A Remarkable Kindness (26 page)

She covered her face with her arm. She could hear the air conditioning and a floor fan churning the warm air, muffling the sounds of explosions. Somebody let out a snore. A child whimpered.

Rachel was crying again, thinking about Yoni, tears sliding into her hair. She loved all of him. He was teaching her love. Endless love, tough love, impatient, amazing, magical, funny love. She wished it could all be perfect, but perhaps if it were good and easy all the time it wouldn't be as deep and complex and real.

She checked her watch: 11:45
P
.
M
. Maybe in a few hours, Yoni and the other soldiers would leave that building on the hill in Tiberias. They would leave the Ping-Pong table and the scratchy grass. They would leave their cigarette packs and cell phones. They would smear on camouflage paint, tie their boots in one long braided strand, and take their weapons. They would step out of the darkness of the city and head north into deeper darkness. They would leave everything they knew and loved behind, slip across the border, and march into war.

R
achel was in the bomb shelter the following week with Shoval, Tal, and some of the other kids, playing Hide and Seek. Tal hid with Shoval behind a chair and then jumped out, calling, “Here I am!”

Amit Cohen, a freckle-faced four-year-old boy shouted, “That's not how you play!”

“
Zeh b'seder,
” Rachel said in her improved Hebrew. It's okay! She kneeled next to Amit. “Shoval and Tal are not as big as you. They don't really understand the game.”

“Then I don't want to play!” Amit cried, his face reddening so much it looked as if it were covered by one big freckle.

“Amit, why don't you hide and I'll look for you.”

“
Lo
, I want to count again!” Amit stamped his feet, whirling around. “
Maspik!
” Leah Zado jerked her head up from her
book of Sudoku puzzles. “Enough already, Rachel! Can't you find something for them to do that doesn't end in a fight?”

Rachel looked around. The cots were closed up, pinned against the wall, hanging from their hooks. There was a little more room for the kids to play now, but still, the shelter was one big
balagan,
as Yoni would have said. A box of cornflakes, slices of stale bread, and a jar of jam stood on the table. The same Barbie doll lay facedown on the floor, her hair chopped even shorter.

“Kids,” Rachel said, “let's put on your sandals fast, and go upstairs and play outside for a little while.” She pulled her hair up with a clip, sweat beading on her brow and neck.

“It's too dangerous!” That was Esther, sitting with her back to the TV, staring at nothing.

“I want to go outside!” said Amit.

“
Gam ani
!” shouted Shoval, pushing his glasses up his nose. Me, too!

“Why don't you all help me clean up here?” asked Gila Salomon, washing dishes at the sink, her stringy hair pulled back into a careless ponytail. “That's what you can do.”

Rachel tried to think. Then the door jerked open and Aviva stepped in, her cheeks flushed, her eyes red, and before she even said anything, Rachel gasped, “No—”

“Yoni's okay.” Aviva's words were rushed. “He was hit by shrapnel in his legs, but the doctor says he's okay.”

“Yoni? Oh my God, Yoni!”

“Rachel, he's okay, really, he's on his way to the Nahariya hospital.”

“Then we can go see him!”

“It's been nonstop rockets all morning,” Aviva said. “It's way too dangerous. You can't go there now.”

“Are you going there?”

Aviva paused, slumped and weary. She had aged in a matter of days. “Rachel, I can't let you take that chance.”

“But Aviva, if you're—”

“I have a lot less to lose than you do.” Aviva's voice was clipped. “Stay here where it's safe and later tonight, when they're not bombing, I'll drive you to the hospital. We'll go together.”

“You sure he's okay?”

“He's slightly wounded in his legs, but he's really fine.”

Rachel trembled. Tears caught in her throat. She reached for Aviva, clung to her, then remembered she'd promised Yoni to be strong and reluctantly let Aviva go. “Please hug Yoni for me and tell him I'll see him later.”

“Aviva, why don't you let Eyal drive you?” Esther suggested. “You shouldn't be on the roads by yourself.”

“He has enough to do. I'll be fine.”

“Rachel, as soon as I get there, I'll call you and you can speak to him.” Aviva gave Rachel another strong hug and then hurried out of the shelter.

