All I Love and Know (16 page)

Matt looked at his watch. It was around 8:30, and Derrick would probably be at work, but Brent, who was a professor, might be home. He picked up the phone and dialed them on speed dial, and Brent picked up on the second ring, saying, “Matt?”

“Hi.”

“Matt,” he breathed, as though hearing Matt's voice was the culmination of all his desires and he could now rest. “When did you guys get back?”

“Just me,” Matt said. “Daniel's still there.”

“How was it?” Brent asked. “Wow, what a stupid question. How's Daniel doing?”

Matt shrugged. “You know,” he said. “He's completely fucked-up. He's dealing with his twin brother being blown to bits, and his parents are there, which doesn't make it any easier, and then there's the kids.”

“What's going to happen to them?” Brent asked.

There was a pause. “We never told you?”

“No.” And then, before Matt could say anything, he said, “Oh my God, are you guys taking them?”

“We're trying to,” Matt said. “Joel and Ilana wanted that; it was in their will.”

“Wow,” Brent said.

Matt was quiet, parsing that “Wow.” Of all Daniel's friends, Brent was the one whom Matt had immediately clicked with; he was hilarious, and a media scholar at Mount Holyoke, and after Matt had stopped being a little intimidated about being friends with an academic, he loved being around someone so smart, someone who made his mind dance. But Matt had also been the laughing audience for many of Brent's scathing performances about moms with kids, and he worried a little that he and Daniel would become the butt of Brent's breeder jokes. Recently, Brent had stopped going to Woodstar Café, down the street from his apartment, since it had become a hangout for moms with kids in strollers, saying that being there made him want to stick a knife in his eye.

“Does that make us uncles?” Brent asked.

“Absolutely,” Matt said, smiling.

“You guys will be all ‘Do your homework' and ‘Clean your room,' and we'll be the place they go when they run away from home. And who takes them to the doctor when they want to transition. Well,
I
will. Derrick will want to make sure the lines of respectful communication remain open between you and them.”

“Dude, they're six and one year old,” Matt laughed.

“What are their names again?”

“The girl is Gal, and the little boy is Noam.” Matt found he was still smiling. “Look, it's not certain. It turns out that the will isn't binding, and the kids' Israeli grandparents are going to go to court to try to keep them there. And they're Holocaust survivors, and Ilana was their only child. So we're basically trying to take away the only thing they have left. Can you imagine?”

“Shit.”

“I know.”

There was a long pause. Then Brent said, “How are you feeling about it?”

Matt sighed. “I have no idea,” he said. “You
know
I've never wanted kids before. I feel awful about taking them away from their grandparents. But Daniel wants them. And it's what Joel and Ilana wanted.”

“Sure.”

Matt drained his cup of coffee and put it down. “I think maybe I want them just a little bit,” he said to Brent, emotion rushing into his voice and surprising him. “Is that weird? Am I just being a competitive asshole?”

“Probably,” Brent said, and they both laughed. “What do you think your chances are of getting them?”

“I'm not sure. Fifty-fifty?”

After another pause, Brent said, “Wanna come over? Since after the kids arrive, I'll never see you again?”

“Oh please,” Matt said. He opened the back door and looked down at the stoop, which was coated with pollen. “Let me do some cleaning up around here, and go through the bills, and I'll call you later.”

“See?” Brent said. “It starts already.”

“Shut up,” Matt said. “It does not start already.”

After he hung up, Matt swept off the stoop and the steps, propped the broom against the house, and sat down, looking out at the garden. His imagination was very gently entwining itself around the idea of being a father. He was ready for something new. He should learn Hebrew! He wanted to be able to understand his daughter—
his daughter
—when she spoke to Daniel, and it would be important for both kids to know their mother's language. It felt a little weird, setting out to learn the language of the oppressor; it felt a little like learning Afrikaans. His mind worried the comparison for a while, as he hosed out the grime from the birdbath and filled it, dragged out a bag of birdseed from the garage, and filled and rehung the feeders. Then he began imagining himself in a classroom with little wood desk chairs and batik wall hangings of Hasidic fiddlers, with all the bar mitzvah boys—the bored kids with braces and chubby cheeks learning their Torah portion from a severe, bearded man.

