A Remarkable Kindness

by Diana Bletter

  “Don’t be so blue, big fella,” Rachel said.

  “You can look at a dog and understand its owner. That dog’s owner is a psychiatrist.”

  “I guess Max still needs a lot of therapy,” Rachel joked, and when Jacob let out a short chuckle, she realized it was the first time she had heard him laugh.

  “When we had our chicken coops, we used to keep baby chicks in here.” Jacob stood by a large wire cupboard. “Now I use it to store my things.” There were medicines, flea collars, rubber toys, woolen blankets. On a shelf was a pot as big as the one Rachel had cleaned in the hotel kitchen.

  “You cook out here?”

  “I make the dogs rice. They mostly get dried dog food, but I add some rice and yogurt on top. You know, a little schmaltz.”

  “But you said you don’t like schmaltz.”

  “The dogs are away from home. I want them to be content.” He glanced at Rachel as if he had inadvertently unlatched a door that he didn’t want opened. Then he moved quickly down the next row of stalls until he slowed in front of a basset hound with somber eyes, its ears sweeping the ground.

  “That’s Freddie.”

  “Hi, Freddie!” Rachel then noticed a cot carefully made up with a woolen blanket and a thin pillow in a white pillowcase, like the kind they’d wheel into a hotel room for an extra child. “This is where you . . .” She stopped. “Do you talk to the dogs at night?”

  “If they bark.”

  “What do you tell them?”

  “I say, ‘Shhh, be quiet, good night.’” And then Jacob did an about-face and headed back to the gate, holding it open for her.

  “Thank you.” Rachel looked at Jacob’s distraught and weather-beaten face, trying to think of something else to say but coming up short.

  Jacob stepped out after her. “Now that you’re here, I’ll take you for a walk through our avocado groves.”

  “We can go another time, if you want.”

  “No. We’ll do it now.”

  They walked away from the kennel, following a lane into the groves. Walking between the trees, Jacob jutted out his chin and chest. The barking of the dogs faded. They reached a fence where the groves ended.

  “You see this?” Jacob patted the bark of a slender tree. “It’s a carob tree.”

  “It’s nice.” Rachel thought the tree plain, gnarled. Its leaves were pale and dusty, and a lone pod swayed from a low branch. Rachel had a disconcerting memory of the song “Strange Fruit,” about black men who were lynched and hung from trees, swinging in the Southern breeze.

  Jacob thrust out his chin. “I planted this carob tree. Zeh hu zeh. That’s it.” Then he pivoted, walked away.

  Rachel stared at the tree for a moment and then turned, walking briskly to catch up. “Thank you for walking with me—”

  “You’ll always know where to find me.” He did not look at her. “In the shade of that tree at the end of the road.”

  RACHEL TOOK THE next two days off work. She didn’t want to go to the gan and pretend to be happy with the kids when all she could think about was Jacob and his desolate sadness. She lay in bed doodling in her notebook. Rolled onto her back and looked up at the blank sky. The clouds had moved on. It hadn’t rained after all.

  On Friday afternoon, there was a knock on her bedroom door. She didn’t feel like talking and turned to the wall, shutting her eyes.

  “Rachel? Can I come in?”

  “Yes.” Rachel didn’t turn around. She kept her eyes closed, her other senses sharpening. She could see Yoni take three long strides into the room, stop by her bed, open his mouth. Hesitate. He looked down at her, worry clouding his green eyes. “My mom told me you haven’t been to work.”

  “I was feeling down.”

  “About . . . ?”

  “Jacob.” She paused. “And I guess . . . well, about not getting to see you.”

  “I tried to call.”

  “I kept my phone off.” And then she rolled over to look at him. “Hey, you.” She patted the side of the bed.

  “Hey, Rachel.” Yoni sat down.

  “Thank God, you’re dressed as a civilian.”

  “A Yankees shirt is still a uniform.”

  “Your nose is all burned.”

  “I’ve been working on my tan.” He smiled. “Even sick, you look pretty.”

