I woke up to the sound of my dog, Kipi, scratching at the door to come in. I groaned and sat up to let her in, but as soon as I opened my eyes, I realized it was only Payton gathering her papers for her eight o’clock class.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “I was trying to be quiet. I’ll be out of here in two more seconds.”
“ ’S okay,” I mumbled, and rolled over, burrowing under the covers. My new flannel sheets were warm, and I rubbed my cheek on my pillow. I’d say that much for living in a cold climate—which is what Virginia had become in the last few weeks—it made snuggling in bed even more of a joy. It had been so brutally cold last night at the astronomy observatory. A sudden cold so crisp I thought even the stars would shatter. A preview of what winter must be like here. “Unseasonable chill,” the weatherman called it, and I shuddered to think what it’d be like when it was seasonable for such cold. I was warm now and I planned to stay that way. I wiggled my toes, happy that they seemed to have survived the night intact.
The door clicked shut behind Payton.
It was too bad I couldn’t bring Kipi here, right now—her little body would fit perfectly in the space by my belly. She’d sprawl on her back with her legs spread and I’d scratch her stomach and play with her ears. But university dorms didn’t let you keep dogs, and even if they did, I couldn’t have brought her with me. The flight alone would have traumatized her.
What would she think of the cold? I pictured her playing in the snow Payton kept promising would come. I imagined her jumping into a snowy drift and disappearing with a poof of white flakes.
I must have fallen asleep because I nearly fell out of bed when the phone rang.
“Maya, did I wake you? Your mother said the morning was the best time to call … and it’s almost nine in the morning, right? Or did I get it wrong?”
“Hen,” I said groggily. My eyes were weighted with anvils. I forced them open. My voice sounded like I had a two-pack habit, as smooth as sandpaper. “Yeah, it’s almost nine. I should be up by now.” A lie, since I was planning to skip class and sleep until ten-thirty. But no matter.
I had meant to call Hen before now. I never felt up to it, never had the energy for mental fencing. She produced guilt as a defensive secretion, like a skunk. So now I tried to wake up my fuzzy brain, to make sure I said the right thing.
“So how is school? Do you have any friends yet?”
“Hen,” I protested. “What kind of question is that? Of course I have friends. People here are terrific.” I was mildly surprised to discover as I said it that it was true.
“And are you eating? Can you find any food besides hamburgers?” Hen was not a vegetarian but was still convinced any weight gain came directly from eating meat. Weight gain was a favorite topic of hers. She could make a POW feel uneasy about his daily caloric intake.
“There’s a salad bar in the cafeteria,” I said. “I eat a salad every day.”
“You shouldn’t use a cream-based dressing, it’s just a sneaky way of saying oil and butter. It defeats the whole point of eating a salad.”
“Of course.”
“Americans don’t know how to eat.”
Annoyed, I felt I had to defend American cuisine. “That’s not true, Hen. It’s not as bad as people think. There’s lots of good food.” I tried to think of compelling examples. “The sandwiches here are wonderful, they have good pasta. Even the salad bar is pretty good.”
“But not like in Israel.”
“No.” I was forced to agree. “There’s nothing like the food in Israel.” I sighed, thinking about it. “I miss tomatoes the most. The ones here are almost pink. They have no taste. There’s no hummus, no good olives.” Didn’t I mean to defend American food? Hen always got me to agree with her in the end.
“I miss having you here in my apartment,” she said, as if thinking the same thing.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s very different here.”
“That’ll make it easier for you to come back.” I could hear the satisfied smile over six thousand miles of telephone cables, or whatever they use these days.
“I got another award yesterday,” she said. “A glass pyramid they pretended was crystal.” Hen was the only person I knew who could tell the difference between glass and crystal. Until I met her I didn’t even know there was a difference. “I don’t know where they expect me to store all this nonsense they keep handing out.”
“What did you get it for?”
“I don’t remember,” she said. “They give them out too easily. Close a deal, organize a function, blow your nose, and voilà, another glass pyramid to dust.”
