What to Do About the Solomons

by Bethany Ball

  Sam and Nick, the younger two, had darker hair and Carolyn’s blue eyes. The middle one, Sam, was ten and had Saba’s nose and Marc’s athleticism. The youngest, Nick, was six, and seemed to take after Carolyn’s father with his rangy frame and broad forehead. Nick, as in, just in the nick of time, before they closed those doors forever. The mistake.

  The plane landed. Marc pressed his temples with his fingers. He chewed on a nail and scratched at the hair on his face.

  Marc walked through Ben Gurion to the car rental. He’d forgotten, as he always forgot, how obnoxious Israelis were. How they shoved and pushed and jostled their way through life. Always rushing, often shouting. He’d shed most, but not all, of those habits. Around him, men and women talked into their cell phones at all times at full volume. They formed a wall in front of the luggage carousel, not giving up an inch even as Marc struggled with his suitcase, finally ramming into a middle-aged woman, who cursed at him in Russian.

  At Hertz, Marc stood in line. Three people ahead of him, an attractive young woman flirted with the clerk, angling for a discount. An old Moroccan couple sidled in line in front of him. Ma zeh? Marc asked. The old woman looked back at him and raised her eyebrows in innocence, the old man so sure of his place in the queue that he didn’t bother to turn around. Hey, Marc said. He should curse them out. He knew the words, but it was like he’d forgotten the ways of this place.

  But then, really, what did it matter? There were so many transgressions already. Marc sighed loudly. Almost a cry, and the old woman with her smudged lipstick turned to him and gripped his arm. She held on and swayed a bit, looked into his face, and then let go and stepped up to the counter with her husband.

  Shira flew in from Los Angeles, where she had been visiting her boyfriend, Michael, and finalizing the details of what could potentially be a game-changing film shoot. She fetched Joseph from his father’s. She was still furious with Joseph’s father for not knowing Joseph was alone. She could not think about Joseph being alone without her hands shaking, and she has begun to take Clonex for her nerves. What a boy! her father, Yakov, had said just before he’d died. What a boy, he’d said, like it was a blessing, what a boy to stay alone all these days! Maniac!

  She had a lot to think about on the train anyway. Joseph sat beside her, loud music crackling tinnily from the headphones screwed into his ears. She has fallen out of love with Michael. She met someone new on the airplane from her layover in Newark. At the El Al ticket counter, she’d been recognized and upgraded to first class. The man was younger than her by a decade or more, but ageless. He loved Shira’s plumpness. He loved her on the Israeli show Haverim, from fifteen years ago. He watched the old episodes on YouTube. He cupped her ass and said, How can we make this bigger? And for that, she’d blown him in the airplane bathroom.

  When he was alone, Joseph cried for Saba. He wept about missing his mother who had recently been on another traveling jag. He longed for that moment when she’d returned after his time alone in the apartment. How kind she’d been, and apologetic, and loving. Where was that ima? He had been living mostly with his father these days and he missed her and the freedom of the apartment in the Moshava. He wept for his brother, Gabriel, who the family says was not really his brother and was now in jail being evaluated for something called mental competency. He sat alone in front of his computer. On top of everything else, he was going to miss an important soccer match for his grandfather’s funeral. His cousin Izaac Skyped him from America and Joseph answered. Izaac said, in his American-accented Hebrew, Don’t worry, my brother. I am coming to you. Don’t worry, my brother, Izaac said. Don’t be sad. Saba lived a good, long life.

  The cousins told Joseph they are all rich now. None of them would ever need to work again. Saba had probably left them each a million shekels. Look at all the construction projects with Saba’s name on them, they told Joseph. They talked excitedly of the things they would buy until Keren came to scold them.

  But the funeral was today, and Izaac had not yet arrived. Joseph’s mother told him they would come the next day and stay in the kibbutz with them. His father had clapped him on the shoulder before his mother picked him up. He’d given Joseph his own white kippa to wear on his head.

  Aren’t you going too, Abba?

  Ha! Abba snorted. That old man, Yakov Solomon, hated me on sight, and vice versa. But—Joseph’s father caught himself—he was a good saba, Joseph.