  “With this zit?” Rachel picked at the pimple on her chin.

  “Don’t pick.” He brushed her hand away.

  “Why do you care?”

  He blinked, embarrassed. “Because I’ve never felt anything like this before. I’m thinking about you all the time.” He hesitated. “I like you. I like you a lot. Maybe even I love you.”

  Then he leaned forward and kissed her, his eyes wide open. In them, Rachel could see a meadow, an entire field of four-leaf clovers.

  “Well, I love you, too,” and Rachel let out a breath that she felt she had been holding inside for way too long.

  26

  In the Burial Circle

  Emily

  On the seventh of the month of Adar, according to tradition, God buried Moses.

  Ever since then, the date has become known as the special day for communities around the world to honor their burial circles.

  In Peleg, Rabbi Lapid invited the members of the men’s and women’s hevra kadisha to the synagogue for a modest celebration. It was a mild evening in the middle of March, and the rabbi—not one for long speeches—stood and spoke briefly.

  “It’s no small task, what you do,” he told the dozen or so people sitting around a few tables. “Being a member of a burial circle has always been considered a great honor. The privilege was sometimes passed from father to son, from one generation to the next. What you do is an act of mercy, and everyone appreciates your dedication. Thank you.”

  Emily sat with Aviva, Lauren, Leah, and Gila. Rachel had gone to see a movie with Yoni on home leave from the army, which was just as well, Emily thought. They drank tea, ate pastries, and spoke about the weather and their families, and then moved on to the evening’s subject: taking care of the dead. Emily, Aviva, Lauren, Leah, and Gila all agreed that the dead gave off an aura, a presence.

  Some of the dead appeared tense, as if they had fought death until the very last moment and only reluctantly surrendered. Others appeared calm. They had made peace with their fate. They had accepted the inevitable fact that they had arrived at life’s exit. The final destination.

  They were prepared for their next journey.

  They were the same in death as in life.

  They would always be what they once were.

  27

  April 2, 2006

  Lauren

  Lauren drove with Emily in her car to Akko on a Sunday morning. It was warm and clear, and puffy white clouds drifted aimlessly in the sky.

  “Boaz tells the boys that’s the dragon tree.” Emily pointed to a eucalyptus tree standing alone in the middle of the fields.

  “That’s funny,” Lauren said. “My girls call it the dinosaur tree.” From her side of the car, Lauren could see the tree’s upper branches, bent like the arms of a dragon—or a dinosaur. She looked at the road and glanced at Boaz’s groves, a field of ruffling green wheat, and then a field of fallow land. On the radio, Cher was singing “Walking in Memphis,” and when Lauren couldn’t hold herself back anymore, she blurted out, “Emily, what is going on?”

  Lauren waited. Emily drew in her breath. “You complain I don’t talk, but look at you,” Lauren said. “When I came by to say hello to you at the hotel you were with him and—”

  “With who?”

  “Oh come on, you know who. Just the way you were giving him your big gummy smile, I had this feeling— I knew— I’m your best friend! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t know how to tell you.” Emily turned to Lauren with a pained look on her face.

  “Do you love Ali?”

  “Don’t make it sound so schlocky and melodramatic!”

  “I knew I’d have t
o be the first to say his name—”

  “I do love Ali, and I don’t even understand it. He’s not only from a different religion—sometimes I feel like he’s from a different planet. But he understands me more than anyone else I’ve ever been with. Instantly. And he loves me so much—”

  “Does Boaz suspect anything?”

  “Remember that time Shoval broke his arm and I wasn’t there? Boaz figured it out—it was awful—and I couldn’t apologize, but I decided to stop seeing Ali, and I have. Sort of.” Emily hesitated. “I’ve tried so hard with Boaz—really, Lauren, you don’t even know the half of it. To be sensitive and careful and caring. I keep thinking that if I love him enough, I’ll be able to pull him out of the darkness, but I feel like he’s pulled me down into it with him. I can’t, I can’t, I just can’t live the rest of my life so sad like this—”

  “Oh, Emily—”

  “I say, ‘Good morning,’ and he says, ‘What’s so good about it?’ I cook him dishes he likes, I get up early to make him sandwiches to take to work, I try my hardest so the boys aren’t too noisy or too messy . . . It’s like I’m constantly running interference.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “I’m just so unhappy, and then there’s Ali, who makes me feel so full of joy and alive.”

