A Remarkable Kindness (10 page)

“Being around death? It's bad enough I have to listen to Boaz talk about it.”

“It's not about death,” Aviva said. “It makes you appreciate doing the most boring, mundane, and annoying things because they're part of being alive.”

Emily looked at Aviva, a pair of very big sunglasses hiding the wretchedness in her eyes. “I'll think about it.”

“Good.” Aviva nodded. “But really, Emily, how can you expect a Yankees fan to walk next to someone in a Red Sox cap?”

“Sorry about that!” Emily smiled.

Aviva bent over the stroller, studying the twins, and reached for the one in red. “Tal, right? You didn't switch colors on me, did you?”

Emily checked for the birthmark. “Not this time.”

They moved through the beach crowded with teenage girls sparkling like ice sculptures, boys playing volleyball, kids sprawled on boogie boards, parents and grandparents standing waist-high in the water. Emily smelled meat being grilled on
a barbecue, the salty air, and coconut suntan lotion. Since the babies were born, Emily had felt so isolated, on the outside of life, looking in. And now she was stepping back into a vibrant, colorful tableau.

Lauren was lying under an umbrella near the water's edge, holding a worn paperback in her deft hands, Yael curled and sleeping beside her.

“You're reading that again?” Emily glanced down at the familiar cover of
Everything That Rises Must Converge
.

“Trying to read it.” Lauren sat up, reaching for Shoval. “One or two paragraphs and then Maya needs renovations on her sand castle.” Lauren lifted her chin toward Maya, who was playing on the water's edge with some other kids.

“Call your mom's interior decorator.” Emily opened her umbrella, spreading a towel on the sand. She sat down, happy to be out of her house, particularly happy to be with Aviva and Lauren. Emily could even daydream for one uninterrupted minute while staring at the choppy sea, the color of denim. Then she noticed a guy standing on the bow of his boat, shading his eyes, looking in her direction.

“Hey, that's Boaz!”

“You see, Emily?” said Aviva. “You just have to be patient—”

“Wow, he's here.” Emily stood up and waved. He spotted her, threw his anchor overboard, and dove into the sea.

“I cannot believe this! I'm going to surprise him and swim out. Would you mind watching the boys for five minutes?” Emily took off her terry-cloth cover-up, revealing a paisley tankini that she knew couldn't hide the weight she'd put on during
her pregnancy. But she didn't care. She didn't care who watched her jog along the beach and dive into the warm water. Emily swam as fast as she could, and then popped up her head to locate Boaz.

“Hey, what's that on your head?” Emily called.

“A jellyfish!” Boaz yelled, thrashing his arms at the enormous, slimy, bluish sea monster stuck to his face.

Emily screamed and the lifeguard, Erez, hairless and sleek as a seal, jumped into the water and swam to Boaz, grabbing him across the chest, dragging him like a towboat pulling a barge. Boaz stumbled onto the shore, flailing his arms, blindly battling with the jellyfish, its tentacles stuck to his skin. He flung himself on the sand and rolled around as though he were wrestling with it, and someone gave Erez kerosene, which he dumped over Boaz, who finally yanked off the jellyfish.

“Oh, Boaz!” Emily threw her arms around him. “
Atah b'seder?
Are you okay?”

He shook his head. “Emily,” he choked out, his shoulders heaving.

Beads of salt burned her eyes, her breath sucked out of her. “I—I love you so much,” she stammered, looking at the swollen red welts on his face, “I'm so sorry—”

“There's nothing I can do.” Boaz buried his face in his hands. “Everything always goes wrong.”

R
achel was trying to explain to Aviva's son Yoni Sereno what it had been like to be one of the few Jewish students at the University of Wyoming, from where she had graduated the previous year. “I hated how people thought I'd feel special,” she said. “I just felt weird, is all.”