  Joseph’s stepmother was skittish and shy with Joseph. She ignored him until it was time for his mother to get him. As he started out the door, she grabbed his wrist and pulled him to her. She was so unlike Joseph’s mother. She was short and plain and she pressed Joseph into her breasts. She was not wearing a bra and one nipple was wet with milk from the baby. Joseph fought the instinct to hug her back, to hold onto her, in fact, as though he were drowning in the sea. He didn’t want to be disloyal to his mother. If he were to love this woman a little more, it could only result in his own mother loving him a little less. And Joseph loved his mother so fiercely.

  Chapter 21

  Maya and the Sea

  Maya, divorced from Levi Cohen, is now married to Shai Skymatsky. She washes the floor of her apartment by the sea. She brings out the bucket and the mop and splashes the warm sudsy water as she scrubs. She is barefoot and the feel of the water on her toes brings her instantly back to her mother’s apartment in the kibbutz. How she washed the floor every Friday morning while her mother cooked Shabbat dinner. The long rubber blade she cleaned the floor with. The dark gray water pushed out the front door, leaving the clean floor behind. She sends more dirty water skidding across the white tiles to the tiny balcony that looks out at the sea. From the edge of the balcony, she sees her husband, Shai, on the beach across the road. He is frowning down at the phone as he makes his way barefoot across the sand. He calls something to her but the wind whips the sound out of his mouth. Ma? she calls. What is it? He shouts again. The waves crash.

  She is so prone to these moments now, when she is instantly transported to an earlier time, or a future place, while at the same time she is rooted here: Shai calling to her. Her feet wet and warm on the cool tile floor. The wind from the sea shakes the blinds on her balcony door. There is a baby in her belly. She places her hand there and says, Remember this, baby. Remember this moment.

  Shai trudges through the sand. He’s swum ten kilometers out to the ruins of Yaffo and back, going along the shore just out of reach of the riptide. His wife is so beautiful, so lovely on the balcony with the mop in her hand. She wears only a T-shirt and panties, and her four-months-pregnant belly is just beginning to show. She looks better than she ever has. Shai tells her she looks like a teenager, just like she did when he first met her, when she was still Marc Solomon’s girl. Of course she is getting on in age, already forty, but the doctor says everything will be all right. Everyone had said Shai Skymatsky would not marry! Would not father children! But look. Everyone should look at him now.

  The lights in the room could be blazing and Shai Skymatsky will fuck all night long! His pregnant wife from behind, her creamy Ashkenazi ass, spreading now with each passing week of pregnancy. Now your fetus is the size of a grape, now a walnut. Now your ass is the size of a young girl’s ass, now a heavy girl’s, and now: ballooning to epic proportions! I love your big white ass! he’d called out, and she had turned and gotten up off her elbows and smacked him across the mouth, her ring catching his lip and blood crimson on the sheets.

  How he loves that woman!

  Maya has heard about Yakov Solomon. Everyone has, of course. An article about his memorial service was on the front page of Yedioth Ahronot.

  A real sabra, born in Israel seventy-five years ago. He’d gone to school with Rabin, supped with Barak, was the guest of the kings of Jordan and Morocco. Maya remembers him well. He flirted with her sometimes when she’d come to visit with Marc. He’d make her his famous salad. There had been a rumor about May
a’s mother and Yakov Solomon. There had been a rumor about Yakov Solomon and every halfway attractive woman in the kibbutz, and quite a few of the unattractive ones. The funeral is Saturday night. Shai plans to attend, of course. Marc Solomon was his best friend from the army. He asks Maya to go, you must go! he exhorts, but she refuses. No.

  But why?

  Maya shrugs. It does no good to tell him and Maya has made a promise to herself she will not lie. It is not just her suicide attempts in the kibbutz, the failures and breakdowns, although that is no doubt what Shai thinks. The truth is, if she sees Marc Solomon, perfect Marc Solomon, she will not be able to bear Shai Skymatsky any longer. All the love she has for this good man who treats her so tenderly will drain away. Her heart will rattle with the dried seeds inside it and her life, as she now knows it, will hold no interest for her. Marc will be perfect as always and Shai Skymatsky will have food stains down the front of his shirt. Shai Skymatsky, a commando’s joke: a great soldier, but as a human being, a mess. These days he makes good money driving dignitaries around. A glorified chauffeur. A bodyguard. He is happy and Maya is happy for him.

