A Remarkable Kindness (27 page)

A
viva stepped back into the burial house. The room had never seemed so dark. So utterly, thoroughly hopeless. She could only make out the vague forms of the others.

“We can't do the
tahara.
” Leah's voice was low, choked.

“Why not?” Aviva's eyes sharpened on the shrouds that Emily had tenderly laid over the edge of the coffin.

“Rachel's body is covered with blood. Every drop of her blood is holy. We have to leave her as she is.”

“We can't even use the shrouds,” Emily whispered.

All around the burial house, the summer light stood still. Tears dropped down Aviva's face. She did not know what to do. “Her mother asked us to cut off some of her hair,” she finally said.

Lauren reached for the scissors on the shelf above the sink. Gila inched down the hospital sheet to the edge of Rachel's forehead.
Emily separated the strands of Rachel's hair, those clotted with blood, those not clotted with blood. Lauren cut.

Aviva heard the dark thuds of war and the sound of the scissors.

“Is that enough?” Emily asked.

“It will never be enough,” Lauren said.

Gila took the shroud sheet, unfolded it, and passed it to Aviva. They shook it out. The sheet billowed in the air. Floated down like colorless wings. The women managed to pull out the hospital sheet from underneath the shroud sheet without exposing Rachel's mangled body.

Better to remember Rachel in her pristine beauty, Aviva thought. Better to simply slip the edges of the shroud sheet under Rachel and tuck her in. As if they were simply saying good night to her and she was going to sleep.

Nothing was better, really.

“Forgot my glasses,” mumbled Leah, passing the prayer sheet to Lauren, who took a moment and then recited, “
Peace be upon you, Rachel, daughter of . . .”

“Hillel and Malka.”

“
Hillel and Malka
. . .” Lauren repeated.

“Oh God . . .” Emily said.

“
Oh God,
” Lauren recited, “
may Rachel go in peace and rest in peace and be a messenger for all of us here on earth. And may she tread with righteous feet into the Garden of Eden
. . .”

Aviva eyes welled with more tears. Time stopped. Then she slowly stepped to the door and tugged it open and the harsh sunlight turned everything blacker than the blackest night. She
waited. Charlie Gilbert sat on the bench with a cigarette between his lips.

“Rachel's mother forgot to give this to you.” He handed Aviva a shopping bag.

Aviva pulled out an envelope with Rachel's name on it. Seeing Yoni's handwriting made her cry out again. Through her tears she saw a teddy bear with a Jewish star necklace, and a folded piece of paper at the bottom of the bag with her own name in a different handwriting. She read:

Aviva braced herself, trying to keep her legs steady enough to walk back into the burial house with Charlie. Gila and Leah held Rachel's legs, Charlie and Lauren clasped her middle, and Emily and Aviva cradled Rachel in their arms. They lifted Rachel and they raised her high and they held her—only to carry her over the side of the coffin and lay her down within it. Aviva placed the teddy bear on Rachel's chest along with Yoni's letter.

Aviva stood there. The world was exploding. The world was
imploding. There was nothing to hold on to. Nothing left. She closed her eyes. If God had asked her, Aviva thought, if there was a God and He would have dared to speak to her, then she would have beseeched Him, “Take me, don't take her, take me,” and she would have lain herself instead of Rachel right down inside that coffin.

E
mily walked with Lauren and Aviva to stand under the eucalyptus trees, away from the burial house and the sounds that Charlie Gilbert made as he nailed Rachel's coffin shut. The noise could be heard just the same.

“Do you think I have time to check on Shoval and Tal?” Emily asked.

“Definitely not,” Lauren said. “They're with the other kids at the shelter and seeing you will only wind them up. Out of sight, out of mind.”

Emily nodded and called Boaz, who told her that he and David had just picked up the rabbi from a bomb shelter in Nahariya and they were on their way to the graveyard.

“Be careful,” Emily pleaded into the phone.

“Careful has nothing to do with it,” Boaz told her. “It's like playing Russian roulette.”

