The Wolf Hunt E-Book

Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 436

Beschreibung

'Gundar-Goshen is adept at instilling emotional depth into a thriller plot' New York Times Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, the award-winning author of Waking Lions and Liar, returns with a powerfully compelling novel about a mother who begins to suspect her teenage son of committing a terrible crime Lilach seems to have it all: a beautiful home in the heart of Silicon Valley, a community of other Israeli immigrants, a happy marriage and a close relationship with her teenage son, Adam. But when aa local synagogue is brutally attacked, her shy, reclusive son is compelled to join a self-defense class taught by a former Israeli Special Forces officer. Then a Black teenager dies at a house party, and rumours begin to circulate that Adam and his new friends might have been involved. As scrutiny begins to invade Lilach's peaceful home, and her family's stability is threatened, will are her own fears be the greatest danger of all? This psychologically astute, timely and page-turning literary novel is perfect for fans of Leïla Slimani, Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha, and We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver PRAISE FOR Ayelet Gundar-Goshen 'It's not every day a writer like this comes our way' Guardian 'Gundar-Goshen is interested in examining the messy grey areas between right and wrong, good and bad, victim and perpetrator' Financial Times 'Deliciously enticing… a plot that thrills at every twist and turn' Irish Times on Liar 'A classy, suspenseful tale… shine[s] a penetrating light into the dark corners of our safe lives' The Times on Waking Lines 'This is storytelling that feels instinctive… both moving and satisfying' Guardian on One Night, Markovitch

Leseprobe

For my mother, and for Yoav

Contents

Title PageDedicationPART ONE:RELOCATIONPART TWO:MEXICOPART THREE:MOTHERLANDAbout the AuthorsAvailable and Coming Soon From Pushkin PressAlso by Ayelet Gundar-GoshenCopyright

THE WOLF HUNT

PART ONE

RELOCATION

1

I LOOK AT the tiny fingers of a newborn baby and try to understand how they could possibly grow into the fingers of a killer. The dead boy is named Jamal Jones. In the newspaper photo, his eyes are as dark as velvet. My boy is named Adam Shuster. His eyes are the color of the sea in Tel Aviv. They say he killed Jamal. But that’s not true.

2

MY NAME IS not Leela. It’s hard for Americans to pronounce Lilach, so everyone here calls me Leela. But my name is not Leela.

With Mikhael, it’s easy. They just call him Michael. He never corrects them. It’s not polite. Unlike me—I always say “Lilach” the first time and then let my new acquaintance turn me into Leela without making an issue of it but without cooperating either—Mikhael started saying “Michael” a long time ago. He claims that with his name, it doesn’t matter, it’s almost the same thing. But four and a half months after Jamal died, when they hooked Mikhael up to the polygraph and asked him what his name was and he said Michael, I know that the needle jumped.

When we make love, I call him Mikhael. I called him Michael once, and it felt as if I were having sex with someone else.

When our son was born, we gave him a neutral name—Adam—that would work in both Hebrew and English. A name that would slide down the throats of the Americans like good California wine and not stick in the esophagus like Lilach and Mikhael, names that give us away the minute they read them on our passports: Not from here. We raised a child in America. We stored our Israeli-ness in the closet, along with the soccer trophies Mikhael had been saving since high school—for the memories, not because they were of any use. We raised an American child who went to high school with American children, and now they say he killed another American child.

3

JAMAL JONES. YOUR face is kind, but your size is intimidating. Your shoulders are broad, so broad that they seem to surprise even you. Perhaps it happened all at once, that growth spurt during one summer when, without warning, you changed from a short, skinny kid into a giant of a teenager. But your face didn’t keep up with your limbs. Your body stretched and swelled, but your eyes remained the eyes of a child, and your lips, without the shadow of a mustache, retained the sweet pout of a child.

On the street at night, I would be afraid of you. I wouldn’t linger to look into your eyes, which seem kind and pleasant in the newspaper photo. I would probably walk faster, put a hand in my pocket to be sure my phone was there in case I needed it. I would cross over to the illuminated side of the road and wait for your silhouette—that of a broad-shouldered Black man—to walk past me and disappear around the next curve.

If Adam was with me, I would be twice as stressed. Not only a woman on the street with a Black man behind her, but a woman with a small child she has to protect. And it wouldn’t matter that you’re the same age. You’re a man, Jamal, and Adam is a child, short and skinny, his shoulders slightly stooped, like a chick that hasn’t yet managed to raise its wings. That’s why I can’t understand. Your picture in the paper. The kind eyes. The broad shoulders. To think that, while all this time I was afraid of you, maybe it was you who should have been afraid of me, of what I was capable of giving birth to.

Now I’m afraid all the time, Jamal. Afraid of everything. But then, I wasn’t so afraid yet, only rarely. I remember: Every night, all three of us took off our slippers and put them on the hardwood floor before going to sleep. In my double bed, I would read the news from Israel on my phone until Mikhael said, “It’s late,” and closed the blinds with the press of a button. Beyond the blinds was the yard, and beyond the yard was a green, quiet street that led to a green, quiet avenue in one of the greenest, quietest, safest cities in America.

