Light Years (21 page)

“It’s not your fault,” Hen said. It was two months after Dov’s funeral. I had just come back from a run. It was June, and the heat was brutal. My legs were shaking and my shirt actually dripped with sweat. The air-conditioned apartment was freezing after the heat outside, and I was shivering, trying to keep my teeth from chattering. “Stop hurting yourself. Stop
punishing yourself.” She grabbed my arm, and her nails dug painfully into my skin.

I hadn’t decided if I should go to the States. My father had already paid for the first semester, but every day, every hour, I changed my mind. Sometimes it seemed like the right sort of punishment. After all, Dov had been there waiting to hear what I had decided. Dov had wanted me to stay. I should stay. But then sometimes I thought if I stayed here one more day I would die too.

There had been another suicide bombing the day before. Dozens of people had been injured. Two killed. Not a bad one, considering.

“I know what you’re doing,” she said, giving me a little shake. “You do this every time there’s another bombing.”

“What are you talking about?” I jerked my arm out of her grip. I walked to the kitchen and filled a glass with water.

“Every time there’s a bombing you hurt yourself. You torture yourself, soaking up all the details on television, reading all the articles. Then you punish yourself. You don’t eat. You run in this crazy heat. You don’t sleep. Why do you do this to yourself?”

“I just went for a run.” I said. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” My teeth were chattering now. I clutched my arms to my chest to preserve body warmth, but my shirt was clammy and it didn’t help.

“Stop being a victim. Get over it!” Hen’s patience with me had finally snapped. “Everyone loses people they love. Stop wishing you’d been there. You weren’t. And you know something,
I’m glad you weren’t. That’s right.” She jabbed a finger in my chest. “To me, that’s a blessed miracle. Yes. Dov was there. Sad. Tragic. But that’s life.”

“No, that’s life in Israel!”

“Then go. Leave. Stop hiding behind Dov’s death, don’t make excuses. If you want to go, then go. But if you stay, you have to start living life in this world again. I hear you on the phone, always refusing to make plans, to meet your friends. You have to start living like a human being and not like a dog in a cage. You think no one noticed?”

I hated her. Hated her shallow views, her simple life.

“I am not living with you anymore,” I said.

I got up, grabbed my purse, and slammed the door on my way out. I called Daphna—my only friend who owned a car—on my cell phone and she drove me all the way back to Haifa, back to my parents. They drove up the next day and picked up the rest of my things from Hen’s. I don’t know what they said to her. I didn’t ask and they didn’t say.

“It’s not your fault,” my parents kept saying. They had more patience for me. They said it every day, every morning when I stumbled into the kitchen for my morning coffee. I had been excused from the rest of my military duty. I only had a few weeks left anyway. So I lived at home and did nothing. Didn’t get a job. Didn’t meet friends. Didn’t sleep. When my welcome packet from the University of Virginia arrived, I was surprised. Surprised they still expected me. But I had faxed in my acceptance an hour before Dov was killed. The welcome packet sat on my desk, unopened.

“You have to start sleeping,” my mother said. I could hear the tears in her voice. “Maya, my love, stop hurting yourself. It wasn’t your fault.”

They made me see a shrink.

“Not your fault,” the counselor said. She specialized in terror survivors. She had plenty of experience with this sort of behavior. I was surprised she even had time to squeeze me into her busy schedule. Too many survivors. “It’s typical for victims to try to take on the guilt of the perpetrator.” She spoke in a very matter-of-fact tone. No coddling here. “But don’t you do it. You’re not the one who detonated a bomb in the middle of a crowded café. You are not the terrorist. You are a person trying to live her life the best she can. Yes, a terrible tragedy happened. Don’t make it worse. Seven people already lost their lives to this bomber. Don’t let yours be the eighth.”

I sat in her sunny office and let her talk. I knew she believed what she said. Intellectually I could understand what she said. I agreed with her. It was true for most people. But it didn’t matter in my case. I didn’t even bother to explain. It was different. After he was fired from Shtut, he never got another job. He just sat at home, fuming and plotting. He was eighteen. Unemployed. Full of rage. Because of me. If I hadn’t said anything, maybe he would still be working, still bringing money home to his parents, hating the Jews, but beholden to us for his living. Once that was taken away, he didn’t need us anymore.

