The Others

by Sarah Blau

  It always ends with a baby, you’ll all want one, just wait and see.

  Some biblical exegeses claim that even Miriam the prophetess ended up getting married and having three kids, and I always wondered whether the rabbis behind this interpretation couldn’t bear that such a powerful prophetess chose not to have babies, or just felt bad for the woman and decided to bestow upon her the sacred gift of childbirth.

  I expect the room to start spinning around me, but the naked walls are steady and still, Dina was pregnant. Everything sharpens and crystallizes like icicles, and all at once I realize just what has bugged me all along, what chafed at the edge of my consciousness at night before falling asleep, like an incessant itch.

  Because I knew, I did. I knew it the moment she opened the door, her face bloated with that subtle hormonal fullness, that rosy glow, the distinct scent of pregnancy that I could always sniff out on a woman, even from the way she walked and sat down. She was carrying. And I almost knew it.

  There, now you know.

  I can’t read the email, the letters are dancing on the screen. Dina was pregnant. But I feel Debby’s expectant gaze on me, and force myself to blink and focus on the very short text.

  Dear Sheila,

  You left my house in anger, and I’m very sorry for that. It’s not what I wanted. Quite the opposite. There was a happy reason behind my invitation, and I wanted to clear the air between us, to mend years of wrongdoing.

  You see, this is a period of renewal and great change for me, I—

  I raise my eyes from the screen and meet Debby’s pointed look. For some reason she doesn’t seem as nice now.

  “According to our timeline, she stopped writing to open the door for the killer.”

  I feel a stabbing pain when I imagine Dina bent over her keyboard, writing her reconciling words. I more than anyone know how hard it was for her to apologize, she never owned her mistakes, no matter what price she had to pay. “Only losers apologize, or stupid women,” she used to say with that famous determination of hers, but here it is, this apology, this pregnancy. Dina is the proof that people can change.

  Who knows, maybe you can too, one day.

  “We’re assuming that with her pregnancy, Dina decided to reach out to more people from her past, and it very well may be that one of them is our murderer.” Debby takes a noisy sip from a giant cup of coffee that I only now notice, and says, “So we want to go over the list of people you and Dina both knew again.”

  She takes another slurpy sip and gives me a conspiratorial look. I feel like telling her, “Oh, so now we’re best friends?” but I don’t have time for that. There’s someone on the list of “people you and Dina both knew,” knew very well indeed! that I’m going to see the moment they let me leave this place.

  24

  THE UGLY GREEN ceramic sign on his door announces: Yarden.

  For a moment I feel a surge of relief. At least that’s his real name, at least that wasn’t a lie. At least he’s not a figment of your imagination.

  Thrump, thrump! Thrump, thrump! I knock as hard as I can, pounding with balled fists. Thrump, thrump! My hands are starting to hurt, but I’m not giving up, I know he’s in there.

  “Open up! Open the door, you piece of shit!” I shout, “Open the door, arsehole!”

  When my shouts become too loud (had I known how liberating it is to scream at the top of your lungs, I would have started shouting a long time ago), the door opens abruptly, and he pulls me inside.

  Once my eyes adjust to the blinding neon light, we stare at each other silently. He’s wearing an old, loose-for-wear wife beater, looking grubbier than usual, his stubble darker than usual and eyes lighter than usual – their gaze flat and strange. The gaze of a dead snake.

  “I know you know,” he says quietly, almost whispering, his voice as flat and strange as the look in his eyes. The overly calm tone is enraging – he has no right to be calm.

  “You have no idea what I know!”

  “I know you know I’m not an official investigator on this case,” he says, still with the same flat tone.

  “You’re not anything on this case! You’re a nobody!”

  He slowly pulls away and settles into the armchair, almost sinking into it. Only now do I pause to sweep my gaze across the apartment, which is awash with a glaring light and sharp angles. It looks very new. Too new. Everything around us is glowing with surgical sterility, and there’s not a single personal item in the place apart from a giant wall clock, polished white, its enormous second hand sweeping across the dial. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

  Micha is still fixed to the armchair, looking like a wax figure lifted from the museum. Staring into space in a spectacular display of indifference, he ignores my presence, as if all at once he just stopped caring, or maybe he could only get his groove on when he was lying and pretending to be someone else. He looks like he’s mourning something. Someone.

