The Best Place on Earth (15 page)

They strolled home down the quiet streets, past people’s windows, the blue flicker of television sets, cats curled up on the hoods of parked cars. The asphalt sparkled under dim street lights.

“Ilan came looking for you today,” she said.

“Oh yeah?” Yaniv tucked his hands in his pockets. “What did he want?”

“I think he’s sorry,” she said.

“Sorry for what?” He studied her, his face darkening. “Have you been listening to our conversations?”

“Of course not,” she said too quickly. “I just heard fighting. You guys were loud.” But it was too late; she had said too much.

“What exactly did you hear?” he said coldly.

“Nothing.”

“Then stay out of it.”

She looked at the ground, the words lodged in her throat, making it difficult to swallow.

When she reached the front door, she fumbled with the key, muttered, “Good night,” without turning around. She released the
replacement caregiver as fast as she could, eager to be alone, but Savta called out to her from the bedroom. “You come home with Yaniv?” she asked once Rosalynn entered the room.

“I ran into him.” Rosalynn arranged the pillows behind Savta’s head.

“So why you crying?”

Rosalynn said nothing, holding the blanket at one end and snapping it flat over Savta’s body.

“I was in love once too, you know,” Savta said. “My husband, he take me when I was twelve. He was eighteen. He married me so the government won’t take me. He saved me.”

Rosalynn sat on the bed. Savta laid a warm hand over Rosalynn’s.

“He waited four years before he touched me. Four years he feeds me and takes care of me.”

“I know, Savta.”

“Here, you take this,” the old woman said, wiggling one of her many rings—a thin filigree silver band—off her finger. “My husband, he made this. He was a silversmith in Yemen. For the king.”

“No, Savta.” Rosalynn pushed her hand away. “You keep this for Aviva.”

“I give her enough rings.” She shoved the ring toward Rosalynn. “I don’t like to see you cry.”

Rosalynn hesitated but Savta grabbed her wrist, planted the ring in her palm and folded Rosalynn’s fingers over it.

“Thank you, Savta.” Rosalynn leaned in to kiss the old woman’s wrinkly cheek. She slid the ring on her finger and held her hand up, admiring it. The ring was loose, but to Savta she said, “It’s perfect.”

Yaniv didn’t come for dinner
the following evening, but after Savta went to sleep Rosalynn heard a knock on the door. She opened the door with her eyes lowered. Yaniv’s body filled the door frame. “Can we talk?” he said.

“I made food for you,” she said. She went to the kitchen, grabbed a plate covered in saran wrap and held it in front of him.

“Would you sit with me?” he said. “Please?”

She followed him to the couch outside his shed and sat at the edge, her hands on her knees.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be so rude yesterday.”

“It’s okay.” She stared at a row of ants walking across the paving stone.

“I can be an asshole sometimes.”

She twirled Savta’s ring on her finger.

“I just … I came to Rosh HaAyin thinking this was the one place I could … I don’t know, disappear I guess. Here no one would bother me or get on my case. Sometimes it’s better to just be, not to think so much about … the painful stuff. You know what I mean?”

She looked up at him. She had never heard him talk so much before. And she did understand. Every day she tried not to think too much, not to give in to guilt and regret. It was the only way she knew how to keep going.

“I have something for you.” He dug inside his knapsack and handed her a metallic pink iPod. “For your daughter.”

She held the gift in her palm. “For my daughter?”

“It’s from the house I’m painting right now,” he said. “The kid just got a new one, so she was going to throw this one out. It has music on it and everything.”

She turned the device one way, then another, her eyes flooding with tears.

His face softened. “You’re crying. Why are you crying?”

She shook her head, looking at the ground, trying to smile. He lifted her chin with two fingers and wiped a tear with his thumb. For a moment she held her breath, thinking he might kiss her, which was impossible, ludicrous, but then he leaned over, and he was.

“Is it okay?” he asked, pulling back for a moment.

She nodded and he kissed her again, or maybe she kissed him, their mouths uncertain and searching at first, as though forming unfamiliar words, a new language. But then something shifted and clicked and they were kissing,
really
kissing, and it was as she had imagined it, as she had wanted it to be. He rested his hand on the small of her back, and she wrapped her arm around his neck, feeling his pulse against her palm. Then she heard Savta’s voice and they both froze, breathing. “I have to go,” she said. She ran back inside without looking back at him, forgetting the iPod.