A short time later, about thirty people stood by the burial house,
surrounding Rachel's coffin. Rabbi Lapid recited psalms, and when he stopped, a silence fell, broken by the stirrings of the sea.

Emily slid her hand into Boaz's and squeezed it tight. She did not think of Ali. She did not think of her past or her future. All she thought of was the terrible present.

Then Rachel's father, Herb, moved next to the coffin.

“We were thinking of bringing Rachel back to Wyoming,” Herb said softly, as if he were thinking out loud. “But this is where she was killed and this is where she belongs. I don't know what to say about our daughter that you all don't already know. She was like a flower—right away, you saw her beauty. Nothing hidden. I know she wouldn't want you to endanger yourselves on her behalf now, so I just want to read the last stanza of a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem that Rachel loved.”

He stopped to compose himself, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, his lower lip shuddering, and recited,

            
The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls

            
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;

            
The day returns, but nevermore

            
Returns the traveler to the shore,

            
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

The sea swept on. Some birds flew past. The sky was slashed with gunfire. “Does anyone else want to say something?” Herb asked in a trembling voice.

What could anyone say?

Yoni held on to Aviva and shook his head. Rachel's mother
began to weep. Her wailing voice no longer sounded human. Her cries seared Emily's heart.

Then Boaz and David joined Jordan and Herb around the coffin. Yoni limped behind them as they carried Rachel through the cemetery to her hastily dug grave. The men slid ropes underneath her casket and when it had been lowered, they took shovels and began pitching dirt into the hole. Earth clopped like horses' hooves against the wood. Emily and Lauren clutched Aviva between them. They cried and cried.

When the grave was filled, Rachel's family recited Kaddish, the mourner's prayer. Emily remembered reciting Kaddish for her father; the words had always comforted her, though they sounded like indecipherable rhymes. Like mysterious messages carried by the wind. Rhythmic, enigmatic words that somehow conveyed the color of grief.

May the One who makes peace up above, may He make peace upon us and upon all of Israel. And let us say Amen.

Explosions ripped through the air. For a moment, Emily had forgotten they were in the midst of a war. She stared at the mound of earth over Rachel's grave. She could not believe that Rachel lay within its dark folds.

“God forbid, we don't want any more tragedies.” The rabbi gestured with his hands. “Please, everyone, we all need to go. Please.”

The mourners filed out of the graveyard. Boaz told Emily he was going to take the rabbi back to the shelter. Lauren and David left to join their daughters. Aviva and Yoni were going with Rachel's family to a hotel in Jerusalem. It was safer away from the border, up in the hills.

Emily waited. “I know we all have to leave fast,” Emily told the rabbi on the way out, “but I have to ask you something.” She moved with him to the side of the burial house. She knew that Lauren would say it was all pointless. Meaningless. There was no message. No lesson for the spirit. No spirit.

But Emily had to find some sort of explanation.

Something.

“What do you think happened to Rachel's soul?”

Rabbi Lapid wiped his reddened forehead and the patches of skin not taken up by his beard, hanging damp with beads of sweat. He seemed to stumble through his thoughts as though hacking through bramble. He was lost.

The rabbi got hold of his voice. “I'll tell you what the Lubavitcher Rebbe believed. You can hold a wooden chair in your hands and feel that it exists. But if the chair is burning, you can't hold the heat and energy that is created from the fire. So it is with our souls. No substance really disappears, it is transformed. But you can't always see it.”

Emily stared at the old blue sky over Rachel's grave. Then she turned and watched the rabbi walk away. She was the last to go. She didn't want to leave Rachel.

At the fountain by the gate, Emily took a ritual cup and poured water three times over her right hand, three times over her left.

There were no towels, so Emily shook her hands in the air. It had been so long since she'd recited any traditional prayers. She glanced at the wooden placard next to the fountain. “
May God swallow up death forever,
” she read aloud. “
And may God wipe the tears from every face
. . .”