  Shai stands outside on the hot August pavement washing his tiny red Toyota. He wears his ratty red shorts. His brown belly hangs out over them, tanned, smooth, leathery. He waves at her. It’s already starting. This man she loves looks different. Just thinking about Marc casts a shadow over him. He turns and sets the bucket of water down and his back is covered in black hair, like the pelt of a seal. Then he is bounding to her, opening the door of their apartment. The shock of the heat. She falls into his arms.

  In the kitchen, Shai prepares food. Hummus with olive oil and sprinkled with paprika. There are good pitot. Shai toasts the pitot in the oven and the apartment smells of baking bread.

  He asks how she feels. He tells her, again, that he will be going north for old man Solomon’s funeral. He tells her again that she should come and reconnect with old friends and maybe see her mother, whom she hasn’t seen since the last time she was in the hospital. Wouldn’t you like to see Marc? he asks. He will be coming from LA for the funeral. Maya shrugs.

  But you were once very close, Shai says. He has always been careful not to mention Marc around Maya. She has never mentioned him.

  Yes and no, she says carefully. We were told by the elders we were not allowed to date, I don’t know why. I think they thought I was too fragile for Marc Solomon. That he might crush me, and so they broke us up. We snuck around in the kibbutz until he went into the army. Everyone dates everyone in the kibbutz, Maya says. It is a small dating pool.

  With what has happened to Marc, he needs all the friends he can get.

  But what has happened to Marc Solomon? she asks. Only that his father died, yes?

  Haven’t you heard?

  Chapter 22

  Vivienne

  Vivienne finally sits down in a chair. Those old plastic chairs in the cheder ochel! Countless meals she spent in the old dining room before it was closed. How sad now that the cheder ochel is used only for occasions like these. A memorial, a party at Hanukkah. A winter wedding. She tries to avoid the large poster board with a photo of Yakov set up on an easel. It was taken not long ago at a birthday party for Guy Gever. She nurses a cup of seltzer water and watches Shira with her young son, Joseph. Shira is stiff with her son, awkward, as though they were merely acquaintances. But Vivienne remembers. That’s how it is just before the bar mitzvah. The children grow up and become strangers. If the mother is lucky, the child will return to his mother a man.

  Soon Marc will arrive.

  Her throat catches. Vivienne stifles a sob. All the years she wasted on Yakov Solomon’s bombastic nonsense. His stupid nationalism. Zionism. Communism. Socialism. Then a full embrace of capitalism. He died a rich man once the kibbutz was privatized. Doling his money out little by little. Ruining each and every one of them except Marc, who’d gone and ruined himself. And Ziv who wasn’t here. The fighting would begin soon, any minute now, for whatever money he’d left.

  Yakov and the over-the-top sabra shtick. Dancing on tables with empty bottles of vodka on his head like Zorba! Cavorting with all manner of women: secretaries—armies of secretaries— teachers of his children, wives of his friends, her friends. She was certain he would drop dead over one of them, plugging away as he had when she still let him. Doing laundry she’d fish out from his pockets those little blue Viagra pills, the little pilules his doctor had given him. Now and again she confronted him when she could no longer contain her irritation, and then his answers amused her. He’d told her Viagra was a workout pill for his “organ” to keep the “circulation” going since they so rarely had sex anymore. She’d told Aliza and they’d laughed and laughed. She was not altogether certain Aliza didn’t count in that number. She was not altogether certain that other children of Yakov wouldn’t show up at the funeral here in the dining hall. Certainly at the reading of the will. When she’d got the call about Yakov’s collapse on the treadmill she’d called the attorney right away, before she’d made any other arrangements. The attorney was an old friend, living in town. Will there be any surprises? she’d asked.

  I’m not at liberty to say, he’d told her, clearing his throat.

  Vivienne wasn’t stupid. Of course the children loved him, but everyone knew about the will and that there was money coming. Everyone remembered what Yakov used to say:

  “Keep the milk close to keep the kittens closer.”