“Why don't you take a few minutes alone,” Gila told Rachel after Aviva left. “We'll watch the kids.”

Rachel went into the bathroom and locked the door behind her, giving in to her crying. She felt unplugged, tears spurting out from her eyes, and gasped for breath, then swooned from the stench.
Yoni's wounded but he's okay,
she told herself.
I'll see him later. He's okay.
Then there was pounding on the door and
she heard Tal and Shoval shouting, “Rachel! Rachel!” and Leah Zado's hacking voice, “
Maspik!
” Enough!

Yes, enough. Rachel wiped her face and stepped out of the bathroom. Tal and Shoval wrapped themselves around her legs and the three of them walked back into the other room where the TV was blaring and the news announcer looked grimmer than ever. “What's he saying?” Rachel asked.

“Another soldier killed,” Gila Salomon said sadly, looking at Rachel through her thick glasses.

“Oh God.” Rachel sank into a chair.

“Rachel, you know it wasn't Yoni.”

“But it was still somebody else's boyfriend. Somebody else's son.”

The kids crowded around Rachel and she was trying not to cry, forcing herself to think of something, anything, to do with them.
Do not quit this time,
she told herself.
No matter what, do not quit.
“Guess which animal I am.” Rachel's voice quivered as she sucked in her mouth, crossed her eyes, and fluttered her lips.

“Fish!” That was Amit.

“
Tov me'od!
Very good! Your turn.”

Amit fell to his knees, crawling and barking, and then Tal joined in. Shoval shouted, “You're dogs! Dogs! It's my turn!”

The noise and heat were suffocating. Rachel couldn't breathe. The door opened again and Emily came into the shelter carrying shopping bags with groceries.

“
Eema! Eema!
” Shoval and Tal ran to her.

“Yoni's okay!” Emily looked at Rachel while hugging her sons
tightly. “Lauren just called from the hospital. She saw him and he's
fine
.”

“Oh, Emily, thank you, thank you.” Rachel's head was spinning. “I feel like I'm going to faint.”

“Why don't you go get some fresh air? There seems to be a lull for now. Go home, take a really fast shower, and come right back.”

“
Lo!
” cried Shoval. “Don't go!”

“Shoval, Rachel will be right back,” Emily said. “Look, here are some pretzels and a few apples. There's not much left at Aga's these days.”

“You're giving him business and he's a crook,” Leah Zado protested.

“He's still the only store delivering food to bomb shelters,” Rachel heard Emily say behind her as she opened the shelter door.

Rachel climbed the stairs into the crushing heat. The sky hung like a drab, hot blanket. Not one cloud in the sky, not one breath of a breeze. She squinted in the sunlight. She didn't have her sunglasses. They were probably down in the shelter, but she didn't want to go back for them.

She hurried to the cottage. Inside, the air was hot, motionless. She showered and changed into a pair of shorts and a rose-colored tank top, imagining seeing Yoni later, imagining his hands running up and down her arms. She listened. Outside, everything was quiet. And then a thought galloped through her:
Not later. Now.

Rachel scribbled a note for Julius and Rouven, who were helping the farmers.
Went to see Yoni! He's okay!!! XOX!!!

She grabbed a sun hat and her bag and left the house. She briskly walked down the road away from the sea. The last time she had tried to swim there with Julius, a rocket exploded in the water in front of them like a gushing geyser and they had to scramble to shore.

The road droned on. Like Sunday mornings in Wyoming, Rachel thought, only hotter, scarier, eerily hushed. She ran and walked and then ran as fast as she could before the bombs started again.

She reached the main road, empty as an airport runway, the traffic light blinking yellow. On and off. She kept moving and when a lone car appeared, she stuck out her thumb to catch a ride.

The driver said something, but his car was so tightly packed with cans of corn, beans, cereals, breads, diapers, and toilet paper that she could hardly see him, much less understand him.

“Do you speak English?”

“Is Nasrallah a pain in the ass?”

“I have to get to the hospital!”

“Get in!” The driver put on the hand brake and tossed some of the packages onto the jumble of groceries crowded on the backseat.

Rachel squeezed in and shut the door. “Where are you going with all this stuff?”

