by Judith Frank
“Listen,” Daniel said. “I just have to blow off some steam before I report back to my parents.”
“What did he say?” Matt asked, dismayed and fascinated.
Daniel told Yaakov he wanted to talk about Gal. He had worked up to it slowly, aware that even hearing his voice on the telephone could send them into a tailspin. He had heard the click of the other line being picked up, and Malka’s breathing. “I told him it didn’t seem right to tell Gal she was going to live with them,” he said. “I said that it was really important to tell her the truth. And then he became a lunatic. He kept yelling, ‘Truth? Truth? Wait until she learns the truth! Wait until the judge hears the truth!’ ” He sat down on the bed and put his head in his hands.
Matt sat up and smoothed the hair at the back of Daniel’s head. How many terrible conversations had they had in this tiny room with the stacked pillows and sheets, the tiny desk scattered with change and watches and wallets and notebooks, the dry wind sifting through? “You mean the truth that we’re godless sodomites?” he said lightly.
Daniel craned his head violently away from Matt’s caress. “I want to say, ‘Okay, the man’s in anguish.’ He is! ‘Okay, the man’s from a different culture than we are.’ That too! But how many times am I supposed to excuse homophobic insults because the guy is traumatized? Because I know that the homophobic anger is just a cover for his despair?”
Matt knew the answer. The answer was many, many times. He hadn’t told Daniel about how Lydia had cornered him that afternoon, sat on the edge of the couch next to him, and put her hand on his and said knowingly, confidingly, “Matt, be honest with me. You can’t possibly want to raise two small children.”
He’d asked, “Why not, Lydia?”
She gave him a Don’t kid a kidder look.
He said, “Look, it wouldn’t have been my first choice. But I loved Joel and Ilana, and I love their children, and you know how I feel about carrying out their wishes? I feel fantastic about it.”
She’d stood and crossed her arms and pinned on him the severe look of the prophet. “See how you feel about it when instead of going out dancing at night you’re nursing a vomiting child.”
Dancing? Did she know where they lived?
And now they were going to be in a supplicating position to get custody of the kids, and that meant they’d have to put up with God knows how much bullshit. He could see it already. It would be implied that their gayness was trivial, a luxury, in comparison with the huge issues of terrorism and orphanhood. They’d be told to shut up about being gay already, as though it was they who were constantly hammering that point home, as though they were children clamoring for a Popsicle in the midst of a typhoon.
Suddenly, Matt couldn’t wait to go home.
Daniel left the room to talk to his parents, and Matt closed his eyes as quiet settled around him.
WHAT WERE THEY LIABLE to see at the site of the former Peace Train Café? Daniel knew that all signs of blood and broken glass would be mopped up. He imagined that after just ten days there wouldn’t be an official memorial there yet, but that there would be an unofficial one. In bed, he imagined himself there, on the site where his brother had said his last words, breathed his last breath. He saw Joel sitting back in his chair, one hand on the table, playing with a book of matches or a packet of sugar. Was he smiling at Ilana, laughing at something she said? Was he smoking the odd forbidden cigarette? Daniel fiercely hoped he’d gotten in a last smoke. It was Windbreaker weather, and the wind ruffled Joel’s sleeve. Daniel imagined the soft, hidden parts of him, his armpits and belly and his cock nestled against his leg. He thought of the pictures of the two of them as children, each marked with a D and a J under the corresponding child so they could be told apart, in a kiddie pool in the backyard, their kids’ bellies, with their outie belly buttons, jutting over their trunks.
When he imagined the bomber, he saw a sweaty, agitated kid in a big coat.
He and Matt walked downtown, on side streets clustered with stone houses, tall trees that looked like palms, with trunks the texture of pineapple skins, and huge furry-brown firs. Plants tumbled over stone walls and through the bars of ornamental iron gates, narrow verdant walkways with stone steps, the occasional small dog barking shrilly from a balcony lined with planters. It was a dry and sunny morning, and despite himself, despite the dread that seeped over him at the prospect of seeing the spot where Joel and Ilana were killed, Matt felt happiness bound into his limbs from the air, the exercise, the quiet companionship of being with his partner. They passed crowded bus stops, the elderly sitting on benches in hats and overcoats, and teenagers huddled together, laughing. Red Egged buses passed them with huge gasps and exhalations of dark exhaust. Traffic got noisier as they approached downtown, and crossing streets they ran between honking cars.
