it. I'm not sure what you'd call it in Hebrew. Do you remember that I spoke to you?”

“A mantle
,
” he repeated as though Lauren had just invented the word.

“You said you ordered me one.”

“I can't order something that doesn't exist.”

“Of course it exists! It's the decorative cover for the Torah scroll
.
Sometimes it's blue, sometimes it's white—”

“Who are you getting this mantle for?”

“I'm getting it for my father.”

“You can't come in here without him.”

“My father is in America! He's donating a Torah to a synagogue in Nahariya.”

“You call that a synagogue?”

“You don't even know which one I'm talking about.”

“I know which one would send
you
to buy a mantle. Why didn't you tell me? I would never do business with that place.”

“Why not? It has people from Argentina and Russia and South Africa who've never gone to a synagogue in their lives and now they're coming to services and my father is donating the Torah and all I want to do is buy—”

“That place is for
goyim,
not for Jews. You don't even know the laws.”

“I didn't come here for a lecture. I came here for my mantle.”

The man clicked his tongue, hidden behind his swampy beard.

“Are you kidding me?” Lauren asked in disbelief. “You ordered it for me!”

He stared at her. He stared through her.

“Lauren, let's just go,” Emily urged.

Lauren swung around, stomped back through the tightly jammed aisle, and accidentally knocked over some cassette tapes. She did not pick them up. Emily held the door open and let it slam shut behind them.

“I went out of my way to come to his shop, thinking I was doing him a favor, wanting to give him some business because it's clear to me that nobody has shopped there since Golda Meir was prime minister, and look how he treated me!” Lauren plunked down her vegetables and eggs on the sidewalk. She dug her cell phone out from her pocketbook and dialed David's number.

“Hi, sweetie, what's up?” His voice was always soothing, comforting.

“David! The guy won't let me buy the mantle!”

“Why not?”

“Because it's for the reform temple, that's why! You'd think
after all we've been through, Jews would be kind to each other. You'd think we'd want to help each other. But look what's happening here. David, I can't take this anymore.”

“Lauren, we'll talk when we get home—”

“No.” Lauren turned away from Emily so she couldn't hear her. “I've had enough. This isn't my home. I want to go back to Boston. I want to go
home
.”

O
n a sun-drenched Tuesday morning, Rachel was helping Lauren's daughter Maya do a puzzle in the
gan
when Hannah from the village office walked in, her red eyeglasses hanging crooked on a chain against her ample breasts. Rachel smiled but Hannah only nodded, crossing her arms, and then said something to Iris, the
gan
teacher. Iris, who had black hair and always wore silvery-pink lipstick, winced and clasped her hands to her mouth. They both turned to Rachel and the thought occurred to her that she was about to get fired. Rachel knew the kids liked her and she was good with them, but maybe Moshe or Svetlana complained about the way Rachel quit her last jobs. Maybe she'd have to go work somewhere else.

“Can I talk to you for a few minutes?” Hannah asked, approaching her.

“Okay.” Rachel stood up warily.

“Don't go, Rachel!” Maya gave her the same piercing look that Lauren did, with the same intense gray eyes.

“Don't worry, Maya, I'll be right back,” Rachel reassured her, although she was not really sure.

Rachel followed Hannah into the playground, where they stopped by a tractor tire filled with sand. There was a dump truck, a plastic rake, a rubber ball.

Hannah opened her hands, palms up.

“If it's about my working somewhere else because I took two days off last month,” Rachel said, “I don't think it's fair because—”

“It isn't that.” Hannah touched her shoulder. “It's about Jacob Troyerman. Esther wanted me to tell you . . . he's dead.”

“What?”

“He didn't come in for breakfast this morning and his son Eyal went to look for him and found him in the groves.”

“I don't understand.” Rachel felt as though time had opened up like a crevasse and she'd fallen in.

“Jacob shot himself.”

“Oh no.” Rachel gasped, a cry strangling her throat.

“I'm sorry.”

Rachel shook her head. She wanted to say that it was not worth saying sorry; it was not worth saying anything. Yoni was right. Silence was the best thing, the only thing.

Then a loud siren went off.

Hannah glanced at her watch. It was ten o'clock: the ten o'clock siren on Holocaust Memorial Day.

Rachel straightened and stood erect. Through the window of the
gan,
she could see Iris motioning at them to stand up. She brought her finger to her lips.
Stand straight. No talking
. Rachel remembered hearing the siren last year in Nahariya. As soon as it had sounded, everyone on the street stood as still as statues, as if they were all playing a giant game of Freeze. Even taxi drivers got out of their cabs and stood in the middle of the street, their car doors flung open.

