What to Do About the Solomons

by Bethany Ball

When Marc first sees Maya, he notes she is fuller than her Facebook picture. On Facebook one sees middle-aged women falling into one of two categories. Since it is impossible for them to stay exactly as they were as teenagers, they either 1) become quite fat, or at least a little fat, or 2) become lean and sinewy. Hard and tough as leather shoelaces.

  Maya is one of the exceptions to the rule. Her skin is shiny and youthful, with not a single line on her face. Only a barely discernible crease between the eyebrows. Her curly hair drapes luxuriously over her shoulders. Gone are her dreadlocks. Her breasts spill out of her V-neck T-shirt. She had always been flat-chested. He remembers how she was one of the only girls in the kibbutz who could get away with not wearing a bra. She is still not wearing a bra and her nipples are pronounced, standing high beneath her shirt.

  She is a vision.

  Shyly, he approaches her. She wraps her arms around his neck and kisses his cheek. Marc feels his face grow hot. He has always blushed. He blushes now. And standing off to the side is his old friend, Shai Skymatsky.

  Hello! Hello! Shai says. He embraces Marc. He squeezes him so tightly Marc loses his breath. For the first time since he landed, Marc exhales.

  Can we walk with you? Shai asks. Maya has retreated a few steps away.

  Come back, Marc thinks.

  Marc has a theory that no one loves anyone after a certain age. We are, none of us, really capable of it. Right about the time you stop enjoying discovering new music, that’s the moment you are incapable of love. Everything beyond that moment is as mechanical as a wind-up toy. It is all memory and ghosts. And yet.

  Marc thinks of his father, his voice booming. He is telling a story, a joke. The hair from a woman down there can derail a train! he says. No really! Yakov says. Think about it.

  I’m only going to the kol-bo to pick up a few things for my mother and for Keren, Marc says.

  How is Vivienne? Maya asks.

  She is all right, I guess. Maybe even better off.

  And man! How are you? Shai asks. He’s bounding around with his enormous energy like a big, happy dog. Marc notes he’s a little fat now. Solomon! How are you faring these days?

  Marc stops. Are you talking about my case?

  Yes, of course. What else?

  Marc stops walking. He’s still wearing the suit pants he wore on the flight the day before and an old T-shirt of Yakov’s. Carolyn’s flight is due to arrive in Tel Aviv any moment. The dust kicked up by their walking settles. Marc bends over and dusts himself off with the palms of his hands. Maya’s feet in her sandals are brown, her toes are a little dirty and unpedicured. Carolyn would never walk around with her feet like that. Maya’s ankles are small and delicate. Marc heard she’d married Shai Skymatsky, of course, but he never expected she’d be radiant. She stands like a goddess in her cut-off jeans. Shai sees Marc staring and pulls Maya closer to him. Yes, Shai is proud of his trophy. Why shouldn’t he be? He caught what everyone else had thrown back into the sea.

  Well, Marc says. I’m fine. Everything is fine. It was all blown out of proportion. I was never even charged with a crime! It is an American custom. The police accuse you of a crime and then take all your money. But it is not serious, Marc says. Everything is in civil courts now.

  Oh, fantastic! Shai says. Of course I knew everything was all right.

  Marc catches Maya’s eye. Maya turns away. Once, when they were teenagers, how well they knew each other. His roommate was a deep sleeper. Marc was responsible for waking him each morning, always waiting until just after Maya had sneaked back to her own room. As the first light fell into their dorm room, he would wake up with Maya astride him—

  It’s good to see you, Marc, Maya says now. She’s holding Shai’s arm. Shai seems to be nuzzling her ear. Marc looks away. His heart pounds a strange rhythm. We’ll be staying at my mom’s. Come have coffee with us later.

  They take off down the path and Marc heads toward the kol-bo, the general store. When Marc was growing up, this was the place where the children picked up their one chocolate bar a week and where the mothers shopped for small items for the home. At one point, most meals were taken in the dining hall. There was only a small store, no supermarkets as there were now, since the dining rooms of the kibbutzim had closed. The kol-bo was now like a New York City bodega. Only the old women who didn’t drive shopped there still. The younger families drove into town to the big American-style supermarkets.

