World Without You

by Joshua Henkin

  Immediately, the family was frozen out. Rumors were floated, the sources unnamed, that maybe Leo wasn’t as innocent as people had said. He’d violated journalists’ protocol; he’d wound up where he wasn’t supposed to be. Why, Noelle wonders, did these rumors surprise people? You slap the president in the face and he slaps you back. And she speaks as someone who voted for Bush, who sent in her absentee ballot from six thousand miles away. Her brother is dead—she still grieves for him—but Bush is the best friend Israel has ever had. She’s the one who has to live with the terrorist attacks, the sounds of katyusha rockets going off at night.

  Brain damage? Learning disabilities? In no time, Leo had outstripped her, as successful in his own way as Clarissa and Lily were in theirs. It was a relief to move to Israel; finally she wasn’t simply someone’s sister. She views the girl she was in high school with disapproval, but it’s a faint, abstract disapproval, as is the pity that accompanies it. She regards the sex the way she regards everything else. She wouldn’t deny it was her, but it doesn’t trouble her any longer.

  Across the aisle, Amram is flipping through a computer magazine. He’s in the software industry; at least he was until he lost his job. She still doesn’t know what happened—Amram won’t talk about it—but the specifics are almost beside the point. What happened is what always happens. Amram is smart, but he alienates people. Temperamentally, he’s meant to be the boss and he hasn’t accommodated to the fact that he isn’t the boss, so the real boss fires him. Noelle knows what people say behind Amram’s back. She feels embarrassed for him, and for herself as a result, but there’s nothing she can do about it. Amram is good-hearted and he’s misunderstood, but after this last firing she, too, has grown exasperated.

  It’s an unspoken lie in their marriage, perhaps the unspoken lie, that Amram’s salary supports them. His paycheck certainly helps, and Noelle is hardly in a position to complain; she brings home barely any money herself, working two mornings a week as a teacher’s aide, though she knows that if she were paid for raising their children, she would—or at least should—be well compensated. But their own situation is tinged with regret because her grandmother, Gretchen, gave each of the grandchildren a substantial sum of money when they turned twenty-five, and Noelle frittered hers away. Strangely, the regret comes principally from Amram, who didn’t even know Noelle when she was twenty-five. He spends considerable time talking about what they would have done with the money if only they’d gotten it a few years later. Because they didn’t, they’ve been forced to rely on Noelle’s parents for help, which humiliates Amram; he feels his masculinity is being impugned. He has become frugal to the point of unreason, deploying tricks to save money, when the real trick he’s playing is to convince himself he isn’t accepting help from his in-laws. He buys the cheaper brands of yogurt and cottage cheese, gets the lachmaniot in bulk though the bread becomes stale quickly, and having salved his conscience and saved a few shekels, he places the money he’s accumulated into a piggy bank that he hides beneath his and Noelle’s bed. Noelle finds this endearing and a little sad; her husband, thirty-eight years old, veteran of the Israeli army, has a piggy bank into which he places his shekel coins, thinking of this money as a vacation fund, what will send the family on a tiyul to the Negev, when what’s in there will likely cover gas money and little else.

  Yet at the same time, Amram will invest a thousand dollars in a company on a tip from a friend; he’ll shirk his responsibilities at work. Penny-wise and pound-foolish, the saying goes, but it’s more than that. Amram believes in reinventing himself. He has done this already by becoming religious, and he’s done it in other ways too, by shedding seventy-five pounds in a year only to gain the weight right back again. He believes in spectacular acts—miracles, essentially—not just by God but by man, and given the choice between caution and glory, he’ll choose glory any day. This is what has gotten him into trouble, and it’s what he and Noelle have been fighting about. Though they’ve promised themselves to stage a truce, for the sake of Leo’s memory, and for the sake of their vacation, which they’re hoping to enjoy.

  A flight attendant distributes wipes, and the boys shred the packets and wave the wipes in the air. Soon Yoni starts to shred the wipe itself before Noelle reaches over and stops him.

  Another flight attendant hands out customs forms, asking the passengers are they U.S. citizens, are they Israeli, and Akiva, proudly, says they’re both, to which the flight attendant says, “Well, someone’s double trouble,” and she hands Akiva the forms for the whole family.

