Laura wore a very good perfume that brushed the air with the drifting fragrance of wildflowers, and although her face was lean, impertinent dimples cleft her cheeks. Other young men had smiled at her as they passed, and Aaron’s cousin Jakie Hart had, without asking, removed her empty cocktail glass from her hand and brought her another, newly filled with gin and tonic and the crescent of a lime. He had blushed when she smiled and thanked him. Clearly, she was a girl who was used to having her glass refilled without asking. And yet Aaron was indifferent to her soft voice, her teasing laughter, even to the glorious swell of breasts beneath the sheer white blouse. He felt no desire to touch the golden roundness of bare arm, nor did he wonder what her face would look like in shadow. Had all desire frozen within him, he wondered, when he stared down at Katie’s lifeless, broken body, at the pallor of her skin and the rain-wet hair that clung so closely to her delicately molded skull?
“I’m not really hungry,” he said and hoped that Laura would not see his words as a rejection, that Sherry Ellenberg (who watched them from the terrace with the wishful gaze of the matchmaker manqué) would not be disappointed.
She smiled, the indifferent grin of a good loser in a game that she had not particularly wanted to win. Aaron Goldfeder’s sadness had briefly intrigued and challenged her, but he was too pale, too entangled in a web of grief. She made her way to the buffet table, where she stood beside Jake Hart and allowed him to select a tender piece of chicken for her plate, to spear a slice of roast beef and surround it with a snowy mound of cole slaw. Jakie Hart was not pale. His skin retained the ruddiness gained during long summer afternoons on the tennis courts. His father, Seymour, often reminded Jakie that he had worked eighteen hours a day to establish S. Hart, Inc. Jakie always smiled amiably and patted his father’s arm.
“That was then, Pa. This is now.”
They had come a long way from the crowded railroad flat on Eldridge Street where sewing machines hummed through the night in the living room while his aunt Leah bent, red-eyed, over designs and patterns at the oilcloth-covered kitchen table. Jakie Hart, in his plaid slacks and snowy white sport shirt (the inevitable hart that was the trademark of the family company sprinting across the pocket), radiated the optimism and prosperity of the times. Wars and want were done with. He was not sad. He was newly divorced and not displeased with his single status. He told jokes loudly and laughed at them before delivering the punch line. Now he held Laura’s arm as they walked across the lawn and found seats beneath a giant elm.
Aaron remained alone on the fringe of the crowd, smiling politely at the friends and relatives who passed him, answering their questions with cordial restraint.
Sherry Ellenberg, newly elected to the presidency of her Hadassah chapter, asked him if he would speak at a meeting.
“On what topic?” Aaron asked
He liked Joshua’s pretty English wife, who had always been considerate of his family, who touched Joshua’s black leather prosthetic hand with unembarrassed tenderness.
“Something political. The election, perhaps. What’s happening in Suez.” Sherry’s intentions were sincere, but her knowledge was vague. She giggled charmingly.
“They’re closely related, actually,” Aaron said. “Eisenhower speaks with Dulles’s voice. President Charlie McCarthy to the Secretary’s Edgar Bergen. And Dulles is so obsessed with containing communism in Asia that he reneged on the promise to help Nasser build the Aswan Dam because Nasser recognized Communist China. So last month Nasser paid him back. He nationalized the Suez Canal. Now our French and English allies are in trouble. That’s going to be the major issue in this election—the direction of our foreign policy.”
Michael Goldfeder had moved to his brother’s side, and he listened carefully, fingering the Stevenson button that the blond girl who stood at his side had pinned on his jacket minutes before.
“What I can’t figure out,” he said, “is why Dulles is so hip on the SEATO pact. Why the hell are we involving ourselves in Southeast Asia? Damn it, he’s committed us to the defense of a country that doesn’t even exist—South Vietnam.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to find it on a map,” Sherry said. “But if you could just concentrate on the impact of the Suez situation on Israel, that would be terrific.”
“I’ll try to work something up,” Aaron promised. “Yehuda should be able to help me.”
Sherry smiled knowingly.
