by Judith Frank
He looked fiercely out the window, deliberately blocking from his mind any thoughts of the future—of those kids living in his house, of himself as the guardian of two children. He thought about playing Uno with Gal, and what a sore loser she was, how she stormed out of the room when she lost and her father had to go speak with her. And almost from the time she learned to talk, if she was in the room, you couldn’t tell other adults about the cute thing she’d said or she’d pitch a fit.
She was scathing about American accents, and imitated with withering accuracy the way Matt said her name till he learned to make not just the ah sound in the middle, but also the l sound at the end, pronounced not with a thick American tongue lazing at the bottom of the mouth but with a sharper tongue tapping the middle of the upper palate. For all that, Matt adored her and couldn’t resist pushing the limits with her, making her giggle and howl in protest at the same time. He knew she adored him, too; she greeted him by rocketing into his arms, and he’d make loud strangling noises when she gripped him around the neck. Ilana and Joel had instilled in her a good sense of humor; they were the kind of parents for whom that was a value. Since she was tiny: Is this my nose?! they’d ask, pointing to their chin, eyes wide and incredulous. Naaahhh. He thought of the look she got on her face when she sensed something was a joke: a hilarious parody of slyness, eyes darting.
They were climbing now; the driver shifted into lower gear and the van paused and then surged. The sky had become both bluer and more cloudy; they drove in and out of the shadow of pine forest. “Look,” Daniel said, pointing, leaning toward the window till his face touched Matt’s. “Memorials. From the battle for Jerusalem in the ’48 war.” Matt began noticing the rusty remnants of trucks and tanks scattered among the rocks and pines at the side of the road. “See? There’s another one.” Matt nodded, impressed by the somber and rustic memorial. They continued to climb; he yawned to pop his ears. In the distance he began to discern, on a series of forested and terraced hills, clustered masses of white stone buildings bathed in late-afternoon light. The van turned and then rose again, and the populous outskirts of Jerusalem began to spread before them. It was called Jerusalem stone, Daniel had told him. Draped over the hills like necklaces made by a primitive hand, the neighborhoods conveyed a sense of inevitability, a rugged majesty. “Wow,” Matt breathed, stunned. “Is that occupied territory?”
Daniel raised his eyebrows and turned away. Matt’s stomach seized. He hadn’t intended the question to be controversial or insensitive. Hadn’t Daniel once told him that something like 75 percent of occupied territory was in the area of Jerusalem? His mind scrambled to remember what Daniel had said, and what he’d read, to reassure himself that it hadn’t been a stupid question. The van swerved one way and then the other, and a nauseous headache began to gather behind Matt’s eyes. They were engulfed by the noise of engines in low gear and the smell of gasoline fumes. They plunged into shadow as they rounded a curve, a towering stone wall on their right. They were rising to Jerusalem, the stench of death on their clothes and hair. His eyes smarted, and he felt profoundly alone, a pebble kicked along by a boot.
They wound around a road on the edge of a hill, then through the twisting narrow streets, all one-way, of Beit Ha-Kerem. Joel and Ilana’s apartment building was at the end of a cul-de-sac circled by apartment buildings. Cars were parked everywhere, and every which way; laundry hung from windows, whipped by the wind; when they got out, two cats sprang out of a Dumpster and raced away. The Rosens ran into the dark hallway and up the stairs, while Matt and Shoshi and the driver lugged out the suitcases. The driver held the elevator door open by propping a suitcase against it, and they dragged in the rest of the luggage till the elevator was full, Matt pinned in by suitcases.
He went up the slow, creaky elevator alone. When it stopped, he dragged all the luggage out, and straightened. He grabbed a suitcase and entered an apartment full of crying, huddled adults and a burnt coffee smell. Lydia and the woman he took to be Malka, Ilana’s mother, were hugging and rocking with high, keening cries. Daniel had Gal in his arms, her legs swung around his waist and gripping. His eyes were squeezed shut, his mouth pressed against Gal’s hair. Matt wondered if he should stand there until introduced; he waited awkwardly for a moment, and then began dragging in the rest of the suitcases. The apartment had tile floors throughout, and windows that slid open to the sun and wind and the dark flapping-crow sound of laundry on the lines. Its furnishings were the cheap hodgepodge of people whose main business is raising children; nothing on the walls but framed family photos, taped-up children’s drawings, and a few framed posters from museum exhibits of Impressionist painters. He figured out which was the master bedroom and dragged Lydia’s and Sam’s suitcases into it, then sat down on the bed. He thought about a novel he’d recently read that depicted an epidemic of blindness, in which only one woman could see. That would be him now, he thought, the one functioning person in a family blinded by grief.
