by Sarah Blau
As we sat in his car, Neria Grossman confessed his unwavering love. I remember that moment well, the image still pooling across my mind. How the prey had finally succumbed to my weeks-long hunting campaign and said, “I’m in love with you,” and “I never felt this way before.” As the love burned in his fair eyes, I felt that something inside me shrivelled up and died.
All my feelings disappeared at once, like a plug violently yanked out of its socket.
Even in real time, while it was happening, I was already thinking: Sheila Heller, you’re batshit, you’re fucking nuts, what’s going on with you? It’s Neria! Your Neria! Your prince charming, the subject of your elaborate pursuit, the man you imagined, even if just for a fleeting second, as the father of your children. Here he is, sitting right next to you, confessing his undying love! What’s happening to you, Sheila? Get your act together this moment, you basket case!
Neria continued gushing, I think he even used the hair-raising term “love of my life,” while I sat there, immobile, staring out the car window. I felt like a doll, devoid of emotion.
And now he’s standing in front of me with his Taliunger, both silent.
Taliunger is boring into my eyes, searching for something inside them, and I feel like saying: I’m not interested in your husband, just like I wasn’t interested in him twenty years ago. The only person I’m interested in is me. But she pre-empts with, “After so many years, we all meet again!”, cracking a big, smarmy smile.
“No, not all of us,” Neria hisses, and his slurred speech indicates that the empty wine glass in his hand wasn’t his first. “Someone’s missing.”
“Who are you talking about?” I ask, although I know perfectly well who.
“Queen bee, mother of all bitches,” he says, “Dina fucking Kaminer. I can’t begin to describe how happy it makes me to know that someone went and drained her, just like she drained your minds.”
“Drained her?” a familiar voice cracks through the eerie silence.
“Drained who?” It’s Ronit, wafting in out of nowhere, her cape dragging behind her, like a bat with a broken wing.
“Her, that bitch, Kaminer, she was drained. Exsanguinated. Didn’t leave a drop of blood in her!” he exclaims, face flushed, drunk grin. Neria Grossman is brimming with blood and something else. A primal emotion. It’s hatred.
11
A VEIL OF SILENCE falls over the entire living room, and it seems we have all transformed into frozen dolls, standing in a circle around Neria, who’s still smiling and shaking his head. “Drained,” he repeats.
“How do you know that?”
That detail didn’t appear in any written account. I know because I scoured every article. I assumed she was strangled, and I’m almost certain that’s what was indicated in the papers. When I mentioned it to Micha in passing, he didn’t deny it. But he didn’t confirm it either.
Dina’s image flashes before me, baby doll in her arms, red letters marring that high, regal porcelain-white forehead, even whiter now that it was sapped of its blood. Dina of all people, Dina who had more blood inside her than anyone else.
“I have a friend on the police force,” Neria says.
“What friend? Who?” Taliunger asks and immediately falls silent; a drop of red wine trickles down her glass onto one of the white armchairs, the fabric ravenously absorbing it.
“A friend, what does it matter who. He knew we went to college together, so he told me.” Taliunger, who’s already fishing a tissue out of her handbag to save the armchair, freezes again when he says, “He asked me to keep it a secret.”
“Well, he definitely told the right person,” I remark.
“It’s the booze,” he slurs. “Alcohol and I don’t get along too well.” He looks at me as if waiting for confirmation.
It’s true. Once again the images from that Purim party loop through my mind, Thrump, thrump! Dina, impossibly tall in her flowing cape, and Ronit, Naama and me, her forever faithful entourage, and Dina’s hands beating the tambourine, loud, loud, louder. And Neria, drunk, crying, angry. Children don’t cry.
“That bitch deserved what she got,” he almost yells, and this finally jolts Taliunger out of her frozen stupor, and she drags him away, like any good little wifey with even a grain of common sense in her head would have done the moment her husband opened such a mouth.