  A voice announces, first in Hebrew, then in English, that the captain is beginning his descent; they should be touching down at Logan in forty-five minutes.

  “G’virotai v’rabotai,” Akiva mimics. “Ladies and gentlemen …”

  Yoni and Dov get into an argument about whose English is better, and then they’re on to the question of whether there are more Americans or Israelis on the plane, a subject about which they also disagree.

  “Come on, kids,” Amram says, “we’re almost there.”

  Noelle, to lend support, points out how well behaved everyone has been on the trip.

  “Ari didn’t even throw up,” Yoni says.

  “You see?” says Noelle, who in the cab to the airport had to mediate between the brothers, none of whom wanted to sit next to Ari, thinking he would vomit on their laps.

  At customs they get their visas stamped, and then they head over to the baggage carousel, which Yoni and Dov promptly mount. They ride around on it, pretending they’re luggage, until Amram insists they get off. Then they’re through the swinging doors and out into the terminal, where Noelle scans the crowd for her sisters.

  3

  “Jesus Christ!” Lily says. She’s standing in Logan waiting for Clarissa, who’s an hour late. She looks up at the arrivals screen above her head, but what’s the point: Clarissa and Nathaniel are coming by car. She waits a few minutes longer, then heads over to international to meet Noelle alone. She skips the automated walkway; she’ll get there faster on her own two feet. She cuts a striking figure, a pretty redhead in capri pants, threading her way between the travelers.

  She checks her voicemail and finds a message from Clarissa. She’s been waylaid, it seems. It’s hard to hear her sister over the voice of the P.A. telling travelers to pass to the left, stand to the right, issuing an endless loop of gate changes, but the upshot is clear: Clarissa won’t be making it to the airport; she’ll meet up with them at the house. I’m truly sorry, Clarissa says. You’ll have to strap those kids to the roof of the car. I love you, Lil. I owe you one.

  Lily mouths the words back—I love you—then presses on. Clarissa: her older sister, her best friend. She does love her, but right now she’s annoyed. Strap those kids to the roof of the car, indeed! Though even that won’t be sufficient. With Noelle and Amram and their four boys, with all the luggage and car seats (Lily and Malcolm’s friends are always transporting their car seats wherever they go—it’s as if they’re cabled to their arms), they’ll have to rent a car as well.

  Lily doesn’t know Noelle’s flight number—all Clarissa told her was the airline—and when she arrives at international, she looks up at the screen and sees multiple flights from Tel Aviv.

  Terrific, she thinks. Lovely.

  At information, she asks to place an announcement, but no sooner does she do so than she hears her name being called out—“Lily! Lily!”—like some clarion call from years ago. It’s Noelle, followed by Amram and their four boys, two of whom are sliding shoeless through the terminal. Another of them (The second? Lily thinks. The third? There are so many of them, and they’re so closely spaced, it’s hard to keep track) has gotten hold of Noelle’s pocketbook and is sifting through the contents.

  “Hello there,” Lily says, and she kisses Noelle on the cheek. Then she kisses her on the other cheek, in a show of gallantry, of Europeanism, she isn’t sure what. Mostly, she realizes, it’s a show of discomfort, because, Jesus, Noelle is
her sister, but the fact is they can’t stand each other, and when Lily feels uncomfortable she goes for high drama; histrionics is her point at rest.

  “Hello, Lily,” Amram says.

  Lily takes a step toward her brother-in-law. Then, remembering that Orthodox Jewish men don’t kiss women they’re not married to, she reaches out and shakes Amram’s hand. “How are you, Amram?”

  “I’m all right.” Amram looks warily at the crowd funneling past him.

  “You’re here,” she tells them.

  Amram nods. “Land of the free, home of the brave.”

  It looks to Lily as if Amram has put on weight, but she can’t be sure; he has always been fleshy-faced and heavyset. He’s standing next to Noelle with his hands behind his back, looking ahead expressionlessly, as if waiting to be instructed what to do and already resenting those instructions. He has blue eyes, and blond, thinning hair pasted to his head by a sheen of sweat, on top of which lies a black velvet yarmulke. His face is tinged with color as if he’s been exerting himself. He’s exhibiting what appears to be a willed calm.

