A Remarkable Kindness (16 page)

Perhaps she was just being too hard on Moshe and the two others. They were your typical Mediterranean guys, she thought, no different from Italian or Greek jerks who leered at women as if
it were their prerogative. Perhaps she was being overly sensitive. She'd maintain her distance, not be too friendly to avoid giving them the wrong message, and continue her work in the groves rather than return to the steamy drudge of the hotel kitchen.

She remarked, “I never tasted
zaatar
before I got here. Yoni introduced it to me.”

“The Arab women still pick wild spices in the fields,” Moshe said. “Some things don't change. But no more days when soldiers came by sheep.”

“By sheep?”

“No, by jeep.”

“By jeep?”

“No! Not by sheep, not by jeep, by ship!”

“Oh, by ship!” Rachel repeated.

“Oh, by ship,” Moshe squealed in a high-pitched voice, setting off a round of raucous laughter. The three men guffawed until Moshe asked, “Whose turn is it to make coffee?”

Kareem moved to the sink attached to the back wall. He ran water into a small metal pot with a curved spout and heated it on a Bunsen burner in the middle of the table. He opened a bag of coffee, releasing an exotic aroma, and dipped a teaspoon deep inside the bag, adding three heaping spoonfuls to the water.

“Do you like two spoons of sugar, the way Kareem takes his coffee?” Moshe smirked, winking at her from under one of his shaggy eyebrows. “Or three spoons of sugar like me?”

“Both are fine.” Rachel lowered her eyes.

“Do you think twenty stirs are good, like Jamal?” he pressed on. “Or thirty stirs, like Kareem?”

The three of them stared at her again.

Rachel's face burned. She refused to look up or speak, hoping that her silence conveyed the message that she didn't like the way they were treating her. She listened to the spoon clink against the metal coffeepot. She'd brought this upon herself, she knew, by asking to work outdoors.

Outdoors had never felt more stifling and claustrophobic.

She tried to steady her breaths, but the rough-hewn walls around her kept shrinking. A hand as big as a paw appeared in front of her, setting a small, chipped ceramic cup down on the table. She could feel Kareem's presence behind her.

“Thank you,” Rachel mumbled.

“
Shukran,
” Kareem said, remaining there. “That's
thank you
in Arabic.”

“Shukran.”

“Very smart!”

“She's as smart as she is pretty,” Moshe said, and for one unbearable moment her throat constricted as the three men remained in a knot around her, making her feel like a small elk about to be pounced on by mountain lions. She tried to reassure herself that they would never do anything to her.

But what if they did? Who would hear her shouts? And wouldn't people say it was her fault, she was just asking for trouble? Her heart pounded, and there was no more air left in her lungs.

Then Kareem hooted, “And Moshe, you're as
majnoon
as ever,” pouring him his coffee.

“I'm not crazy.” Moshe snickered. “You're
meshuggeh
. You and everyone in your entire family.”

Rachel sat motionless, trying to get her breath back.
Ordinary objects are weapons,
she repeated to herself, a phrase she remembered from her college self-defense course. She reached for her cup with an inch of hot coffee within it. She clutched it with a shaking hand. She waited. When Kareem served the two other men and sat down again, she took a sip of the coffee, momentarily relieved. Another sip. Then the very last super-sweet sip, almost tasting the muddy grounds at the bottom of the cup. She stood up. She'd wash the cup and wait for Moshe outside. As she walked around the table, she could feel six eyes glued to her legs, her breasts, her butt. At the sink, she washed the cup, thinking she had to get out of there as quickly as possible.

“You're not going to perform surgery with that cup!” Moshe barked. “Americans waste money and water. Just give it a little
vish
!”

Kareem and Jamal snorted with laughter.

“
L'atzor!
” Rachel shouted in Hebrew. But she knew that the way she pronounced
stop
and the way the word should sound were two different things.

“
L'atzor!
” Jamal mimicked, the first time she'd heard him speak.

