A Remarkable Kindness (9 page)

Emily opened the box.

“It's beautiful!” A ring with a ruby glittered inside. Rob had told Emily to pick out her own ring; after he'd left her for Taylor, Emily had sold it back to the same Charles Street jewelry store she'd bought it from.

“Try it on,” Boaz said.

With Boaz holding on to her kayak, Emily slid the ring onto her finger. She leaned across the kayak to kiss him, and they almost tipped over. Finally they were able to balance and they kissed. On his lips, Emily tasted salt. How come she hadn't noticed that seawater tasted like tears?

The nurse with the green eyes came back into Emily's room, wheeling the babies in their little carts. Emily picked up one boy, then the other, unsure who should be whom. Rain slashed the sky. One of the babies started to cry.
Tal,
she thought,
dew-like tears.
Then she thought about how Japanese painters always left a tiny,
deliberate mistake in their paintings. Because a perfect universe always contained the slightest imperfection.

A
FEW WEEKS
later, Emily was dangling her leg over one arm of the rocking chair and feeding Shoval while Tal slept in his bassinet, moments after she had fed Tal while Shoval slept in
his
bassinet. Emily could barely keep the boys straight. What was one plus one? In math, one plus one equaled two, but with twins, it was definitely more than two.

She heard a knock on the door and shouted, “Come in!” She didn't care who was there—she was not getting up. A cold wind swooshed through the house, there were familiar voices, and then the door closed.

“We're taking our boots off!” shouted Lauren, who then walked into the room with Aviva. “Why don't you look thrilled to see us?” Lauren asked.

“I am thrilled,” Emily replied. “But I need Andre the Giant to hold my eyelids open. What's with this morning visit?”

“Aviva made you some spinach quiche and then we both decided to take the day off to be with you.” Lauren surveyed the cluttered room. “Being a new mother can be so freaking lonely.”

“Yeah, you never told me that.”

“I didn't want to scare you.” Lauren bent over the bassinet in her cream-colored woolen fisherman's sweater, her hair swept back.

“You'll get the hang of it,” said Aviva, who always made life seem like an obstacle course you worked your way through. “We figured you could use some company.”

“Sorry about the mess,” Emily said. Boaz's newspapers were piled on the couch along with packages of diapers, baby wipes, ointments, Q-tips, and gifts for the boys, including one from Rob and his ballet dancer, Taylor.
We wish you all the best in your new life!,
Taylor had written, substituting a heart for the letter
O
in their names. (
After you ruined my old life, thank you very much,
Emily thought.)

“I'm getting us all something to eat and drink.” Lauren walked into the kitchen in her socks.

“Old Mother Hubbard's cupboard is bare.” Emily glanced up from Shoval, who'd dozed off again.

“Make your list.” Aviva sat down on the couch, wearing an extra-large charcoal-gray crew-neck sweater that looked like it had once belonged to Rafi. “I'm going to Aga's after I leave here and I'll pick up whatever you need.” She glanced at another pile of baby clothes, teddy bears, and unwrapped toys under the window. “I can help pick up all that stuff from the floor.”

“Don't bother. There will be a new mess tomorrow.”

“It's really not a bother.”

“You've been so helpful to me—I can't thank you enough.”

“You can thank me by letting me babysit for the boys. Just keep dressing Shoval in blue and Tal in red so I know who's who.”

“Don't tell anyone else I color-code my kids,” Emily said. “And when they're naked, even I have trouble telling them apart.” Emily had to look for the red nail polish she'd painted on Tal's big toe or the birthmark by Shoval's right ear. She might have even switched their names the first few days and not even known it.

Lauren came back into the room carrying a tray with a couple
of apples and clementines, the last three slices of a Garden of Eden honey cake that Gila had brought over, and three cups of tea.

“I can't believe this rain.” Lauren reached for an apple.

“When Boaz comes home, even after he puts on his slippers, he
still
manages to track mud all over the place.” Emily jiggled the bottle inside Shoval's mouth to wake him up.

“How's he with the babies?” Aviva asked. “He seems like he'd get the hang of it fast, considering how many baby calves he's held.”

“Honestly, it's like he's vanished.”

