Saving Grace (29 page)

He didn’t reply, but came close and examined the gash on her scalp. His face was stern. “Superficial,” he said. “But close enough. A centimeter lower and I’d have been in big trouble with Tamar.”

“I asked you a question.”

“Do you want to go to hospital?”

“Of course not.”

“Then I’ll just clean that up a bit and we’ll go on to Ein Gedi. Tamar can deal with it there.”

It hurt but she didn’t make a sound as he washed the cut and poured something over it. When he finished, the woman gave her glass of water. Gracie remembered Clara’s last words at the airport. “Don’t drink the water. And don’t take anything from the Arabs.” Though faintly brackish, the water was very cold and refreshing. She drank it all.
 

* * *

“You’ll feel a slight burning and then no pain. Try not to move. Good girl. Micha, how could you be so stupid? Taking her with you into the Old City—you might as well have painted a bull’s-eye on her back.”

“Sorry,
Ema.”
Micha stood awkwardly in a corner, a large man growing smaller by the moment.

“What next? A stroll through Hebron, a picnic in Gaza?” Tamar snorted, unappeased. Meanwhile her deft hands probed and parted, snipped and cleaned with the autonomous competence of long practice. “He must have got you with a flat edge,” she informed Grace. “It’s a deep scrape and it’s still oozing a little, but there’s no puncture and I doubt the impact was enough for a concussion. If we can just keep it from getting infected...” She pulled down the overhead lamp and peered closely. “What did you put on this?”

Micha answered in Hebrew.

His mother grunted. “He’s a fair medic, I’ll say that for him. But stupid, very stupid.”

Grace opened her eyes and squinted upward into her aunt’s bright little monkey face, framed by a cap of dark hair. “It wasn’t his fault,” she said. “I made him go.”

Tamar hooted. “Did you put a gun to his head?”

“Not quite.”

“Then it was his fault. Wasn’t it, Micha?”

He sighed. “Yes, Tamar. It was my fault.”

* * *

Later, after dark, Micha and Tamar walked to his car; actually it was the army’s car, but he had the use of it. He was quiet, brooding.

“Must you go back tonight?” she asked.

“Yes.” He used to love going back to the army after leave, used to feel like a sea lion slipping back into the sea. But lately the water had tasted bitter; the sea was polluted. He would fight for his country anywhere, but he hated playing cop.
 

“So,” said his mother, “what did you think of the girl?”

“Not quite as bad as I expected.”

“God knows what you expected.”

“The female equivalent of Paul.”

“Not much like the brother, is she?”

“Not much. I’ll say this for her: she didn’t whine when she got hurt.”

“Didn’t snivel when I patched her, either.” Tamar looked so satisfied at this that Micha felt a pang of apprehension, almost jealousy. Unlike him, this girl was her own flesh and blood.
 

“She didn’t want to come, you know,” he said.

Tamar stopped short. “No, I didn’t know.”

“Her parents forced her.”

“Oh, no. I can’t have that. I won’t keep her here against her will.”

She looked like a kid whose new puppy had just been snatched away. Micha relented. “You’ll bring her around. Could be she doesn’t have much to go back to.”

They’d reached his car, but in unspoken agreement they walked past it to the edge of the parking lot. The kibbutz was set atop a steep hill; at its feet, the Dead Sea glistened darkly. Micha and Tamar gazed downward. Bats darted soundlessly overhead.

“I’m thinking of leaving the army,” Micha said.

“I thought you might be.”

What would it take, he wondered, to surprise her? He laughed suddenly and kissed the top of her head. “Good luck with your stray cat
.
”

20

LILY WAS CUTTING SALT-SPRAY ROSES for the house when something stung her on the back of the head. She yelped and spun around, but nothing was there. Suddenly there was buzzing all around her, a swarm of invisible bees. She covered her face with her hands and ran toward the house, but the insects flew with her, attacking, stinging. She knew she was going to die. She screamed—and woke, safe in her bed, in East Hampton.

Sunlight streamed through the window. She was alone in a bed soaked with sweat. The buzzing was gone, yet the pain remained. Something’s wrong, Lily thought. Something’s very wrong. The telephone rang. She grabbed it.

“Hello?”

There was a hollow sound on the line, a slight echo to the caller’s voice. “Lily, it’s Tamar.”

“Tamar. What’s wrong?” She struggled to sit up. “Is it Gracie?”

“Gracie’s fine. Micha picked her up at the airport this morning. When I left for the hospital, she was sleeping off the trip and Yaacov was pacing the floor like an expectant father.”

But Lily had heard something in her voice. “What is it, Tamar?”

“Clara’s concerned about you,” Tamar said in her blunt fashion.

“About me?”

“I had a letter. She says you’ve been having severe headaches, that you fainted, and something—I can’t quite read this part—about crawling out of a tub?”

“Oh, Lord. I told her, the headaches are just a reaction to what’s been going on in our lives. Perfectly natural, under the circumstances. But she gets so fussed.”

“She also said that sometimes when she talks to you, you don’t seem to hear her. She says it’s as if you were sleepwalking while awake.”

Lily didn’t answer.

“Were you aware of that?” Tamar asked gently. Her voice was calm, interested, not overly concerned.

Lily was weary. The dream was still with her, the pain unabated. Keeping it a secret took a greater effort than she could summon. That she had never felt close to or even comfortable with Jonathan’s sister emerged now as an advantage: when she spoke, it was to the doctor in Tamar.

“The headaches are terrible. Frightening. They make me think I’m going to die.”

Tamar was silent; then: “What else?”

“My mother visits me.”

“Do you see her?”

“No. I hear her. Sometimes I smell her scent. Do you think I’m crazy?”

“No. How long has this been going on?”

