Saving Grace (34 page)

Gracie was a fighter, a fighter and a survivor. Tamar’s greater fear was for Jonathan. She had believed in her brother’s innocence, not because he was incapable of venality, but because he was too smart to endanger himself. But Grace believed he was guilty; and Grace was an observant child.

For some reason, she felt sorrier for Jonathan now than she had when she’d thought him innocent.

“Have you thought how strange it is,” she asked Grace, breaking a long silence, “that I ended up living with Yaacov, and Jonathan with Clara?”

“Why strange?”

“Because I am really more like my mother, while your father is like Yaacov.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Clara and I are peasants. Our attachment is to place, not ideologies. Yaacov and Jonathan are a whole other breed. They’re idealists.”

“But you’re a doctor. You
are
an idealist.”

“I’m a worker,” Tamar said firmly. She held up hands as hard and muscled as any laborer’s. Grace thought of her mother’s hands, slender, blue-veined, delicate. Her aunt’s hands evoked the potato pickers in Van Gogh’s paintings. Tamar was solid flesh, deeply rooted.

“But you and Yaacov both chose to stay here.”

“We did, but for different reasons. Yaacov fell in love with Zionism, but I fell in love with the land.”

“And which am I?” Gracie asked after a pause. “Peasant or idealist?”

“What do you think?”

A thing without roots, Grace thought. “I don’t know.”

“Then you must find out.”

“Why?”

“A person needs to know where she belongs.”

“Another Delphic utterance. Care to translate?”

Tamar smiled. “I’m saying that nothing matters more than knowing who you are and where you belong.”

Grace’s thoughts turned to an incident of the day before. She had been standing with Yaacov outside the dining hall, watching Micha play soccer with a bunch of kibbutz men, when the old man squeezed her arm. He said, “I look at those boys, and I know it was all worthwhile, just to produce such fine healthy animals.”

Would he have said the same, she’d wondered, watching Paul play tennis? Paul played well, but Gracie didn’t think so. Yaacov’s approval had had to do with the dual nature of those young men cavorting on the lawn. Each had another life, a secret life into which he would disappear for a month or two each year, returning home in a dusty green uniform, leaner and harder than before. These men handled rifles and Uzis with the same seasoned ability as they did soccer balls and tractors.

Grace had felt hurt, obscurely criticized. She felt the same way now with Tamar. “You think my father lacks roots?”

“I think,” Tamar said slowly, “that of the two of us, I was the lucky one.”

* * *

Micha lingered like a cold that won’t go away. Though he claimed to be on leave, week followed week and he showed no sign of returning to duty. No one who knew why was telling, but Tamar looked grim, and Yaacov slammed about the kitchen with his jaw clenched. Rumors flew like bats at dusk. Some people whispered that he had been booted out of the army for some obscure offense, others that he had taken leave or quit altogether. Volunteers came to Gracie for inside information. She would have enjoyed keeping his secret but was denied the opportunity; no one had confided in her, and she was too proud to pry into matters that were none of her concern.

When Micha had first come home, he’d said he was going to the Sinai for a week or two to get away, touching off a quiet but intense competition among the female volunteers. None secured the desired invitation, but it hardly mattered, since after announcing his plan, Micha kept delaying his departure. Instead he settled in as a tractor driver; and after that, Grace seemed to run into him everywhere she went: in the dining room, in the kibbutz clubhouse, at Tamar’s on Saturdays. In public he rarely sought her out, but she often felt his eyes on her; and if any of the kibbutz men talked to her, Micha was sure to notice and afterward warn her off. “Coby’s unreliable,” he’d say. “Yair’s married.”

If he were anyone else, she’d have assumed he was interested in her himself, but if there was one thing Gracie was certain of, it was that Micha was not attracted to her. His own behavior made it clear. He was more like a sheepdog than an aspiring lover: vigilant and protective when wolves were about, uninterested when the flock was safe.