It was a warm spring night and they were sitting at a bonfire on the beach. It was the sort of place Rachel had dreamed about before she'd left Wyoming for Peleg. More than fifty kids from the village's youth group were standing around the fire, roasting marshmallows and cooking potatoes wrapped in tinfoil. The bonfire was in honor of Lag B'Omer, a holiday Rachel hadn't known existed until two days ago. She stared out at the flames shooting up from the fire, the skeins of blue and orange licking the sky. She tipped back her face. Sparks popped, bursting and vanishing into the night.

“You are far from home.” Yoni spoke English with a faint Israeli accent. He was tall and lanky—not good-looking in a typical way, but Rachel thought he seemed kind and spirited, with his reddish-brown hair, craggy nose, and thoughtful green eyes.

“How did your family ever end up in Wyoming?” He leaned back on his arms, tilting closer toward Rachel, listening.

“My father says that my great-great-great-grandfather was headed for Seattle, but when he got to Cheyenne, his horse dropped dead,” Rachel said. “Seriously, I think they were peddling clothes and stuff.”

“It sounds cool to grow up in the Wild West.”

“Not all the time. When I used to sell stuff at the Cheyenne farmers market, people would tell me, ‘Don't Jew me,' so I'd go, ‘I'm Jewish,' and they were like, ‘No way!' Then they got all sorry.”

“You were undercover with your blue eyes and blond hair. But that can't be why you came here.”

“When I came last year for a visit, it was the first time I didn't feel so out of place,” Rachel explained. “My mom is a pediatrician at a clinic on a Native American reservation, and my dad is a lawyer who takes on any depressing case that comes his way. So, of course, it's only natural that I'd want to help out somehow.”

“This country is one big
balagan
.” Yoni paused. “Learn that word yet? A total mess. I don't know where you could even begin to help.”

“Well, I'm working as a volunteer in the hotel's kitchen. Today, I helped the kids gather wood for tonight's bonfire, and I also asked your mom to let me join the burial circle.”

“What did she say to that?”

“She thinks I'm too young to see death up close, but I convinced her to let me try.”

“Not a lot of girls would want to do that.”

“Honestly, I've never wanted to be like everybody else.”

“My mom already told me you were special.” Yoni tucked in his chin, embarrassed.

“Your mom is really cool.” Soon after Rachel had arrived in Peleg, Aviva had invited her for coffee and cake. Aviva still called every few days to see how Rachel was dealing with culture shock and hinting that her son Yoni would enjoy talking to her. Had Aviva sensed how much Rachel would enjoy talking to him?

Danielle Cohen, a fifteen-year-old girl with waist-length wavy hair, poked a stick into the ashes and pulled out a potato, giving it to a little boy standing nearby.

“This is so great.” Rachel looked around at the kids. “We didn't have anything like this when I grew up. And everybody back there belongs to one church group or another. Talk about exile. A Sunday in Wyoming has got to be the loneliest day on the entire planet.”

“By the rivers of Babylon,”
Yoni sang softly.
“Where we sat down, and then we wept, when we remembered Zion . . .”

“You got that right. Hey, you have a really nice voice.”

“I play the guitar, but since I joined the army . . .”

“I guess you don't have much time.”

Yoni's eyes darkened like the sea. Lauren had told Rachel about Yoni's brother, Benny, killed in a terrorist attack, but Rachel didn't know if Yoni knew that she knew, so she turned to look at
the string of bonfires up and down the dark shore. She decided to change the subject. “I never knew about Lag B'Omer until yesterday.”

“I've been to a Lag B'Omer bonfire every year of my entire life, but nobody knows what it's even for.”

Rachel grinned and then admitted that she'd looked it up on the Internet that afternoon. “It's to honor Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the rabbi who wrote the
Zohar
.”

“Pshh,
yafeh
.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“
Yafeh
just means nice.”

“Thanks. So, what's it like being a soldier?”

“You really want to know?”

“Of course.”

“It's very hard.” His voice dropped. “But there's no other option right now. And I owe it to my brother, Benny. He was . . .”

“I know,” Rachel whispered. “Lauren told me. I don't know what to say.”

Flames from the bonfire flickered across Yoni's face. “Don't say anything. Silence is the best thing.”

Somebody whistled and then Danielle Cohen led the kids in a song.

