by Dara Horn
“My name is Rachel,” she said carefully, and hesitated before adding: “I’m Rocky’s mother.”
The woman smiled. “Oh yes,” she said. “He mentioned that his mother had moved in with him.”
Rachel pretended to cough, to avoid choking.
“You look so young, you could be his sister,” the woman said cheerfully as Rachel gagged. Then she added, “Do you need a glass of water?”
Rachel swallowed. “No thank you,” she said, feigning lightness. Maybe this woman wasn’t from the IRS, Rachel thought. Maybe she was FBI. In either case, Rachel told herself, better to cooperate. “I’m fine,” Rachel announced. “Please, come sit down.” The invitation was irrelevant. The woman had already strolled into Rachel’s living room, plopping into what had been Rachel’s husband’s chair. What was her name again? Meirav, Rachel reminded herself. It was an old name, and an even older word, old enough for Rachel to remember it from her father’s scrolls. Abundance. Would an Israeli work for the FBI? “Can I get you anything?” Rachel asked. Meirav shook her head, but Rachel understood that this too was irrelevant. Surely if Meirav had wanted anything, she would have helped herself.
“The court is really backed up today. I almost didn’t get out myself this morning,” Meirav said, twirling a finger in her hair.
“You were there?” Rachel asked.
Meirav smiled. “Sure. Where do you think we met?”
Rachel stared at her. Everything about her seemed unreal. “You work at the court?”
Meirav laughed out loud. “I wish! No, I’m just being punished for a bad marriage, like everybody else.” She sat completely relaxed in Rachel’s husband’s chair, slouched on an armrest like one of Rachel’s children. Was this some kind of cover story? “It’s actually a very good place to meet people. It’s like a singles bar over there. Everyone is sitting forever, just looking at each other. In the waiting room where we are, they don’t even let you use your phone. It’s like an existentialist play.”
This time Rachel smiled. If Meirav was an FBI agent, she was at least a pleasant one. “Which is it, a singles bar or an existentialist play?”
“They really aren’t so different,” Meirav said. Her smile felt familiar, as if Rachel had known her for years. Rachel had to remind herself that this woman had just broken into her house. “Your son is my favorite character in this existentialist play,” she said. “He’s made it all bearable. Rocky is just that kind of person, isn’t he? The kind of person who lightens everyone’s burdens. Everyone ought to know at least one person like that. Of course, I don’t have to tell you. You know better than anyone.”
Rachel wondered briefly if the woman had the wrong house. Or was she just undercover, and doing a lousy job? The kind of person who lightens everyone’s burdens? “So how is your case coming along?” Rachel asked, as a test.
Meirav let out a snort, a dismissive noise that made Rachel suddenly like her, though she could not fathom why. “It’s just some silly things to work out with my ex-husband. It isn’t worth explaining.” Rachel suspected that it was worth explaining, but didn’t ask. She was still enjoying Meirav’s dismissive snort, which returned, twice. “We’re already divorced in Israel. It’s complicated.”
Rachel was confused. “Do you—do you live in Israel, or here?”
“Both. I’ve mostly been here for the past year or so. My mother was born in America, so it isn’t hard for me to move back and forth. Maybe I’ll go back sometime soon. Or maybe not. I’m not a person who likes to plan too much,” she said. “Life’s about the adventure, isn’t it?”
“Sure,” Rachel muttered, and thought of the feed on her phone. Bring it on. She tried to change the subject, to test how deep the story went. “Do your parents still live there?”
“My crazy mother, yes. My father died thirty years ago. Actually more than thirty years ago now. In the Lebanon War.”
“I’m sorry,” Rachel murmured. But she was doing math in her head; she was terrible with dates, but something didn’t add up. If it was a cover story, it was, as Rocky would say, piss-poor. “You said—in the Lebanon War? Your father? But aren’t you—”
Meirav laughed again. Even death is funny to this woman, Rachel marveled. “You don’t need to guess my age,” Meirav said. “I’m fifty-two. And you’re right, it’s strange, because he was the same age I am now. He was in his very last year in the reserves, which went past fifty for men back then. He used to joke about it. Like, ‘Don’t worry, Meirav, I still have one more year, I can still get killed, and then you can go to university for free!’ Because in Israel they have all these government benefits for war orphans.”
