The Best Place on Earth (24 page)

Outside the ferry window, Galiano Island was dark blue against the lighter sky. Small houses clung to the shore and a row of boats was moored at the marina. She rested her head on Carlos’s shoulder. She didn’t like remembering how angry she’d been back then, before coming to BC. When she first arrived in Vancouver, she hadn’t planned on staying long; it was just another stop, like the year spent selling sandwiches for office buildings in New York City, the months spent driving an ice cream truck in California. But in BC she noticed herself slowing down, unwinding, as if she’d been holding her breath for twenty-four years and could finally let it out. It was in BC that she learned to forgive her father, though he never forgave her for leaving; when she called home he often didn’t want to speak to her, and when he did, he was short, demanding to know when she was coming back. The day Naomi phoned to tell her about her father’s stroke, Tamar had just moved into a new apartment in East Vancouver, her few boxes piled unopened in her new living room. Tamar boarded a plane to Tel Aviv the next morning. By the time she landed in Israel, eighteen hours later, he was gone.

Tamar’s house, wooden and painted red,
was on the other side of the island, a twenty-minute ride from the ferry terminal on skinny roads that curved around bays and hills. Inside, it smelled like fresh herbs, garlic and essential oils. Naomi noticed that there was nothing Israeli or Jewish about it, no mezuzahs on the door frames, no hamsas like the ones their mother had hung all over their home for good luck, no dangling strings with blue beads to repel the evil eye, no calendar with Jewish holidays marked upon it. Tamar proudly showed her the patio, which was framed by luscious forest. Even though it was past nine, the sky was a quiet, steady pink. The lingering daylight made Naomi uneasy. In Israel the sun had never set later than 8:00 p.m.

Tamar asked about Yoav and Ben, and Naomi was relieved to talk about her children. She told Tamar about Ben’s new girlfriend, Yoav’s new interest in cooking. She felt a stab of guilt; she couldn’t remember the last time she had left the kids alone with Ami for more than a day. She calculated the time difference; the kids would just be waking up now. She hoped Ami had made them sandwiches, wasn’t just giving them money. She pictured her boys scampering around the house, Yoav pounding on the bathroom door, the two of them downing their juice standing up, bickering and pushing each other on their way out the door.

They sipped their tea in silence. Naomi looked into the living room. Through the glass it looked staged, like a display in a department store: the earthy toned walls, the row of black-and-white travel photographs in silver frames, the wooden Buddha head above the mantle.

“You never told me you had a new boyfriend,” Naomi said.

Tamar smiled. “I wanted to tell you in person.”

Naomi took a sip, looking at Tamar sideways. “Is he Jewish?”

Tamar laughed in a short burst and shook her head. “I forgot Israelis always ask that. You know, people actually consider that rude in other parts of the world. It’s like asking people what their sexual orientation is.”

Naomi turned to face the forest and bowed toward her mug. The treetops swayed like a coordinated dance troupe, their rustling leaves a thousand tiny jazz-hands. “It’s so quiet here,” she said with a nervous laugh. She fought a yawn, wishing for darkness to come.

“When I first moved here the quiet used to freak me out,” Carlos said. He had snuck up on them, creeping barefoot like a thief. He grinned at Naomi, his teeth large and perfectly white. “Hopefully one day we’ll be able to live here full time. Right now, we have to keep going back to the city for work.”

“Carlos joined my business,” Tamar said, leaning toward him. “I do video and he does stills. We offer package deals.”

“That’s great,” Naomi said, running her finger along the wooden railing.

“Especially for weddings. People like to hire a husband and wife team.”

“But … you’re not married, are you?” Naomi stared, confused.

“Well, not
officially,
” Carlos said. Tamar tilted her head and smiled at her. Naomi felt ancient, backward. She looked up, relieved to see stars starting to appear, filling up the sky. A distant choir of crickets and frogs followed, breaking the silence.

Tamar and Carlos
tiptoed around their bedroom, speaking in whispers, not used to having another person in the house. It occurred to Tamar that this is how it would be if they ever had children,
the house no longer theirs alone. She squeezed toothpaste onto her brush and caught a glance of her face in the mirror, brow furrowed. The visit had just begun and already it wasn’t going as well as she’d hoped. She wasn’t sure that Naomi liked Carlos, and for the first time, she really wanted her to approve of a man.

