Authors: Barbara Rogan
When she thought of her poor mother waiting at home, Gracie wept. It was the first time Lily had ever needed anything from her, and she was letting her down. What would they tell her? What would they tell Jonathan? Gracie, who had never prayed in her life, prayed now that Tamar would have the wits to lie, to conceal her absence until she was found. Tamar could do it. She’d had no problem lying to Gracie all these weeks.
Gracie had a dreamlike recollection of Tamar standing like a piling in stormy seas while she, Gracie, sick to death of adult lies and deception spewed outrage. She’d considered Tamar her friend, and Tamar had betrayed her.
Even when all else was revealed, she’d gone on pretending there was hope. Many tumors were operable, she’d said. Some cancers could be cured. But from the instant she heard the words “tumor” and “brain,” Gracie knew she was going to lose her mother—lose her, worse yet, before she ever found her.
Above all, she felt cheated. There was supposed to have been a time when she and her mother would come together in understanding and love. That time might have come when Gracie had a child of her own and thus learned a mother’s secrets, or perhaps sooner; now it would never come at all. She understood that every time she had said or thought or written in her diary the words “My mother and I don’t get along,” the essential context had been that once they had done so and someday they would again. That context had suddenly, shockingly, ceased to exist.
Whoever said “Ignorance is bliss” had lied. Ignorance is pain deferred, payable later with interest.
A sudden flash of lightning cleaved the sky. Thunder cracked, resounding through the gorge. Gracie raised her head in amazement, wiping the tears from her eyes. After she’d told her about Lily, Tamar had said, “The sky won’t fall if you shed a tear or two, Gracie.” See how wrong she was. Another streak of lightning lit the world. The air had turned chill, and the wind carried a strange, electric scent.
Shivering, she pulled herself out of the stream and reclined on a narrow stone bank with just her right foot in the water. Her sweatshirt was soaked. She took it off, wrung it out, and put it back on. Now there was neither moon nor stars; mist drifted through the gorge.
Hours passed. Gracie dozed fitfully. In a dream, she heard her father call her name, but she couldn’t see him. She wandered alone in a desolate plain without boundary or feature, crying like a child who’s lost its way. Marooned, bereft, she had nothing left except a sense that something remained, something abided. Grace squatted down, clasping her knees; a stone arch grew up around her, like the gateway to a Roman citadel, and a white bird came from nowhere and perched upon her head.
She awoke to darkness and pain. But she knew where she was; she no longer felt lost. Dawn was approaching. Ten yards upstream, a female ibex stood on the rocky verge of the stream, head raised and nostrils flared. Gracie stared at the ibex and it stared back.
A wordless acknowledgment passed between them. Then the ibex lowered her head and drank.
27
ON SUNDAY, AT SEVEN A.M. ON THE morning of the day Gracie was coming home, Tamar phoned.
“The flu,” she shouted over a static-filled line. “We waited till the last minute, hoping she could fly, but she’s not up to it.”
“Let me talk to her,” Jonathan said. “Put her on.”
“She can’t talk. She’s lost her voice on top of everything else. We’ll call tomorrow.”
He believed her; it was just the way their luck was running these days. Listening to his end of the conversation, Lily began to weep. He put his arms around her and tried to comfort her. Just another day or two, he said; Gracie would surely be home before the operation. Lily covered her face, but tears seeped through her transparent fingers. She cried a lot these days. When they’d closed up the East Hampton house she’d cried as if...
well, as if.
Two hours later, as Jonathan was finishing a solitary breakfast at the kitchen table, the telephone rang again. He picked it up.
“Mr. Fleishman, it’s Elsie, from the answering service? There’s a Mr. Elliot from the New York
Times
on the line, sir.”
“You have standing orders about calls from the press.”
“I know, sir, but I thought you might want to take this one. He says it’s about your daughter.”
Briefly Jonathan closed his eyes. It had come at last. He was surprised that it had taken so long, surprised too that it was the
Times,
this kind of scandal being more the province of the tabloids.
“Put him through.”
“Mr. Fleishman? Dave Elliot,
Times.
Thanks for taking my call.”
“What’s this about my daughter?”
“Is Grace in Israel, Mr. Fleishman?”
“No comment.”
“Sir, our Israeli correspondent picked up a local report of a girl gone missing in the Judean desert. The girl’s said to be an American named Fleishman, first initial G. We know you’ve got family in Israel, and no one’s seen Grace for a while. We wondered if it could possibly be your daughter.”
Jonathan leaned against the refrigerator and stared out the window. Though last year’s ivy had taken hold and spread over the terra-cotta garden walls, its roots were engulfed by weeds. Lily hadn’t the strength to tend the garden these days, but Jonathan didn’t have the heart to hire a gardener. He lit a cigarette with shaking hands.
“No,” he said. “It’s not my daughter.”
“Where is Grace, Mr. Fleishman?”
Jonathan hung up. Moving slowly through the house, as if its corridors were full of a viscous fluid, he drifted upstairs to check on his wife. After a restless night she was sleeping at last. Clara sat beside her in an armchair; she gave him a reassuring nod. He walked down the hall to Paul’s room and peeked in. His son was lying on his back on a mat, lifting a barbell.
“Be careful with that,” Jonathan said.
“It’s only forty pounds.”
“Just be careful.”
He continued down the hall to his study. As the oak door closed behind him, he sank to the floor, where he sat for some time, hugging his knees to his chest. The room looked different from this angle. The floor-to-ceiling bookcases seemed to lean inward, looming over him; the desk looked unscalable. The clock on the wall read nine-fifteen, which made it four-fifteen p.m. in Israel, where Sunday was an ordinary workday. If all was well, Tamar would be at work in the hospital. He got up, crossed the room to his desk, and punched in her home number. She answered on the first ring.
