When I got off the phone, I unlocked the outer door of the building. The staircase smelled of mildew. I climbed slowly, entered my shabby apartment, with its bare walls and flattened carpet, the broken burro on the windowsill. I had no reason to be upset, I thought, as waves of sadness washed over me. No way would I see them together when I was there.
But I would, of course. At Chaverim.
Twenty-Eight
I arrived at my cousin’s house in Ra’anana late at night and Meir showed me to Galia’s old room. Unused to such dark, silent nights, I slept so deeply I did not know when I woke if it was late afternoon, or two days later, until I opened the shutters and saw the white morning sun and my rental car. I dressed and followed Ronit’s voice out into the garden. Breakfast had been laid out on the patio table—salads, soft cheeses, and bread.
Meir, small and polite, stood when I arrived, and Ronit said, “Meir thanks you for the gifts. He says you have a very optimistic nature. You’d like coffee?”
“Yes, thank you,” I said. I’d never been called optimistic and was puzzled by this comment.
I’d brought my cousins iPods and mag lights, and as an afterthought, I threw in a couple of my insulated bags. Meir brought me a cup of hot water and a jar of Nescafe and sat back down. While Ronit and I caught up, he lifted the flap of the bag, pressed the Velcro together, and ripped it apart again. He wiggled his fingers inside, quietly exploring the interior.
Ronit had visited Aviva, once with Meir and once alone. It was difficult to be there, she confessed. It pulled at her insides. Meir could not go anymore. Better to die quickly by whatever means than to suffer the way these poor people did.
“You don’t have to go,” I told her. “I hadn’t suggested visiting as a punishment. But please tell Meir that Aviva isn’t suffering. She doesn’t have a ‘before.’ Her way of being is what she knows. It’s her life.”
Ronit watched Meir stick his whole fist into the bag to assess its capacity and said,
“Your father also brought very nice gifts.”
“Did you know what he used to do at Chaverim? Shelley said he brought presents for everyone and had catered lunches set on the patio and hired a klezmer band and a string quartet.”
“And for the girls, too,” Ronit said.
“What did he bring them?”
Ronit got up from the table, and Meir patted the insulated bag.
“Yes,” I said. “I had fun with that one.” I gestured to the table and grape arbor, the beautiful garden, with bougainvillea and green lemons dangling like ornaments from a pair of trees, and said, “Yafe? Yafa?”—unsure of the gender of this lovely tableau. After that we waited in amiable silence.
Ronit returned with a Parcheesi set and two big picture books. Wonders of the Natural World and Manmade Wonders. Everything had been extensively repaired with duct tape, the corners of the Parcheesi box, the spines of the books. I recognized my father’s handwriting when I opened the first book and saw the inscriptions in Hebrew and in English. On the flyleaf he had written, “To Galia and Maya.” In the second book he had written, “To Maya and Galia.” It was as if I were learning about his secret family, with grateful girls who did their homework eagerly. It cut deep.
I had to leave for Chaverim in an hour. I showered and dressed, checked the mirror, and saw a portrait of despair. Not good, I said to my reflection. Not good at all.
Some women, this one at least, have moments of feeling that perfect attire can vanquish despair. Thus motivated, I pulled my shirt over my head, slid off my jeans, and perched on the bed, intending to reconsider my options. I studied the inadequate rental car map instead—the only places of interest seemed to be rental car locations—then reached for one of the picture books my father had given Ronit’s daughters. Flipping through the pages, past the Grand Canyon and Victoria Falls, I thought once again what a waste it had been, all those nights we’d sat in the dining room, my math homework spread across the table. There was no way to tell him that the look on my face was hopelessness, not scorn or disrespect as he’d believed.
I put the book aside, slipped on a dress, a long-sleeved black jersey that, like my insulated bag, could fold into a little square. I put lotion on my legs, moisturized my heels and then each toe, and when I stood, I slid in my sandals. I imagined sliding toward Baruch, arms extended, and Baruch stepping back and letting me fall.
I’d freeze up there in the mountains. I changed back into jeans, chose a long-sleeved shirt, packed a bathing suit and jacket, and slipped on boots. By then it was one-thirty.