  Marc Solomon! It is Mrs. Benjamin. She is English and awkward and hasn’t learned Hebrew after forty years in the kibbutz. She has always liked the Solomons, who, for the most part, all speak good English. Your father was a wonderful man, she says to Marc, who is now pressed against Mrs. Benjamin’s breasts. He feels a slight tingle. That strange attraction the male has to the maternal. Her own husband dead now less than a year.

  He always made the ladies feel special, your father. You always felt like you were special when your father was talking to you.

  I’ll bet you did, Marc thinks.

  Thank you, Mrs. Benjamin, Marc says. How have you been?

  She grabs hold of his arm with wizened hands. Blue veins pop, and Marc almost flinches to see them. Her breath is minty. The rumor is she’s not Jewish and never converted. They say she was Mar Benjamin’s wartime English bride. She leans in. To tell you the truth, I’ve never been happier since my husband, that old bastard, is gone! My goodness, she says. I feel like a young girl again.

  Marc is speechless. Mrs. Benjamin steps away, watching his face, and then chuckles as she pushes her tiny shopping cart down the narrow aisle of the kol-bo.

  Yes, as a matter of fact Marc can imagine his father and Mrs. Benjamin. When she’d laughed just then, he’d seen her beauty. Marc was not like his father, had never been like his father, had done everything in his power to be nothing like his father. It had not occurred to him how much the women might want it.

  Marc closes his eyes and sees Carolyn in Dror’s car, hurtling across Israel, a land she doesn’t care for, on her way to him.

  Chapter 26

  Gabriel

  Gabriel sat on the floor and played Joseph’s mother’s CDs. He leaned up against his army-green duffle bag. Joseph lay on the couch and felt his eyes grow heavy. The clock on the stereo said it was 1:30 a.m. But Joseph’s belly was full and Gabriel was nice. Like a real brother. Like family.

  Gabriel was also tired. His frame sprawled out across the thin rug. His bones dug into the wood floor, but he was too weary to get up. And he also didn’t want to startle Joseph, who looked like he was about to fall asleep. Gabriel knew that on the table by the front door of the apartment there was a set of keys, and Joseph’s grandfather’s credit card.

  In California, I play soccer. Do you play soccer, Joseph?

  Joseph nodded his head. Yes, he said. Of course. I am the best in my grade. I am going to be a professional and play for Beitar Jerusalem. His head fell onto the sofa cushion. He’d fallen asleep.

  Gabriel waited several moments and then crept across the room toward the table beside the door. The floorboards creaked. Joseph stirred but didn’t waken. Gabriel stood very still. The card glinted in the light of a street lamp just outside the living room window. He exhaled in his new freedom. The apartment and the boy’s act of sleep had finally released him from scrutiny.

  His conscience pained him. Certainly the boy owed him nothing, even if he was Gabriel’s brother. The boy’s mother owed him nothing, nor did the grandfather. But still. He was a stranger in a strange land. Even if it was the land of his birth, the birth of haaretz had been an accident. He realized now, and finally without pain, that he was the least Israeli of his brothers and cousins. He’d spent the bulk of his childhood in America. He’d even had his bar mitzvah in Los Angeles. His mother had left religion behind when they’d left Jerusalem. Three years in the IDF was not going to change anything.

  No, he did not want to
go to the West Bank. No, he did not want to go to the Golani. No, he did not want to protect settlers. No, he did not want to sit at a desk and be an administrator for a bunch of fascist soldiers.

  No, he did not want to go to military prison.

  This occupation. How had he not known these things when he was back in the United States? He had known but not fully understood.

  His hand hovered over the credit card. Joseph spoke, slurring his words, still asleep. Gabriel snatched his hand away. Now was not the time. He needed a shower. He’d caught a glimpse of it, its walls covered in stone. There was a large rainfall showerhead that he looked forward to standing under. Showers in the army had been limited. There had been all those other soldiers, and the incident.

  Gabriel shucks off his uniform, leaving it in a heap on the floor of the bathroom. On second thought, he shoved it into the hamper. He would like never to see it again. He’d leave it for the boy as a souvenir of his visit. The normalcy of a hamper full of dirty clothing brought tears to his eyes. He thought of his mother, back home. He was not certain he would be welcome, only that he must get there by any means necessary.