  “You always get that happy and alive feeling in the beginning.”

  “Honestly, I never had that with Boaz.”

  “I didn’t think so.” Lauren frowned. “He was just in the right place at the right time when you got here.”

  “And I knew he would be the last person to leave me for another woman.”

  “Still, that doesn’t mean you need to end your marriage and all you have for this fling with someone you don’t really understand.”

  “But I do understand him. That’s the thing. And he understands me.”

  “That makes two of you—very few other Muslims or Jews will understand.”

  “So, you think I should end it. That’s what I thought, too, but the idea of losing Ali . . .”

  Lauren kept her eyes on the road, but she could feel Emily’s confusion. “What about your boys? An Arab guy will never become the father to another man’s kids. Don’t fool yourself.” She paused. “And Emily, on top of that, your own—”

  “Father. Don’t remind me. On Charleston’s Council for Interfaith Relations, but he’d never, ever . . .” Her voice fell.

  “I know you know.” Lauren ran her hands around the rim of the steering wheel, lost in her own thoughts. What could she say to Emily? Could she make Emily love Ali less? Make her love Boaz more?

  Still, how could Lauren not try to stop Emily from rushing into something that seemed so uncertain? It was as if she were flinging herself into a stormy sea without a life jacket. “I think,” Lauren began carefully, “that sometimes we have to accept things in life that we don’t necessarily like. Life is a package deal. We don’t get to choose one thing from column A and one thing from column B like on a Chinese menu. Look at me—”

  “But you love David, I know you do. And I’m miserable, really.”

  “I wish you’d told me all this sooner, before you went off—”

  “I didn’t go off—”

  “I wish you’d trusted me enough to—”

  “To what?” Emily’s voice conveyed her misery. “To tell you so that you’d give me this lecture? You’re saying exactly what I was afraid you’d say. He’s a Muslim, I’m a Jew, there’s no way it’s going to work—”

  “Do you have any idea what’s going on in the world?” Lauren banged her hand on the steering wheel.

  “Of course I do! I just thought you’d understand me.”

  “I understand you. I really do. And I didn’t exactly choose the person I fell in love with, either. But sometimes we have to stop ourselves from doing the wrong thing.”

  “And what if not following my heart is the wrong thing?”

  Lauren slowed down for a red light. “You’re taking such a big risk.”

  Emily wove her fingers together, the way she did when she was nervous, and placed her hands on her lap. “I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m scared to leave for Ali; I’m scared to stay with Boaz— I didn’t want any of this and suddenly—”

  “Just don’t do anything rash, okay?” Lauren took Emily’s hand for a moment before the light changed. “Because you don’t want to look back and realize you threw away a very good life. I like Ali, I do. But you don’t really know him. You don’t know the culture. They don’t think like we do.”

  “Now you’re stereotyping.”

  “It’s still the truth!”

  “There are exceptions to every rule,” Emily said. “Aren’t we exceptions? Almost all the girls I grew up with are living in Charleston or Atlanta or maybe Miami. They’re not driving around the Middle East!”

  Out the window, orange bougainvillea flicked by. “That’s right! This is the Middle East.”