Here’s why I was late to meet Baruch and Dina, why I am often late. Living alone, I had no one to push me from the gunwales of the boat, backward into the unknown.
The two of them were sitting on the patio when I approached. Dina saw me first, cried, “Roxanne!” and shuffled toward me in her mules, her arms outstretched. I embraced her, taking in her scent of sandalwood and cloves.
Baruch rose slowly. Pale, thin, distracted, his odd, luminous eyes looking elsewhere. He seemed to occupy a different plane, high above his small, voluble companion. Six months had passed since he had rocked me in the cool sea. I don’t know this man in his zip-front sweater and khakis, I thought.
Dina kissed both my cheeks. “You are looking like a movie star, so beautiful, wow! Baruch, this is my very good friend, Roxanne.”
My body could not be fooled. My heart was racing. “Hey,” I said, friendly, questioning, wishing someone would fill me in on who knew what.
Baruch extended his hand and glanced at me briefly, and when I felt his leathery palm and the shape of his hand, I did know him and wanted to say, “What are you doing?” I wanted to say, “It makes no sense, the two of you together.”
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said.
“This is so fantastic, the two of you with me. And now we will get Dan and Aviva and we will all take our walk through the beautiful garden, and later, Roxanne, we have so many special places to show you.”
I followed Baruch and Dina on the broad winding paths beyond the patio, past lush plantings and sculpture gardens. Dina’s enthusiasm was a relief and a distraction and kept me from sinking into pointless, bitter feelings. I didn’t need to return to the evening when I’d leaned over Dina’s computer to study his photo and said with irritation, “You like him? Fine, you take him.” As if he were an object at a yard sale, gently used.
It was chilly. I dug around in my bag for my jacket. You go out with him. He’s not my taste.
Dina paused, putting a hand over her heart. “To be in this beautiful place with you and Baruch? This is a dream, Roxanne. The most special day.” She moved to the side to let a father wheel his son past us, the heavy, dark-haired man and spastic, skeletal son in matching yarmulkes. “It is fantastic,” she said.
My heart could still ache and did.
Baruch fell back a step so Dina could take his arm. At the bottom of a long hill, Dina stopped. “This is where they’ll have the horses. You know about this, yes?” She gestured toward a flat, rocky stretch of land where soon there would be stables and a therapeutic horseback-riding program.
“Yes,” I said. “Tomorrow Mrs. Silk is showing me the plans.”
“I am trying to bring Etti here, so she can see it is so fantastic and tell her father.” Etti was the oboist who’d moved into my mother’s apartment, whose father owned hotels in Greece. “He don’t know what to do with his money, he has so much. And he is a very good man, Roxanne. Very generous. He get a job for my Tali at one of his hotels and this has been fantastic for her; you can’t believe. Roxanne, you’re in love?” Dina gestured with her chin. “I call her, she tells me nothing on the phone!” she said to Baruch.
I stole a glance at him and the night in Dina’s apartment again flashed through my mind, how drawn I’d been to his photograph. What? I’d thought when his face appeared on her
computer screen. Tell me, what is it? His straightforward gaze had been so compelling I kept returning to his photo. Now I found myself wondering if it was simply the expression of a man who was not paying attention.
“No,” I said. “Not really.”
Dina slowed, so we could all walk together. “We will find someone for you.”
Baruch flashed what even I knew was a fake smile, just the corners of his mouth raised.
The doors opened for us and we entered the building together, approaching the warbling birds Dina seemed to dislike. As soon as she moved beyond them, she was comfortable, greeting therapists, family members, maintenance workers. I followed along, and the familiar sense of being stuffed with the unspeakable rose within me. Baruch slipped his phone from his pocket and checked it as he walked. I had to make something of this visit. Isn’t that what he’d advised? Learn what pleased Aviva, and be with her in a way that would hasten my return?
I couldn’t spend my time pushing Aviva in her wheelchair and talking to Dina. I’d traveled too far to settle for this. So when we reached the greenhouse, where Dan and three other residents in wheelchairs sat with an aide, enjoying the rich, loamy scent, I said, “I’m going to swim with Aviva.”