“Did you know Dina Kaminer too?” It’s that quasi-recognizable actress, the incontinence star, and she injects her question with more drama with an appalled, “It’s just awful, awful what happened to her.”
“Yes, yes, awful!” A few other voices chime in, and the newly formed choir enthuses, “And that baby they glued to her?” “Dreadful!” “Horrendous!” “Disgraceful!” “Bone-chilling!” “Where were the police?”
“And for what reason?” It’s that actress again. “So not everyone wants kids, why is that so offensive?” Now she waits for our approval, but the choir falls into silence.
“Look, don’t think for a moment that I’m justifying murder,” a round-faced guy joins in, and you just know that any moment he’s going to do exactly that – justify murder, “but with all due respect, I think there’s something selfish about choosing not to have children, and that Kaminer woman promoted that agenda quite aggressively.”
“What agenda?” the actress asks, taking a step closer to him, “The agenda that says it’s okay to be who you want to be?”
I observe the unfolding scene with boredom. Here we go again.
“The agenda of thinking only about yourself and the hell with your country!” The man with the pudgy baby face raises his voice, at which his wife presses against him and places a maternal hand on his shoulder. “Where do you think we’d be if everyone made that choice?” he laments. “Look who’s procreating around here, only the Arabs and the Haredim, so take some responsibility, it won’t kill you!”
A shadow passes over the actress’s face. “I’m not going to have a baby for the country’s sake.”
“It’s not for the country’s sake, it’s for your own! It’ll be good for you to think of someone other than yourself for once!”
“I think I know what’s good for me!”
“Well, with that attitude, what’s the point?!”
“You’re a guest at the home of someone who happens to think exactly like me!”
That shuts him up, but not for long. I keep a disinterested gaze on them while cracking pistachios from a big bowl and depositing the shells in my napkin. I know the arguments will forever be the same old arguments; whether the setting be a bohemian soirée or Shabbat dinner at your religious relatives’ in Ra’anana, conservatism will always win. The round-faced man now shouting (because at a certain point the discussion will always disintegrate into a shouting contest) could have been Efraim, or the vendor at the kiosk near your house, or your GP. They all want the same thing, for you to be like them, to settle down, make babies, save yourself, themselves, the country, it won’t kill you!
Maybe it won’t kill you, maybe you’ll just wish it did.
Someone cranks up the volume and the music comes crashing back into the room with Nineties Swedish pop sensation Ace of Base crooning, All that she wants is another baby. Ah, Ronit and that famous sense of humour of hers. But where is she, Ronit? I cast my eyes around the living room but can’t find her anywhere. How long has it been since she disappeared with Eli?
I feel the full-body shaper clawing into my skin and scamper to the bathroom to peel it off, knowing it would be easier to shed my own skin. But at least I’ll be able to breathe again, even at the cost of visible flab.
I step into the bathroom, and what a surprise! Unlike the vanilla living room, the walls are painted a fiery red, and the toilet bowl is a shining, cold silver. On the wall to my right hangs a giant black-and-white poster, and who’s staring at me from the frame, with all her diabolical splendour? Who if not Lilith, flashing her familiar smile at me, Hey there, old friend, I’ve missed you, you didn’t think you’d g
et rid of me that easily, did you?
I carefully lower myself onto the toilet, keeping my eyes on the floor. I don’t want to accidentally see the painting again, with that dark smile, those giant teeth, the red lips, the big hands and what they’re holding. My mind is racing ahead, and I thank the lord that Micha isn’t here to see it. Not true. You wish he was here.
Coming out of the bathroom, I spot Eli and Ronit. They’re standing by the bedroom door, suspiciously quiet. I can’t read their body language: it seems to convey both intimacy and detachment. Eli isn’t looking at me, and Ronit is similarly staring off into space. I want to tell her I’m not into him and never was, so go ahead, baby, do whatever you feel like doing. Just like you’ve always done.