4

ON THE FIRST night of Rosh Hashanah, a man with a machete walked into a Reform synagogue in one of those greenest, quietest, safest cities in America. There were two hundred twenty worshippers and fifteen catering-company employees inside the synagogue. In the large hall, usually used for bar mitzvahs, tables were being set for the Rosh Hashanah dinner. Propped up against the wall were high chairs for babies and young children because, even though most of the regular worshippers were senior citizens, young families came for the High Holidays, so they were joined by grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The prayers on the top floor had just ended, and people were beginning to trickle down the steps. In the hall on the first floor, workers were spreading white cloths on the tables and placing plates of sliced apples and jars of honey from Israel on them.

Later, on the news, they said they had been lucky; the man who attacked the synagogue in Pittsburgh was armed with a semiautomatic rifle and had managed to wound several people and kill eleven congregants before he was stopped, but here in Silicon Valley, just four were injured and only one person, a young woman, was killed. I understand what they meant on the news. But I knew that as far as Leah Weinstein’s parents were concerned, that was definitely not luck. Their daughter had been standing right next to the door when the man ran inside with his machete.

In the photo on the news, she looked younger than nineteen, perhaps because of the makeup. She had a round face and soft brown eyes, and the makeup, instead of making her look older, actually emphasized her youth. In pictures taken a short time before the attack, you see her at the door of the synagogue in her white holiday dress. Her arms hug her body in the gesture of someone who doesn’t really like to be photographed but knows she must be because the family insists. A well-brought-up girl. But when that man ran into the synagogue with his machete, Leah Weinstein did not act like a girl. She pushed her grandmother back and faced him, and that was the last thing she ever did.

I saw the video several times in the days that followed the attack. The plump young girl in the white dress stands in the lobby beside her grandparents. In the background, you can hear the voices of the synagogue choir singing a medley of holiday songs. It’s difficult to pinpoint the precise moment when the joyous hubbub of song and speech turns into screams of terror. At first, you hear some sounds from outside, but you really can’t know for sure yet because those are the shrieks of young girls, and sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between screams of laughter and screams of panic. Then all at once, there’s no mistaking it anymore: Smiles vanish, people scramble for shelter. The man in the hoodie bursts inside, and they trample one another in their mad dash to get away from him, all but Leah Weinstein. Instead of fleeing, she pushes her grandmother back, and perhaps because that movement is different from all the others, it catches the man’s eye, leading him to her. In the video, he bends over her for a moment, only a moment, then brandishes his machete and continues running. The person who videoed all that, one of the worshippers on the upper floor, kept the camera on the attacker as he moved forward. That’s why you can’t see exactly what happened to Leah in the minutes that followed, although the screams of her grandparents are clearly audible, as are the screams of the young boy standing next to them, who hadn’t known Leah before then but saw the girl in white suddenly collapse, covered in blood. By the time she was loaded into the ambulance, Leah had already lost so much blood that nothing could be done for her.

We were at home when they reported the attack. I remember exactly where each of us was standing: Mikhael was at the barbecue grill outside, along with his brother, Assi, who had arrived that day from Israel with Yeela and their twin boys, Tamir and Aviv, for a visit. Adam was in the pool behind them with his cousins. Yeela and I were in the kitchen, trying to salvage a honey cake that hadn’t risen. Mikhael suddenly burst in with his phone in his hand and said, “There was a terrorist attack,” and when Yeela asked with concern where in Israel the attack had taken place, he shook his head and said, “Not in Israel. Here.”

We listened to the news all through dinner. After dessert, the kids went upstairs to watch something on the computer and we sat in the living room and watched the TV reports. Late that night, when we were already in bed, someone sent a WhatsApp video of what had happened in the synagogue. I didn’t know if we should watch it. I told Mikhael that maybe it was disrespectful to the people who had been there. After all, it wasn’t an action movie. Those were real people, and that was the moment when their lives were destroyed. But Mikhael insisted we watch it, said it was important.

“We’re not watching it to be entertained,” he said, “we’re watching it to try and understand what happened there and to think about what to do if it happens again.” We viewed the video once. And then again. When Mikhael started to play it a third time, I said, “Enough.”

Later that night, my mother called from Israel, wanting to hear more details. The text I’d sent her right after we found out about the attack wasn’t enough for her. I assured her again that we were all fine and told her what they knew here.

“They said on the news that he was Black,” she said. “Since when do Blacks attack Jews? That’s always been white people’s job. An attack on Erev Rosh Hashanah,” she went on. “That means he planned it ahead of time.” She added that she’d sent a holiday gift for Adam—he should get it in a couple of days.

“Did you see the video from the synagogue?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, “it’s horrible.”

My mother sighed on the phone. “Just don’t tell me later that it’s saner to raise children there.”

Afterward, I had nightmares that I couldn’t remember when I woke up, but I knew that the girl from the synagogue was in them. In the morning, I asked Adam not to watch the video if someone happened to send it to him. He asked whether Mikhael and I had seen it. I said no.

On the morning of the funeral, Mikhael and I dropped Adam off at school. We didn’t know the family and weren’t members of the Reform synagogue, but we wanted to show solidarity. When we arrived, we saw other Israelis who had come to offer support. Someone told us that Leah Weinstein had graduated from Adam’s high school two years earlier and was going to college in Boston. Her parents had bought her a plane ticket to come home for the High Holidays. Israelis stood together in the cemetery parking lot and spoke Hebrew, and not far from them, American Jews were speaking quietly in English, and in both groups, the same thing was being said: How could this happen here in Silicon Valley? Then we entered the cemetery. Leah Weinstein’s parents wept bitterly. She was their only child.

