My first thought: This must be a joke. Someone from the office was playing a mean trick on me.
My second thought: Answer! Say something!
I think I said, “I would welcome the chance to talk to you.” I probably sounded like a frog. “Do you have a particular assignment in mind?”
“We do.” Of course they did. “We think it would be right up your alley.”
That could mean anything. Women’s rights. Politics. A shady politician. The Middle East.
He said, “We loved what you had to say a few weeks ago about the peace process.”
He said love.
About my work.
“Would next week work for you?” I asked.
He said, “How about something this week?”
This was big. “Absolutely,” I said without hesitating or screaming or checking my calendar. When the network called, you didn’t say no.
I didn’t want to.
Before I could grab my laptop, he started rattling off specifics. It was a job that would take some travel and some sacrifice, but that if I was up for it, he thought I would be perfect.
Love. Perfect. Those were great words. I said, “Could you say that again so I can make a recording? For my husband?”
When he didn’t laugh, I let it go. I said, “So tell me about it.”
The basics were too good to be true:
Three weeks in the Middle East.
Four daily reports. By me.
Two interviews daily. With me.
He said I’d travel during the second or third week in April—that got my attention. I knew what this was about. The pundits were already squawking about an international visit to the region. Diplomatic meetings. Maybe even the president. “So, would you like to set up an appointment to talk?”
Sometimes it’s good to play coy. Sometimes it works to play hard to get. Today, I didn’t pretend to check my calendar. I didn’t pretend to mull it over. I did not wait for him to change his mind.
I said, “Yes. I would never miss an opportunity like this.”
I am sure he smiled. You could hear it in his breath. “That’s wonderful, Karen. We were hoping you would say that.”
I kept reading. I read about her telling my dad and picking out what she wanted to wear to her interview. I read about the day the job was officially hers and the research she had to do to get ready. Even though I knew the ending, I wanted to share her excitement. I wanted to feel her anticipation.
But after fifteen more pages of more of the same, I had to admit: I was bored and completely uninspired. I wanted a memory or a story. I wanted something new. I wanted to read about me and Dad and some things we did or funny things we said. I wanted to read about what kind of kid I was becoming—what I liked to do with her.
I wanted to read if going back to Israel meant reconciling with my grandparents. Maybe they had changed their minds. Maybe they were ready to accept all of us.
But there was nothing. Page after page, there were no funny stories, no sad ones. There were no stories period. It was like my father and I didn’t even exist.
The dress seemed far, far away.
In this journal, she was excited about meetings and plans, assignments and new people and interviews that she needed to set up. Historically speaking, my mom was about to do something really exciting and meaningful. She was going to talk about important issues that just might change history. She was going to do her best to encourage the process toward peace.
I should have been proud. I shouldn’t have expected every page of every journal to be about me. For a moment, I put the book down. Then I picked it back up and skimmed a few pages. I considered going back to an old journal. Maybe she wanted this book to be just for work.
Then I saw the letter, M.
M wants me to bow out.
Now I was interested. M was for Martin. My dad.
According to Mom, he thought that the assignment, as exciting as it seemed, was taking too much time. He said they didn’t need the money and that there were plenty of qualified correspondents and that she was not the best for the job—not by a long shot. According to her, he said she was too opinionated, too biased, too connected. In large capital letters, she wrote that he was unfair, that she had worked hard for this big break, and that my dad—of all people—should understand that.
I’m not acting like I’m the most important person in the universe, but we had a deal. An agreement. When I am playing by the rules, I shouldn’t have to listen to a complaining, thoughtless, insensitive husband.
I didn’t remember reading about an agreement, and I was sure she’d never called him insensitive before. Only two things were clear: they were not happy. And I was still not on the page.
Today, when I got home, he told me that I was acting reckless. He said that I was too inexperienced, that they were using me like a pawn because of my father—maybe even at his bequest. He said he knew that they hired me because they knew I couldn’t be objective. Wasn’t that the problem with the television media today? According to M, the network had some top-secret agenda, as if that was so surprising, and that I was playing right into their hands. He said that I was a mother first, that I should think about what was best for my child. A mother first. Has he lost it? What does that even mean?
I wanted to say, “Stop fighting. You know what it means.”
I wished I could ask, “Are you really fighting because of me? Do you really want to leave me?”
As I read and they fought, I didn’t understand why my dad even wanted to go—or bring me. It was only a month-long assignment. Couldn’t he see how out of sync they were becoming—that she had a dream? The dad of the other journals would have supported that. But in this book, every time she got excited, he said no.
I said, “You stay home for a while. You see how great it is. You see how many times you get asked to cover a good story when you have to manage your childcare.”
Now I knew they were fighting about me.
Two entries and four pages later, even though I knew that the three of us went to Israel during the second week of April, I was actually surprised when we got on the plane together. We had five days before the meetings and reports began. I looked for the events that Lo told me happened, the days that matched the pictures: Drinking Coke. The first time we ate falafel. Building sandcastles on the beach in Haifa. But my mother wrote nothing about these events in her journal.
The whole thing was about syntax and scoops and some nice feedback she got from the network.
She did not call my grandparents. That surprised me.
I took out my pictures. I stared at our faces, our bodies, how we posed.
We were there. Together. She looked happy. So did he. But now I was sure they weren’t.
I went back to the book.
Five days before she died, the whole page was filled with stars and smiley faces. Her first broadcast was set to tape and air after she attended a big meeting at a synagogue. I knew what meeting that was. It was the meeting that killed them. It was the meeting that made me famous.
He will not leave me alone.
First he said, “Let’s give it one more try,” right when I was in the middle of writing my first report.
Then he said, “Come on. You can wing it.”
Then he said, “If you won’t talk to me, I’m going to take Janine home.”
I said, “That would be fine with me.”
I had to be reading this wrong.
I read it again.
But the words didn’t change.
I said, “That would be fine with me.”
I took a deep breath. It wasn’t like I thought they never disagreed. But it was never like this. They loved each other. They loved their work. They loved me. I knew they did. They didn’t hate each other.
That wasn’t possible.
I looked for the retraction. The remorse. An asterisk with a note explaining how embarrassed she was to have written such junk, even though she had no reason to
believe anyone but her would ever read it.
Instead, I found their so-called agreement.
One more time, I reminded him that we had a deal.
Stay home five years.
Then do whatever I want.
That was the plan. It still is my plan.
She told him to go, get out, take the kid, too. Her words hurt; they stung. But he stayed. I didn’t understand why. Why would my dad take this? My only explanation: he knew she didn’t mean it. She must have been mad about something else.
She must have still loved me.
But then I turned to the page before the bombing, the day we went to the Dead Sea. The tone of her words seemed confident. Even the letters themselves were bigger.
These were her last words.
After we see L, I am going to tell him that my plans have changed. I am going to stay in the Middle East.
I am going to tell him to go home.
I can’t leave this land. Not yet. It is too beautiful, too important. The people are so passionate.
I belong here. I always did. I just didn’t know it until I came back.
I have so much more to do. I have a mission. I have to tell the world what is happening here. Americans need to see how the people of this region live. I need to be part of it—to help bring peace. I love the feel of the air and the energy of these people. I need to convince the world we have to embrace a solution. Without conversation, there will be no peace.
Peace is what matters.
Peace is what we need.
It’s not going to be easy, but M and J will just have to understand.
Understand.
No, I didn’t.
My first response: my mother’s job was more important to her than her family.
I grabbed the Dead Sea photo. If I believed the journal, these smiles were faked. These people weren’t having fun. They were lying to keep me happy—to create a picture that was wrong.
I went back to the book, turned the page over, and looked for something more. But there was nothing. Just the mission. Just the desire for work. And peace. It was so weird. She sounded like Dave. Like a fake, insincere preacher who was looking for cash. After that, the lines on the pages were empty. She was dead. I shook out the book. This was not the end of the story. It couldn’t be.
She was my mother. She was the person who kept me alive. She was the person who gave me strength when I didn’t think I could wait one more minute. She was the person who sacrificed herself for me.
All my life, I thought they were happy—the perfect couple. I trusted those pictures. I thought they told the truth. I thought she loved me.
This writing—it didn’t even sound like her. I had to be reading it the wrong way. She walked away from Israel; this was a job—she didn’t want this life. I thought she chose my dad and me. The three of us in one frame.
I read it again. I looked for clues, but there were none to find. The truth was plain. It was clear: her life was in the Middle East. She didn’t want to be part of our family anymore. She didn’t want to be just a mother. She didn’t care about being a wife. She hoped we’d understand.
I understood.
I threw the photo on my bed.
I ripped off the hamsa and hurled it across the room.
I grabbed a pen and wrote on top of her words, “I hate you.” It wasn’t enough. I reached for a thick marker and scrubbed out every word, until the black seeped into the next page and the paper started to disintegrate. No one would ever read these words again. No one would ever be able to see that she didn’t want her daughter.
TWENTY-TWO
The second she saw me, Lo jumped up out of her chair. “Are you okay? Do you have any questions?”
“No. I don’t.” I motioned to the TV. Roxanne Wheeler was sitting in the pretty blue-and-green studio of the Philadelphia news team from the ABC affiliate. “Turn up the sound.”
She and the weatherman were talking about her upcoming special report in honor of Easter and Passover (and I guess all the other springtime religious holidays). She called it “The Power of Faith.” She was sure the viewing audience would love it.
In that report, she was going to look at how faith has entered every corner of our world. Religion and faith in God had become a part of sports. At every awards ceremony, from the Grammies to the Oscars to the People’s Choice, winners always thanked their Savior. I stared at her as she talked about how she knew she had to do this story after hearing that Dave Armstrong would be speaking in her hometown, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She talked about meeting him outside the home of Janine Collins, whom, of course, everyone remembered was the Soul Survivor, blah, blah, blah. She said, “I promise you. When you hear what these people have to say, you will change the way you think about prayer.”
I turned the TV off, flung the remote across the room. Lo wanted to comfort me, but I pushed her away. “You could have just burned it.”
I didn’t want her to tell me it was going to be okay—that soon I was going to be fine. Because I wasn’t. I would never accept this. Or understand it. “Why did you save it? Do you hate me that much?”
“Of course I don’t.” She rambled a bit about my mother’s intentions, some conversation that she had with my parents at the Dead Sea right before they died. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t destroy it. She was my sister. I didn’t save it to hurt you.”
“Well, you did. You all did.” I walked out the door.
The sun was still up, but the air had begun to feel like night. It was cooler. At times, the wind gusted. I swung my arms and took very large steps, and waited to warm up. When my cell phone rang two, three, four times, I ignored it, kept moving.
There was nothing Lo could say.
I couldn’t believe that for ten years, she hid this from me. She let me believe in a fantasy—a happy family—a mother who loved me. But that was a lie. My mother wanted to leave us. She didn’t want to change the world as much as she wanted to be the person who told everyone else that the world was changing. She was no different and no better than Dave or Roxanne Wheeler or any of the other reporters who’ve plagued me over the years.
M and J will have to understand.
She was everything I hate.
I walked faster, down the main streets. The only thing still open was the coffee shop/used bookstore—the one Lo liked. On the door was a sign. It said DREAM in swirly blue letters with sparkles and stars. In smaller letters: Love. Peace. Hope. In smaller letters: If you can picture it, it can come true.
At least it was warm inside. I had enough money to get something to drink.
But the cappuccino machine had its own sign: out of order. The store was practically empty. A guy with a way-too-long beard sat on a table, talking to a woman wearing about fifty bangle bracelets. She looked old enough to be the guy’s grandmother. “Can I help you?” she asked.
I turned away. Reflex. Even though I would bet a million dollars that she was the yoga lady. “I’m just looking,” I said.
I scanned the shelves. Literature. Travel. History. Politics. I picked up an extremely fat book about Lyndon B. Johnson—which I had no interest in, but I felt like I had to look at something—when I saw a familiar girl standing underneath the word HEALTH.
It was Emma.
She didn’t see me.
I watched her read. She turned the pages fast—with enthusiasm. A few times, she smiled and jotted something down in a notebook. But she didn’t buy it. She put the book down, said thank you, and walked out the door.
I couldn’t stop myself—I wanted to see what she was reading. I walked over to the table where she had been sitting. There was only one discarded book. It was fat and technical looking. I picked it up: Current Medical Practice and Diagnosis.
That was too funny. Little Miss Faith Healer was reading a book about medicine. Which meant she was sham. And a fraud. If she was reading a book like that, there was no way she believed any of that crap about trust and God and healing.
&
nbsp; I wondered if Dave knew. Did he suspect that she didn’t buy his “Pray for a cure” philosophy, or was he a fraud, too? His whole mission—maybe it was all an act. Maybe none of them believed a word they stood for.
It meant that she didn’t believe in me. It was all a joke. I was a joke.
Not for long.
I bought the book. “Thank you,” I said, and I meant it. I knew it was mean, but I couldn’t wait to show this to Abe, to tell him that this is what Emma had been reading. His hero was a hypocrite. I couldn’t wait to expose her. She wasn’t going to make a fool out of me.
I walked faster, down the road, toward home. I passed the school and, of course, the farm. When I got there, I tried to see what Miriam saw.
I stepped over the drooping warning tape. I walked across the soft, tilled plots. Little signs with pictures of carrots and beets lay strewn on the ground. Twine that once divided land was now a scramble.
I stopped at the tree.
The trunk was huge. I had to tip my head back to see the place where the lightning hit it. From here, it looked clean and white. Maybe Samantha and Miriam would get what they wanted. It didn’t look like the tree was going to fall down by itself.
It looked strong. But what did I know? It was also alone. There was nothing big enough to help stabilize it.
I sat with my back against the trunk and paged through the book, wondering what disease she had been studying. Then I called Dan. Even though I hated to admit being wrong, I knew I’d acted like a jerk. I needed to make it up to him. When his phone went straight to voicemail, I tried his home phone, too, but his mom said he was out. “Try his cell,” she said. When I told her I already had, she said, “Funny. I guess I thought he was with you.”
Next, I tried Miriam. This time, she picked up on the first ring. “Janine! It’s you! I’m so glad you called back.” I could tell she was flying high on the power of grassroots organization.
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