L
auren was in the delivery room getting everything ready: the medications, the sterilized scissors, the sutures, the swabs. A thirtyish woman lay on the hospital bed, her hair covered by a white scarf with blue and silver fringes, her plump face growing more flushed by the minute.

“Judith,” Lauren told her, “this is your second child, so the delivery should be pretty easy. Do you want me to turn on some soothing forest music?”

“I'm not Bambi.” Judith squeezed her eyes shut, clutched the metal rail by the side of her bed, and let out a long groan.

Lauren followed Judith's contraction on the monitor. Almost there. After switching off the ceiling fixture, Lauren turned on a floor lamp. The room softened, and a pale kind of moonlight spread across the walls. But ever since Rachel had been killed, Lauren's sense of the order of things was smashed. Emily had said she felt as
if she had stepped out of a color movie into an old newsreel where everything was black-and-white. Lauren had replied that it wasn't even black-and-white. It was gray. One gray smudged world.

Judith's moans filled Lauren's ears, a welcome distraction. “You're getting close.” Lauren tried to muster some conviction. She could no longer pretend to be excited about her work; she couldn't do much more than go through the motions. She glanced at the monitor again and then turned to Judith's husband, Yishai, a skinny slice of a man with carrot-colored hair and a smooth, hairless face, who stood near the floor lamp, a prayer book opened in his small hands. He swayed back and forth, reciting prayers in a voice just loud enough for Judith to hear.

“I feel like I have to push! I can't take this! I have to push!”

“Judith, hold on for one more minute while I check.” Lauren moved to the bed. “Ten centimeters. Good. When you feel the next contraction, push.” In the light that was like the early hour before dawn, Lauren saw the top of the baby's head, and waited for the next contraction.

“Help me!” Judith cried, her voice drowning out Yishai's prayers.

Lauren readied herself. Judith shouted and Yishai's prayers swelled. “Come on, Judith,” Lauren urged. “Push hard. Push
now
.” Lauren cupped her hands as if she were a nun in a convent of devotion. As if she had faith. As if she believed in the power of prayer. As if she were convinced that only goodness and beauty would greet this newborn baby falling through space, ignorant of the pain and grief that came with being part of this world. Lauren steadied her hands and the baby slid out, slid right into her palms.
A baby boy. Lauren lifted him, clamped and cut the umbilical cord, wiped him off. She wrapped him in a white hospital blanket and handed him to Judith so that he could rest on the outside of his mother now, listening to the familiar beat of her heart
.

“
Baruch HaShem
.” Yishai closed his prayer book with a kiss. “Thank God, thank God, thank God everything went well.” He moved to the bed, reached for his newborn son.

“Thank God.” Judith fell back on her pillow, trembling with relief and joy.

“You did great, Judith.” Yishai's face glowed as he stared down at his baby. “I'm going out to call your mother. I promised she'd be the first to know.” He gave his son a kiss, said another prayer, and left the room.

Lauren turned on the ceiling light. She checked the baby once more, put a hospital bracelet on his wrist, and gave him back to Judith.

“You must love working as a nurse here,” Judith said.

Lauren looked at Judith holding the baby, not saying a word.

“It's such holy work.” Judith tucked some stray hairs back under her scarf, her pink face filled with nothing but awe.

“I do love it.” Lauren hesitated. “It's just that sometimes . . .” She stopped, opened her mouth, and grew quiet again, looking down at the diamond pattern of the floor. “The war was so, so horrible. And I know what I'm about to say sounds so wrong, but a few hours ago, there was a Muslim woman in here who gave birth to her fourth son. Of course, I helped her the way I helped you, but I couldn't help thinking that when he grows up, he'll probably hate us.”

“You can't look at a newborn baby and think like that.” Judith's voice was charged, resolute. “New life is new
life.
”

“But he might turn into a terrorist!”

“You are God's hands on earth.” Judith stared up into Lauren's eyes. “You are His helper and each baby born here is partly because of you.” She gazed down at her son. “So hold that newborn and take care of him like you did just now.” She clasped her son close. “And remember, God put you here for a reason. He wants your hands to be the very first hands to touch that child.”