It was only an idea that caught his fancy; he didn't intend to act on it, at least right now, when there was so much work to catch up on. But the next day, Brent called him to say that a colleague of his knew an Israeli artist named Yossi-something who was married to a physicist at UMass, who was apparently waiting for his green card and taught Hebrew under the table. Matt kept the paper with Yossi's number on it next to the phone for a few days as he caught up on delinquent projects—a poster for a film festival and a boarding school annual report that accounted for about a quarter of his yearly income and that was, miraculously, only a week overdue. He lingered over the number when he came into or left the kitchen, and each time tender fantasies overcame his awareness that, to some people, Hebrew was the language of the set of byzantine, malicious laws that legitimized blowing up their houses or keeping them apart from their farms, their own spouses and children. The idea of learning Hebrew made him think of Gal and Noam as his daughter and son, he didn't know why.

He didn't tell Daniel about it yet because their official attitude on the phone was a guarded neutrality on the subject of the children, as a way of protecting themselves in case they didn't get them. And when he thought about it, he wasn't really sure how Daniel would react. But finally, he put in a call to Yossi. Yossi was unpleasantly abrupt on the phone, asking midway through Matt's spiel, “Who
is
this?” Which made Matt sigh and have to start over: “My name is Matt Greene.” Yossi made him tell him exactly how he'd gotten his number, and when Matt couldn't remember Brent's friend's name, there was a stony silence on the other end that made Matt wonder:
Do I need this crap?

It occurred to him later that Yossi was being extra careful because he wasn't legally allowed to hold a job. But when Yossi arrived at his door a few days later, he thought that he might just be a prick. He was gorgeous—tall and broad, with closely cut hair, a dark beard shadow, and blue eyes that looked a little washed out from gazing into the sun, perhaps, or inward, at his own weighty thoughts. A lovely sprout of chest hair showed above his shirt where it was open at the neck. Matt suddenly remembered that Brent had reported that Yossi had been an air force pilot. If he had extended his hand, Matt would have gripped it with all his might, but he was spared that display because all he got was a curt nod. When Yo-yo barged at him, Yossi quieted him by taking his head into his two large hands. “Don't mind him,” Matt said, taking note of his wedding band. “He's a goof.”

“I don't,” Yossi said.

Matt got him coffee, which he drank black, and as they sat down at the kitchen table, Yossi asked him in a nonplussed way why he wanted to learn Hebrew. “Are you Jewish?” he asked.

Matt felt himself bristle. As happened with some straight men, Yossi made him feel girly and silly. “No, I'm not,” he replied. “But my partner is.” He cleared his throat and gazed at the man across the table from him as he digested the word
partner
, enjoying for once the anticipation of telling their story, knowing that it would wipe the dismissive look off of Yossi's handsome face. “My partner—his name is Daniel—Daniel's brother and sister-in-law were killed in a
pigua
in Jerusalem, and there's a chance that we are going to raise the children.”

Yossi sat back in his chair and placed his hand on his chest. “Ah,” he said gently. “How old are they?”

“Gal is six and Noam is eleven months.”

Yossi heaved a sigh. “Terrible. It was the
pigua
at Peace Train Café?”

Matt nodded.

“So your first Hebrew word is
pigua
.”

It hadn't been, quite, but Matt didn't correct him, Yossi was so obviously touched by the thought, and it felt delightful to have this Israeli warrior feeling bad for him. “Yes, and the word
ptsatsa
,” Matt said, bringing out the Hebrew word for “bomb,” and then thinking that he was perhaps working the pathos too hard. “But that's about it. Oh—
buba
and
miskena
, things like that.”

Yossi smiled faintly. “
Miskena
. Is there a word in English?”

“I don't think so. ‘Poor thing'?”

Yossi shrugged. “
Miskena
, that's for a girl. You must also learn the word for a boy poor thing.
Misken
.”

“
Misken
,” Matt repeated.

“
Miskenim
,” Yossi crooned, as though he were actually comforting children. Poor things. “
Im
, that is plural, for masculine.”

