A Remarkable Kindness

by Diana Bletter

  Emily beamed at him. She didn’t want to admit how many times he stopped to talk to her on his way in and out of the hotel where he worked as Yoram’s assistant manager. Ali was a little taller and a little older than Emily; he was so bold, spry, and full of energy that she joked he must have an Eveready battery inside him. He understood her humor and liked to laugh—his deep-set black eyes glistening like a lake lit up by moonlight—and he waited for her to laugh when he said something funny in return. In the weeks since she had been back at work, he’d brought her lilies in a vase to keep on the desk (he remembered her telling him she liked their aroma) and white chocolate (“You’re the only one I know over the age of ten who likes white chocolate.”), and he phoned her on her days off to find out how she was getting along.

  “Follow me for Heineken and Maccabee,” she heard Ali say, watching as some of the guests trailed behind him as if he were the Pied Piper.

  Emily passed out registration forms, swiped credit cards, and distributed room keys. The guests dispersed one by one, and just when she thought it was safe and the lobby was finally under control, in walked Danielle Cohen, Tal and Shoval’s babysitter, wheeling the twins in their carriage. Tal was in Spider-Man pajamas, Shoval dressed like Superman: they were wide awake and ready for action.

  “Hi, Danielle.” Emily glanced at her watch. “Isn’t it kind of late for these guys?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Danielle, wearing Naot sandals and baggy cargo shorts. “They wouldn’t stop crying and I couldn’t get them to sleep and I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Emily stepped out from behind the desk, picked up Tal in one arm and Shoval in the other, and balanced them on her hips. “That’s okay,” Emily told her. “Boys, Danielle is going to take you home and get you to sleep.”

  “Noooo!” Tal shouted, as if Emily had just announced that Danielle was taking them to the guillotine. Shoval looked at Tal and opened his mouth, too. Emily silently counted three . . . two . . . one . . . and then watched as Shoval also burst into tears. The boys clamped their legs around her, holding on tight.

  “Okay, you can stay for ten minutes and then you’ll go.”

  “Thank you.” Danielle’s sigh of relief was quite audible. She plopped herself down on the brown leather couch by the large picture window, placed the boys next to her, and took out a Hebrew version of Where the Wild Things Are from the diaper bag. Emily returned to the reception desk and worked, listening to Danielle read the book, and as soon as she reached the last page, the boys started whining again.

  Emily sat down with them on the couch. “Boys, it’s time to go home. I’ll call Boaz and he’ll come pick you up.”

  “Boaz went to check something in the groves,” Danielle informed her.

  Emily nodded, not surprised. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help out with the boys—he just saw the twins as her responsibility, the way the groves and the cows were his. Emily looked out the window. A spotlight shone on the flower beds, illuminating hundreds of insects zipping through the restless, humid night. She turned back to her sons’ matching, tear-streaked faces, wondering what to do next.

  All at once, Ali reappeared, making her feel immediately relieved. How was it possible that he showed up whenever she needed him? He strode toward her in a pastel-blue polo shirt, dark jeans, and sneakers, his eyes beaming like strong headlights on a dark road. “What’s the matter?”

  “Who knows? Danielle brought them here because they wouldn’t stop crying, and now they don’t want to go home.”

  “Shoval and Tal!” Ali knelt next to the couch. “Did you know I’ve known you both since you were babies? You’re big guys now. Crying isn’t for big guys like you. How would you like a ride in my car?”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Emily said.

  “We’ll go for a ride and then I’ll drop them off at your house.”

  “That’s nice of you, but I’ll think of something.”

  “My car’s right out front.”

  “Do you have car seats?”

  That made Ali laugh. “Your house is less than five minutes from here. I promise I’ll drive very slowly, and I’ll be sure to make a complete stop at the one stop sign from here to there.”

  Emily blushed, embarrassed by her overcautiousness and the way he could get her to laugh at herself. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Outside, Ali folded up the boys’ stroller, put it in the trunk of his car, and got into the driver’s seat. Danielle climbed into the back and held out her arms, and Emily passed the boys to Danielle, or tried to, at any rate, because they clung to Emily, unwilling to be dislodged.