The next morning,
as she made Savta’s tea, helped her bathe and dress, Rosalynn caught a trace of the smell of him on her skin—sweat, soap, paint—and a warm, wonderful sick feeling churned in her stomach, coursed through her body, flushed her cheeks.

She dropped Savta at the elderly community centre and took the bus to the vegetable market in the next town. It was early in the morning on the market’s quietest day, when it was the safest. She stood on the crowded bus, crammed with commuters and students, feeling anxious and excited about seeing Yaniv that evening. She had decided to make chicken curry, a Filipino dish, like he asked, and maybe bake cookies for dessert. Downtown, as the passengers shuffled on and off the bus, she felt a man’s gaze upon her. It was one thing about Israel that she couldn’t get used to,
the way men stared at women, boldly and unapologetically. Some days she felt invisible in Israel: she had heard people speak about her—or people “like her”—in her presence before. Other times it was as though she was walking around with no clothes on: everyone stared.

The man hung onto the bar with one arm and leaned toward her. “You legal?” he asked. His face was unshaven and he reeked of cheap tobacco.

She stared hard out the window.

“I’m talking to you,” he said. Now Rosalynn smelled alcohol on his breath. A woman standing on her other side glanced at Rosalynn, then at the man.

“You don’t speak Hebrew?” he said.

“Leave her alone,” the woman said. Other passengers turned to look.

“I’m just asking a question,” the man raised his voice, slurring.

“I don’t have to answer to you,” Rosalynn said. “You’re not police.”

The man leered. His teeth were stained yellow. He waited a moment while some passengers got off the bus, and then he moved in closer and whispered, “Maybe I can help you.” He winked. “We can help each other, if you know what I mean.”

“I have visa.” She levelled a bold look at him, speaking in loud, clear Hebrew. “My husband is Israeli. He was an officer in the army, so back off.”

The man retreated, raising both hands, then shoved his way out. The woman beside her laughed, arching her eyebrows. “Good for you,” she said. “You’re one of us now, ha?”

Rosalynn stepped off the bus across from the market’s main entrance, feeling proud of herself. Outside, it was one of those
perfect winter days, blue-skied, the air warm enough for a light cardigan, the sun spilling all over the grey buildings, bouncing on the market stalls’ tin roofs, glowing on the asphalt, still wet from an early morning hosing. She walked with a light step, almost believing her own lie, that she was legal, married to Yaniv, one of them.

Maybe that’s why she wasn’t immediately alarmed when she saw the white van stopping in front of the market, its doors slapping open, cops swarming out of it and spreading like bees released from a jar. Maybe that’s why it took her a moment to remember that she should be running. The cops approached a group of men hanging out by the barricades. Two female officers crossed the street toward her, one entering a building where Rosalynn knew migrant workers lived, the other walking in her direction.

Rosalynn took a step back and leaned flat against a cool brick wall. She scanned the surroundings, shops were just beginning to open, their metal shutters rattling as they rolled up, a few people carried baskets filled with produce, a shopkeeper sat smoking on a milk crate, his radio playing a cheery jingle. She glanced across the street, her eyes meeting those of another Filipina woman, who then turned and ran into the market. Two men were being cuffed and escorted into the van. A narrow stairway was a step away, a dark cavity between two stores, and Rosalynn slid against the wall and turned into it, blinking to adjust her eyes, debating for one moment if she should run upstairs, before deciding it would be safer under the stairs.

The alcove was filled with junk, littered with cigarette butts and stinking of urine and mould. She crouched next to an old, broken stroller, hidden by a piece of plywood, breathing fast and shallow, her body vibrating. She wasn’t ready to leave Israel. She needed
more time. Savta needed her. Her daughter’s future relied on the money she sent. And there was Yaniv. From where she was hiding, she could only see a fragment of the street: a sliver of sunny pavement, black army boots marching past. She heard a woman crying on the street in a foreign language, running footsteps growing louder, then fading away. A female officer stopped on the front step, speaking on her walkie-talkie, her broad back to Rosalynn. Rosalynn’s heart beat heavily, like a metal bell clapper punching her chest from the inside. She fiddled with Savta’s ring, swirling it back and forth, and it slipped down to her bony knuckle, then over it and off her finger. She reached to grab it but it was too late. The ring bounced on the tile with a high-pitched chime, rolling before it came to a stop against the plywood. Rosalynn froze. The police officer turned around, and Rosalynn could see her eyes squinting in the dark.

