Light Years (18 page)

We were stuck in traffic. I was now fifteen minutes late. We passed a small accident in the middle of the road. A man stood on the sidewalk crying, cradling his arm.

I was staring at him in surprise and in pity when I heard a loud boom. The windows on the bus rattled and I could feel the vibrations through the seat and all the way into my chest. There was shocked silence on the bus for a moment. Someone screamed.

“My God,” I thought. “Something exploded.”

Everyone on the bus started talking at once, trying to figure out what happened, where it happened. It was surreal. Someone said the mayor’s office was nearby, the American
embassy. Even though people were shouting and trying to see what happened, we all stayed on the bus. We didn’t know what else to do. The traffic started moving again. Someone said maybe it was a car bomb. I could see over the driver’s shoulder and suddenly I noticed a cloud of black smoke rising in the distance and it finally sank in that another terrorist had attacked.

This was the closest I had ever been to a bombing. I’d only seen their aftermath on television. I didn’t know anyone else who’d ever seen one. I had actually heard the explosion. Goose bumps raced up my arms. I felt tears prickling. What was happening to my country? How could we live like this? How could this keep happening?

As the bus crept forward, we got closer and closer to the smoke. I could hear sirens behind us. The bus pulled up onto the curb to get out of the way. The driver turned on the radio, searching for news, but there was nothing about it yet, it was too soon.

Then my cell rang. I rummaged through my purse, pulled out the phone, and glanced at the readout. It was Hen.

“You won’t believe what just happened,” I said. I was upset and glad she called—I needed to tell someone about this.

“Maya, where are you?” Even through the fuzzy connection, I heard the edge of panic in her voice.

“On the bus, going to Shtut. Why?”

“Oh my God,” she said. “Oh God, oh God.”

“What?” I was totally floored. Hen was losing it. My skin broke out in chills. “Stop it! Stop saying that.”

She wouldn’t stop. She was sobbing.

“Hen, what happened!”

“Get off the bus!” she screamed in my ear. “Now! Maya, get off the damn bus!”

The bus was about to pull away from the curb.

“Okay.” I was nearly crying now. I didn’t know why. “Hen, I’m getting off, I’m getting off. It’s okay. Don’t cry. I’m getting off.” The whole time she kept screaming “Get off now. Oh God, just get out of there!”

I stood up before the bus could lurch away, grabbed my purse, and with the phone pressed to my ear, I made my way to the door. “Can you hear me? Hen, listen! I’m getting off.”

“Now, hurry, hurry, Maya.” I had never heard her like this. My guts were coiling and my hands were clammy. I couldn’t stop crying. I was feeding off her hysteria. I needed to breathe. I needed to calm down.

“Hen, please.” I took an unsteady breath. “I’m okay. Where are you?”

The bus pulled away with a belch of black exhaust. The heat was still there, pressing on me. There was a bench, and I sat down.

“Are you off the bus?”

“Yes, Hen. I’m off the bus.” I spoke slowly, but my chin trembled, I was so scared. There were sirens howling all around me. Ambulance and police racing to the scene, which I suddenly realized wasn’t far from me. “What happened? Are you okay? Are my parents okay?”

My heart clenched at the thought that someone from my family could be hurt.

“Maya.” She took a deep, unsteady breath. “There was a bombing at Shtut.”

I felt nothing. Of all the things I was braced to hear, that wasn’t one of them.

“What?”

“Don’t you understand? There was a bombing. Now, five minutes ago. The guard at the office just told us.” Her office was close to Shtut, I remembered.

“But I’m only four blocks away,” I said. The numbness was fading. Still, it couldn’t be. It didn’t make sense. Shtut was off the main square. It was on a small street, a local café. Not the sort of target bombers go for.

“I knew you were going there today and I thought you said you’d be there at four.” She started crying. “I—I ran over there b-but they wouldn’t let me get near.” She was sobbing. I could barely understand her.

“No,” I said. “No. You’re wrong. It couldn’t be Shtut. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Excuse me?” I felt a cool hand on my shoulder. “Where was there a bombing?” I looked up. A middle-aged woman was looking at me.

“I don’t know,” I said, “maybe Café Shtut.” But I still didn’t believe it. “My boyfriend is there.” As if that settled it. Nothing bad could happen if Dov was there.

