A Remarkable Kindness (21 page)

L
auren drove with Emily in her car to Akko on a Sunday morning. It was warm and clear, and puffy white clouds drifted aimlessly in the sky.

“Boaz tells the boys that's the dragon tree.” Emily pointed to a eucalyptus tree standing alone in the middle of the fields.

“That's funny,” Lauren said. “My girls call it the dinosaur tree.” From her side of the car, Lauren could see the tree's upper branches, bent like the arms of a dragon—or a dinosaur. She looked at the road and glanced at Boaz's groves, a field of ruffling green wheat, and then a field of fallow land. On the radio, Cher was singing “Walking in Memphis,” and when Lauren couldn't hold herself back anymore, she blurted out, “Emily, what is going on?”

Lauren waited. Emily drew in her breath. “You complain I
don't talk, but look at you,” Lauren said. “When I came by to say hello to you at the hotel you were with him and—”

“With who?”

“Oh come on, you know who. Just the way you were giving him your big gummy smile, I had this feeling— I knew— I'm your best friend! Why didn't you tell me?”

“I didn't know how to tell you.” Emily turned to Lauren with a pained look on her face.

“Do you love Ali?”

“Don't make it sound so schlocky and melodramatic!”

“I knew I'd have to be the first to say his name—”

“I do love Ali, and I don't even understand it. He's not only from a different religion—sometimes I feel like he's from a different planet
.
But he understands me more than anyone else I've ever been with. Instantly. And he loves me so much—”

“Does Boaz suspect anything?”

“Remember that time Shoval broke his arm and I wasn't there? Boaz figured it out—it was awful—and I couldn't apologize, but I decided to stop seeing Ali, and I have. Sort of.” Emily hesitated. “I've tried so hard with Boaz—really, Lauren, you don't even know the half of it. To be sensitive and careful and caring. I keep thinking that if I love him enough, I'll be able to pull him out of the darkness, but I feel like he's pulled me down into it with him. I can't, I can't, I just can't live the rest of my life so sad like this—”

“Oh, Emily—”

“I say, ‘Good morning,' and he says, ‘What's so good about it?' I cook him dishes he likes, I get up early to make him sandwiches
to take to work, I try my hardest so the boys aren't too noisy or too messy . . . It's like I'm constantly running interference.”

“I'm sorry—”

“I'm just so unhappy, and then there's Ali, who makes me feel so full of joy and alive.”

“You always get that happy and alive feeling in the beginning.”

“Honestly, I never had that with Boaz.”

“I didn't think so.” Lauren frowned. “He was just in the right place at the right time when you got here.”

“And I knew he would be the last person to leave me for another woman.”

“Still, that doesn't mean you need to end your marriage and all you have for this fling with someone you don't really understand.”

“But I do understand him. That's the thing. And he understands me.”

“That makes two of you—very few other Muslims or Jews will understand.”

“So, you think I should end it. That's what I thought, too, but the idea of losing Ali . . .”

Lauren kept her eyes on the road, but she could feel Emily's confusion. “What about your boys? An Arab guy will never become the father to another man's kids. Don't fool yourself.” She paused. “And Emily, on top of that, your own—”

“Father. Don't remind me. On Charleston's Council for Interfaith Relations, but he'd never, ever . . .” Her voice fell.

“I know you know.” Lauren ran her hands around the rim of
the steering wheel, lost in her own thoughts. What could she say to Emily? Could she make Emily love Ali less? Make her love Boaz more?

Still, how could Lauren not try to stop Emily from rushing into something that seemed so uncertain? It was as if she were flinging herself into a stormy sea without a life jacket. “I think,” Lauren began carefully, “that sometimes we have to accept things in life that we don't necessarily like. Life is a package deal. We don't get to choose one thing from column A and one thing from column B like on a Chinese menu. Look at me—”

“But you love David, I know you do. And I'm miserable, really.”

