A Remarkable Kindness (25 page)

Lauren sat very still. Then she did what her mother did in uncomfortable situations: she locked her jaw. She willed her body temperature to go down, her feverish heat to break. She reached for Jasmine's arm and clutched it tightly. “Jasmine, I really want to help you. You could talk to someone—”

“I can't. If he doesn't come back, I'll get more pills. How many pills do you think I'll need to swallow?”

Lauren shook her head.

“Ask David.”

“I can't ask David how you can kill yourself! And just because a man left you, it doesn't mean you should end your life.”

“Lauren, in this village, if your husband leaves you, it is the end of your life.”

“Would you stop talking like this? I have a husband, that's
true, but there are a lot of times when I feel sad. That's just what it means to be human. We have to figure out what our own lives mean. Sometimes we feel lost and unhappy, but no husband can ever change that.”

“You have everything in life.”

“You can make something of your life, too.” Yet as Lauren was speaking, she knew that Jasmine wouldn't—or couldn't—attempt to expand the constricted, dull perimeters of her life. Lauren still had to try. “At least try to get some help. Please? You're still alive! Don't throw your life away.”

“A beating heart, that's all I have.” Jasmine cocked her head. “Can you hear it? Can you hear it beating?”

Lauren didn't hear Jasmine's beating heart. She heard thuds in the distance. It couldn't be thunder. Could it be war? “Oh no, I wonder if it's because of what happened.”

“What happened?”

“Didn't you hear the news?”

“I have my own problems.”

“Hezbollah killed three soldiers and kidnapped two others.” Lauren listened. “I hope those aren't bombs.”

“I don't care anymore.” Jasmine closed her eyes. “Come get me, Hezbollah,” she begged. “Come get me now.”

R
achel,” Yoni said in his softest voice. “I gotta go. Please don't cry, Rachel.”

They were standing on the edge of a cliff in Tiberias. The city was barren, deserted, the lights on low or turned off. Down below, Lake Kinneret lay in another blotch of darkness.

Aviva was standing in an indigo-blue shadow behind Rachel and Yoni, her face turned toward the two-story building where Yoni and the other soldiers were staying. There was a Ping-Pong table in the yard and Rachel could see two soldiers playing a game until one of them slammed the ball under a picnic table and the game suddenly ended. A couple of other soldiers were sitting together on the stubbly grass of the yard. One soldier sat alone, smoking a cigarette, holding his cell phone close to his ear.

“I hate this war,” Rachel said.

Yoni didn't respond.

“How long can it go on?”

He shrugged. “As long as it takes.”

“Yoni.” That was all Rachel could think to say. “When will they send you in?”

“Soon.”

“From where?”

“Somewhere through the border.” He pushed her hair behind her ears and then slid his hands down her arms. It was a muggy night. Rachel wore her favorite turquoise shirt with spaghetti straps so that Yoni could feel her skin. She wanted him to remember that there was a good reason to make it through the war. Something to fight for, come home for.

“You're strong,” Yoni told her. “You have to promise me you'll be strong. I can't go in worrying about you, okay?”

Rachel gave a wobbly nod. Her head felt disconnected from her neck, and her heart had jolted into her throat.

He kissed her mouth. “Sorry, my lips are dry. I couldn't find my ChapStick.”

“You would make a joke at a time like this.”

“And watch out for my mom, too.”

Rachel gave another discombobulated nod. Yoni hugged her hard and she hid her face in his worn-out uniform, taking in the distant scent of his pine soap.

“Wait for me,” Yoni said. “When I get out of the army, we'll travel someplace really cool and I'll never have to leave you. I know we're young, but I love you. I really love you.”

“And I really love you, too.” But Rachel's words couldn't convey
all she was praying and hoping and feeling. Yoni dipped his head and turned from her, already facing what he had to do next.

He walked to Aviva, her face resolute, sticking out her chin as if reminding herself,
chin up.
Rachel could see Aviva's alert eyes and the way she studied Yoni's face, his fingers, his teeth, as if trying to paint a permanent image of him in her head. Boaz stood a few steps away. He had offered to drive them to Tiberias even though there was nobody on the roads except emergency vehicles and army tanks and jeeps. Boaz was staring off into the darkness, staring into the black of the night. He held a cigarette between his lips, the ash as long as the cigarette itself but not falling off.

Rachel hung back, composing herself, wiping the tears from her cheeks. Aviva reached for Yoni, standing on her toes to hug him, and then nudged him away. She opened the door to Boaz's truck, climbed in the front seat quickly, and closed the door.

Boaz gave Yoni a quick hug, patting him on the back, and got into the truck.

“Watch out for yourself,” Boaz said.