And then I heard Hen say, “Oh, my love, I am so sorry. Shtut is destroyed. I saw it. It was Shtut.”

I heard the pity in her voice and the anguish and I finally realized she was telling the truth. I’d been headed there. And if I hadn’t been running late, I would have been there when the bomb went off.

“Hen, Dov was there. Waiting for me.” I tried to swallow. “Did you see him?” My voice was rising as my throat tightened. “Did you see him when you went to look for me?” My voice was spiraling higher and higher. I felt that cool hand lift my damp hair, stroke my neck. The woman was still there, touching me, making hushing noises. I brushed away my tears.

“I don’t know,” Hen said. “I wasn’t looking for him. No, I didn’t see him. They wouldn’t let anyone near. But you’re safe, thank God. I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead, but they wouldn’t let me look for you.” She was crying again.

“Dov was meeting me there.” My lips felt numb. I could barely talk. “Didn’t you see him?” I couldn’t stop asking. “How could you not see him?”

“No,” she said again. “I couldn’t get close. They didn’t let anyone near.”

The woman petting my hair looked at me with pity. I wanted to tell her that everything was okay. I knew what she thought.

“He’s okay,” I told her, dragging the back of my hand across my dripping nose, pressing the heel of my palm against my eyes. “Maybe he was running late too.”

Other people had stopped, drawn by my crying, my rising voice, and the woman by my side.

“What happened?”

“Another bombing,” she said. “This one thinks her boyfriend was there.”

“God damn it,” someone said. “Fucking terrorists.”

I didn’t want this. I didn’t want them looking at me with pity, thinking I was a victim.

“Where was the hit?” one of them asked.

“Café Shtut,” I said, fighting to be able to speak through the rising panic. “Café Shtut on Grossman.”

There was a murmur around me.

“Your boyfriend was there?”

“I’m sure he’s okay,” I said. “I’m going to call him.”

In fact, all around me, people were pulling out their cell phones, calling their kids, their friends, making sure no one had made the mistake of stopping by Shtut for an afternoon snack.

I hung up with Hen and dialed Dov’s cell-phone number, but my fingers shook so badly it took me three tries. The call couldn’t go through. I wanted to scream.

But it didn’t mean anything. His phone could have been broken earlier today. He had dropped it before, had to buy a new one. Maybe the lines were down. Or maybe his phone was broken in the blast but he was fine. A million excuses ran through my mind.

He was fine, he was fine, he was fine. I wrapped my arms around my middle. I could hear people shouting on their cell phones, all able to get through, talking with their loved ones.

“He was there waiting for me,” I said. The woman hugged me and pushed my head against her soft bosom and I sank in, hiding my face. I wrapped my arms around her and held on. I felt her arms gather me like a child.

“Shhh,” she said. “Shhhh. There, there. It’ll be okay. I promise. It’ll be okay.”

But it wasn’t okay. Dov hadn’t been late. He had been there, drinking a coffee, waiting for me to arrive.

I stepped off the lit path and into the darkness of the shadows cast by the oak tree near the history-department building. The dark surrounded me, hiding me.

I studied the building in front of me, the lit doors and locked windows. It was fitting that the history department was in a distant, dusty building. History. Forgotten. I wondered if its location here was someone’s idea of a joke. Chemistry, physics, even English and music were all at the heart of things, which is why I never stood in front of the School of Engineering thinking morose thoughts. I’m sure if I even tried, the building’s cosmic aura of Newton’s Laws of Thermodynamics would interfere, blocking transmission of such inconsequential nonsense.

Late at night, with the stars shining clearly above and the moon distant and cold, I was hidden beside the history department, haunted by my own history.

I stood for a moment under the tree, hands dug deep in the front pouch of my old hooded sweatshirt. With my dark hair and dark clothes, standing in the shadows I was perfectly camouflaged. As invisible as I could ever hope to be. I felt weightless. I could join the nighttime molecules, looking so much
like them that I could be them. I felt safe in shadow, safer in disappearing than I ever could be in the light. With the darkness under my feet, no one could see me and I was free.