That evening, we picked up Adam from school and drove to the synagogue to light a candle and leave a flower on the sidewalk. The street outside the synagogue was crowded with people, along with a few news crews. A TV reporter with a blond bob spoke to the camera, her expression grim. We all listened to her as if that outsider had been given the authority to tell us who we were, what had happened to us.

“Paul Reed was born and raised on the east side of town. When the neighborhood was flooded by high-tech people who had come to work in the Valley, the rents also climbed in the poorer neighborhoods, and the Reed family had to move to Oakland. An hour before he left home with a machete in his bag and took a bus to the synagogue, Reed posted an antisemitic rant on Facebook. His parents say that, over the past few weeks, his mental state had deteriorated. He had been hospitalized twice in psychiatric institutions.”

“He’s not mentally ill,” Assi muttered. “He’s an antisemitic shit and a terrorist. They better not turn him into a lunatic who’s not responsible for his actions and then release him.”

“Nobody will release him,” Mikhael said, “but we have to consider that the guy was institutionalized twice. He could just as easily have attacked a mosque or a bank, which means that what he did in the synagogue was not really an antisemitic act.”

Assi waved his hand dismissively. “If your lunatics here in America can attack anywhere, why do they somehow always end up in a synagogue?”

The reporter looked away and listened to something said to her through her earpiece, then she put her grim expression back on and turned to the camera. “Eyewitnesses claim that they saw two suspicious people near the synagogue before the attack. The area is being searched. The FBI has yet to determine whether Reed acted alone or was part of a hate group liable to strike again.”

That last sentence caused a stir in the crowd. Yeela and Assi exchanged glances. Adam said, “Mom, if it’s a hate group, then it makes sense that they’ll come back to strike again, because right now, there are a lot of Jews on the street.”

Mikhael put a hand on his shoulder. “That reporter is causing hysteria for no reason. I’m telling you, ninety-nine percent of analysts say that these attacks are carried out by mentally ill people acting alone.”

“We can’t know for sure,” I said and saw the same doubt in the eyes of the people around me. The row of lit candles cut us off from the street. Police barriers fenced us off from the other side of the lawn. Tensing at every sound, nervously looking around, we huddled together on the grass like sheep at night, searching for the wolf.

5

THE ANXIETY THAT began that night intensified in the days that followed. Even after the FBI determined that Paul Reed had acted alone, the Jewish community refused to calm down. Perhaps because this was a case of not only panic, but also humiliation: The outdoor security-camera video showed Reed charging into the synagogue observed by at least ten men who did nothing, too paralyzed to act. The video from the indoor security cameras showed the kippah-wearing worshippers fleeing to the side as Reed, screaming, races straight ahead, a lone, single-minded man doing the thing he’d set his mind on.

Perhaps that’s why, when one of the Israeli parents suggested that we start a self-defense class for the young people, people eagerly agreed. Einat Greenbaum told me about it when we came to pick up our kids from school three days after the attack. “It’s the father of a boy in the middle school,” she said. “He has experience in Krav Maga and volunteered to teach the kids.”

When Adam got into the car, I told him enthusiastically about the class. He said right away that he wasn’t the slightest bit interested. I wasn’t surprised. He never liked things like that. A mother once told me that the world is divided into two kinds of children: Those who choose to learn karate and those who choose to learn chess. Adam went for chess, and I’d actually been happy about that. But after Rosh Hashanah, after the video of Leah Weinstein, I suddenly regretted that he had never formally learned how to fight.

“There are only three sessions,” I told him, “and you’ll learn things that will serve you for the rest of your life.”

Adam stubbornly refused all the way home and asked me not to nag him about it. I knew there was no point in insisting. The best way to make a kid hate a class is to force him to attend. But the images from the synagogue—the possibility that it could have been Adam—haunted me. I knew Mikhael was right, it was only mass hysteria, but I still wanted Adam to go to that class, just as I’d wanted him to get a hepatitis vaccination—not because the disease was an immediate threat but to be on the safe side.

“Do it for me,” I said as we turned onto our street, “so I won’t have to worry so much.”

“You’re really forcing me,” he said. “It’s not fair.”

“At least think about it,” I pleaded, hating him in my heart for making me beg.

“Okay,” he said as I parked in front of the house. “I’ll think about it.”

That night, all the adults sat in front of the TV again, something we didn’t usually do, and Adam joined us. CNN showed the synagogue security-camera videos. Assi watched and muttered, “Why didn’t anyone stop him?”

“It’s not so easy to stop someone like that,” I said as I put a plate of the sunflower seeds they’d brought from Israel on the table. On every visit, Assi would schlep three kilos of sunflower seeds with him and present them to us with the pride of a doctor introducing antibiotics to a remote tribe.

Adam sat on the couch next to me, shifting his gaze back and forth between me and his uncle. The guest-room door upstairs opened, and Tamir and Aviv ran out. I heard their strong, confident steps on the stairs, and I knew that Adam would never have run down the hallway of someone else’s house with such freedom. They came into the living room, sat down beside Adam, and buried their heads in their cell phones. I thought they weren’t listening, but a few moments later, Tamir looked up and pointed to the TV. “That would never happen in Israel.”

“But there are terrorist attacks in Israel,” Adam said.

