Every Last Cuckoo (22 page)

“Was it hard to go into the army so soon after your loss?”

Mordechai sat back down on his stool and stared out through the screen. The surface of the pond registered small currents of air, which roughened some patches and left everything else a mirror full of high clouds.

“Sarah,” he said, “you can't imagine. I was crazy with grief. I felt completely powerless—and then I was given weapons and trained to kill an enemy. For a while I fought the Arabs as if
they
had killed Rachel and Baruch. When I finally saw how illogical that was, I could no longer fight. I began working for peace. I became a pacifist. Or perhaps I learned I had always been one.”

This surprised her. “What do you mean?”

He didn't answer directly. “My mother—the only time I ever heard her speak of the Holocaust, she said that war was never about ideals, it was always about hatred and greed. Years later, when Rachel and I left for Israel, the protests against the war in Vietnam were just beginning. If we had stayed, we would have been for peace. Instead, less than a year later, we were wildly celebrating the Six-Day War.” He paused. “Isn't that a strange thing? If my mother was right, and war is always about selfishness and hate, then how could I oppose one war and support another?”

“What happened when you finally did go to war?”

He said slowly, “It was—it is—endless war. It has solved nothing. And there is nothing like actually killing people to make you a pacifist. If you are meant to be one.”

“Are there many pacifists in Israel? We never hear about them.”

Mordechai sighed. “Some Israelis have always called for peace, even in the worst of times. They aren't all pacifists, but the urge for peace is strong. It's why Barak won the election.”

“You should have hope then.”

He looked gravely at Sarah. “I do. But there is one terrible thing. Sometimes Israel is safer when there is no progress toward peace at all.”

“Why, for God's sake?”

“Because fanatics on both sides hate the idea of reconciliation.” Mordechai rose from his stool and leaned against the frame of the screen, his back to the water. “After a peace accord was signed in Oslo, a Jew went and slaughtered worshipers in a Muslim mosque. The Arabs retaliated. Another Jew, a student, murdered Yitzhak Rabin, who had signed the accord for Israel.” He looked sadly at Sarah. “Some people just won't give up their hatred.”

This was more than Sarah could grasp—hopelessness inside the very heart of hope. She watched the surface of the pond and scanned the air above it. A sparrow lit on the tip of a reed, its weight barely bending the stalk. Sarah, studying its lightness, had a sudden thought.

“Mordechai, did you hold your baby? Your son, Baruch—did you see him?”

He brought his hands together and touched them to his chin, as if praying, or thinking. “Yes,” he answered. “He lived only a short time. They called me in. I knew Rachel was dead, and I knew Baruch would follow her, but I saw into his eyes before he died. I was a father for five minutes.”

“No,” she said softly, picturing the scene. “You were a father for nine months before that. You're still a father. Nothing changes
that.” She paused, remembering the look in Charles's eyes when he'd spoken so ardently about David with Hannah. She added, “Just like you're still a husband, all these years later.”

She told him about Andrew then—how she had held his small body and wondered what he was supposed to teach her. “I still wonder, though sometimes I almost understand.”

Mordechai said nothing for a long moment. Finally he murmured, “Thank you for telling me.”

Stephie had once told Sarah that the worst and best of human nature lived in separate parts of the brain, the worst in the oldest part and the best in the most recently evolved. Mordechai, it seemed, had erased the boundary between them. Sarah, though, was still sometimes ruled by stark pain, lost to everything else. Grief slipped away, only to attack from behind. It changed shape endlessly. It lacerated her, numbed her, stalked her, startled her, caught her by the throat. It deceived her eye with glimpses of Charles, her ear with the sound of his voice. She would turn and turn, expecting him, and find him gone. Again. Each time Sarah escaped her sorrow, forgetful amid other things, she lost him anew the instant she remembered he was gone.

S
ARAH SLEPT LATE ONE
morning and woke at eight to hushed sounds that meant others were trying with some difficulty to be quiet. She smiled lazily and got up, and on her way to the kitchen she overheard Angelo's voice through the screen door that led to the front porch. Tyler's piping laugh chimed in as she turned in to the foyer and drew closer.