  Vivienne watches Joseph trying to get his mother’s attention. Shira taps into her cell phone. The dining room is too loud. The lights too bright overhead and the fans too sluggish. Vivienne is getting a headache. When will she be permitted to slip away to go home finally and sit in her empty house? She’s been waiting for that day now for over fifty years. Shira tap-taps at her little screen. Vivienne crosses her legs and winds her hands together. We should marry our phones, Vivienne says out loud to no one. Maybe then we’d all be happier.

  Marc finally arrives. Vivienne is overjoyed to see him. It is hard to believe he is late. He has never been late. Even his birth was to the minute on his due date. Initially, everyone hangs back from him. But then he is surrounded, consumed by friends. The dining room is filled with light from the early afternoon sun. Someone goes to shut the blinds and when the room is darker, they come and surround Marc, to shake his hand. To hug him, to be close. Marc has always had this effect on everyone in the kibbutz. He never should have left.

  The freeway is full of traffic. Their car hardly moves. They are on their way to LAX. The boys, in back, listen to their headphones and play video games on their phones. Carolyn is mentally checking her suitcase. Has she remembered to bring a white blouse? Will the boys’ good trousers still fit them? What about their shoes? She knows it doesn’t matter much what they wear. Israelis have no sense at all of ceremony. She remembers the little band of Marc’s friends who’d shown up at her wedding. They’d worn shorts and Tevas. Her mother had nearly had a heart attack. Would it kill them to wear a shirt with buttons? Never mind a tie.

  Carolyn thinks of Yakov. It’s impossible to believe he is dead. Her fists ball up and her fingernails dig into her palms. In the middle of all this, Yakov had to go and die. Marc will disintegrate, Carolyn fears. There will be such a fight for the money that there will surely be nothing left. Marc will walk away from it all without a dime, if she knows Marc. The youngest child. The peacemaker. She remembers the Xanax she carries in her bag.

  Carolyn thinks about money. She’ll have to buy the boys food at the airport, snacks and water and maybe a toy for Nick, but she’s not sure if her credit card will work or if it has been canceled. There are only two modes of being in this world. You are either alive and well or your credit cards don’t work and your bank accounts have been cleared out.

  The youngest two, Sam and Nick, are surprisingly subdued. Yakov had once convinced them he could kill lions with his bare hands and was therefor
e immortal. Nick still believes this, as he still believes in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus. Sam, two years older, isn’t sure about Santa Claus—but why does Santa Claus not come to the other children in Hebrew school? Izaac believes in nothing. Carolyn watches Izaac in despair. Is it puberty or is it normal to be furious all the time?

  The night before, after packing the two suitcases and the duffel bag, a feeling had come over Carolyn, an ache in the hollow of her chest that’s still there. Or no, not an ache. Something more neutral. A sensation. It is the feeling she has for her husband. How much she loves him, and at the same time, how little. Once upon a time, this no-name sensation filled her with panic or dread. But last night, moving through the quiet and stillness of the house, the children sleeping in their beds, she held the sensation as easily as one palms an apple, a pear.

  The feeling comes and goes. Dissolved by her careful, neutral attention. Disposed of, and forgotten, she had curled up with six-year-old Nick, who had appeared by the side of her bed.

  Vivienne sleeps alone tonight. Before the walk to the grave site, she’d tried to help clean up the cheder ochel but had been sent away. We will clean it later, her friend had said, after we walk to the grave. They follow the truck with the coffin of Yakov Solomon through the kibbutz to the graveyard, where they stand around the site, and throw dirt inside the grave on top of the coffin. Everyone places a stone on the heaped soil. People begin to wander off, nodding at Vivienne, Keren, Shira, Marc, and Dror, who goes back tomorrow for a business meeting in Tel Aviv and to pick up Carolyn from Ben Gurion Airport for shiva. In one year they will return to the site and place the gravestone. Vivienne looks at her watch. The sun is setting and the Jordan Valley cools. Yakov would say, Now the party begins! Now that you have all left.

  So tonight the joke is on Yakov. Wherever that joke came from, it will likely never be told again. But in her head, though she loved him, tonight as she climbs into bed, she will say to herself: