Where Love Lies, page 6
When we arrived at the beach house, I couldn’t wait to take a quick look and then head off to the tennis court. As we parked the car to check on the renovations, he was in the middle of a story about his trip to the Galapagos with his father.
“You wouldn’t believe how your grandfather laughed, Ella. It was such a relief for him to actua—” He stopped mid-sentence.
He put the car in park and stepped out, his forehead scrunching curiously as he walked toward the front door of the new house, my own footsteps following behind him. All my life, I walked behind him, desperate to impress, to absorb, to emulate my father’s strength, to adopt his unapologetic outlook on life.
He walked slowly and then faster, his steps growing bigger and wider, until he stopped in front of the door. I hadn’t noticed yet. I just stood there with him, staring at his face, watching as the shock hit, as he started to understand what had happened. My eyes darted to where his eyes were looking, to the white door, and there I saw an enormous red swastika spray-painted across it. I recognized the symbol immediately, the way the color symbolized blood and murder and death—the way its size showed no doubt of its intention.
And then, silently, my father touched it. He stepped even closer to the door, reached his hand out, and traced the swastika, the paint still wet, staining his hands with every stroke. It seemed so out of place, the red paint against the white door, against the blue sky, against the backdrop of a quiet suburban town, dirtying the white outfit my father wore that day.
It wasn’t the swastika that made my gut lurch—it was the realization that my father was hurt, that whoever had dared to commit this hate crime had shattered him.
We drove straight to the Westport police station to file a hate crime report. The police officer, a man in his mid-fifties with fat, red cheeks, sat behind his desk, unfazed.
“Nothing I can do about this,” the officer said. We seemed to have interrupted an important game of computer Solitaire. “Fill out this form, and I’ll relay it to the big boss,” he promised.
My father filled out the paperwork apathetically while I sat next to him, still studying his face, searching for a sign of the stubbornness I had grown up witnessing. Where was the man who didn’t take no for an answer? I wanted to help him, to be the one he could lean on, to make him feel like I was the right person to be there with him on this day of all days, but instead, I just sat there uselessly. As we drove home in silence, no longer in the mood to play tennis, I wondered how anybody in the neighborhood even knew we were Jewish. Did our last name give us away? Was Davidson that Jewish? We had barely spent any time at the new house, especially since my parents had bought it as an investment to later lease out to future tenants. And why, I kept asking no one in particular, didn’t that police officer do anything?
I thought I was American, that since I had grown up in Connecticut, spoke fluent English, celebrated Thanksgiving, and lived for McDonald’s chicken nuggets, I belonged. That since I went to school in America, since all my friends were American, since I learned about the Civil War and read Mark Twain and Toni Morrison, I was as American as a crisp autumn day at the apple orchard. But after this happened, I knew that no matter how hard I tried, I would never feel that way again.
After that, a cold clarity permeated our home. My father’s face said it all: It’s over. We were immigrants. In the end, after all and above all, we were Jews. And Jews, well, they belonged in Israel. My father’s mind was working, though; I could tell from the way he kept biting the space on his hand between his thumb and pointer finger. Something in me already knew our lives were about to change.
Six months later, we were on the plane to Tel Aviv.
Chapter 7
I needed the perfect transgression that would send me to Liam’s office. What could I do to be punished? Forgetting a gun in the shower meant two weeks in jail. Not worth it. Hiding my phone in my suitcase after hours would only mean a late-night guarding session and a quick lecture from Commander Mia. I needed to do something drastic enough to be able to talk to Liam but not too drastic to actually have to face the consequence. I needed to be alone with him. The second he and I could talk honestly behind closed doors, Liam would take off his mask. I could look him in the eye the same way I did that night at the bar and figure out my next move from there. I hadn’t been hallucinating when I felt his fingertips against my thigh at the cafeteria. There was that hope again. I couldn’t let go of the opportunity of personally knowing, and almost kissing, the most powerful person on the base. The more I worried that maybe Liam wasn’t interested in me, the more I wanted him.