It was the first time Matt had been downtown. It was crowded and dirty—Israelis were huge litterbugs. Daniel stopped to buy a small bouquet of tulips wrapped in plastic from a street vendor surrounded by buckets of flowers. They turned down the pedestrian walkway, looking at stores crammed with jewelry and tourist Judaica—Star of David necklaces, seder plates, menorahs, mezuzahs—middle-aged proprietors standing outside for a smoke in the sun, the smells of pizza and falafel and grilled lamb heavy in the air. People pushed and elbowed past them without interrupting their conversations. Armed soldiers patrolled the streets, and there were guards posted in front of coffeehouses, most of them Ethiopian, in fluorescent yellow vests. Matt suddenly noticed that he was in a crowd, and also that he wasn’t afraid. It had nothing to do with the presence of the soldiers, he thought. It was that they had already been touched, and wouldn’t be again. At least by something huge, like a terrorist’s bomb. He had already begun worrying about the silly, banal ways of dying, like being killed crossing the street, or slipping in the tub and cracking his head open, or one of the kids choking on something. Because if one of them were to die like that, it would just be too hideously ironic.
The café was down by the bottom of the walkway, and he didn’t see it till they were almost upon it. It had been called Peace Train Café, after the Cat Stevens song, not translated, just like that, pronounced “Pees Trrrein.” It was boarded up, and in front of it lay heaps of flowers, cards, teddy bears, yarhzeit candles with tiny wavering flames. Tourists were stopping to take pictures, and off to the side, two lanky teenagers stood melancholically, their arms draped around each other.
They stopped and stood with their hands in their pockets. Matt lightly rubbed Daniel’s back.
Daniel took a breath. He couldn’t tell how big the café had been—it was entirely boarded. Smoke streaks stained the building’s upper floors, and its windows were blown out. He carefully laid his bouquet on top of a heap of withered roses. At his feet was a piece of pink construction paper with a snapshot of a smiling family taped to it, and the words Zichronam l’vracha—May their memory be blessed—written below it. He knew the names of most of the sixteen dead by now, having encountered them over and over in the newspapers, which had run features on many of them. Five of them, almost a full third, were the Golan family, who had taken their three kids out for ice cream at the end of the Sabbath.
Daniel looked at Matt, who had stooped to peer at some of the pictures. Two women in sunglasses, carrying purses, came up and stood next to him, shaking their heads and making tsking noises. “Nora,” one of them said. Terrible.
He stood there, leaden, dumb, like a beast being goaded to haul things. He turned around, and turned back, and scratched his jaw. He’d been building up to see something sublime, and this was so banal, the Hallmark version of his lacerating grief. The sublimity was all in his fantasies and dreams, where his mind soared and blacked out from the enormity of what it imagined, the enormity of his love for Joel, of Joel’s body being shattered, his shining life obliterated.
Beside him stood Matt, tears running freely down his face.
Daniel thrust his hands into his jacket pockets. He felt tha
t he should stay there till he’d taken it all in, till the image had imprinted itself upon his mind so that years from now he’d be able to call it up, and to say, I’ll never forget the sight of that bombed-out café. But it was as if the images before him were fake, the way a child’s tinkling keyboard is a fake piano, and he felt cheated by them.
Matt was sniffing and making throat-clearing noises as Daniel steered him away by the elbow. He led him into a tiny alley and past stores with ceramics and handcrafted jewelry, and then they went through a dark passageway, up some stairs, and emerged into a pretty café courtyard set up with tables and umbrellas. “It’s still here,” Daniel said. Inside, the shop was dark and cool, lined with crammed bookshelves. They ordered espressos and brought outside tiny cups rattling on saucers. Matt hiccupped and asked Daniel if he would bum a cigarette for him from a young man who was reading at another table; Daniel went over and returned with one, whispering, in a faint attempt to amuse him, that the kid was reading Heidegger. Matt lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply, blew the smoke into the sky in a thin stream. He touched Daniel’s sneakered foot with his own, and Daniel looked at him.