“Stealing it.” The driver had a bony nose, a shaved head, and a diamond stud in his ear. “I'm just dropping it off at some bomb shelters. I'd go fight in the war, but they told me I'm too old.”

“You're that courageous?”

“The soldiers are courageous.” He eyeballed Rachel sideways. “You shouldn't be out now.”

“I know, but my boyfriend's a soldier and he was just wounded. He's okay, really, but I want to go see him.”

“What unit is he in?”

“Paratroopers.”

The driver shook his head, gave the car gas, turned off the radio, and drove on.

The road was deserted. Rachel saw the weathered stones of the aqueduct, the white lines in Aga's empty parking lot. She felt pumped up with adrenaline, jittery, scared and raw, her skin peeled back, her heart exposed and beating like mad. She stared at the hills ahead, the green ridge under the hot blue sky.

“Don't worry, I've been very lucky.” The driver smiled at Rachel. “I've been driving around the past two weeks, dropping off supplies at shelters, and nothing's happened to me—I'll get you to the hospital.”

They reached the main traffic light in Nahariya, usually bumper-to-bumper. Now the only movement came from sprinklers clicking back and forth in the roundabout, watering orange and yellow marigolds. Rachel thought of Esther's story about her father and Jacob's father meeting in the labor camp and how they'd spoken about a match between Esther and Jacob after the war.
You have to look for hope in the midst of evil,
Rachel thought.
Even in the midst of ugliness, you have to look for beauty.

“You see?” The driver pulled to the side of the road opposite
the hospital. “What did I tell you? I got you here. I'm so lucky I should buy lottery tickets—only there's nobody selling them.” He let out a dry cackle as Rachel unbuckled her seat belt.

“
Todah rabah!
” Rachel opened the door. “Thanks a lot. Hope you stay lucky!”

“Give your boyfriend a big kiss. If you're his girlfriend, he's lucky, too.”

He was waiting for Rachel to cross the street when the siren went off.

“Come back!” he screamed, jumping out of his car and throwing himself to the ground. But Rachel took off. The hospital was big and solid and she was a fast runner and once she got to the closest wall, she'd lean against it and wait out the bombs. She stretched her legs, thinking how she'd find Yoni in the hospital and he'd flash one of his exthrillerating smiles meant only for her and she'd say, “Hey, you,” and he'd say, “Rachel,” making her feel like she was the sun coming up. She was thrusting her arms up and down, practicing saying “I'm crazy about you” in Hebrew, sprinting as fast as she could because she couldn't wait to reach him when there was a flood of brilliant, blinding light and an explosive roar.

I'll never be me here again,
Rachel thought in a blazing instant,
but this is where I'll be forever.

D
eep in the underground hospital, Aviva sat on Yoni's bed in the ward for soldiers. The second row, third cot. She reached for Yoni's hand, his gaze settled on the far wall. Aviva followed the trail of green-and-brown camouflage paint still streaked along the edges of his forehead, down behind his ears and under his chin. His legs were under a hospital sheet.

“Thank God you're safe,” Aviva mumbled, her heart plummeting, her head in a vise. She should never have let him become a combat soldier. There was a law exempting an only child or a boy whose brother had been killed from combat units, and she could have stopped Yoni. She should not have let him go in. But he wanted to go. Raz, too. They always said, “We have to do this for Benny. We have to do this.”

Yoni closed his eyes.

On top of the small cabinet next to his cot were a plastic cup
filled with cotton, a bottle of iodine, bandages, a bottle of water. The ward had no windows—they were two floors beneath the brittle surface of the earth—and it was packed with soldiers and doctors and nurses, visitors and a TV crew. The sounds boomeranged in Aviva's head.

Yoni opened his eyes into slits. “We were surrounded by snipers. They were so close and the fighting was so intense and the soldier next to me . . .”

“Shhh.” Aviva squeezed his hand. “Don't talk right now. Just rest.”

At the opposite cot, a nurse was taking the temperature of a soldier with metal pins coming out of his shoulder like a bridge under construction. The nurse moved to Yoni and brought the thermometer up to his chapped lips and held it there. He closed his mouth listlessly over the plastic wand and dropped his head.

“How do you feel, Yoni?” someone was asking. Aviva looked up.

Standing at the foot of the cot with a stethoscope around his neck was David, pools of fatigue under his dark eyes. “Yoni, how do you feel?”

