Light Years (13 page)

“Nice, isn’t it?” I finally said.

“Yeah. Been a while since I did this.”

“Me too.” He left a comfortable distance between us, but I was still very aware of him, his body so close to me. “We should have discussion outside on days like this.”

“I tried it before,” he said, his eyes still closed. “No one pays attention.”

“No one pays attention anyway.”

It wasn’t true. Most days the discussions were actually interesting. Justin could point to connections and consequences that I never saw on my own. I even found myself reading sources not on the reading list just so I’d have something meaningful and surprising to add.

“You’ve read Thurgood Marshall’s decision on this?” he asked the first time I quoted something different.

“It seemed relevant,” I shrugged, secretly pleased by his tone.

Now on the bench, he just laughed.

“They teach you how to be cruel in Greenland, or does it just come naturally for you?”

“That wasn’t cruel,” I said, smiling. “You haven’t seen cruel. And I’m from Israel, you know. I can’t believe you still think I’m from Greenland.”

I had meant to tell him that for weeks. He seemed to enjoy bringing up Greenland every time we met. It was past time to set him straight. I just didn’t want to do it in front of fifteen other students. I wasn’t as paranoid about letting people know where I was from, but I didn’t want to make a production of it. I didn’t know what I was afraid of—maybe that people would sneer or make assumptions. Would he call me Israel now? Somehow I didn’t think so.

“I hadn’t guessed that,” he said. He opened his eyes and turned to look at me. “I thought maybe Italy or Argentina. I hadn’t thought Israel.”

“Now you know.” He’d thought about me. I was pleased. I was also impressed that he had never asked me.

“So what do you think of our fair country?” he asked.

I was going to give him a flippant answer, but his tone was serious and the sun had worked out the kinks in my neck and the tension from my body.

“It’s peaceful here,” I said. “I hadn’t even known what the word meant until I came here.” I took a deep breath, held it, and then let it out. “It feels like nothing bad could ever happen here.”

And then we were both quiet again.

When Payton noticed me and came over a few minutes later, I introduced her to Justin. From the flare of interest in her eye and the significant looks she kept shooting me, I knew that even if I tried to tell her he was just my TA and not a love interest, she’d never believe me.

I met Chris again that evening in front of the cafeteria. Our running styles fit well together, and we kept up our twice-a-week runs. We were both slow and steady, preferring time and distance to speed. I suspected Chris could have run faster, but he wasn’t complaining and I liked having a running partner.

As we ran, he grumbled about his girlfriend, Tasha. She worked at a bank back in Blacksburg and was very close to her
mother. He talked about her every once in a while, usually when he’d just gotten off the phone with her.

“I would love to get stationed in Japan,” Chris told me, his breath coming even and steady. “I went there two years ago and it was awesome. Totally different. I could have spent years there and I still wouldn’t have seen anything.” It always surprised me when Chris mentioned travel or sophisticated interests. There was something very humble and unpretentious about him, and he looked exactly like a dumb marine who should only be capable of shouting out “Yes, sir!” or “No, sir!” When he talked about attending a tea ceremony or going to a Turkish bathhouse, it always threw me.

“Tasha just doesn’t see it,” he said, eyes straight ahead, head up, perfect running form. “We’ve talked about getting married, but she said she’d never move to Japan. Too far away from her mother, can you believe it?” He shook his head and glanced down at me. “I’m in the Marine Corps. There’re no bases in Blacksburg. I don’t know what she’s thinking.”

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye and then concentrated on opening up my stride. He had sped up as he talked. I waited until I could feel that pause between each step, when both legs were far apart, striding out, and I floated for a split second, legs scissoring like pendulums.

As I opened my step, I sped up just past Chris. He increased his pace almost unconsciously, keeping even with me, his breath still coming nice and easy, his running form still perfect. I realized how much faster he could run and I wondered why he kept calling me to jog with him.

“She says I’m more committed to the Marine Corps than I am to her. What’s that supposed to mean?”

I took it as a rhetorical question. We ran for a while in silence. I focused on keeping my breath steady, since I was running faster than usual. The trees and streetlights were flashing by, there and gone, and I was a force of nature. Unstoppable.

