March, which came in like a lion and went out like a lamb, deposited in its path the lost Husband, and in mid-May Shlomi’s baby is born in Nepal because surrogacy for gay men remains illegal in Israel. Two weeks later, he and Dan fly with the infant back to Tel Aviv, and in the third week of June, the day after Iris and Remy finish school, Tamar packs their suitcases as usual and goes over the plant-watering schedule with the house sitter, a Columbia grad student who was a woman last year, but now is a man. Tamar and the kids have spent July in Tel Aviv every year since she and David divorced, and she often stays on in August while the kids fly to meet him wherever he’s decided to spend his vacation. The Columbia student, who was Jessica for the last three summers, is now Kevin, and because Tamar was not present for the transformation, she has the impression, however wrongheaded and absurd, that it happened simply, without a great deal of fuss, just like everything Jessica has ever done. For the last three summers they kept everything in perfect order; more than perfect, really, because when Tamar returned in late August, it was always to a house more organized and well run than the one she’d left, the minor repairs that had accumulated over the year having been seen to, all the burned-out light bulbs replaced, and while this at first delighted her, in the wake of the delight there was left a feeling that she was slightly superfluous, that she was not really needed by her life in New York, just as she was not really needed by her life, what was left of it, in Tel Aviv. One could argue whether or not this is true—there are her patients, her children, her mother, her friends, in short, many people who need her—but regardless of its validity, it is the thought of someone whose roots are sown in two places and so can never grow deeply enough in either. Always on the plane back to Israel Tamar feels the excitement of finally going home, only to land and remember why she left.