Whirling around to reach for her knapsack, Rachel accidentally knocked over her chair, causing the men to laugh even harder. “That's it!” she yelled in English, and stomped to the door. She stepped outside, into the fresh, open air. The sun was higher in the sky, and the light was dazzling.

“What's wrong?” Moshe asked, coming after her, his squat,
clunky body like a round peg trying to fit through a rectangular doorway.

“You know what's wrong.”

“We were just having fun.”

“It's not polite to stare!”

“Says who? And what's wrong with guys having a little fun?”

“Does your fun always have to make me feel so uncomfortable?” Rachel squinted at him.

“
Az mah?
So what? What do you want from me?” Moshe wiped some hummus smeared on the side of his mouth. “What do you want from us? You're the first girl to come to work in the groves. And if a woman will work here, she is covered from head to foot. You're walking around in a teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy shirt and shorts!” He took a couple of mincing steps in the doorway, teasing her.

“What is this, the Taliban? I can wear what I want and still get respect!”

“I can't stop men from looking—”

“So you're not going to do anything?”

“What do you want me to do? You give a little
shukran
in your little voice and you expect guys not to react?”

“Then I quit!”

“Fine,
nu,
go be someone else's headache! Ali said you quit the hotel because it wasn't good enough for you, and now this isn't good enough. You want everything. Why did you come here if all you do is complain about how we are? Go back to America!”

“I'm here because I want to help change things!”

Moshe slapped his hands against the side of his head and opened his mouth as if to speak, but just glared at her, stepped inside the work shed, and slammed the door.

Rachel walked away. She felt like one naïve, angry, foolish dumbo for moving to this faraway place and thinking she could make a difference. She walked carefully around the hives, the air resonating with bees, and then stepped out of the groves. The sunlit day was now hot. She'd never quit anything in her life before. She hadn't quit the varsity basketball team even when she and Jamie had Mr. Hughes, whom they called the coach from hell. She'd been able to laugh with Jamie, but now she felt only frustrated and upset. She bit into her bottom lip. Would she ever find a place where she fit in? The sun pressed down on her head, and beads of sweat dripped below her hairline.

She walked past Udi and Idan Cohen's hothouses, where she could see Rouven and Julius through the mesh screens. They were bending over plants, but they didn't see her and she didn't stop to say hello.

On a bumpy road lined with prickly weeds, Rachel stepped around horse manure and then spotted the curvy trail of a snake imprinted in the dirt. She crossed the railroad tracks. Rachel wished she could have called Aviva, but she was at school, and Emily and Lauren were at work. Instead, Rachel found Moshe's lumpy wife, Leah, reading her mail by the post office.

“Back so early?” Leah's tone was judgmental.

Rachel didn't speak. Leah was almost as crabby as Moshe, and she didn't have a neck, either.

“What's wrong?” Now Leah sounded concerned. “You don't feel well?”

Rachel shook her head.

“Lost your voice so Moshe let you go home? That was nice of him.” Leah paused. “For a change.”

A
fter every
tahara,
the burial circle members left the cemetery to return to the land of the living. But one of them would always volunteer to stay behind. You never left the dead alone until the funeral, the
levayah
. The word itself meant to accompany, to guide. According to the Talmud, attending the dead to burial is a deed that yields a reward both in this world and in the world to come.

Leah Zado chose to stay with Sophie until the burial service. Leah wedged a rubber stopper under the door to keep it open and sat by the coffin, reading psalms. She tried to get the other members of the burial circle to read
tehillim,
too, as was the traditional custom, but they all preferred to simply sit, looking out. The sun shone or it did not. Sometimes the rain fell. The sky was a whoosh of wind or it lay still as a blue lake. Now, the winds traveled in long sweeps, up from the desert and on to the sea. The air was dusty
and hot. Leah had a powerful awareness that she could feel the warmth all around her while Sophie, lying in her coffin, could not.