I laughed. “Hen, you are one of a kind.” I thought again how amusing it was that in Hebrew Hen’s name meant charm and beauty, while in English it was the word for a female chicken.
“I know. Anyway, I was just calling to check on you for your mother. Make sure that you were still alive.” I knew that wasn’t true, but it was so like Hen to need an excuse to call me. To blame my silly mother for worrying.
“You’re a good sister for doing that,” I said. “Tell her everything is fine. Tell her I’m doing well.”
“And sleeping in until noon,” Hen said. “Obviously someone is having a good time. Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
I gently hung up the phone and sat in bed, blanket around my shoulders like an Indian chief, thinking.
It was a perfectly beautiful day, not too hot or too cold, with an easy, steady breeze that made me want to sigh in pleasure. Restless and feeling like I was wasting a precious day in the cool, dark library, I gathered up my books and notes, jammed them in my bag, and walked out into the sunshine. Students were stretched out on the grass or playing Frisbee. I found an unoccupied bench nearby and sat down.
I exhaled deeply, feeling the sun warm my skin. I suspected I wouldn’t get too many perfect days before it got cold. So I sat on the bench and ignored the piles of books I should have been reviewing, ignored the students around me, closed my eyes, and lounged like a lizard, letting the sun warm my limbs.
I opened my eyes a moment later when a dark shadow spilled over me and cut off the heat and light like a switch.
“Sunbathing, Greenland?”
I squinted at the figure blocking the sun and recognized Justin.
“Move over,” I said. “Or sit down, but don’t block the sun.”
He sat down next to me and stretched out his long legs. It had been almost a month since the kissing incident, and neither he nor I had brought it up or even alluded to it in any way. This was the first time I had seen him outside class since then. He glanced over at me, then slouched down so his head could rest against the back of the bench, like mine. He tilted his head back, sighed, and closed his eyes. When I saw that he seemed content to stay put, I turned my face back to the sun and closed my eyes.
We stayed silent like that for a while and it was very peaceful.
“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.
While the plates were cleared away, both Payton and I excused ourselves to the restroom.
“She’s my mom,” Payton said before I could say anything, sadness and frustration warring in her tone. “That’s just who she is.”
“Is it her medication?” I knew I probably wasn’t supposed to ask, but I did.
“I don’t know. It might be. Sometimes she just gets this way.” Payton entered a stall and closed the door. I leaned against the counter, waiting for her to finish, trying to think of something to say.
Payton came out and briskly washed her hands.
“The desserts here are unbelievable. Have you ever had pecan pie?”
I admitted that I had not.
“Then today is your lucky day,” Payton said. “They have the most amazing pecan pie here.”
I understood that she didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
After her mother dropped us off in her dark-green Jaguar, Payton plopped on her bed. “I hope the club wasn’t too rough for you,” she said, pretending that was why we were both slightly subdued. “But my family pretty much has to go there. My great-grandfather helped found the club.”
I followed her lead.
“Tough,” I nodded sympathetically.
“You know what I mean.” She threw her pillow at me.
I ducked and it hit my shoulder.
“It must be hard,” I said. “Going to a fancy club, day after day, pecan after pecan.”
“We try to be brave about it.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
She laughed. “Now that you’ve mocked my family and our proud heritage, are you going to help me with this calculus nonsense?”
“Calculus is many things,” I sniffed. “But nonsense isn’t one of them.” I scooted over to her bed, and we spread out her notes and worked on figuring out proofs, theorems, and the value of the unknown.
* * *
That afternoon I met the major’s Israeli wife, Yael, for coffee. She lived in a nice house not far from the university. The directions she gave me over the phone were impeccable, and I found the house ten minutes before I was supposed to arrive. I strolled down her street, admiring the different houses with their long windows and lush gardens until it was time, and then I rang the bell.
A slim blond woman wearing blue cotton pants and a snug white shirt opened the door.
“Maya,” she said warmly in English. “Come in. You found the place okay?”
“Perfectly.”