Rachel closed her eyes, listening to the siren wail at a deaf world.
Why on this night?
Rachel thought.
Because on all other nights—

She tried to imagine Jacob the previous night, a constellation of darkness around the cowshed where he lay on his cot with the dogs. Had he looked at his watch? Had he chosen a certain time? A certain hour when he decided he would cease to be? Maybe he had said good night to the dogs before he left the kennel. Maybe he said,
Shhh, be quiet, good night,
to Pete and Sputnik and Coco and Happy and Max and Scrappy and Freddie, the basset hound with the somber eyes.

Then Jacob headed into the groves. He walked and walked through the silent shadows.

You'll always know where to find me,
he'd said.
In the shade of that tree at the end of the road.

Sobs racked Rachel's body. She hadn't found the right words to say to Jacob, so she had said nothing. Offered him nothing. Yoni was wrong. Silence was not the only thing.

It was the worst thing.

L
ATER THAT DAY
, Rachel stood with Aviva, Lauren, and Emily in the back of the crowd of mourners at the cemetery. Rachel knew that an hour earlier, David, Heinz Zuckerman, and the other members of the men's burial circle had carefully attended to Jacob in the burial house—awash in that permanent gray silence—and then placed him in his coffin.

Rabbi Lapid stood next to Jacob's casket, which lay on the black trolley in front of the burial house. The rabbi rocked back and forth, reciting psalms, his grainy voice floating up through the eucalyptus trees and into the beyond. The afternoon was warm and still. Birds flew in a V formation above the cemetery, breaking loose and scattering, reuniting into another V, and flying away.

Rachel spotted Boaz, in a John Deere cap, streaks of grease on the sleeves of his blue shirt. Heinz Zuckerman wore a gray suit and a gray felt hat, and Omri Salomon, the beekeeper, had a black-and-yellow yarmulke resting on his bald spot. If Rachel hadn't felt so despondent, she would have laughed to herself that the yarmulke was a bald-spot cover.

But she couldn't laugh, not when she saw Esther sitting on a bench near the coffin, her delicate face looking baleful, bereft. When Rachel had first arrived at the graveyard, she'd waited with the other villagers to give Esther a hug. Rachel had rehearsed the traditional Hebrew greeting said to a mourner, “I share in your grief,” and managed to say it without any mistakes
,
but her words had never sounded quite so hollow. “I'm so sorry,” she added, to which Esther nodded; her rueful face looking like a city after a war, left in ruins.

Rachel gazed at Esther's son, Eyal, standing behind her, his
hands resting on her narrow shoulders; Esther's two daughters on either side of her. Rachel worried what would become of Esther once the week of shiva ended and her children returned to their routines and their lives.

Rabbi Lapid stopped chanting. The sounds of the sea rushed in.

“It is against Jewish law to kill yourself,” he said, and a surprised murmur passed through the crowd. “But we all know how much Jacob suffered. And because he suffered so much, he cannot be held accountable for what he did. Jacob didn't kill himself. The Nazis killed him long ago.”

Tears filled Rachel's eyes, and Lauren handed her a crinkled tissue. Eyal moved to Jacob's coffin. He had a lean build and Jacob's hooked nose that sliced the air, dueling with the world.

“Abba . . .” Eyal stared down at the coffin. “Abba, after losing your six brothers and sisters and your parents, you somehow managed to survive the Shoah. You and Eema walked from Hungary all the way to Italy, and then you sailed in a tiny, crowded fishing boat to Palestine. The British caught the boat and sent all of you to a detention camp in Cyprus, where you stayed because you had no place else to go. When you finally arrived here, you had to fight in the first war, then the next one and the ones after that. You never complained and you never gave up until now . . .

“I'm sure you prepared for your death for a long time, but none of us knew and none of us guessed. You even made one last pot of rice for the dogs.”

There was a pause.

“Abba, I want you to know that everything you taught me, everything
you told me, everything you made sure to pass on to me, will always stay with me. I hope you'll be proud of the way I take care of your dogs and your groves. And now the time has come to lay you down in the land you loved so much.”

Then Eyal, David, Boaz, and Charlie Gilbert lifted Jacob's coffin and carried it to the easternmost row of the graveyard, the spot nearest to his kennel.

Aviva put her arm around Rachel. “Jacob went the way he wanted to go. He wasn't able to fight against the Nazis, but now he decided when he would die. It was his choice. He died with dignity. He died a soldier, not a victim.”

“I wish I believed that. All I know is that I was with him and I couldn't find the right thing to say and if only—”

“Rachel, those are two of the most useless words there are. Jacob had already shut the door on life. He could no longer bear being alive.”