  Lily trains her gaze on her four nephews, whom she hasn’t seen since Leo’s funeral. One by one, she takes them in a hug, and now she steps back, looking at Ari, the baby. Except he’s not a baby anymore. “My God.”

  “What?” says Noelle.

  “He looks so much like Leo.”

  “You think?”

  “It’s like I’ve been transported back thirty years.” Saying this, and looking at her nephew, Lily feels her throat constrict. It makes her soften for an instant, even toward Noelle. “Well, you made it.” She touches her sister on the sleeve. “Welcome home.”

  “Thanks,” Noelle says, and for an instant she seems less guarded, too.

  “How was your flight?” Lily asks.

  “It was long,” Dov says.

  “Twelve hours long,” says Yoni.

  “It felt more like twenty-four,” Akiva says, looking at his brothers in exasperation. Lily remembers this about him, the way, in his siblings’ presence, he assumes the pose of an adult.

  “Come here,” Lily says. “Let me have a look at you.” And now she’s crouching before her nephews in the middle of the terminal, two on one side, two on the other, her arms draped over them. “You probably don’t even remember me.”

  “Of course we remember you,” Akiva says. He elbows his brother in the ribs, who elbows another brother, and soon they’re all nodding, one after the other, like dominoes that have been toppled.

  They’re all blue-eyed and pale-faced, with delicate features: little Aryan Israelis, Lily thinks. What would the Nazis have made of this? Akiva, especially, is curious-seeming, as if absorbing some signal the world is sending out. Yoni, the second oldest, is slightly darker-complected, though he, too, has eyes the blue of quartz. All four of them look like they spend time in the sun; they appear remarkably healthy next to the other travelers wheeling their luggage into Wendy’s and Krispy Kreme and T.G.I. Friday’s and Sbarro. “So this is what the army does to you. It makes you handsome.”

  “Hush, you,” Noelle says. “The army, thank God, is years away.”

  “Seriously,” Lily says. “You could put these kids in commercials.”

  “Okay,” Noelle says. “That’s enough.” But she says it gently, and Lily can tell she’s secretly pleased.

  “What happened to Clarissa?” Amram asks. “Weren’t you supposed to meet up with her?”

  “She didn’t show,” Lily says.

  “What do you mean she didn’t show?”

  Lily shrugs. “She left me a message saying she’ll meet us at the house. Luckily, I brought the van.” Most of the time the van sits in the parking lot at Malcolm’s restaurant. He uses it to go on runs to the farmer’s market and the liquor wholesaler. But he won’t need it over the holiday, so Lily has commandeered it; she figures if she can’t bring Malcolm himself, she might as well bring his van. Still, she says, they’ll need to rent a car, too.

  Dov, meanwhile, has spotted someone eating an Auntie Anne’s Pretzel. He wants one, he announces. He wants a bagel as well and, while he’s at it, a slice of pizza, all of which requests his younger brother reminds him can’t be fulfilled because the food isn’t kosher.

  “Nothing in this country is kosher,” Dov says forlornly.

  “There are kosher restaurants in America,” Akiva says.

  “Not as many as in Israel,” says Yoni.

  “Let’s get going,” Noelle says. “It’s two and a half hours to Grandma and Grandpa’s house.”

  Amram has a suitcase in each hand and a duffel slung over his shoulder. The two older boys are wheeling suitcases themselves, which leaves the last suitcase and the car seats to Lily and Noelle, sister beside sister moving through the airport toward the rental car counter where they’ll divide forces, as Lily has suggested. Lily will take Noelle, the two older boys, and most of the luggage, and the two younger boys and the rest of the bags will go with Amram.