  “Well, that was a good plan. I guess they’ll have to stay with me in the hotel a while longer.”

  “Why don’t you get in with them and I’ll drive you all around until they calm down,” Ali suggested.

  “I can’t leave the reception desk.”

  “What’s going to happen if you leave for a few minutes?” An amused expression crossed Ali’s face again. “And if anyone is looking for you, you can say you went outside to check something.”

  “It’s good that Yoram likes you, because when he fires me, you can talk him out of it.” Emily climbed into the backseat, nestling the boys in her arms.

  They drove down the curved village lane. “Shhh,” Emily whispered to Shoval and Tal as they drove past the silent cemetery. “Shhh . . .”

  They passed Jacob Troyerman’s kennel. “Shhh . . .”

  The road hugged the shore and the sea rocked back and forth, singing its own lullaby. Emily felt the boys’ bodies slacken against her, and by the time Ali looped the car around the hotel and arrived at her house, they were fast asleep.

  Emily took Tal and Danielle carried Shoval, and they made their way through the darkened house, following a trail of building blocks, cars, and trucks. They laid the boys in their cribs, closed the door partway, and tiptoed out.

  “Danielle, help yourself to Gila’s amazing cookies,” Emily said in the kitchen. As a babysitter for the Wallenstein kids in Charleston, Emily had loved the way Mrs. W. always encouraged her to take whatever she wanted from the snack drawers. “When Boaz comes back”—she took a cookie, hesitated, then put it back—“you can go right home. Good night, and thanks again.”

  Emily then hurried toward the front door, hoping to return to the hotel before she was needed, but when she reached the living room, she stopped suddenly. The room looked like a scene. A still life. It was strange, Emily thought, it was her life. The reading lamp near Boaz’s armchair (he never used the overhead ceiling light because it grated on him to pay the Israel Electric Corporation to keep a room bright), the messy table in the corner where Emily and the boys played with Play-Doh and finger paints, the stereo system with its spidery wires hanging down that Boaz had been meaning to fix. She gazed at it all, not feeling a part of it, and then she stepped outside, surprised to find Ali’s car, the engine on.

  “Why did you wait? I could have walked.”

  “Maybe, but I wanted to drive you.”

  “That was nice of you.” Emily climbed in, buckling on her seat belt though they were less than five minutes away. “Your English always surprises me.”

  “I didn’t have time to learn a Massachusetts accent. I wanted to stay there, but Jasmine wanted to come back.”

  Emily nodded, remembering Lauren’s story about Jasmine and Ali’s breakup at Em-Hassan’s house. Emily looked at Ali’s face, half-illuminated by the streetlamps. “I like your hair pulled back to the side like that,” Ali said.

  “Thank you.” Emily was surprised by his remark; Boaz hadn’t even noticed.

  Then Ali’s cell phone rang and he glanced at the number and rolled his eyes before answering. “Yes, Yoram, the travel agent would know which airport is closest to Mt. Kilimanjaro . . . No, you don’t have to call Hussein, I took care of the pool chemicals . . . Yes, I already told Svetlana to make extra goulash.”

  When Ali hung up, he shot Emily a smile that triggered s
omething inside her.

  She smiled back.

  But no and no, she told herself firmly. She was married to Boaz and she should not be flirting with Ali. Then she thought of the muted shapes and shadows of her living room. Was her whole life going to be one long diet in which she constantly denied herself the smallest of pleasures? And what was wrong with enjoying another man’s compliments? Did she always have to deprive herself?

  Ali parked in front of the hotel.

  “Thanks a lot.” Emily opened the door.

  “Isn’t your shift supposed to be over soon?” Ali asked, walking next to her through the deserted lobby.

  “At ten o’clock.” Emily stepped behind the reception desk. “I’m waiting for one last couple.” She ran her finger down the reservation list. “Mr. and Mrs. Berdichevsky.”

  “And where are Mr. and Mrs. Berdichevsky?”

  “They called to say they’d be late. Unfortunately, they had a flat tire.”

  “Poor them.”

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  “I’m making fun of the way you take your job so seriously. That can’t be why you came here, to work and work and have no fun. Why did you even move here?”