Then, one day, the explanation came to her. Micha was following orders, and those orders could only have come from Tamar. Silly woman. Couldn’t she see that if there was one thing Gracie Fleishman could do, it was take care of herself?
 

*
 
* *

Gracie wasn’t the only one to notice Micha’s odd behavior. He endured some ribbing, especially from his friend, Coby.
 
“What’s your problem, man?” Coby demanded one night when they met in the tractor shed. “You want her yourself, is that it?”

“Get fucked,” Micha told him equably.

“I’m trying, but you keep getting in the way.”

Micha popped him lightly on the chin, a love tap. Coby tapped back. They teetered on the edge of blows until Coby backed off. “Fuck it, man,” he said. “You want her, take your best shot.”
 

“It’s nothing like that,” Micha said.
 

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that.”

Why shouldn’t he, when it was by far the simplest and most useful explanation? Micha, no simpleton, nevertheless preferred uncomplicated solutions when they were on offer. He was not a deep thinker. His intelligence was considerable, but by nature and training it was geared toward action, not analysis. Tactics, not strategy, were his forte; in that respect he was the perfect army man. Lately, though, Micha had run up against matters that absolutely required thought, and not merely thought, but the most painful reexamination of long-held tenets. Decisions had to be made. With his future hanging in the balance, Gracie was a distraction he didn’t need, but one whose removal from the scene he had sometime since ceased to desire.

One night after dinner, he followed her down to the Dead Sea. He didn’t purposely sneak up on her; it was just the way he walked.

Gracie started. “Jesus Christ. You should wear a bell.”

He sat beside her on the rocky shore, close to the sea. The air was as salty as tears. She said, “Why are you dogging me?”

“Who says I’m dogging you? Can’t a man get some fresh air?”

“I don’t need a baby-sitter.”

“You sure about that?”

She scowled. “Tell Tamar I can look after myself.”

“What’s Tamar got to do with it?”

“I know she put you up to it. Piss-poor choice, if you ask me. It’s obvious we don’t get along. You made it clear from the start that you didn’t want me here.”

“You made it clear you didn’t want to be here.”

“Don’t you get it, cuz? School’s out. You can go.”

“What if I don’t want to go? Besides, you’re wrong about Tamar. She hasn’t got a devious bone in her body.”

“Then why are you hanging around?”
 

Micha sighed. “Damned if I know.”

A star fell into the Dead Sea. They watched it sizzle.

24

JONATHAN READ THE VERDICT in Dr. Barrows’ face. His smile of greeting seemed painted on, like a clown’s; his eyes were remote, armored.

He clipped an X ray onto a lighted screen and picked up a pointer that lay atop the screen.

Jonathan saw a convoluted white mass: his wife’s brain. He averted his eyes.

“Here is the problem,” Barrows said without preamble. “This dark mass here is a lesion. Its location, on the surface of the superior temporal gyrus, accounts for all your wife’s symptoms.”

“A lesion...
 
?”

“A tumor.”

“Not acceptable,” Jonathan said. “I don’t buy that.”

He could hear God taunting him, thumbing his nose: Lily has a brain tumor, nya nya nya nya nya. Dr. Barrows’ face appeared in his narrowed line of vision, peering into his face with a comical expression of concern, like someone seen through a fish-eye lens. His mouth moved soundlessly; Jonathan could hear nothing over the roar of God’s derisive laughter. He stood, frozen with fear, like a rabbit caught in rushing headlights.

A strong hand pressed him downward into a chair. Barrows disappeared, then reappeared. A glass was held to Jonathan’s lips. He drank. The brandy warmed his soul. God’s laughter faded to a murmur.

“Are you with me, Mr. Fleishman?”

Jonathan spread his arms, as if to say: Where could I go?

Barrows pulled up the other visitor’s chair and sat knee to knee with Jonathan, who took this as a positive act of charity. In another era, this man would have doctored lepers.