This seemed like a higher level of improbable detail than a fake story would include, Rachel reflected. She felt vaguely reassured. “Of course, I didn’t appreciate what it really meant until I had my own children,” Meirav was saying. “Children are a gift from God, right? Why? Because they’re so wonderful? Honestly, they aren’t so wonderful. They’re a gift because they give us permission to fail. Because then we can at least imagine we’ve done something for the future, and we can die without thinking about what we haven’t done.”
Rachel pondered this, but Meirav had already lost interest. She stood up suddenly and began strolling around the room. She was the kind of person who did not know how to sit still, Rachel noticed. Like Rocky. Rachel rose and followed her, watching her as she inspected the various family photos on the walls and shelves. Suddenly Meirav laughed out loud again.
“This isn’t Rocky’s house,” she said.
Rachel hesitated, trying not to make another mistake. “You’ve come to the right place,” she said carefully.
Meirav was still laughing. “I know he lives here. But this is your house. You didn’t move in with him. He moved in with you.”
Rachel opened her mouth to protest, but Meirav waved her off. “No man would have this many pictures of children and grandchildren on the walls. Also, what’s this? Your wedding photo? No, not his house. But is this his father? Rocky looks more like you, except he’s so pale.”
Rachel glanced at her dead husband, who had given up hope in Rocky long ago. “And he wouldn’t have childhood photos of himself, either,” Meirav said. She pointed at a portrait of Rocky at age ten with his brother and sisters, his wiry hair slicked back with some hair cream product that was no longer sold. Every time Rachel saw the photograph, she could still feel the hair cream on her hands, running her fingers through ten-year-old Rocky’s hair, hair that was as unmanageable as he was. The interval from then until now was more than meaningless; it didn’t exist. Years upon years lay before her in every moment. It goes by so fast, she heard every parent “her age” say in her mind. If only.
Meirav smiled and turned to Rachel. “It’s sweet, isn’t it?” she asked.
“What’s sweet?”
“That he told me it was his house. He wanted to impress me. Don’t you love that?”
I don’t love lying, Rachel was about to say, until she realized that was a lie. Lying was what made her life possible. Instead she said, “Rocky has always been an inventive person.”
Meirav grinned. “So am I,” she said.
As Rachel tried to guess what that might mean, she heard Rocky slam the back door. He typically stopped at the refrigerator, already groaning about whatever had just happened wherever he had just been, but he must have seen Meirav’s car outside. Clearly he was expecting her, because he was in the living room in seconds.
“Well, hello,” he said, his voice deeper than Rachel had ever heard it. Rachel grinned. Suddenly he was a teenager again, except that he was a grandfather. The distinction between teenager and adult seemed trivial to Rachel. In fact she recalled many centuries when that particular distinction didn’t exist at all. It was trivial, she thought, along with the distinction between birth and death. Everything and everyone blew through the world, leaves carried on wind. Did everything matter, or was everything an outrageous waste of time?
“
Sorry I’m late. Mom, this is—”
“We’ve met.” Meirav smiled. “Your mother is lovely, and she has a lovely home.”
Rocky purpled, then glared at Rachel. But Meirav was laughing. “Come, let’s go. I’m starving,” she said.
Was Meirav who she said she was? Or was she some sort of agent, human or divine? Either way, Rocky smiled. Rachel watched as they left together. She waved goodbye and then turned back to her phone.
@highpriest
#EternalLife: I will love her until the end of time. Every man on earth will tell her that, but I am the only one who will ever mean it.
Oh, Elazar.
CHAPTER
9
EXCEPTIONS
. . .
“How old are you, Gram?” Hannah asked as rain poured down outside.