“I have about six pieces of shrapnel in my thighs and I can't walk very well, but I can't complain,” Yoni mumbled. “The doctor told me he can't remove the shrapnel pieces. Most of them should fall out eventually.”

“Then that's fine. You'll be setting off metal detectors at the airport.” David's eyes darted to Aviva. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”

His look set off an alarm deep within her, but she pushed it
aside for the moment—more bad war news—to kiss Yoni's hair, which smelled of sweat, metal, exhaustion, grease, fire, war.

“Mom, how come Rachel's not answering her phone?” Yoni asked.

David flinched. Aviva caught it. She went cold, an icy fear creeping up the back of her spine.

“They don't have any reception in the shelter.” David stepped away from the bed. “Yoni, you need your strength. Lie here, try to rest and we'll be right back.”

Aviva followed David through the rows of wounded soldiers and out into the corridor, which was tapered like a submarine, with lightbulbs burning behind cages. An orderly rushed past, wheeling a stretcher on which a soldier lay, still in his bloodied uniform.

David took quick strides, looking straight ahead.

“David,” Aviva said feverishly. “Tell me!”

“Let's find Lauren.” His stethoscope banged against his chest.

Racing to keep up with him, Aviva remembered when the soldiers had come to her house to tell her that Benny had been killed. Aviva had been washing the dishes, looking out the kitchen window, and through the leaves of the frangipani tree she saw three soldiers she didn't recognize in starched uniforms. Aviva knew right away who they were.

Soldiers in dress uniforms were messengers of death.

Aviva had turned off the faucet and run first into the bathroom, but that wasn't far enough, so she ran into her bedroom and hid in the back of her closet, hunkered down by her shoes, making herself invisible because if they couldn't find her then they wouldn't
be able to bring the news and then it couldn't have happened. But the soldiers waited and waited and they would not leave until they had completed their mission, and then Aviva heard the front door open and close and Rafi's voice calling her name. He was coming down the hall and he was opening the door to their bedroom and he was standing at the closet door where she crouched like a hunted animal—

David was now opening the door to a room not much bigger than that closet. Lauren sat at a desk, and when she saw Aviva, she twisted her head away. Aviva knew that something awful was about to consume her. She shuddered with fear as she sank down in the chair in the tiny room and closed her eyes. Lauren was kneeling in front of her, holding her hands.

“Aviva.” Lauren's voice was trembling.

“Don't tell me. I do not want to hear this.”

“They killed her.” Lauren's words hit her like blows. “They killed Rachel.”

“No!” Aviva roared. “They couldn't have killed her!” She shoved away Lauren's hands. “She's in the bomb shelter! I left her in the bomb shelter!”

“Aviva.” It was David's voice. Aviva could hear it, but it was ricocheting off the cinder-block walls and the desk, where there was a piece of shrapnel no bigger than a jelly bean resting on a prescription pad.

“Rachel was on her way here,” David explained. “She was right outside when the last barrage of rockets fell. They rushed her in right after the attack and I recognized her and we tried to save her—”

“But I told her to wait because there were so many bombs!” Aviva sobbed. “I was going back to get her later! I wanted to keep her safe!”

“Aviva, we need to break the news to Yoni.”

“No!” Aviva croaked, collapsing into her grief. “I can't do it. I just can't do that.”

Y
ONI
'
S COT WAS
empty, the sheet kicked off.

“It's good he's taking a long time in there,” Lauren said after a while. She and Emily were sitting on both sides of Aviva. “His first shower.”

“I told Rachel to go home and take a shower, too.” The pain in Emily's voice saturated the air. “I just wanted her to take a break and get out of the shelter for a few minutes. I told her to come right back. I had no idea she would come here. If I'd only known . . .”

Grief had caved in on Aviva. She glanced at the opposite cot, where a dark-haired girl had squeezed herself next to the soldier with the metal pins in his shoulder, stroking his face. Aviva turned away and at the end of the ward she saw Rabbi Lapid in a white shirt and black pants making his way between the rows. He stopped to talk with a soldier a few cots away and then approached.

“I got here as fast as I could,” he said.

Aviva looked up at him. “You're already too late.”

