A Remarkable Kindness by Diana Bletter Page B

things?”
    â€œA lot of practice.”
    They both laughed. “Will you come have dinner with me on Friday night?” he asked.
    â€œOh my God, please don’t cook for me.” As Emily dressed, she remembered how Rob had made roasted leg of lamb, her favorite dish, and wild rice with shallots and pine nuts that day he said good-bye. (“Of course he cooked that for you, like Brutus or somebody ,” Lauren had told her. “To soften the blow.”)
    â€œI’ll order in,” Boaz said.
    â€œNow you’re talking.”
    â€œMy ex-wife said I never talked.”
    â€œAnd Rob talked too much.” Emily was suddenly aware that the ache in her heart was gone. She felt calm, at peace, thankful that she was no longer a lonely transplant in the village.
    She settled back in Boaz’s truck. He drove deliberately along the path imprinted into the earth. The road wasn’t an accident andher life wasn’t an accident, and even though she’d been through so much, as Lauren had said, she’d find her way out, as her father had promised. Emily smiled at the idea of doing something so spontaneous and reckless (making love in the middle of an orange grove!) and then remembered Lauren’s words. Never say never.
    She’d never thought she’d get over Rob. And she’d never thought she’d try to fall in love again. But now she stared at the truck’s headlights lighting up silver patches of the velvety night.
    â€œHad we not been in the darkness,” her father used to say, quoting from one holy book or another, “we could not have seen the light.”
    â€œ Tov, ” Boaz said. Good. He set his hands on the steering wheel. They had felt calloused going over her skin, durable and resilient. Emily rolled down the window and stuck out her head, feeling the air roll over her skin the way Boaz’s hands roved over her face, her neck, her hair.

4
October 23, 2002
Lauren
    L auren always dreamed she’d settle down in a house by the Chestnut Hill Reservoir. If not there, then she could have named a dozen other places she hoped she’d live other than where she was: in Peleg. She thought about that as she rode her bicycle from the village into Nahariya, two miles away. Then she remembered her mother’s suggestion: when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Lauren pedaled through the streets of the awakening seaside town, reminding herself to appreciate the beauty of the sea, the sidewalk cafés and the rows of colossal eucalyptus trees with leaves rustling in the breeze. Coasting along, riding fast, she felt better and almost carefree. Even her hair swished back and forth against her back like a horse’s tail.
    The morning was bright and hot. They called this autumn, she thought, and her mood abruptly changed again. The only signs of the fall season were the brittle, brown leaves of the pecanand carob trees. No stunning red maples, no fiery colors like in Boston. She locked her bicycle on Hannah Senesh Street, thinking that David would have said, “But in Boston, there’s no street named after Hannah Senesh.”
    Lauren walked past a street cleaner sweeping the curb and a store lined with a sidewalk display of household necessities: plastic pails, toilet brushes, fly swatters. The next store had an outdoor rack of conical brassieres so massive that Lauren wanted to laugh—she could have fit her whole head into one cup. Everything reminded her of Boston and nothing reminded her of Boston.
    Running along both sides of the street were squat apartment buildings that resembled old freight trains abandoned and left to disintegrate in the sun. David had explained that the buildings were put up in a hurry to house new immigrants back in the 1960s. The front yards were yellowed, scattered with stones and weeds. The windows had no screens, and they were wide open, blankets and mattresses airing out and hanging over the sills like giant