“Isn’t their timing fantastic? I couldn’t believe it when Rebecca called from London last night and said they were on their way. It will make the party for Leah.”
“Our sister, Rebecca, who lives in Israel, is arriving tonight,” Michael explained to the blond girl. She smiled, pleased to be included in the secret.
Hand in hand, she and Michael walked over to the patio and began to dance to the music that blared from the phonograph. She laughed and whispered something into Michael’s ear, but Aaron noticed that his brother did not return her smile, nor did his eyes change expression, although his arm encircled her slender waist and he commanded her body with the flexing of his wrist. Like himself, Michael was a victim of grief; they were, the two of them, fraternal invalids, slow to recover from the grievous malady of loss. Aaron went to the bar and asked for another drink, a double scotch, straight up.
Leah watched him down it in a single swallow and frowned. How long would Aaron linger on the edge of the crowd, restrained by grief and loss? She, too, had known overwhelming sorrow. She had been only eighteen years old and pregnant with Aaron when his father had been killed—but she had rebuilt her life, molded her own destiny. Her children would have to do the same. She could not shield them from the vagaries of life, the inevitable losses, the random wounds of rejection and misjudgment. They were solitary travelers now, embarked on their separate journeys.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the rush of a powerful motor grinding suddenly to a halt.
A late arrival, Leah thought—one of Joshua’s business friends. She turned her attention to the dessert buffet and admired the huge pyramids of fresh fruit, cakes topped with swirls of cream, snowy caps of meringue, chocolate pools of mousse bordered with ivory-colored ladyfingers. This was always Rebecca’s favorite time at any party, Leah remembered. Joshua and Rebecca shared the craving for sweets peculiar to those who had felt deprived of them as children.
She noticed now that the guests were not converging on the buffet table but were gathered still at the gate. The new arrivals were probably celebrities—television personalities involved in the shows Joshua had begun to sponsor. He had plunged heavily into television advertising.
“It’s the wave of the future,” he had told Leah. “Watch it. Television’s going to elect presidents and market ready-to-wear.”
He had watched the Kraft Television Theatre for three consecutive weeks and had called his advertising agency. A month later, The Ellenberg Hour: Sixty Minutes of Fine Drama was launched. Perhaps one of his stars had come to the party. Leah’s own curiosity was piqued, and she moved toward the small crowd. They grew quiet and separated into two groups, leaving a path for the tall man and woman who rushed toward Leah, their arms outstretched, their faces sun-burnished.
“Mama!” Rebecca’s voice was vibrant, joyous; her arms enveloped her mother and her lips brushed Leah’s cheeks. She tasted the tears that streamed with joyous release from Leah’s eyes.
“Becca, I didn’t know, I never dreamed you’d be here.” Leah was breathless, full of wonderment. How beautiful Rebecca looked, her dark hair caping her shoulders, her skin golden against the rich blue fabric of her dress. She had been traveling for hours, yet her strong, even-featured face betrayed no fatigue. Rebecca was energized, as she always had been, by joy and excitement. Michael and Aaron moved closer to their sister. She was still their golden girl, their brave and ebullient princess.
Yehuda, too, embraced Leah.
“Three days ago I was told that there was business for me to see to in New York. Luckily Rebecca could j
oin me, and we were able to arrange flights that would bring us here in time for the party.”
“Well, you made it in time for dessert,” Joshua said. “When we knew you were coming, we doubled our mousse order, Rebecca. Do you remember how we used to lick the spoon when your aunt Mollie made chocolate pudding?”
“No mousse will ever taste as good as my mother’s My-T-Fine,” Jakie Hart said.
The family laughed, launched on the familiar tidal wave of reminiscence. Always, on Scarsdale verandas, on Long Island lawns, on the patio of Rebecca’s small kibbutz bungalow, their conversation reeled back to their beginnings on the Lower East Side as, with practiced skill, they ignited each other’s memories.