“What are they singing?” Rachel asked.

“It's Peleg's song,” Yoni said. “It goes something like, ‘If you come to the Galilee, you'll see the sky, you'll see the sea. The waves are nice and very blue and the kids have smiles, too.'”

“And walk around barefoot.”

“My feet have so many calluses that even army boots can't
give me blisters.” Yoni stood up, poked a branch into the fire, and pulled out a potato for Rachel. “Wait a minute until it cools off.”

“Thanks.” After a moment, she peeled back the tinfoil and took a bite. “Wow, this potato tastes almost sweet. A potato in Wyoming tastes only like a potato.”

“You probably have a boyfriend waiting for you to come back home,” Yoni said tentatively.

“I
had,
” Rachel said. “His name was Henry.
Is
Henry, I mean, he's not dead or anything. He's Native American. His Arapaho name is Touch-the-Clouds. But we broke up before I came here.” She hesitated, scooping up some cool sand, letting it sift through her fingers. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No.”

Rachel turned so that he couldn't see her smile. Two girls were doing cartwheels by the fire and Danielle gestured them away. Suddenly an older man with wild eyes bolted out of the darkness. He was twirling a broomstick. Yoni lurched up, leaped toward him, and grabbed the broomstick from his hands. The man yelled at Yoni and Yoni yelled back, the two of them circling each other until Yoni tossed the stick into the fire. The man kept shouting as he backed away, disappearing into the shadows, and then he was gone.

“What was that all about?” Rachel asked after Yoni flopped himself down again by her side.

“Every place has a crazy guy, right?” Yoni said. “Micha Zlotnik used to be a top scientist, but he got into a car accident. Now he walks around all day with a broomstick, swinging it at people.
Yallah,
let's go.”

Yoni stood again, holding out his hand, pulling her up. They walked away from the shore, their shadows swinging sideways and then sliding out in front of them. Following a narrow path, Rachel could still smell the sweet aroma of burning wood until they reached the pine trees by her cottage.

“This is where I saw you for the first time,” Yoni told her. “My mother slammed on her brakes so I could meet you.”

Rachel remembered how Aviva had stopped the car right next to her. Rachel was standing there holding a pinecone. She hadn't felt so mortified since eleventh grade, when she'd left the bathroom and returned to chemistry class with a piece of toilet paper trailing from her yellow Converse sneaker.

“I'm sure you thought I was one of those weird tree huggers. But it was the largest pinecone I'd ever seen.”

“Did you keep it?”

“I couldn't resist,” she said, smiling.

“Maybe I can come see it?”

“How about for a few minutes?” Rachel said.

Yoni followed her through the yard, its sandy dirt riding up to the front door. Rachel stepped into the kitchen, the ceiling light still on, and called, “Anybody home?”

No answer.

“Who's supposed to be home?” Yoni asked.

“Julius and Rouven. They're from Germany, volunteering on the Cohens' farms instead of going into the German army. Look, I painted the refrigerator myself. Periwinkle.”

“I never saw a periwinkle refrigerator before.” Yoni turned to her. “About that pinecone.”

“Right.” Rachel smiled nervously, expectantly, as he trailed after her into her room. On a wobbly dresser, in the middle of a ring of beach shells, was the pinecone, tilting precariously.

“I call it the leaning pinecone of Pisa.” She noticed Yoni looking around the room. “Sorry, I still haven't had time to fix things up in here.”

“I'm in barracks with fifty other smelly guys, so this is really nice.” Yoni flopped down on the bed.

She sat on a folding chair opposite him as he looked at her teddy bear, making her feel even sillier. But she'd had that teddy bear since she was a baby—it now had bald patches where the fuzz had rubbed off, and one torn arm that she'd repaired with black thread—and she didn't want to part with it.

“Who's this?” Yoni asked.

“That's Skippy. He gives me good luck.”

“Skippy's Jewish?” Yoni pointed to the bear's little Jewish star necklace.

“It's the necklace I wore in Wyoming. I don't need it here.”

“Cool.” Yoni smiled, leaned forward, jutted out his chin, and kissed her.