During our fifty-minute evening break, Anna’s head popped up at the top of the ladder of our bunk. “Can I join you?” she asked while climbing under the covers next to me. As hot as it was in the desert during the day, it was just as freezing at night.
“Well, you kind of already have,” I said. Israeli girls had no boundaries.
Anna slept in the bunk bed beneath mine, and she was always so quiet I barely noticed her. She was a neat, compact young woman, and even through her uniform you could tell she was curvy. She grew up in Even Yehuda, a town east of Netanya, and the officers usually were extra tolerant with her because apparently her mother was a famous singer in Israel. Her mother could have been the Ariana Grande of Israel for all I knew, but if she wasn’t prancing around a stage in an oversized sweatshirt and a high ponytail singing “Positions,” she wasn’t a singer I cared about.
Anna looked over my shoulder as I read the Goddess Rules, the rules I knew by heart but always loved to refresh. I longed for the feeling of control I felt as I read each line, closing my eyes and repeating them in my mind. Laugh at his jokes, but not too loudly. Be experienced, but not slutty. The rules were my mantra, and I fell asleep knowing that as long as I followed each one carefully, Liam would eventually be mine.
“What can I do to get into enough trouble that I would have to go to Liam’s—I mean, Officer Levine’s—office but not enough trouble to go to jail or have to guard?”
Anna looked at me suspiciously. “He’s got you, too?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re crushing on Officer Levine? Already? Join the club. He’s practically every girl’s fantasy, at least here at the base, although I don’t see what they see in him. To me, he seems kind of, I don’t know, dark.”
“Who has a crush on him?”
“Who doesn’t? Don’t you see the way the girls perk up whenever he’s around? He’s like the Chris Hemsworth of the unit. The charmer. The Don Juan. There’s no hope for any of the girls, though; he and Commander Mia have been on and off since she joined two years ago. My sister told me.”
Commander Mia. That bitch. Of course. That’s why she kept giving me those looks when Liam called out my ID number. How could he not be with her—she was only the most effortlessly stunning woman I’d ever seen in real life.
“But I heard through my older sister’s friend, who’s also friends with Commander Mia, that they’re not together right now. Apparently, he said he needed space when he found out she went for lunch with her guy friend.” Anna knew all the juice.
I shook my head. “Seriously?” I wanted to know every detail of Liam and Commander Mia’s conversation, but I didn’t know how to ask Anna without giving myself away completely. Plus, by the way her eyes kept reverting to the Goddess Rules, I could tell she was starting to become uninterested in our conversation.
“What are you reading?” she asked.
“This? The Goddess Rules. The rules to finding love. I wrote it with my best friend from home. We haven’t really shared it with anyone, but I’ll let you peek if you tell me more about Commander Mia,” I said, only half-joking.
“Turn that light off,” Rebecca, the girl in the bunk bed next to mine, hissed.
“We’re reading the Goddess Rules over here,” Anna said to her, trying to perfect her English accent when she repeated the title.
“I don’t care what you’re reading,” the girl said. “I want to sleep.”
“Rebecca, you’ll love this. It’s a book about dating. All the rules you have to follow to get the guy you want,” Anna said. “All the American secrets to finding love, but since you’re so tired, we won’t share them with you,” she teased.
Rebecca slowly lifted herself up on her elbow and leaned her head on her hand. “I want to hear the American secrets. Israeli guys love American girls. Read it to me, too—I won’t share the rules,” she said.
So I read the rules aloud as quietly as I could to her and Anna, translating each sentence into Hebrew, and as the minutes passed by, the other girls in the room slowly propped themselves up to listen, too.
Sit up straight, but don’t look like you’re trying.
If an opportunity doesn’t present itself, create it.
Be yourself, but not overly honest.
Laugh at his jokes, but not too loud.
Discuss your accomplishments, but never before he does.
Look youthful, but not childlike.
