“You can end something to begin something better.” Then Ali’s phone rang.
“I can’t just—” Emily began but Ali said, “Hello, Yoram,” and comically rolled his eyes. Emily listened to the conversation for a while, then dozed off. When she awoke, darkness was sweeping into the room like floodwater. All she could see was a stroke of light under the bathroom door.
“Ali?” Emily propped herself up on her elbow. “Are you in there?”
No answer.
Shit.
Oh, shit. Emily picked up her cell phone—ignoring the two missed calls from Boaz—and phoned Ali. “Where are you?”
“Back at the hotel, unfortunately.”
“How could you have left me?”
“Yoram did a Yoram. One of the stoves wasn’t working and there’s a huge wedding and he said nobody else could fix it. I told you I had to go, don’t you remember?”
“No!” Emily’s heart went cold. “I fell asleep and I didn’t think I’d wake up in a hotel room by myself. It’s like a horror movie where a woman is alone in all this fog—”
“Emily, I’m sorry. Don’t you have to leave now, anyway?”
“Do you think I’d stay here alone?” Emily yanked the sheet off the bed and wrapped it around herself.
“I wouldn’t have left if I didn’t have to get back to work. I want to be with you—that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Please drive carefully and call me later so that I know you got home safely, okay?”
She was too angry to say anything.
“Emily—”
“Fine, I’ll call.” Emily hung up. She went into the bathroom, washed up, combed her hair, and pulled it back with two rhinestone barrettes. She put on the same pair of jeans and black sweater jacket, but she felt as if she were dressing in a Purim costume. The phone rang. It was Boaz, but Emily wasn’t ready to talk to him or hear his voice in her ear. She wasn’t ready to think of being with him. Wasn’t ready to think of being without him.
She grabbed her things, closed the door of the room, and drove slowly down the winding hills. At the edge of Peleg, the car wheels rolled over the seams of the straight road. She tried to see the chicken coops, the cowsheds and farmhouses, but they were all lost to the gloom. As she parked the car in their driveway, her phone rang again. Boaz, for the fourth time. But she was already out of the car, slamming the door and hurrying up the stone path. She stopped.
Boaz stood in the path holding a twin. Tal? Shoval? Emily squinted and in the faint light coming from the kitchen window, she caught sight of Shoval’s birthmark by his ear. His arm was in a cast.
“Shoval!” Emily jabbered. “Shoval, honey child!”
“Where were you?” Boaz’s eyes narrowed in on her.
“At the gynecologist’s.” She forced a weak smile. “Thank goodness, all is—”
“And your cell phone?”
“I was just parking the car so I didn’t pick it up.” Emily was aware of the quiver in her voice that she couldn’t quite master.
“You should know by now that in this country, you keep your cell phone on at all times and you answer it.”
“I left the boys their lunch,” Emily said. “Didn’t Danielle tell you? I put carrot sticks on their plates and made funny faces with red pepper slices for the mouths—”
“Here’s your mother you were crying for.” Boaz passed Shoval to Emily.
Emily held Shoval close. She couldn’t get her heart to stop thrashing. She kissed her son, thoroughly relieved that he was okay, thoroughly ashamed that she hadn’t even known what had happened to him. “Mah karah?” she asked Boaz.
“Tal pushed him at gan and Shoval kept saying his arm hurt, so Sara called me and I took him to the hospital,” Boaz replied, and before Emily could even respond, he walked into the house.
“Tal pushed me!” Shoval repeated.
“I’m very sorry, my brave boy.” Emily’s face still felt hot. She looked at the dense fog creeping in between the hedges, inching around the blurry outline of the boys’ swing set. She kissed his blondish-brown hair. “You smell like a puppy. Are you hungry?”
“Abba buy me falafel.”
“Sounds yummy.” Emily’s voice still sounded unnatural. “So then, it’s time for your bath.”
She carried Shoval into the house. She’d always liked its competing smells: soap and mud, eggs and toast, oranges and the occasional sharp tang of Boaz’s cigarettes. But the smells of the house seemed unfamiliar now, as if they belonged to someone else’s house. Emily passed the couch strewn with toys, Boaz’s solitary armchair with newspapers on the cushion, and the shelf lined with seashells she’d collected with Shoval and Tal on the beach.