Rosalynn took a long, steady breath in, and as she did, caught a quick, startling whiff of Yaniv’s scent still on her, out of place and comforting. At her feet, Savta’s ring glinted. Clarity washed over Rosalynn like a bucket of cold water. She closed her eyes and willed herself to disappear. She heard the officer shifting, her army boots crunching pebbles, a voice urgently speaking on the walkie-talkie, and felt her body shut down, become small and quiet and limp, her breath soft and light, her clothes a vacant, bodiless heap on the dusty floor. On the street a car alarm went off—a loud, piercing whine—but Rosalynn could not hear it. She was no longer there.

When the time for their trip came,
the streets of Montreal were already snowy, the sidewalks outside their Mile End apartment heaped with grey slush. David and Josie flew first to Amsterdam, spent a night in a hotel overlooking a canal, then to Tel Aviv, where they strolled along the seawall in jackets and boots, wrapped in wool scarves, watching the Mediterranean in all its wintry fury, a lone surfer battling large silver waves that dashed to shore.

Now, driving down the desert roads to Inbal, they were shedding layers, uncoiling scarves, rolling down windows, until it was hot enough to turn on the air conditioning, all in the course of two hours. The view through the windows turned yellower, sparser as they drove down a narrow winding road into the Jordan valley. David clutched the wheel, foot hovering above the brake pedal.
With every turn he pictured the car continuing over the abyss or crashing into trucks coming up the road.

“There it is,” Josie gasped, pointing straight ahead. The Dead Sea glistened blue and long in the crease of the earth, inviting, deceptive. “200 Metres Below Sea Level,” a sign on the side of the road announced. David imagined the seas he knew, the Pacific, the Mediterranean. Two hundred metres below their surfaces there must be no colour, no life. The thought made him shudder. Once, in grade six, he had nearly drowned at a Tel Aviv beach. He remembered the murky green-white, the silence penetrated by a thin hum, like a computer buzz. He’d been terrified of the sea ever since.

“You don’t seem excited.” Josie looked at him evenly.

“Sure I’m excited.”

“You’re worried. Why are you worried?”

He forced a smile. “Hello. Have you met me?”

She undid her seat belt and leaned over, kissing his cheek and neck.

“That’s not helping.” He tensed up.

She slumped back in her seat. “I’m the one who should be nervous.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “My dad is going to love you.”

Josie cocked her head and looked at him. “Yeah?”

“He’s not going to care that you’re not Jewish. He’s not like that. He used to rant about how Orthodox Jews don’t go into the army and we have to serve for them, how our boys get killed so the Orthodox can live here, and they don’t even acknowledge us.”

“So let me get this straight.” She held up her fingers and ticked them off. “No talk about Palestine, wars, terrorism or Orthodox Jews. Anything I’m forgetting?”

“No talk about me not going into the army.” He glanced at her. “Ever.”

It may have been eight years since he’d dodged service, but he didn’t expect his father to ever really forgive him. As a child, David used to count the days until his dad came back from the army, envious of his classmates who had their fathers around to help them with homework, teach them how to ride bikes, be there for their birthdays and graduations. When his dad finally returned, dressed in uniform, smelling of metal and sweat, he took David out to play soccer, shoot hoops or watch a game, bought him gifts David had no use for, signed him up for activities he hated. At first, David played along, even though he was miserable, terrible at sports. He was into arts, a theatre buff, a Dungeons and Dragons enthusiast, a comics fan. Later, he started protesting, but his dad would hear nothing of it. “It’s what men do. What are you? A little girl?” It got worse after the near-drowning incident. His father had taken him swimming on a red-flag day. We won’t go far, he promised. But David swallowed water and when he came up for air, a huge wave filled his open mouth, his nostrils, tossed him violently, his knees scraping the bottom of the sea. When his father pulled him out, he seemed more annoyed than concerned. The water was only waist-high. “Why are you crying?” he snapped. “You’re alive.” David started dreading his dad’s visits, shut down when his dad was home, felt relieved when he returned to the base. He looked forward to summers, when he and his mother would fly to Vancouver for two months, staying with his grandparents in Burnaby.