From the corner of the room I see the red-headed girl’s eyes on me, and now she seems even more familiar. Just as I decide to approach her, I feel a strong tug at my skirt. I turn around and see a flush-faced two-year-old.
“Look, car,” he says, one hand grabbing onto my leg and the other holding a big toy truck.
I give the toddler a perplexed glance. What is a sleepy two-year-old doing in the middle of Ronit’s pristine IKEA universe?
“Ari!” Taliunger rushes towards the child. “You don’t want to sleep?” she asks him, and without waiting for the toddler to answer, she turns to address the group around us, “We had to bring him along. He was supposed to sleep quietly in the bedroom.”
I lower my gaze and consider this child, Neria Grossman’s son. Lucky for him, he takes after his father, with all those fair curls. He’s pulling at my leg again. “Car! Car!” he squeals.
I feel the piercing looks of those around me as I crouch in front of the boy. It’s the same old test, the only one that matters, and how is she with babies? Each category will be scored and tabulated, I have to show just the right amount of affection (not too much!), straightforwardness (not too much!) and geniality (not too much!), but don’t worry, years of practice have imbued me with surgical precision. I get down to business.
“What a nice car!” I say.
“Mine!” he shrieks and pouts. A thread of spittle dangles from his pacifier and Taliunger lunges in to wipe it, but pauses midway.
“Of course it’s yours,” I say and lean closer to him. He’s purring with delight and beaming with puppy excitement, and his expression remains just as gleeful as he takes his toy truck and slams it into my face.
I’m seeing stars, flashes of light, and my nose feels like it was smashed to smithereens.
My ears are ringing with the sound of panicked cries as well as a few snickers. My fists curl into balls, pumping to the beat of the blood, laugh, laugh it off! Never show you’re in pain.
“Ari! What did you do?!” Taliunger rushes to swoop up her child and begins to deliver a scolding, but I can hear the laughter bubbling underneath the admonishing tone, and soon the entire living room is awash with giggles. Now Neria is smiling, and even Eli’s lips twist upwards, though he still won’t look me in the eye.
I get up slowly, swaying solemnly, and stagger to the mirror. Other than a hint of swelling on both sides, my nose looks pretty much the same, but the pain is crushing and throbbing.
“Want some ice?” Ronit’s voice cuts through the fog in my head; her eyes are red and conspiratorial as she approaches me and whispers, “Here,” handing me a pack of frozen peas. “Poor thing,” she adds. She’s radiating genuine compassion, and just like that and all at once, I’ve had enough of her, of the sudden sincerity she manages to draw out of herself only in the presence of real pain.
That’s it, I’m out of here, next time I’ll know better than to poke and pry into the past. The past will always come back to haunt us, although the thing that just whacked me in the face was the future.
“Happy birthday, have a good one,” I tell Ronit and turn to leave, but not before she leans in and whispers in my ear the words I’ll eventually repeat more than once to the cops, to their sceptical gazes and endless barrage of questions. They’ll try to challenge my account and plant doubt in my mind, but I won’t budge from my story because I remember exactly what happened that night in the middle of the living room. Ronit looked me in the eye and whispered: “It’ll be my last.”
12
ACCORDING TO THE police report, Ronit was murdered shortly before sunrise.
The papers regurgitated the “in the dead of night” frill, and just like with Dina, they disclosed all the hair-raising details. And hairs they did raise.
She was found naked, tied to her white EKTORP armchair, nope, not white, soaked with Ronit’s blood – drained to the last drop! – with a small baby doll glued to her hands, and her forehead serving as a billboard for the most daunting word of all: “Mother.”
The detectives couldn’t establish whether it was the same handwriting that had appeared on Dina’s forehead, but the lipstick was the same hot red – the least maternal shade imaginable.
When I read that her body was found three days after the murder, the first thing I thought about was the smell.
It seemed like an especially cruel twist of irony that Ronit, for all her fancy Lagoon perfumes, Ronit, who always walked around in a cloud of sumptuous scents, was eventually found smelling what I can only imagine was less-than-fresh.