When she first met Carlos, on a shoot at a wedding in West Vancouver, Tamar wasn’t thinking romance. She had enjoyed working with him, impressed by how thoughtful he was in his movements, possessing an awareness of space that she had rarely witnessed in men. Over lunch, as they sat together at a table, he pulled out a card and handed it to her, suggesting they keep in touch, maybe recommend the other to prospective clients. When he called the following week to ask her out, she thought it was business related, but over a vegetarian Indian dinner at a Commercial Drive restaurant, she reconsidered. He may have been twelve years older, but she found herself envying his youthfulness, his enthusiasm, his energy. But it was his goodness that got her in the end, the kind of sincere kindness she had always admired in others and was afraid she didn’t possess.

Carlos walked into the bathroom and reached around her to grab the floss from the medicine cabinet. “I changed my mind,” he said as Tamar spat toothpaste into the sink. “I can’t even see the resemblance anymore.”

“I know,” she said, looking at him through the mirror. “We were really close once.”

“Really?”

“Inseparable.” She nodded. “We got into so much trouble together.”

“You? Trouble?” He glanced at her with a lopsided smile. “Impossible.” He threaded the floss between his teeth. “I would
expect Naomi to keep you in check, being the eldest and all.”

“She did,” Tamar said. “Especially when we were kids.” She dried her face. “Okay, maybe
I
got us into trouble.” Carlos laughed. Some of Tamar’s best memories were with Naomi, or if not the best, then at least the most intense. Tamar, at sixteen, convincing Naomi to take her to a bar at the Russian compound, and then getting so drunk that Naomi had to hold her hair while she puked in an alley. Tamar (seventeen? eighteen?) dragging Naomi, recently dumped and heartbroken, out of her room late at night to the Mahane Yehuda Market, handing her cracked dishes she had stolen from their mother’s kitchen, and urging her to smash them against a wall to vent her anger. When windows in the nearby buildings turned yellow and a woman screamed, “We’re calling the police!” the two of them ran back home, laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe. Hitchhiking together to Eilat on a whim the summer before Naomi enlisted in the army, sleeping on the beach with a bunch of stoned hippies they had met along the way; and then later, in their early twenties, driving to Sinai in a beaten Fiat their father had advised Tamar against buying, and picking up cute hitchhikers: uniformed soldiers and European backpackers Tamar flirted with. The car died on the way back, outside Dimona, and the two of them stood and watched a finger of smoke rising from the engine up to the desert sky.

And then, an older memory flickered, out of place: eight-year-old Naomi sneaking Tamar outside through the kitchen door to play in the street, two girls in nightgowns under a lone street light, the sounds of fighting and crying from their home faint, blending with the buzz of traffic and mosquitoes and television sets from other homes.

After Tamar moved to BC, she had called her sister almost every
week, but eventually life took over. Every now and then they’d make vows that they’d call every Tuesday, email every Friday, but nothing stuck.

Then, on Tamar’s last visit to Israel, something had shifted between them. She had missed Jerusalem so much when she was in Canada, but having finally made it there, she couldn’t wait to go back to BC. For the first time, she saw the city through a foreigner’s eyes: the chaos, the traffic, the aggression, what Israelis loved calling “passion.” It was as if the city was stuffing itself into your throat. She no longer belonged.

“You have an accent,” Naomi had said one evening over dinner.

“What?” Tamar laughed. “That’s crazy.”

“You do. Your
l
is too soft, your
t
is too sharp. You speak funny.”

Tamar had tried talking to Naomi about the distance between them, bringing it up in a polite, Canadian way, but somehow Naomi got annoyed, accusing her of being passive-aggressive. Tamar wondered whether Naomi resented her for not having children or a husband, for never having wanted a family, for being carefree and travelling the world while she was stuck in a life that so much resembled their mother’s.

After that visit, it was hard to just call. Or rather, it was easy not to, to let months pass by. Tamar felt guilty about it, aware of the passing time, dreading the day something happened, because things happened, especially in Jerusalem, and then she’d realize how much she was missing out on, the way she had felt when her mother died of a heart attack—two years after their father—leaving no time for goodbyes. Naomi was the only family she had left.