“Sure,” Tamir replied. “But there’s no way a terrorist walks into a place and no one tries to stop him.”

I wanted to say something about the class but stopped myself. I ordered Indian takeout. I thought we’d stay up late, but by nine o’clock, our guests were already beat from the jet lag and said they were going to sleep.

“The kids get up early,” Assi said proudly.

Tamir and Aviv were training to join an elite combat unit. Every day they were with us, they went running in the morning an hour before we all got up. When Adam woke up and went downstairs, he would find them making protein shakes in the kitchen, sweaty and panting after a long workout. There were athletes at his school too, boys who charged each other on the football field, but he had nothing to do with them. For him, they were distant creatures, like grizzly bears. Tamir and Aviv were his cousins. Every morning, he encountered a reflection of the life that could have been his. Their damp, post-workout smell lingered in the kitchen after they’d gone. During our meals together, they asked Mikhael about the elite combat unit he’d served in. His discreet answers only excited them more. After a few days, Adam began asking as well. He had never shown an interest in it before.

On the following days, the presence of the twins, strong and tan, loud and brash, filled the house. My son trailed after them like a dog hoping to be adopted, and though they let him follow them around, they never invited him along on their own initiative. He admired them, eagerly drank in every word they said in their up-to-date Hebrew, which he didn’t always understand. They liked him, I think. From the minute they arrived, they treated him like an old pal. Instead of Adam, they called him Edamame. That made us all laugh.

Before they came, I was afraid Adam would be an outsider, just as he had been during their last visit two years ago. The twins had been immersed in their own private world then, always laughing and whispering in the latest slang, which Adam wasn’t familiar with because, even though we spoke only Hebrew at home, our usage had grown old-fashioned without our noticing it. Tamir and Aviv spoke like sixteen-year-old Israeli kids, and my son spoke like his forty-year-old parents, so that’s why—but not the only reason why—during their entire stay with us, Adam walked around like a stranger in his own living room. This year, I tried to prepare myself: Another family is coming to live in our house for two weeks. They’ll see what we have in our fridge, go into our bathroom after us, wash their hair with our shampoo until we all smell the same. They’ll notice the minor tensions in our household, and we’ll see the cracks in theirs. Arguments between couples will be hushed. Arguments between parents and children will be loud. Other arguments will not take place.

That’s how I prepared myself for every eventuality, except the most unforeseen one—an attack that would unite us, because even though nothing happened to any one of us individually, something had happened to all of us together.

“I think we can talk to him about the class again,” Mikhael said to me a few days later, after Adam had spent a couple of evenings with Tamir and Aviv. I wanted Adam to learn self-defense, but I think my reasons were different from Mikhael’s. When we got into bed, he said, “Maybe now he’ll finally agree to do something athletic. It could be healthy for him, physically and socially.”

My stomach clenched. It was the first time Mikhael had spoken about Adam that way, as if there were something wrong with him that had to be fixed. I knew it was because of Tamir and Aviv. It wasn’t the way they carried themselves, because they slouched, almost deliberately, and dragged their feet. No, it was the way their bodies gloried in a comfortable slackness that amplified their strength. Mikhael noticed this about Assi’s kids—it was impossible not to. Thirty years ago, he and Assi used to pee together on the kibbutz fields in a never-ending competition: who peed farther, who peed longer, who could hit the bushes. They compared their children now the way they had compared their pricks then. And Mikhael, the strong, smart, levelheaded one, was losing.

6

I COULD NEVER say exactly when that fence had been erected—Mikhael and I on one side, Assi and Yeela on the other—but it was obvious to me that the fence was made of money. At some point along the way, money became something we didn’t talk about. And not talking about something makes you realize it’s important. When we’d first arrived in America, before Mikhael moved up in the company, we talked freely to Assi and Yeela about money. I complained to them about the insane cost of preschool in the States, and they grumbled about the interest Israeli banks charged on mortgages. But as the gap grew larger, we talked about it less frequently.

The worst times were when Assi told Mikhael about his idea for a start-up. He’d speak enthusiastically while looking around suspiciously, as if at any moment someone would snatch away his brilliant brainchild. Mikhael would listen, ask a question or two. I think he did it out of politeness, but for Assi, Mikhael’s questions were gasoline poured on the fire of his hopes—he would light up immediately, wave his arms as he spoke, plan the presentation they would both give to the investors. It used to happen every time they visited us, but since the loan, it occurred less often.

The annual visit always passed quickly. We made great shakshuka for breakfast. In the evenings, we picked up Adam from school—Tamir and Aviv were shocked by how seriously people took their studies here—and went to eat in the best restaurants in town. Every time the check came, Mikhael whipped out his credit card, saying, “It’s on me.” His intentions were good, but I think the gesture caused damage. The loan Mikhael had given Assi three years earlier sat between them, unmentioned. Fifty thousand dollars to get his sure-to-succeed initiative going. When everything collapsed, Assi paid back what he could. He wanted to pay back more, but Mikhael told him there was no need. I thought Assi would love Mikhael forever for saying that. But apparently something inside him would always hate him for saying it.

Even after the loan and the collapse, our joint vacations happened at their usual times: Rosh Hashanah at our place, Passover at theirs. The present visit wasn’t supposed to be different from the others, but the attack on Rosh Hashanah, although we weren’t directly involved, affected everything. Assi talked about it constantly. At every opportunity, he said he thought it was just getting started, that antisemitism in America was only beginning to rear its ugly head.