It was her boyfriend who found her, returning from abroad and walking straight into the horrifying scene that awaited him in the living room.
Even when envisioning the atrocity, I couldn’t help but feel a bristle of betrayal. Boyfriend? She had a boyfriend? Later I learned it was one of those breezy, strings-loosely-attached relationships, with him overseas most of the time. And yet, Ronit had a boyfriend. And a doll. See? They all get reeled in in the end.
The detective duo who appeared at my door took me by surprise.
I was almost finished unpacking boxes, my hairballs ceremoniously resting at the bottom of the garbage can, is it possible there were significantly fewer balls than usual? I didn’t bother taking down The Witch of Endor because Micha had already seen the painting, and its absence would only draw his leery attention to it all over again, which is the last thing I wanted after what I saw in Ronit’s bathroom. And out of nowhere, gling-gling went the doorbell, and the detective duo burst into my living room.
She – a diminutive figure with pinprick black eyes and a ponytail. He – heavy and froggish with a fleshy tongue that looked too big for his mouth. I couldn’t stand either of them from the minute I opened the door, and the sentiment was mutual, even if they tried to hide it at first.
“So, who do you think killed her?”
Just like that, straight to the point, no chit-chat or pleasantries. It was the short one, of course, her beady black eyes pricking the living room while Froggy plopped his fat arse on the only comfortable armchair in the room. And it ain’t a white EKTORP.
“I don’t know,” I reply, “but I’m guessing it’s the same sick perv who killed Dina Kaminer, right?”
“Interesting point,” she says, leaning against another shaky shelf, and I don’t dare tell her to move away from it. “Very interesting.”
She drags out the “very” with a mocking drawl, as if she’s watched all the same American detective movies I myself have watched, and I’m waiting for her to pull a box of doughnuts out of her bag and offer me one.
“You don’t think it’s strange that you knew both victims?”
“There were others at the party who knew them both,” I say. Neria Grossman’s and Taliunger’s faces flit before my eyes, and for a split second, Eli’s face flashes and fades, just like he faded into her bedroom.
“How did you know the murder took place right after the party?” Froggy interjects with a triumphant tone. The short one closes her eyes and sighs.
“Because it appeared in the papers,” I reply, and for a moment feel sorry for the fun-sized detective who at least comes across as a sentient being, for having been partnered up with such a half-wit.
“So why do you think we’re
here?” she asks.
“I have zero idea.” I also have no idea why these two are here instead of Micha. O, Micha, where art thou?
“Where were you on the night of the murder, after the party?” Froggy probes, and it’s Micha’s voice that rings in my ears with the words the night of the murder, but this time I’m armed with the right answer.
“I was at the ER,” I reply. “I went to check if my nose was broken.”
Shorty tries to hide it, but a laugh escapes her twitching lips, and for a moment she looks like Taliunger – just one more woolly haired gnome bursting into laughter at my breaking bones.
The ER is aglow with blinding neon lights as I stagger in.
Hours of steadily exacerbating pain convinced me that I better go to the hospital to see what the little heir to the house of Grossman has done to my nose.
“Yes?” the receptionist asks, without bothering to look up from the form in front of her.
“I think I broke my nose,” I reply, and finally receive a look. It’s surprisingly unsympathetic.
“How did you get here?”
“Alone.”
Alone!
“Married?”
“No.”
And no!
Later they’ll explain to me that the receptionist’s questions are designed to rule out the possibility of domestic abuse. Turns out they get quite a few of those around here, lonely women limping into the ER in the middle of the night, and the nose just happens to be the body’s first line of defence.
When the X-ray technician asks me if I’m pregnant, I burst into wild laughter. The medical staff tonight all sounds like a bunch of nosy aunts at the Passover table. I’m still laughing when he fits me with the grey lead apron.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, no tot, no tot.
“Rest assured, we’ll check the hospital records,” Shorty says, scribbling something in her notepad.