by Sarah Blau
“Why did you tell her I’m here?” he asks, and his threatening expression fades into an insulted pout, which I’m not buying even for a second.
“I did it for you,” I say with a sickly sweet tone. “So she won’t feel like you tricked her and clam up.”
“I would’ve made her open up without your help,” he says, “and pardon me for saying so, but this overprotective shtick isn’t becoming.”
We sit silently under the Witch of Endor’s gaze, and I have no doubt that if I returned the look, I’d find her expression to be one of complete content. But I don’t look up.
The veil of silence has yet to lift. I remember he once told me that silence is a powerful weapon in interrogations. Very few people can bear it for long stretches, so they start blabbing away, and eventually talk themselves into jail.
I think about Naama, who was never a chatterbox, never one to trip over her tongue, but what point is there being careful with words if you’re just going to end up dangling from the ceiling?
But the eerie glee in Gali’s voice is unnerving, and it makes me wonder again what she remembers from that period. She remembered you, didn’t she. Does she remember anything from those actual moments of horror? From the moments when her own mother turned on her?
Naama picking up a big white pillow, the red lampshade bathing the room in a blood-coloured glow.
I wonder how they took care of her afterwards, if they even sent her to a therapist or preferred to keep all the “unpleasantness” in the family. (I could swear that’s what one of the relatives mumbled during the funeral, “unpleasantness” she called it, and I asked myself whether it was the aunt they brought in from the States to take care of her. I didn’t dwell on it because that’s exactly when Avihu noticed us out of the corner of his eye and lunged with his “Get the hell out of here.”)
Only God knows how Gali turned out to be this impressive young woman, when all she had left was a screw-up like Avihu for a father. His tall, stooped figure flashes before me, with his sunken mouth, the dead look in his eyes, the stale smell of cigarettes surrounding him like a cloud. But he wasn’t always like this, something made him become like this.
“Just an idea, but is it possible that someone went into Naama’s bedroom, saw that she strangled her daughters, and then hanged her? As punishment?” I ask.
“You mean the husband?” Micha immediately replies, as if he’s been waiting for that question. “Avihu Malchin was cleared of any involvement, and believe me, they looked at his alibi from every angle and it was airtight. The husband is always the first suspect.”
Well, duh. The closer he is to you, the more likely to hurt you.
She came more quickly than I expected. We’re sitting there, still entangled in silence, when the doorbell rings. Unlike the Grossmans’ genteel wind chimes, my doorbell produces the grating blast of a train horn. All aboard the midnight train to nowhere!
I open the door gingerly, wanting to at least try to whisper something to her, but she walks right past me inside, a pair of long, slender legs stepping into the apartment. Hey, girlie, what pretty legs you’ve got!
She’s wearing a dark, tight-fitting dress of a fabric too thick and dense for the weather we’re having, and it only reinforces my suspicion that it isn’t part of her everyday wardrobe. No, she wore this little number for me.
Behind me, Micha gets up, stretches out and clears his throat. “Nice to meet you,” he says, “we haven’t had the chance to meet until now.”
Now he’s staring at her, his eyes running the full length of her body: neck, chest, stomach, legs. I’d like to think of it as the usual dirty-old-man eyeing young flesh, but on second, painful thought, I realize they’re too close in age, so close in fact, that if I had started early, they could both have been my children. Yeah, right, as if this is the look a brother would fix on his sister.
“Gali, did you forget you’re coming to Bnei Brak?” I can’t believe my own schoolteacherly tone. “What were you thinking with that dress?” Shut up, you moron!
With the two of them ogling me, I force myself to laugh, and it comes out sounding like an old witch’s cackle. “It was a joke! Come on, you can’t take a joke?”
No, they can’t. I’m trying to catch Micha’s gaze but he’s avoiding me, and what’s worse, Gali seems to have noticed, because all of a sudden she straightens her back and lifts her chin. And boobs.