“I wish you'd told me all this sooner, before you went off—”

“I didn't go off—”

“I wish you'd trusted me enough to—”

“To what?” Emily's voice conveyed her misery. “To tell you so that you'd give me this lecture? You're saying exactly what I was afraid you'd say. He's a Muslim, I'm a Jew, there's no way it's going to work—”

“Do you have any idea what's going on in the world?” Lauren banged her hand on the steering wheel.

“Of course I do! I just thought you'd understand me.”

“I understand you. I really do. And I didn't exactly choose the person I fell in love with, either. But sometimes we have to stop ourselves from doing the wrong thing.”

“And what if not following my heart is the wrong thing?”

Lauren slowed down for a red light. “You're taking such a big risk.”

Emily wove her fingers together, the way she did when she was
nervous, and placed her hands on her lap. “I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm scared to leave for Ali; I'm scared to stay with Boaz— I didn't want any of this and suddenly—”

“Just don't do anything rash, okay?” Lauren took Emily's hand for a moment before the light changed. “Because you don't want to look back and realize you threw away a very good life. I like Ali, I do. But you don't really know him. You don't know the culture. They don't think like we do.”

“Now you're stereotyping.”

“It's still the truth!”

“There are exceptions to every rule,” Emily said. “Aren't
we
exceptions? Almost all the girls I grew up with are living in Charleston or Atlanta or maybe Miami. They're not driving around the Middle East!”

Out the window, orange bougainvillea flicked by. “That's right! This
is
the Middle East.”

Neither of them spoke. They passed under the tall eucalyptus trees and went around a traffic circle. An empty field. A mix of sunlight and cloud light fell across the weeds and grasses. Lauren drove through the tense silence. She felt close to tears. She couldn't tolerate any kind of rift with Emily. She put on one of Emily's favorite CDs—
Essence
—and by the time Lucinda Williams was done singing “Steal Your Love,” Lauren knew she had to put aside her own feelings. What was right or wrong when it came to love? There was no correct answer. All Lauren knew was that she cared so much for Emily. Lauren told her, “I just want you to know that whatever you decide, I'm here for you.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

Lauren parked the car by the train station in Akko, and from there they entered what David called the souk and what Lauren secretly thought of as a consortium of hardscrabble vendors shouting over one another from jammed stalls. If you were not Lauren Uhlmann from Brookline, you shopped here. If you were poor or strapped for cash, you shopped here and ignored the bleakness and the carcinogens probably leaking out from the asbestos roof. But the vendors had a wide assortment of fresh produce, and Lauren had an errand to run nearby. And she was trying—as she'd promised David—to accept where life had taken her.

“First loquats of the season!” called a man with a bushy gray mustache in the first stall. “Sweet loquats!”

Lauren stepped toward him but Emily took her arm. “Don't buy them here,” Emily said quietly. “Boaz will give you as many as you want from our tree.”

Did that mean she wasn't going to leave Boaz after all? The thought reassured Lauren. “Your boys will soon be big enough to pick the fruit.” Lauren thought of Shoval and Tal climbing up the trees the way Maya and Yael already did. “I love picking fruit with David and the girls. Did I tell you the other day Maya and Yael stuffed oranges under their shirts and walked around showing off their ‘boobies'?”

Lauren made a beeline to the egg vendor, who had scarred skin and looked like a gangster, and ordered extra-large eggs.

“Why don't you just buy eggs from Fanny Mosseri?” Emily
asked. “Hers have the same chicken shit and feathers stuck to them.”

“Just because I'm a nurse, she wants me to listen to her complain about every ache and pain in her body.”

Lauren watched the vendor tie a string around two cardboard egg trays and make crisscrossed handles like on a bakery box. She rummaged in her heavy pocketbook, found her wallet, and paid him. They wandered past a stooped peddler selling tins of Tiger Balm, nail clippers, toilet brushes, and loose cigarettes, and then Emily stopped by a wizened man sitting on the cement, bunches of limp parsley and rotten clementines at his feet. Emily knelt and chose some parsley and four clementines.

Lauren bent beside Emily and whispered, “Those look terrible.”

“That's the whole point. Passover's coming and my father always said to give charity before the holiday.”