“Tomorrow you swim; that will be very good,” Dina said. “Today we will walk with Dan and Aviva and then we will take you to Akko. You’ve never been there, Roxanne, it is the most ancient city, so full of history and also the most fantastic restaurant, with a chef who is a brilliant man, all over he is famous. You have never had such delicious food.”
“That sounds perfect. I’ve never been to Akko. Why don’t you two walk with Dan while I swim with Aviva, and we can meet in the lobby in two hours. We’ll have the whole rest of the day together. Would that be okay?”
It was not okay. Dina looked as if she would cry.
Baruch put his hand on Dina’s arm and spoke softly to her. She nodded in a resigned way. I continued ahead, hoping I could cast off the familiar sense of having disappointed someone yet again. Dina for certain—I was always letting her down. Baruch didn’t seem to care, about this or anything else.
At least I was doing what I needed to do, I thought, as I changed into my bathing suit.
My pride was short-lived. I walked into the natatorium, took in the still blue water in the pool, the walkers and mechanical lift, and realized I’d forgotten to ask that Aviva be brought here to swim with me.
The natatorium was annexed to the main building and on this afternoon felt as quiet, as sealed-off, as a bunker. I wandered barefoot, towel wrapped around my waist, accosting everyone I met, calling “Anglais?” my language a useless currency down here, where everyone was Russian. “Anglais?” I tried, tightening my towel.
I dressed and made my way to the main office where a young office worker, fluent in English, told me I’d find Aviva in the “Quiet Room.” An aide escorted me down the corridor, and I stepped inside the room where the lights were dim and New Age music played. On the wall was a bubble column with real-looking fish swimming in the bubbles, while the background color changed. I looked for Aviva. Not in the waterbed, gazing at a segmented mirror, not near the bubble column. It took me a moment to find her, swaying in a leaf chair that cradled her body, a sparkly net drawn over her. The air had a faint floral scent. Was that why she was here? I knelt in front of her, lowered my shoulders, then slipped my hand through the mesh net and placed it over hers. I’m here, I thought.
“I’m here,” I said aloud. “Vered, your sister, a.k.a Roxanne.”
I worked the soft shoe from her foot, felt the shape of her arch, and each toe.
While music played softly and the water bubbled in the tubes, I took off her other shoe, and while she swayed in the chair, massaged her feet, with their soft soles that had never touched the ground. I pushed the chair gently so it swayed and wished there were room for me beside her. Maybe I could ask if there was a leaf chair for two. Or if not, I could design one. I rested my head on her lap and imagined a checklist for myself: brings objects to nose, enjoys being naked, likes to spoon with a man in bed, seeks out having body parts rubbed or touched, withdraws from peers, avoids sustained eye contact, hard to calm when upset.
I had the same visceral response, seeing them in the lobby two hours later. Wrong. On the way to the parking lot, the word rang in my head like a chime. Wrong. All the other men she’d liked had been lumpy and distracted.
I volunteered to sit in the back of the car. Dina moved the pile of folders, newspapers, and empty water bottles to make room. I climbed in and sat with my knees pressed together. At the start of the drive to Akko, I craned forward, trying to hear above the road noise. Dina spoke to Baruch in Hebrew, but there was also a brief narrative for me, an accounting of all the people who’d stirred up the dust in Akko: the Canaanites, the Israelites, the Greeks, the Persians, the Egyptians, the Romans, the Byzantine empire, the Christians, Arabs, Baha’i, the Crusaders, the Druze, the Ottomans, the British, the Jews. I couldn’t get the gist of their conversation, only understood that they weren’t chatting about history.
I leaned back, pretending to be drowsy until I became drowsy, and entered a dreamy state from which I was shaken when Dina turned sharply onto a traffic circle. I peeled off the newspapers and water bottles that had slid onto my lap, took in the drab apartment blocks on the outskirts of town, the laundry on racks, and nearly empty streets.
