What to Do About the Solomons

by Bethany Ball

  Now that you have left, Yakov Solomon, the party can finally begin!

  They will sit shiva, the will will finally be read, and Yakov Solomon, who once loomed so large, will start to fade.

  Chapter 23

  Maya and Marc in Youth

  The problem with the romance between Maya and Marc was not that they were too young, as some had speculated. They were thirteen and fifteen, respectively. Nor was it that Marc often acted indifferent to Maya, though he loved her achingly in a way he has never loved anyone since. Nor was it true that Maya was fragile emotionally. The problem was not so simple and for many years, it was a secret.

  Maya had loved Marc. She was the most beautiful girl in the kibbutz, with wavy light brown hair, a compact body and narrow hips and in her bathing suit: perfect small breasts. She didn’t mind how Marc seemed one day to love her passionately and then ignored her sometimes for three or four days at a time. She didn’t mind because it was far superior to how the other boys treated her, often with slavish, tongue-tied devotion that annoyed her. She acted just as indifferent to Marc as he did to her and it drove him wild.

  Marc was the most handsome, charming, and talented of the kibbutz boys and it was only a matter of time before they would get together. None of the other kids begrudged their romance.

  It was Maya who took Marc’s virginity just after her fourteenth birthday. Marc was strong and cocky, but deeply shy. He’d hit puberty somewhat late. Maya understood that when he could not look at her in the disco it was because of his shyness and immaturity and his unwillingness to show his love for her in front of his boorish and unevolved friends. They’d done it first during the Shavuot festival, when the children spent the night in the fields. The youngest children followed the slightly older ones as they tramped through the fields. The teenagers lit bonfires and fucked in the brush. Sometimes unlucky small children would stumble upon them rutting away. Maya had brought a blanket and laid it down beneath a weeping willow tree. His friends had jumped out at them, laughing, and Marc told them to fuck off already.

  She took him in her hand until he came. They crushed their lips together and she caught his ear in her teeth, whispering, Put this on, and handed him a condom.

  It had taken only a few seconds. She was lifting up her shirt and showing her naked breasts, the small perfect nipples, and he was leaning over her with his cock in his hand, and then collapsing in dizziness and exhaustion. It wasn’t more than a minute before she reached for him again.

  Because by thirteen the children had their own apartments, she would show up in his room after his roommate had gone to the showers. He would wake up with her astride him, her hand pulling his hand to her breast, showing him that she liked her nipples squeezed. She liked a thumb on her clitoris while she worked over him. He liked her nipple in his mouth.

  She came to every one of his soccer games. He admired her strange drawings. She could draw anything, true to life, like a photograph, but she preferred things that were more surreal. She would console him when Beitar Jerusalem lost. He would console her when her mother said yet another cruel thing to her. Maya’s mother seemed to despise her. Maya didn’t tell her anything. Did not tell her about her romance with Marc.

  It didn’t take long for the grown-ups who oversaw their apartments to get wind of their relationship. It would have to be stopped. No one in their group of friends could understand why. They were meant for one another! Plenty of kids were getting together, having sex in the field or even in their own beds. But no. This was different. None of the kids knew the reasons, just that they were each sat down separately and told they weren’t allowed to see each other anymore. As it turned out, and few people knew—only Maya’s mother and uncle and Yakov, of course—but Maya and Marc were brother and sister.

  Maya spent the summer in Amsterdam at an art camp and came back with jet-black dreadlocked hair and a nose ring. She had utter contempt for everyone in the kibbutz after that and returned to Amsterdam the moment she finished the army. She was going to be a famous painter. She had a Dutch passport from her grandmother, who died in the camps.

  Marc cried for six months when she left. He cried at night, but his roommate, who was his longtime best friend, didn’t tell anyone and pretended not to hear. In fact, one night, after they’d broken into the kibbutz disco and stolen a bottle of cheap vodka, they cried together. Marc was devastated and did not fall in love with anyone else until many years had passed. Twenty years, in fact, when he met Carolyn.

  There were rumors, of course, about their parentage. There were always rumors, as there were rumors about everyone in the kibbutz. Hardly anyone paid attention.