“I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”
The house was decorated in a strange mix of Israeli and American styles. There were several prints of Jerusalem, an embroidered blessing of the house in Hebrew—clearly her contributions. The tan recliner in front of the television and the military prints of historic uniforms must have belonged to her American husband.
She had set out plates with cookies and fruit, and a little pitcher of cream and sugar in a matching silver set. I was officially a Real Guest.
We settled down, poured ourselves a cup of coffee, and added the necessary adjustments of cream and sugar. I helped myself to a cookie, knowing nothing would get said until I did so.
“We can talk in Hebrew, right?” she asked me. Her accent in English was very soft, nothing like the harsh tones most people in Israel carry when speaking English.
“Of course,” I said. “I’ve been looking forward to speaking Hebrew again. Apart from my parents on the phone, I never get to speak it.”
She nodded sympathetically.
“I only speak Hebrew with my mother and sister these days,” she said, switching to Hebrew. “I tried to teach my kids Hebrew—I’ve got a son and a daughter—but it’s too hard.” She shrugged. “They didn’t want to learn it as kids. Their father doesn’t speak it and their friends don’t speak it and they thought it was embarrassing that their mother did. Now they’re grown up and they want to know why I never taught it to them.” She gave a little laugh and sipped her coffee.
“Does your family in Israel speak English?” I asked.
“Some, but not well.”
“That’s hard. I mean, they’re your family but they can hardly communicate with your kids.”
Yael waved away my concern. “They can understand the important things. Besides, seventy percent of communication is body language. When you have that and you love each other, you understand just about everything.”
I blinked at her blithe explanation. It sounded like she must say it a lot. I had this vivid mental image of little kids pantomiming licking an ice cream and their grandmother pantomiming back looking for her wallet and keys. I was sure my professors would be interested to know that the grammar mistakes I made in my papers weren’t important and were irrelevant to getting my point across.
“That’s … good.” At least my parents spoke Hebrew and English well. No matter where I chose to live and have kids, they’d be able to talk with them using more than just hand signs and foot taps. It was something I’d already thought about if I stayed here.
“You make a place for yourself, no matter where you end up,” she said, as if reading my mind. I had to be careful not to let my thoughts show on my face. “I never imagined myself as an American, living all over the world on military bases. But that’s how things worked out, and now I can’t imagine it any other way.”
“It must have been hard.”
She shrugged and made a face.
“I can see that being here now might be hard for you. But it’s hard for me when I go back to Israel now. I’m not fully Israeli anymore. I know I’m not really American either. But you learn not to define yourself that way.”
I was taken aback and didn’t have an easy comment to return. I suddenly realized that I’d found a person who might help me figure out what to do, how to make the choice of picking my country, my homeland. The afternoon switched from being a tedious chore to being something that might truly help me.
“Okay,” I said, scooting forward in my seat, carefully setting down my cup. “How does this work? How do you learn to be comfortable here? Or do you?”
She put down her mug as well. We had both figuratively rolled up our sleeves. “You have to choose,” she said softly. “You need to decide what team you play for. I’m not saying you need to do it now; you don’t know yet. But give it two years and then decide one way or the other. And this doesn’t mean there aren’t days when you’re homesick. And it doesn’t mean you don’t pay close attention to the news every time they mention Israel. You’re still connected. But in your heart, you need to decide that if push came to shove, whose side you’re on, and then stay there. Don’t second-guess yourself.”
I must have looked uneasy because she smiled. “Don’t worry about it so much. I think in the end it’s not a decision your head makes. It’s an instinct you develop. A gut feeling that you follow. It doesn’t signify love or a lack of it—” she stopped herself, thought for a moment. “You’ll know when you decide because you’ll talk about something and you’ll say ‘we’ about one country and ‘they’ about the other country. I know right now you think that the only people who love you are in Israel, right?”
I nodded.
“And that no one can love you like that here. So how can you leave the people who love you so much, who understand who you are. Am I right?”
I nodded.
“Well, here’s my story. I met my husband when he was stationed in Israel. We started dating and we got married three months later.”
“Wow.”
