“We’re still at the beginning,” David said.
“I don’t think I want any more. I’m feeling kinda sick.”
Maybe it was the soda. She could hope.
“We should take a break,” Meira said, trying to salvage the moment and keep David’s patience from thinning again. “Maybe get out of the house. You guys could take the canoe out. Or the sailboat.”
“Nah. Can I just go lie down?”
“A nap sounds like a great alternative.” Meira stood and gathered their glasses. “Maybe we’ll order pizza tonight. Find a good movie.”
“Sure,” Tony said, but his shuffling feet didn’t bode well for an evening of forgetfulness.
When his bedroom door closed behind him, she turned to her husband. “This isn’t going well.”
“Maybe, maybe not. We knew it would be hard.”
“Remind me again why we waited so long?”
“Picture him hanging out with Bahir and casually mentioning that his mother and father are spies. Were you thinking show and tell in school?”
Meira combed her hair back with her fingers. “I know. And if he’d known and been forced to silence, it would have killed him. And if we’d had to send him away earlier, it might have killed me. He’s still such a boy.”
“I don’t think secrets are part of the vocabulary of a kid. Even for an almost fourteen-year-old.”
“That’s the part that’s going to be the hardest, isn’t it?” she said. “The fact that he won’t be able to tell Bahir. Or visit his best friend again. It’ll be like a death.”
“Let’s just hope the psychology books are right and that kids are resilient.”
“Maybe they are to things that can’t be helped. I’m not so sure about disillusionment. Not when we could have chosen differently.”
9
Tony
He pulled down the shades to darken his room, kicked off his sneakers, and flung himself on his bed. He’d quit naps about a zillion years ago, but he’d had to get out of there. Not to sleep. Just to quiet the buzzing in his head.
The ceiling fan whirred overhead, its blades circling round and round. Staring at the twirling motion started to hurt his eyes. He threw his arm across his forehead.
It wasn’t fair. He should be on the beach with Bahir instead of stuck here.
He had to admit his parents’ story was kind of interesting, all those guns, bad guys, and a superhero marksman saving his mom.
Maybe that part was true, and maybe they’d made it up to give themselves a reason for lying. Lying was wrong, no matter how you cut it, and to your kid?
Come to think of it, when he was five, maybe six, he’d said he didn’t have any candy hidden under his covers. That had been a lie, because he’d been sucking on some lollipops his nonna had brought and put in the pantry for special occasions. Anyhow, his mom had known he was fibbing, and she and Dad had taken him into the living room to have a talk, how they said he was supposed to tell the truth. No matter what.
He’d brought out the candy he’d sneaked, and then he had to listen to them talk about sneaking and taking. They’d told him lying was something forbidden by God. Had they meant Allah? Maybe Allah hated lying, but the Jewish God—what did they call him? HaShem?—didn’t seem to care so much. Because they were Jews, and they lied.
But if they were Jews, he was, too.
His head started to pound, as if one of those little hammers like the one his dad used for hanging pictures was in there, pinging away at his skull.
Who was he supposed to believe?
A mom and dad who told him never to lie or a mom and dad who lied?
10
Meira
She carried a tray with a couple of slices of triple-cheese pizza into Tony’s room and set it on his desk. “Here you go. In case you change your mind and feel hungry.”
He lay curled toward the wall. She waited a moment to see if he’d give her a chance to say more or if he’d speak, but he remained silent, unmoving, and she retreated to the living room where she and David nibbled a little and sipped wine and pretended to read.
Crickets began a serenade. An owl hooted. Dogs barked somewhere across the lake.
It had begun to cool by the time they heard Tony pad down the hall to the bathroom. The toilet flushed, and water whooshed through the old pipes. He headed back to bed, and his light went off. They barely spoke as they switched off the living room lamps, carried their glasses to the kitchen sink, and retreated to their own room.
They shared a prayer, this one laced with pleas for peace, for HaShem to touch their son and bless him. A single peck to the lips, and David turned away. She fluffed her pillow under her head and stared into the dark.
She shut her eyes, barely moving as sleep hid from her. David tossed off the top sheet and soon pulled it back up. She knew each time he turned as she lay there, listening, hoping, praying. For hours.
What could they have done differently? What else could they have done twelve years ago? Or even five years or three years ago?
What about yesterday?
“What are you thinking?” David’s voice came from the darkness, husky with exhaustion.
“Nothing, everything.”
“Worrying?”
“How can I not? Were we wrong to have begun this thing?”
He sighed and sat up, propping pillows at his back. Then he tugged her up to his chest. “I don’t know.”
The moon had risen, and its glow illuminated them. Full moons meant the promise of something, but they tugged at her heart. There’d been a full moon at their beginning, hadn’t there? All those long years ago.
“It all started in Jerusalem, didn’t it? I mean, once I’d identified that man and we’d come here . . .”
He traced a finger across her bare shoulder and down the thin strap of her gown. “Do you remember when I proposed to you?”