Yehuda Arnon watched his wife. Her eyes sparkled and her laughter was musical. Aaron’s arm was around her shoulder; Michael’s hand rested on her head. Yehuda looked about at the spacious garden, the sculpted bushes were patterned with the golden glow of the lights, and the glimmer of the dangling lanterns was refracted in the clear water of the swimming pool. All this warmth and luxury, these shared memories, this family closeness, Rebecca had given up to live with him on their stark border kibbutz.
“I don’t regret it,” she had retorted defiantly once when he spoke of it. “I don’t think back to the past. The important thing is our future, the children, what we are building together.”
Brave Rebecca, he thought, my radiant Rivka. He had thanked her silently then, for keeping silence, for not accusing him of too often lingering in the shadows of a time that had passed, of a love that had vanished. They were together. They had each other and the adventure of their lives.
“How are the children?” Leah asked Rebecca, the question tinged with grandmotherly anxiety.
“The baby, Yaakov, is fine,” Rebecca replied. “He’s such a happy baby. I sometimes keep him with me in the studio when I paint. And Noam and Danielle spoil him terribly.”
“And Noam and Danielle?” Leah asked. She was fond of the children of Yehuda’s first marriage. They had welcomed Rebecca into their lives with warmth and affection.
“They’re fine. And my work is going well. The studio that the kibbutz built for me is marvelous. You can’t imagine what it’s like to paint in the light of the desert dawn. I brought some work to show to Charles Ferguson—just a few small canvases. There was no time to organize things properly. We had to leave in such a rush….” Her voice trailed off. The haste and urgency of her departure cast a shadow across the bright picture she had painted of her life on the kibbutz—the happy children, the chortling baby, the involvement with work.
“Will you be able to stay long?” Leah asked.
“I don’t think so. We need every working member. We have to mount a twenty-four-hour-a-day guard.”
“Are things so bad, then?” Leah asked with sinking heart.
“Bad enough,” Rebecca said, but there was no fear in her voice, no despair, and Leah remembered how calmly the Israelis assimilated the dangers of daily life in their beleaguered country. “A tourist bus was attacked near Beersheba about a month ago,” Rebecca continued. “Nasser’s actions on the Suez have made the fedayeen bold. Last week they attacked a team of surveyors on the Eilat highway and killed one man. Uri Cohen. We knew him well. He was a cellist and sometimes played with our kibbutz chamber music group. Noam is in the Scouts with his son.” Her voice was tinged with accepting sorrow.
“But has anything happened on the kibbutz itself?” Leah persisted. Her question was laced with fear. David Goldfeder had been killed in front of the kibbutz children’s house, during a nocturnal struggle with an Arab intruder. Sometimes Leah awakened in the night, remembering her husband’s inert body sprawled across the ground, his blood petaling the ocher sand with a crimson rosette. She was seized with fear then, for Rebecca and her family. The children are all right, she would whisper to herself. Their grandfather’s ghost protected them. Still, she trembled as she listened to the news, scanned the morning paper.
“We are very careful,” Rebecca said. She touched her mother’s hand reassuringly. She- would not tell Leah about the harsh searchlight that illumined the kibbutz each night, nor would she describe the electrified fence they had built. “And besides, we will not allow things to continue this way.” She spoke with firm determination, and Leah was gripped with a fierce pride in the brave, golden-skinned young woman who was her daughter.
Rebecca joined her brothers and Yehuda, who stood beneath a tall elm, its boughs threaded with tiny flickering bulbs. The amber glow of the lights lit their upturned faces, and their mother watched them, moved by their beauty, stirred by their strength and the sweetness of their laughter, as their memories converged onto a fragment of remembered joy.
Yehuda and Aaron walked together toward the small copse where Joshua Ellenberg had hung wooden swings for his children.
“It’s wonderful that you and Rebecca could be in New York just now,” Aaron said. “It means a great deal to my mother. Especially since Michael leaves tomorrow for Berkeley.”
“I’m glad it worked out,” Yehuda said. “A happy coincidence. It wasn’t Michael we were thinking about when we undertook this journey, Aaron. It was you.”
“Me?”
“Yes. I came because of you. I must speak with you about an important mission that I hope you will undertake.”