Tamir’s and Aviv’s induction into the army at the end of the year was another ever-present part of our conversations. How many sit-ups they did. How many kilometers they ran. On Saturday, when they were packing for their flight back to Israel, cramming their suitcases full of things they’d bought, I was surprised at how relieved I was.

The next day, I woke Adam early for the first session of the self-defense class. He’d been sound asleep and didn’t want to get up. Mikhael drove him, yawning and grumbling, to the old rec center on the edge of town, and I picked him up two hours later. Waiting for him in the parking lot, I worried that he’d get in the car and announce that once was enough for him, but when he opened the door, he was surprisingly positive. The sleepy kid who had entered the class that morning emerged with a rousing dream—a terrorist would come to the synagogue and he would be the one to stop him.

I didn’t have to wake him for the second class. He woke up and got ready by himself. When I came to pick him up, I saw the boys leaving the center together, chattering away in English, walking shoulder to shoulder to the parking lot. I think that was the first time I realized that I had never seen my son as part of a group. He’d had friends over the years. Not many, but he’d had them. Quiet, polite boys. I knew that he would have preferred his teenage years to be different, and I noticed how little they resembled what we saw on TV. But I didn’t worry. High school might seem an eternity when you’re there, but in reality, it’s very short. And then you have your entire life ahead of you. Only after everything went off the rails did I understand how wrong I’d been, how clueless about his longing to be part of a noisy crew of kids walking together down the street, each drawing strength from the presence of the others.

The difference was the instructor. He didn’t let the boys make the natural though unspoken division into a central group surrounded by hangers-on and rejects. At the very first meeting, he told them he didn’t care about well liked and not well liked, about popular and unpopular. If anyone tried to attack them, they were one another’s only hope. They had to be united because tomorrow morning another piece of shit like Paul Reed might come along, and the only way to stop him was through cooperation. Adam’s eyes glowed as he told me that. It sounded a bit pompous to me, like the speech given by the commander of an officers’ course, but I kept my cynicism to myself. For Adam and the other boys, that class was what might stand between them and another massacre in the synagogue. They gave themselves over to it totally. And when the three sessions were over, they asked for more.

“Does he have any maneuvers left to teach you?” I asked.

“Of course he has more maneuvers to teach us,” Adam said. “Besides self-defense, there’ll be Krav Maga, assault course training, orienteering …”

If it hadn’t been for the synagogue attack, I might have raised an eyebrow and said that the class was beginning to sound like a combat-unit boot camp. But the fear still pulsed under my skin. It calmed me to know that Adam was continuing the class. It made me happy to see him fitting in with the other boys, and I liked the fact that the instructor taught them in Hebrew. When Adam said he needed a compass for the next session, I smiled to myself and hurried to order one. It was great to see him finally blossoming, part of something larger.

I was afraid that after another meeting or two, he’d drop out of the class and withdraw into himself again. I worried that a sixteen-year-old boy’s natural laziness would keep my son in front of his laptop at home, especially since it took twenty minutes to bike to the rec center, so I was pleasantly surprised when he persevered despite the distance. Once, he had spent his afternoons alone in the amateur chemistry lab he had set up in our garage. Now he barely went in there. He would come home sweaty from the bike ride, cheeks red and eyes shining. And I knew it wasn’t only because of the ride that his whole body was like that. It was because of something else.

Only after Jamal Jones died did I discover that they were a fairly large group. Ten teenage boys. They met every Sunday at noon. Under the gentle caress of the California sun, they navigated, camouflaged, attacked, and neutralized, then went home to eat schnitzel for supper and study for their math tests.

One rainy Sunday, Adam came home completely soaked.

“You should have called,” I said. “I would have picked you up.”

He laughed. “We trained in the rain. Uri said there are no umbrellas in war.” That was the first time I heard the name—Uri—and the way Adam said it: with profound respect, almost awe, as if merely uttering it were a great honor.

“You’ll catch cold,” I said, but he swore that he hadn’t been cold for even a minute. And he didn’t rush to take off his wet clothes. Pride kept him warm.

Over the following weeks, Mikhael and I heard more and more about Uri. His name punctuated every one of Adam’s sentences. Rumor had it that Uri had been part of the IDF general staff. The boys in the class said that after leaving the army, he joined the Mossad. Uri didn’t talk about that and wouldn’t answer questions. I had already encountered that reticence of former elite combat-unit members, the quiet way they moved around in the world, with the pride of modesty. And the truth was that the less information he volunteered, the more the boys were drawn to him.

“Maybe Uri is still in the Mossad,” Adam told us one evening. Mikhael stepped in at that point. He was squeezing oranges while I was making potato pancakes and Adam was setting the table. Adam said that maybe Uri’s entire stay in the United States was part of a secret mission, and Mikhael, with that ironic half smile of his, said, “You think he’s recruiting the future generation of Mossad agents?”

Adam laughed. Mikhael sliced an orange in half with one stroke of the knife and went on in the same amused tone: “Maybe the whole idea of the class is just a cover story. Maybe next time you meet, he’ll send you all into a forest to kidnap a senior Hamas member who traveled to San Francisco.”

I waited for Adam to laugh or offer a sarcastic response of his own. Nothing prepared us for the hurt, sullen silence that prevailed for the rest of the meal.