  Chapter 24

  Kadima

  Keren comes and throws open the doors and windows. She pulls the cloths from off the mirrors. Her mother, Vivienne, seems to have sunken into grief. A grief not even Vivienne understands.

  Keren also can’t understand her mother’s sadness. Yes, Keren Gever loved her father. They all loved their father. But as a husband, he was lousy. He wasn’t such a great father either. Look at how the children turned out. Dror, who handed his balls to his first wife and has not seen them since. Shira, who abandons her child. Keren and Guy. Only Marc escaped, and look what happened to Marc. Ziv has not returned. Now, of course, there will be money for everyone. Vivienne had always complained she’d rather be in Paris, or America. Now she can go! What is holding her here? She is nearly seventy-five, yes, but she is a young seventy-five.

  Keren busies herself putting bottles of Coca-Cola into the freezer so they will be chilled before people arrive. She arranges salads on plates. Turns on the oven to toast the pitot. Who will come, Keren doesn’t know. She posts to Facebook, checks her phone, texts some friends.

  Everyone is welcome at the house for the next seven days. It is customary. Everyone is invited. Vivienne is against it. She wants to skip the whole thing altogether. Imagine sitting shiva for a communist? But Keren insists. He wasn’t a communist when he died, she says.

  He wasn’t religious, either, Vivienne says.

  Amos Solomon, Yakov’s only living brother, is in charge of beverages and he comes through Vivienne’s front door bearing two bottles of cheap lemonade from the kol-bo. The bells that hang from the door handle chime wildly. Keren takes the bottles from him and kisses his cheek: Two, Dod Amos? You only bring two bottles?

  What? he asks, bewildered.

  There are fifty people coming at least! she says. She’ll have to send someone to buy more. Perhaps Dror, when he comes.

  Amos Solomon is contrite. It wasn’t easy, after all, being the older brother of a man like Yakov Solomon. Do they want him to go into minus for Yakov’s funeral? He will not inherit Yakov’s money, but Keren will!

  Keren has no idea how many people are coming, or if anyone will come at all. Keren walks into the kitchen. She begins to pull bottles of soda and juice out of Vivienne’s refrigerator. She pulls out a bottle of vodka, a bottle of good whiskey. Vivienne is aghast. That is expensive alcohol, she says. At a shiva! Mon Dieu. She clutches her chest.

  Never mind, Ima. You don’t drink anyway. I will send Dror later to buy more, Keren says.

  Vivienne says, I might start drinking now.

  Keren rolls her eyes and curses under her breath. Amos sits beside the kitchen table, beside the plates of hummus and eggplant salads, the pickled beets, the fennel, the pitot hot from the oven. Keren finds the good white Pesach tablecloth and arranges the plates.

  Guy Gever is quiet today. Yakov had been like a father to him. Keren looks over at him and is flooded with love. Guy catches Keren looking at him, and smiles. A real smile. How she loves him.

  Dod Amos pours himself another glass of his dead brother’s whiskey. You died before me, you old bastard, he thinks. Keren sets out napkins. The phone rings and Vivienne rises to answer it.

  Shai Skymatsky looks forward to seeing his best friend, hi
s dearest friend. He looks forward to meeting his American wife, Carolyn, and the American children. They are coming to sit shiva and pay their respects to a great sabra: Yakov Solomon.

  In the little Toyota, Maya is completely silent. So quiet Shai wonders if she has fallen asleep. He wonders if she is angry at him for insisting she go. It will be good for you, he’d said. You will see all your old friends!

  Maya stares out the window. Shai thinks of Marc with pleasure. How they were so young! With so much hair. Shai is bald.

  Shai had once thought Marc had all the luck in the universe. He remembers how brown their skin was. How stoned they were those six months on the beaches of Thailand. The time they nearly drowned in their operation, how Marc got his gun stuck and would not cut it loose. How Shai stayed beside him and would not swim to the surface without his partner. And how good that made the life that came after. His wife is so quiet he can hardly hear her breathe. She must be sleeping. She is tired more and more as the pregnancy progresses. She sleeps so much Shai Skymatsky imagines she will give birth in her sleep. Her mouth hangs open sweetly, like a child. Her breath rattles wetly in her throat.

