Authors: Naomi Ragen
When she came home, Jeff was gone. He never made it into Harvard, her parents told her. He was in some little college in the Midwest.
She refused her parents’ offer of another tutor, promising to keep up with her grades. But in a sense, every boy she’d been interested in from then on had been a Jeff.
She began to spend more time at the library, reading everything: romance novels, travel books, the poetry of Emily Dickinson. She chattered less, played less, asked for less. And her grades zoomed up. Her teachers gushed over her like doting older relatives giving Bat Mitzvah speeches. Her principal, cold, undemonstrative Mr. Arens, once even put his arm around her mother and asked: “Mrs. Samuels, what is your secret? I’ve never seen such a transformation in a student.”
Far from being delighted, her mother had been completely unnerved. Had they solved a problem or created one? Had they come down on Kayla too hard and “broken her spirit”? Or had they assured her future?
Kayla found all the parental hand-wringing hysterically funny. “Ambition. Almost as bad as being on drugs,” she’d mocked.
She looked down at her Brooks Brothers blouse where the pizza sauce had stained it an oily red. So much for ambition, so much for hard work; she sighed, trying and failing to clean it off with a thin napkin.
What had it all come to?
She got up, leaving the fourth slice of pizza untouched, and walked slowly down the street without purpose or direction. Crossing over busy Jaffa Road, she suddenly found herself in the middle of an outdoor market. The air was scented by piles of cookies fresh from the oven, newly roasted nuts, and the exotic perfume of paprika, coriander, and cumin.
Her eyes feasted on the piles of red strawberries, the passion fruit, and oranges. The exuberance of the produce was matched only by the
joie de vivre
of the vendors who sang out in praise of their wares: “Come buy strawberries,
sweeter than wine, and cheaper than you deserve,” warbled one. “Oranges, bright like the sun, filled with vitamins. Take some for your sons.”
She had always thought of America as rich, and all other countries as poor. But as she looked at the amazingly cheap prices of fresh local produce, she realized that even the poorest Israeli could feast every day on strawberries and oranges—even in the dead of winter—something most people in Brookline could never afford.
A one-legged beggar in a wheelchair held out his cup, sobbing dramatically. She dug into her pocket, taking out a few coins. As soon as she dropped them into the can, his sobs stopped, his face wreathed in a smile of cynical self-mockery and congratulation. He had gotten his coin and kept his self-respect.
She looked at him in admiration. He couldn’t care less what anybody thought of him. Her entire life, on the other hand, had been one long search for an affirmation of her worth: degrees to prove her intelligence; the trophy boyfriend to prove her beauty and desirability. So far, her life had been one big report card signed by the universe, all A’s. But what kind of person are you, really? she asked herself. Do you have any quality or achievement worth admiring?
She thought of her grandmother, Esther Cantor. They had been so close, she had always told herself, remembering all those visits she had made when she was a little girl. But she wondered now if that was ever true. She would come to her, laying her accomplishments—drawings, poems, report cards, certificates of merit—on her kitchen table like offerings. And her grandmother would accept them, making her feel—as no one else ever had—that it all meant something. She told herself she was making the old woman happy. But really, she received more than she gave. She was royalty when she arrived unexpectedly, fussed over and fed and admired. But each passing year, the intervals between visits had grown, reducing their meetings to a handful or less, until the old woman had had a stroke and could no longer speak.
In the beginning, Kayla had hurried to the nursing home to hold her hand and whisper kind words. But then she’d gotten tired and bored. The week her grandmother passed away, Kayla couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to see her.
And now, she had left her father, too, just when he really needed her.
Why have I come here? she asked herself. What is the real reason? Or is it
just another flight from responsibility? Another ugly, unforgivable act of selfishness?
A group of klezmer musicians began to play. A Chassidic woman pushing a crying baby in a carriage, two smaller children trailing after her, all talking at once, passed her by. From a number of different command posts, the noise of walkie-talkies from security guards blared. The rumble of traffic merged with the songs of the merchants hawking their wares.