“I know it sounds dreadful. I know it’s frightening. But I assure you that there is hope. This is not an automatic death sentence by any means. We don’t know, you see, what kind of tumor it is.”

“Does it matter?”

“It matters a great deal. Some tumors are relatively benign— they’re contained, they progress slowly. Some can be completely excised. Others can’t.”

Hope seized Jonathan in its cruel claw. “Can hers be?”

“I don’t know. It’s impossible to say without a specimen of the tumor.”

“You want to do a biopsy.”

“That’s one possibility. We could do a needle biopsy, remove some tissue.”

“One possibility?”

“The other is a procedure called debulking, and in your wife’s case, that’s the course I would recommend. Debulking simply means going in and taking out as much of the tumor as we can. Killing two birds with one stone.”

An image flashed before him: he saw Lily lying on a table and this man, hidden behind a mask, opening her skull. Who were the two birds? Jonathan put his hands to his temples and pressed hard. The hospital’s air conditioning was inadequate, yet he shivered.

The doctor’s voice was calming, almost matter-of-fact. “We know the tumor’s there, Mr. Fleishman. Whatever kind it is, it’s got to come out.”

Jonathan found his voice, or someone’s. “I want another opinion.”

“I understand. But time is of the essence. This thing isn’t going to stand still while we discuss it. Your wife needs treatment now.”

“Dr. Barrows, I don’t care if my sister thinks you walk on water. I am not letting you or anyone else cut up my wife’s brain without a second opinion, and a third if I’m not satisfied.”

“Then do it fast. If you want, I’ll have my office set up the appointment.”

“What the hell am I supposed to tell Lily?”

“Ah.” Barrows sat back with a sigh. “What do you think? You know her best.”

“I don’t think she wants to know.”

“Why not leave it up to her at this stage? I won’t lie to her, but I’m certainly willing to let her ask the questions before I answer them.”

Lily asked no questions.

Told she could not drive, she did not inquire why. She agreed to see another doctor without expressing any interest in Barrows’ findings. If anything, her mood was lighter now, as if by telling all to the doctor, she had literally unburdened herself. Serenely, if a bit absentmindedly, Lily went about her ordinary business, maneuvering around the reporters who clustered at the gate, gardening, shopping, visiting with those few of their friends who still called. Either Jonathan or Paul was always around to drive her wherever she wished to go.

Clara and Paul knew. Clara had read his face the moment he came from the hospital, followed him into his study, and demanded to know. He told her what the doctor had said. She listened with her hands over her mouth. When she took them down to embrace him, a wordless cry escaped.

He planned to keep it from the children until no doubt remained; but Paul walked into the study that evening and caught Jonathan weeping at his desk. In a moment of weakness, desperate for comfort, Jonathan broke the news.

Paul called him a liar; then he, too, burst into tears. Moved to a tenderness he had not felt since the boy outgrew him, Jonathan came around and knelt beside Paul’s chair to embrace him.

His son pushed him away. “Don’t. You’re the kiss of death. This is all your fault.”

“My fault,” echoed Jonathan, amazed, not at this idea, upon which he had already seized, but that the boy had had the wits to conceive it.

“She was fine until all your shit started coming down. God damn you,” Paul sobbed, “she was the only one in this family who cared about me.”

“Is, not was. And she isn’t. The only one.”

But Paul had already run out, slamming the paneled oak door behind him.

Later the boy came back and apologized. The shock, Paul said, had rattled him; he hadn’t meant the things he’d said. But Jonathan knew they were true. It
was
his fault, though he knew better than to say so. People only say such things to be reassured that they’re wrong:
No, of course it’s not your fault—you did everything you possibly could.
Whereas Jonathan knew damn well that somehow or other, Lily’s illness
was
his fault. He was certain that this catastrophe could not have happened if he had cleaved to his wife as he had vowed to do. His failure to notice that she was ill was but an extension of earlier failures, not of love, but of attention.