In the bathroom, running water in the tub, Emily suddenly noticed the sea-foam-green tiles that Boaz’s ex-wife had chosen long ago. Why had they never irked Emily until now? She found a plastic bag for Shoval’s arm in the cabinet under the sink (another ugly shade of green) and gave him a quick bath, not thinking. Don’t think. She wrapped Shoval in a towel and carried him to his bedroom, helping him into his Superman pajamas. Tal was in the narrow bed that lay catty-corner to Shoval’s, sleeping upside down, his feet on his Spider-Man pillow. The boys were always restless, even in their sleep.
Emily tucked Shoval under the covers. “Now let’s say Shema.”
Shoval listened as Emily recited the nighttime Hebrew prayer that her parents always used to say with her before she went to sleep: You shall love your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. But now Emily wasn’t sure what it meant to love God with all her heart. Did she even have any room left in her heart? Was her soul indelibly stained after breaking one of the Ten Commandments? What did “all your might” mean? And to top it all off, she wondered, could God say the same prayer back to her?
“Be with me.” Shoval thumped his small fist against the mattress.
Emily knew she’d have to confront Boaz, who was somewhere in the house. She wanted to procrastinate so she settled next to Shoval on the bed. He looked at her, his amber eyes the same shade as her own. He didn’t blink; his gaze fixed on her as if he were a sailor navigating to a distant shore and she was the harbor, waiting for his boat to come in. Emily stayed still, not moving, watching him as he watched her. Inhaling, exhaling, speeding up her breaths to match his own. When he and Tal were born, she had felt so much joy. Fireworks in her heart. Then she remembered Boaz sitting next to her hospital bed, his head bent, his elbows on his knees.
Shoval kept his eyes opened on her, taking her in, and suddenly his eyelids closed, as if the lights in a room went off. Emily counted to ten in Hebrew this time, and when she got to eser, she eased herself off the bed and tiptoed around police cars, plastic animals, and puzzle pieces with fuzzy cardboard edges.
The lamp burned by the armchair. The living room was empty. Boaz was slouched at the table in the kitchen, reading the newspaper. A bottle of Maccabee beer next to him, a cigarette burning between his fingers, bright tangerine peels curled in spirals on a white plate. The refrigerator throbbed in time with Emily’s heart.
“Boaz,” she tried, “I’m sorry.”
Boaz squashed the cigarette into the tangerine peels and looked up. “She just got up and left me. You can do the same thing. Just pack up your bags and go.”
“I don’t want to.”
“What does he give you that I don’t?” Boaz’s eyes widened. Darkened.
“‘He’?”
“Don’t take me for a fool! You don’t think I know? If I could kill him now, I would. But I don’t want to sit in jail for him or for you or for anyone else. I sit in jail in my own head as it is.”
Emily wanted to apologize, but she certainly couldn’t admit what she’d done: that would only make things worse. “You’re never around, Boaz.” Her ragged voice cut the air. “You leave me with the boys and spend hours on the sea or in the groves. I try so hard to reach you, to get you to be with us, to want to be with us. We never spend time toge
ther as a family. You’re never here!”
“Thank God I was here today, after Sara tried to track you down at your doctor—”
“I thought she was just calling again about the Purim party—”
“You shouldn’t even try to get away with an insulting kind of lie like that.” Boaz was on his feet, coming toward her.
Emily wasn’t afraid that he’d hit her, but she stepped away from the kitchen and through the hall until her back was pressed against the wall.
“You have two choices.” Boaz stopped in front of her, his face flushed, indignant, injured. “Him or me.”
“When was the last time you even asked me how I am? When was the last time you did something with the boys and me? Just when, tell me when? When was the last time you—”
“Tell me what you’ve decided. Me or that bastard?”
“You’d give me up so easily?”
“Didn’t you?” Boaz swerved around and walked out the front door.