I have to get out of here, out of the city. I need to think, to work it out. I need some peace and quiet.
Her eyes brimming, she hurried down the street back to her hotel.
And then she saw it.
She stopped, leaning against the building: a square bronze plaque dated August 9, 2001, for the victims of a Hamas homicide bomber who had blown up a Sbarro pizza parlor in the heart of Jerusalem.
She held her breath as she read the names. A sixty-year-old from Brazil. A thirty-one-year-old American tourist. Two sixteen-year-old girlfriends from Jerusalem. A Dutch mother and father in their early forties, along with their fourteen-year-old, four-year-old, and two-year-old. A young mother and her eight-year-old daughter…
Her heart began to beat erratically, feeling as if it might burst.
She closed her eyes, trembling, leaning against the building, imagining what it must have been like. The summer crowd filling the restaurant. The laughter. The baby carriages pushed close to the wall. The smell of melting cheese. And then the explosion. The noise and black smoke. The scattered limbs and bits of cloth. A child’s screams. A baby bottle and someone’s broken glasses lying in the blood. A bomb purchased by money given to terrorist organizations. A terrorist’s family and his accomplices rewarded with thousands of dollars from terrorist organizations. They couldn’t, wouldn’t, do these things if they had no money. The money made it possible.
What… ? she thought, unbearably. What… if… ? What if her father was guilty? No, not in the sense of having deliberately transferred the money to terrorists for a profit. She would never believe that of him! Never! But something else. Like running over a small child who runs right in front of your car with absolutely no warning, no chance to brake in time. You’d be blameless.
Blameless! And yet, without wanting to, without any intention, you’d killed a child.
Her father had admitted transferring the money—so much money!—and that money had gone to terrorists. Her wonderful, kind, honest father. It had gone to facilitate the worst crimes imaginable. People were dead because of that money. And, like the blameless driver who kills the toddler, her father had been part of it. And because she was his daughter, she too was now part of it.
She sat down in the triangle known as Zion Square, now the front yard of a bank high-rise. It was filled with Peruvian flute players, beggars, political activists, and homeless young people who had adopted it as their own. In the center was an ambulance from Magen David Adom, which was collecting blood donations.
She said nothing as she walked in off the street, accepting their smiles and thanks as she lay down on the table. She welcomed the pain of the needle through her skin, turning her head to watch as her blood dripped out, filling a bag.
Her stomach contracted, her throat caught, and large, silent tears streamed down her face.
“Are you feeling all right?” the nurse asked in concern.
“Yes, I’m fine, really,” she insisted unconvincingly. She saw the nurse exchange glances with the orderly. She detached the tube and the bag, bandaging her arm.
“Sit up slowly. I’ll bring you some juice.”
She felt dizzy and strange as she sipped the sweet orange-flavored drink.
“We don’t get many tourists these days. Except the German kids. The kind who had Nazis in the family. For them, coming to Israel is a kind of atonement. They also give blood,” the nurse said.
She suddenly felt faint.
Like a German kid. The kind who had Nazis in the family.
She let herself be led to a chair, where she was given more juice. She sat there, dazed, until the dizziness passed, her mind clouded and blank. She took out her cell phone and dialed.
“Seth. Did I wake you?”
“Kayla? How kind of you to call, and to be worried about waking me,” he
said, his words clipped, his tone thick with sarcasm. “No, I wasn’t sleeping. Unlike you, I have courses to study for, and a bar exam in my future.”
There was a silence as loud and heavy as a bomb blast.
“Kayla, are you still there?
“Yes.”
“HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?!” he suddenly shouted.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Seth—I’m so lost. I don’t know what to do.”
“That’s obvious,” he said coldly.
Her eyes stung with tears. “This call was a mistake. I’ll let you go.”
“No. You don’t get to hang up on me! Do you have a clue as to what you’ve done? That law firm in New York you blew off is one of the top firms in the country! Do you think jobs like that grow on trees?”
“Believe me, they weren’t going to hire me anyway.”
