“Did you really sleep with Kurt’s best friend?” Stav asked later.
“Kurt doesn’t have friends,” Stef said.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Jav said.
“Slut.” Stav stretched it into two syllables.
Colts were playing the Falcons in the Georgia Dome. The three friends sprawled on Stef’s couch, slowly demolishing the last of Lilia’s apple pie, passing the aluminum plate down and back.
“God, we are just torturing Roman,” Stav said. “Look at his face.”
“I see the humans have pie,” Jav said. “I also enjoy pie.”
“Ugh, I’m never eating again,” Stef said, tossing the empty plate on the coffee table.
“You’ll be hungry in an hour,” Jav said.
“Y tu mamá también.”
“God, your accent sucks.”
“You guys really are awful cute,” Stav said, knitting at the other end of the couch. Because that was how they partied here on Cushman Row.
“How’d your mothers meet?” Jav asked.
At the random question, Stef and Stav exchanged a look, either deciding if Jav was worthy of the answer, or deciding who would answer.
“Rory did a study at NYU about wartime rape,” Stav said. “She interviewed my mother. They became good friends. Mom eventually became Rory’s research assistant. Then her personal assistant. Then they fell in love. And here we are.”
“I see,” Jav said, his chin rising once and falling again. “Lilia was raped? At Auschwitz?”
“After liberation. By Russian soldiers.”
Jav’s eyes widened. “I thought they only raped German women.”
“They pretty much raped anyone they fucking felt like,” Stef said.
“Including women at Auschwitz,” Stav said.
Jav blinked a few times. “Jewish women were raped by their own liberators?”
Stav’s head rose and fell several times.
“The Red Army went certifiably, batshit crazy,” Stef said. “It’s one of the worst scourges of systemic rape in history. Two million German women and those are just the documented cases.”
“At least one hundred thousand in Berlin alone. Ages eight to eighty.” Stav glanced up from her knitting. “I grew up hearing the statistics so bear with me if I casually spew numbers.”
“Jesus,” Jav said. “Is that why you work at Exodus Project?”
Stav’s head bobbled side to side. “Partly.” Another glance exchanged with Stef. “But also because I think something happened to my father in the camps.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“During the study, my mom interviewed quite a few male Europeans as well,” Stef said. “It’s much less documented, for obvious reasons. But men were raped. I don’t mean only gay men who were rounded up into camps. There were SS officers and Jewish kapos who abused young boys.”
“Young conscripts in the Russian Army,” Stav said. “Sixteen-year-old boys raped by a superior officer starving for sex. Then all those boys turned loose and sex-starved on the enemy’s women.”
“Build the culture,” Stef said.
Jav tugged at his hair. “So you think it happened to Micah?”
“He’s never outright said so. My mother’s hinted at it. When she was being interviewed for Rory’s studies, she met so many other women who were sharing their experiences. She became part of this strong, bonded community of female survivors, but she said to me once, ‘Many of us speak for men who will never tell their stories. Your father saw things he will take to his grave.’”
“He ever say anything to you?” Jav asked Stef.
Corners of his mouth turned down, Stef simply shook his head.
“Jav, you keep any of that good rum here?” Stav asked, getting up.
“Lower cabinet next to the fridge.”
She poured them each a shot of Appleton Estate, and Stef turned the TV volume down.
“Has Lilia ever talked to you about being gay?” he asked Stav.
“She said she knew at a young age, but she thought something was wrong with her. A shameful secret. Then, of course, the war came and the entire world blew up and all notions of romance and sex stopped.” Stav stared across the living room, her knitting needles still. “I think my parents came out the other side of the war honestly not caring if anyone ever intimately touched them again. Know what I mean?”
“But they found each other,” Jav said. “They married. Made a family. And here we are.”
Stav smiled. “I think as they made their way across Europe and eventually to Palestine, they became best friends. Soldiers in their own army.”
“Did Micah ever go back to Greece?”
“No. When they got to Lilia’s town in Hungary, he saw how her family’s restaurant had been nationalized and given to someone else to own. Strange people were living in her childhood home and they slammed the door in her face. Before they were deported, Lilia’s father gave a little bag of diamonds and jewelry to a Christian family for safekeeping. He watched them bury it under a tree in their garden and mark it with a rock. The family looked Lilia in the eye and denied it ever happened, denied the bag ever existed.”
“Jesus,” Jav said.
“My father said at that moment, he had no desire to go back to Greece and find…whatever he might find. He and my mom wanted to get the hell out of Europe. They put their scraps together and thought they could make something good in a new place. I think they understood each other and each other’s ordeals. Each was the only person the other trusted. Their marriage wasn’t romantic or passionate but it was…valiant.”
Jav pointed a finger. “I love that word. Valiant. Valiente is Spanish for brave. When I was young and had to do something tough, my dad would push me on my way and say, ‘Eres el mas valiente.’ Now I say it all the time to people.”
“Is that what you’re telling me when I leave in the mornings?” Stef said.
“Yeah,” Jav said, laughing. “I didn’t tell you what it meant?”
“No. I thought it was like vaya con Dios or some other farewell. Or maybe, ‘I like your ass, can I wear it as a hat?’”
“That I would say in English.”
“Say it now,” Stef said. “Talk slow.”
“Not in front of the children,” Stav said loudly. “God, you two just exude sex all the time.”
“We do?”
Stav gazed down the length of the couch as she scratched Roman’s ears. “Yeah. But it doesn’t suck to be around it.”
“We need to find you a boyfriend,” Jav said.
“I’ll settle for a fuck buddy. I haven’t been laid in so long, the other day I gave a box of tampons my phone number.”
“Kurt’s single,” Stef said.
He yelped and rolled away as Stav and Jav both grabbed pillows and smashed them on his head.