Lauren found a chair and pulled it up for the rabbi.

“I spoke to Rachel's father.” Rabbi Lapid spoke quietly. “The embassy is making the travel arrangements for her parents and
her brother. We'll have to wait until the day after tomorrow for the funeral.”

Aviva nodded. Her head weighed more than a truck. It weighed more than the planet. “Rabbi.” Aviva looked at him. “How could God do this?”

The rabbi turned like a door creaking open in the wind as Yoni stepped into the ward in a pair of basketball shorts and a white T-shirt. He tottered, limping, and Rabbi Lapid hurried toward him, throwing his arms around him. The rabbi curled his hands into fists, and then his hands went limp. Aviva watched him wipe tears from under his eyes with the knuckle of his thumb.

“Can I get you something to drink?” Rabbi Lapid asked after Yoni had climbed back into his bed.

Yoni didn't answer. Only shut his hollow eyes.

“Why, rabbi?” Aviva asked again, her voice hooking like barbed wire in her throat. “Tell me. You always say that everything happens for a reason. Tell me the reason why God took Rachel away.”

The rabbi peered into the distance, searching for a reply. “I wish I had the answer, but I don't.”

“That's not good enough.”

Rabbi Lapid pulled at his beard. Glanced at Yoni lying on the cot. “The only thing I can think of is the passage from Psalm Eighty-Two that we read every Tuesday morning,” the rabbi whispered. “‘You are like angels, you children of the Most High. But like men you shall die and like one of the princes you shall fall.'”

T
WO DAYS LATER
, Aviva drove to the graveyard. When rockets exploded around her, she sat and waited by the burial house wall. Emily, Lauren, and Charlie Gilbert arrived, and after a short time, the ambulance came. Charlie helped the driver unload the stretcher with Rachel lying upon it. They wheeled her into the burial house, the ambulance driver pulled away, and then Aviva saw Gila Salomon coming up the path with Leah Zado.

“I'm so sorry,” Leah cried, squeezing her face into a fist of despair, mumbling something about how she had accidentally lost her patience with Rachel in the bomb shelter.

“I'm sure you didn't mean anything by it.” Aviva patted her back.

“That's what I've been telling her,” Gila said.

“I'm just so sorry,” Leah added miserably.

Leah and Gila walked together into the burial house. Aviva stood there, the relentless sun beating down. A white rental car pulled up. The back door opened and Aviva knew right away it was Rachel's mother. She was tall and athletic, her gray hair falling down to her waist, her blue eyes reddened with weeping. Aviva moved to her. They hugged each other for a long time.

“Mom,” Yoni said. “Obviously you know this is Michelle and Rachel's dad, Herb, and her brother, Jordan.”

“I really loved your Rachel,” Aviva told them.

“You—you were so good to her,” Michelle stammered.

“I just can't believe it,” said Herb, a tall man with dark, kinky hair who was barrel-chested like a bulldog—but one that had just lost a vicious fight. His lips quivered.

Aviva had been searching for something to say, and it occurred
to her that words were useless things: never wide enough to wrap around grief or sharp enough to chisel it back. She said nothing at all. She stood listening to the ribbon of waves arriving onshore and then departing. She looked toward the hills. The gossamer sky.

“I still don't get why she came here,” said Jordan, an awkward, gangly teenager, his blondish hair hanging over his bewildered eyes.

“She believed in doing everything she could to help people.” Michelle raised her eyes to the sky. “I wish she wasn't—I mean, I just never thought this would happen—”

“No, we never think this will happen.” Aviva glanced at Yoni, the light in his eyes gone out.

“We begged Rachel to come home after the war broke out,” Herb said. “Every day, I called her to try to convince her to get out of here, but she was not a quitter.”

The sky rumbled and Yoni said, “I better get them to the shelter.”

“Just one thing before you go,” Aviva said. “Do you happen to know your Hebrew names? We need them for the prayers we'll say inside.”

“Mine is Hillel,” Herb said quietly.

“And mine is Malka.” Michelle reached for Aviva's arm, clutching it tightly. “Just do me one favor—could you, please? Could you please cut me some of Rachel's hair?”

“Of course.”

“Mom, we'll be back in an hour.” Yoni limped to the car.