The mattress sat on a low wood frame, and the bed was neatly made. From the little adjacent bathroom he could smell Joel’s scent, his aftershave. He ran his hand over a pillow, noticed several long brown hairs. Ilana’s. He closed his eyes, thinking about the skin sloughed off all over the bed and floor and windowsills, and the hair on the pillows and in the shower drain. Someday, someone—maybe even him—would clean this apartment, and in doing so they’d eradicate all the earthly remaining traces of Joel’s and Ilana’s bodies. He stood and opened the door of one of the closets that lined the front wall and thrust his head into Ilana’s blouses and skirts and blazers. When he emerged and shut the closet door, he saw a small figure standing in the doorway. Gal’s cheeks were a hectic red and she was sucking her thumb. She wore purple leggings and a purple-and-white-striped T-shirt; he remembered Joel saying that purple was apparently young girls’ color of choice when they outgrew pink and got snobbish about their previous lack of sophistication. He folded his long legs into a crouch. “Hey there, Boo,” he said. “Wanna come give me a hug?”
She came to him and allowed him to hug her, with an obedience that hurt his feelings a little; he picked her up and sat down on the bed with her on his lap. He tucked her hair behind her ear. She pushed him and reared away from him. “Ichsah,” she said in the universal guttural expression of disgust of Israeli children. “You smell bad.” Then she whispered, “Ema and Abba died.”
He thought: She’s seeing if it’s true in English, too. “Yes,” he said, squeezing her and kissing the top of her head so she wouldn’t see his tears. She wiggled loose and looked searchingly into his face, then put her two hands on his cheeks. Matt tried to return her gaze as honestly as he could. Her features were thinning and becoming more defined as she passed out of her babyhood and into childhood, and her brown eyes were weirdly fierce, as if she were trying to look into his soul. “Has anybody brushed your hair in a while?” he asked, raking his fingers lightly through the tangled mass. “Go get me a brush, and I’ll brush it.”
She hopped off his lap and went into her parents’ bathroom, and emerged with a hairbrush. She stood patiently between his knees with her back to him. He hastily tore Ilana’s hair out of the brush and looked at the little nest of hair in his palm, then stuffed it in his pocket.
Her hair was dark, and slightly shorter than shoulder-length. He removed the headband that held it off her face and brushed for a while, bringing out its gloss, thinking that this was as good a place to be as any. Gal was compliant; when he tugged too hard, she let out a quiet whimper that broke his heart because he knew what a shrieky little beast she could be. He wondered if he should be saying something to her, emphasizing how many adults loved her and reassuring her that she’d be taken care of, but he was frightened of saying something that would cause permanent damage. He could hear talking and crying from the other room, and then Lydia’s raised, angry voice and the sound of shushing and whispering because the baby was still asleep. Someone turned on the shower. He brushed for what seemed like a lon
g time, until static made the fine hairs crackle around the brush. Then he heard the quick clack of Lydia’s footsteps, and she burst in, her lips tight. “Honey,” she said to Gal, “go get something to eat, okay? Your savta will find you something.”
When Gal had gone, Lydia opened her suitcase, releasing a waft of her scent, and began rummaging through the neat piles of knit clothing. “Those religious fanatics are insisting Joel and Ilana be buried tonight,” she hissed at Matt. “The funeral is in two hours.”
“You’re kidding,” Matt said.
“No, I’m not,” she said, her face livid. “According to Jewish law you’re supposed to bury the bodies as soon as possible, and they’ve already held them so we could get here to identify Joel.”
“Wow,” Matt said.
He rose and went in search of Daniel, bumping into Ilana’s father in the narrow hallway. Yaakov looked at him, bewildered.
“Shalom,” Matt said.
“Shalom.”
