by Judith Frank
Now Matt nodded warily. He knew that if Daniel couldn’t have this conversation with him, he couldn’t have it at all. He reached for Daniel’s shoe, removed it, and took his foot into his hands, began massaging it gently over the sock.
“When my dad started talking about how innocent Joel and Ilana were . . . I mean, they were innocent. But you know what I mean. . . .”
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it. That whole innocence thing,” Matt mused. “It kills me.” His lip curled a little. “Your dad—you know, he was just doing his thing, he’s devastated. But do you think anyone ever called Jay innocent when he died?”
Daniel snorted.
Matt’s hands stopped.
“Don’t stop,” Daniel said. He opened his eyes. “What?”
Matt’s eyes were blinking very rapidly, and his lips were pressed together.
“It’s not the same thing,” Daniel said.
Anger wormed into Matt’s throat. Daniel’s tone was so final and derisive. He sat still, fuming, and Daniel propped himself up on his elbow.
“Oh, come on, Matt,” he said, incredulous. “It’s not.”
“Why?” Matt asked. “Because Jay was just fucking without a condom, while your brother was heroically drinking a latte?”
That stunned them both into silence. Then Daniel scrambled back into a sitting position and shouted, “Go to hell!” He glanced in the direction of the kitchen, where his parents were sitting, and lowered his voice to a vicious whisper. “Go to hell! I knew I couldn’t talk to you!”
“You can talk to me,” Matt cried. “Just don’t insult my friend! Why do you have to insult him? I know you think he was just a silly queen, but he was a good person, Dan.” He sat on the couch, his chest heaving, ashamed that he had insulted his partner’s dead brother, and yet so hurt and furious he couldn’t help it. For some reason, he remembered going to the movies with Jay, and how Jay always made Matt be absolutely quiet—not even a whisper or a snide comment here and there—even though when they’d watch TV together they could talk as much as they wanted. It was a rule. Jay hadn’t had any long-term relationships till Kendrick, and he wasn’t a breeder, and he didn’t live in a majestic holy city at the center of a world-historical conflict. But did that make him unimportant? And why did Daniel have to be such a huge homophobe?
“This isn’t about Jay! This isn’t about you!” Daniel hissed.
But it had an impact on him! How could he say that? Just then the door slid open and Gal came in. She was chewing on a piece of bread wadded in her hand, and wore a bead necklace around her neck. The hair around her face had been pulled back and tied with a fancy hair band, clearly Gabrielle’s work. She looked at them curiously as they quickly wiped their eyes and tried to compose their faces.
“Hey, Boo,” Matt said, his voice hoarse. “Did you play with beads at Leora’s?”
“Yeah,” she said faintly, being cooperative with an interrogating adult while she eyed Daniel, who had turned his back to them and was wiping his eyes with his forearms. “Why Uncle Dani crying?” she asked.
Matt looked at Daniel. “He’s sad,” he told her. “He misses your ema and abba.” He hoped it was okay to bring it up when she was having a break from mourning.
She shot Daniel a suspicious look, then backed up till she was standing against the doorjamb. “Why did the bad man hate the Jews?” she asked.
Daniel looked at Matt sharply and sat down beside him. “Who told you that?” he asked.
“Savta.”
Matt waited, bitter mirth surfacing in his nose and sinuses; this one was so up to Daniel.
“Some Arabs hate the Jews,” Daniel said, clearing his throat, “because when the Jews came to Israel, they lived on land that the Arabs say was theirs.”
“Was it theirs?”
“Lots of it was,” Daniel said. “The Israelis and the Arabs are not good at sharing.”
She considered this. Then she asked, without looking at Daniel, “Is that why he killed Ema and Abba? Did they live on his land?”
Daniel and Matt looked at each other, eyes still, minds racing.
“No,” Daniel said, “they didn’t. He was just a very bad, angry man.”
Gal gnawed off another piece of bread. “Leora’s scared of taking a shower by herself,” she reported to Daniel in Hebrew.
“Really? How come?” he asked, shrugging at Matt when her eyes darted away for a moment.
“She’s afraid that water will go up her nose. She doesn’t know how to breathe through her mouth,” Gal said, and slipped out of the room.