“Cute place,” she says, and sweeps her gaze across the living room with a look that seems more gauging and scrutinizing than it should. No, this Gali is nothing like the tiny, bleary-eyed munchkin that pressed up against me by Jezebel’s cage. Nothing at all.
But why does she need to be miserable for you to love her?
I catch the flicker of hesitation in her eyes as she sits herself down in the armchair, probably because of the stains I couldn’t get out, despite the very clear instructions in the various tutorials I found on YouTube. What can you expect when you get a hand-me-down living room set from a family of six? You should be grateful!
She glances at the cookie dish, and I say in too loud a voice, “Help yourself,” even though we can both see the bowl is practically empty. But I can’t bring myself to go to the kitchen and leave these two alone. Sheila, come on, don’t be one of those fairy-tale evil stepmothers, suffering from youth-envy.
“I’ll pop into the kitchen to get some more,” I mumble with some effort, and head to the kitchen. I feel like I’m plodding through cement compared to Gali’s nimble, gazelle-like stride, and get the sudden urge to kick her in the shins.
The new pack of cookies rips in my hand. I’m starting to sense the same heaviness I get whenever a man I’m into shows interest in another woman. This has happened to me before, more than once.
My mouth is still filled with a bitter, metallic taste when I return to the living room and place the bowl of cookies on the table. They’re filled with jam. One of them has broken and the reddish filling oozed out. Obviously, that’s the one Gali chooses.
“Looks like the cookie’s having an abortion,” she giggles, red curls bouncing, red lips parted with laughter. She picks up her phone. “This one’s going straight on Insta. No filters needed.”
Now they’re both messing with her phone, and the quick intimacy that has sprung up between them is unmistakable. It looks so natural and easy, but I remind myself that the same kind of instant intimacy also sparked between us, even if it was quickly followed by that awful, hollow gaze he fixed on me that night when he thought I was asleep.
And now Gali is fixing her own gaze on his tattooed arm, and I wonder whether he’s going to tell her about her mother and the tefillin, but he doesn’t. Instead, he flexes his muscle, making the letters dance, while she gapes at him and giggles. Giggles!
Yes, I’ll take the blubbering little orphan Gali over this simpering Sally any day.
Then I hear him say, “Someone talked me into it,” and I understand he’s referring to his tattoo. “Someone who could talk me into anything,” he adds, and now he’s giggling too.
The toddlers’ teeth are set on edge.
No, this visit is not going the way it should have. I fold my hands over my stomach, feeling the swell of my flesh while staring at her impossibly thin waist, rumour has it that certain Hollywood actresses undergo rib-removal surgery to achieve a narrower waist. I try to understand whether there’s a reason that all these emotions are suddenly roiling inside me in the middle of my living room; maybe it’s another one of his interrogation techniques? After all, Micha only has two modes: good cop and better cop, who also flirts with you, as a bonus.
Gali finally gets up and takes her camera out of her bag. She tries to mount it on the tripod and fumbles. He rushes to her aid, of course, and their movements seem so in sync that they look like a four-armed creature (tanned, slender, young arms). I can’t ignore the stealthy side glances Micha sneaks her way, and I’m starting to think he really does like her.
And when my mouth fills wi
th that metallic taste again, my phone GLING!s with an incoming message.
I’m sorry. I wasn’t myself. Hope you can forgive me. Neria.
Ha! The prodigal son. Obviously, this serves as an instant pick-me-up. Turns out my switch is easier to flip than I thought. All I need is to feel wanted. I read the text again and again, scouring for subtext and plot.
“So how’s your dad?” I ask, a question Gali has earned fair and square.
“He’s fine,” she replies absent-mindedly, and adds while looking in Micha’s direction, “He and Sheila don’t exactly get along.”
“Actually, I’d like to talk to you about that,” he says.
I notice her tensing. Out of the corner of my eye, I see that Micha has noticed as well, but pretends he hasn’t and starts tinkering with one of the zippers on the camera case.
“So when would be a good time to meet, just the two of us?” he asks, looking up at her.
