All I Love and Know by Judith Frank

where the Arabs all knew us and liked us and gave us rolls with zatar .” He stopped and laughed. “Not that we weren’t a little messed up! If you ever hurt yourself, or felt bad, you looked into your parents’ eyes and felt ashamed to think of that as suffering.” He looked at his wife and said complacently, “But I turned out okay, right?”
    His wife patted his arm. “Sure, sweetie,” she said.
    Natan’s eyes moved over the living room and then rested fondly on Yaakov. “They all helped each other. If one lost a job, the others pitched in. If one had, God forbid, to be hospitalized, or had a nervous breakdown, the others were there to help. And Malka and Yaakov! Well. To this day, my parents say that they wouldn’t have made it without them. They got on the same boat to Palestine as Malka. None of them were married yet, of course. They’d all lost their parents, brothers, sisters. So they had to be a family to each other.”
    They were silent for a while, then Natan heaved a mighty sigh. “He’s a hero, Yaakov. A true hero. And now— ach .”
    Sitting on the park bench, Matt wrapped his arms around himself and rubbed. The sun had lowered behind a building and it was suddenly cold. He thought about how he’d tell Daniel this story, about this obnoxious man who worshipped Yaakov. He was sure that by now he knew more about some of these people than Daniel did. Anger rose sullenly in him again. He knew Daniel was grieving, but didn’t he, Matt, deserve a little recognition, deserve to be seen as part of the family? As a participant in this drama?
    IN THE BEDROOM, THE four parents perched uncomfortably at the edges of Joel and Ilana’s bed. Malka, whose feet didn’t quite reach the floor, smoothed down the bedspread on either side of her; Lydia had picked up a small framed picture of Joel and Ilana hiking up north before they got married, and was rubbing the dust off the glass with the hem of her blouse. Daniel was crouching at the side of the bed, his pulse racing, ready to get this over with. His mother and Malka kept insisting that he come on up and sit down. “I’m fine,” he said, and “There’s no room!” till his mother pressed closer to his father, bumping the line of bodies, which moved in a small series of sighs and grunts. Daniel sat, the mattress drooping under half his butt, his mother folding his hand in hers and rubbing it. He pulled it away. “I’m falling off!” he said, and stood.
    Assaf stood awkwardly in front of them with a manila envelope in his hand. He twisted and looked behind him at the floor, as though contemplating sitting there, then turned back toward them and cleared his throat. “Is everybody . . . ?” he murmured. He read the opening language of the will, and explained to Daniel’s parents that it was just the everyday legal stuff about Joel and Ilana being the parents to Gal and Noam, and being of sound mind. Then Assaf peeked at them over the paper and cleared his throat again. “ ‘It is our wish,’ ” he read, “ ‘that our children’s uncle, Daniel Rosen, be designated the guardian of Gal and Noam, to live with them wherever he wishes.’ ” He read it once in Hebrew, and then translated it into English.
    There was silence. Anxiety gaped in Daniel’s chest as he waited for the information to take. Yaakov’s face was reddening. Malka looked at him, bewildered, for an explanation. Then she looked at Daniel. “But you’ll live with them here, in this house.”
    Daniel tried to look at her, but it was too hard to meet her stupefied gaze, her sagging mouth. “No, Malka,” he said, “I’m going to have to take them to my home, in the States.”
    â€œ Lama? ” she asked. Why?
    He began to speak, but his parents were staring at him, pulling his attention back. “Have you known