Rachel and Aviva stood together for another moment in silence. The dogs in the kennel barked.

A
lthough Aviva tried not to lie on the living room couch too often, she found herself sprawled there once again, staring up at the ceiling. With her feet turned out and her arms heavy, she thought,
So this is what it will be like when I'm dead.

Aviva held herself still as stone and drifted off to sleep—another kind of death—dreaming that the women in the burial circle were gathered around her, speaking about her in the past tense. The book of her life had slapped shut.

Then the phone rang. “Where have you been?” Rachel asked.

“I took the day off to get a root canal on my tooth. But the dentist told me he couldn't save it and pulled it out instead.”

“Oh, you can't trust dentists.” Rachel laughed. “Still, you have to come to the beach party tonight.”

“You're sweet to me, Rachel. I'm sorry. I'm in no mood for a beach party.”

“But you said—”

I said I'd do a lot of things,
Aviva wanted to say. After Benny was killed, she had burned her “Things I Want to Do” list because she knew she'd never take him to a Yankees game or meet him to hike in New Zealand—the first place he wanted to visit once he got out of the army. She'd never make pancakes for Rafi again on a rainy Saturday morning while listening to Bach or—

“What about your rule?” Rachel asked.

“Which one?” Aviva looked up at a chameleon that had snuck into the house and was hanging upside down on the ceiling.

“Better for a teacher to have a wild student with a lot of passion in her class than a dull kid who always does his homework. You said you can calm down a wild kid, but you can never give someone that spirit for living. And Aviva, you have such an amazing spirit.”

“Oh, that. My spirit
.
”

“And you were the one who sent me that Edith Sitwell quote: ‘I am not eccentric; it's just that I am more alive than most people.'”

“I don't feel so alive right now.” Aviva curled up on her side, wanting to squish the grief right out of her.
We are all eighty percent water, anyway,
she thought.
That's all we are, really, a river of tears in sausage casing
. “Rachel, I really appreciate your calling me, but I think I'll pass on this one.”

“How about just for a few minutes?”

Aviva tucked her knees in to her chest, her heart pumping and beating and thrumming its own tune, reminding her that she was still alive. Still alive, still alive. She could stay in the house the rest
of the night with that lone chameleon on the ceiling for company, or she could get out, even for a few moments. She knew she'd be spending the rest of her eternity alone, anyway. “Okay,” she said reluctantly. “Okay.”

But by the time nine o'clock rolled around, Aviva was still lying there. The sun had set and the room was flooded with night. She hauled herself up because she couldn't lie there forever and she'd promised Rachel. Aviva didn't like breaking promises: life itself broke enough promises.

Aviva washed her face and changed into a salmon-pink Grecian-style dress that Emily had helped pick out, slipped into a pair of low-heeled sandals, and mindlessly put on some silver bangles. She glanced in the mirror only long enough to apply a thin coat of almost invisible lipstick. But she did not look into her own eyes. Could not look.

It was easier outside. Outside, some of her sorrow could seep away and dissolve into the darkness, into the soft night with a full moon hanging above, reminding her that the universe was still there and hadn't entirely abandoned her. Aviva opened the gate and saw Rachel hurrying toward her.

“It's past nine o'clock and I wanted to make sure you'd come.” Rachel's smile lit up the darkness. “Aviva, you look great.”

“I tried my best only because I promised you.” Aviva gave her a hug. “Too bad Yoni can't see you in that outfit. You look beautiful—though you'd look beautiful in a potato sack.”

“Emily and I picked it out.” Rachel twirled so that her white eyelet sundress flared around her.

Aviva and Rachel walked along the path, nearing the beach
where tiny lights twinkled around Shuky's Snack and Surf Shop. As they headed through the gate, the lights went out.

“Of all things—a blackout during a beach party.” Aviva stopped, waiting for her eyes to adjust. If the lights didn't come back on soon, she could excuse herself to Rachel and go home. But then she heard shouts and the lights blazed back on and people were yelling, “Surprise!”

“Happy birthday, Mom!” shouted Yoni, running toward Aviva and hugging her hard. Aviva still wasn't sure what was happening until she took in Lauren and Emily also crowding around her, and then neighbors and friends gathering and shouting, “Happy birthday!”

“I can't believe this!” Aviva shook with astonishment, the first time in so long that she was trembling not out of loss but out of joy. She had been trying to forget it was her fiftieth birthday, but apparently Yoni and her friends hadn't. Aviva turned to Rachel, thanking her, hugging her. Yoni waved in the direction of the jetty, where there came the sounds of drums, trumpets, and cymbals and a group of figures marched toward them.