Leah did not like to think about her own death. It was hard to imagine that she, too, would one day lie in a coffin in the burial house. Yet for some reason, she always assumed she'd die before Moshe. She pictured him as a widower. She had once asked him if he would remarry after she was gone, and he said, “You think I need more trouble?” But Leah sensed he would quickly take the first woman willing to be his wife.

Leah's breaths came out in heated puffs. She unbuttoned the top button of her white blouse and loosened the belt of her black skirt so that it wouldn't dig into her waist. She felt hot and angry and decided that she'd buy herself the nice royal-blue dress she'd admired in the window of a store in Nahariya the other day. Why let his second wife get it all?

She hunkered over her prayer book.

“Even when I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,” Leah read out loud. “. . . And I shall dwell in the house of God forever . . .”

A
fter stepping past Leah reading her mail, Rachel opened the door to the village office and entered a long, narrow room. It was painted yellow, and the windowsill was lined with cactus plants.

“Shalom, Rachel,” said Hannah Oshinsky, a fiftyish woman with short, henna-red hair and a long face. She looked at Rachel over her red bifocals.

“I can't stay with Moshe and those guys.” Rachel slumped down on a chair in front of Hannah's desk, every inch of which was cluttered with papers. “I need to find another job.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing actually happened, thank God.” Rachel let out a long breath. “But the way they stared at me! It made my skin crawl. How rude!”

“Yes, but guys do it anyway.” Hannah stood. “I told Ali you
wouldn't last more than a day. You lasted more than two weeks.
Kol ha'kavod
. Good for you. Let me make you a cup of coffee and we'll think of something.”

Hannah bustled to the kitchenette in the back of the office, waited for the water to boil, and made two cups of instant coffee. “Do you want some fresh cream from the cows? I bet you've never tasted anything like it.”

“That sounds great.”

Hannah returned with the coffee and a plate of cookies.

“Thank you.” Rachel took a sip. “This coffee tastes a lot better than the mud spiked with cardamom that those guys made. I only drank it to be polite.” She took another drink. “Moshe says it was
my
fault because of my shirt and shorts, but what? I'm supposed to walk around in one of those long
schmattes
?”

Hannah laughed. “Well, you are pretty, but that's still no excuse.” She turned to the bulletin board next to her. “I think it's best if you try working in the older kids'
gan.
”

“With kids? I came here to try something a little more challenging than babysitting.”

“Working with thirty five-year-olds is challenging enough,” Hannah said. “I'll phone Iris Katalan and you can walk over to meet her. Just go past the library and you'll see the bomb shelter. God willing, we'll never have to use it again. The
gan
is right across from it.”

After Rachel finished her coffee, she made her way along the path, passing a rock garden filled with rosemary bushes and pink-and-yellow flowers. In front of her was the shelter, buried into the side of a hill, an air vent jabbing out from the top like
the periscope of a submarine. Rachel wondered why she'd never noticed the heavy metal door, which looked like it belonged to a vault or a crypt. Butterflies were painted upon it. Maybe, Rachel reasoned, she hadn't wanted to see it because she hadn't wanted to acknowledge its presence, and she still didn't want to admit it was there, so she turned her head, looking sideways at the
gan
with children's bicycles and tricycles lined up by the gate like a miniature parking lot.

A
viva was chopping oregano, parsley, and cilantro on a Friday afternoon. She sprinkled the fresh spices into her Mediterranean chicken dish and added more salt, pepper, extra cumin, and another touch of lemon zest. Then the phone rang.

“Hi, Aviva,” Lauren chirped enthusiastically. “Tell me what you're making for dinner so I can drool.”

“A lemon chicken dish, couscous, and salad.” Aviva mixed the dish. “Rachel was over earlier and we baked Yoni chocolate chip cookies. I finally understand what I was missing having three sons and no daughters.”

“Well, you can take over for me when my daughters hit their vile teen-girl years.”