  Noelle puts down the car seats.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I got lipstick on you,” Noelle says. “It must have been when I kissed you.” She licks her forefinger, and now she’s putting the finger to Lily’s cheek, and when that doesn’t work she takes out a tissue and places it against her sister’s skin. And there Lily is, standing in the airport, and she feels as if she’s going to cry, the touch of Noelle’s hand to her face. Where is this feeling coming from? Always she finds herself caught unawares. And now Noelle is licking her finger again, telling her to hold still, and Lily does as she’s told, feeling her pulse flutter within her. She’s back to years ago, their parents taking them to the beach, the Pavlovian sound of the ice-cream truck, the four of them beside each other in the sand with their rainbow ice pops and chocolate malteds, the handing out of Wet Ones. Lily’s mother is wiping one of their mouths, and then it’s Noelle wiping Lily’s mouth, and Lily is wiping Clarissa, who’s wiping Leo, the four of them in a row the way Lily’s nephews are now, marching determinedly through the airport. Lily hears her mother’s voice, They’re like monkeys, David, pulling nits out of each other’s fur. They had been that, Lily thinks, hadn’t they—four little monkey?. And Noelle is saying, “There, I got it off,” and she’s telling Lily a story about synagogue, how you always know which prayer books have been in the women’s section because they’re the ones with the lipstick smudges across the page. But Lily hears only the outlines of this. She has her hand to her cheek, is saying “It’s off, right, the lipstick?” and now she realizes Malcolm’s van is still over in domestic, and so she tells Noelle she’ll go get it and drive over to rental car to retrieve them.

  Now, in the van, a quiet settles on them; Lily can sense they’re going to fight, or if not fight, then remain silent, which feels to her like its own sort of fighting. She and Malcolm don’t argue much, but when they do, there’s no place she’d like to be less than in the car, the endless hum of the tires, the rubber clicking over grate after grate. Noelle sits beside her in the passenger seat; the two older boys are in back. Noelle is wearing a yellow blouse and a denim skirt down to her ankles, and her hair is hidden beneath a kerchief.

  They pass Cambridge and Newton and are headed toward Worcester; it’s a straight shot west on the Massachusetts Pike. It’s four-thirty, and they’re supposed to be in Lenox for a seven o’clock dinner. They should get there on time if the traffic isn’t bad, but now the cars in front of them have stalled and a pickup truck is pulled over at the side of the road, an orange pylon flattened beneath it.

  It goes on like this for fifteen, twenty miles, the cars proceeding at their own haphazard pace, the vehicles moving slowly around a bend, swaying like beads on a necklace. They pass Framingham State College and they’re in Fayville now. To the sides of the road, the grass is lined with realtor signs and little American flags pitched into the ground. In the distance is a Red Rooster drive-through, with a giant-sized soft-serve vanilla ice-cream cone perched on top. A billboard r
eads, WHEN WORDS FAIL, MUSIC SPEAKS. The van in front of them says Kennedy Livestock. They pass telephone pole after telephone pole, all that wire running west. Lily glances over at Noelle, who wears a mystical, faraway look, as if wherever she’s been since Lily last saw her, she has left a part of herself. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “You could say, ‘How are you, Lily?’”

  “How are you, Lily?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Noelle is silent.

  “And how are you, Noelle?”

  “I’m fine, too.”

  Behind them, the boys have fallen asleep, each with his head pressed to the window, thumping against the glass as Lily accelerates, as she winds around the occasional bend. She turns on the radio and music comes through the speakers, bad music, she thinks, but at least there are other voices in the car.

  A Saab brakes in front of them with a bumper sticker that reads JESUS LOVES YOU BUT I’M HIS FAVORITE. A deer stands at the side of the turnpike, still as a signpost, looking at them so intently it’s as if he’s trying to make out their words.

  Presently the news comes on, and it’s bad news, of course. Lily lives in D.C., an entire city dedicated to making bad news and watching it spread like a disease. Right now, that disease is Iraq, where, the broadcaster announces, another car bomb has gone off. Two Americans were killed, and dozens of Iraqis. “Occupation, occupation,” Lily says glumly.

  “You better get used to it,” Noelle says.

  “I am used to it. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

  The car in front of them seems not to like it either: on its bumper is a sticker that says NO BLOOD FOR OIL.

  But when Noelle looks up at the sticker, she says, “That’s a stupid slogan.”