The Egyptian clerk eyed her as he stamped her passport with a two-week visa, and she smiled and thanked him in Arabic. She gazed over her shoulder at the familiar skyline of Eilat, the hotels ablaze in the morning sun, an orange flame caught in each window. She looked past the Egyptian terminal, to where Bedouin taxi drivers leaned against their dusty station wagons, waiting to take her where she wanted to go.
WARPLANES
On the way home from school, three warplanes slice the sky, leaving a trail of chalk across the blue as they head north. Orli squints and cups her hand over her eyes. “F-15s again,” she says, disappointed. Her dad flies F-16s.
I glance up, say nothing. We’ve been watching warplanes all summer long.
When we get to my building, we throw our school bags on the lawn outside. It’s September and everything seems tired and dull, sucked dry by summer. The grass is yellow and sparse, speckled with patches of cracked earth. Orli ties her hair into a bun, pulls a deck of cards from her bag and shows off her shuffling skills.
“I think it’s going to rain,” she says.
“But it never rains before Rosh Hashanah,” I say. The air does feel heavy with moisture; it’s like being draped in a sheet just out of a washing machine. I pull a card from the pile and discard it, then change my mind and take it back.
“You can’t do that,” Orli says. “Once the card is down, it’s down.”
“You don’t get to make the rules,” I say.
“They’re not my rules.”
I put my cards down and get up, brush the grass off my jeans. “I changed my mind,” I say. “I have to go in.”
I skip up the stairs two at a time to the second floor, open the door and yell, “I’m home.”
Mom says, “Don’t leave your bag by the door. Every day I have to pick up after you.”
I drop my bag in my room and go into the living room. I turn on the TV. News. Since the war started they break for news all the time, interrupting shows I love, like Little House on the Prairie. On the screen a guy from parliament is saying, “This war is leading Israel into an abyss!” and other members of parliament start yelling at him and waving their hands. I turn off the TV and head to the kitchen. Mom stands by the stove, staring into a pot. She wipes her hands on a towel and sits down at the Formica table to read the paper. I read over her shoulder. The front page headline is a big black box with white letters. Black on the front page means many soldiers died in Lebanon. Red is usually some sort of murder. A bad car accident can go either way. If someone dies from a heart attack or a disease, they put it in the obituaries in the back, in little squares with black frames. That’s where they had my dad’s obituary last spring, next to one sponsored by the factory where he worked that said, “To Sara and family, with you in your grief over the loss of your husband and father.” The front of the paper that day had a big black headline with a picture of an artillery officer who was blown up by a land mine in Lebanon.
The day my father died I called Orli. I was crying really hard, so at first she couldn’t understand me. She came over and took me outside because our apartment was full of people talking and praying, and women carrying steaming Pyrex dishes. We walked on the neighbours’ fence, and I laughed when I lost my balance and almost fell down. Later, I overheard my aunt telling my mom that she had seen me laughing, and that it was inappropriate.
Other things that are inappropriate when your father dies: going to weddings or bar mitzvahs, dressing up all fancy, listening to music really loud, thinking about boys, having fun of any kind.
I get bored with the paper, so I walk over to the counter. There’s a plate of schnitzels by the stove, layered on top of a paper towel. I touch one, and Mom says, without turning her head, “Don’t.”
“I’m hungry,” I say.
“It’s not ready yet.”
“It looks ready.”
Mom doesn’t answer, just flips a page in her newspaper.
She wasn’t always like this. Before Dad got sick we talked about things. Sometimes after ballet class she took me for ice cream, and once we drove all the way to Tel Aviv for no reason and had milkshakes on a terrace overlooking the sea. On the way back the roads were empty and we hit a green wave on Jabutinsky, the traffic lights turning in our favour one after the other. Mom rolled down the windows and cranked the radio way up, and we sang at the top of our lungs until my throat got scratchy.