It was the slowest, sweetest, most tentative, most deliberate kiss. “I've never kissed an Israeli soldier before.” Rachel stared into his eyes, as clear as mountain streams.

“So,
nu,
what do you think?” He touched the side of her face.

“Your lips are chapped, but nice.”

“I've never kissed an American girl before.”

“So,
nu,
” she echoed after a time, “what do
you
think?”

“I could get used to it.” He tugged her toward him and then
onto the bed. Their kisses deepened, lengthened, widened, turned her body into silk. He unbuttoned her plaid flannel shirt, and then he pulled off his gray sweatshirt. She could hear the sounds of the bonfire floating up from the shore as he unhooked her bra. His gaze traveled over Rachel's breasts and belly, studying her the way she imagined soldiers studied terrain maps in the middle of the night.

After a while, Rachel pulled away. “I'm sorry, Yoni, but do you have any . . . ?”

“I don't.” He looked flustered. “Do you?”

“No.” She turned around, putting her bra and shirt back on. “We should probably stop now, anyway. Sorry.”

“Don't be sorry. I'm the one who should be sorry. But obviously not sorry for all this. I gotta go, anyway.” He kissed her again. “You'll be around tomorrow?”

“I'm working at the hotel kitchen until the afternoon.”

“I'm sure I'll find you.” Yoni stood and then knelt by the bed, his fingers winding themselves in and out of the corkscrew curls of her hair.

“I've never touched hair like this before,” he whispered.

“Weird, right?” She got her breath back. “My father has a Jewfro and my mother has blond hair like she's from Scandinavia. She's actually from Milwaukee.”

“It's really nice.” He reached for her again. Then he finally pulled himself up and slipped out of the room.

Rachel listened as the front door opened and closed. A quiet looped back to her, interrupted now and then by music and voices coming from the beach. She looked around the room, thinking of
her parents' house in Cheyenne and her big bedroom that she'd painted indigo blue with her best friend, Jamie Almquist, whose grandparents
were
from Scandinavia.

Whenever Rachel and Jamie did something fun, they called it exthrillerating. Taking off to ride horses, winning an important basketball game (they had played together on the high school team), or ice skating on the frozen pond by Jamie's house was exthrillerating.

“Moving to Israel is also exthrillerating,” Jamie had told Rachel, “even if you are doing it without me.”

“Maybe you can come visit someday,” Rachel persisted, though she knew it was nearly impossible.

“Yeah.” But the way Jamie spoke made the trip seem too far out of reach. Jamie was already living with her boyfriend and they had a two-year-old son. She worked as a waitress and planned to go to nursing school. “Someday.”

Then Rachel thought of Henry. She had never gone to his house on the reservation (“definitely off-limits,” he had said whenever Rachel asked), but she imagined him in it. He would not have a pinecone or a teddy bear. He would have a few buds of Wyoming weed and an empty bottle of whiskey that he'd use as a candlestick. When Rachel had met Henry at the farmers market, he told her he was really a shaman in training, but he never went anywhere without a Trojan pressed like an exotic butterfly in his wallet, right between his real driver's license and his fake one.

“I'm tired of selling tawdry Native American trinkets at the flea market,” Henry had told Rachel the last night they were together.

“Tawdry?” They were sitting in her studio apartment near the
university. It was ironic: she was the one who'd gone to college, but he used the SAT words.

“Yet any other kind of escape,” Henry began, rolling a joint with his nimble fingers, “would be a futile attempt at bettering myself for no proven purpose.”

“You can start selling your own wood furniture,” Rachel tried.

“Don't get all bug-eyed and Girl Scouty on me.” His face closed up and he blew a few smoke rings. She watched him, wrapping herself in his silence as if it were a poncho. Then he left the end of the joint in the ceramic ashtray she'd made for him, snuffed out the candle between his thumb and middle finger without using spit, and organized his braid on the pillow so it looked like a meandering river. (Once, when Henry had thought that Rachel wasn't listening, he'd told his brother, “Money-back guarantee, bro, the braid gets the girls every time.”)