“Dan,” he said, looking into his eyes.
Daniel nodded. He was depressed and didn’t know what to do with that, except to be angry at Matt for making him come here in the first place. He felt as though Matt had gone for the facile response to the makeshift memorial, and Daniel was angry at him for that too, but was trying to stuff back that feeling because it was ungenerous and judgmental.
Matt wiped his face with the tiny napkin beside his saucer. “I’m going to leave you all of my underwear and socks and T-shirts,” he said. Neither of them had packed many clothes, and Daniel would need them.
Daniel nodded. “I’ll buy whatever else I need. They have clothes in Israel.” And then, with a half-comic yelp, “Don’t leave me alone with them!”
“Oh, honey,” Matt murmured, and then with a quick anxious pang: “Do you want me to stay?”
“Don’t offer what you can’t give,” Daniel said with a level look. He knew Matt was dying to go home.
“Okay,” Matt said in a small voice.
“Really,” Daniel said. “It just makes things worse.”
Another surge of emotion rushed over Matt’s face. “It’s just,” he said, his voice breaking, “it’s just that it’s hard to leave you.”
“I’ll be okay,” Daniel said. Even as he had no idea how he would manage without him, he was longing for Matt to leave, so he wouldn’t have to worry about him, so he could handle things in his own way.
They sipped the hot, harsh, grainy coffee and felt the cool wind brush their arms and necks.
THE NEXT MORNING, STANDING at the airport curb with Matt’s luggage at their feet, they clung to each other, until Daniel broke away.
“I love you,” Matt said, eyes glistening, his fist to his heart. “Me and Yo-yo, we’ll be waiting for you and the kids.”
“If we get them.”
“We’ll get them.”
“I hope so.”
“No, really.” His forehead was touching Daniel’s. “We will. The house will be a total disaster area. It’ll be great.”
Daniel laughed.
“Okay, baby?” Matt asked.
Daniel nodded, looking at the ground. Suddenly, he couldn’t bear to look at Matt’s face. He turned away, got into the car, and drove off without looking in the rearview mirror.
Matt went inside and moved quickly through the line, up to the security woman who took his passport, looked him up and down, and asked him what he was doing in Israel.
Matt’s mind tumbled over the answers: partner or friend, died or killed? What kind of explanation?
“My friend’s brother was killed. I came for the funeral,” he said, cursing himself. Later, he wondered why he hadn’t just said partner. The security guard wasn’t screening out queers, just terrorists.
“Killed?” She looked at him, her curiosity breaking through her interrogation technique.
“Yes, in the Peace Train bombing,” he said.
She looked at him soberly. “I’m sorry,” she said, and put a sticker on his suitcase.
He went through passport control and up to the terminal. He had an hour before boarding, so he cruised the duty-free shop, where determined Israeli men with huge watches on hairy arms and women with lacquered nails were throwing enormous boxes of cigarettes and aftershave into shopping carts. He went back outside and bought treats, a stack of Elite chocolate bars and a bag of sunflower seeds. He sat down by the gate, peeling back the crinkly silver lining of one of the bars. He’d been unprepared for the deliciousness of Israeli chocolate. It was a strange and guilty pleasure to be alone, leaving the Rosen family and their trauma behind. Of course, he told himself, he wasn’t really leaving them behind, he was resting up so he could be there for Daniel and the kids when they came home.
He broke off another square of chocolate and sucked on it, and reached into his bag for a magazine and his iPod. He put in the earbuds and turned it to shuffle. A murmuring came into his ears.
I’m so tired, so tired of all this drama.
Oh, God. Too perfect. He closed his eyes as Mary J. Blige’s voice—and the voices of her sighing, echoing backup singers—swelled into his ears.
No more pain
No more pain
No more drama in my life
No one’s gonna make me hurt again
His music. His music! He closed his eyes, and his big, emotional heart throbbed to the beat of pain and survival.