“Since the beginning of summer.”

“Have you seen your doctor?”

“I didn’t care to. I like hearing her voice.”

“Have the occurrences increased in frequency?”

“At first there were intervals of a week or more. Lately it’s every day, sometimes several times.”

“Are they associated, the headaches and your mother’s voice? Do they occur together?”

“Sometimes. Not always.”

“What does your mother say to you?”

“She doesn’t talk. She sings. Nursery songs.”

“Songs you remember?”

“Yes, but it’s not remembering, it’s hearing.”

“I understand,” Tamar said, and to Lily’s relief, she sounded as if she really did, as if hearing one’s dead mother sing were nothing out of the ordinary. Lily felt a deep sense of relief, as if she’d been speaking in tongues and had stumbled at last on someone who knew the language. Once started, she held back nothing, but described her symptoms in detail, with a sense of wanton luxuriance. It had been a very long time since she’d held anyone’s attention the way she now held Tamar’s. Lately, all conversations had centered on Jonathan, with a smattering of Gracie; the rest of the family had faded into the background.

Suddenly Jonathan walked in. Lily fell silent and clutched the phone to her chest with a guilty start. For one dizzying moment, Jonathan imagined she was talking to a lover. “Who is it?” he mouthed.

She brought the phone up to her mouth. “I must go. Thanks so much for calling. Please give Gracie our love.”

“Is that Tamar?” Jonathan reached out. “Let me talk to her.”

“Don’t hang up!” Tamar shouted in her ear.

“ ‘Bye now,” Lily warbled, waving Jonathan off.

“Lily, listen.” Tamar spoke urgently. “The constellation of symptoms you describe could be caused by a number of things, some of them relatively trivial, some quite serious. Stress alone is definitely not the answer. Do you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“You must see someone without delay.”

Lily’s voice was resolutely social. “We’ll talk again soon. Take care, now.”

“Is Jonathan there? Put him on.”

“I’d rather not. He’s got enough on his plate.”

“This comes first.”

“What the hell is going on?” Jonathan said. He snatched the phone from her hand. “Tamar, it’s Jonathan. What’s the matter?”

For the next ten minutes he said very little. He paced the room, cradling the phone, time and again casting a baleful look at Lily, who felt as if he were seeing her for the first time in months. He took a pen and pad from his pocket and wrote down a number and a name. After he hung up, he sank into a slipper chair beside the bed and gazed out the window at Paul swimming laps in the pool. Beyond him, the
Water Lily
bobbed on gentle waves. Finally he looked at Lily.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to worry you. I thought it would go away by itself.”

“Bullshit.”

“You’d have made me see a doctor.”

“Damn right I would have.”

She frowned. “I didn’t want to. She’s
my
mother. You think I wanted some doctor telling me, ‘Take two pills and your mother will go away’?”

“You’re a mother and a wife. If you didn’t care enough about yourself to seek the proper care, at least you had an obligation to me—”

“Pompous, pompous,” Lily mocked. “You have no right to talk.”

“Didn’t it occur to you that something might be wrong?”

“Why shouldn’t my mother visit me, goddammit? Yours
lives
with us.”

“My
mother’s still alive.”

“Alive, dead, what does it matter?”

“Now you’re scaring me,” he said.
 

His head was in his hands, a hangdog pose that begged for pity. Poor Jonathan, Lily thought reflexively, but stopped herself. No. It was “Poor Lily” now. For once, the fuss wasn’t about Jonathan or Gracie. It was about her. “Would you take my mother from me, too?” she asked.

“Take her from you? Lily, she took herself out of the picture twenty years ago. That’s a one-way door. No one comes back.”

True, thought Lily, and yet her mother
had
come back.

“And why
too
?” Jonathan continued, with rising indignation. “What have I ever taken from you? All I’ve ever done is give, give, give, to you and the children.”

She rolled her eyes.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.

“It means we have a son who’s spoiled rotten with excess and a daughter who can take nothing from our hands.”

He lifted his face to hers and she saw him naked, all his pain exposed. “That’s cruel, Lily.”

“Life’s cruel.”
 

He ran his hands through his hair. “I’m beginning to feel I don’t know you.”

“It’s a beginning.”

“I don’t know why you’re so angry with me. I don’t know why you didn’t trust me enough to tell me what was happening. We used to tell each other everything.”

Lily raised an eyebrow. “Twenty years ago. Besides, I tried to tell you.”

“When?”

“A week ago. I came to your study. I told you my head hurt.”

He didn’t remember. “What did I say?”

“You said, ‘Take an aspirin. Take two.’ “

“You didn’t say enough. I’m not a goddamn mind reader. And there’s a hell of a difference between having a headache and—”

“You found me unconscious in the garden. That didn’t worry you?”

“You said it was too much sun.”

“It probably was.”

“Not according to Tamar.”

“I don’t care how good a doctor she is, she can’t diagnose from seven thousand miles away.”

“She didn’t diagnose anything. All she said was it’s got to be checked out, which any idiot—” Jonathan choked to a stop as bitterness flooded his mouth and throat. “What if you’re wrong? What if it
is
something serious? How am I supposed to live with that? Damn you, Lily,” he cried, torn between a compulsion to fall at her feet and another, just as strong, to beat her with a stick. “How could you do this to me?”

“Tell me,” she said, “if you’d found Gracie lying in the dirt, would you have let it go at ‘too much sun’?”
 

They both knew the answer to that. The real question was why she’d asked it. Was she implying that he cared more for his daughter than he did for his wife? Jonathan was beginning to see himself as the hero of a Greek tragedy, a mortal persecuted by a malevolent god. He dared not ask “What next?” for fear his house would come tumbling down about his ears.