The Place Will Comfort You (28 page)

“Do you remember walking me home?”

“No.”

“Stands to reason,” she said. “Me neither. We wouldn't have exchanged a word.”

The repairman was back at the pool table, though plainly he was not that but rather the earnings collector. He had propped the great repository of jukebox coins on the green felt and now, one after the other, drew the box-shaped objects, each from its fitted sack. Each sack revealed a repository like the big one, of metal painted white, but smaller. Each of these in turn he fitted with the gizmo like a nutted bolt and what protruded of this he inserted in the larger case. Each full connection caused a rush and clank of change that rang each time in a faintly new way. When each bout of streaming stopped he detached the receptive unit, rewrapped it, and cinched the string.

“Why did your family descend?” Neer said.

“That word,” she said. Meaning
emigrate
but applicable only when the launching point was Israel. Immigration was ascent, and emigration, the fall. The lingo wasn't new.
There was a famine in the land, and Abram descended into Egypt to sojourn there.
Under similar circumstances, Jacob and his sons went down, but never again came up.

“I apologize,” he said. “Charm is not my strong suit as I said. Why did you emigrate from the land?”

“The land.”

“Now you're quibbling.”

“We thought we were ascenders for life but were only for a time,” she said. “Am I supposed to be able to explain it? In that case all right. We were never sufficiently absorbed. We left, and now we're here and not there.” She flipped her palm to let the subject go like a balloon.

For in the period leading to her family's descent she had been happier than ever before, but why would she tell him? Did he require recollections of her late-coming and short-lived period of acclimation to assure him of his native country's worth? Would he find this in the details of three ordinary girls from her middle high school?

He might have saved her life, but Natalie, Pazit, and Colette invested in it, welcomed her onto a trail hidden to her until then, into the ways of less observant Orthodox schoolgirls, or rather girls observant of other things. They'd known how to negotiate the markets, striving through leaning stalls to treasures of stretch cotton and fake gold. They had brought her to dance halls, urged greater attention to the hips. On double, triple, and quadruple dates they had planted her on the rear seats of motorbikes on which the cutting wind had taught her with what tightness one must hug the waists of boys in army uniforms. Colette threw up her meals to stay lean. Pazit's brothers slapped her when she disobeyed. In the tenth grade Natalie wrote Death to Arabs on a sole of her running shoes.

The good old times. In hindsight, yes, times that had been drawing a new itinerary for her in the land, by a way different from the old heroic songs. On foot, on bus, and on motorcycle, the girls had stayed on the move, the girls had got around. The girls had loved the street, heaving with crowds of coexistent human wills, malicious and neighborly, all desirous in their way. When she had left none of the girls had wept. The Poresch family after all had only been taking a sabbatical leave. No one had anticipated that same year would furnish the Israeli street with so many more trapdoors
than before. Who would have let themselves predict so many sounds of walkers falling? Or the Poresch family remaining in the stiller landscape.

“Can you recommend points of interest?” Neer said.

“Sure,” she said. “Boston.”

“Locally, I mean. They send us only on the tourist route. The beaches are too quiet. The pocket watch museum is thoroughly covered in two days. I don't like ice cream. One mansion was enough. Where do I find the human scene?” He reached behind him and took out his map. He spread this over the area of their table above which two other patrons might speak.

“We have a watch museum?” she said. His finger traveled three or so miles over a shore route and stopped. She stared at the point.

“Do you find you like it here?” he said.

“Something in the local character speaks to me.”

“You must have to live here awhile to pick up the sound.”

“No denying,” she said. “I miss the people on the streets. Wait a few weeks. It gets thicker. Or hire a captain, go fishing.”

He folded his map. She pinched the tip of her stirrer and turned it, blending the liquid ice into the darker stuff surrounding.

“How's your drink?” he said.

“Once the ice melts it's not so syrupy.”

“Is there a vodka you prefer?”

She looked at him. He didn't know he was recycling her earlier small talk. “No.”

Music began to play through the jabber of television comedy. The earnings collector was at the jukebox again, thumb on the coin slot.

“Christ, not again.” This was the bartender, fully audible now. An Irish accent aerated her final
t's
to a soft whoosh.

“Don't like it?” the collector said. “I'll let you choose the next one.

