Safekeeping (55 page)

The sun peeked over the hill of avocado trees, its yellow light beaming through the wispy clouds in thick bands. Ziva picked another peanut. Now that she knew the kibbutz would not last, if she could, would she do it all again? What if her son was right, and the kibbutz, though destined to disappear, had been a steppingstone to the Jewish state? Well, what if that too didn't survive? Sooner or later the United States would lose its power, and then who would raise a hand against Israel's destruction? Europe? What if the State of Israel ended up being just another tragic chapter in the book of the Jews? Would she do it all again?

The sun inched across the land, driving the shadows toward Mount Carmel. She plucked another peanut and added it to the collection in her lap, knowing, without a doubt, that yes, she would do it all again. The dignity lay in the effort, not the results. She had always known that. She
had told people that her whole life. Why had she questioned it for even a second? Foolish.

She lowered onto her side, until she lay on the ground, cheek against the soil, eye to eye with the peanut plants. She was exhausted. As she should be.

Claudette drove along the far side of the lychee orchard, unable to see the peanut field. She paid attention to the morning air on her face, wondering if she might sense something if Ziva died, her soul rushing past. That day they worked in the cemetery, Ziva had grumbled that only when it came to death did the kibbutz have trouble keeping out religion. Claudette could see why. If Ziva had the timing right, instead of finding her friend in the peanut field, there would be a dead body, one that she would have to lift into the back of the golf cart as if it were a sack of potatoes. It didn't befit the life.

Claudette drove around the corner of the lychee orchard. Up ahead lay the peanut field, basking in the early morning light. When she reached its edge, she turned and drove alongside the field, searching for Ziva. Where was she? She stopped the cart and scanned the sea of uprooted plants. And then she spotted her, lying in the middle of the brown field, her white hair looking like dandelion snow.

Claudette climbed out of the cart. She didn't hurry. She understood Ziva was gone. She walked into the field, the wind rustling through the low-lying plants. It felt as if the ground were whispering, whispering something older than words.

She stopped. Ziva lay just ahead, so peaceful against the soil.

For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building.

Claudette's chest rose sharply as she drew in the morning air.

God had made her fall into that deep sleep. So she could be there to help her friend. He couldn't take Ziva to the fields on His own, but neither could she.

He had sent His sign.

And she could not have asked for a better one.

C
laudette pulled the white waffle blanket over Ziva's body, leaving her face exposed. Beyond the bedroom window, people crossed the square, headed for breakfast. As Claudette picked a leaf out of the white hair, she felt none of the indignity she had feared. She didn't even feel it when she was lifting the body into the back of the cart, and the blue nightdress caught on a metal corner, exposing a withered backside. The body was just another thing Ziva had left behind, no different than the green sofa or the clothes in her closet. She tried to pull down the wrinkled eyelids, but they kept popping back up like faulty nightshades, revealing a thin ring of hazel around yawning black pupils.

Claudette rang the Tel Aviv number Eyal had scrawled next to the phone. The hotel clerk informed her that Eyal had checked out very early, which meant he could be back on the kibbutz. She dialed his home and the office, but all she got were the answering machines. She went to look for him in the dining hall.

The hall was noisy with breakfasters: factory workers in green jumpsuits stood in the food line, women chatted by the coffee urns, children raced to their chairs. Claudette walked down the centermost aisle, scanning the long tables for Eyal. All the faces were familiar to her now. She raised her hand at Dana from the laundry house, but she didn't wave back, even though her gaze followed her.

More and more eyes seemed to fix on her, tables hushing as she passed. Was that in her head? It had to be. A layover from years of believing people should regard her with revulsion. But why get that sensation now,
so powerfully? Was it from sneaking Ziva's dead body across the kibbutz? No one was staring, she told herself.
It isn't true. It isn't true.

After a few more steps, she had to acknowledge that it was true. The dining hall had silenced, and everyone's focus was on her. Claudette stopped and turned around in confusion.

“You pervert! You sick piece of shit!”

An obese woman marched toward her, the silver roots of her long, thin hair gradating to dark brown tips.

“He's just a boy!” She stood before Claudette, lips quivering, eyes glossy. “Who cannot see. Or hear. And you . . . you come from wherever it is you come from and take advantage of him? A boy wounded in a terrorist attack!”

Claudette understood this was Ofir's mother. And she felt sorry for her. The woman had so many reasons to be angry at the world, but Claudette didn't believe she should be one of them.

“I didn't take advantage of your son. We love each other.”

“
Love
each other?” The woman raised her hands as if to strangle Claudette and held them there, face turning an alarming red. “You're a thirty-something-year-old woman! He's a seventeen-year-old boy!”

The diners gawked, forks hovering over their oatmeal and eggs. Were any of them watching in terror, knowing it could be them standing where she was, being publicly shamed for something in their private lives? It didn't matter. Even if everybody were gaping at her with pure disgust, she no longer believed she was a monster.

“Yes, love.”

Ofir's mother pointed at the back door, where Claudette had stood listening to Ofir playing the piano. “Go! Go pack your bags. Before I kill you!”

No one rose to object, not Dana or the ponytailed cook or the cashier from the store. With everyone's eyes on her, Claudette walked toward the door. As she pulled it open, the dining hall filled again with chatter and the clinking of utensils against plates.

Back in her room, Claudette stepped over Ulya's T-shirts to reach her bed, where she pulled out her backpack. Unzipping the bag, she worried that she wasn't going to get to say goodbye to Ofir. Could she go to his room? She had almost no possessions to pack, just some clothes and the white sundress. Before packing Tropical Sunrise, she considered the tube
in her hand, thinking how strange it would be the next time she saw it, in Montreal. After zipping the bag closed, she began taking off the kibbutz work clothes.