She smiled. “It makes sense when you’re nineteen, let me tell you. Anyway, the first year we were married he was still stationed in Israel, so things were really easy. Ian’s not Jewish, but he didn’t care about religion. We went to my parents’ house for the holiday. Ian wore a kipa. I had everything the way I was used to it. But after a year, we got assigned to this place called Parris Island, which has nothing to do with Paris, France. And I’m not talking some nice fun island. It’s the headquarters for Marine Corps recruiting. I’m talking about mosquitoes and some godforsaken swamps in the middle of nowhere.” She paused, took a sip of her drink, smiled as I winced in sympathy. “Two days before we’re supposed to leave Israel for South Carolina, Ian gets a three-month assignment to Haiti that he can’t talk about. On his way out the door he tells me there’s no housing available for us in Parris Island but that some chaplain priest, hearing about our plight, has agreed to share his house with us.” She was a good storyteller, pausing at the right places, building up her tale.
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah. I nearly had a nervous breakdown.”
“Why didn’t you just stay in Israel until he came back?”
“Well, I said I wouldn’t go. I said he couldn’t abandon me and send me to a priest’s house. Apart from one trip to visit his family in Michigan, I’d never spent time in the States. I’d never met a priest.”
I nodded my head. I’d never met a priest either.
“But,” she lifted a finger. “I was six months pregnant, and the one thing Ian asked of me when we got married is that the kids be born in the States. He didn’t care if I raised them Jewish, he didn’t care if I kept a kosher house, but he wanted the kids born on American soil. So I went.”
“Unbelievable.” I shook my head. “That’s incredible.”
She smiled. “I ranted and raved for two hours and then my parents drove us to the airport. I got on one plane, he got on another.” She set down her cup, clearly enjoying my reactions to her story. “I flew by myself—another first—with my belly already out to here.” She held a hand two feet away from her stomach. “When I landed, the priest was waiting for me with my name on a sign. I was so upset to be in this new country, I nearly cried when I saw him. I’d been wondering what I would do if I landed and there was no one waiting for me. I was ready to throw myself into his arms.
“I grew up in a religious home. We kept kosher and my father went to synagogue every morning. And here I was, going to live with a man who wasn’t my husband, alone in his house, and he was a priest. It nearly killed me. I didn’t even tell my parents, I was so ashamed and worried about their reaction.”
“They were okay with the fact that you didn’t marry a Jew?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Not at all, but for once in my life I didn’t care what they thought. Sometimes you only listen to yourself, and my parents realized they couldn’t change my mind. They could keep me as their daughter who married a goy, or they could lose a daughter who married a goy.” She shrugged. “They decided to keep me.”
“Wow.”
“Wait until you fall in love,” she said. “The strangest things can happen.”
It took a physical effort for me not to flinch at the blow. I swallowed back the rush of memories that suddenly crowded the edge of my mind and forced myself to focus on the rest of her story.
“By the time we arrived at the priest’s house, I was nearly shaking. He showed me where he’d put up a mezuzah on the doorframe. He showed me the kitchen. He had turned it into a kosher kitchen. He’d gone out and bought two sets of dishes, forks, spoons, everything you need. He had taken down all the crucifixes from the walls. Then he took me to one small bedroom and he said, ‘This is my bedroom.’ There was a bed and a dresser and a crucifix over the bed. That was the only place in the whole house with one. Then he showed me the master bedroom. ‘This is where you’re going to sleep.’ It was a beautiful room. ‘This is your house now,’ he said. ‘I won’t be in your way.’ ”
Goose bumps raced up my arms. “He really put up a mezuzah and koshered the kitchen?”
“He did. He got some man from a synagogue in Savannah to come in and help him do it right. I started crying, and he got very worried. This was twenty years ago and everyone thought it wasn’t healthy for a pregnant woman to be upset. So he starts saying, ‘Did I do something wrong? I’m sorry, it’ll be fixed, please don’t worry. We can make it right.’ Then I started crying even harder because he had done everything perfectly, so thoughtfully. I’d expected him to try to convert me, and instead he gave up his house to Judaism.” I noticed her eyes had welled up. She looked away. “Even today I can’t get over it. We became very good friends. When David was born, he was there with Ian in the hospital waiting room.”