  The shower was hot and rinsed the army down the drain. He pissed too. The smell was fragrant in the steam. There was expensive American shampoo and he washed his buzzed head twice. He shaved his face and neck with Joseph’s mother’s razor. He used conditioner as shaving cream. He thought of Joseph’s mother. He saw her in a movie years ago with his brothers. She was a little full now, photographs around the apartment showed, but she only looked more beautiful. Not like the starved American actresses back in LA. He did not think of his father. In fact, he rarely if ever thought of his father. He took himself in hand and when he came, minutes later, he sprayed the wall of the shower. After he stepped out and dried himself, he dressed in jeans and a T-shirt from his duffle bag.

  He stepped into the living room, where the boy was still sleeping, only now there was a cat perched on the boy’s back. The cat eyed him as he crossed the room. The boy didn’t move. The cat stretched out and rested its chin on the boy’s back. Its eyes flashed yellow.

  I’ll book the cheapest flight, Gabriel told himself. In his six months of service, he had made only five hundred shekels a month: about one hundred fifty dollars. In Joseph’s room, he found the computer. No password, luckily. He pressed the space bar and the screen lit up. He typed in “Ben Gurion to JFK.” Maybe he didn’t need to go back to California, after all. He knew someone in New York City, a friend of his older brother who Gabriel had heard was doing quite well. His name was Tomer Skymatsky. He had a job on Wall Street.

  There were a multitude of things he could do! He could go to college! Play soccer! No, the army was not for him.

  Haaretz was not for him.

  He would return his Israeli passport to the consulate the moment he got back to the States and he would never come back to this place—not knowing, of course, that he would not be let out. That he would be forced to return to the army until they proved his incompetency to serve, and released him back to America.

  Chapter 27

  Dror Solomon

  Carolyn is so exhausted after the flight, she nearly forgets Nicholas on the airplane. He is inconsolable, sleepy and miserable from the long flight. Izaac is dragging him by the hand through customs. They show their passports. Izaac and Sam both have Israeli passports, though Izaac insists he’ll give his up in another year or so to avoid the draft. Of course he will, Marc had said. We are American now. It is the reasonable thing to do. But the official won’t leave it alone. You must get a passport for the youngest as well, the official says.

  Izaac rolls his eyes. He can have mine.

  Izaac! Carolyn hisses. She’s had trouble with Israeli customs before. She’s been escorted off planes and strip-searched. Until she understood, and memorized a Hebrew name, the name of her rabbi, the name of her synagogue. This was de rigueur each and every time she’d flown. It didn’t help that she was semi-fluent in Hebrew, though she’d thought it might. It was only a red flag. A suspicious activity by an American non-Jew.

  As they walk through the door to the cavernous room of luggage carousels a woman grabs her arm and speaks to her in Russian. I’m sorry, Carolyn says. I don’t understand. She tries again in Hebrew, Slicha, ani lo mevina.

  Izaac smirks at her. She thinks you’re Russian. He points to her yoga pants. They appear to be covered in dog hair. Those look communist-issued, he says. You look like shit, Mom.

  Carolyn is stunned almost to tears, tries to rub the dog hair off. Puberty makes children mean, Carolyn thinks.

  At the baggage carousel they grab their luggage. Carolyn tries to activate her cell phone but it doesn’t work. Marc must have forgotten to set up the international account.

  They find Dror Solomon waiting for them outside the airport.

  Dror pulls over to the side, curses the policeman who tries to wave him on. He grabs their suitcases, ruffles Izaac’s hair, and asks how their flight was. The children load sleepily into the backseat of the car and Carolyn climbs into the passenger seat.

  So, you know all about Tomer Skymatsky? Dror Solomon says. Shame, isn’t it. Little brother of Shai Skymatsky. You ever hear what they say about him?

  Carolyn flinches, recoils. No, she says. I don’t really feel like talking about it. It was a long flight—

  Wonder why he did it.

  I don’t know the details, she says. She pinches the tense skin between her eyebrows.