“Five shekels.” The man held out his scaly palm.

Lauren found her wallet again. “My treat,” she said quickly, and counted out the money, muttering under her breath, “This is Jewish history right here. I'm telling you, Emily, you switch the first letters around and you get a
shitory
.” Lauren gave the man an extra coin and stood.

“
Five
shekels!” the man yelled. “What
chutzpah
! You gave me a ten-
agarot
coin instead of a shekel!”

“I'm sorry, I thought—”

“Of course you thought I wouldn't notice! Just wait until you're my age.”

Lauren could feel the other vendors staring at her and she opened her wallet again and poured all the coins she had into the man's palm. “Let's get out of here,” she said vehemently, tugging at Emily as another seller called, “Cabbage, I have cabbage!”

Emily started for his stall as Lauren suddenly remembered him, and his dark eyebrows, which ran in one thick blur across his enormous forehead.

“Do
not
go to him! He's the one who—”

“But I want to make Boaz some coleslaw.”

“You said you're
leaving
Boaz.”

“I don't know what I'm doing! All I know is that Boaz likes coleslaw, and today, all I'm going to try to think about is making coleslaw. Just give me a minute.”

Lauren waited as Emily studied the cabbages as if they were works of art and then chose one. Emily picked out string beans, scallions, and a leek as big as a baseball bat. Her brown hair now had strawberry-blond highlights, falling at just the right angle along her jaw. Her cheeks looked full and rosy. She seemed to find a way to embrace life no matter where she was. Lauren couldn't help admiring the way Emily took chances. She greeted life with open arms while Lauren stood off to the side, holding herself back. Was it really better to be safe than sorry? Lauren thought about how when she used to sail, she sometimes had to change tack or come about and head right into the wind.

“How about some great lettuce at a great price?” The vendor lifted his unibrow at Lauren.

“I'm not buying any more lettuce from you. I will not forget your little frog.”

“
My
little frog? You think I put it in there? This is the best lettuce in the souk.”

“Oh, go ahead and take another chance,” Emily said.

“Your friend here is buying it! You buy it, too, and I'll give you a special deal.”

Lauren hesitated. “Fine, fine.” She inspected the lettuce and picked one that she hoped was inhospitable to frogs. She bought red peppers for Maya, cherry tomatoes for Yael, and cauliflower for David. Lauren wasn't sure what exactly to do with the cauliflower, but she bought it nonetheless. The seller placed the vegetables on one side of an old-fashioned scale that hung overhead and balanced a rusty weight on the other side. He weighed the vegetables, mumbling as he calculated the numbers, and announced, “Forty-nine shekels.”

Emily handed him the fifty-shekel bill she was holding in her hand and he gave her back a shekel coin.

“Guys at MIT can't even do the numbers that fast,” Lauren said as they walked away. “I bet he just said forty-nine shekels because he saw your fifty-shekel bill. It's arbitrary pricing.”

“So why did you buy from him?”

Because I'm trying to be a good person,
Lauren thought.
Because I'm trying to forget my disappointments. Or maybe because I'm trying to be more like you, Emily, unconstrained and ready to go after joy.
But Lauren only shrugged. “I try to buy vegetables I don't have to cook. Except for the cauliflower—what am I supposed to do with it?”

“Just grill it with some olive oil and salt.”

“The whole head?”

“You have to cut it up, silly.”

“You never told me that,” Lauren said as they left the market.

“Where are you schlepping me now?”

“To the store to pick up the Torah mantle. Were you even paying attention when I told you on the phone?”

“Do you want to test me? Your parents have taken it upon themselves to guarantee pluralism in Israel. They're donating a Torah to the reform temple in Nahariya and you ordered a cover for it.”

They walked down the street. The sun shone on a row of drab apartment buildings with stiff laundry hanging on clotheslines under the windows. Lauren suspected this landscape would have fit perfectly well in the Soviet Union. At least it was spring, she thought, the sky a cloudless blue, and purple blossoms dotted the jacaranda trees.