Be experienced, but not slutty.
Don’t complain, but say what’s on your mind.
“How can you look youthful without looking childlike?” Rebecca asked.
“Yeah,” Anna chimed in. “And I don’t get how you can say what’s on your mind without ever complaining.”
What do they not get?
“You can look youthful by doing your hair. If you crimp it with a crimper, for example, it looks young, like you didn’t do anything to your hair, but you actually did. It doesn’t look childlike, though, because each hair is in its place. Or you can do your makeup, but not heavily,” I explained. “Wear mascara but not eyeliner, put a little extra blush on your cheekbones to make it look like you’re sunburned, but skip the lip liner. That’s looking put together and youthful without looking like a child. Children don’t wear mascara, you know?”
“This girl thinks she knows it all,” Rebecca said.
They may not have agreed with the Goddess Rules, but they were all interested, which was enough for me.
“These rules are as intriguing as they are dumb,” Rebecca said. “But keep reading to us, America.” We all started laughing, and as I continued to explain the first few rules, we passed around the bag of Cheetos I brought for emergencies only, licking our orange-stained fingertips until the Cheetos were all gone. I had become the army dating guru of the unit overnight, with the secret answers I shared only with the girls in my room. My girls. As I turned off the light and pulled the pink satin sheet over me, I felt like maybe, just maybe, I was starting to fit in.
It was another Sunday morning at the base. Shvizut yom alef, Anna said it was called, which is synonymous to that dreadful Monday morning feeling as you think about the long week to come. In Israel, there was only one day of the weekend, Saturday. Sunday marked the first day of the week, which seemed absurd to me. Not only did I have to start my life from scratch in a new country, but this country also took half of my weekend away. I had barely seen Liam since sitting with him at the cafeteria two weeks earlier, but I was relieved to feel like I had something to look forward to.
Imagine not having Liam to think about. My morning would have revolved around the garbage juice that spilled down the leg of my uniform when Commander Mia forced me of all soldiers to take out the trash in each of the girls’ rooms. The clock hit 10:45 a.m., which, since we had breakfast before the sun came up, meant that lunch was right around the corner, and still no sign of Liam. I had come up with a plan to secure at least a few minutes with Liam alone, but I couldn’t go through with it—I couldn’t create the opportunity—if Liam wasn’t going to be there to watch me.
Anna and I walked alongside each other toward the cafeteria, which was bustling with soldiers from all over the base, officers and top-ranking commanders, and cooks in their aprons stained with dirty handprints. The white tile floors were barely visible, covered as they were by the black army boot prints everywhere.
And then, finally. There he was. Liam sat with his back hunched over his plate, taking large bites of a schnitzel and hummus sandwich. He chewed with his mouth closed, but I could tell by the size and frequency of each bite that he was hungry. There was something about grown men eating that immediately transformed them into little boys at the kitchen counter picking food off of their plastic plates. My heart melted. He looked like a vulnerable child, his gaze off somewhere in the distance, probably thinking about home.
As Anna and I took a seat at the long plastic table, I looked down at my own plate: white rice with little specks of black pepper and fried chicken swimming in oil. Anna was already halfway done with her meal when I forced myself to eat. Just as I took the first bite, I felt a sudden, unfamiliar crunch. At first I thought it was an undercooked piece of rice, until I spit out my mouthful—and right there before my eyes, I saw it.
A fucking cockroach head. I couldn’t believe it at first, but when I saw those dark, compound eyes staring back at mine, I squealed and elbowed Anna, whose face turned white.
On a regular occasion, I would have spit the insect out and run to the bathroom to throw up. But this—this was it. My opportunity. This was my chance to cause a scene. It was all or nothing.
In the midst of my panic, I strapped my gun over my shoulder and stepped up onto the table. Anna moved the other soldiers’ plates to the side so I had room to stand.
“Attention, everyone!” I yelled. At first, the bustling continued.