L
AUREN
'
S SHIFT ENDED
a few hours later. She left the hospital and headed home, the streets jammed again. Buses, taxis, vans, bicyclists, old people riding in those golf carts, pedestrians. And the cars. Israeli drivers were like geese, Lauren thought, always honking. Lauren turned into Peleg and drove down the main road just in time to see Maya, now in first grade, standing at the school bus stop with the other kids. Lauren got out of the car and gave Maya a kiss, but she shooed Lauren away, embarrassed.

Lauren continued home, where Yael was sitting on her tricycle in the driveway. David stood next to her, holding a kitchen towel in one hand, his motorcycle helmet in the other.

“How was your night?” he asked.

“Enlightening, actually.” Lauren got out of the car and gave David a kiss.

“Tell me all about it later.” He handed her the towel, put on his helmet, and got on his motorcycle. “I'll be back about six.” He blew her a kiss. “And can you surprise me with something besides noodles for dinner?”

“Very funny,” Lauren called after him.

“Eema, it's Avigail's birthday in
gan
today,” said Yael, dressed in Maya's hand-me-down bright red shorts and a matching shirt with a strawberry on the front. “Let's go already!”

“What are you waiting for?” Keeping pace with Yael, whose tricycle wheels rattled over the sidewalk, Lauren observed the clear light and the bright white clouds against the deep blue sheen of sky. “Yael, watch out!”

“What?” Yael turned so suddenly that her front wheel slid into the bushes.

Lauren disentangled her, set the bike upright, brushed her off, and they started out again.

“Yael,” Lauren said after a while, “this is taking so long.”

“I don't care!” Yael shook her head so her braided pigtails swung back and forth.

“I'm inviting a coach from the Tour de France to give you private lessons, because by the time you get to Avigail's birthday party, she'll already have turned five. Don't you want me to go back, get the car, and drive you to
gan
?”

“No!” Yael turned down her lower lip in the same defiant way that David did. “I'm old enough to ride just like the big kids.”

“Fine, fine. Just keep pedaling.”

Tricycles and bicycles lined the front of the
gan
. Yael left hers there, quickly hugged Lauren good-bye, and ran inside. Lauren wanted to get home, take a shower, and collapse on the bed. She walked past the bomb shelter, now cleaned, locked, and empty. She let out a long sigh. Then her cell phone rang. Emily.

“Can you get over here fast?” she asked.

“What's wrong?”

“I'll tell you as soon as you come—please?”

“I'll be right there.” Lauren walked as fast as she could to Emily's house, knocked on the door, and didn't wait for a response. “Emily?”

“In the boys' room!”

Hurrying past the living room—as disheveled as always—Lauren found Emily sitting on the floor in Shoval and Tal's bedroom surrounded by all the boys' things. Two partially packed suitcases, their unzipped flaps flipped back, lay open next to her.

“What's going on?” Lauren pushed aside a pile of red and blue sweatshirts to sit down next to her.

“You won't believe it.” Emily looked at Lauren with dazed eyes. She was still in her tiger-striped pajamas. “This guy named Hussein Zureib came here looking for Boaz.”

“Hussein Zureib?” The name sounded familiar. Then Lauren remembered Jasmine finding Tala Zureib's name in the newspaper. “Tala's husband?”

“Tala's husband,” Emily repeated. “He said that Jasmine had gone to their house and accused Tala of having an affair with Ali. Of course, Tala denied the whole thing, but Hussein didn't believe her and went to confront Ali last night. Ali told him the truth. That it wasn't Tala, it was me.”

“Oh no!” Lauren shook her head, wishing more than anything that she had been able to talk Jasmine out of believing that Ali was having an affair with Tala. But that would have meant incriminating Emily. Could Lauren have done anything differently?

“And even though this whole thing had absolutely nothing
to do with Hussein,” Emily went on, “he still came over here at the crack of dawn to talk to Boaz, who was out in the cowshed. The next thing I knew, Boaz walked into the kitchen where I was making a cup of coffee for him and said that Hussein told him everything about Ali and me. Hussein told him that if I were
his
wife, he'd kill me. Then Boaz told me to go. Just like that. Not even raising his voice. And the boys slept right through the end of my marriage!”