CHAPTER 5
DANIEL GOT BACK from the airport to find his parents feeding the kids dinner. Gal and the baby were sitting nicely in their chairs eating spaghetti, Gal trying to twirl it with a fork, the way Matt had taught her, and Noam grabbing it in his fists, his chin glistening with tomato sauce. His father was working on his own enormous plate, a paper napkin tucked into his collar. Daniel tossed his keys onto the counter.
“Spaghetti?” his mother asked, putting her napkin on the table and pushing back her chair.
“No thanks,” he said, “I’m not hungry.”
The minute the words came out, he wished he hadn’t said them, because he was starving. He stood and looked at the placid family, rubbed his temple with his thumb. He’d thought that things would be simpler once Matt left; no more clamor for recognition, no more having to deal, on top of everything else, with the feeling that he was a bad person because he didn’t acknowledge their relationship to Matt’s satisfaction. But the whole drive back to Jerusalem he’d dreaded coming home alone to his parents, coming home as he had at sixteen, sexless and unpartnered.
“Are you sure?” Lydia was asking. “Maybe just a little plate?” And Gal was asking, “Is Matt on an airplane?”
He sat down at the table. “Okay, maybe just a little,” he told his mother, and turning to Gal, “Yes.”
She was blinking rapidly. “Matt’s plane won’t crash,” she said in Hebrew.
“That’s right.” Daniel leaned over and wiped spaghetti sauce from her mouth with his napkin.
Gal’s silky hair rose in wisps, and her eyes were dark. “How do you know?” she asked.
His parents were looking at him inquisitively, and he quickly translated.
“I just do,” he told Gal, but that made her face fall, and he could tell he was insulting her. “They have very, very good pilots,” he said. “Airplanes almost never crash.”
He leaned back as his mother placed a steaming plate in front of him. “Don’t indulge her,” she murmured.
He whirled on her. “Indulge her? Are you kidding me?”
Lydia flushed. “The fears, I mean. Not the child.”
Gal was asking, “But do they ever crash?”
“I meant the fears,” his mother repeated.
“Daniel,” his father said.
“Almost never,” he said to Gal, speaking in Hebrew, ignoring his parents. “Really, sweetie, I’m just not worried.”
/> “But do they ever?”
“Sweetie,” he said. He scooted back his chair and patted his lap, frightened, because he’d used up the extent of his repertoire for comforting her. “Come here.”
She was crying now, and there was a sudden sweep of her arm and her plate went crashing to the floor, spaghetti and sauce splashing onto the cabinet bottoms and slithering over the tile.
“Hey!” Daniel shouted.
Gal jumped off her chair and ran into her room, and they heard the door slam. Daniel and his mother looked at each other accusatorily.
“I don’t know why you have to be so hurtful,” his mother said. “You’re not the only one suffering.”
“I don’t like being corrected when I’m trying to manage something difficult,” Daniel snapped.
“Your mother was trying to help,” his father said.
Daniel rolled his eyes. “Dad, could you just stop?”
“We’ll get this mess,” Lydia said. “You get your temper under control and go calm her down.”
In her room, Gal was sobbing. Daniel got on his knees and gently gripped her shoulders so he could look her in the face and apologize for yelling at her. She wrenched herself away and threw herself onto her bed, sobbing into the pile of the morning’s rejected clothes. He stood, irresolute, knowing better than to touch her again, and watched her shoulders quaking, enduring the long moment when she went still and silent before she caught her breath and let out a shattering scream. He murmured her name, whispered, “Shh, shh.”
She screamed again, and he winced, dreading the baby hearing and melting down himself. He went over to the open window, glanced out at the geraniums Joel had planted in the window boxes, which none of them had had the wherewithal to keep alive. He wondered if it would be okay to slip out of the room for just a second and find the watering can. But then he reproached himself for really just wanting to escape the screaming. He thought about Ilana, her fierce competence, how she would hold Gal like a big butch mama-warrior when she cried, and the image made him faint with grief and longing. How would Gal ever survive losing that?