“I’m Matt, I’m Daniel’s friend,” Matt said, and stuck out his hand, which Yaakov gripped. Yaakov had a strong, broad face, lined from years in the sun. He was wearing a white oxford shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his forearms. His belly strained over his belt. “I’m very sorry about Ilana,” Matt said. “I knew her, and she was a wonderful person.”
Yaakov nodded with moist, puzzled eyes.
Daniel was in the shower. Matt went up to the bathroom door and hovered there for a moment, then gently tried the handle. The door was unlocked, and after a quick look around, he stepped into the tiny, steamy room, and locked the door behind him. “Hey, baby, it’s me,” he said, unbuttoning the top two buttons under his open collar and peeling his shirt off over his head. “Can I come in?”
Daniel stuck his wet head out from behind the curtain. He was virtually blind without his glasses, but managed to cast a disapproving look in Matt’s general direction. “I don’t feel comfortable cavorting naked with you when my in-laws are out there,” he said.
Matt looked at him. “Cavorting? Honey, believe me, the last thing on my mind is a cavort.”
Daniel turned off the water and stepped out, and Matt handed him a towel.
“And I’m worried my parents won’t have enough hot water. The boiler’s on, but hot water isn’t unlimited here.”
Matt looked at his foul-smelling shirt. “I’m putting this back on,” he said.
Daniel looked nervously at the door and bit his lip.
“Shit,” Matt said. He threw the shirt angrily onto the pile of Daniel’s soiled clothes and slipped out the door, walking shirtless through the apartment to their room. There was food out on the kitchen table—sliced bread, cold cuts, hummus, olives—and an argument under way between Lydia and her in-laws about whether the baby should be taken to the funeral. It was conducted in English without the benefit of Daniel’s mediation, so it was occurring in its crudest form. Lydia was struggling to express the idea that when Noam grew up, he’d regret not being at his parents’ funeral. Sam was leaning against a counter, ripping out huge bites of a sandwich, his eyes darting anxiously back and forth, his Adam’s apple convulsing as he swallowed.
Matt went into their room, a tiny guest room/office off the kitchen with a sliding door that rumbled when rolled open and shut. He perched on the bed and folded his hands. Maybe he would never get to shower; maybe it was his destiny to reek of death from now on. He sat there for a while, hearing outside the door the noises of raised voices straining to remain polite, staring at his hands till they blurred, trying to recall himself to his life but unable to imagine the details of his friends and his work and the house he lived in. Where had he felt this before, his stomach yawning into an abyss of despair, feeling so implacably plunged into another’s dark reality? The closest he’d come was family holidays when he was a child, when he had to dress in a shirt and tie and be ostracized by his cousins because he was a big sissy. One Christmas when he was about ten, he had stolen his cousin Teddy’s brand-new toy soldiers, doused them with lighter fluid he found out in the garage, and set them on fire. “Napalm,” he explained with a steely look at his cousin as his mother gripped his arm and a big black, rancid fire smoked. Teddy cried “You freak!” and burst into tears, which Matt remembered to this day with satisfaction.
He heard Daniel come out of the bathroom and join the fray, speaking quickly in Hebrew, and then he heard the baby’s cry, and silence fell over the apartment.
BY THE TIME IT was his turn to shower, the water was cold. He stood shivering and swearing, turning off the water and furiously rubbing his head with shampoo till the suds ran down his wrists and arms, then rinsed, then soaped himself up again, all over. His nipples were as hard as pebbles, his dick shrunk back like a turtle’s head. He scrubbed himself so hard his arm muscles hurt. He got out and toweled off, pushing his dirty pants and underwear into the corner of the bathroom with his toe, and stopped dead when he realized he hadn’t brought any clean clothes in with him. He thought for a second, then thought, Fuck it, and wrapped the towel securely around his waist. He tiptoed quickly back to his room through the apartment, his toweled-off hair standing straight up and dripping down his neck—passing through the living room where Daniel, dressed in black pants and a white dress shirt, was nuzzling the baby, and his mother was crying. “Don’t mind me,” Matt waved, with a grimace. As he was closing the bedroom door behind him, he heard Yaakov ask, “Who is that?”