Now, days can pass and the only things she’ll say to me are, “Don’t touch that,” “Dinner is ready,” “I need you to get milk from the store.” And it’s not like I don’t try to get her attention. I sit in the kitchen while she cooks, follow her around while she does laundry or cleans. Once, I told her I thought I was in love with Amir from my class. I thought it was pretty big news. Silence. Another time I asked, “Ima, do you believe in God?” because I had started to have my doubts. Nothing.
Instead, she makes other kinds of noise. She digs in the pots and pans drawer really loudly, for a long time, like she just can’t find the right pan, or bumps the broom into the walls when she sweeps, or drags chairs on the floor instead of lifting them. When I still believed in God, I used to make deals with him to bring Dad back. I promised I wouldn’t watch TV on Shabbat, mix dairy and meat behind Mom’s back, or steal money from her purse. When that didn’t work, I offered up Mom. If I had to have one parent, I wanted one who saw me.
Now I don’t bother talking to God. I was hanging out in the empty lot behind our house one day soon after Dad died. The shiva was over. People stopped coming, life went on. I was angry at everyone. Especially God. I threw cans into the abandoned house at the edge of the lot, ripped weeds from the ground and kicked stones. Then I said aloud, “God is an asshole.” I looked up but nothing happened, and I saw that the sky was just a sky, and there was nothing there, just clouds and planes.
I walk to my room, slam the door and turn the radio on loud to listen to the top ten chart on Reshet Gimel, but it’s the news again. The anchor is reading in a very serious voice, “Captain David Yehu, Sergeant Gal Bergman, Lieutenant David Abutbul.” One time last year I actually heard Meirav’s dad’s name on the list. The next day at school, the teacher told us what happened. It was a big deal when he died, because he was a war hero, so they wrote about him in the paper and had a special ceremony in the community centre with a big picture of him, like a fold-out poster from a teen magazine. Unlike regular people, who get buried covered in a white sheet, Meirav’s dad got buried in a coffin, in the cemetery’s army lot, which looks like a garden, with flowers and trees. My father’s lot is all stone. Meirav’s family got lots of money because they were now a bereaved Israeli Defense Forces family, and the kids were IDF orphans. IDF orphans get to go to a special camp every summer in a nice kibbutz by the beach, with lawns, a pool and a water park, and cool activities like a makeup-for-film workshop and flamenco dancing, all paid for by the army. I wish my father had died in the army instead of in a hospital. There is no Remembrance Day for people who died of a weak heart.
The teacher made us go to the shiva at Meirav’s house, and afterwards Orli and I walked home and Orli was quiet the whole way. It was already dark. You could hear people’s TVs playing the opening jingle for the evening news. We sat on the fence by her house and she said, “You know, I’m scared about my dad, too.” Her eyes were pink and wet. I just sat there and stared at my sneakers, and I thought I should hug her but I couldn’t. I was frozen.
In the afternoon, Orli comes knocking on my door and suggests we go for a walk to Fege, a neighbourhood pretty far from where we live. She threads a token for the pay phone on my shoelace in case of an emergency. Orli always has one because her mother doesn’t come home from work until four.
I grab my hoodie and tie it around my waist, and meet Orli in the parking lot.
“You told your mom?” Orli asks.
“She’s napping,” I say. “Besides, she won’t mind.” My mom likes Orli. She thinks she’s a good influence.
We
walk for a long time. Orli has some money, so she buys us chocolate milk in plastic bags and we puncture holes in them with our teeth and suck on the plastic, letting the bags hang between our lips. We talk about school and gossip about our teachers and classmates. Halfway to Fege, it starts smelling like the bomb shelter in our building, which is always damp and dusty. We look up and it starts to rain, a cloud bursting over our heads. Everything turns dark, as if someone flicked off the light switch. The asphalt is shiny and wet like a giant dead fish, and we have to hop over puddles on the sidewalks. On the sides of the road, rivers flow, full of leaves and plastic bags and candy wrappers. We start laughing, running until we make it to the nearest apartment building and take shelter in the lobby. We sit on the marble floor next to a row of metal mailboxes and a big fake palm tree and wait for the rain to stop. Inside the lobby it’s quiet and cool, and even the smallest sound has an echo. Every now and then people come in, shake their umbrellas and let them drip on the floor while they check their mail. They glance at us and then go upstairs to their apartments, the echo of their footsteps fading away. Nobody asks us anything. Only one older lady smiles and says in a thick Russian accent, “Guess summer is over, eh?” and Orli says, “Guess so.”