Daniel and Matt sat there, looking at each other stupidly, until Matt rose and slid the door shut. “That was pretty lame,” he said. “We better get our story straight.”
Daniel laughed a little, and sighed a wide-eyed, shuddery sigh.
“I liked the part about the Jews and the Arabs not being good at sharing,” Matt said, and when Daniel looked sharply at him, he protested, “No, really, I’m serious. What did she say there at the end?”
Daniel told him about Leora’s fear of the shower, and they shrugged and laughed.
Matt snuck his hand onto Daniel’s knee and pressed lightly. When Daniel looked into his face, his eyes were bright and intense. “Dan,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
Daniel breathed in and then out again, his breath like a small parcel he was picking up and putting down. He wasn’t sure what Matt was saying—whether he was apologizing for what he’d said or just expressing general sorrow about the whole sad situation. And he did not forgive him. But it was hard, because Matt looked beautiful as feeling suffused his face and lent radiance to his eyes and mouth, and because, for better or for worse, he was the safest harbor Daniel knew.
Daniel got up to wash his face. Gal had gone into Joel and Ilana’s room with his parents; a low TV sound came from behind the closed door. He swallowed a few sleeping pills. When he returned to the bedroom, Matt had opened up the bed. Daniel took off his pants and shirt, crawled under the covers in his underwear, and turned his face to the wall.
LYDIA EMERGED FROM BEHIND that closed bedroom door the next morning with her eyes red and her mouth set, and told Daniel that she was working very hard to accept that Ilana hadn’t trusted her to raise the children. When Daniel opened his mouth to protest for the hundredth time that it wasn’t just Ilana, she held up her hand and stopped him. “I’m trying to accept it,” she said firmly. “She was entitled to her opinion.” She heaved a great sigh. “And that’s all I want to say.”
It rankled, but he decided to let it go. He told himself that she had lost her son and was coping with this renewed injury, trying to be a big person the best way she could.
As it became clear that it would take at least three months for the custody issue to be worked out, Matt began making plans to go home. Daniel would stay for the duration; he’d have to meet with a caseworker and appear in court, probably several times. He had talked at length with his boss, and they’d worked out an arrangement where he could continue doing most of his story meetings and editing by telephone and email, at least through the next issue of the magazine. He found out that he could rent a cell phone on a monthly basis, and miraculously, Matt, who’d initially decided not to haul along Daniel’s laptop, changed his mind on an impulse and grabbed it on their way out of the house. “What made you think to do that?” Daniel asked when Matt pulled it—voilà!—out of the closet.
“I don’t know!” Matt exclaimed, basking for a moment in being the hero. “I just grabbed everything that I thought might help.”
Gradually, a semblance of normalcy settled over the family. In private, they would be shaving or brushing their teeth when their knees would buckle, and they would cry out. Each time it shocked them, to be so thoroughly felled. Joel and Ilana came in and out of their dreams, stunned and bleeding and weeping and begging for help, or miraculously alive and wondering what the fuss was all about. In Daniel’s dreams he swept past the yellow police tape and the authorities tal
king into crackling walkie-talkies and the black-coated Chevra Kadisha brushing little scraps of blood and tissue into small plastic bags, into the ruined and burning café, stepping on glass and blood, straining so hard to see his brother through the smoke that he finally did, his enormous effort making the air crystallize into the shape of his brother. He often came out of those dreams when Gal stumbled into their room crying “Ema!”—having dreamed that her mother was angry at her for talking back, or that she’d appeared in her room and smiled at her. He’d sit up, stunned by the still-lingering image of his brother, and hold her and rock her while she sobbed and sobbed, his cheek pressed on her hot, heaving back, trying to take long, even breaths, to soothe her with his body warmth and rhythm. They decided that it would be best for her to get back into her routine as quickly as possible, so Daniel took her to school, where she marched in like such a resigned and compliant trouper he almost snatched her back and took her home.