“I'll be happy to. Hey, did I tell you I also invited Guy to dinner?”

“Guy who?”

“Guy Sasson, who took me surfing. I promised I'd invite him when Yoni was also coming home. What's on your menu?”

“Chicken nuggets and fries with a side of ketchup. Maybe I'll make a salad. If David married me for my culinary skills he was greatly mistaken.”

“Well, you have other wonderful qualities,” Aviva reassured her. “You're thoughtful, smart, and one of the few people who can still get me to laugh.”

“I'm happy about that. Anyway, I was just thinking about you. Have a fun dinner and I'll speak to you tomorrow.”

Aviva hung up, checked the food once more, and then changed into a black crepe dress that she sometimes wore to teach. But the outfit made her feel even more like a widow, so she took it off and put on a scoop-necked emerald-green shirt and flared pants that she had bought at the department store in Nahariya with Emily. Emily had joked that she sometimes bought clothes there only because she felt sorry for them. “Instead of going to the animal shelter and bringing home a stray dog,” Emily had said, “I think I'll buy this plaid skirt.”

The sky was pale, pale and sifting into night. Aviva turned off the radio, went into the living room, and lit the Sabbath candles. She always lit five candles, because Rabbi Lapid had told her a long time ago that women could light a Sabbath candle for each member of their family: “Each person's soul is like a candle bringing light into the world.”

She stared at the flames. Was that true for dead souls, too? Aviva wondered now. Could dead souls still bring in light?

A
FEW MINUTES
later, Guy stepped through the front door wearing a tan V-neck sweater and brown pants, looking healthy and full-muscled as a Thoroughbred horse. His brown hair was still buzzed short for the army, and he was clean-shaven, his chiseled cheekbones rosy. “These are for you.” He held out a bouquet of pink Gerber daisies, a sheepish expression in his light brown eyes.

“Thank you.” Aviva took the flowers. “They're beautiful, but you didn't have to bring me anything.”

“My parents trained me well.”

“Of course they did; they're French. I'll put them in a vase and we'll wait for Yoni and Rachel.”

“Thanks for inviting me.” Guy followed her into the kitchen.

“Thanks for the surfing lesson.” She pulled a glass vase from a top shelf and had just turned on the faucet when her phone rang.

“Hey, Yoni,” Aviva answered it. “Dinner's ready. When are you and Rachel coming over?”

“Ma, I couldn't get out this weekend.” Yoni's voice sounded like a bonfire that had been stamped out. “The commanders changed their minds at the last minute. And they wouldn't let us use our phones until just now. I'm not going anywhere except out to guard.”

She winced and covered the phone. Dammit. She tried to catch her breath, tried to hide her disappointment. “Oh well,” she managed. “Do you think Rachel still wants to come?”

“She told me to tell you not to worry about her because she's going to eat at Rouven's girlfriend's house,” he said. “Ma, I gotta go.”

“Yoni.” Aviva stopped, swallowing hard. She glanced over her shoulder at Guy, sitting at the kitchen table, looking through
The Norton Anthology of English Literature
. Aviva thought of all the things she wanted to say. All the things she might not have a chance to say again:
Yoni, keep your eyes open. You only get one chance. Count on nothing and nobody. I don't care what you have to do to stay alive. Forget that I played “Imagine” when all of you were growing up
. . . She felt wretched and heartbroken and powerless and blurted out, “All that matters is that I love you—”

“I love you, too, Mom. Bye.”

Then there was the click of the phone. Aviva turned away from Guy and leaned into the edge of the sink, not yet ready to turn around and face him. She heard the pages of the book riffle through the quiet. She felt her heart scuttling, crashing into her ribs.

Guy cleared his throat. “I take it Yoni's not coming home.”

She kept her back turned.

“It's normal for soldiers suddenly not to be able to come home.”