  Tel Aviv gives way to the high-rises on the outskirts. To Shai Skymatsky, they look like the projects in America from the days he lived in New York. Shai loves so dearly his tiny apartment near the beach. The high-rise apartments look like ghettos, but they are expensive and all Israel wants to live in them. There are lengthy waiting lists.

  Would you like to have one of those apartments, dear Mayush? Shai says to the sleeping figure of his wife. Her shaded face is turned away from him. Her thick black hair ropes around her neck and shoulders. We could put a bundle of children in one of those big apartments and they could go to good schools.

  She turns and groans, shields her eyes with her hand from the afternoon glare of the sun. No, she says, as she always says. Our apartment is plenty for us. It always makes Shai happy to hear this. She wants what I want, he thinks.

  They drive through Alonim in silence. Should I stop and get an espresso? Shai asks. Some hummus? But there is no answer. Maya sleeps again.

  Marc Solomon walks around the kibbutz. He walks past the tennis courts, now overgrown with weeds. The soccer field where he was unsurpassed as a player. The best in the north. If not for Shayetet 13, he might have turned professional, played for Beitar Jerusalem, or gone to Europe even. The swimming pool reflects the full moon. It’s 30 degrees. Too warm for the lightweight wool sweater Marc wears. It is three o’clock in the morning.

  He’s drunk from the whiskey he’d brought to the lul. Four bottles purchased duty-free. He’d hidden them away from his sister and the funeral, his mother and uncles. His friends are happy to see him, shy. Telling him the kibbutz gossip. The same gossip from twenty years ago. A long news cycle, in fact a loop. The marriages and betrayals. The crack-ups and suicide attempts. Yes, he knew about his ex-girlfriend Maya Frank. Yes, he’d heard she’d married his old army buddy and friend from the next kibbutz over, Shai Skymatsky.

  Yes, it was funny what they said about Shai Skymatsky. The stories of the commandos. The operation by the sea and how’d he flagged down the entire army with a Sprite bottle and a flashlight. Shai was coming tomorrow and he was bringing Maya, of all people.

  Someone drain the swimming pool! Maya Frank is coming! his friend Ofer had called out, and they’d laughed.

  Ofer, you’re such an asshole, Marc had said, and everyone groaned and it was time to go.

  Marc has slept a couple of hours in his parents’ basement apartment, but the peacocks’ calls have woken him and now he is wandering, jet-lagged. Past the cowshed, past the wadi, past the orchards, the pecan trees, the pomegranates, the morning glories that climb the railings, closed up for the night. The water tower where some girl had jumped some years before. His sister Keren’s house.

  Carolyn will come tomorrow with the boys.

  Guy Gever sits out on a porch chair surrounded by five sleeping hounds who barely raise their heads as Marc approaches. Gever! Marc says.

  Solomon. Guy doesn’t get up. He gestures for Marc to sit.

  Well, we’ve been through the shit now, haven’t we, Guy Gever says.

  Yes, I guess we have.

  Such a shame. There was a time when Marc Solomon could do no wrong.

  And you, Guy Gever. You were king in this kibbutz for over thirty years. What have you been reduced to?

  Guy laughs. He sucks at one end of a spliff and offers it to Marc. Why not? Marc takes it and sucks in the acrid marijuana mixed with tobacco. I did not know you smoked.

  I don’t, Guy says. This is a special occasion. He watches Marc inhale. Careful now, Guy says. This is strong stuff. From Sinai. Strong enough to stone even the Bedouin.

  The moon is impossibly large in the sky. There are more stars here than there are in Los Angeles. The moment feels holy. Marc Solomon is not religious, but he can understand how the night and stars could be mistaken for God. Guy is humming an old Hasidic song they’d learned as children for their bar mitzvah. All the world is a narrow bridge, Guy Gever sings in his good high tenor voice, do not be afraid.