  Emily paused. She and Ali talked a lot, but most of their conversations revolved around the hotel, the staff, or the guests. Never anything personal. She didn’t want to tell Ali about Rob. She didn’t want to reveal the lingering shame of being dumped for another woman. She didn’t want to tell him about the Nazis or how her father, after fleeing for his life, used to say, “Now that we have Israel, what Hitler did, he can’t do again . . .”

  “Y’all picked a lousy neighborhood.” That was Emily’s mother, who said the same thing almost every other phone conversation. “You know Moses stuttered, ‘Ca . . . Ca . . . Ca . . .’ He didn’t mean Canaan, he meant Canada! Anything would be better than where y’all are.”

  “Well,” Emily told Ali, “Lauren moved here after she married David, and I wanted to try something new so I decided to come.”

  “Just like that?” Now he was studying her, his eyes trawling across her face.

  Emily swallowed hard. “Kind of.”

  “And you like it?”

  The way he asked her that, in this new, intimate way, made Emily’s face go red. As red as the raspberry-colored cardigan she was wearing. She fiddled with the bottom button, not knowing where else to look.

  “Because I’d pack up and move tomorrow.”

  The thought of his moving away filled her with a sudden gloom. When had seeing him become the highlight of her day? “Where would you go?”

  “Right back to Somerville,” he replied. “My cousin has a hummus place there, and he said he’d help me open another one. I wouldn’t stay here if I had the choice.”

  “It is a very complicated place.”

  “Too complicated.”

  The hotel door opened. A round-bellied man with gray strands combed sideways over his bald scalp walked in, followed by a woman who, Emily thought, seemed to have poured herself into a gold lamé blouse, matching pants, and stiletto heels.

  “For this much trouble, we could have gone to Italy,” the woman muttered to nobody in particular as she reached the desk, extracting lipstick beads from the corners of her mouth.

  “I told her that Italy is nice, but so is the Galilee,” the man said. “But then with that flat tire in the middle of the night—”

  “It’s hardly the middle of the—” the woman argued.

  “You must be Mr. and Mrs. Berdichevsky,” Emily interrupted.

  “A lucky guess,” the man huffed.

  “How can he even compare the Galilee to Italy?” the woman asked. “I grew up in Israel, but most people think I’m European. I’m surprised this hotel is even booked at all. At least in Italy, you have the mountains, the lakes, the food, the wines—”

  “Welcome to the Garden of Eden Hotel, Mr. and Mrs. Berdichevsky.” Ali affected a dramatic flourish. “There will be a continental breakfast served between eight and ten. You’ll enjoy the pool and the beach, and you can also take a hike in the hills.” Emily thought they looked like the last couple to hang out with Mother Nature. Smiling, she turned around and reached for the last room key hanging from a hook in the wooden cubicle.

  “Well, anyway,” Mr. Berdichevsky said, “now that the exchange rate is so bad, who wants to get ripped off in Lake Como?”

  “Exactly.” Emily handed him the key, explaining how to get to the room.

  “I’ll get our suitcases,” Mr. Berdichevsky said.

  “No, you won’t.” His wife glanced at Ali. “There’s a porter right here.”

  Ali shot her a heated look. “I’ve sent my entire staff home for the night, but since your husband needs help, I’ll make an exception.”

  They left the lobby. Emily stood there, waiting impatiently for Ali to return so she could apologize to him.

  “Why should you be sorry?” he asked when she did, joining her at the desk.

  “That woman was so insulting.”

  “I won’t waste my time thinking about someone like her. I prefer to think about someone like you.”

  His words hung in the air. Closing the computer, locking the office door, straightening out the desk: Emily did everything she could think of to avoid his eyes. Then she paced back across the lobby, aware of her high-heeled espadrille sandals padding against the floor, aware of Ali’s steps, in rhythm with her own. He opened the door and Emily walked into the cloud of light that drifted off the bronze lanterns mounted on the walls, and then down the stairs.

  “Do you have to go home right away?” he asked.

  It was so warm that Emily felt the night melting into her skin. Her skin melting into the night. “I guess I have a few minutes.” Then a memory came to her. It was during a rare disagreement with Lauren, right after Emily had said she was marrying Boaz. Lauren had told her, “You can’t just do the first thing that pops into your head.”