My perked ears register the flirtatious tone, but I also pick up on something else, a subtle undertone smelling of detective’s guile. While he might actually be into her, he’s also no fool, this Micha.
I shift my gaze back to Gali and see just the slightest wrinkle of her nose, telling me that she too recognized and did not appreciate the undertone, and I wonder what I can say to alleviate the tension; but before I can come up with an ice-breaker, a miracle happens – the camera doesn’t work! Gali tries and tries, checks the battery, presses buttons and plays with the aperture, but nothing.
Conked out.
“Let me try,” Micha suggests, but she won’t.
“I’ll come back some other time,” she says, pops the camera into its case and starts heading for the door.
I want to call out to her, Wait, you fool, don’t let him see you’re afraid. But I don’t say a word, a decision prompted by Micha’s lingering look at her long legs and shapely little behind packed in her tight dress. Joseph Pilates himself couldn’t whip my arse back into that shape. Nope, it would take a dip in the fountain of youth.
“A paragon of professionalism,” I can’t help but blurt out the second the door closes.
“Nice of you to worry about my job,” he retorts.
In lieu of answering, I get up and bend over the coffee table to start clearing the nasty dishes, to clear everything that’s nasty, but he grabs my arm and pulls me back to the couch, next to him. His touch is strong and intimate at the same time. I sink into the cushion.
“Say, how did Dina react to Naama’s suicide?”
The question – which makes it clear that he’s abandoned the theory that Naama was murdered – surprises me. I’ve already learned that it’s better not to show him too many of my cards, so I keep a calm and composed expression. Free of worry wrinkles.
Obviously, there was nothing calm or composed back then. None of us could be calm, not with her suicide taking place only a day after that get-together. The knife! Take the knife from her! I wondered if Naama told Avihu about it. After he kicked us out of her funeral, I thought she must have told him, but I’m not so sure any more.
“Dina is the key,” he says, and there’s something in his tone that I can’t quite put my finger on, “the first victim is always the key to solving a case, especially when it’s someone like her.”
“So now you’re positive she was the first victim?” I want to make sure.
“A woman like Dina will always want to be the first.”
Now I can put my finger on it, and I don’t like it. Not one bit. I stare at the nearly empty bowls in front of me. Even the crumbs look gross.
“From what I understand she was the dominant figure in every area of her life, even in the Others, even the decision to not have kids.”
“We made that decision together,” I say. “It’s what we all wanted. It worked for us.”
“Is it still working?” he asks very quietly.
“It’s something that sinks in and sets,” I reply, surprising even myself. “It forms inside you slowly, and then you realize it’s where your life is heading, even if there are questions and doubts along the way.”
I fall silent, realizing I said more than I wanted to, but it’s the truth. With or without Dina, the choice of a childless life is something that settles and congeals very slowly, maybe too slowly, along with other life choices. And what was right for us during our youth, for the women we were back then, isn’t necessarily right for us in our adult life.
Because what we wanted back in college was one thing and one thing only: to make sure we didn’t become like everyone else, didn’t veer down the popular path of snagging a prince and popping out babies and accidentally falling asleep for a thousand years. The Others was our act of defiance against this path. Today I realize it was a pretty juvenile gesture. Today I can also understand that the “everyone else” that used to terrify us isn’t so bad; it’s just not for me, and not necessarily out of defiance but out of a deep, visceral knowledge.
I look at Micha with what I hope passes as indifference. If only he knew what his question sparked in me, or maybe he does know and that’s exactly why he asked.
My gaze drifts across the armchairs, stained with the marks of other people’s children. No matter how hard I scrubbed the upholstery, the stains wouldn’t budge; they’re still here, as if celebrating a private victory. But over who?
“You sound less decisive than usual,” Micha says, and I see a hint of a smile. “What would Dina say?”
Again with Dina?