Only later, when TV voices had dulled Adam’s angry silence and Chandler and Joey got us ready for bed, covered us with a blanket, and kissed us good night, only then did Mikhael say in a sleepy voice, “I think I know him.”

“Who?”

“That Uri. I think he was three years behind me.”

“And what was he like?”

Mikhael didn’t say anything for a while. I thought he’d fallen asleep. “Brilliant. They said he would be chief of the general staff.”

I turned to face him. “And look at what became of him, a Krav Maga instructor in Silicon Valley.”

Mikhael ran a warm, heavy hand over my thigh. “You mean a Mossad agent in California.” In the darkness of the room, I heard the smile in his voice, which made me smile too. And so, smiling, we fell asleep.

7

I THOUGHT I recognized her standing next to the fruit display, but I wasn’t sure. She was looking down at the cherries and holding the handle of a half-full shopping cart. It wasn’t until she looked up that I knew for certain. Her eyes were very red and her pupils were dilated to the size of blueberries. Leah’s mother noticed me looking at her. I turned around quickly. As I began pushing my cart toward the dairy section, I heard her behind me.

“Excuse me,” she said in a thin voice. “Can you please help me?”

I turned around and said, “Of course.” I didn’t know if I should tell her that I knew who she was. That I’d been at the funeral. That I was so sorry.

“I’m just a little dizzy. Can you please help me get to the benches outside?”

Only then did I see how she was gripping the handle of the cart. She wasn’t shopping for fruit; she was clutching the cart to keep from falling. I left my own cart and hurried over to her. “Come with me.”

She hesitated, as if even after she’d decided to ask for my assistance, she wasn’t sure that she actually required it, that she really needed a stranger in the supermarket to help her walk. But a moment later, when I reached out to her, she gave in and placed her cool palm in my hand.

“I took a pill,” she said as we slowly made our way down the aisles toward the glass doors. “I thought it would put me to sleep for only a few hours, but I still seem to be a little woozy.” Her pupils were enormous. I don’t think she noticed that she was leaning on me as she walked.

“The thing is that I have to make a pie. A reporter is coming over this evening. I wanted to make the pie my daughter asks for every time she comes home from college.”

“What kind of pie?”

“Blueberry. I’m not such a great cook, but that pie always comes out so delicious.”

The glass doors opened. I helped Leah’s mother sit down on the bench, hurried back inside, and returned with a glass of water.

“I don’t think you should drive home on your own,” I said as she took small sips.

“Sometimes when I’m driving, I hope I’ll have an accident. My daughter died fifty-one days ago.”

“I know,” I said. “I was at the funeral.” Then I added, “We’re from Israel.”

She turned to look at me. “That was very nice of you. Israelis hardly ever come to our synagogue. It’s nice you came to the funeral.”

She squeezed my hand with hers, which was still cool, and took another sip of water. “It’s not that I think I’ll see her again if I die in an accident. I’m not one of the lucky ones who believe in heaven. I just hope that then it won’t hurt anymore.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I hurried back inside again and got her another glass of water. Leah’s mother took it but didn’t drink.

“Would you like me to drive you home?” I asked.

“Our rabbi said that Pete and I should start going out more. I told him that I’m always smelling Leah’s clothes. I go into her room, open the closet, and smell her clothes.”

I asked myself whether I should call Pete to come and get her. I didn’t know what kind of pill Leah’s mother had taken, but she definitely didn’t look like someone who was going to bake a pie today. “Maybe you should call your husband?”

“Why not.” But she didn’t move. Her purse was slung over her shoulder, but she didn’t reach for it. “Her scent is fading away.”

A red-haired woman standing at the supermarket entrance looked at us with interest. I didn’t know whether she was an acquaintance of Leah’s mother or just recognized her from the news. I hoped they were friends and she would come and sit down on the bench so I could get away. But the redhead went inside, and other people, although some of them looked at us, didn’t stop.

Leah’s mother took her phone out of her bag and called her husband, who said he’d come right away. Talking to him seemed to revive her a bit. She asked my name and my husband’s and wanted to know how long we’d been in America. “Do you have children?”

“Yes,” I said. “One.” I waited for her to ask what his name was, but she didn’t. We spoke for another few minutes. She looked better. When a metallic-blue Jeep turned into the parking lot, she straightened up and said, “Here’s Pete.” After a moment, she added, “I can’t thank you enough.” And a moment later, she said, “You know, sometimes it hurts so much that I think it would be better if she had never been born.”

Adam was sitting in the living room when I came in. He asked why it had taken me so long. I didn’t tell him about my encounter with Leah’s mother, but that night, I told Mikhael, who sighed and said, “That poor woman.”

“I hope they put off the meeting with that reporter,” I said. “I really don’t think she’s in any condition to be interviewed right now.”

But Susan and Peter Weinstein didn’t cancel the visit of the reporter, the one with the blond bob. They didn’t want people to forget their daughter. The speed with which Leah’s face was fading from the screens seemed unfair to them. They had things to say about her. She had been so bright. So sweet. She had saved her grandmother. They thought the reporter would want to hear those things, but what she really wanted to talk about was Paul Reed. The murderer interested her much more than the victim. And perhaps what hurt Susan Weinstein the most was that, for the reporter, Paul Reed was a sort of victim. He was pushed out of the neighborhood where he grew up. When he was seven, white people bought the house he’d been born in for almost nothing and then charged much higher rents. In Oakland, the boy was exposed to drug dealers who dragged him down, and when some combination of drugs and genetics caused his mental collapse, Reed did not receive the treatment that might have stabilized his condition because it cost too much money. When the reporter said those things during the interview, Susan Weinstein exploded.