She sat upright, a laugh choked out of her. “Are you trying to distract me?”
“Maybe. But I was lying here, going back over the years and the choices we made. I’m not sure I had a choice once I lifted you from the road that day and carried you to the car.”
“Really?”
“You caught me. And with all that followed, the door to love opened, and I walked right in.”
“The sun shone the day you proposed. I remember how bright it was.”
“It glittered off your hair. I was surprised by the color.”
She turned toward him. “You hadn’t noticed before?”
“I suppose I’d never seen it with sunlight hitting at that angle. You have red in it.”
“Well, yes.”
“I was petrified you’d say no. It was too soon.”
She sighed and settled back against his chest. “Much too soon.”
“But you said yes.”
“Well, you were very attractive. And your eyes, so blue. I thought the laugh lines at their corners must mean you enjoyed life.” She trailed her fingers up his chest to his neck, tracing the line of his jaw. “Besides, you promised me adventure.”
That surprised a guffaw from him. “But you didn’t want adventure. You wanted peace. And to stay home.”
“That’s true, but marrying you seemed like a good idea at the time.”
He lifted her off him and brought her up for a peck on her lips. “Your memory has been clouded. You thought it horrifying.”
Pulling herself free, she straddled his legs so she could peer at him. She could just make out his features. “Only in the abstract. Leaving home, not knowing you, traveling so far away, getting married, which meant forever in my book. Those frightened me.” Then she leaned close to his face. “But in the concrete, the immediate, there was this gorgeous man who made me feel things I’d never imagined, whose smile nearly knocked me over, and who seemed to have fallen for me.” She moved closer still. Her voice became a whisper. “Besides, he had great taste in rings.”
“You sold yourself for diamonds and sapphires?” he whisper
ed back.
“And a hard body.”
“And you knew that how?”
“Honey, you carried me. I was very close to those muscles.”
“You liked my body?”
“Even before I met it skin to skin.”
She braced her hands on his shoulders and closed the distance between their lips until hers brushed lightly against his. And then he cupped her face in his hands and deepened that kiss until they didn’t think or worry about anything else but bodies and touches and kisses and loving.
Drugged with pleasure, she ignored morning until David set a steaming mug on the bedside table and kissed her forehead. “I’m going for a run. He hasn’t come out of his room.”
“Thank you for the coffee.” She pulled the pillow over her head. She wasn’t ready to face the day, and running sounded like torture.
She finally climbed from bed and padded into the bathroom. As she brushed her teeth, she stared at the haggard face purporting to be hers.
It couldn’t be. Those were lines. That was a sag at her neck.
A shower didn’t help. It certainly didn’t erase lines or sags. She towel-dried her hair, pulled on shorts and a tee shirt, and took her cold coffee to the kitchen where she brewed another pot. While it dripped, she wandered to the lakeside window and stared out at the water.
Her son sat hunched at the end of the dock with his knees drawn up. At the sight of his wet hair, her heart did a somersault. He’d gone swimming. Alone.
He was never supposed to go in the water alone. None of them swam alone. The prospect of what could have happened terrified her.
What had they done?
She heard the slap of shoes on the steps as David climbed to the porch. She intercepted him, but all she could do was point.
He barely paused before turning and jogging back down the steps and toward the dock. Tony didn’t look up as his father approached. David lowered himself beside his son.
When the coffee pot had filled, she poured herself a cup, added cream and sugar, and set about making pancakes. She had a batch in the oven keeping warm when her men trooped inside.
She looked through the open doorway. David shook his head, so she kept her questions to herself. “Pancakes?”
With his hand on Tony’s shoulder, her husband smiled. “Lovely. Do I have time for a quick shower?”
“Tony? You ready for some?”
“In a sec.” He headed to his room, to change clothes, she assumed.
“Five minutes,” her husband called.
It killed her not to ask questions, to wait until they sat. David bowed his head and spoke a prayer, invoking Adonai’s help and blessings.
Tony sat, stone-faced, staring at his plate.
Her boy’s anger hurt. It felt like a knife slicing her open for a slow bleed-out.
“You don’t have to agree with our faith,” his father said, “but you do have to show respect and courtesy.”
“Why? Did you show it to me when you lied? And who is this God of yours if he lets you lie?”
“There’s a difference between lying and omitting facts,” David said. “We allowed you to believe certain things because your belief in them would protect you.”
“And you,” Tony said, pouting.
“And our mission.”
“Which was to lie.”
Meira set down her fork. “No. Our mission was to ferret out bits of information to help stop terrorists—like the one who killed all those people in Jerusalem that day. The one who tried to kill me.”
Tony didn’t respond, nor did his facial expression soften.
She turned to her husband. “I think we should tell him what happened in Virginia.”
“Virginia?” Tony asked. “What happened there?”
“You eat. Then we’ll tell you.”
After Tony had washed the breakfast dishes, Meira led the way back to the living room. She eased down onto one of the chairs and decided she ought to recover them. The place would need brightening once they’d finished baring their souls, something lighter on the cushions after they’d absorbed all the heaviness of confession and tears.