“Some people say that after his first wife left him, his emotions just dried up,” Aviva said. “And also, obviously, because of the war.”

“Boaz told me about this one battle when his army unit lost five out of twenty men,” Emily began. “That's twenty-five percent. Every fourth man.” She looked down at Shoval with a sad expression on her face. “He recites the names of the soldiers who were killed as if he's saying Kaddish. Even
I
know their names: Baruch, Eliezer, Rami, Yair, Yigal. One guy was blinded.”

“Once you've been through something like that,” Aviva observed, “you're never the same.”

“Before the babies were born,” Emily went on, “I'd wake up in the middle of the night because I was so uncomfortable and realize that Boaz wasn't there in the bed. I'd get up to look for him and he'd be lying right here on the couch, not sleeping, just lying there. Now he's gone in the morning before the babies get up. He milks the cows and then disappears into the groves.” She heaved a long sigh and stared at the cement walls where she'd hung up
a few landscape paintings that she'd made long ago. Shoval had conked out, so she pulled the bottle from his tiny mouth, which resembled a puckered pink carnation.

“Have you tried to talk to him?” Aviva asked.

“I talk, but he doesn't,” Emily said. “Sometimes he hums, sometimes he whistles. He's so different from Rob. Rob would debate anything. He'd ask me, ‘What do you hate more, mosquitoes or flies?' Or ‘What do you like more, the sunrise or the sunset?' I'm telling you, sometimes I wanted him to shut up, but after he left me for Taylor I was sorry I'd ever felt that.”

“That's what he gets paid for on TV.” Lauren snickered. “Recipes and drivel.”

“Boaz never asks me anything about Rob, and I'm so curious about
his
ex,” Emily said. “I once saw her in the supermarket and I followed her down the aisle. Her hair was dyed and cut like Cleopatra's, and she was wearing this skintight dress with glittery purple platform sneakers.” Emily let out a yawn. “I'm going to pass out.”

“Em, you could use a big glass of V8,” Lauren said. “Too bad they don't import it.”

“Forget the juice. I'd take a huge bowl of Häagen-Dazs chocolate chocolate-chip ice cream. And Lauren, I bet you'd go for vanilla fudge.”

“No way,” countered Lauren. “I'd head straight for the chocolate mousse cake at L.A. Burdick's on Brattle Street. What about you, Aviva?”

“When I was a little girl I liked Cracker Jack and getting the little surprise at the bottom of the box.” Aviva's voice dipped. “I'm
not so big on surprises anymore.” She stood and slipped Shoval from Emily's arms and nestled him close, walking back and forth in the room. “Look at this.” Aviva stared down at the baby. “I know it's supposed to be a good thing, and it is, but it's cruel, too, the way life doesn't skip a beat.”

“My father always told me that each day is a gift,” Emily remembered. “I wish that Boaz could enjoy himself. Even a little bit.” She tried to recall the times she'd seen him truly in high spirits. Maybe that very first Friday night when Emily had lit the Sabbath candles in his kitchen. He had looked at her with that half smile of his, one lip up and one lip partway down, conveying the idea that there were too many wrongs in the world to ever trust or give in to happiness unequivocally.

“S
HIT
.” E
MILY GROANED
.

Oh shit.

She opened her eyes and for a split second tried to dive back into the dream she was having, in which she was making a beautiful diorama for a museum.

It was not yet dawn, but the August air had the weight of molten heat. Emily climbed out of bed and quickly peed and trudged down the narrow hallway. She knew the way so well that she could close her eyes and fall asleep for another six steps. Then she made bottles for the twins and went into their bedroom, scooping them up in her arms.

“Shhh, Shoval,” Emily whispered, on automatic pilot. “Shhh, Tal.”

Emily never knew whether to change them first and then feed
them, or feed them first and then change them. She carried both of them, their warm bodies sticking to her skin as though they were wearing head-to-toe adhesive tape, regretting that she hadn't taken an extra minute to brush her teeth. When she reached the living room, she pushed aside some newspapers and stuffed animals and collapsed on the sagging couch, balancing two babies and two bottles. By the time she fed the boys, changed them, and laid them back down for naps, she was too wired up to fall asleep again.