“It’s not about her,” he finally said. “It’s not a choice between her and the Marine Corps. It’s about whether she wants safety or adventure in her life.”

It seemed to me that Tasha actually understood things pretty well. If it was about whether she wanted to join him and the military or whether she wanted to stay home without him, if those were her only two choices, that meant the Marine Corps did come first to Chris.

“We’ve dated since high school, and she’s never left our hometown. She went to the community college there, still lives five minutes away from her folks. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but if you have a chance to explore, how can you turn it down?”

It was the most he’d said about himself or Tasha since we’d started running together.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Some people aren’t like that. Some people find what they like and they’re happy to stay there.”

“You make it sound like a good thing.”

We exchanged looks, because it was clear neither one of us was like that. I was here in the States instead of home in Israel, and he couldn’t wait to cross an ocean.

Poor Tasha was about to be dumped for the open road and the brotherhood of the Marine Corps. There it was again, personality, force of will, leaving you where you started or moving you along.

“We’d come back,” he said. “I told her that I plan to live in Blacksburg again one day. She’d be away from her mother for a few years, big deal. Everything would still be the same when we’d get back.”

Maybe Tasha had the right idea. If you knew that you were happy someplace, it was a good thing to stay put. I missed the hot beat of Middle Eastern music that always blared from the radio. I missed hanging out with my friends and not having to think about what comes out of my mouth. I missed my family. I fought the urge to glance at my watch. I dropped my arms, shook them to relax them, and thought about my breathing. In, out. Like a heartbeat. Slow and steady.

When we finished, we stretched on the grass.

“Go easy on her,” I said, propping my ankle on the bike stand and stretching my hamstring. “Be patient. She might change her mind.”

“I know,” he said, grunting as he imitated my stretch. “But even if she went, we’d both know I dragged her there and that she’d rather be home, eating at the Golden Corral. We just don’t want the same things.”

“No, I guess you don’t.”

Dov and I wanted the same things. We just didn’t know how to get there. He had finished his military service seven months
before I did, and he’d gone to work for his uncle’s computer company, writing software. He still lived with his parents. Even with Hen’s casual attitude and long workdays, it felt wrong for me to bring Dov over to her place and do anything more than kiss. I always worried she’d pop in, needing to grab some files from her home office. At his place, I could hear his mother watching television in the next room. Even though he swore she’d never walk in on us when the door was closed, I couldn’t relax and I wouldn’t let him take off my shirt. It drove him crazy.

“She won’t care,” he said, nearly grinding his teeth. “She already thinks we have sex. So why not do it?”

We’d been going out for nine months. We made love for the first time four months earlier. We made love again a month after that. But opportunities were few and far between, and we’d fought over this ever since the first time we slept together at his cousin’s place. As far as Dov was concerned, after that first time the floodgates were opened, so to speak, and we should be making love on a regular basis.

“I can’t,” I said. “I just don’t feel right.”

We hardly ever had any privacy. I had a cousin who’d lend us her place when she was away, and there was Dov’s cousin, who had a place. But if they were in town, then—as far as I was concerned—Dov was out of luck.

One Friday night, we’d both drunk more than usual and Dov’s frustration with me had mounted. His fevered brain was plotting, though I didn’t know it. It was three in the morning and we’d stumbled out of a club near the beach. We were in
Haifa for once, visiting my parents. We’d had dinner with them and then Dov and I went out.

“I’ve had too much to drink,” he said, taking a deep breath of the salty air. “I shouldn’t drive.”

My ears were ringing slightly from the music in the club and the air around me seemed soothing and quiet. I didn’t want to go home yet. “So let’s walk.”

The club was right on the shore, so we took off our shoes and walked to the water’s edge. After a while, Dov said he was tired. He put his arm around me and rested his cheek on my hair. I thought I felt him kiss my hairline, but it was so soft I couldn’t be sure. We found a dry sand dune and sat down. We looked at the stars for a bit, but there wasn’t much to see; the city lights washed away most of the stars.