“It’s not my fault if Black people would rather get high while other people work hard. The Jews worked to get ahead in this country. We paid full price for our house. We’re not racist in any way—my father marched with Martin Luther King Jr., and believe me, King would be ashamed to hear that a Black man with a machete charged into a synagogue like a wild animal in the jungle.”

The interview appeared on the news. The sentence about the jungle was widely quoted. Two organizations demanded that Susan Weinstein apologize for her racist remarks. Mikhael and I sat in the living room and watched Leah’s mother speak to the camera, her forehead sweaty and her pupils dilated.

In the weeks that followed, I was tense every time I went to the supermarket, afraid she would be there. But I didn’t see her again. They say she stopped leaving the house.

8

HOW LONG WERE we asleep? How long did we walk, work, and speak in such total oblivion? The terror caused by the attack subsided, absorbed into our daily lives. Paul Reed and Leah Weinstein were still mentioned on TV, his picture alongside hers, but terrible things continued to happen—a baby disappeared during a family vacation in Florida, a policeman shot a Black man who was out on a morning run in Wisconsin—and those things gradually overshadowed the synagogue attack until the day came when it wasn’t mentioned at all. The memory of Rosh Hashanah grew distant.

Every morning, I drove Adam to school, and I drove him back every afternoon. On the drive home I used to ask him how his day had been, only to be met by a wall of shrugs. But motherhood is one long climb up a wall. Instead of asking directly, I started asking more oblique questions—What did you learn today, who did you talk to, what was fun, what annoyed you?—questions I’d found on a parents’ forum, questions formulated by well-groomed psychologists whose pictures appeared in the corner of the screen along with their phone numbers. Like the rigorous screening at Ben Gurion Airport, when they check to see if there’s a bomb concealed in your innocent-looking bag—that was how I scrutinized his face every afternoon, searching for a clue. Are you happy, my son? What happened to you during those long hours we were apart? Did anyone make fun of you? Hurt you? I tried to read all that in his face, and I was so totally focused on getting answers to those questions that I never once asked, And you, my son, did you make fun of anyone? Did you hurt anyone?

At some point, even those questions stopped. I continued taking him to school in the morning and driving him home in the afternoon, but I no longer tried to understand what was happening to him in between. There was some relief in that. Not constantly struggling with that alienation but letting it grow. When I stopped trying to know, find out, understand, investigate, I could just enjoy the time we spent together in the car, lean back in the driver’s seat and listen to music. He decided what we’d listen to on the way to school and I decided what we’d listen to on the way home. I could act appalled by the foul language in hip-hop, not because it really appalled me but to let him enjoy an adolescent victory over his old-fashioned mom. On the way home, I played the Beatles, Pink Floyd, David Bowie. I thought a lot about which songs to choose—what he could relate to, what he might like. Everything I wanted to tell him, I told him in those songs. And he listened, even if he didn’t always understand. Once, on the way to school, after witnessing an argument between me and Mikhael, he played “Life on Mars” between one hip-hop song and another, and David Bowie sang in the car. I knew he’d done it for me, to cheer me up, and I hid my emotion behind my sunglasses.

That’s how it was—hip-hop on the way to school, Beatles on the way back, and in between, silence. He was in school, I was at home, Mikhael was at work. Three rivers that did not touch until the evening, when we joined into a single sea for a dinner that was sometimes noisy and sometimes quiet but always, always took place in total oblivion. Oblivion we were startled out of at eleven o’clock on a Thursday night, when Adam called Mikhael and said in a trembling voice, “Dad, can you pick me up? Someone died here.”

9

WHEN HE CALLED, we were watching an episode of The Simpsons. It wasn’t an especially good episode, but neither one of us suggested changing channels. We’d already had so many hours of Marge and Homer that they seemed like another couple in our social circle, and you don’t toss a couple of friends out of your living room just because, one night, they don’t happen to be as funny and interesting as usual. And there was another reason: A large, dark silence lay in wait for us behind Marge and Homer’s chatter, like a panther staring out from the blackness. We hadn’t exchanged a word since Adam had left the house two hours earlier, closing the door behind himself in anger. (He didn’t slam it. My son has never slammed a door. He has a sort of angry gesture that stops itself a moment before the door actually slams, producing a noisy but controlled sound, a miniature rebellion.)

He hadn’t wanted to go to that party. Mikhael pressured him. He wanted Adam to spend more time with his classmates. Ever since Adam had started the self-defense course, his social life had improved, but most of the boys there were younger than he was, and apparently Mikhael thought they weren’t enough. When he heard about the party, he bribed Adam to go. He offered incentives like the ones he offered his employees.

“I know you’re not crazy about going, so let’s decide that today you go, and over the weekend we’ll do something really great, maybe a drive up to Bear Valley?”

I didn’t like Mikhael’s way of engineering people’s behavior. His system of incentives seemed like something you’d do with sea lions, not people. But Mikhael insisted, saying that the entire American economy worked that way so there was no reason it wouldn’t work with our reclusive son.