I sipped my coffee. It was almost cold and tasted like wood.
“Maya, what I’m trying to tell you is that no matter where you end up making your home, people make room for you. People who you never thought would accept you. You don’t have to hide who you are or try to conform.” She looked at me sharply, as if she could see my walls. “You couldn’t blend in even if you tried. So you shouldn’t bother.”
I thanked her for the coffee and said it was time for me to go. We shook hands.
“You’ll have to come here for Rosh Hashanah,” she said.
On my way out the door I turned and asked her, “Are you still friends, you and the priest?”
She looked down for a moment. “No,” she said. “We kept in touch for almost ten years, and then he got out of the military and we lost touch.”
I said good-bye and walked away.
I didn’t want to think about Yael or her hybrid house or her American husband and their nomadic military existence. So I walked through the quiet neighborhood, taking the long way back to the library, trying to keep my mind clear. But I couldn’t help thinking about friendships and respect and making space in your life for people different than you are. As always when I met someone new, I wondered if Dov would have liked her. I tried to remember if I thought about him this much when he was alive, but by now it was all tied up together and I couldn’t remember. It seemed like there was never a time when he wasn’t in my thoughts.
I forced myself to focus on my breath, lungs filling in and emptying, oxygen-rich blood reaching all the nooks and crannies of my body. Call it Zen walking. Zen avoidance. Meditative denial.
In this state of false Eastern calm, I ran into Justin and Brook, the two people I knew who seemed to absolutely fit together, like yachts and Kennebunkport. I didn’t want to be seen and I didn’t want to chat. I was seriously eyeing the giant SUV on my right as an excellent hiding place, but I was spotted before I could dive behind its monster fenders. As always, I hesitated on my instincts and waited too long.
“Hey, Maya. What are you up to?” Justin sounded happy to see me, oblivious to the fact that Brook and I had our hackles raised. I couldn’t really articulate what it was between her and me. Maybe it was that she seemed perfect and all-American and still wasn’t happy. I couldn’t stand to see someone so spoiled that she could be unhappy with an easy, beautiful life. I wasn’t sure why she didn’t like me either. I don’t know if she thought I was a rival or if she was naturally hostile to other women. But it was clear that neither one of us was happy to see the other.
“Hey, Justin,” I said. “Hi, Brook.”
She gave me a closed smile and a slight inclination of the head. I debated between curtsying or giving her the finger, but restrained myself.
“We’re off for a cup of coffee on the Corner, want to join us?” Justin asked.
I considered accepting for the joy of tormenting Brook, but then was tempted to say no to spare myself an hour of hostilities. And then I remembered what Yael said and decided, evilly, to put it to the test.
“Are you sure there’s room for me?” I asked. “I’d hate to intrude.”
“Not at all,” Justin said, and Brook, who maybe hesitated on her instincts too, missed her chance. “We’d love for you to come.”
So we went, the three of us, and I had my fourth cup of coffee of the day.
Playing with the brown packets of natural sugar, regretting the impulse that landed me here, I listened to Justin explain their mission on Rugby Road.
“The houses on Rugby Road are, architecturally, some of the most interesting homes in Charlottesville,” he began. “That big sunken field across from the Bayly Art Museum was where the slaves and laborers dug the red clay to make the bricks that built the university.”
I sipped my cappuccino and listened to him ramble. It was actually interesting at times, since I jogged along Rugby Road and knew the buildings he was talking about. I would never have guessed the history that had occurred behind those staid Colonial walls.
Brook laid a possessive hand on Justin’s arm as he talked, but he kept gesturing with his arms and her hand would get knocked off. It was kind of entertaining to watch this keep happening. I wondered if they even noticed. It seemed very appropriate. Maybe I should study psychology instead of astronomy, I thought.