He leaned over and kissed me. My heart thumped pleasantly as it always did when I felt those firm warm lips and his hand cupped the back of my head. I was buzzed pretty good, and soon his clever hands were under my shirt, plucking at my bra.

“Wait,” I mumbled, feeling half-drugged. “There’re people around.”

I could faintly hear people laughing. An open-air bar not far from us was doing brisk business, and people sat on the sand drinking beer.

“Who cares,” Dov said, his voice rumbling in my ear. My hands tightened involuntary on his shirt. He kissed my ear, bit lightly on my earlobe. “Even if they notice, they’ll just see two people making out on the beach. Happens all the time.” He
rained tiny kisses on my face, the line of my jaw, my neck, and then returned to my lips, kissing me deeply, making love to my mouth.

I barely heard him. The ringing in my ears had grown.

“Okay,” I whispered as his hand slipped under the waistband of my pants. “Yes.”

I showered after we crept back home. I studied myself in the bathroom mirror, satisfied little smirk and all. My hair was a tangled mess, full of sand and salt from the damp wind. The sand had gotten everywhere, and Dov, with a grin, asked if I needed any help getting it out.

“No,” I said, and kicked him out of the bathroom.

I was embarrassed but also slightly proud. Sex on the beach. Not bad for a nice girl from Haifa. Next thing, I’d join the mile-high club.

I still had energy after the run with Chris, so I walked to the gym and worked out in the weight room for forty minutes. I wanted my muscles to quiver with fatigue. I wanted to push out all the memories, sweat them right out of my skin.

I passed Brook Maxwell, ex-flame of Justin Case. She was wearing black spandex tights and a lilac sports bra, climbing and climbing on the Stairmaster but getting nowhere. I was wearing ratty sweatpants and a faded shirt, stained dark with sweat. Her eyes shifted from the fashion magazine in front of her to me and then shifted back without acknowledgment. I flicked her the middle finger but she didn’t see.

*  *  *

For the next two weeks, Payton was consumed by sorority rush. Eight hours a day in her high heels and making conversation with perfect strangers was trying even for Payton. I was surprised how disappointed I was when I’d find our room empty at the end of the day. We hardly met for dinner anymore, and when I did see her during the day, she was too busy to say more than a quick hello, always surrounded by her group of fellow rushees. Like a string of little Goldilockses, they went from sorority house to sorority house trying to find the perfect fit. I’d never seen Payton fuss so much with her hair, her makeup, or her clothes.

I shrugged to myself in the empty room, quiet after Payton’s frantic search for a hair clip and her quick good-bye. I was thinking that it shouldn’t matter that we never did anything together anymore. But it did.

Two weeks later, Payton was accepted into the sorority of her choice and was giddy with the knowledge that another Walker woman would be a Kappa Delta. Having passed from prospective rushee to first-year pledge, Payton was consumed with secret rituals, Big Sister Week, and elaborate functions. I was constantly taking down messages, accepting little gifts—plastic cups full of candy decorated with Greek letters, framed photos of Kappa Deltas having fun, T-shirts with the sorority’s Greek letters—and leaving them on her bed, like offerings for a benevolent goddess.

Payton would be out until past midnight on weeknights and not back until dawn on the weekends. She started skipping her morning classes, unable to get up before ten.

“I don’t know how much more I can take,” she croaked to
me one night. “They say in a week things’ll settle down, but I’m behind in all my classes. God, I’m so tired.” She flopped into bed and was asleep with all her clothes on by the time I turned out the lights.

Then the onslaught was over and we were back to having dinner together two or three nights a week.

Payton’s mother took us out to their country club to celebrate her daughter’s brilliant success.

We lunched on chicken salad on croissants, fruit salad, and sweet iced tea. Several women wearing Chanel suits in pastel colors stopped by our table to say hello. Payton and I pasted on polite smiles that stayed in place for nearly an hour.

Her mother was very chatty and hardly let Payton get a word in, waving gladly anytime someone she knew walked by. She’d ask a question and not give Payton a chance to answer. After being cut off mid-sentence for the fourth or fifth time, Payton caught the look I shot her and grimaced.