He picked through the open suitcase on the floor, found underwear and his white shirt, only slightly wrinkled. He was pulling on his pants when the bedroom door slid open gently, and Daniel eased in with the freshly diapered baby in his arms, baby clothes clamped under his armpit, and slid the door firmly closed again. “They want to know why you’re always half-naked,” he said. Matt ignored him and approached the baby. Noam had wispy brown hair, dark eyes in a moon face with multiple chins. “Hey, little baby,” Matt said softly, looking at his lover’s face and suddenly seeing the handsome dad, which made his heart hurt. “I’m Matt,” he told the baby. He took Noam’s hand and shook it gently, and the baby’s face broke into a smile so crooked and goofy, his little tongue sticking out between his teeth, that Matt laughed out loud.
Daniel laid Noam on the bed and began pulling pants over his fat legs, while Matt leaned over Noam’s face and nuzzled him, and Noam grabbed onto his hair. “Ouch,” he said, and extricated himself. He looked at the baby’s fuzzy tulip skin, the purple shadow of his nipples. “Almost a year, huh. Can he talk?” he asked Daniel.
Daniel straightened and stared at him, his eyes narrowed in thought. “Beats me,” he said, shrugging, and they both laughed. Matt pulled Daniel into his arms, and Daniel cried “Don’t!” and pulled away. “I can’t do this right now,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, baby.”
“Okay,” Matt said. Daniel turned back to Noam, removing his glasses and wiping his eyes with his forearm. As Matt finished dressing, Daniel pulled the waist of the pants over Noam’s diaper; he scrunched up the shirt to the collar and pulled it over the baby’s head, and stuffed his arms clumsily into the sleeves.
“There,” he said, and picked Noam up. “Are you ready?” His lips grazed the baby’s cheek.
“Why isn’t he crying?” Matt asked. His fingers grew still over the buttons of his shirt as a thought occurred to him. “How do babies mourn, anyway?”
“I have no idea,” Daniel said.
Matt considered. “You don’t think we’ll ruin them, do you?”
Daniel looked at him wearily. “I think somebody has already done that for us.”
THE FUNERAL WASN’T THE way Matt had feared it would be—not at all like the settler funerals he saw on television, armed and bearded civilians roaring with bombastic song. But dignitaries had arrived in long Mercedeses, and they and their bodyguards stood, their hands clasped before them, at the front of the crowd clustered under the strong lights set up to illuminate the cemetery. There were photographers, too: Matt couldn’t see them, but he heard t
he clicking of camera shutters. The mourners were gathered on an outcrop of rock on a mountainside, huddled in overcoats, hundreds of people crowded around them. The wind was strong and noisy, and the sound of weeping reached up and was taken by it, bobbing on the wind. Gal stood behind her Grampa Sam, wrapped around his leg, while Daniel held the baby, who was crying, joggling him and cupping his head. Headstones stretched out far ahead of them, and Matt could see that there were graves set into the rock wall as well. He had a sudden memory: Ilana at their house in Northampton, packing to go back home, sighing, calling Israel “that sad piece of rock.” Ilana hated Jerusalem, the city in which she’d grown up; she hated the religious people, the city’s fraught status as a symbol for three religions. She was a teacher, and her work took her close to abused and neglected and hungry children. She had named her daughter Gal, which meant “wave,” to evoke her beloved Tel Aviv, which was on the ocean.
They had been taken to the cemetery in the van, and herded first into a large, crowded hall. When they entered, a hush fell over the crowd. Matt walked self-consciously behind the others to the front. He towered above most of the people there, and Daniel had taken a large yarmulke from a box at the door and pinned it to Matt’s hair, so he felt like a big beanpole in Jewish drag. The family held their heads high—asserting, he imagined, that they had dignity even though their destinies had turned them into every other person in the room’s worst nightmare, to be pitied and avoided, or maybe fetishized in some creepy way, from this point on. They reached the front and sat in seats that had been reserved for them. It was so clear, he thought, who were to be honored and supported here; he had a sudden and unexpected flash of sympathy for Kendrick’s loudmouthed partnering of Jay: he was trying to make himself count. Before them, the bodies were laid out, wrapped in white sheets draped with cloths with fringes and Stars of David on them.