“I don’t know, she’s dead,” I say, and head to the toilet, only to discover the first bloodstain, dark and curdled like all first stains, and I stare at it and then reach down and touch my pants, worrying the fabric, waiting for the sweet wave of relief to wash over me, and it indeed arrives, but not as quickly as I thought it would, not at all.
I stay there, sitting on the toilet, counting the floor tiles in front of me over and over again like a record stuck in a groove, until I hear Micha calling out from the living room asking if everything’s okay, and I shout back, Yeah, sure, of course, everything’s fine, fine, fine, fine, fine.
Just fine.
21
DINA’S SPRAWLED OUT on the grass, her hair spilling over her face like a veil. To the innocent onlooker she probably looks calm and at peace, but I can see how tense she is. She wants to catch you.
This memory is alive and vivid. Funny how I’ve forgotten everything I learned inside the classrooms of Bar-Ilan University ages ago, but everything I learned outside the classroom is still as fresh as if it happened this morning.
In that memory, Ronit and Naama are also splayed on the grass, surrounded by open notebooks, the air rich with the warm and sweet end-of-spring scent. Maybe I knew while it was happening that that’s how I wanted to remember us, a bunch of students lazing on the grass under a soft sun. I think there was even a butterfly fluttering around us, landing on the tip of Dina’s nose, but I have to say I’ve begun to doubt the accuracy of this memory.
“Having a kid is supposed to be a guarantee that you’ll leave something behind,” Dina says, with a semi-sleepy voice that doesn’t fool me for a minute. “That a part of you will live on, that you’ll be remembered.”
“It’s not completely far-fetched,” I reply, and hear Ronit giggling behind me (maybe the butterfly landed on her nose?).
“What’s your mum’s name?” Dina asks, and the question takes me by surprise.
“Sarah.”
“And her mum?”
“Bella.”
“And her mum?” Dina’s voice has lost its feigned drowsiness, and I recognize that subtle quality creeping into it.
“Sheila!” I call out triumphantly, “You didn’t think I’d know, did you?”
“Honestly, I’m surprised you know,” she admits, “but that’s only because you’re a narcissist. If you weren’t named after her, there’s no way you’d know your great-grandmother’s name.”
Ronit is giggling behind me again, but this time I kno
w it’s not because of the butterfly. Dina props herself up on her elbows, the curtains of her dark straight hair parting to reveal her fair skin. She looks like an Inuit with a pair of bulging black spotlights for eyes.
“I’m willing to bet neither of you know the names of your great-grandmothers,” she says to Ronit and Naama. “I actually conducted a little survey here on campus, and almost no one knows, or even cares to know. And yet everyone’s so worried about leaving something behind, living on in people’s memories…”
Dina scoffs. Ronit and I join her, and all our snickering soon turns into hysterical giggles. I remember that laughing fit on the grass, and I remember the butterfly, yes, there was a butterfly there, I’m sure of it now, and the three of us laughed and laughed until our sides hurt.
It’s a shame that by then Naama wasn’t laughing along with us.
The bead eyes of the wax figurines are glimmering in front of me. “You came back to us,” they’re saying, “and this time it’s for good.” When Efraim called to ask me to come back to work, I had no idea how happy I’d be to see them again, and now I realize I missed them a lot more than I missed my colleagues.
And here they are before me, my dear old friends, shiny and polished of dust (maybe I could book the museum cleaners for a one-off emergency gig at my place?). I move slowly from one figurine to the next, until I reach Michal’s.
The crown is perched on her head more crookedly than usual. I straighten it and study her beautiful, sad face. I think I’m starting to understand the reason for her sadness, and it has nothing to do with her not having kids, and everything to do with the dude she married, because that’s what happens when a princess marries a shepherd. Especially when her deepest desires – even those she isn’t aware of – aren’t compatible with his. Compatibility is everything.
Almost despite myself, I think about Micha, What’s the matter with you? Whatever you two had it was over before it started, and I also think about Maor, and about how they’re both twenty-six, they’re always twenty-six, frozen in time while I keep getting older.