“So,” Angelo was saying, “you know that feeling, right? When you have this insane itch that you can't reach?”

“Or you can't scratch it cause . . . cause . . .” Tyler was trying to talk past the giggles. He took an audible breath. “Once I was in Sunday school and my butt itched.”

“Uh-oh,” replied Angelo. Sarah stayed out of sight, but she could picture a glint in Angelo's eye. “Whadja do? You couldn't scratch your butt in Sunday school.”

“I wiggled!” Tyler said, howling with glee. “And the teacher kept telling me to sit still!”

Angelo snorted. “Teachers.
Jeez
. But hey, I know a story about a dragon that had this
really
terrible itch. Wanna hear it?”

Tyler did, and Angelo proceeded. He launched into a tale about a friendly dragon who lived in the woods and guarded a cave full of treasure. “Not boring stuff like jewels, you know. People's dreams. Babies' first words. Memories. Things like that.”

The dragon lived among forest animals who loved him but couldn't help when he got a searing itch right between his wings. Their claws and teeth couldn't penetrate the dragon's scales to reach it. He tried scratching the itch himself, against trees and rocks, but the trees just snapped under his weight and the rocks crumbled.

“What did he
do
?” Tyler asked.

“Well,” said Angelo, warming to his tale. “He had to go see this horrible witchy person on the other side of the forest. Nobody even knew if it was a he or a she, but we'll call it a she just because that's kind of traditional for witches.”

Sarah crept closer to the doorjamb and leaned against it.

“So the dragon found this witch and begged her for a magic potion. She smelled bad and looked worse. But she finally said she would cure the dragon's itch for a price.”

Tyler took a sharp breath. “His treasure, right?”

“Right,” said Angelo. “Stupid witch had
no
imagination. She'd never want the dragon's stuff, but he couldn't convince her of that.”

“So did she get his treasure?”

“Nah. The dragon was too smart for her. He pretended to go along, but while she was in her cottage mixing up the potion, he thought of a plan. He kept working on it as they flew back to his cave. The witch rode between his wings, smack on top of his itch, which was suddenly ten times worse. He began to think she had caused his itch in the first place.”

Sarah couldn't see Tyler, but she could imagine just how he looked, his small, squarish knees drawn up, his eyes on Angelo's face.

“When the dragon landed beside his cave, the witch scrambled down from his back and started to run toward it. But the dragon yelled, ‘
Wait, Witch!
How do I know your potion will work?'

“The witch was furious, but she scuttled back and motioned for the dragon to kneel down. Then she put the tiniest possible drop of potion on his itch. It worked just long enough to convince him before the itch came back worse than ever.

“The witch spun around and headed for the cave again.

“‘
Wait!
' the dragon yelled. ‘One more thing!'

“The witch glared, but the dragon let a tiny tongue of flame come out of his mouth. The witch noticed this. The dragon pointed out that she had never signed an agreement with him. He said he needed her signature on a piece of paper. Not even that—just her initial.
W,
for
Witch.
He'd fill in the details later.

“The witch was crazy with greed, so she conjured up a scrap of paper and a quill pen and scribbled a messy
W
and threw it at the dragon.

“The dragon acted fast! He snatched the paper, grabbed the potion, yanked the stopper from the bottle, and dashed a dollop into the witch's ugly face.

“And guess what?” Angelo said in a throaty, conspiratorial voice.

“What?” Tyler whispered.

“The witch disappeared, right in front of the dragon's eyes. She just went
poof
!”

Tyler let out the breath he had been holding. “Why? How?”

“Well,” said Angelo. “What do you get when you take
W
away from
Witch
?”

Tyler barely paused to think. “
Itch!
” he hollered, triumphant. “He turned her into an itch!”

“And then he gave her the old heave-ho,” Angelo confirmed.

“The old heave-ho!”

Sarah stifled a delighted gasp.

Awestruck, Tyler said, “Did you make that story up?”