“I know. It's like that morning on the beach when you didn't show up. When I saw that helicopter—my heart dropped all the way to China. I've been through all that with Benny and I kept praying that your parents wouldn't have to go through the same thing.”

“Why did you worry? I knew I'd be back.”

“I'm glad you were so confident.” Benny had been confident, too. Sadness draped Aviva. She glanced at the dishes she'd prepared.
It did no good wishing things were different, because wishing was dangerous. “Well, you're here,” she told Guy, “I've made a ton of food, so we might as well eat.”

She brought the dishes to the dining room table and removed Yoni and Rachel's plates. “Do you mind singing ‘Shalom Aleichem' with me?” Aviva sat down across from Guy. “I always sing it when Yoni and Raz are around.”

“We sing it at home, too.” Without hesitating, Guy joined her in the song to welcome the Sabbath angels:
Welcome angels, messengers of peace, angels of peace, angels from on high . . .

After saying the blessings over the wine and challah bread, Aviva served dinner.

“Your parents don't mind that you're not eating with them?” She laid a piece of chicken on a bed of couscous for Guy.

“They're on vacation in Paris.”

“Lucky them,” Aviva said, though she didn't want to visit Paris ever again. Her phone rang and she glanced at it, still hoping it was Yoni calling back to say his commanders had changed their minds and given the brigade a weekend leave after all, but it was Charlie Gilbert and she didn't answer it. Soon after they finished eating, there was a knock at the door and she called out, “Come in!”

“Aviva?”

It sounded like Charlie's clipped voice, so she stood up. “Excuse me.” She walked to the hallway, where Charlie was standing inside the door, bringing in cool winter smells, the sea air, and cigarette smoke.

“I tried ringing you but you didn't answer.” Charlie tugged on his goatee.

“You never come over on Friday night. Who died?”

“Edna Levy.”

“But I just visited her in the hospital a few days ago. That's too bad.”

“Too bad?” Charlie snorted. “Don't look so gobsmacked! I'll be very happy if I make it to ninety-two like she did, the old tart. The
tahara
and funeral will be on Sunday afternoon, and I want to make sure you'll be available.”

“I'll tell the others.”

“No need—I have and will. Where have you been?” Charlie craned his neck toward the living room.

“Just sitting around.” Aviva shrugged. “I didn't feel like talking.”

“Right, well,” he said curtly, “I rang Lauren, who said she'd tell Emily. And I'm going to stop by Gila's, who'll tell Leah. You can decide if you want to invite Rachel again, but it's my humble opinion—not that you asked—that she's far too young for this sort of thing. She'll have her whole life to experience death, if you see what I mean.” He paused, chuckling. “The least you can do is spare her a few more years.”

“You're probably right. She's just so adamant about helping.”

“You Americans who come here are bloody mad. Expecting to change the world by the weekend.” Charlie distractedly patted the front pockets of his trousers, then the back ones, and then pulled out a pack of Camels from his suede jacket. “I know, I know, you don't want me to smoke in here. But it's windy outside, so I'll light it here,
then
step outside, and Bob's your uncle.”

“Exactly.” Aviva smiled, opening the door. She paused, letting the cool air linger. She pictured Edna Levy walking to the grocery store, so hunchbacked that her body was bent in half, and the way she strained her head sideways and upward to say hello. Then Aviva remembered Guy and returned to the dining room, where he was clearing the table.

“I couldn't help hearing about Edna.” Guy was carrying some plates into the kitchen. “She was a nice woman. She always gave us cookies whenever we passed by.”

Aviva nodded. She put on an apron that Raz and Yoni had bought her for her last birthday (“Hint, hint,” they joked, “keep cooking!”) and washed the dishes. Guy disappeared into the dining room several times before returning with the tablecloth bundled like a baby in his arms.

“Thank you.” Aviva glanced over her shoulder. “You can eat and run, as they say. I'll be fine.”

“That's all right. Nobody's around, anyway. Where should I put the tablecloth?”