  You think Marc knew anything about it? I mean, the firm was doing really well, I hear. For sure, he did! The whole database of Tomer’s gambling operation was on Marc’s server! All the money he was pretending to bring in from the religious was really bets. He was a common bookie!

  I beg your pardon?

  Listen to me, Dror says. He grips the wheel tightly. He is going only forty miles per hour. Tel Aviv traffic races around him. Carolyn suspects the children will fall asleep. I’ve been hearing rumors for months. Tomer was a bookie. You know. Sports bets. Police don’t like that much. Marc is lucky Tomer wasn’t taking money from Israel or this would be a much more serious matter.

  I don’t know, Carolyn says, and closes her eyes. She clenches her fists tight in her lap. Carolyn Bennett Solomon is furious. The words she’d like to say sizzle and dissolve in her mouth as if on hot coals. Angry to be stuck with Dror Solomon. A man she despises and who despises her back, it would appear. The Solomon brothers can hardly tolerate each other ever since a real estate partnership turned ugly a year ago. Marc had put money into a discotheque Dror was developing in Tel Aviv, but something had gone wrong. The money had disappeared.

  But Carolyn can’t afford to rent a car. So she’s stuck. Dror comes because he’s closest to Ben Gurion and saves Marc a four-hour round trip. Carolyn knows she should be grateful. She grips the door handle of the car with two hands. Dror drives his father’s car, of course. Already the spoils are divided.

  No, I do know, he tells her, in that typical aggro way of a certain kind of Israeli. “Aggro.” A word Izaac would use. Don’t be so aggro, bro. She glances over at Dror now. His jaw tense and working. His arms are sinewy. Clearly he’s lost weight since marrying this second wife. He’s been going to the gym. She wonders if he’s taking steroids. It seems unusual that a man in his late forties should be so cut. It is an American thought. Israelis don’t consume pharmaceuticals the way Americans do. A little coke. A blunt. They drink, but not much.

  I mean, he continues, aren’t you nervous? Did you see what they wrote about him? It was all over the news here!

  Carolyn turns around in her seat. All three children are sound asleep. Thank God.

  Don’t get me wrong! I love my brother. But I’m worried about him. I’m worried about you and the kids. The police will come for you too, you know, just like they did for Bernie Badoff—

  Madoff.

  Whatever
. And your children! What will you do to protect them? Their reputation?

  Shut up, Dror.

  I’m sorry?

  Shut up. Just shut the fuck up. Be quiet already. The kids are in the back of the car for God’s sake.

  Oh, I see. Dror speeds up. The car veers nearly to the shoulder. You know, it wasn’t easy coming to get you at the airport. Your flight was two hours early. The traffic was terrible.

  Carolyn is getting a migraine. The traffic is terrible now. It’s Thursday night; everyone is heading out of the city. They slow to a crawl. Dror tells her it will be another hour at least. Possibly two!

  Everything Dror says seems calculated for maximum damage. Especially anything he says with a smile. Carolyn smiles weakly back. The children sleep.

  Carolyn reaches into her bag at her feet. Her body hurts. The migraine pulses, marching up the side of her skull. Her mouth is dry from the airplane, dry from the air outside. But she’s freezing. Dror has the air-conditioning turned up high. She fishes through the pockets of her bag. Her hand wades through half-wrapped tampons, an open pack of gum, a bottle of water that has emptied itself into the bottom of her bag, her now damp wallet, her wet passport and the soggy passports of her three boys. Finally she finds the little plastic box where she keeps her earplugs. She opens the box and fishes out a quarter of a Valium and an Ambien. She works up some saliva in her mouth and swallows the pills. Dror watches her, intently. Too intently for a man who is driving with his knees.

  Please, Dror, Carolyn says. Please just drive. I’m sorry. I’m just tired. . . . It was a long flight.

  Okay! You want to stop and get a coffee? We can stop in Alonim. They have good espresso.

  She should. She needs to pee . . . but to wake up the boys? To prolong this trip another minute longer? Before she can answer, Dror pulls off the highway into a small shopping center. The children wake up, complaining. Nicholas begins crying immediately. Dror winces. He opens the door and pulls the crying child out by his arm. Be strong now, little man, Dror says. Dror picks him up and carries him into the small shopping center.