“Oh, Emily, this is awful!” Everything ricocheted inside Lauren: shock and sadness and a sense of being completely powerless, unable to stop the dismal chain of events.

“Before I could even defend myself or ask for a second chance or even suggest counseling—not that Boaz would go—or anything like that, Boaz took his thermos of coffee and walked out of the kitchen and went to milk the cows as if nothing even happened. Can you believe that? So I called Ali. He's coming to get me later and we're going to be together.”

“Be together where? Emily, I know you don't want to hear this, but I think after all that's happened, it's best you get over this fairy-tale romance of yours. There's no way you both are going to live happily ever—”

“We're moving to Boston.”

Emily's words ripped through Lauren's veins. They slit right through her. “What?
What?
”

“I'm moving there with him. To Somerville, actually.”

Lauren's eyes jammed with tears. The friend she loved best was leaving for the city she cherished most. A double betrayal. Emily was abandoning Lauren in a country that Emily had always cared
for more than Lauren did. A third betrayal. Emily was leaving Lauren here when she was the reason Emily had come. A fourth betrayal. “You're always looking at a man's potential, at what you think he
could
be, not who he really is. Emily, you're living in a fantasy!”

“It would have been a fantasy if I'd stayed married to Boaz and pretended that things were normal!”

“And what's Ali going to do there?” Lauren was unable to contain herself. “Wash cars on Commonwealth Avenue?”

“As a matter of fact, Ali's cousin has been saying for years that he'd help Ali open a hummus place. It's something he's always wanted to do. Maybe it's not a five-star restaurant, but he'll be good at it, with all his experience at the hotel.”

Lauren listened but she couldn't speak.

Emily's head jerked toward her. “Lauren, what's happened to you? Why did I even call you to come over? Because I wanted support from my best friend! But listen to you! And who are you to talk to me about not following my dreams? You're the one who moved here first!”

“A lot of good it did me.” Bitterness clogged Lauren's throat. “And you can't just pick up and leave Boaz—you're going to break his heart.”

“His heart was already broken. I tried and tried, you know I did, but he was like Humpty Dumpty. I couldn't put him back together again.”

Lauren set her jaw. She had nothing to say. Too much to say. She stared up at the drawers of the boys' dresser, opened and
stacked like stairs. Going nowhere. Then she began to cry. Emily reached for her and they cried together.

“And you don't even have your cruddy tissues.” Emily got up, went into the bathroom, and came back with a box.

“Em, I know you've tried with Boaz.” Lauren wiped her face. “But I can't believe you're doing this.”

“I don't need this right now.” Emily turned away and carelessly placed a pile of shorts in a suitcase.

“I just can't believe you're moving away. I can't believe you're leaving me, just picking up and—”

“I can't believe you're mad at me!”

“I'm not—”

“Seriously, Lauren? Really?” Emily stared hotly at Lauren.

Lauren looked down at a box of Legos, her cheeks burning, Emily's stare setting her face on fire.

“You keep saying that I dream of things that can't be, but you've kept up this romance with a city for so long that you don't appreciate all you really do have. Honestly, Lauren, since I've moved here, you've done little but complain.”

“I was usually only joking—”

“Whatever. But don't envy me because you feel sorry for yourself. And, if that's the case, then do something about your life, and don't be angry at me because I'm doing something about mine.”

Lauren was speechless. She looked out the window to where the sun had bleached the sky, burned a hole through all that blue. She heard some crows going crazy by the cowshed. Maybe one of
their own had died and they were coming to pick up its remains. And how could their lives just go on?

She bowed her head. Listened as Emily packed more clothes into the suitcases. Lauren knew she had to compose herself. “Emily, I'm sorry.” Lauren glanced up through blurred eyes. “I'm just in shock. It's all been so much. The war and Rachel and now you . . .”