Rachel climbed in the backseat, and just as Boaz started the motor, she said, “Wait!” She jumped out, ran to Yoni to kiss him one last time. (
No, delete that,
Rachel commanded herself,
one
more
time
.) She pulled herself away and got back in. The truck lurched forward, and in the weak light falling off the soldiers' building, Yoni's shoulders and head looked like an outline in a cartoon. He lifted his arm, gave a wave. Rachel brought her hand to her mouth, pressing her palm against the rear window, spreading
her fingers. She was trying hard to keep herself from crying as she watched his stick figure get smaller and smaller, and then Boaz turned the corner and Yoni was gone.

They drove past shuttered cafés and ice cream stores and falafel stands.

“It's a ghost town,” Aviva said.

“At least there's no traffic,” Boaz muttered. “At least those shitty rockets are good for something.”

Boaz drove out of the city, cutting through the hills. The windows were open—Boaz didn't believe in air conditioning—and humid air rushed in. Booms reverberated in the distance.

“Artillery,” Boaz announced.

“Outgoing,” Aviva said.

The sounds were thunder and the flashes in the sky were lightning, Rachel told herself, pretending it was just a summer storm. Still, she crouched lower in her seat. Boaz turned on the radio in time for the
beep-beep-beep
and the nine o'clock news and then he shut it off.

“What did they say?” Rachel asked.

“Nine soldiers killed in fighting today. Nine!” Boaz banged his hand on the steering wheel. “And rockets falling all over the North.”

“We don't have to listen to the news to know that,” Aviva said.

There was a staccato of explosions and Rachel could no longer pretend she was not scared. But if she did admit that she was scared, then that would make her fears real. Her parents called her every day, twice a day, urging her to come home. But Rachel wouldn't leave Yoni. This time she wouldn't quit. And anyway,
if she went back to Wyoming, wouldn't she be glued to the news all day?

They rode on. Explosions ripped the sky. Rachel felt very afraid, but she ran her tongue over her lips, trying to bring back the taste of Yoni's kiss. It was no longer there. She could see his green eyes, but they no longer held a meadow of four-leaf clovers. They were the beaten prairies after a storm. She could hear him saying,
I really love you
. Boaz turned down the long, dark road into Peleg. She could make out the fields filled with sunflowers.

“The rockets landed right over there.” Boaz stuck his arm out the car window toward the field. “After the policemen came to inspect the damage, one of them picked up some sunflower seeds and ate them. He said the rockets roasted the seeds just right.”

“That's kind of funny,” Rachel said.

“All these crops gone to waste.” Aviva shook her head.

“The army won't let us harvest anything.” Boaz hooked his arm through the steering wheel and lit a cigarette. “They say we'd be moving targets.”

The truck thumped over the railroad tracks.

“Everything's come to a halt,” Aviva said.

“No trains and no buses,” Boaz added. “No one leading the country, no one leading the war.”

They passed the village office, its fluorescent light sputtering over the door, and the darkened synagogue. Boaz slowed down next to Rachel's cottage.

“I'll get my stuff and go to the shelter,” Rachel said. “What about both of you?”

“I'm going to the groves,” Boaz replied. “I want to make sure nobody's stealing anything. Then I'll go check on the cows.”

“I'm going home,” Aviva said.

“Please come stay with us tonight.” Rachel thought of Yoni's request.

“I can't worry about me now.”

Rachel's heart flip-flopped. She placed her hand on Aviva's shoulder. Let it stay there.

“I'll be okay.”

“I'll talk to you tomorrow, then.” Rachel forced herself to sound sturdier than she felt. “Thanks again, Boaz, for taking us.”

“Good night, Rachel. And don't slam the door. It makes everyone jump.”

She closed the door quietly and followed the path through the tall black shadows of the pine trees. All of a sudden, bombs blasted the air. Silver skeins flashed in the sky. She ran around the bend, her heart pounding, to find Julius and Rouven in the middle of a card game at a folding table outside the cottage.

“Why aren't you in the shelter?” Rachel asked.

“We were going crazy down there,” Rouven told her. “The kids have nothing to do so they're fighting and driving each other nuts.”

“God, this war.” A shiver rode through her. “Are you guys staying here?”

“Until we can't.”

Then the siren went off. Julius and Rouven sprang up, ran down a path and across the sandy clearing to the bomb shelter
with the butterflies on the door. Rachel flew down the cement steps two at a time. Julius pulled open the heavy door, dry leaves swirled at their feet, and she took a deep breath against the sour smell of sewage pipes she knew she'd find inside the shelter. She pulled the door shut.

Children in pajamas looked up first, and then women in light summer housedresses. Ehud Oshinsky, square-faced with a pencil-thin white mustache, was pacing the room the way he had been when Rachel had left the shelter three hours earlier, his thumbs hooked under his blue suspenders. Toys, clothes, books, newspapers, and bags were strewn everywhere. A towel hung from the back of a chair; a Barbie doll with a jagged haircut lay underneath it.