  It doesn’t take long for Marc to realize he is very, very high. Guy Gever begins talking. For a moment Marc sinks into it, the words. Guy is telling him things the rabbi has told him. The old rabbi who has been indoctrinating the kids as they return from their months in India, after the army, high on spirituality. It is some kind of mystical mumbo jumbo. Marc never gets high, but he is high now. Suddenly, the world has no seams. He doesn’t believe in taking drugs of any kind. Even three years ago when he’d had his wisdom teeth removed it was his wife, Carolyn, who took all of his pain meds for recreation. He likes to drink. Like a man. Like his father. Marc pulls himself together, looks at Guy Gever with pity. For surely it is the kibbutz that has made him like this. If Guy Gever had gotten to the real world, even only as far away as Haifa, he would have been better off. He’s grown soft here, that’s what it is. It is not reality here in the kibbutz.

  You, now! Guy shouts at him suddenly. You, Marc Solomon, imagine that if a man takes this step, all carefully considered, life will go as smoothly as a reserves exercise, is that it, Marc Solomon?

  But Marc had not been speaking, not out loud anyway. Or had he? Maybe he was speaking. Marc is a rational man. But then Marc is sweating, profusely. His hands are clenched into fists. He wants to get up and leave, very much.

  You could just run, you know, Guy says to Marc. You have enough money, don’t you? I thought you and Ziv were in competition to see who would be the wealthiest Solomon? You could just run away and never come back and leave all your family and legal problems behind.

  Like you did, Guy Gever? When you tried to run away to Jordan?

  That was a long time ago, Guy says. And anyway, it was not for lack of trying. I didn’t have the money to go anywhere. Nor proper visas. I’m afraid of flying and it is impossible to get out of this godforsaken country without a flight.

  A boat to Cyprus, then.

  Guy shrugs again. I hate boats. What can I tell you? I’m a man of the earth. I like the earth. I am afraid of everything that is not the earth, the bushes, and the trees.

  Like my father, Marc says.

  Yes, Guy says. Like your father. Everything that is not built on earth. On soil. I need roots. The earth Abraham walked on. Guy Gever takes a long pull and the homemade cigarette burns bright red in the night. For instance, now your father is as safe as a baby in his crib. He lies in the cement of his grave. Nothing more can happen to him.

  Yes, well. You are safe, Guy. Nothing bad can happen to you here.

  Something bad can always happen, Guy tells him. And it will.

  Gever goes on and on, Here is a story your father told me years ago when Keren and I were first dating: Back in the old times, when he was small, there was a chief of a Druze village in the north named Kemal Kasem.
Your grandfather used to like to tell stories about him. He was very strong in his village. Why was he strong in his village? your father asked. Because he had killed eleven men. Blood feud, you know. How did they know he killed eleven men? Yakov asked. Why not ten or a dozen? Because the neighbor counts. You see, Marc? Because the neighbor counts!

  Yes, Marc has heard this one before. Marc begins to doze off. Guy says, She’s coming for you. And if you see Maya, let her go. Let her drown herself. It’s better. I hear she’s coming back. I should have let her drown.

  Oh, come on. Marc gets up to leave.

  No, it’s true. Let me tell you something, Marc Solomon. You either fuck her or let her drown. That’s the best you can do. You should have married her. You never should have left. You were the one who should have stayed. If you’d stayed, you would have made the kibbutz good. But you went, and look what has happened. Guy spreads his arms wide. Look what has happened to all of us.

  But you are doing well now! Marc says and laughs.

  Guy laughs too and then is quiet. Yes, he says. In a way. But you are not.

  An hour later, Marc is trudging home, head spinning, mostly from the tobacco that he is not used to. He wonders if Guy Gever said any of those things at all. He wonders if Guy was even there. Could it be he sat on that porch, as he had many times while on leave from the army, but this time by himself? Could he have made up Guy Gever? And if he was there, could they have just sat silently?

  Maybe it’s true. He never should have left the kibbutz.

  Carolyn and the boys will arrive tomorrow so Sam Solomon could play in the regional soccer championship. Dror will pick them up and bring them to the kibbutz to sit shiva and visit the grave site.

  Chapter 25

  Marc in the Kibbutz