Make It Concrete

by Miryam Sivan

  “What are you doing out in this snow? I think there’s going to be a storm.” Leon ushered her in. He insisted on making her a cup of tea and wanted all her news. He knew a little about her life in Israel from another member of the childhood group. He told her about his three children. Two sons in the business. His daughter a high school English teacher. Seven grandchildren all together. His wife was well. In a few days they were off to Florida for three months.

  “How’s Suri? It’s been years since I’ve seen her.”

  “Good. She’s good. She’s with Hal, you know. He’s good to her. Leon, sorry for being so abrupt, I don’t have much time, but what can you tell me about Suri and Dave? About their marriage?” It was not easy for Isabel to ask, but maybe she was supposed to find Leon. For answers. Today. Now. On this trip. Another coincidence with meaning, no meaning.

  He smiled paternally. “Not much. But I think Dave felt driven out by Suri’s silence. By her war. She’s always so cheerful, so lovely, you know how she is. But she never talked about her childhood. Maybe that came between them.” Leon sat back in his chair.

  “Did Dave ever talk to you about it?”

  “No, not really.”

  “So he’s like her in some ways.”

  “You’re an only child, Isabel. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out there was distance between them. And then he moved away.”

  She went over to the large paned windows. The mighty Hudson was bullet grey and choppy. The storm approached. Could it be this? Sexual coldness? Caused by rape? Maybe Suri’s reserve was not about rape. Maybe it was just the accumulation of too much trauma. A simple numbers game. Too many childhood years without a protective love between herself and a staggeringly cruel world. Too much responsibility. Too much guilt about Shiya who died.

  “Why didn’t Dave share his family’s history with me?” Isabel tried another tack.

  “You know that Isabel’s been a name in the Toledo family for 400 hundred years? Isabel Toledo made the crossing from Holland to Curaçao.”

  “I know almost nothing about the Toledos.”

  “Odd.”

  “Dave was allergic to history. Global and apparently personal too.”

  Leon looked uncomfortable. But Isabel pressed on. “Did Suri know that Isabel Toledo is a name stretching back to Spain?”

  “I’m not sure she cared to know. Suri’s . . .”

  “At some point Dave gave up trying to make it all right for her?” It was rude to interrupt him but there was little time for formalities.

  “I think so. Maybe. I’m not sure, Isabel. I never talked to Dave about Suri. And she’s a very private person. Anyway, we’re not a generation of shrinks like yours. We just accept the cut and the scab.”

  He came over and put his arms around her.

  “Thank you, Leon,” Isabel whispered and sunk into his paternal embrace, somehow able to hold back a deluge of loss.

  We just accept the cut and the scab, Isabel repeated over and over in her mind as she continued southward. Snow fell all around her. One block after another. Flat bed of concrete. Curb. Step down. Asphalt street. Curb. Step up. Flat bed of concrete. Step after step. Curb down. Asphalt. Curb up. The flakes became so thick she could barely see two blocks ahead. She shook from the cold and pulled her scarf over her head. Her gloves were not warm enough and she dug her hands deeper into her pockets. She was not used to the East Coast’s cold anymore. She breathed heavily and the frosty air hurt her lungs.

  “Accepting the cut and the scab destroyed their marriage,” Isabel said out loud. Precisely what she did not do by moving to Israel, the new skin that grew around the scab. And ghostwriting was a deliberate reopening of the cut, a draining of pus and allowing the wound to heal properly so the system—mind, body, soul—did not become septic.

  Isabel walked towards Battery Park. The streets were increasingly empty and the sky a screen of old fashioned television fuzz. She saw silhouettes of buildings behind white floating particles. Then the ghost outlines of the Towers, like Klezmer music on an old Krakow street, rose before her. All that remained. Memories. Imprints in the air. In Poland, in Prague, in Lisbon and Toledo. Without being told, Isabel’s body always knew when it found itself on the streets of former European ghettos. Josefov. Jew Town. Juderia. And now, on the soil of the new world, she felt it again. Contours of containment. Violence. Injury. And soon enough right before her the buildings that should have been there but were not.

  Since Yamasaki’s towers were laid low Isabel had avoided coming this far downtown. She had enough sites of terrorism back home. But here she was on the Family Viewing Platform awed by the size and scale of the Freedom Tower’s construction project. 200-foot-tall cranes filled the pit. A cluster of tractors, some with shovels, some with cups, some with spikes, moved back and forth like dancing bugs. Candy striped concrete mixers rolled in by the dozen. Crews of thousands were employed. Heavy equipment was contracted by the year. Materials ordered by the millions of feet and cube. Documentation, construction and contractual, filled bookcases, filled rooms.

  Snow gathered into a soft blanket on her body. Isabel could almost see the Towers’ shapes for she remembered them as one would a personality. Though a palimpsest of disjointed events broke the narrative thread of her life, buried beneath it all, seeping upward as teeth pushed forward in a mouth, was the plot line of a New York childhood.

  She took a long shallow breath of cold air. And this plotline included the Twin Towers. When Windows on the World opened in 1976, Dave took her and Suri there for lunch. At sixteen not only was Isabel bored by any outing with the parents when she could be with friends in Central Park or the East Village, but she was too nauseous to eat. The steel, designed not to resist air currents on the 106th floor, swayed up to eight inches in high winds. The steel was also designed to withstand the impact of a small airplane which its designers thought could happen accidentally. No one anticipated the shock and heat of two enormous jet planes with loaded fuel tanks crashing into the structures. Yet when this happened twenty-five years later the steel sheered.

  Isabel remembered the day. The hour. The minute that it happened. Four p.m. local time. She had gone to pick up Yael from a friend on the other side of town. The friend’s mother held a cell phone against her ear. “I don’t believe what my husband’s saying,” she turned to Isabel. “A plane crashed into the Twins.” They rushed to turn on the television and watched the second plane fly into the South Tower. It took Isabel two days to get through to Suri.

  She remembered how clean up began as soon as the earth cooled. In Israel too one day’s terrorist site was tomorrow’s regular bus stop. All traces of terror wiped away with alarming speed and efficiency. And the land where the Towers once stood worth so much that of course construction commenced as soon as possible. Landlords, insurance companies, tenants, all focused and proud to be part of the reclamation of the air space of lower Manhattan. Only the smaller reconstructions experienced delays. Fallout from emotional and psychological landscapes not so easily cleaned up. Parents who never returned home. Parents frozen in bereavement for incinerated children. Spouses and mates clutching threads of last words. Friends left hanging. Bosses, colleagues, employers, employees vanished without graves. Reduced to white bone and ash.

  Isabel plunged her hand into her handbag and wrapped her fingers around Jaim Benjamin’s key. Keys from Spain. Keys from Poland. Keys from Germany. Keys from Russia, Ukraine, Paris, Rome. Keys from Palestine. Keys of refugees all over the world. Isabel closed her eyes. How much easier to destroy than to build. She tightened her grip on Jaim Benjamin’s key from Seville. At this moment thousands of people in and around New York City were in possession of keys to apartments, offices, mailboxes, personal safes, closets, desks, elevator shafts, electrical boxes, plumbing stations, sprinkler systems, fire boxes, boiler rooms, cars, vans, motorcycles, bicycle locks, trucks and fork lifts that no longer exi
sted. Relics of the phantom towers.

  The Stairs

  1

  When Isabel got home from the airport she found Alon, Lia, and Uri cooking dinner.

  “Hope it’s okay.” Alon opened the door. “Uri was with me all day. I missed Lia so I came into the house when I brought him home. We got to talking. She asked me to stay for dinner.”

  “No problem. Everything okay at home?” Isabel usually didn’t ask Alon about his relationship. It wasn’t a tender issue any more, no, that was long over. Still she was not especially interested in hearing about Hila, the divorcee with two children and a dog, whose kibbutz apartment Alon moved into two months after he left their home here in town.

  Molly pointed out that Isabel had basically told Alon to pack his things and leave. That Isabel had no right to dictate to him how long he needed to wait until he began a new relationship. Not true, Isabel countered. In fact it was Alon who huffed and puffed his way out of their home. Isabel wanted to go to marriage counselling. She wanted to give it more time. Uri was a baby. And while Isabel might not have had a right to tell him when to start a new live-in relationship, she certainly could have an opinion about it, especially since their children spent time in his new domicile. But that was years ago and everyone had mellowed since.

  “Everything’s fine. Hila and the kids are in Zurich visiting family.”

  “Nice.”

  “Dad, Mom,” Lia called out. “Chow time.”

  “You go on,” Isabel said. “I want to shower first.”

  It was a little surreal when she came downstairs and there they were. The happy family. But hell why not. Alon and Isabel had such great love once. And she loved him still in so many ways. And the children, yes, for their sake, a lot.

  “I want to take Uri to the desert over the Hanukah break.” Alon made himself a sandwich thick with avocado.

  “Sure, but only after the class party. That’s happening here.”

  “Here?” Uri asked astonished.

  “Yes, I told Idit. You’d like that?”

  “I love that!” Uri beamed.

  The doorbell rang. Uri ran for the door and returned with Emanuel. Isabel didn’t recall telling him to come now. But she must have. He didn’t usually come on his own. The men were polite, just a little awkward with one another.

  “I’m going to the desert over Hanukah,” Uri announced.

  “Anna and Eva will be here then. Maybe we’ll join you.”

  “With Alon,” Isabel added.

  “So?” Alon asked. “Be great for us all to go. You too Isabel. Get you away from your desk.”

  “We’ll see. Meantime all I’m thinking about is my bed. I didn’t sleep on the plane.”

  “I’m off.” Alon gave Lia a big hug and kiss. He gave Uri a big hug and kiss. He gave Isabel a small kiss on the cheek and shook Emanuel’s hand. He sailed out of the house they had built together. But they were over that. Old news.

  “It was strange with Alon,” Isabel said to Emanuel when they were in bed. She wanted to sleep so much but wanted to feel connected to him too. The time in New York was good for them. She had missed him.

  He hugged her. Kissed her hair. “I missed you. And yes it was a bit strange with Alon.”

  “I didn’t know he’d be here . . . I missed you, too.” Isabel couldn’t control her eyes closing. Her body sank into sleep.

  ✶

  “Beautiful, huh?”

  “I love them.” Isabel fingered the cherry wood front doors of the Winkler house. “So smooth. What a gorgeous crimson grain.”

  “Crimson grain. Sexy description.”

  She laughed.

  “Come upstairs. Something else to show you.”

  Isabel followed Zakhi into the Winklers’ master bathroom. The elegant glass block wall was in and muted light filled the room. The porcelain white fixtures were in. Even the shower doors were waiting for their new owners.

  “This steam apparatus was installed yesterday. System needs to be tested.”

  “Imagine your crew taking steam baths.”

  “Imagine us.” Zakhi’s white teeth sparkled.

  She laughed some more, adoring that they were really just playmates. Love was for grown-ups. “Naughty boy.” She wagged her finger at him.

  He grinned greedily and trailed behind her as she walked the house to admire the finishes that had been completed since she last visited. Doors, windows, cabinets, fixtures. The house finally closed to the elements.

  “Great ass,” Zakhi said when she led the way into the living room.

  “Great house. Looks pretty much done to me.”

  “Almost. Next week the painter comes in to lay a soft and final touch on it all.”

  “Get a load of these cabinets.” Isabel opened the Scandinavian-style doors in the kitchen.

  “Put in a couple days ago.” Zakhi was proud of the work.

  “Wow.” She pulled out the pantry’s stainless steel hardware.

  “Retractable. State-of-the-art.”

  “This house is amazing.” She spun the corner cupboard’s carousal and watched it gently settle back into place.

  “I missed you.” Zakhi drew his arms around her.

  “I missed you too.”

  He kissed her full on the mouth. “How’d it go with Jaim?”

  “The book part, excellent.”

  “What other part was there? A date?”

  Isabel looked at him. A crooked smile on her face. Was he serious?

  “Sort of. He asked me to do something for him.”

  “It’s none of my business, Isabel, but aren’t you wasted on old men?”