Rachel noticed Moshe Zado sleeping on one of the opened cots hanging from metal chains attached to the cinderblock walls. If she weren't so scared, she'd be laughing that she was sleeping with Moshe Zado. Rachel spotted Emily reading
The Red Balloon
to her twins. Lauren was playing cards with Maya and Yael.

Around the table in the center of the room sat Gila and Leah from the burial circle, Hannah from the village office, and Iris, the
gan
teacher whom Rachel worked with, playing Rummikub. There was a small television perched on a three-legged stool with the news on. In the bathroom on the left, someone was flushing the toilet. Rachel tried not to breathe.

“You shouldn't be here, Rachel,” Esther Troyerman scolded from her chair by the TV. “You should get on the first plane back to America.”

The shelter got quiet around her words.

“If there are even flights.” Gila rubbed her hand up and down her long, thin neck.

“But I don't want to leave Yoni,” Rachel said. “And Esther, I don't think Jacob would have wanted me to run away.”

“But
he
ran away.” Esther's eyelids drooped over the corners of her eyes. “He didn't leave a note. He didn't even say good-bye.”

Rachel knelt in front of Esther in a way that reminded Rachel of Jamie kneeling at her church in Cheyenne. Rachel wrapped her arms around Esther's tiny frame.

“Where's Eyal?” Rachel asked.

“With the dogs. They're frightened by all the noise.”

“The owners should have taken them when they ran away,” Leah Zado groused, tapping a Rummikub tile on the table.

“At least they took the time to drop off their pets instead of abandoning them,” said Lauren.

Ehud Oshinsky stopped by the table, his thumbs still hooked under his suspenders. “Hannah, I'm going to check on the horses. I hope you all get a bit of rest. Good night.”

“Ehud.” Hannah looked up at him from over her colorful bifocals. “Please don't stay at home. Please come back here.”

“I've fought four wars. I think I can take my chances. Good night.” He walked across the room decisively and opened the door, and hot air blew in before the door closed again.

“So stubborn,” Hannah muttered. “I have to fight with him to take an aspirin.”

Rachel sat on the floor with Lauren, Julius, and Rouven.

“I wouldn't have let him go.” Leah Zado glanced at Moshe's sleeping form; black hairs covered his back like a vest. “He listens to me.”

“That's because he's scared not to,” Lauren whispered, and Rachel suppressed a giggle. “How are you doing?”

“Okay.”

“Yoni's going to be okay, too.” Lauren's eyes steadied Rachel.

“I'm going to check on Boaz,” Emily said suddenly.

“Me, too!” yelled Shoval, and the only way Rachel knew it was Shoval and not Tal was because he now wore glasses, making him look like a miniature Clark Kent.

“Me, too!” echoed Tal.

“Emily,” Lauren said, “have you lost your mind?”

“I haven't seen him all day.” Emily sounded frantic. “Rachel, did he tell you where he was going?”

“To the groves and then back to the cows.”

“I need to make sure he's okay.”

“You need some rest, Em, that's what you need,” Lauren snapped. “I already have to be back at the hospital by six tomorrow morning. Come on, girls, time for bed.”

“Eema!” Yael looked at Lauren sleepily. “I want to go home.”

“We all do, sweetie.”

“When's Abba coming home?” Maya asked.

“Soon.”

“Soon o'clock,” Maya said. “That's what you always say.”

Lauren let out an exhausted sigh. “Maya, we all have to do what we can.”

“That's it, I won,” Gila announced, turning over her black plastic Rummikub stand. “First time I've won since we've been here.”

“Maybe that's good luck,” said Hannah.

“I hope our bees are okay,” Gila said.

“I want Abba!” Tal whined.

“We'll go see him tomorrow, I promise, if you get into bed now.” Emily's face was flushed with fear.

Rachel watched Lauren squeeze into a cot with Maya and Yael. A jolt of homesickness barreled through her. She reluctantly got out her sleeping bag from the corner, unrolled it between Julius's and Rouven's, and lay down in her clothes. She felt as sticky as flypaper.

“Rachel.” Julius turned to her. “I'm sorry you had to go through what you did today.” His glasses were off and his eyes were pale and so full of concern that she couldn't bear to look at him.

“Thanks, Julius.” A couple of fat teardrops rolled down into Rachel's ears.

“I'm turning off the TV.” Hannah stood in her floral nightgown.

“If any of you want to watch the war, go outside and you can watch as much as you want.” Leah Zado shut off the overhead light. The shelter darkened. There was a light on in the bathroom, and it reminded Rachel of the eternal flame hanging in Mt. Sinai Synagogue in Cheyenne. But that light gave her hope. This light filled her with despair.