The children would be eating soon in Rachel’s kitchen, and then Daniel would pick them up after Hannah left for a conference. Rachel’s house had become a tavern again, just as it had been long ago, somewhere else. Rachel didn’t mind. In fact, she preferred being with children when their parents weren’t present: grandchildren and grandparents got along so well, Rachel knew, because they had a common enemy. But Hannah was the exception to agreeable grandchildren, and Hannah was insistent. Rachel immediately felt uneasy, and continued chopping carrots with an unexpected vengeance. She ignored the question until Hannah asked again.
“How old are you, Gram?”
“Forever twenty-one, right?” Rachel said with a forced grin. “I’m assuming this is a joke.”
Hannah finished setting the table and sat down in what was once her father’s seat, her narrow body taut against the table’s edge. “Seriously, Gram. When’s your birthday?”
“You know I don’t let anyone celebrate my birthday,” Rachel said. “So you better not be planning anything for me.”
“Your passport says you were born on July 4, 1934. Happy birthday Gramerica! The fireworks are a party just for you.”
Rachel glanced at Hannah mid-chop, still holding her knife. “What are you doing with my passport?”
Hannah laughed. “Gram, you’re the world’s most paranoid person.”
“There’s a lot of competition for that,” Rachel muttered.
“I’m not doing anything with your passport. I just remember seeing it once.”
“Well, there’s your answer then. Thank you, federal government, for clearing up the mystery of my birth. Though I’m not sure why you’re asking me, if you already know.”
“I’m asking you because you have the genetic deterioration of a teenager.”
Rachel stopped breathing. She looked at her own hands as she put the knife down on the counter. What Hannah had just said could mean almost anything, she told herself. Stupid girl! her mother shouted in her head. She breathed again, slowly, and asked, “The genetic what?”
“You have the genetic deterioration of a teenager, Gram.”
Rachel turned toward Hannah as slowly as she could. With intense effort, she made her voice light, carefree. “What in the world does that mean?” she asked. “And how would you know anything about my genetic anything?”
Hannah colored. “Dad helped me out,” she said quietly.
“What are you talking about? Helped you out with what?”
“With taking a sample.”
Rachel shuddered. “A sample of what?”
“DNA,” Hannah said.
“Excuse me?”
“You didn’t want to give me any, so we—we took it.”
Fire seared through Rachel’s veins. “You took it? How is that even possible? What did you do, come into my room at night and suck my blood?”
Hannah shrugged, though Rachel could see that the nonchalance was a ploy. “I just had Dad take some hair out of your hairbrush. He found some nail clippings too. Bathrooms are a veritable fountain of DNA.”
Rachel’s skin crawled. “So you stole little dead pieces of me, and now you magically know everything about my genes.” As she spoke, an unfamiliar wisp of wonder crossed her mind: are those pieces of me really dead?
“Well, I don’t know everything, because nobody knows everything. But did you know you’re ninety-eight percent Middle Eastern?”
What’s the other two percent? Rachel wondered, and thought of Elazar’s green eyes.
“Anyway, that’s not what’s extraordinary about you.”
The tide of Rachel’s panic rose, blood rushing through her body the way it did before she burned. She brandished sarcasm as armor. “Thanks,” she sneered. “I like to think I’m extraordinary because of things I’ve achieved in my life, rather than because of what you discovered in my fingernails. But I never achieved anything that extraordinary, so I guess we just have to go with the nail clippings.”
Hannah wasn’t listening. “I mean, the Middle Eastern thing actually is pretty remarkable, because ninety-eight percent of anything just isn’t a number you see when it comes to genetic ancestry. Plus, Dad seems to think your parents came from some dump in Poland.”
“That’s a rather rude way to put it.”
“That was how Dad described it, not me. Supposedly it was how you described it to him.”
In fact, it was how Hirshl described it, Rachel remembered, two husbands before Rocky’s father. Rucheleh, let’s get out of this dump. Elazar was right, Hirshl was a fool; of all the people to marry, why had she married him? Then again, getting out of Poland was the only good idea Hirshl had ever had. If only Elazar had thought of it. “I doubt I ever said that,” Rachel replied. “In all likelihood it was a dump, by your standards. But I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been there.”