I created many scenarios where the ending was different. There were so many ways this could have been averted. If Dov
and I had agreed to meet later. If I called to say I was running late and for Dov to come meet me. If I let Dov choose the place where we met. If that goddamn manager had handled the situation differently. If I never said anything to the manager. If that stupid Frenchwoman hadn’t brought pecorino in her bag, Hen would never have agreed to go to Shtut for lunch. If. If. If.

It didn’t matter what anyone said. If Dov and I had never met, he’d be alive today. He wouldn’t have been at the café and he’d be alive. But he did go and I had told him to meet me there, and now he was dead. Those were black-and-white facts. Meeting me, falling in love with me, was the worst thing that ever happened to him. That didn’t even take into account that I was meeting him to tell him I was leaving for four years.

My parents, my aunt, the counselor could repeat their mantra as much as they like, but I knew the truth.

Besides, I wasn’t sure Dov’s parents didn’t agree with me.

I saw them a few times after the funeral. I wondered if they hated me.

My parents drove me to the airport at the end of August. We were quiet in the car, mostly. There was not much left to say. I was going to the United States because none of us could think of anything else I could do. It was almost four months since Dov had died. My parents hoped sending me away was the right thing to do. But I knew they were scared that once I got away from them, I might do something stupid. Something harmful. I knew I wouldn’t, but nothing I said could make
them believe that. I could sense their doubts, their fears, like a smell in the car. They were fighting a battle for me, trying to at least, but there wasn’t anything they could do and we all knew it. Keeping me near wasn’t working, and they were taking a chance that sending me away would help.

I said good-bye to Adam at home. I knew he was confused about the whole thing. Mad and sad about Dov, but not really understanding me. That was okay, though. I didn’t really understand me either.

“You take care, little brother,” I said. He was taller than I was now. He’d grown a lot in the past two years.

“You too, big sister.”

When he kissed me on the cheek, I noticed that his skin was rough with patches of stubble. I hadn’t even noticed that he’d started shaving. He noticed my look and rubbed his chin with sheepish pride.

“Guess it’s time for my weekly shave.”

“Adam,” I laughed. “I love you so much. I’m going to miss you.”

“I know,” he said, and his mouth twisted with something I couldn’t read. “But I’ll miss you more.”

We drove under blue skies with only a few white clouds to mar perfection. My mother sighed a bit and my father kept glancing at her.

“I’ll be fine,
Ima,
” I said.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“If it doesn’t work out,” my father said, “just come back to us. Don’t force yourself through this if it isn’t right for you.”

He had his doubts that I should leave my support when I needed it most. But even he could see staying here wasn’t good. My mother had convinced him I should go. Maybe she was right. Maybe leaving would be better. I didn’t think it could get worse.

“I’ll be fine,
Abba.
”

“I know you will. I just want you to know.”

“I know,” I said. That didn’t seem like enough. “Thank you.”

“I miss you already,” my mother said in a small voice.

“Oh,
Ima,
” I said. “I miss you too.”

“All this missing and she hasn’t even boarded a plane yet,” my father said.

We laughed weakly.

“It’s for the best,” my mother said. “You need a break. You need some peace.”

I sat in the backseat watching the fields and orchards and towns on the side of the road whoosh by, appearing and disappearing, rolling away with ease.

There had been another bombing that morning. They didn’t want me to know about it, but I heard the news during breakfast. It was in Jerusalem. They kept thinking I was going to fall apart every time there was another attack. Everyone thought so. They tried to keep it from me. My mother even canceled our newspaper subscription. They never turned on the television when I was around.

“It won’t always feel like this,” my mother said. “And going to the States, it’s so exciting. You’ll have such a good education, make new friends.”