Emily took a cool shower and got dressed. If she overlooked the unmade bed and Boaz's work clothes strewn on the floor by the hamper, then she could have five minutes alone. All she wanted was three hundred seconds. She tilted the living room shutters and looked out. A stray cat ducked under a parked car, and iridescent heat rose from the street. She saw Sophie and Heinz Zuckerman stroll by on their way to synagogue for the morning services.

Emily had even forgotten it was the Sabbath. She stared at Sophie's carmine-red button-down dress with its round white collar that looked like a schoolgirl's. Heinz, in his gray suit and tie and matching homburg hat, reminded Emily of the old-timey way her father dressed for synagogue. When Emily was growing up, she'd gone to synagogue every Sabbath morning with her mother and brother to listen to their father. Emily loved the stained-glass windows depicting the twelves tribes of Israel, the marine-blue velvet cushions, and the distraction of her brother kicking her under the pew as her father chanted the prayers. Since her father's death, Emily rarely went to services because nobody—not even well-intentioned Rabbi Lapid—sang the prayers she loved the way her
father had. And since his death, there were no more prayers she loved.

Emily went into the kitchen. Dishes from last night's dinner were still piled topsy-turvy in the sink. On the counter stood a glass bowl with clumps of mashed potatoes that looked like papier-mâché. There was also an open can of corn, its jagged top flipped up like a circular saw. She gazed out the window, noticing a viper curled by the work shed.

“You hear what just happened to Gideon Rosen?” Boaz had asked Emily the previous summer.

“Who?”

“Gideon! The chicken farmer who lives over by the post office! Last night, he went out to his coops because he heard his chickens squawking and didn't see the viper hanging on a tree branch. But the viper saw Gideon! Bit him right in the neck! Killed him in seconds!”

Emily quickly dialed the snake catcher's number, which was pinned to the bulletin board. Then she glanced out the window again, realizing that the viper was nothing more than a coiled garden hose. She was relieved she'd taken a second look, relieved she wouldn't have to pay the snake catcher for his time, relieved to be spared another lecture from Boaz, who'd chide her for not knowing the difference between a hose and a snake. Come to think of it, where was Boaz?

No tractor, no note.

Emily didn't want to call him and ask him where he was, again. She didn't want to call Lauren, who'd be enjoying her morning with David and their girls. Emily called Aviva.

“Boaz is out fishing already. I tried to talk to him like you suggested, but once again, this morning, he took his tractor and hitched up his boat and took off, and I don't understand why he—”

“Because he is who he is,” Aviva interrupted. “But that's not important now. It's really up to you how you're going to deal with it. You can either stay home and feel sorry for yourself—and that's not to say I don't do the same thing—or come to the beach with Lauren and me.”

A moment passed. Emily wasn't sure what she wanted, but as she stared out at the garden hose, she realized that sometimes a hose was a deadly viper, and sometimes it was just a hose.

“Okay.” Emily suddenly felt determined. “Okay. The boys are sleeping now, but I'll be at the beach at eleven o'clock.”

“Good. I'll meet you at the gate.”

Emily stuffed the diaper bag with diapers, wipes, ointment, sunscreen, pacifiers, beach towels, extra clothes. She filled two bottles with baby formula and grabbed a bottle of water, fresh lychees, and a cheese-and-tomato sandwich. When the boys woke up from their nap, Emily buckled them in their double stroller, put on a baseball cap, took the diaper bag and a beach umbrella, and set out.

The morning sky was white, as thick as cream. Reaching the shoreline, Emily saw fishermen posed here and there on the rocks. Two guys on bareback horses rode past. Now and then a seagull dove into the sea. Maybe, Emily thought, she could make things better. Maybe she could plan a picnic or an outing—and make sure that Boaz joined in.

“Aviva, thank you for dragging me out of the house,” Emily said when she met her at the beach gate.

“If you hadn't called, I might have just stayed home alone, too.” Aviva wore a navy-blue bathing suit and a white scarf tied around her waist. “But no matter what, we still have to make the most out of our lives.”

“It's just so hard right now.” Emily looked down at the boys.

“That's why joining the burial circle would be a positive experience for you,” Aviva said. “Because it puts things into perspective.”