A young soldier walks by us without checking the mail. He’s wearing a khaki uniform and his gun dangles behind him. There are two lines sewn on his sleeves. Orli follows him with her gaze, and once he’s gone she says, “Corporal, engineering corps.”
Orli knows all the different ranks and units in the army. She says the air force is the best, then the navy and the ones with coloured caps, like paratroopers, who also have red boots to match their caps, and then the artillery corps and armoured corps. Orli’s entire family is in the air force, even her mother was a secretary in the air force during her army service, which is where her parents met. Orli’s father is a major and has a profile of ninety-seven, which is the highest medical rating and determines your suitability for fighting. My dad only scored sixty-four. He had a weak heart and thick eyeglasses. He served in the signal corps.
My dad once took Orli and me to the movies at Shalom Cinema and later to a café on Hertzel Street, where we sat at a table on the sidewalk and shared hummus and fries and falafel. When he ordered for us he said, “The lovely young ladies would like some Coke, please.” He asked our opinions of the movie and talked to us like we were grown-ups, and he was really interested in what we had to say. Afterwards Orli said I was lucky that my dad was around. I only met Orli’s dad once. He was wearing a grey uniform, all decorated with glinting pins on his chest and some round buttons on his shoulders. He picked Orli up and spun her around and didn’t even say hello to me.
Orli is braiding her hair in neat little braids. I find a pen in my pocket and start drawing hearts on my jeans. The marble starts to feel cold on my bum.
“Aren’t you cold?” I ask.
“No.”
“How come you didn’t bring a hoodie?”
“I’m not cold.”
“I don’t believe you,” I say.
“You think I want to suffer?”
“I think you like to show off, like you’re tough or something.”
Orli rolls her eyes at me but says nothing, just keeps braiding her hair.
A teenage boy with acne on his forehead and a skateboard walks by and looks at us. He lingers by the mailboxes and keeps glancing at us. Orli and I smile at each other. I think he’s going to talk to us, but then he just skips up the stairs to his apartment.
“You want to know a secret?” Orli says.
I nod.
“Amir asked Dalit to be his girlfriend.”
I press the pen into my jeans until the tip pokes through the fabric. “When?”
“Friday at the party.”
I press harder. I can feel the pen jabbing my skin.
“When are you going to come to parties again?” Orli says.
I shrug.
“You should come next week. Danny is having one at his house. There’s going to be a DJ.”
“I’m not allowed to go to parties,” I say. “You’re supposed to wait a year according to the Torah.”
“A whole year?”
I shrug.
“We miss you,” Orli says. “I miss you.”
I stare at the floor between my legs. Suddenly I have tears in my eyes. They burst out all at once. I pull the hood over my head so Orli won’t see them.
“Are you upset?” she says.
“No.”
“You can tell me if you’re upset.”
“I’m not upset!” I yell.
“Why are you yelling at me?”
“Why don’t you just shut up and leave me alone?”
Orli stands up. “Fine. I’m tired of defending you anyway.”
“Defending me?” I snort.
“Yeah, everyone says you’ve been weird since your father died. Even Meirav is not acting like this and her father was a hero.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” I stand up and push Orli out of the way and run outside. By the time I get to the pay phone I am soaked again, my face wet. I take the token off my shoelace and call my mother to ask her to come get me, but the phone rings and rings. I sit on the dirty floor of the phone booth. I can’t see through the condensation on the glass or hear anything through the rain pounding on the booth. I feel like I’m in an aquarium. I wonder if this is what it feels like to be dead. Shut in and all alone. At first my heart beats fast, but then I lean my head against the cool wall and watch the glare of the traffic lights through the steamed-up glass; it’s beautiful, how it paints everything green, then orange, then red, then green again. I start to feel quiet and a little sleepy. I almost don’t want the rain to end. I stay in the booth even after the rain slows down to a drizzle and finally stops. I wipe a window with my sleeve and look out. The street looks different now—new, as if the rain injected fluid into its veins. The sky is the colour of peaches and blood oranges.
