A Remarkable Kindness Read Online Free PDF Page B

Rafi’s hand gently in his own. “It was a good game. I’m really sorry about what happened.”
    â€œWasn’t the first time and won’t be the last.” Rafi glanced down at Eli. His voice sounded different, gruff even.
    â€œI’m going to make sure that the coach talks to the boys, and I’m going to talk to them, too.” Eli looked at Aviva. “Nice to see you again,” he added flatly, because he was still someone who’d never give himself away.
    â€œYou, too.” Aviva kept her voice neutral. She stayed with Rafi in the empty gym while the boys changed out of their uniforms and then he turned off the lights and locked the door. The boys walked up the hill, and Rafi and Aviva got into their car.
    â€œThat was terrible when the boys fought like that,” she said. “I hope Eli talks to the other team. I think he will, but I really didn’t know him all that well.”
    â€œAviva, you don’t have to explain.”
    She turned and touched his right arm, his three fingers hooked around the steering wheel. “ Ani rak rotzah lagid l’cha, ”—I just want to tell you, she began, in Hebrew, to emphasize her point—“I love you.” She loved all of him: the small mound of skin that jutted out from under his lower lip and the flattened nose that his older brother had punched and broken long ago. Rafi said that even when blood was gushing into his mouth, he hadn’t stopped fighting.
    â€œAnd I don’t need to tell you how much I love you.” He gazed out, concentrating.
    An orange cat darted in front of the car and Rafi braked and then drove slowly, weaving through the winding roads. White lights burned in some of the houses, but by the time they turned off the highway and into their village, the night had deepened all around. All Aviva could see was the vague outlines of the bales of hay in the darkened fields, and at the end of the road under the streetlights, the frayed edge of the sea.

3
January 16, 2002
Emily
    E mily could not believe she was there. Right there in Lauren’s car, driving into her village of Peleg. Most of Emily was terrified—about ninety-nine percent of her—but the other one percent was excited.
    â€œI know my dad would have been happy,” Emily said. “Maybe not about the reason—which I still can’t wrap my head around—but because I moved to Israel to be with you. Yay, us.”
    â€œI would never have moved here on my own,” Lauren said. “But I’m a wimp and you, obviously, are not.”
    Emily looked at Lauren’s pregnant belly, waiting for her to say something else. They’d been best friends since they’d lived in the same house on Willow Street in Cambridge as UMass Boston freshmen, yet there were times when Emily still couldn’t tell what Lauren was thinking. And that was frustrating for Emily because she was born in Charleston, West Virginia,and as her mother always said, “What you think on Monday, every Jew in Charleston knows by Tuesday.” Only her mother pronounced the days Mondee and Tuesdee. Emily had dropped the accent as soon as she got a job at an art gallery on Newbury Street (she was convinced that nobody took people with Southern accents seriously), but she could still hear her mother’s words. And now it was Mondee, and Emily was craving to hear what Lauren would say about how she’d completely flipped her life upside down.
    â€œAnd . . . ?” Emily waited. She wished she’d figured out by now how to get Lauren to say how she truly felt.
    â€œI’m really happy you’re here,” Lauren finally said.
    â€œBut . . . ?” Emily knew there’d be a but .
    â€œBut it’s not paradise,” Lauren said in that practical way that drove Emily crazy. “Not by a long shot.”
    â€œDon’t you think I know that?”
    Big pause.
    Emily watched a cloud