“Nah.” Angelo cleared his throat. “My mom did. She used to make up stories a lot. But that one the other day? About the war between the donkeys and the monkeys over how to say their names? That one I did make up.”

“Oh, yeah! Dawnkeys and mawnkeys or dunkeys and munkeys. That was
funny
.”

Once again Sarah had the sensation of standing still while time flowed around her.

A
FEW NIGHTS LATER
, still thinking of stories, still remembering down in her bones and belly how Charles had found out her own most private tales, Sarah glimpsed herself naked in the big bathroom mirror. Look what she had come to. Her impulse was to turn away and duck hastily into her nightdress. What was there to see in an old woman? Then she paused. What indeed? Slowly she put the nightdress on top of the hamper and began to look at herself from every angle. “God,” she groaned. She was melting, coolly and in slow motion, everything heading toward the floor. Even the skin of her knees sagged. Her breasts were scored with wrinkles. Her belly was slack, her throat webbed, her long arms mainly bone and loose skin, their once firm flesh eaten by time.

When exactly had she become old? Sixty? Seventy? Even in her fifties, maybe later, she had seen her younger self underneath the years. She had remembered her face and body when they could make Charles moan and he in turn could make her cry out, his passion electric on her skin. This was so powerfully true in their early years together that she would jump if he kissed her while her hands were in dishwater, as if the current of his love could deliver a sizzling jolt.

Sarah took in the evidence of age not knowing whether to laugh or cry. How many girls and women she had been—she carried a multitude inside who shared only memory and character traits.

I
am
a memory,
she suddenly thought.
And half the time I can't tell what's real from what I've made up.
She slid her nightdress on and felt as if some other Sarah's head emerged through the satin edging the neckline. As she buttoned the yoke, pushed up the loose sleeves, and brushed her teeth and hair, she had the odd feeling that some brand-new piece of her singular, shifting, multitudinous self had bumped lightly into place, moving the others, making more sense of the whole—the irreducible, authentic Sarah, who weathered perpetual change and yet persisted. More would happen to her. She wasn't finished yet.

D
AVID
, T
ESS, AND
H
ANNAH
arrived unannounced just as Jonathan's homecoming dinner was winding down and the arguments were heating up. Peter was goading Mordechai—“Isn't a pacifist in Israel a bit like a hen in a foxhouse?”—when David walked in with Hannah sleeping on his shoulder and Tess beside him.

“We heard Jonathan was in town,” David said, amid a clamor of greetings. He and Tess met Mordechai for the first time, Tess met Jonathan, Hannah woke into full, excited alertness and asked for Sylvie, who at that moment came racing into the great room with Ruckus skittering behind her. Lottie took Hannah from David, and Sarah offered food, drinks, or coffee.

“For heaven's sake,” she said abruptly, “where will you sleep? The house is full!” Surely she had told him about all the boarders. Except for Lottie, they had discreetly or coincidentally gone out to jobs or movies or friends' houses.

“Thought of that, Mom. Thought we'd camp in Dad's office, if that's okay.”

Sarah drew up short for a second. “Oh. That never . . . Yes, of course that will work.”

They drifted to the other end of the great room, leaving the dining table still cluttered with dessert plates and wadded napkins. Charlotte and Tom, the quietest pair in the gathering, sat on the loveseat together. Lottie took Hannah onto her lap in the rocker, while Sylvie and Ruckus fell into sighing heaps at their feet. The others settled themselves with coffee or drinks.

“I heard Peter yelling as we came in,” David grinned. “Which hobbyhorse was he whipping this time?”

“Oh, let's not start that again!” cried Vivi, mock horrified. No one but Sarah paid any attention in the renewed uproar. She knew Vivi was glad for Mordechai, whose presence eased Peter's loneliness for Charles.

Peter cracked up, pointing at Mordechai. “My esteemed cousin over there, the one whose last name means ‘nut case'—oh, excuse me, ‘nut
tree
'—believes Israel's new prime minister will do everything he promises. Unite the Jews among themselves, then make them brothers with the Israeli Arabs. And fit everybody into a place smaller than Vermont, which has only a half million people to Israel's six million and counting.”