All the students I met seemed to fear the dark. They wanted to always stay in sunlight, on illuminated paths. The girls, especially, seemed to think that without streetlights they were at risk. Like children, I thought with disdain and envy. They didn’t even realize that light could conceal far more than it ever revealed. It deceived you, tricked you, and lulled you straight into the heart of danger. Like moths, they gathered under streetlights to feel safe. My heart clenched when I passed them in the shadows, unseen and unheard amidst their giggles and shouts. They were so vulnerable. Anyone could harm them while they continued to think they were safe, surrounded by a force field of mere photons for defense.

The crisp night air was so different from the soft, featherlike feel of a Virginian summer night. I wondered what winter would feel like here. I had seen snow only once before, on a trip to France with my parents. My brother had raced to the elongated widows of our hotel room in Paris and said, “Look!”

The glass in the window was as old as the little hotel we were staying at, a warehouse from the eighteenth century. It was rippled, creating waves along its flat plane, distorting the view outside. It was what happened to glass over time.

For a moment, looking at the odd view from our window, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. I thought it was feathers floating down, that someone in the floors above us had a massive pillow fight. Or that all of the thousands of pigeons endemic to Paris
had taken flight simultaneously, shedding the small downy feathers at their chests. Finally it clicked in my mind. My eyes made sense. Snow.

I looked forward to seeing snow again, though I was told it only fell here twice last winter.

Three students came stumbling out of a dorm room, reeling with drink, flushed with their youth and good fortune. It was Friday night, and lights from parties were cropping up like chicken-pox sores on the dark body of the university grounds.

I breathed the night air, tried to take pleasure in the clear night. The leaves had turned colors, though I couldn’t see them in the dark. I couldn’t get over how these ordinary-looking trees could produce such explosive changes. Trees never looked like that in Israel.

I didn’t know why I returned to this thought so often—whether Israel had something or not. I guess I always felt that anything truly important or wonderful could be found in Israel. Maybe only in tiny quantities, but there nevertheless. When I thought about the beauty in Israel, the ocean, the pastel desert, I realized how much I missed it, and then I remembered that I was in exile.

A sudden shout of laughter made my heart race. Two guys guffawed and stumbled out of a West Range room, the historic graduate-student rooms off the Lawn. With the door open, I could see clearly into the small room, packed with people, full of music and light. I saw someone tilt a longneck beer bottle and swallow, come up for air, and laugh at a joke. I turned and
veered off toward the gardens, walking slowly on the pale gravel path to reduce the noise of my footfalls. The undulating wall of tall, heavy trees created pockets of deep shadows and gloom.

I entered my favorite garden, seeking by memory the white bench at the curve of the brick fence. The moon was out, waxing half full. The trees threw shadows like dark veins on the smooth lawn. I found the bench, tucked romantically beneath the outspread limbs of a cedar tree, which was lush and green when everything else had started to wither and fade.

I closed my eyes, hoping to relax and listen to the small noises of the night, trying to recognize what was what.

Footsteps crunched on the gravel path outside the garden. I held my breath, listening. They stopped in front of the gate. Voices giggled, and the latch of the garden gate creaked open.

I scrambled off the bench and ducked behind it, my heart speeding as though I was doing something wrong. I peered over the bench at the intruders. How could someone else come into my garden? No one came here at night. No one but me. I didn’t want to be seen. If I stood up and left, they would certainly ask questions.

They slipped in, clearly visible on the lawn, painted in silver, white, gray, and black, and looked around, making sure they were alone. Then they leaned into each other, slowly, and kissed. They were beautiful. They stood still, lips together, looking like ghosts. The moon outlined their forms, hid their faces. My heart slowed. One of his hands disappeared in her pale hair; the other clutched her close, then slid down her back.

I bit my lip, watching their kiss. It had never occurred to me before, but these secluded gardens were perfect for this sort of thing. My palms were sweaty and I wiped them on my jeans. Their kisses were growing intense. Her hands tugged at his belt.

I eyed the brick wall behind me, but it reached above my head. I could scale it but not silently. They would see me. They would be embarrassed, or scream, and I didn’t want that. I was invisible. They would never know anyone saw what they did. I was night air. Settling down lower under cover, I peered through the painted slats of the bench.