“Getting away from Israel is the only reason I’m doing this,” I said. I hated myself for saying mean things. It just hurt them more. But the words seemed to spill out. “You know it and I know it. It has nothing to do with friends or adventures or even learning anything. I just have to get out of here.”

We didn’t say much after that. There were so many things I wanted to say. Bitter words. But it wasn’t their fault. It wasn’t fair for me to hurt them more. I managed to keep silent and they kept quiet too. My parents insisted on coming in the terminal with me, and they stood beside me until I went through passport control, where only ticketed passengers could go. My father nearly crushed me in his hug, and I felt my mother’s soft lips on my face, near my eye. Once I was past the metal detectors, I turned back and waved at them.

“
Shalom,
” my mother called out. A few people looked at her. It was an old-fashioned way to say good-bye. It meant hello and peace as well.

“Be safe,” my father said.

“I love you,” my mother said.

I waved one last time and walked away.

I left them standing so close to each other they were nearly touching.

I left Israel, flying away in a 747, leaving only a fading contrail to mark my passing. I told myself, in a litany on the plane, that it was for the best.

The plane trip was uneventful. A large, dark group of Hasidic men took up the back half of the El-Al flight. They would get up at certain mysterious intervals and pray in the back of the plane, near the bathrooms. I wondered how they knew which time zone to pray by—the one they came from, the one they were headed toward, the one they were currently flying through, or some combination of all three. I was sure they had debated this for many hours back in Israel and that they reached a logical, Torah-based conclusion. I was vaguely curious about what they decided and the rationale behind it, but not enough to ask any of them. I always felt uneasy around the Hasidic community, the men with their thick beards and thicker black coats, the women with their styled wigs and long skirts.

On this trip, however, I enjoyed the sound of their deep, prayerful murmurs from the back of the plane, rising above the hum of the engines. I leaned my forehead against the cold plastic window and gazed out at nothing.

I tried not to think of my last night in Haifa as a bad omen. I had cramps and the room was too hot. I was covered in a sticky sheen of sweat. It took me a moment before I realized what the wetness between my legs was. My period had started early. I turned on the light by my bed and saw dark blood, almost black, smeared on the sheets and my shorts. It was three in the morning. I stripped the bed, stripped off my shorts, and after cleaning myself, I spent nearly half an hour scrubbing out the blood from my pajamas and my mother’s sheets.

The murmurs of prayers from the back of the plane had faded, and there was only the hum of the engines for company.
The sun had set, and my reflection in the window stared back at me. I was headed someplace new and different. I was going there alone. I prayed then, something I rarely did. I prayed on the plane for God to help me and keep me and make me whole again.

By January, the start of my second semester, my body was wasting into air, becoming air. I began to ache at night. I dreamed of kissing Dov, of brushing my lips over his, of him kissing my forehead, my nose, my face, my neck, my shoulders. I dreamed of tracing that delicate pale path from tan wrist to ivory shoulder. I could feel his mouth on mine, his warmth, and I let my fingers glide along the hills and valleys of his stomach and his back, felt his weight on top of me, inside me. I would cry out in my dream, so happy he was back, that it had all been a nightmare, his death, my guilt. He was back with me, touching me, loving me, and everything was all right. I would wake up crying, alone, tangled in my bedsheets.

On mornings after nights like that, I functioned a little slower and my temper came a little faster. I was raw and unable to deal with the eccentricities of the people around me.

My parents and Adam had come during winter break, and we’d spent two weeks together. We spent the first few days in Charlottesville, so they could see the university and where I lived, and then a week and a half in Florida, where everything was sunny and bright and warm.

When I was with them in Miami, it seemed like everything
was going to be fine. It felt like we were back in Israel, hanging out by the water on a Friday afternoon. We ate ice cream every day, went to see an alligator farm, spent a day at Disney World and got our picture taken with Goofy. I laughed at Adam’s jokes, and my parents lost that tight look around their eyes. At the airport, we said good-bye. They were flying to Israel. I was flying back to Virginia.

“Well,” my mother said, stroking my hair. “I guess things are working out fine.”

“Yes, they are,” I said, and I meant it. At least for that moment, everything seemed fine.