  But what would be so terrible if Emily did something spur-of-the-moment for five minutes? She only wanted three hundred seconds for herself. Three hundred seconds to be with Ali, her newfound friend. And why not? Throw away the idea that life consists only of duty, dishes, and diapers, she thought defiantly, and walked with Ali in the opposite direction of her house. An almost full moon shone brightly above them. Emily thought of another thing Lauren had once said: Humans are made of the same substances as the stars and the planets. Emily wondered, didn’t the moon also need some time alone in the middle of the swirling cosmos?

  They reached the banyan tree at the end of the lawn. “I sometimes walk by this tree during the day and there are so many birds hidden inside it that it sounds like the tree itself is singing,” Emily said.

  “It’s my favorite tree in the world. A long time ago, I wrote my name on it. Here, let me show you.”

  Emily knew she should turn back, but Ali took her hand and guided her under the leaves. Why did it feel so natural to have her fingers grasped in his, almost like finding a glove that fit absolutely perfectly on your hand? He flicked a cigarette lighter, a flame splashed, and Emily could see the graffiti carved into the trunk.

  “That was you,” she whispered.

  “I wrote it the first summer I worked here with David in the fields. We were sixteen and he dared me to do it. Here’s his name in all three languages, too.”

  “This is like a clue at the beginning of a mystery novel.” Emily stared at David and Ali’s names. “I saw this when I first started working here, but I forgot all about it.”

  “You had other things to think about.”

  “That’s why I’m never good at guessing what will happen in mysteries.” Emily thought first about Rob, and then about Boaz, and then about how she was standing there with Ali enfolded in all that plush, sheltering green. I really should donate my brain for scientific research, Emily said to herself. She traced the version of Ali’s name in Arabic: a line as coiled as a trail going uphill, and then circling
back with two small dashes underneath, like footprints.

  “Now that I’m pretty good at Hebrew, teach me some words in Arabic.”

  “Fesh mitlik.” His voice was quiet.

  “What does that mean?” She swallowed nervously.

  “There’s no one like you. And I know you and I are more alike than you think.”

  “This is crazy.” Emily let go of his hand and turned to go. She was afraid of how terribly wrong she felt. She was afraid of how terribly right she felt, basking in Ali’s attention like a sunflower tilting its face up toward the sun. “I really have to go.”

  “You don’t have to do everything alone,” he said. “Why do you think I waited for you at your house? Why do I stop to talk to you every day? Why do I always try to help you?”

  Emily laced her fingers together—here’s the steeple and mosques don’t have them, either—her heart hammering.

  Ali stood so close she could smell his lemony aftershave. She could see the ridge of his tapered jaw, his gleaming eyes. He kissed her on the lips.

  “I must be crazy,” she whispered.

  “No, you’re perfect.”

  And then she was stumped and speechless. She didn’t know which was worse: her old life, where she was filled with secret loneliness, or this new one, where she was flooded with secret joy. It reminded Emily of a line her father used to read from the Bible: “I have set before thee life and death, a blessing and a curse . . .”

  Emily thought of Boaz, who needed her love, and Ali, who did not. She knew she shouldn’t do the first thing that popped into her head, even if it seemed to be according to God’s plan. But would God plan for her to kiss an Arab guy hidden in the banyan leaves while her Jewish husband waited at home?

  Emily knew she had to do the second thing, which was to get her legs to walk away, and she pivoted and did just that.

  “Emily, all I want is to be with you,” Ali called after her. “Is there anything wrong with that?”

  15

  September 09, 2005

  Aviva

  It was after dawn and Aviva had just finished a swim in the clear cobalt-blue sea. She walked along the beach, listening to music blasting from Shuky’s Snack and Surf Shop. It was Dave Matthews singing “Crash,” and the song stung her eyes. She pushed herself along, focusing on the terrace by Shuky’s shop with its tables and chairs and palm fronds hung up to make a leafy roof. In the front of the shop were surfboards stacked upright, lined one after the other like library books. Aviva imagined Benny walking along the shore, his surfboard tucked under his arm, a trail of his footprints leading out from the water.