“A mission?” Aaron repeated the word as though it had been plucked from a foreign language. “I’m not a secret agent, Yehuda. I’m a workaday lawyer and sometime law professor. I think you’ve come to the wrong address.”
“I hope not,” Yehuda replied gravely. “I pray not. Rebecca was sure you would help us.”
Aaron looked at his sister, walking now beside the pool with Joshua Ellenberg. He supposed that he would always remain a hero to Rebecca. He was the older brother who had shepherded her through the streets of the Lower East Side, told her stories when their mother was delayed at a union meeting, their father absorbed in his studies. He had fended off the bullies who chased her across the Brighton Beach boardwalk, and he had struggled to answer the questions that had bewildered her during their shared childhood. “Are we still brother and sister even though we have different fathers?” “Of course.” The brusque certainty of his reply reassured her as no explanation would have. “Do Mama and Papa love each other?” “I don’t know,” he had replied, whispering into the darkness of the Eldridge Street apartment. “Yes, they love each other,” he had told her later, much later, after their move to Brighton Beach, after Michael’s birth. The honesty of his earlier uncertainty affirmed the validity of his new assurance. She had believed him. “I’m glad,” she had said, and she had pressed closer to his protecting shadow.
Rebecca still carried a snapshot of Aaron in his RAF uniform. She had never seen him behind the barbed wire of the Italian prisoner-of-war camp, nor had she seen him surrender to grief when Katie died. She did not understand that with the passing years their roles had been reversed. She, the younger sister, lived daily on the edge of danger, while he went each day to his law office, welcoming the predictability of his practice. It was Rebecca who now searched for answers, while he had all but stopped asking the questions.
Yehuda absently pushed a child’s swing. It stirred the still air, moved with languid rhythm; moonlight whitened the slatted seat.
“This mission is very important. Important to both our countries,” Yehuda continued.
“What is it about?” Aaron asked. His voice was steady, but he felt an odd surge of excitement.
“I cannot talk about it here. It involves other colleagues. Can we meet tomorrow morning—early?”
“My apartment. Seven o’clock,” Aaron said.
“Good.”
Abruptly, Yehuda turned and strode toward Joshua and Rebecca. Aaron watched them and wondered if Yehuda knew that once, so many years ago, Joshua had imagined himself in love with Rebecca. It no longer mattered, of course. They had each found new lives, new loves. Only he remained in limbo. Still, he was s
wept now, by the half-forgotten feverish excitement he had felt as a young soldier, just before a battle, that curious commingling of fear and fearlessness, of trembling trepidation and soaring courage. “An important mission,” Yehuda had said. Aaron was eager suddenly for the night to drift into morning, for secrets to be revealed, mysteries divulged.
His mother touched his arm.
“I think we should leave. Michael has a long journey tomorrow. Rebecca will drive back with us, but Yehuda is staying in the city.”
“I’m going to stay in the city also,” Aaron said. “An early appointment I’d forgotten about.”
“I see,” Leah said. She had seen Yehuda and Aaron speaking earnestly, their heads bent close, in the darkness of the copse.
They thanked the Ellenbergs and made their farewells. The blond girl kissed Michael lightly on the cheek.
“Remember, you’re for Adlai,” she said. “I’ll give you a call if I get to the Coast.”
Aaron shook hands with his cousin Jakie and smiled at the woman named Laura, who looked absently at him. Would his cousin sleep with her tonight? Aaron wondered. Would she have slept with him, Aaron, if he had filled her plate, smiled into her violet eyes, and listened to her recite fragments of Dylan Thomas? It did not matter. He did not care. He wanted only to return to his empty apartment, to speculate briefly about Yehuda’s “mission” before falling into heavy, nepenthean sleep on the wide bed he had once shared with sad-eyed Katie.
The family walked to the car together and stood with their arms linked. They inhaled the sweet night air, tinged with the melancholy fragrance of autumn, and looked up as a flock of gray geese sliced a swathe through the black velvet night sky. The birds soared above them in a smoke-colored streak, their wings softly beating against the resistant air.
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