I heard about the party by accident. I’d stopped at the supermarket to buy a few things and bumped into Ashley’s mother. She asked if we wanted to drive the kids to the party and they’d bring them home. “What party?” I asked, and I saw her eyes widen in surprise.

“Josh’s party. Adam didn’t tell you? All the sophomores are invited. I’m sure they’re all invited.”

We were standing in line waiting to pay. The more she repeated that everyone was invited, the more I realized she wasn’t so sure that Adam was included. But at home, when I asked him, he said, “Yes, at Josh’s place. Everyone’s invited.”

“So, are you going?”

“I don’t feel like it.”

“Why not? I’m sure it’ll be fun.”

“Why are you so sure?”

Though Adam’s look was hostile, there was a drop of curiosity in it, as if part of him really wanted me to explain. Then Mikhael interrupted us. In a confident voice, that vice-president-in-charge tone that always put me off, he offered Adam the party/Bear Valley deal.

Adam spent the next few hours in his room, listening to hip-hop behind his locked door. Then he went out for a run, as he’d been doing every evening since beginning the self-defense class. I heard Kelev whimpering at the door and was angry at Adam for not taking him along. I put on my coat, clipped the leash to his collar as he quivered with excitement, and went out into the frost. Hoping to bump into Adam, I’d prepared an angry rebuke (If you want a pet, you have to take responsibility—a mother’s remark), but he wasn’t on the street. On the way back, I saw a small light in the garage window and went inside. Adam was bent over his chemistry set beside the small cabinet, and he straightened up as soon as he saw me.

I asked why he hadn’t taken Kelev out. I told him that he had to learn to consider others, that I was cold, that I shouldn’t have to walk around outside in this weather just because he didn’t take care of his dog. He mumbled that he was sorry, and when I noticed how troubled he looked, I thought I’d been too hard on him. It never occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t my rebuke that troubled him but the chemistry set and the cabinet and what was inside it. Only when the police knocked on our door several weeks later did the question pop into my mind, like a closed eye suddenly opening: What were you doing that evening in the garage, Adam? What was in the cabinet?

10

TWENTY-EIGHT MINUTES after Adam called, we pulled up in front of the Hart family’s house, brakes squealing. We weren’t alone. Other parents had received similar phone calls from their kids. “Mom, Dad, someone collapsed and died.” Every minute, another car raced onto the block and pulled up to the curb. More and more adults stepped out. Worried mothers. Worried fathers. Only a short time ago, a young girl had been murdered in our city, and the news of another dead youngster struck exposed parental nerves.

Ashley was sitting on the fence, wrapped in a coat that belonged to her mother, who nodded at me but remained beside her daughter. A few girls were crying along the pathway to the front door. Makeup smeared their young faces. Their dresses were very short, despite the cold. After all, they’d planned to spend the evening inside the house, which was lit with colored party lights, dancing in the living room, or drinking in the kitchen, or in Josh’s parents’ bed (they were out of town), or in Josh’s older brother’s bedroom (he was in college), or in Josh’s bed. They had planned to fool around, kiss, maybe suck. They’d planned to get drunk, vomit in the toilet or the bathtub or, if they had no other choice, in a potted plant. They had not planned to stand outside on the path to the front door, exposed to the freezing wind, while inside, a boy’s body lay on the living-room floor.

A group of boys was gathered at a nearby bench. They smelled strongly of weed and alcohol. Some of them were crying. Not uncontrollable weeping, like the girls, but restrained, embarrassed crying, and they kept wiping their faces with their hands. Others were standing on the bench on their tiptoes for an obvious reason they made no attempt to hide—to steal glances at the body inside the house.

Yellow police tape cut across the yard. I was surprised at how familiar it looked to me, that yellow tape, what a sense of déjà vu it aroused in me, after an endless number of crime scenes and bodies in movies and TV series. As if in a dream, I walked across the lawn, past the patrol cars, and around the yellow tape, crushing autumn leaves under my feet. Red-and-blue lights glared from the roofs of the police cars onto the wet grass and bounced off the windshields of the parents’ cars, which kept coming. For a moment, it seemed as though they were the flickering lights of the party, especially since, with all the commotion, no one had bothered to turn off the music.

Strong, insistent bass sounds came from inside the Hart family’s home. You could almost believe that the grim-looking police officers were there because an angry neighbor had called to complain about the noise, not because a stammering teenage girl had called to report that a boy had collapsed and died.

I looked around, searching for my son. I saw Mikhael at the other end of the street. He was wandering through the crowd looking for Adam, and when he caught my eye, he shook his head. I shook my head in reply—No, I don’t see him either—and continued walking. A woman in an evening dress supported a tall boy who was vomiting on the grass. His vomit stained her foot, shod in high heels despite the cold, and sprayed her sheer stockings. Another mother, wearing slippers and a windbreaker over pajamas, passed me and asked without stopping, “Have you seen Cora, a redhead?” I shook my head and began walking faster. Where are you, Adam?

Suddenly I was afraid for him for no real reason. I knew very well that it wasn’t Adam lying inside that house. After all, Adam had called us. He was the one who told us to come. And yet, the seconds ticked by and he wasn’t here. More and more kids fell weeping into their parents’ arms, even the toughest boys. When their dads or moms got out of their cars, they suddenly broke down and melted into their embrace.