He woke to the sound of Darla crying. Still groaning, he made himself get up and change her. He felt like collapsing again, but she was wide awake now. Liz had made a pot of coffee, which explained how she had managed such an early start. He downed two cups, ordered breakfast for the two of them, and felt nearly human by the time room service knocked on the door.
Darla seemed in better spirits after her juice and oatmeal, although he could see her peering around the room wondering where Mommy was. “It's just you and me today, kiddo,” he told her, wiping oatmeal off her chin with a napkin. “What do you want to do?”
Intelligent blue eyes stared at him. “Cookie?” she suggested hopefully.
He laughed. “You are a persistent little devil, aren't you? Yes, we'll find you some cookies.” But then what? He tried to remember what he had told her mother. Something about a movie. Involuntarily, he grimaced, imagining trying to make her sit still for two hours in a local theater. The room service cart had a local paper. He scanned the local listings but couldn't seem to find anything he could imagine both of them sitting through.
“Tell you what,” he said. “Why don't we grab some cookies and juice for the ride and just go see the Wall anyway? It'll get us out in the fresh air, and we can always go see it again with Mommy tomorrow. You won't tell her, will you?”
“Cookie,” Darla agreed.
What with one thing and another, it was past noon by the time they got there, and crowded. With a start Manny realized he wasn't sure what to do. His people were in two groups, the men and women separated from each other on the pink marble. What about men with daughters?
“I think we should keep our distance, today,” he told Darla. “Tomorrow, with your mother you can go in that group, with the women, maybe.” My God, he thought with dismay, have I been away so long that I've forgotten my own heritage?
He thought about Elizabeth, up the coast at Haifa by now. If her friend wasn't crazy, and wanted her to collaborate on the discovery, would they have to live here? It seemed likely. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. Would he find and fit in with the kibbutzniks he had grown up with? That was his past. His life was with Liz now.
Carrying Darla over the marble paving to an empty table, he set her down and tried to think. What am I doing here? Am I trying to prove I'm still Jewish? Part of him wished he'd stayed in London. Another part of him was angry, angry at him for leaving Israel, angry at him for dragging Liz back here with him, and angry at his wife for leaving him to spend his first day in his homeland alone with their child. And then came the shame, for feeling the anger. And then more anger, resentment for feeling guilty about his feelings.
I'm a mess, he thought. How can I be a decent father to this child, when I can't even decide who I am? Without planning it, he found his hands coming together on the tabletop to pray. God of my fathers, he prayed, should I move my family here? I'm feeling so lost today. Please give me a sign...any sign at all.
Suddenly it was very quiet. He had thought it quiet before, but while those nearest to the wall doing their rocking and praying had been silent, the people further back where he was had been making the same sounds as any well-behaved crowd. But that had stopped. Now he heard absolutely nothing. And then he heard a low moaning, as if the crowd were a single organism, a being in its own right, that was shocked and dismayed into silence by something terrible, like a boy who hears his parents fighting.
He opened his eyes and turned to see what their unbelieving eyes were looking at. And then it struck him too, and he heard his own throat making that same terrible sound.
A mushroom-shaped cloud was rising in the northwest. Over Tel Aviv.
Then a flash brighter than the sun, and another cloud, farther to the north. With a sinking feeling, even worse than before, he knew without asking that it was over Haifa.