A Remarkable Kindness Read Free Page A

corners of his eyes. He gazed at Lauren, his face a sad tapestry woven with wrinkles of history, of time. She knew he wanted to reassure her, and she felt grateful for his soft, paternal ways, so different from her father’s intellectual, challenging approach. Before she could even respond, Yossi told her, “I leave you two alone,” and headed back toward the car.
    â€œMy father’s a member of the men’s burial circle,” David said. “Maybe I’ll help him with that, too. And he wants you to be happy here, almost as much as I do. Don’t you think this is beautiful?”
    Lauren looked at the blurred bluish line of the horizon, which seemed to keep the sky from falling into the sea. Waves of heat barreled toward her. “It is beautiful, but right now all I’m thinking is that my back hurts from the plane, you could cook a dozen eggs on my head, and I could really use a bathroom.”
    â€œWe’ll get you right home.”
    â€œHome?” Lauren fought back tears of sadness mixed with apprehension. It hit her hard: she truly was far away from home. Shehad become pregnant by accident, then David had asked her to marry him, and now this was where she was going to live.
    â€œYou’re going to like it here, I know you will.” David placed his hand under her chin. He lifted her head, looked into her eyes. “ Ani ohev otach .” I love you.
    Lauren squinted up at him. “ Ani gam ohevet otcha, ” she replied in the Hebrew she’d been studying hard. But her “I love you, too,” sounded like one of Yossi’s mixed-up sentences, garbled and meaningless. She placed her palms under her belly, its weight pressing her down to this very spot. “I’m just not so sure I should have started talking to you at that elevator.” Lauren smiled halfway. “Maybe I should have listened to my mother. She always said, whenever you get the chance, get some exercise and take the stairs.”

2
September 13, 2000
Aviva
    A viva had planned to get to Rafi’s basketball game before it even started, but by the time she’d finished tutoring two seventh graders for their English test, she was already late. So she sped away from Peleg, out through freshly harvested fields with square bales of hay scattered randomly in the reddish dirt. She turned east, the sun behind her now, driving by a shepherd walking with his cows. The road swept her into a grove of olive trees, their shadows pale and gray, their branches twisted this way and that like the arms of mothers reaching out for children who were no longer there.
    Aviva turned into a Druze village. In the dusk, the houses looked like pastel-colored boxes; pants and shirts and socks dangled on clotheslines against the flat walls. The street was narrow, more like an alley, and as a truck inched toward her, she stoppedand pushed in her side mirror to let it pass. Some children crossed the road, followed by a Druze woman in a long black robe with a white veil wrapped over her head and pulled tightly across her mouth. Ever since it began, the Druze religion has been a secret, and Aviva respected that.
    She believed in secrets.
    A T THE BOTTOM of a steep hill sat the village high school, and when Aviva opened the heavy door of the gym, she hesitated, waiting until her eyes adjusted to the dim light filtering in from the high windows. Rafi was talking to his basketball players on the sideline. She glanced at the scoreboard. The home team—Rafi’s team—was winning, thirty-four to twenty-eight. The court was empty. It was halftime: she’d already missed the first part of the game.
    From the ceiling hung heavy ropes, pulled back and hooked to the wall like braids, and on the far wall was a sign announcing that the gym had been built with lottery money. A few parents and spectators sat in the orange bleachers. Aviva climbed up the uneven stone steps to sit by herself, and then she saw