Just outside the old city Dina pulled into a dusty lot. I’ll wait in the car! I imagined saying, as I had when Ronit had visited my family all those years before. Or I could be like Hannah, who refused to go to Vermont with her parents the summer she turned fifteen. “But it’s so beautiful,” Mindy had tried to explain to her sullen daughter. And Hannah, voice dripping with disdain: “I did beautiful last year.”
Dina said a few cheerful words and slid out of the car. Baruch got out next. I pushed the front seat forward, thinking, “I’ll wait in the car! I did beautiful last year!” as I scuttled awkwardly to my feet. Then Dina wove her arm through Baruch’s. He’s great! I’d have to tell her that. I’m so pleased you’ve found someone you like. I’d have to tell Baruch. Or maybe the truth would slide out, and I’d say, “You’ve got to be kidding.” It was brutal seeing them together.
We walked on the stone path toward the harbor, where fishing boats were anchored. Ancient Turkish houses opened to the sea. I made a half-hearted attempt to take in the stone walls and mosques, the boats with their clanging halyards, the blue sky and crisp breeze, if only to file away these sights for a time when they might interest me. I asked occasional polite questions. Dina answered and digressed. Baruch walked beside her, silent, chin raised, as if busy smelling the air. All I wanted was to go home, to get to that elusive non-place, instead of strolling beside the two of them, making admiring noises, feigning pleasure, bilious with despair.
It was still early when we arrived at the restaurant. A few diners sat inside, but all the tables on the patio were empty. We sat at one, listened to the gulls, praised the light wind. A small swarthy waiter brought us a wine list. Dina talked to him for five minutes and then turned to me. “What the chef is making they will bring to us.”
This is how it would go. We would be offered one course after the next until we’d had enough. I fished around in my bag for a scarf to wind around my neck and suggested they choose the wine.
“Baruch is just home from Minnesota,” Dina said. “That’s near Pitts-boorg?”
Closer than Winnipeg. I imagined saying this. I imagined running off, and then, what—standing at the traffic circle, trying to hitch a ride back to my rental car in the lot at Chaverim? “Not particularly,” I said. “Were you there for a conference?”
This was the first question I’d asked Baruch directly. He looked up.
Dina said, “His son live there. Lives there.”
“Really!” Of course he’d told me this. “We’re all so scattere
d. It’s another diaspora, everyone travelling to the land of best opportunities. That’s how I ended up in Pittsburgh. It’s not like I’d ever been there. I hadn’t even known what it was, Pitts-boorg. But it’s not so dramatic when you think of the journeys other people make on rafts or in trucks to cold unfriendly places.” My bracelet got stuck in my sleeve. I busied myself, working to free the clasp from an invisible thread. An unforgettable image came to mind: two Somali boys sitting in a bare room in North Dakota. “I think about this a lot.”
Dina didn’t, at least not then. “You’re going to move to Israel.” She squeezed my wrist. “Everyone is here. Your cousin Ronit, such a wonderful woman; we have become very good friends, and you know, we love you so much, Roxanne. We will take such good care of you.”
“I know you would.” I turned to Baruch. “Do you get to thank her? I’m not allowed to say I appreciate everything she’s done for me, so I won’t try to tell her anymore. But it’s true, what she says. Almost everyone is here. I have a friend in New Jersey who’s like a sister, and I’ve just reacquainted with some cousins, also in New Jersey, and there’s my business, my little company, in Pittsburgh. And my partner. That’s kind of it, which I guess is pathetic, but maybe not. It’s a life.”
The waiter brought us a plate of grilled red peppers, feta, and olives. Dina arranged some on a hunk of bread and held it to Baruch’s mouth. He protested weakly, opened wide, then gently moved her hand. I turned away from this awkward interaction and watched a steady stream of visitors ambling past. Couples. A foursome of nuns in white habits.
“Nuns!” I cried.
Baruch’s phone rang. He took it from his pocket, then rose, and walked off. Dina listened for a moment, before providing me with a subtitle: “From all over the world they work with him.”
“Yes,” I said.
“He is very important in his field, so respected, and with me, Roxanne? He is such a good person!”
“I know,” I said.
Face Tells the Secret Page 29