David sat and started the story. “When I married your mother, I had an engineering job in a place called Newport News, Virginia. By the time you came along, we’d bought a little house in a rural community across the peninsula. You were a baby, not quite a year, when this part of the story took place.”
“I lived in Virginia?” Tony sounded incredulous. “I was born there?”
“You were.”
“How come I never knew?”
“Because our life and our names changed after that. The story gets rather involved here, and I’ll let your mother begin.”
11
Meira
1983
Meira’s dried-up creative juices were sucking the soul out of her. She adored her husband and her sweet baby boy whose blue eyes were so like his father’s. She loved their quaint cottage next to the river with its garden, its view, and her art studio. The space was perfect. Or at least it was when her eyes and her hands coordinated with her mind to fill an empty canvas.
While her son napped in the next room, she sat in the spare bedroom, staring again at the easel and a blank canvas. Charcoal pencils lay on the table next to her with an unopened drawing tablet on the floor nearby.
She lined up her brushes and set her pencils carefully back in their case. She knew David was worried about work. His commute to the shipyard took less than half an hour, but his work hours had been extended after a group in Texas bought the yard and started reorganizing. His immediate superior had even brought in a nephew who coveted David’s job, and her normally placid husband feared his position would hit the chopping block of that nephew’s ambition.
Did worrying about David explain her own inability to create?
No. She’d always created. Always, even during her military service. Her sketches from those years had turned into watercolors once she returned home.
And now? Nothing. Her muse had dried up until it seemed prune-like: wrinkled, unpalatable.
David said it was fatigue from taking care of the baby, but Tony was an easy child. His early bouts with colic had ended at around six months. He ate well. And he could pull himself up and walk holding on to the furniture. He was only days away from independent steps. Yes, he was teething, but that wasn’t a new experience.
A ringing phone took her to the kitchen. She lifted the receiver to hear David’s voice. “Hey, babe. Tony napping? You busy?”
“Well . . .”
“Still having trouble?”
“Mmm.” She wished he wouldn’t ask, but perversely would probably resent it if he didn’t.
“Can you handle company tonight for dinner?” He sounded apologetic, as if she’d mind a grown-up distraction. If he only knew how welcome that sounded.
“Of course. Who?”
“It’s the strangest thing. I just got off the phone with a cousin of mine, a man I don’t even know, except by reputation.”
“Reputation?”
“He’s my mother’s cousin. I’ve heard his name mentioned by my Uncle Avram.” He cleared his throat.
“And?”
“And he works in intelligence.”
“Oh.” With effort, she kept her tone light. “Is he here on pleasure or for work?”
“He said he’ll tell us tonight.”
No one said things like that if they brought good news. She tried to sound positive and to make herself feel it. “Can you pick up fresh fish? Maybe grill them?”
“Sure. Anything else?”
“I can manage the rest.”
“You’ll be busy with the baby. Why don’t I stop at the deli here in town and grab a few things to go with fish?”
“Oh, David, that would be great. I have salad fixings, but if you do the rest, I’d be grateful. And now your heir is stirring.”
She had time to put herself and Tony together and straighten the living areas. They
could serve a Pinot Grigio. Or should it be beer? David would like wine, and they had a lovely bottle he’d brought home last week. She had no idea what his cousin drank.
This would be good, her husband having family come. When a small-plane crash had robbed him of his parents, it had been months before he’d stopped staring blankly at walls or out windows.
He’d taken time off to deal with their estate and sell their Florida condo. She may not have known the senior Rassadims for long, but she’d known them well enough to mourn with David and to grieve for the hole this loss left in their life, a hole her own family could only fill on occasion, thanks to the miles that separated them.
Distance. She hated it. She missed community, which they hadn’t yet found here in Virginia. The people were friendly enough, but they had their own circle of friends with whom they shared history and interests. Most were churchgoers who attended either the Methodist church in town or the Episcopal one a little farther out in the country. The closest synagogue was about forty minutes away in Newport News, and the distance didn’t help with friend making.
Perhaps it hadn’t been such a great idea to buy in a rural area, but she hadn’t known any better, and neither had David. How could she have, when all she’d known had been a nation filled with family, with those who understood her past if not always her present? Sometimes when she visited a local shop, conversation stopped as if people here didn’t know what to do with this stranger from Israel, this Jewish artist trying to find her way among the wives of fisherman and farmers. She missed, with an almost inconsolable ache, having Ima around. Ima adored her grandson, and Meira needed her mother’s reassurance that she could manage this rearing-a-child thing. That’s what mothers did for their daughters, wasn’t it?
Maybe that’s why she couldn’t create. Insecurity. Worry. Loneliness.
Tony nuzzled her when she lifted him from the crib. The sweet scent of his hair made her heart constrict. Before this baby, she’d never known what mother-love meant, that soul-wrenching, all-enveloping love that could bring tears to her eyes just from looking at him.
From Fire Into Fire Page 6