Suspended As They Are

Something in the pull of the train leading them to Coney Island made Tamar uneasy.

“Are we going backwards?” she asked Salim in Hebrew.

“What are you talking about?” The newspaper twitched between his fingers as he read the front page.

Tamar skimmed the headline in Ma’ariv: Two Dead in Sinai Skirmish. “Don’t you feel it?” She tugged at the neckline of her dress, catching her nail on a forgotten baste stitch.

“No.”

“I feel it,” Ari shouted in English.

“Shha.” Salim straightened the paper with a flick of his hand, the muscle in his jaw working like a pump.

She inhaled the Ivory soap he had used that morning to shave. She had watched him through the crack in the bathroom door, his reflection in the mirror as he lathered his face, and then ran the blade in long swipes from cheekbone to jaw, worrying he’d cut himself. He rarely did.

Ari sat on the bench opposite her. She sent him a warning glance. He knew to show decorum in public, especially around his father. The boy sank further into his seat, lips pursed like he’d eaten something sour. Rachel took his hand and he shot her a grateful smile. They were so close in age they might have been twins, except they looked nothing alike. Rachel could have been the poster child for the kibbutz movement with her waist-length hair, dark eyes, and dancer’s build. Salim favored her because of it. Ari, to his father’s dismay and hers too if she were honest, was fat. His face as pudgy as an overstuffed doll. The boy was ten and towered over Rachel, was nearly his teenage sister Ruby’s height, and surpassed her in weight. When he walked...