This was a dodge, and an ineffective one at that. Hannah wasn’t having it. “What’s extraordinary about you is your deterioration,” Hannah announced. “I mean, your lack of deterioration. According to your genes, you’re about eighteen years old. What do you think of that, Gram?”
Rachel’s throat ran dry, as though she were a well in a drought. She turned on the faucet to rinse off the knife and thought of the drought in the year before she met Elazar, the dusty ground pitted at last with late rain. She thought of skins filled with water, sheepskin against bare wet skin, water in an ancient tunnel rushing against her feet, liquid heat between her legs, a thirsty baby’s tiny mouth latching to her breast. She thought of Yochanan.
“What do you think of that?” Hannah asked again.
“I think you’ve got your test tubes mixed up,” Rachel said.
Hannah smirked. “I thought so too. I even wondered if Dad had some new teenage girlfriend who messed up your bathroom. That’s why I came back with him myself and took more samples. We did it three times. We analyzed them all. This is you, Gram.” She drew in her breath, gathering words. “And it’s—there’s just no other way to describe it: it’s a medical miracle. You’re a medical miracle, Gram.”
Rachel scrambled mentally, keeping her face still. Then she shrugged just as Hannah had shrugged, neither one meaning it. “Well, then I guess I’m a medical miracle,” she said. “What can I say, everyone is special in their own special way.”
Hannah narrowed her eyes, and resembled her father. “Special in their own special—what the hell is that?”
“I think it was something your son told me about twenty minutes ago, before he went downstairs. He told me he learned today in kindergarten that everyone is special in their own special way.” Rachel spoke quickly, like a demented person, running on a tightrope across an abyss. “When I was a child, we didn’t have those kinds of educational opportunities where we could learn how special we were. So instead of learning that in kindergarten, I get to learn it from you. Now, thanks to you, I know that I’m especially special. With especially special nail clippings.”
Hannah stared at her. “Holy crap, Gram. Are you making fun of me?”
“I’m making fun of the idea that you can learn anything worthwhile about who I am by raiding my bathroom. While you were in there, did you find my lithium pr
escription?”
“You’re on lithium?”
“Clearly you’re doing a lousy job of looking. I hear bathrooms are a veritable fountain of detritus from other people’s lives. Look harder and you’ll find all your father’s meds too. The man could run a dispensary for Adderall.”
Hannah pressed her hands down on the table in front of her, like a defendant in court. “Okay, Gram, I get it. You’re mad at me. I’m sorry,” she said. Each phrase was a stingy concession. “But I can’t ignore this. I mean, I know you’re not miraculously eighteen years old. But whatever’s really going on with you, it’s—it’s something that could change everything we thought we knew about biology. I’m going to have to bring you in for more testing. The lab has to—”
Rachel slammed the knife down on the cutting board, making Hannah jump. “Stop it, Hannah!”
Hannah paled, and Rachel felt instantly sorry, the way she always did when a child showed fear. But she kept her voice firm, and turned toward her grandchild, her favorite grandchild, the one she loved.
“Hannah, I’m an old, old woman, and it has taken me a long time to learn what I know,” Rachel said. “And I know that no matter what Google thinks, I do not have a lot of time left in this family. And I do not have time for this shit.”
Hannah nodded, chastened—or more likely, she simply decided she was better off biding her time. She rose and went downstairs to get her children. And Rachel turned back toward the sink, chopping away at the cutting board like a slave chipping through a mountain for years upon years, so that no one would see her crying.
AS SOON AS DANIEL took the children home, Rachel rushed to the tunnel, in a panic that felt more than familiar. Elazar was waiting for her when she arrived, holding open the door as she sprang from the car, barely remembering to pull the gate closed behind her. It wounded her that he was right. You need me. You just don’t know it yet. When the door closed behind her, words ran out of her in torrents.