“Yoni.” Aviva squinted into the distance. “I didn't bring my glasses. What's going on over there?”

“Take a guess.”

“Is that a marching band? What is a marching band doing here on the beach?”

“Mom, how many times have you told us that you love marching bands? And that there are no marching bands in Israel? Well, we found you one for your birthday. It's your personal parade.”

The band moved across the beach playing “When the Saints
Come Marching In” and other tunes Aviva recognized from all those long, exciting, sunny, rainy, windy days when she played clarinet and marched with her high school band. When the band finished “The Liberty Bell,” more friends joined, crowding around her. On the terrace were buffet tables with Aviva's favorite salads; skewers of chicken and lamb; grilled eggplant, mushrooms, and zucchini; and mounds of rice with raisins and slivered almonds. She was wandering among the guests, holding a plate filled with food, nibbling and talking, when Yoni passed her his telephone.

“It's Raz!”

“Happy birthday, Mom!” The phone line crackled. “Don't think that just because I'm in Costa Rica I didn't help plan the party. Seriously, it was all my idea.”

“Naturally it was all you.” Aviva pictured Raz's warm face and curly dark hair, his hazel eyes beaming. Raz was the heart of her hearts: a calm, centered, slightly reserved middle child, and as much as she missed him, she was still pleased that he wasn't living nearby on her behalf.

“Mom, I'm sorry I'm not there—”

“Who even needs you here? Right now I'm having instant fun. And you better have fun, too. Live it up.”

“I will,” Raz said. “I am. It's so beautiful here. I really want you to come visit.”

“I'll get there as soon as Yoni gets out of the army.”

“Great. I won't keep you. Go party. I love you, Mom.”

“I love you, too. Bye, Raz,
adios
.”

Aviva listened to the cutoff sound in her ear, steeling herself,
overwhelmed with surprise. Then she thought:
You can be happy for a few hours. Just because you're happy for a few hours doesn't mean you loved any less—

“Want to dance?” asked Rachel as the DJ, who turned out to be Julius, put on Cyndi Lauper's “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” Rachel didn't wait for an answer and pulled Aviva onto the dance floor. Then it was Fleetwood Mac's “Monday Morning,” and Yoni appeared, whirling Rachel. Aviva left them to talk to some friends, watching David dance with Lauren, who wore a floor-length black dress, her long hair dotted with butterfly clips. Aviva danced to “Susie Q” with Boaz and Emily until “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” came on, and then Aviva noticed Boaz's mouth twist to the side. Aviva knew that Emily and Boaz's marriage was rocky, and she watched Boaz cut out from the dance floor. Emily followed him at a safe distance. She looked vibrant in a flowing teal dress and beaded necklace.

When Sly and the Family Stone's “Everyday People” came on, Lauren grabbed Aviva's hand, and they joined David, Rachel, and Yoni on the floor. Not much later, “Something” by the Beatles began, and Aviva heard someone say, “Hey, Yoni, can I cut in?”

Guy Sasson was standing there. For one of the few times in her life, Aviva was caught off guard. Prickly heat rose to her face.

“How can I say no to the guy who got my mom to surf?” Yoni said.

“If you'd blinked, you would have missed me,” Aviva managed.

“You still did it, Mom. Have fun. I'm going to rescue Rachel from Moshe Zado.”

Guy moved in and took Aviva's hand. She wondered if people were looking at them. Then she thought of Eli telling her how he'd learned to act as if he were invisible: “I've been in rooms where nobody even saw me.” Besides, Aviva reasoned, almost everybody in Peleg was at the birthday party—so why would it be odd for Guy to dance with her?

“I'm sorry I haven't stopped by.” Guy's soft voice grew softer. “But I want you to know that what we had that night was really special and if—”

“Please don't apologize. I understand. I know.”

“I know that you know.” He pulled her in. He danced with her. He held her firmly. As if he didn't want to let her go? As if he knew he'd have to let her go? “Please don't forget. You promised me you won't give up.”

She was silent, catching her breath. The music played and the song made her feel so blue. “And you promised me you're not going to be afraid.”

“Nothing to be afraid of. Happy birthday, Aviva.”

The song ended. He planted a solemn kiss on her cheek. Like his first kiss.

His last kiss.

He squeezed her hands forcefully and let them go.

Aviva stood there, rooted to the spot. Life was a gamble, and she'd lost far too much.

She turned so she wouldn't have to see Guy walking off the dance floor. She steadied herself. Got her bearings as she watched the sea rolling and rolling into the darkness.