Up high, two warplanes fly north and disappear behind trees.
THE BEST PLACE ON EARTH
The plane started its descent, and Naomi looked out the window at the dramatic patchwork of land and water. Vancouver was as blue as Jerusalem was golden. The only other time she’d visited her younger sister, ten years ago with Ami, she had been stunned by that view. They had been happy then, married for five years, their first time away from three-year-old Ben, whom they had left with Ami’s brother and family. Ami had given her the window seat, and as he had leaned over her to look out, Naomi had squeezed his hand on her thigh. Now, as she watched the neat rows of boxes on the ground, the toy cars zipping on the highways, the buildings like Monopoly pieces she could crush with gigantic feet, the beauty of the city—like a mass-produced postcard—was lost on her. She pressed her forehead against the cool window, feeling alone, missing him.
Only four weeks ago, they had been sitting in their living room, as they did every evening, watching a romantic comedy she had picked up on the way home from work. Street lights filtered through the arched living room windows, and the evening fell over Jerusalem like warm syrup drizzled over baklava. Naomi had made tea, brought out a plate of cookies. She lay across the couch, rubbing her feet together while Ami sat in the reclining chair, his legs in a diamond shape.
Not long into the movie, the character of the husband came back from a business trip and said to his wife, “I’m afraid you’re going to leave me. I slept with someone else.” Naomi peeked over at Ami like she did sometimes when they watched movies together, searching for the comfort in his shared reaction, and saw that her husband was wearing the wrong expression, one suitable for a horror film, perhaps. Her heart plunged into her stomach like a dead bird.
“Babe?” Her voice gave, got tangled with her breath.
When he finally turned to look at her, his eyes gleamed like two murky puddles.
“Oh dear,” he said, and started crying.
Her sister sounded surprised w
hen Naomi called to say she was thinking of visiting her on Hornby Island. Without Ami. Without the kids. “Is everything okay?” Tamar said.
“Yes,” Naomi said, putting on a cheerful voice. “I just need a vacation. I miss you.”
She didn’t want to tell Tamar over the phone. She could hardly bring herself to tell her friends. She had lied to the kids too, telling them their father was on a business trip, when in fact he was sleeping on the rickety futon in his brother’s living room, a few blocks away.
They hadn’t spoken since she kicked him out; Naomi refused his calls, ignored his emails. Every day, as she drove by his brother’s house on her way to work, she found herself—against her better judgment—searching for his lean frame, his confident stride, his short curls. At the same time she dreaded seeing him, afraid to awaken the part of her that wanted to stop the car and run to him sobbing, seeking comfort from her best friend.
In the evenings, as she came home from work—the jiggle of her keys in the lock echoing in the empty house—she was greeted by musty, stagnant air. The boys were out for hours at a time, busy with their soccer games, boy scouts, summer camp. She found herself saving her daily anecdotes and observations for Ami, and then watching them go stale like leftover food in the fridge.
One evening the toilet wouldn’t stop flushing, and Naomi stood over it, staring at the innards of the tank, perplexed. She grabbed the phone and held it for a while before putting it down. In the car, she didn’t know how to check the oil or water. She had always thought of herself as a modern woman. She worked and kept house; she was the one in charge of the finances. Her mother hadn’t even had her own bank account.
As a teenager, Naomi had been angry at her mother for turning a blind eye to her father’s affairs. But perhaps her mother’s quiet resignation was better than the fights Naomi and Tamar had witnessed as children. Back then, there had been tears and yelling, slammed doors, and once a cloud of smoke Naomi had seen from afar, as she walked home from school. “Someone’s house is on fire,” her friends had yelled, and they all ran, until they were close enough and Naomi realized it was coming from her own house. Her friends stood in a row, giggling and shoving each other as they watched her mother throwing her dad’s clothes into the firepit in their front yard.
The Best Place on Earth Page 18