Sometimes Tamar tried to imagine what life would have been like if she and her sister lived in the same city, like their mother and her sister, who had visited each other almost daily, had taken
care of each other’s children. Tamar hardly knew her nephews. She hadn’t been there to help raise them. She never sent them birthday gifts. And they grew so fast, in three-, four-year increments. Carlos spoke to his niece and nephew in Toronto often, calling his mother and sister at least once a week. A few months ago, the entire family had visited their apartment in Vancouver, hijacking their home for a few days, filling it with lively chatter and loose laughter, drinking wine in the afternoons and talking late into the night. They had such an easy way of communicating, such intimacy and comfort, that it made Tamar feel lonely, then guilty.

She watched Carlos now as he turned on his reading lamp, stripping off his clothes and hanging them over the chair. She hadn’t shared these thoughts with him, harbouring an irrational fear that he’d leave her if he knew how strained her own family relations were. He desperately wanted a family, had told her so early on. And although a part of her—for the first time in her life—yearned to share the experience with him, she was terrified that she was not right for the task, that like her father, she was bound to fuck it up. Things with Carlos were so good. She didn’t want anything to change.

Naomi woke up at dawn.
At first, she thought she was in her own bed, Ami by her side. She rolled onto her back, startled by his absence. It reminded her of the bus rides she used to take through the desert to see Ami in Be’er Sheva, where he’d been at university. She often fell asleep in her seat, letting her head drop on a stranger’s shoulder, mistaking him for Ami.

She got up and tiptoed into the kitchen, made tea and stepped outside with her mug. The sky was pastel, a watered-down version
of its daytime self. A couple of faded stars flickered weakly and a brilliant orange belt embraced the horizon. She warmed her hands around the cup and breathed in the cold, foreign morning air. It was peaceful, serene. The best place on earth. Yet, somehow, it made her feel anxious and lonely. What was she doing here? What was she thinking? She sat on the deck and cried.

She felt the warmth of the sun tickling her skin and looked up. On a patch of grass she saw Tamar and Carlos frozen, each with their legs spread in a wide stance, one arm extended up to the sky and the other touching the earth, their faces golden with sunlight. They looked like twins in their matching yoga outfits, their long ponytails. Naomi ducked. They hadn’t seen her.

After breakfast she asked to use the computer to check the news. “Please don’t,” Tamar said. “You’re on vacation.” She had stopped reading news from Israel years ago, she said. “It’s all bad anyway.” Naomi turned on the computer, typing in Ynet’s URL. A pigua in Jerusalem. Her heart stopped. She scrolled down with shaky hands, skimming over the first few lines. She had to call home. Make sure the kids were okay. Then she noticed the date. The attack had taken place yesterday.

Ben answered in monosyllables, on his way out to see his girlfriend. Yoav told her Ami had taken them to a restaurant last night; they’d had steaks. “We’re having fun,” he said and she couldn’t help but feel jealous. Neither of them mentioned the attack.

After she hung up she turned back to the news online. Ten injured, nobody dead. For a moment, she could see how her country might look to a Canadian. How Jerusalem could be perceived as the worst place to live, raise a family, a dangerous, troubled city, torn between faiths, a hotbed for fanatics and fundamentalists.

Ten years ago, on their visit to Vancouver, Naomi and Ami had
asked Tamar to take them out. They had been younger then, intoxicated by the sense of freedom new parents experience on their first vacation away from their child.

“Let’s party all night!” Ami said.

“This isn’t Jerusalem. There’s no all night here,” Tamar said.

“Well, that sucks.”

“Maybe. But it’s also safe. And civilized.”

“Safe,” Ami scoffed. “Overrated.” They all laughed.

Later, he said to Naomi, “Maybe people in Vancouver don’t party as much because their lives are too comfortable. You know, the whole ‘drink, dance and be merry because tomorrow you might die’ kind of thing. Maybe there’s something good about knowing it could all end at any minute.”

She had thought he was being morbid, but now it made sense. She was so used to living in a constant state of urgency, verging on emergency. No wonder the quiet made her uneasy. She looked at the screen: Israeli soldiers and paramedics frozen in mid-action, their faces grim and alert, a carcass of a car, broken pieces of twisted metal, a dark stain on asphalt. How could this be a good thing? She didn’t miss
this.
Yet she couldn’t even fathom living anywhere else.