“Just leave it on one of the chairs and I'll get to it later.” Aviva turned on the radio and listened to Patti Smith singing “Because the Night,” and she was so caught up in the song that she almost forgot that Guy was there until he asked, “Do you have a container for the couscous?”

“In the top cabinet.” Aviva lifted her chin toward one of the cabinets above the microwave.

“You made enough for a platoon.”

“I was never good with quantities.”

“Well, dinner was great.” Guy placed the last bowl by the sink.

“Sorry it was a lonely crowd.” Aviva untied her apron and walked him to the door.

“It was fine.” Guy stepped outside. “
Lilah tov,
good night, and thanks again.”

She waited on the front step, watching Guy walk quickly out the gate, the sound of his footsteps blending in with the sea. From Jacob's kennel a dog barked, sounding homesick. She returned to the living room and lay on the couch, staring at the burning Sabbath candles. She shook her head at the thought of their fleeting existence. The yellow flames flickered; soon they'd be extinguished. She tried to remember details about Rafi and Benny. She thought of Rafi's favorite skin cream, an old-fashioned blue tin of Nivea that he smeared on without bothering to look in the mirror. Benny's favorite deodorant was Old Spice, and his favorite snack was popcorn with lots of salt.

There was a knock on the door again and Aviva closed her eyes. She did not want to talk to Charlie Gilbert. He had a perfectly fine wife, but he was known to make the rounds of women in the village, stopping for a chat and tea, sometimes brandy, sometimes
bickies,
or cookies. She didn't want to face him. She didn't want to face herself.

There was another knock. Aviva hesitated, sat up, and then called, “Come in,” listening as the door opened and closed.

“I'm not meeting my friends until later and I didn't feel like sitting around an empty house, so I came back for a while,” Guy said, stepping into the living room.

“Things are bad if I'm the only game in town.”

“That's not true.” He plopped himself on the floor by the couch, picked up the newspaper lying on the coffee table, and opened it mechanically.

“I only bought it because I thought Yoni would be home,” Aviva said. “I never read the newspaper. Raz doesn't like to, either. I prefer living in my own bubble.” She looked up at a photo of Raz playing soccer. “I miss him, but I'm happy he went away for a while.”

“When I get out of the army, I want to go visit him in Costa Rica.”

Aviva nodded. She wanted to ask Guy how much longer he had in the army, but she knew that soldiers didn't count how much time they had left until they could count the weeks. Then, like Raz, they counted the days, the hours, and the minutes until they could return their uniform and boots and rejoin civilian life.

Outside the window, the sea swirled. The sound filled her with loneliness so large it swallowed the entire room. Dinner was over, she had made enough small talk with Guy, and she had no energy for conversation. She wondered how long Guy would stay before he got bored and left.

“The other day we were doing maneuvers out on the sea.” Guy turned to Aviva. “I saw a whole group of dolphins playing in the water. I had this strange thought that they get to be kids their whole lives.” He pushed the newspaper away and looked at her, his eyes more serious than she had ever seen them, as if he'd aged in a matter of moments. “It was weird. I've never been jealous of a dolphin before.”

“I was once jealous of a
lizard.
I saw it sunning on a rock without
a care in the world. I had all these idealistic dreams when I moved here. I thought life in the suburbs of New York would be boring. I wanted to do something meaningful and important.”

“At least you tried to do something.”

“I know I shouldn't be telling
you
this, but Benny paid the price of those dreams. Then I think of Yoni out there somewhere and who knows where they'll send you next . . .” Aviva reached over, almost instinctively, and touched Guy's hair, soft and short like rabbit fur. He laid his head in her lap and she sang softly and then yanked her hand away. “I'm sorry!” she exclaimed. “I don't know what got into me. I used to sing to the boys before they went to sleep—”

“Don't stop. Yoni will be okay. I'll be okay, too.” He tapped his knuckles on the coffee table.