His words pierced her, lancing her with guilt and regret. Maybe if she only tried harder, she could pull him out of his sadness instead of just letting him vanish into his own lost world. “Oh God,” she cried, and rushed after him, but the fog had already swallowed him up. She ran down the path toward the eucalyptus trees, their leaves beaded with mist, and around the side of the house. Boaz was nowhere to be found. Finally, Emily caught sight of him cutting across the clearing where the milk truck idled each day.
“Why are you walking away from me?” She caught up with him by the entrance of the cowshed. “Don’t you care? Isn’t our marriage worth something to you?”
Boaz struck a match, cupping his hands around the flame, and lit a cigarette.
“Please,” Emily pleaded. “I want the Boaz I fell in love with to come back to me. The one who said he loved watching things grow.” She searched his eyes, forlorn and distant. She wanted so much to touch his unshaven face, the familiar, almost soft grizzle that covered his cheeks. How could she have almost given up her marriage and her family and her life for a few moments of passion with Ali? What was she thinking? That was it: she wasn’t thinking. Now she thought hard. “All these cows moo for you. They wait for you to milk them. They eat whatever you give them. You’ve planned everything. You get hay from the fields to give to the cows. You give the manure from the cows back to the fields. But what have you planned for me?”
Boaz blew out smoke. All around the fog rolled in, drenching the foliage in gray.
“Can’t you say something? Say something.”
“You knew it all when you married me.” Smoke drifted from Boaz’s mouth.
“But did you . . .” She paused. “Did you really love me?”
“Yes.” He took another drag on his cigarette. “I loved you.”
“And now?”
“And now it doesn’t matter.”
“It has to matter! I chose you because you were a soldier. I thought you’d fight for me.”
“You chose the wrong man.”
She pressed her hands against his massive chest but he did not move. “Why can’t you fight for me?”
“There’s nothing left to fight for.”
“Please don’t say that, Boaz! Please? I want to love you, but you’re not giving me a chance! I want us to be together. To be happy together.” And after she said those words, she knew it was what she did want. Maybe Ali had been the catalyst for a change in her relationship with Boaz. Of course, she had felt an intense connection with Ali, but whatever their relationship was, or might be, it was doomed before it even began. She’d guard the memory of being with him as if they’d gone to their own private tropical island. She was back on the mainland now. Back where she belonged. She shivered at the thought of losing Boaz, of losing everything she had right there. She listened for Boaz’s response. She gazed at him. Waited.
Boaz dropped his cigarette and stubbed it out under his boot. “It is what it is.” Then he fell quiet.
The billowing fog suddenly stopped. It held still. It hung all around them. Boaz’s silence stifled her. Stretched all around her—going on and on until the outer edges of the cosmos. How would she be able to continue to eke out this lonesome existence with Boaz until the very end?
Tears slipped down Emily’s cheeks. She stood there torn, guilty, and anguished, hating herself for deceiving Boaz, at a loss as to how to get him to give her what she needed. What he might be unable to give. She didn’t know what else to do with herself except stand there for the longest time, waiting, waiting, waiting, and when she couldn’t bear to wait anymore, she reluctantly turned and entered the cowshed.
Almost every day, she came here to visit the cows with Shoval and Tal. They’d watch the cows and make up funny names for them. They’d stick long pieces of straw through the metal rails to feed them. Sometimes, a cow would poke out its head, grab on to the edge of Emily’s shirt, and suck on the fabric, making the boys laugh.
“Wake up, cows,” Emily shouted. “Wake up!”
A metal tag on a cow’s ear jingled. The cowshed contained the smells of manure, hay, mud. In the darkness, Emily could not see the cows: not their faces, not their black eyes, not the numbers tattooed on their rumps. She walked through the shed until she reached the end. She turned around. Boaz was not coming toward her and not going away. His figure as substantial as the hills on the other side of the valley. His figure as transparent as a ghost, fading into the fog.
25
March 8, 2006
Rachel
Rachel sat with Esther in her living room on a cloudy afternoon. It was so quiet that Rachel could hear Esther’s wristwatch ticking on her thin wrist. On the coffee table were a bowl of pretzels and three glasses of lemonade, two half-empty, one untouched.
