Light Years (12 page)

“Your dad lets you do this?” I shouted over the roar of the overworked engine and the rush of the wind.

“Why do you think I agreed to come last night?”

Then he whooped and we went sailing over a small rise, airborne for a split second. I grabbed the handhold on the door and closed my eyes. My stomach caught up a few moments later.

He stopped the jeep and studied me. I opened one eye and looked at him. “Is it over yet?”

“Wanna try?” I could hear the dare in his voice.

“Are you serious?”

“Unless you don’t think you can handle it.”

“You think I can’t?” I opened the other eye to fully appraise him.

“I don’t know, can you?”

“What about your dad? It’s his jeep, he probably wouldn’t want me to drive it.”

“Don’t hurt the jeep and he won’t know. But if you’re scared …?”

“Never. You’re on.” I unbuckled and we switched seats. Once behind the wheel, my heart rate picked up. “Are you sure about this?” I said again. The only car I’d ever driven was my mother’s Citroen, a two-door hatchback. It was a stick shift as well, but it was nothing like this luxury four-wheel-drive cockpit.

“It’s a rush. You’ll love it.” He buckled in with a click.

“Okay,” I said, scooting up the seat, adjusting the rearview and side mirrors. “Here we go.”

I drove us for half an hour. I wasn’t nearly as daring as Dov
had been, but I got us airborne twice, and I think I managed to scare him when I cut close to a tree. I felt very wicked and glamorous and it was the most exciting thing I’d done since I joined the army.

Finally we decided to stop and have lunch.

We sat on a couple of large rocks and Dov brought out the food his mom packed for us—sandwiches on bakery rolls, two oranges scored and ready to be peeled, a thermos with warm tea, and two yogurts.

“My aunt never has food in the house, I miss that.” Most people lived at home when they served at a nearby base. I was jealous because living with Hen didn’t feel like home. No one made my lunch or dinner anymore.

“I need to get out of my parents’ house,” Dov said. “Having someone make your lunch isn’t everything.”

“Just wait until it’s gone. Then you’ll miss it.”

“I hate living at home. I’m twenty-two years old and living with my parents. It’s killing me.”

“But everyone does it,” I said. “You can’t afford to rent a place in Tel Aviv. What the army pays you won’t buy you dinner for a week, let alone pay the rent.”

I took a big bite out of the sandwich. It had cheese, tomatoes, and slices of hard-boiled eggs.

“I know,” he said. “But it drives me crazy sometimes.”

“I miss home. I miss my parents.”

“You wouldn’t after a week.”

I laughed, remembering how I felt right after boot camp. “Maybe.”

I studied the small Arab village that was nestled at the foot of the hill where we parked. Arab villages were always distinct from Israeli settlements because of the way the Arabs built their houses—gray cubes of unpainted cinderblocks with square windows placed haphazardly throughout. Some villages were friendly to Jews and sold food or pottery. There was one that my parents used to go to for soft white cheese and locally pressed olive oil. But there was always a mild sense of danger involved. You might arrive right after some mullah announced death to all Jews again. The dust-colored houses looked neglected even from a distance. I didn’t see anyone out in the streets.

Dov handed me a bottle of water and I drank. The sky was perfectly blue, and there was a mild breeze that carried the smell of rosemary. I rarely got the chance to be in the countryside. Once again, I was struck by how beautiful and peaceful it was. I felt Dov watching me.

“What?” I brushed at my hair self-consciously.

“You’ve got some crumbs on your face.” He leaned in and touched my cheek. I stayed very still. My heart was racing. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. Please, I thought. But I didn’t know what I wanted. For him to kiss me, maybe. For me to be cool, definitely. To be a good kisser.

He brushed a finger across my lips and gently tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said. His words brushed by my ear and I closed my eyes. His lips brushed mine. I leaned forward a little. To let him know.

He settled into the kiss and I relaxed with a sigh.

This is perfect, I thought. Just perfect.

He cradled my face between his hands, kissing me, and the bottle of water I held slipped out of my fingers and fell to the ground. His lips were soft against mine. I reached up and touched his face.

“Hey, Israeli fuckers!”

We scrambled apart. Dov jumped up and stood in front of me. I looked all around me until I spotted them. Three ragged little boys, wearing cut-off jeans and dusty shirts. They were twenty meters away. I stood up, trying to see around Dov.

“Did you come to fuck each other in front of our village?” one of them shouted.

My mouth gaped open for a moment. It was almost funny to hear a tiny voice saying such things. He couldn’t have been more than eight. There was nothing here for Dov to fight.

“Go away, Jewish whore,” another one shouted.

I wanted to tell them they’d been watching too much television. I wanted to ask if their parents knew where they were.

Then the third one bent down, picked up a stone, and hurled it our way. It fell short.

“I’m going to kill those little bastards,” Dov said. He started heading their way. The boys scrambled back. One of them picked up a glass bottle and threw it at us too. It landed on a rock and exploded into shards of flying glass. I looked
down at my leg and saw I’d been nicked. A small trail of blood started trickling down my leg.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

Dov looked at them and I could see he wanted to go over and beat the crap out of them. His hands were clenched at his sides and his shoulders were hunched.

“No,” I said, trying to control my voice, grabbing awkwardly for his arm. “Don’t! Just get us out of here.” My legs were shaking and I felt panic edging in. I was bleeding. Headlines and news briefs were flashing through my mind. This is how tragedies happen, I kept thinking. We could easily become the evening news if this escalated any further. “They’re just stupid kids. Don’t let them think they mean anything.”

“I’m not running away from some snot-nosed kids.”

When they saw that I’d stopped Dov, they edged closer again, their jeers growing louder and their throws getting closer and closer to the jeep. One landed on the hood with a loud “ping” and I could see the dent and scratch it made.

“Dov!” I shook him. “Let’s go!”

This wasn’t some prank that naughty boys play. They hated us. They were eight, and I was scared of them the way I would be of a pack of wild dogs.

“You want those little assholes to get away with this?”

“You don’t know who’s out there,” I pleaded. “Their dad or uncle could be nearby with a rifle. Please—” my voice cracked. “Let’s leave!”

With a disgusted look at them, he turned around.

They cheered.

Dov started the jeep, gunned it, and we took off, leaving the boys, the remains of our lunch, and the field where we’d just had our first real kiss, in a brown cloud of dust and hate.

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.