“Oh, so now you’re a prophet!”
“Just let me explain what happened…”
“Did you even care how that was going to make me look? I have friends at that firm! Do you know how many phone calls I got? You left me to clean up after you. And on top of that, you never even bothered to call me and let me know.”
“So that’s what you’re angry about? Making you look bad in front of your legal cronies. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. What do you want me to say?”
“Oh no. You don’t get to rewrite this story. You just disappeared. What was I supposed to think? I was frantic! I thought you were going to be one of those
New York Post
‘Harvard coed raped and murdered’ page-one stories. You were furious at me when I suggested we distance ourselves from your father’s problems, then you take off halfway around the world without a word to anyone! Where has all your much-vaunted concern for your dear old dad suddenly gone?”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she repeated helplessly. “You’re right.”
“We have—or should I say had?—a life planned out, a life we’ve both worked very hard for. I know I have. And, unlike you,
I
have student loans to pay off. You won’t get a job at all if you don’t come back immediately and finish the term. We always planned on two incomes. We need two incomes.”
“Seth,” she interrupted him, “if I don’t graduate, and I don’t become a lawyer, and my family is ruined, and my father is convicted, will you still love me?”
“DON’T YOU DARE CHANGE THE SUBJECT! I am not prepared to waste my time holding your hand so you can indulge your ‘poor little me’ fantasies.”
She sobbed softly into the phone.
“Kayla? Don’t…” His tone softened. “Please, please, just come home. We can figure this out together.”
“Seth, I… don’t know. I can’t. Not yet. Try to understand.”
“No. I will never understand how you could do such a thing. But I can forgive, if you just take the next plane home. Good-bye, Kayla.”
She heard a dial tone. He had hung up.
What am I going to do, what am I going to do? she thought, cradling her head in her hands.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” the nurse asked.
“Fine, I just have to go now.” She got up. Keep focused, some still-rational part of her brain kicked in. Live one day at a time. One hour at a time. She looked at her watch. She needed to go back and check out. She needed to figure out some way to live.
She ran up the hotel steps to her room, then stuffed her dirty clothes into her backpack. The leather briefcase was lying on the floor. She opened it, riffling through her day planner, course notes, articles from
The Wall Street Journal
. And then her fingers closed over the slick pages of the magazine she had been handed by the smirking secretary while she was waiting to be interviewed, opened to the article that had sent her to the airport to catch a plane. She stuffed it into her backpack, swallowing hard, leaving the rest behind. Of one thing she was absolutely sure: That part of her life was over.
11
She needed clothes, she thought. But even that small decision seemed to demand some existential reckoning. For the first time in her life, she realized, she had no idea what she should be wearing or what she was supposed to look like. I can wear anything I want, she thought. No one knows me. I’m not trying to prove anything. But what did she
want
to wear? She could not remember the last time she had asked herself this question. A twinge of controlled panic touched her heart.
She wound up buying sweatpants and hoodies, and a few cotton tees, clothing inappropriate for all occasions except perhaps jogging, which she had no intention of doing. But they were inexpensive and practical and made her feel thrifty. It was also, she admitted, a kind of camouflage. She would look like every other foreigner backpacking her way around the world except for the expensive camel-hair coat from Nordstrom, sole remnant of her former life.
“Here,” she said, slipping it off her shoulders and placing it around the back of the first beggar woman she encountered.
“God bless you,” the woman called out to her, clutching it in her bony hand.
In an army-navy store, she bought an ugly green army-issue jacket called a
dubon.
She looked at herself in the mirror, satisfied. All she needed was a few
more changes of underwear, and she’d be prepared for anything her new life might throw at her.
There it was, the ancient stone wall built around the Old City. Her heart beat a little faster as she saw Christian pilgrims crowding through the darkened stone archway that led inside. Is that what I am, she thought, a pilgrim? Or just another sightseer? Or maybe—she stared at the long-haired, bearded backpackers dressed in the colorful light cotton garments of India—a seeker of truth, searching for a new way to live?