“I’m surprised Jacob didn’t pop in today.” Rachel munched on some pretzels. She wasn’t particularly hungry, but she knew her eating them pleased Esther. “He usually stops by for at least a few minutes when I’m here.”
Esther shrugged, her gaze shrinking. “When we first met after the war, he seemed better. But now he stays alone.”
“How did you meet?” It was a question Rachel had meant to ask for a long time.
“Well . . .” Esther hesitated. She pulled down the sleeves of her maroon blouse and rolled them up again. “My father and Jacob’s father met in a labor camp soon after the Nazis invaded Hungary. You know how it is, no matter where you are, even in a place like that, you speak about where you’re from, your family, and of course, your children. Jacob’s father told my father, ‘If we ever get out of here, I want my son to meet your daughter.’ My father forgot their talk, though, with everything else going on, and Jacob’s father didn’t survive the war. After it was all over, Jacob went back to his village, but everybody in his family had been killed. The Nazis used part of his house as a stable, and neighbors moved into the other part. Jacob left the village right away and came to Budapest, where he joined a group of my friends. We’d all had enough of Hungary and we were trying to get to Palestine. That’s how Jacob and I met.”
“That’s nice.” Rachel’s eyes brightened.
“But there’s more to the story.” Esther looked at Rachel questioningly, unsure whether to go on. “I took him home to meet my father. My father asked Jacob where he was from and what his last name was, and what his father’s name was. When Jacob told him, my father looked at him in utter amazement. He said, ‘Before your father was killed, he told me that after the war was over, he wanted you to meet my daughter. I thought he was just speaking nonsense. But here you are with my daughter, just as he had wished.”
Rachel felt goose bumps rise up and down her arms. “Maybe there is a force for good in the world,” she whispered. “Maybe even in the midst of evil.”
“Jacob doesn’t agree.”
“Do you think I can go visit him in the dog kennel?”
“He won’t let you in.”
“I can still try.” She stood and kissed Esther, aware of the powdery smell of he
r cheeks and the rose scent of her shampoo.
“Thank you for coming to help me.” Esther glanced at Rachel as though surprised that compassion still remained on earth. “It’s very nice of you.”
“I love helping you.” Rachel opened the door. “It’s my treat. I’ll see you next week.” She closed the door and started to walk. The clouds hung low, big gray lagoons full of promise. Maybe it would rain later, Rachel thought. In Israel she had come to love the rain.
“You don’t have to bark so much, Smoky!” That was Jacob’s voice from the kennel. “There, there now, Sputnik.”
“Jacob?” Rachel called softly when she reached the kennel gate. It was not as odd a name as Moshe, but it was just as Biblical. Through the gate Rachel could see Jacob at the far end of the cowshed, just standing there, listening, his elbows jutting out like branches of a tree.
“It’s me, Rachel.”
He jerked his torso around and came to the gate, fixing his gaze on her, the metal bars striking shadows over his face. His eyes cut through her. “Didn’t I tell you that I don’t like people coming here?”
“I’m sorry.” Rachel searched his eyes between the bars. “Just one time, please? I really want to see the dogs.” Her words hung in the air, the dogs yelping behind him.
“Why?”
Rachel hesitated. “I’ve never met anyone like you or Esther before.” The truth was all she could give him.
He stood still. Only his brown eyes flashed. Moments passed. Rachel kept her eyes steady, unblinking. The severity in Jacob’s face began to melt.
“You might as well come in now. First and last time.”
Unlocking the gate, he dragged it open, the bottom scraping over the dirt in an arc, the way Rachel used to make angel wings in the snow. A few steps inside, she took it all in: the plants and small trees, the ivy climbing up the fence, the barks of dogs, and the chirps of birds. It had an unexpected, peaceful loveliness.
“Here’s Pete, Sputnik, Happy, Scrappy, and Coco.” Jacob ticked off the name of each dog as they walked past its stall. He stopped at a stall where a German shepherd was yelping, its ears pointed, its black snout wet and quivering. “That’s Max.”
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