  Neither of them spoke. They passed under the tall eucalyptus trees and went around a traffic circle. An empty field. A mix of sunlight and cloud light fell across the weeds and grasses. Lauren drove through the tense silence. She felt close to tears. She couldn’t tolerate any kind of rift with Emily. She put on one of Emily’s favorite CDs—Essence—and by the time Lucinda Williams was done singing “Steal Your Love,” Lauren knew she had to put aside her own feelings. What was right or wrong when it came to love? There was no correct answer. All Lauren knew was that she cared so much for Emily. Lauren told her, “I just want you to know that whatever you decide, I’m here for you.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  Lauren parked the car by the train station in Akko, and from there they entered what David called the souk and what Lauren secretly thought of as a consortium of hardscrabble vendors shouting over one another from jammed stalls. If you were not Lauren Uhlmann from Brookline, you shopped here. If you were poor or strapped for cash, you shopped here and ignored the bleakness and the carcinogens probably leaking out from the asbestos roof. But the vendors had a wide assortment of fresh produce, and Lauren had an errand to run nearby. And she was trying—as she’d promised David—to accept where life had taken her.

  “First loquats of the season!” called a man with a bushy gray mustache in the first stall. “Sweet loquats!”

  Lauren stepped toward him but Emily took her arm. “Don’t buy them here,” Emily said quietly. “Boaz will give you as many as you want from our tree.”

  Did that mean she wasn’t going to leave Boaz after all? The thought reassured Lauren. “Your boys will soon be big enough to pick the fruit.” Lauren thought of Shoval and Tal climbing up the trees the way Maya and Yael already did. “I love picking fruit with David and the girls. Did I tell you the other day Maya and Yael stuffed oranges under their shirts and walked around showing off their ‘boobies’?”

  Lauren made a beeline to the egg vendor, who had scarred skin and looked like a gangster, and ordered extra-large eggs.

  “Why don’t you just buy eggs from Fanny Mosseri?” Emily asked. “Hers have the same chicken shit and feathers stuck to them.”

  “Just because I’m a nurse, she wants me to listen to her complain about every ache and pain in her body.”

  Lauren watched the vendor tie a string around two cardboard egg trays and make crisscrossed handles like on a bakery box. She rummaged in her heavy pocketbook, found her wallet, and paid him. They wandered past a stooped peddler selling tins of Tiger Balm, nail clippers, toilet brushes, and loose cigarettes, and then Emily stopped by a wizened man sitting on the cement, bunches of limp parsley and rotten clementines at his feet. Emily knelt and chose some parsley and four clementines.

  Lauren bent beside Emily and whispered, “Those look terrible.”

  “That’s the whole point. Passover’s coming and my father always said to give charity before the holiday.”

  “Five shekels.” The man held out his scaly palm.

  Lauren found
her wallet again. “My treat,” she said quickly, and counted out the money, muttering under her breath, “This is Jewish history right here. I’m telling you, Emily, you switch the first letters around and you get a shitory.” Lauren gave the man an extra coin and stood.

  “Five shekels!” the man yelled. “What chutzpah! You gave me a ten-agarot coin instead of a shekel!”

  “I’m sorry, I thought—”

  “Of course you thought I wouldn’t notice! Just wait until you’re my age.”

  Lauren could feel the other vendors staring at her and she opened her wallet again and poured all the coins she had into the man’s palm. “Let’s get out of here,” she said vehemently, tugging at Emily as another seller called, “Cabbage, I have cabbage!”

  Emily started for his stall as Lauren suddenly remembered him, and his dark eyebrows, which ran in one thick blur across his enormous forehead.

  “Do not go to him! He’s the one who—”

  “But I want to make Boaz some coleslaw.”

  “You said you’re leaving Boaz.”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing! All I know is that Boaz likes coleslaw, and today, all I’m going to try to think about is making coleslaw. Just give me a minute.”

  Lauren waited as Emily studied the cabbages as if they were works of art and then chose one. Emily picked out string beans, scallions, and a leek as big as a baseball bat. Her brown hair now had strawberry-blond highlights, falling at just the right angle along her jaw. Her cheeks looked full and rosy. She seemed to find a way to embrace life no matter where she was. Lauren couldn’t help admiring the way Emily took chances. She greeted life with open arms while Lauren stood off to the side, holding herself back. Was it really better to be safe than sorry? Lauren thought about how when she used to sail, she sometimes had to change tack or come about and head right into the wind.

  “How about some great lettuce at a great price?” The vendor lifted his unibrow at Lauren.