He said, “What the hell is going on there?”
“Jonathan...
?”
“Have you lost my daughter?”
Silence stretched over seven thousand miles.
Tamar said, “I was trying to save you a few hours’ anxiety. We’ll find her, I promise you.”
Jonathan laid the receiver on the desk and wrapped his arms tightly across his stomach, gasping for breath. Dark spots danced before his eyes; for the first and only time in his life, he thought he was going to faint. Gradually the darkness subsided and his breath returned to him. He picked up the phone. Tamar was calling his name.
“What happened?” he said.
“Are you all right, Jonathan?”
“Just tell me what happened.”
“Yesterday, after you called, I told her about Lily. She was upset, and very angry with me for not telling her before. Eventually she calmed down. We booked her flight; then she said she wanted to be alone and went back to her room. This morning she didn’t show up for breakfast. We checked her room. Everything’s there except her work clothes and canteen. It looks as if she went out for an early-morning walk.”
“How long has she been gone?”
“We can’t be sure when she left. Probably ten, twelve hours.”
“What are you doing?”
“We have search teams out looking. Gracie’s a sensible girl. She’ll stay put. We’ll find her, Jonathan. It’s not the first time someone’s wandered off and gotten lost. They always turn up.”
Sooner or later, he thought. Dead or alive. “Who’s looking for her?”
“Veteran search teams, people who know the area well: kibbutzniks, field-school guides, Bedouin. We’ll find her, Jonathan, I promise you. In a few hours this agony will be over.”
“Helicopters? Dogs?”
“Not yet.”
He drew a pad toward him, uncapped a pen. “What about the army?”
“They only come in after twenty-four hours. We expect to have her back long before then.”
They spoke a short while longer. Then Jonathan hung up and made a list. His hand shook but his head was clear. He knew what he wanted and how to get it, and he reached for his Rolodex with the air of a knight unsheathing his sword. In less than two hours Jonathan got through to two senators, a member of Knesset, a deputy minister at State and his counterpart at Defense, a contact in the CIA, the Israeli ambassador in Washington, and the American ambassador in Tel Aviv. “My daughter is lost in the wilderness,” he told them, and to a man they assumed he was speaking metaphorically. Apprised of the truth, they were shocked, sympathetic—and vulnerable.
From the Israelis Jonathan demanded that the army immediately join the search for Gracie; he demanded helicopters, dogs, and the involvement of Israel’s security services. From the Americans he required massive pressure on the Israeli authorities. Everything he asked for was promised to him. When he had crossed the last name off his list, Jonathan phoned Christopher Leeds at home.
“Christopher,” he said, “I’ve got to go to Israel.”
“Me, too, some day. Good morning, Jonathan.”
“I’ve got to go today.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Gracie was staying on my sister’s kibbutz. She’s lost. They think she wandered off into the desert.”
In the silence that greeted these words, Jonathan imagined Christopher crossing himself, a gesture he’d never seen the lawyer make.
“How long has she been missing?” Christopher asked.
“Fourteen hours, maybe more.”
“My God.”
“I need my passport.” At his arraignment, Jonathan had been ordered to surrender his passport to the U.S. attorney’s office.
“They’ll never go along with it.”
“They must. I want to see Lucas today, this morning.”
“Jonathan, they’ll suspect you of faking this thing to get out of the country and into Israel. Israel, as you know, is exceedingly reluctant to extradite Jews.”
“Lucas won’t believe that.”
“Lucas is not your friend.”
“He was. He’s known Gracie since she was born.”
“Which means he’s got to bend over backward to avoid any sign of favoritism. At best he’ll leave it to Buscaglio, and there’s no hope there.”
Jonathan’s voice was steely. “I’ll handle Lucas. Just get me in to see him.”
* * *
“I’m sorry,” Lucas Rayburn said. If eyes are the windows to the soul, his were barred, shuttered, and protected by steel grates. “Your attorney must have warned you. It can’t be done.”
“Lucas, we’re talking about Gracie.”
“If she is missing, the authorities will find her.”
“There’s no ‘if.’ She
is
missing.”
They glared at one another from opposite sides of the conference table. Christopher Leeds sat beside Jonathan, Jane Buscaglio beside Lucas. Neither had yet spoken a word.
Lucas said, “Maybe it’s just Gracie’s way of saying she’s not ready to come home.”
“She’s needed and she knows it. She wouldn’t have missed her flight for anything.”
“Let Lily go over, then. She’s under no restraint.”
“Lily can’t travel.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t want to know.”
Lucas rolled his eyes. “No, let’s hear this.”
“Lily’s sick.”
Still skeptical. “Sorry to hear it. What’s wrong with her?”
“Brain cancer.” No one spoke. Jonathan took a card from his jacket pocket and slid it across to Lucas. “Her doctor’s name and home number. Call him. He’ll confirm what I’ve told you.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
“In three days they operate. So you see, Gracie would have been very anxious to make that flight.”
“I can’t believe this.”
But Lucas did, and they all saw it.
Jane Buscaglio caught her boss’s eye and gestured toward the door.
They stepped outside and walked down the deserted corridor. Buscaglio had been reached at her gym and wore training shorts and sneakers. She barely reached Lucas’ shoulder, but she walked like she had no idea they weren’t equals. “Tell me you’re not buying this bullshit,” she said.
“You think that’s what it is?”
“Please. His daughter, his wife—what is this guy, a modern-day Job?”
“I can’t see him making this up. I know Fleishman. The man lives and dies by his family, especially that daughter of his.”