I finished my coffee. I could feel it twanging through my system, and it was hard to keep my hands still.
Justin finished describing his latest interview with a former resident who had lived on Rugby during the twenties.
“You found her coherent?” I asked. “She must be past ninety.”
“Next spring, yeah. She invited me to her birthday party.”
“Isn’t that sweet,” I said. “She likes you.”
“Women of all ages have a hard time resisting my charms,” he said. He nudged Brook with his shoulder and she managed a smile.
“See?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Really charming.”
“Speaking of charming,” he said, rising from his seat. “Excuse me, ladies, the coffee runneth through me.”
“Even more charming,” I said. Justin seemed to bring out my old sarcasm.
He gave a small bow and headed to the back of the café, leaving Brook and me to stare at each other across the small table.
Neither of us had anything left in our cups, so we couldn’t pretend to be busy with those. I rested my elbows on the table and tried to think about what I needed to do that afternoon. I tried not to think of Yael and her theories. I tried not to think about Hen back home, working hard, living it up. About Chris and his girlfriend, about Justin and what I may or may not have been feeling for him.
Brook shifted in her seat. I wanted to smile. I wasn’t bothered by silence at the table, but I guess in her book this was an uncomfortable thing.
She huffed, shifted again, and looked over her shoulder at the back of the café to see if Justin was coming. He wasn’t.
“Justin and I have known each other since high school.”
“That’s nice.”
She glared at me. “We grew up in the same neighborhood.”
“How interesting,” I drawled.
“I just thought you should know. Since you seemed,” she paused, “interested in him.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Look, it’s obvious you have some kind of crush on your TA,” she said, her voice like nails on a chalkboard. “Everyone goes through that, but you need to know that Justin is a big flirt and he can be careless of people’s feelings.”
“Like yours?”
She stiffened. Her nostrils flared as if she’d just smelled something foul.
“I know you’re from Israel and that things are different there.” I noted a shift in her tone of voice. “But here in America, you don’t just take what you want when you want it. Helpless Palestinian refugees might let you get away with that, but not here.”
Okay. That just made things easy. Instead of telling her I had no interest in her ex-boyfriend, instead of reassuring her that he was all hers to stalk as she pleased, I lost it.
“You don’t have a bloody clue.” My wired tongue tripped and fell over the words. I was sick with doubts and suppressed anger, with all that caffeine racing through my system, and my heart was beating too fast. I stood and my chair scraped back loudly. People turned to look. Brook had a smug look on her face. She wanted this. But I didn’t care.
“I was wondering if you could possibly be as stupid as you look,” I said, and to my ears, my voice was low and harsh. The American pronunciations I’d worked on were gone. “You’re perfectly stupid. I wasn’t your enemy and I don’t have a crush on your idiotic former boyfriend. Who, by the way, wants nothing to do with you. But now that you’ve insulted me and my country, I’ll take him away from you just for spite. And you’ll be able to do nothing about it, you fucking anti-Semite.” I held on to my bag with both hands. I was shaking. So was she.
The few people sitting nearby were staring at me with their mouths literally hanging open. I saw Justin coming out of the bathroom, heading back to our table. He saw me and looked surprised that I was standing, that I was leaving. I hurried out of the café before he could reach me. Let that little bitch tell him whatever she wanted. I hardly cared.
I walked, head down, watching my feet, still hugging my schoolbag to my chest.
I wanted to laugh or scream or slam my fist into a wall. Fuck ’em, I thought, picking up the pace. Yael living half a life like a bird in love with a fish. Stupid Brook playing out of her league trying to protect her worthless ex-boyfriend from his wandering eye. And brainless, beautiful Justin who spends his time researching the life of buildings and the youth of old women, too blind to see what’s right in front of him, deluding himself about friendships. I kicked a stone and watched with satisfaction as it hurled away, slamming into a tree and pinging off at a crazy angle. They weren’t worth my time. Let Brook lose sleep dreaming up images of me seducing Justin. I wanted nothing more to do with them. Maybe finding my place would be easy. This country was populated entirely by aliens.