Free The Best Place on Earth by Ayelet Tsabari Page B

tapped the space beside her and Uri sat down next to her, ankles crossed. He studied the pattern on the wooden door leading to his parents’ washroom. “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,” she said. “It just seemed like it was best. Seeing me might have driven her over the edge.”
    Uri chewed on his bottom lip as if to stop the things he wanted to say from spewing out, things like, “What about Dad and me?” and “Spare me the excuses,” which was his mother’s phrase, one she had often used when speaking to Yasmin.
    He had been little when Yasmin was a teenager, but he still remembered the fights she and their mother used to have, spectacular displays of passion and melodrama that left Uri and his dad—thegentle, collected portion of the family—in awe. In high school, Yasmin ran away several times, hitchhiking to Sinai and the Galilee, staying God-knows-where, doing God-knows-what. Even when she was home, she got herself into all kinds of trouble: there was an affair with a substitute teacher, there were nights when she stumbled home late and then passed out on their bathroom floor, drunk.
    Uri concentrated on his socks, curling and uncurling his toes. Their father walked into the room then and Yasmin jumped off the bed to hug him. Uri took the opportunity to slip out. He grabbed his skateboard and his gas mask and rode the elevator down to the parking lot behind their building, where his dad allowed him to play, close enough that he could make it back if a siren sounded.
    It had always been an adjustment, letting Yasmin back into their lives. She had taken off to Sinai right after army service, then Amsterdam, then India, and had come home sporting a new haircut, a new tattoo, a nose ring, a pierced eyebrow. She stayed with them until she found somewhere else to crash, worked and saved money for a few weeks or months, then left again. There was no reason to believe that this time would be any different.
    It had been over a year and a half since he’d last seen her—the longest she’d ever been gone—and so much had happened since. Uri wasn’t sure where to start catching up. They had always been close, despite her long absences and the eleven-year gap between them. She was the only fun person in Uri’s family, a group of serious people with stern faces and tight lips, whose gatherings resembled political conferences he had seen on the news. His father had a permanent groove wedged between his eyebrows and his shoulders were stooped in surrender, as though the whole world weighed upon his small, wiry frame. His mother was fun sometimes; on a good day she was shiny and beautiful and charming,she sang, she put on funny accents, she was the life of every party. But her bad days were so bad that it never quite seemed worth it.
    Yasmin was the one who took him to movies and to the beach, made him hot chocolate with melted scoops of ice cream. And she was the only one in his family who knew about his poetry. In fact, she had gotten him into it. A few years ago, when she still lived at home, they started a game: sitting at the table over lunch or breakfast or hot chocolate, they gazed through the kitchen window, finding metaphors or stories in the world out there. They watched people on the sidewalk, or falling leaves, or cars in traffic, or shapes in the clouds, or faces in the moon. Yasmin would get excited by the things he said and yell, “Amazing! A poet is born!” She’d slap the table, or let her mouth hang open in awe or pretend to swoon. “Seriously,” she used to say. “If you don’t write it down I’m going to have to kick your ass.” And once she was gone and he had no one to play with, he did.
    That night, when the siren cried, Uri and Yasmin hurried to their parents’ bedroom. By then, Uri and his father had developed a routine. There was no talking as they put on their gas masks. Uri turned on the TV, his dad wetted the same towel—the one his mother had taken from a hotel in Eilat