The first selection continued playing, voices of women harmonizing,
a song ubiquitous as of the winter just passed, streaming from mall and film house speakers, radio, music TV on which the video revealed three fiddler ladies, ordinary-looking but lovingly groomed, figures shown off, instruments trained at shining shoulders as they communed with six or seven mariachis on taverna benches, the men ostensibly proficient in Country, as this was the sound. Women and men, they sat together, singing, playing, locking smiles with no amorous suspense. The women's bows sliced at the strings with swift precalculation. The men played concertinas and guitars, which the recording picked up as muted backdrop.

The time to leave was drawing near. “The best of luck with the paste,” Adi said.

“Glaze,” Neer said. “It's almost there.”

“When the product comes out,” she said, “the field of assisted living will rush to embrace it.”

“There is still the issue with the pigment.”

“Particularly in the case of the nonverbal,” she said. “Imagine yourself incapable of understanding language. Imagine trying to make sense of an electric toothbrush in your mouth.”

“If I can overcome this nonsensical stalling,” he said.

“You have no idea how strong Clarence can be,” she said. “Amazing upper body strength, hauling himself around all of these years.”

For the first time Neer raised his head from the supporting hand. She had alarmed him.

“It could have been available last year,” he said.

“Clarence can't conceive of assault,” she said. “He just resists. But if I've learned anything in my line of work, it's that I prefer threat to isolation. I should have remained with the mentally ill, working for the state.”

“Will you be seeking a new position?” he said.

“I think so,” she said. “Yes. I'll keep my eyes open. I receive the daily paper. I pick up the local one when it catches my eye.”

The earnings collector returned to his work surface and began to pack up his tote. He put away a cloaked cartridge, and another, and paused, rubbed at his temple, yawned. Bouncing a fist over his widening mouth he looked directly at Adi, as though in working so long alone he had forgotten he was visible, or perhaps he was preparing to weigh in; if so, he soon recalled they weren't speaking the local tongue. When the yawn had worked through him he withdrew again into his business.

Neer leaned his head back on his hand.

“I'm optimistic,” he said. “I believe I've got it in me to claim the influential role. What I require now is just the proper phrasing. Already the benefits endure beyond all expectations. The color soon fades. To be concerned more with the temporary looks than the long-term health of a smile, this I can't fathom. We're talking about only two, three days in most cases. It soon goes back to normal.”

Acknowledgments
 

My profound thanks to my parents, Batya Abramson-Goldstein and Yehuda Goldstein, for their example in the world, their unflagging love and reserves of strength; to my groom, Robert Goodman, for his sustenance, faith, and infinite kindness; to my siblings, Hillel, Miri, and Avi, near and far, always here; to my editors at Scribner, Alexis Gargagliano and Rachel Sussman, and my agent, Maria Massie, each a unique and indispensable support and goad; to Robert Earley-wine, Stanley Elkin, Judith Neaman, Peter Genovese, Rabbi James Diamond, Elizabeth Searle, Abby Frucht, Christopher Noel, Yona Plezner, Bracha Lieberman, Mrs. Gretch, every teacher who encouraged and pushed, edified and provoked, incited, cheered and challenged; to Shlomo Bar, Yair Dalal, and Zehava Ben, for musical handholds in the nighttime climbs; and finally, a debt of gratitude to my late grandparents, Channah Abramson, nee Tarshish, z”l and Rabbi Avraham Abramson z”l of Jerusalem, and Dorothy Goldstein, nee Steinberg, z”l and Benjamin Goldstein z”l of New York, humble citizens of hallowed cities, models of elevating vision and industrious rebirth, in whose honor I do what I can.

 

N
AAMA
G
OLDSTEIN
was born in Boston and grew up in Petakh Tikva, an industrial central Israeli city founded in 1878 as an agricultural village and known as the Mother of Settlements. There, and later in Tel Aviv, she was educated in Orthodox Zionist girls' schools and for several years was a member of the Torah and Labor youth movement, Children of Akiva. At the age of seventeen she returned with her family to the United States and has since resided in Maryland, New York, Missouri, and Massachusetts. She has worked as a bartender, receptionist, Hebrew school teacher, accountant manque, bakery hand, librarian, pub cook, and behavior coach. She now lives in Boston.