  “Stop it.” She laughed and sat down on the Great Room’s floor even though it was covered in dust, plaster, bits of wood. “Not everything’s about sex.”

  “Not everything, you’re right.” Zakhi laid down beside her. “Just about everything.”

  “Jaim took me to these old cemeteries right there in the middle of Manhattan. Spanish Jews.” She looked out through the large glass doors. Beyond the patio, the mountain framed the valley. Broccoli and tomatoes filled the fields. “He . . .”

  “. . . wants you to write about Spain.”

  “Yeah.”

  Zakhi rolled up from the floor and paced the room dramatically. “Your date with history, sweetheart. Listen carefully: My heart is in the East and I am in the far West. How can I taste what I eat and how can I enjoy it? How will I fulfill my oaths and vows while Zion is in Edom’s snare and I in Arabia’s chains?” He paused theatrically in front of the glass doors as if they were a painted backdrop. “Rabbi, poet Yehuda HaLevi finally made his way to Jerusalem from Toledo, if I remember correctly, in the 12th century. One legend has it he was trampled to death by a horseman outside the gates of the city. Another that his boat set sail from Alexandria and never made it to the Promised Land.”

  Zakhi strode around the room as if it were a stage. “Or maybe, dearest, you prefer Shlomo Ibn Gavirol from Malaga. Poet famous for his lamentations. Or Rambam, mighty Moses ben Maimon from Cordoba, physician, philosopher, genius. And let’s not forget the lesser known but highly poetic Samuel Usque.” He stopped moving and crouched next to Isabel. Consolations for the Tribulations of Israel written in Portuguese when he was already in exile in Italy, just about the time our favorite Kabbalists fled the Inquisitors and set up shop here in Tzfat. Sixteenth century Altneu-Age Judaism in the Galilee. Oh Europe, O Spain hypocritical, cruel and lupine, raging wolves have been devouring my woolly flock within you . . .”

  “How do you know all this?” This clever sexy as hell yeshiva-bocher in construction clothes had her bewitched. As usual.

  “Tisha B’Av’s a general mourning fest, dear heart. You were not raised religious and don’t know that a whole day is set aside for an all-out lamentation-slam. Not just for the hol
y Temples in holy Jerusalem. Those you know about. But for the blood libels of England, 12th century. The burning of Talmuds in France, 13th century. The brutal Crusades, 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries. And the Holocaust of the 20th century. Spain and the Expulsion, in the 16th, the loss of some of the greatest Jewish minds ever, is a live and pressing wound in the Orthodox cult of memory.” He sat down beside her and took her arm in his, held it up, kissed it from fingertips to shoulder. “The Inquisition, the Expulsion, avoid it like the plague, Isabel.”

  “From Toledo.”

  “I know, double reason to tell your Spanish survivor to leave you alone.”

  Isabel stretched out on the dusty floor and stared at the high ceiling. “Jaim gave me the key to his family’s house in Seville.”

  “Oh no.” Zakhi paused. “I’ll go with you if you want. To Rambam’s house in Cordoba. Even to Toledo.” He sounded serious.

  “I didn’t promise Jaim anything. I took the key and told him I’d think about it.” She stood leaving an angel imprint on the floor. “But I dreamt about being in Spain last night. I was on a dark street.”

  “Which means?”

  “Don’t know. Should I go or avoid it like you said?”

  “An uninterpreted dream is like a letter never opened.” Zakhi stood and came to her.

  Isabel put her palm against his smooth cheek. “Yes, rabbi.”

  “Yes.” He leaned in closer.

  Usually when rabbis’ words fell off the tip of the same tongue that during sex went deep inside her, she turned on. But now they made her sad for they dragged a throbbing ‘no’ in their wake. She felt the perimeter fence of their relationship. Isabel stared back into Zakhi’s face. “You can open my letter any time,” she said keeping it light and playful. Those were the rules of the game.

  Zakhi laughed and kissed her again.

  “I’ve got to go. Almost at the deadline. The book will be off my desk real soon.”

  Isabel pulled away and blew Zakhi a kiss. She practically ran to the door to get away as fast as possible. She had nearly sunk there in the quicksand of desire.