“Who told you that?” I said.
“Asaaf. He was worried you didn’t have anything going on.”
“When did he say that?”
“I don’t know. A month ago?”
I hated thinking about them pitying me — as if my life could be sketched out so easily, going straight from finishing the army next month to tilling the same fields for sixty years to being one of those old moshavniks who was too arthritic to milk the goats but still hung out by the dairy, just to have a place to spend his days. “Maybe I like the moshav.” I was filled with a sudden need to let her know I’d be missed if I left. “I help put on the harvest fest in September, and it’s nice how quiet it gets during the winter.”
“Asaaf can’t stand the winter there,” she said. “He goes crazy during the rain.”
“Asaaf doesn’t do shit during the rainy season. He just likes to complain.”
She smiled. “He does like to complain, doesn’t he?”
“You have no idea,” I said, getting excited. “The moment he’s back in civilian clothes he’s a fucking baby. I still don’t know how you got him to agree to another farm.”
“Oh, he whined,” she said. “But it’s totally worth it — the woman who runs it does biodynamic everything on land twice the size of yours. Everybody pitches tents and sleeps out there too, not like here where the moment the sun’s down we’re all in front of the TV.” It was just like her to have found this place, some secret part of America I never would have known to look for myself, beautiful and forested and calm, where people slept in the middle of a field, unafraid of anyone or anything coming after you. Suddenly she looked like the Yael I’d always known, so enthusiastic that on any other girl her earnestness might have embarrassed me, and before I could stop myself I said, “What’s with California now?”
“I’m not going without him.”
“What does he say?”
“That I should, of course. But there’s no way he means it.”
“He does,” I said, and knew it. I wondered what it was like to love someone so deeply their happiness overpowered your own. I had no idea — I only knew that right then, sitting beside her, I was seized by a genuine moment of boldness and wanted to use it, before it disappeared.
“I’ll be discharged in a month,” I said. “Let me come with you.”
“You?” she said. And then she didn’t say anything else. She wasn’t even looking at me. I followed her eyes, but all I saw was the never-ending line of people outside the mall entrance, waiting for the guards to scan them through. We were so close I could see all these things that should have made her less beautifuclass="underline" the faint fuzz above her lip, the constellation of acne scars on her jawline. It was requiring a lot of effort to breathe, and I hadn’t realized I was flicking at a hangnail until my thumb started to bleed.
“This is all so crazy,” she said finally. Her voice was flat and small, and I didn’t even know which part of the craziness she was referring to.
Then she turned to me. “Just promise,” she said, swallowing, “that when we’re out on the farm, you’ll let me win at cards at least a couple times.”
She smiled, and I saw something pass over her face, a flash of recognition — and the thought that all this time she’d remembered those rides gave me such a jolt that I stood up. I took her hand and led her to the escalator, as though we were about to navigate a dangerous intersection. Then I let go, stepped onto the moving stairs and she followed right behind. I could feel her gaze on me the whole ride down to the pharmacy but knew not to turn around, not even once — a move I’d seen my brother make on a hundred occasions but was only now, for the first time, pulling off perfectly myself.
THE MORPHINE worked for Asaaf’s pain but made him nauseated. He threw up his breakfast, then his lunch. The three of us hovered over him, fluffing his pillows, feeling his forehead, offering dry toast and seltzer, which he threw up as well. His shades were down, blocking out the sun and everything else, and even in the dim, cool room with the AC on high, Asaaf was visibly sweating. When he rolled onto his back, his penis slid out of his boxers. All three of us saw it, all three of us said nothing, and I wondered if Asaaf was too drugged to even know. Finally my mother pulled the sheet to his chest and she and Yael stepped back into the hall, but I couldn’t stop watching him. It was horrible, seeing a guy once so in control of his body rolling and squirming and dry-heaving now that everything he’d ingested was in the wastebasket beside him.
“Would you get the fuck out of here, Oren?” he said finally, opening one eye. He’d never talked that way to me before and it stung more than I wanted to admit, and when his new crutches arrived in the mail later that day, I devoted myself to putting them together, grateful to have a project that kept me out of his room. My mother had ordered them from Jerusalem, and they were about a thousand times nicer than the junky pair the hospital had given us, with aluminum legs and removable handgrips. I’d always liked these kinds of tasks — when I was little I used to take apart our answering machine to see how it worked, then screw it back together — but it was distracting having Yael next to me, reading the instruction manual aloud, and I kept putting the underarm pads on backwards.
By late afternoon, Asaaf’s food was staying down and Yael went to check on him. She didn’t have to say anything: as she walked slowly down the hall, I knew she was going to tell him. She stepped into his room and closed the door behind her. I stared at the instructions and told myself the least I could do was give them privacy. Outside the window, my mother paced up the driveway, talking on the cordless. I took a deep breath, let it out quick. Then I tiptoed down the hall and pressed my ear to the door.
“I’ll be here when you’re back — it’s not like I’m going anywhere,” Asaaf said. He laughed, but it sounded breathless and raw, like he was blowing out a match.
“And Oren?”
“Why would I give a shit? You can nerd out on the farm together.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Asaaf said, and when Yael didn’t respond he said it again, and again, until they fell into silence. I pictured them on the bed, neither of them knowing what to say next. Maybe they were holding hands. Or maybe Yael had tucked her head under his armpit, the way they used to lie together, as if her body were an extension of his. Finally the television flicked on; I heard the false ring of a laugh track. Amid its buzz was the rustle of sheets, a few muffled breaths, and then it got quiet. I heard Yael apologize.
“It’s okay,” Asaaf mumbled. “Let’s try again.”
“Like this?”
“Maybe this way. Be patient?”
And she was, until they were hushed for so long I assumed my brother had fallen asleep. I imagined him taking up the entire bed, Yael sequestered to the side, sweaty and anxious and wondering how long she had to stay in that vomitus room — and then I imagined her walking out and finding me at the door, so I went into the kitchen, where our neighbors Uri and Hadas were coming in with dinner platters.
“Tonight we’ve got salad, beets and a kibbeh,” Uri said. “Your mom says that’s your favorite, right, Oren?”
I nodded, genuinely touched.
Yael walked in and gave everyone a halfhearted wave. She rubbed her eyes, as if she’d just stopped crying or was trying to keep the tears from coming out at all.
“How’s the morphine working?” my mother asked.
“Better,” Yael said, “but he was complaining about itching.”