Matt nodded.

Yossi sighed and got out his books. Then he placed his hands on them and leaned forward. “It's good to learn a language to speak to children.”

Matt looked at him, confused, trying to parse the meaning of that sentiment, which seemed either very deep or very cloying, when Yossi added, “Because you will be on a similar level.”

“Aha, true.”

“I try to think—” Yossi cleared his throat. “What kind of things you might say to children in their situation.” He was lost for a moment, lashes fluttering, in tender, brooding thought. “ ‘Try to sleep,' ” he said, turning his glance to Matt. “ ‘I love you. I will take care of you.' Shall I teach you those phrases?”

They worked on them for a while, and then Yossi opened a workbook with the Hebrew alphabet and lines for penmanship practice, and taught Matt to read a few basic words. He would break each lesson into two, he said, teaching him simple conversation for the first half hour, and reading and writing for the second. He watched as Matt drew his first Hebrew letters, and he gave him homework for the following week. They smoked a cigarette together on the back steps before he left. Matt asked him if he had kids, and Yossi said he did, three boys, one twelve, one ten, and one Gal's age.

“Oh,” Matt said. “Maybe they can play together.”

“Rafi is deaf,” Yossi said bluntly.

“Okay,” Matt said. “Does that mean they can't play together?”

“No,” Yossi laughed. “Of course not.”

“Do you like it here?”

Yossi opened his palms and shrugged. “It's good for my wife, this job. And it's a very good place for Rafi, because of the school for the deaf. But I miss home. People aren't very friendly here.”

“Really, you think?” Matt asked. He thought about this town, where men with gray beards and pedantic demeanors, and willowy ponytailed women, and the million and one psychotherapists and, of course, the stocky lesbians with severe and perfect haircuts engaged with one another with great, inculcated civility; civility he'd initially found, after living for years in New York, phony, almost comical.

“At home, you can jump over to someone's house without calling, and they will pull up another chair for dinner.”

“Oh,” Matt said. “We don't do that in New England.”

On his way out, Yossi instructed Matt to say the sentences he'd learned one more time. He lifted his chin sternly, like a father demanding a recitation from a child. “Try to sleep,” Matt said, as Yossi raised his eyebrows and nodded. “I love you. I will take care of you.”

Yossi gave him an approving clap on the shoulder and said, “
Yofi!
Le'hitraot
. That's mean ‘See you later.' ”

Closing the door, Matt took a huge breath. Yossi's sternness and scrutiny and praise made him feel a little like a sheepish child, but he had a nice glow from that too, from being praised for being smart. He paced around the kitchen, feeding the dog and washing out the coffeemaker and setting water to boil for pasta. He wasn't used to not being the most handsome man in the room. But he'd found that he gladly deferred to Yossi's alpha hunkiness. A Magnetic Fields song playing and replaying in the back of his mind floated up to his consciousness, and he laughed to himself. He dialed Brent and Derrick's number, and when Brent picked up the phone, he sang, without saying hello, “He's amazing, he's a whole new form of life.”

Brent laughed, and finished the couplet: “Blue eyes blazing, and he's going to be your wife.”

“Well, not quite,” Matt said thoughtfully. “It's more like he's going to be my
ward
.”

He was having to work until pretty late, but now and then he took a little time to practice his Hebrew alphabet. It pleased him to form the letters; it reminded him of design school, where they made them learn to design by hand, painstakingly drawing the alphabet, or cutting out the listed ingredients from some random product and making a composition out of them. He was enjoying being alone, he found; he turned down invitations to dinner and movies from his friends.

ONE MORNING, WHILE CLEANING
the bedroom, Lydia cried out; she emerged waving a DVD and crying, “We can see him again!” She clasped first Sam, then Daniel, looking into their faces with a tearful smile. She had come across the DVDs of Joel's show, which were stored, it turned out, neatly labeled and dated, in a flat plastic tub under Joel and Ilana's bed. When she went back into the bedroom to take out the box, Daniel murmured to his father, “She does understand that it's not
really
Joel, just a film of him, right?”