In the late evenings, after both children were in bed, the adults gathered heavy-eyed in the kitchen, which smelled of soup and dish soap and clementines. Lydia wiped down the counters while Daniel swept and did a sponga—using a mop with a soaking, soapy rag wrapped around the squeegee end, he soaped up the floors and then squeegeed the water into a drain in the corner of the kitchen, and then wiped down the floors with the rinsed-out rag. Matt grew accustomed to his disquisitions on the superiority of this method of mopping over the American method of repeatedly dunking the very mop you were cleaning the floors with into dirtied water. The phone rang incessantly, but after a certain point they let the machine in the bedroom take it. They kept the TV and radio, which were reporting the army’s incursions into the West Bank, off. They talked about Joel and Ilana’s estate, and the money coming to the children from Bituach Leumi; Sam was going over the details of their affairs with the lawyer, and researching the most tax-advantageous ways to invest the money in two countries. And then there was the baby’s constipation. They’d done some consulting among everyone who’d changed a diaper—which was all of them—and discovered that he hadn’t pooped in three days. Daniel had gone through Ilana’s address book until he found the name of the pediatrician, and called and talked to the nurse, who had told him that at Noam’s age, not pooping for five days or so was normal, but nevertheless recommended lots of fruit in his diet, plus prune juice, prune juice, and more prune juice.
Matt had made a reservation to return on a Continental flight that would leave in four days. One morning, as he was helping Gal get dressed, he said, “You know, Boo, I’m going back to the States for a while.” His heart was heavy; a kind of dull depression had settled over him, like asthma settling upon lungs. It was crazy, but part of him missed those first days of crisis. The tears, the rush from experience to experience, the way being a man in charge filled him with an ennobled feeling, as if he were a hero in a tragic film. But there was something else, too. Once the immediate crisis wore off, you had to admit to yourself that Joel and Ilana really weren’t coming back. It was so unfair: They were mourning and mourning, shouldn’t they get something in return, some alleviation of their pain?
It was morning and Gal was dressing for school. She was choosing between two purple shirts, and from her intensity, Matt thought, you would have imagined that they were even the tiniest bit different from each other. Gal had taken the shirts out of the drawer, which looked as though a tornado had run through it, and laid them both on her bed, tenderly smoothed them out. She was wearing jeans and a white undershirt, and Matt noticed that the kid’s belly he’d blown many a raspberry into had flattened as she grew. She still needed to eat breakfast before Daniel took her to school, and she hadn’t brushed her teeth yet either. He sat on the bed next to the shirts and folded his hands in his lap, fighting back the urge to hurry her.
Finally, she looked at him, her face darkening, and said, “Oof!”
“What’s the matter, can’t decide?”
She brought one shoulder up to her scowling face in a pretantrum half shrug.
“Do you want me to decide for you?”
“No!” she said, and began to cry.
He reached out his arms. “Come here, Boo,” he said, but she stomped her foot and yelled “I not Boo, I Gal!” and ran crying out of the room. When Matt rose to go after her, he found her in the living room, in her grandmother’s arms, Lydia murmuring to her and wiping her eyes. Matt shrugged. “She can’t figure out which shirt to wear.”
“Okay, sweetness, let’s go take a look,” her grandmother said, rising and holding out her hand. Gal went with her back to the bedroom, a thumb in her mouth, turning to shoot Matt a reproachful look. He sighed and went to get some cereal for her. She refused him a kiss good-bye when she left with Daniel for school. “She gives excellent cold shoulder,” Matt said.
That evening, Lydia baked the chicken of Daniel’s childhood, with Lawry’s salt, garlic powder, and paprika. The chicken slid off the bone. The baby was in his high chair with shreds of chicken on his tray, rubbing grease from his knuckles onto his cheek as he crammed his fist into his mouth. A bottle of diluted prune juice stood on the edge of his tray.
Gal sat at the head of the table, smacking her lips over a drumstick like a tiny tsar. She had spent much of the day at school in tears, her teacher had reported to Daniel when he came to pick her up, but her spirits and appetite were rallying. Matt had noticed that she despaired every day, but not for the whole day. They were discussing the logistics of getting Matt to the airport, when Gal turned to Daniel and asked, “When I go to live with Sabba and Savta, will Noam come with me?”