“Attention! Attention!” I yelled again, my gun swinging against my hip. I imagined what Julia would have thought in that moment, watching me stand on the table, my heart beating hard. She probably would have gotten up on the table with me. I heard the clinking of forks against plates, until the cafeteria fell silent. My eyes darted to Liam. He stopped chewing mid-bite. The cafeteria looked bigger from up on the table. My bird’s-eye view gave me a heightened sense of dominance, and I yelled louder than before.
“Stop eating immediately! There is a cockroach in the rice! I repeat, there is a cockroach in the rice! I just bit into its head, which means there is a body and legs and antennae floating around somewhere in there, which you are probably eating as we speak. This is dangerous! Highly contamin—” I could have gone on for minutes, the adrenaline throwing me into the words, but I felt the tug of my sleeve and looked down to see Liam, his face white with rage. I knew this was an embarrassment to him, to have one of his own soldiers step out of line in front of the entire base, but he was the one who wouldn’t talk to me under normal circumstances, so I had to do what I had to do.
“Come with me,” Liam said when he forced me to step down from the table. Bingo. The cafeteria returned to its status quo as if nothing had happened, except for Commander Mia, who seemed to have lost her appetite. Her cheeks were flushed, and she sat stiffly in her chair, not once taking her eyes off Liam. I followed him as we walked out of the building toward his office.
We walked in silence, one step after the other, and I couldn’t help but notice how gorgeous Liam was. Does he do dumbbell squats? How is his butt so firm? I needed Liam to see me as the girl he met that night on the beach, not the clueless army soldier who was like every other girl at the base. It drove me crazy to imagine that Liam could completely forget about the night we had and ignore me without a bit of empathy.
Was this human nature? Wanting what you can’t have? Wanting the first guy who ever ignored you? I had never felt so inadequate before, and I didn’t like it, but it challenged me to work harder and be seen. I wanted to prove to Liam that I was worth seeing. He didn’t see me at the beach when he ran by either, I remembered. I was my father’s crown jewel, but to Liam, I barely existed. That, I promised the universe, was about to change.
As we inched closer to Liam’s office, he walked past it. I stopped in front of the office building, thinking Liam was too wrapped up in his thoughts to notice we missed it.
“Lia—Officer Levine,” I said, but he kept walking like he didn’t hear me. I followed behind him. We walked down a long hallway until we reached a door on the left equipped with an electronic screen. Liam punched in a four-digit code, opened the door slowly, and closed it behind us. We were alone in a lounge with a sign above the miniature refrigerator that read “Officers Only.” Real coffee mugs, not paper cups, lined the kitchen counter, and the Nespresso machine at the far-left corner near the sink was more appealing than a sparkling new Dyson Airwrap.
Liam plopped down on one of the couches, swinging his M16 off his shoulder and resting it beside him. I thought I would be nervous to be alone with him, but as soon as he closed the door behind us, I felt his demeanor change. He patted the seat next to him, and when he looked up at me, I saw the same vulnerable twenty-five-year-old I’d seen a month ago at the beach. I sat down beside him, aware of my every move. Was this my good side? It was my good side.
“Listen, we really need to talk,” he said. He was relaxed, and all at once, I felt an anger bubble up inside me. How could he drag this out for almost four weeks before finding the time to talk to me? I smiled at him, disguising my irritation.
“I know we need to talk,” I said.
“I’m not going to waste time talking about what you just did, standing up on the table like a lunatic,” he said. “I know why you did it, and, admittedly, I respect your courage. You have balls. I want to hear what you have to say.” A wave of relief washed over me. He was speaking to me at eye level. In this magical lounge, Liam and I were equals.
“I can’t believe you’re my officer,” I said.
He laughed. “Make this stop. Please, Ella.”
Now that I could get a closer look at him, I could see that he looked exhausted. He had a few days’ worth of stubble on his face, not enough for an army guard to notice, but enough for me to notice, and his hair was messy, the same way it looked that night after the beach when I ran my hands through it.