Dressed again in the knee-length brown skirt and white button-down she wore the day she arrived on the kibbutz, she lifted Christina the Astonishing off the dresser. What should she do with the necklace? She wasn't angry with the patron saint of the mentally ill; she just didn't think she was her saint. She stowed the necklace in her skirt pocket.

“I'm coming with you.”

She turned and saw Ofir in the factory worker's green jumpsuit. She had forgotten that he was starting work today. He followed her eyes and looked down at his overalls. “Exactly! I don't want to work in the fucking factory. I'm going to leave the kibbutz some day, so it might as well be now. With you.”

Having only met at night, they'd never seen each other in bright daylight, at least not alone and not this close. At most they had glimpsed one another across the lawn or dining hall. The daylight brightened Ofir's gray eyes, accentuating the misshapen pupil, and highlighted the red shave bumps riddling his boyish skin. Did she appear as old in the sunshine as he did young?

“How can you come with me? I don't even know where I'm going.”

“I'll go to Tel Aviv right now and get a visa to Canada.”

“Do you have money for a plane ticket?”

He didn't. And Ofir knew he had no way of getting it today. He couldn't ask his mother or the kibbutz. In a year, when they divided up the kibbutz's assets, he would have some private money, enough to get by for a while in Montreal. He strode forward and grabbed Claudette's hands. “Maybe I can't go with you today, but I'll come as soon as I can. Will you wait for me?”

Claudette lowered her head, stared down at his work boots.

He squeezed her hands. “One year. I know it sounds like a long time, but will you?”

A year didn't sound like a long time to her. She could easily wait. But in a year, Ofir would be almost nineteen years old and wouldn't—shouldn't—want to move into a small apartment with a woman entering her middle years. For him, a year was a long time, long enough to fall in love with someone else. Or maybe find a passion to replace music. By the spring he
could be dreaming again of great universities in London and New York. She wanted that for him.

“Please. Say you'll wait.”

Claudette raised her head and met his pleading eyes. “I don't think you're going to come in a year. And I don't want to pretend that I do. We need to say a proper goodbye.”

“Why? What's so crazy about me coming in a year?”

“Please, Ofir, I need you to hear me. I need you to know this time with you . . . it will stay with me for the rest of my life. I've never been happier. I may never be that happy again.”

Ofir blinked back the tears. He didn't want to accept that they would never be together again. Even though he knew that she was right, had always known, on some level, that they couldn't be together for long.

He took a deep breath and nodded, reluctantly. “I don't know what would have happened to me after the bombing if you hadn't been here.”

Claudette picked up the backpack, and Ofir, wiping the tears from his cheeks, took it from her. They walked outside, where the dawn had fulfilled its promise to turn into a pretty autumn day. Under the ripe red fruits of the pomegranate tree, Golda lay in the grass, licking her paws. Claudette wondered where Adam was and hoped he was all right. She took Ofir's hand, and they walked in silence up the steppingstones onto the main road.

When they reached the gate, she said, “Let's separate here.”

The guard on duty, a young woman somewhere between their two ages, held up the hardcover she was reading as if to give them privacy.

Ofir leaned in and kissed Claudette for the last time. It wasn't a peck, nor a drawn-out kiss. Their lips already felt unfamiliar to one another, as if they both knew this wasn't their real last kiss, that their real last kiss had been the one they didn't know was their last.

Claudette pulled away and, taking in Ofir's young, serious face for the last time, fought a powerful urge to do something to keep him safe: kiss him three more times to make it an even number, walk to the bus stop without stepping on a crack, say “Ofir” ten times.
It isn't true
,
it isn't true
. She couldn't do anything about the rest of his life. She could only hope that God would watch over him.

Claudette started down the road. After a few steps, she looked back. Ofir still stood under the rusted wrought-iron sign that arched over the
entrance. Fields of Splendor. He raised a hand. She did the same and continued on.

Four and half months ago, when she made her way from the bus stop to the kibbutz gate, she saw nothing. She had walked up the hill with her head down, making sure not to step on the cracks in the asphalt, going over and over why she had awoken on the plane with her thigh pressed against the man beside her. Now she noticed the horses swishing their majestic tails, heard the shouts of children in a nearby schoolyard, smelled the resinous eucalyptuses lining the side of the road. A motorcycle zipped past, sun glinting on its handlebars.

She remembered how she had panicked in the Sea of Galilee while Ofir's “You Are Here” cigarette tip glowed on the dark shore, how much she dreaded the moment passing. Now she saw God's hand more clearly. Impermanence was painful, almost unbearable, but that was how He made everything precious.

She glanced behind her once more and found Ofir still standing by the gate in his factory overalls, only she was too far away to make out his face anymore. Beside him the sun shone through the banner flapping against the chain-wire fence:
A STRONG PEOPLE MAKES PEACE
.

As she neared the end of the road, she spotted legs sticking out of the willow herbs. Recognizing the blue high-top sneakers, she jogged to where Adam lay on the ground, cheek pressed against the yellow grass, eyes slits in a swollen face, hand clutching the neck of a beer bottle.

She shook his shoulder. “Adam, Adam.”

Adam half opened his eyes and saw Claudette's face looking down at him, her oak-brown eyes, the willow herbs blurry behind her. He was disappointed to still be able to see. He hadn't drunk enough.

He slurred, “Leave me on the tracks.”

Claudette felt a swell of sadness for Adam. She feared he would never find the peace she had found this summer. She pulled the necklace from her pocket and draped it over his head.

At the bus stop, Claudette sat inside the cement shelter, surrounded by graffiti—declarations of undying love, lewd sketches, anarchy signs, peace signs, four-letter words, racist slurs, and the simple pronouncements that so-and-so was here in such-and-such a year. She looked up the hill, but she could no longer see the kibbutz gate.