Silence fell over the table. “Who told you you were going to live with your grandparents?” Daniel asked.
She looked at him, and then away, as though she’d been caught doing something wrong. “Sabba,” she whispered.
They broadcast to one another grim, significant looks.
“What did he say, sweetheart?” Lydia asked, and when Gal cast a frightened look her way, she said, “You didn’t do anything wrong, baby.”
“They asked me do I want to come live with them.”
They looked at her expectantly. Here was a new twist, Matt thought. He knew right away that she’d said yes; how could anyone as big-hearted as Gal turn down those sad, sad people?
“Did you say yes?” Daniel asked gently.
She nodded, and he pursed his lips and nodded back solemnly.
“Call the lawyer,” Lydia said to Sam in a low, deadly voice, without moving her lips.
“Honey,” Sam murmured.
Daniel’s eyes were fixed on Gal. He reached out his arms and she climbed down off her chair and slid sideways onto his lap. Matt watched him with a lump of love in his throat. “I’m not sure who you’re going to live with,” Daniel said, gently turning her face toward him with two fingers. “There are lots of grown-ups who love you.”
“Like you?” Gal asked.
A teary laugh burbled up from his throat. “Like me,” he said. “And Matt, and Grandma and Grampa, and Sabba and Savta. And who else?”
“Gabrielle and Moti.”
“Nachon,” Daniel sang; in Hebrew you could sing “Right!” in two happy notes. “V’mi od?”
Gal listed all the adults they knew, including all of her parents’ friends, and a few they didn’t know—a girl who was her friend, Leora’s older sister’s scout leader, and a man who, after much interrogation and clarification, they decided apparently owned a lightbulb store.
“So many people love you!” Daniel said in mock astonishment. She’d warmed to the project, and was bending backward to dangle off his knees upside down. He heaved her up till she was sitting upright again, and became grave. “Matt and I and Grandma and Grampa and Sabba and Savta all love you so much that you’ll always be taken care of. But we don’t know who you and Noam are going to live with yet. Either with me and Matt, or with Sabba and Savta.”
Matt felt a tremor pass through him, and looked straight down at his plate. It was the f
irst time it had been said aloud that the kids wouldn’t be living with their American grandparents.
Gal nestled into Daniel’s chest and put her thumb in her mouth.
“I hope you boys know what you’re getting into,” Lydia said quietly. “You know that you’re going to have to make some huge adjustments to your lifestyle.”
“Duh,” Matt muttered, pushing his chair back and going to the cabinet to forage for cookies. He hated everything about those sentences: the sanctimonious parent shit, the condescension, the word lifestyle.
“Can I go play in my room?” Gal asked.
“Sure,” Daniel said.
Can I go play in mine? Matt wanted to ask. He returned to the table with a handful of chocolate-covered biscuits.
“I’m going to call the Grossmans,” Daniel said. “She has so many important questions, and we need to get our stories straight.”
Matt tried to imagine them, the ones she’d asked and the ones she hadn’t yet. Why did the bad man kill Ema and Abba? What happens when you die? Am I going to die? Where am I going to live? He watched as Daniel picked up a little chunk of cantaloupe and put it in Noam’s mouth. It seemed to be on the list of things babies could eat, as opposed to nuts or peanut butter or anything with pits. Matt was sure they’d manage to choke or poison him the moment he got to their house. And then their lifestyle would hardly have to change at all!
“Wait,” Sam said. “Before you do anything, let’s stop and think. You might want to consult a child specialist, so we can learn the most effective thing to tell Gal. Why don’t you call the social worker and ask her for a referral.”
The baby started to kick and rub his eyes with his greasy fists. Lydia went to the sink and returned with a wet cloth, took each of his hands, and wiped them off.
“You know, Dad, I don’t think it’s that complicated. I just want to tell them that they can’t promise Gal she’ll be living with them, when it’s unclear where she’ll be living.”
Daniel called Yaakov that night, and afterward, he came into the bedroom, where Matt was reclining on the bed reading the Jerusalem Post and cackling. “I love this food critic,” Matt said, holding up the paper. “He described a certain wine as ‘Talmudic without being disputatious.’ ”