  “I’m a volunteer in the detective division,” he says as if that explains everything.

  “A volunteer? So how did you get access to all that information?” I want to kill him, pummel him with my bare hands, rip him apart, tear off the cloak of indifference, sully this clean, impersonal apartment, which looks uninhabited. Although I can sense he lives here, that he’s exactly the type to leave no trace behind. Unlike me, with my breadcrumb trail wherever I go, for the children who’ll never follow…

  “Sheila, relax,” he says, and I have to wonder whether there’s a single person on the planet who ever responded well to that directive, let alone actually relaxed.

  “Relax?” I almost scream. Scream, scream.

  “My uncle is Amiram Yarden.” When he sees my blank expression, he adds, “The precinct commander.”

  “So the illustrious commander is okay with fraud?”

  His rapid blinking gives him away.

  “Ah, so he doesn’t know?” I jeer. “He doesn’t know what a lying loser his volunteer nephew is?”

  Shut up, you won’t get anything this way, shut your trap already, do a clean job and get what you want out of him.

  But shouting feels oh-so-good, so freeing. I realize how much I’ve been holding back in his presence, how hard I’ve been trying to be everything I’m not, everything I thought he wanted me to be, so much so that I made up some kind of ghost-Sheila that doesn’t exist. And since he came up with a fictional character for himself, I guess you could say we’re two peas in a fake pod. Or maybe four peas.

  I look up at the wall clock and notice that the giant hands resemble two sharp knives, and the second hand a thin scalpel spinning much too fast. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

  “He knew I was involved in the investigation in my own way,” he notes with carefully chosen words, “I had his unspoken consent.”

  We stare at each other again. Even with his body sunken in the soft white armchair, he still manages to look tall and straight-backed. I picture the boy who was ensnared in a back brace that forced him into sitting like this. Now he doesn’t need to be forced, the body has learned its lesson; there’s nothing the body doesn’t remember.

  “And why would the precinct commander allow you to meddle in the investigation in such an ugly way?”

  The second hand keeps spinning at full tilt, the tiny scalpel trapped between the two knives. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

  “I think you know why,” he says very quietly.

  Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

  He’s right, of course. In a way, I knew from the very first moment. Turns out I knew a lot of things. Good witches never lose their powers; they just decide sometimes that they’re better off not knowing; they know that in certain cases, living in denial is better than the alternative.

  “How long were you together, you and Dina?” I ask, feeling my lungs slowly fill with water. “How long?”

  While waiting for an answer, I remember how in every interview, Dina always took pride in the fact that “when it comes to men, I have a strict, casual, short-and-sweet po
licy,” and I know that if it turns out that he, of all people, was the one who got her to break that policy, it’ll hurt.

  “Only a few months,” he says. But it still hurts, because I hear that naked pining in his voice, that note that sounded in our very first meeting, when he told me, “my girlfriend was your age,” and even back then, even back then!, I detected a distant, dim echo coming off his words, but I chose not to listen, and it may have even made me want to get closer. And there were also those little moments when I could feel his admiration – excessive, in my opinion – for her, and when I felt the tiny pang of jealousy, I convinced myself it was just my regular Dina envy, but deep down I knew something else lay there, deeper and darker. The Others will always recognize each other. And as with the feeling of lurking danger, this too made me want to get closer to him.

  Didn’t I already tell you you’re a stupid baby? Dina’s voice whispers in my ear again, but I’m not listening to her, I know she’s wrong. I was never stupid, I just chose not to be smart, and while some choices are irreversible, this one I can change in a wink.

  “You were the father of her baby?”

  Tick-tock, tick-tock.

  His eyes fill with pain.

  No tot, no tot.

  “No chance,” he says, “she broke up with me more than a year ago.”

  Of course she’s the one who broke it off; Dina isn’t someone who gets dumped, Dina isn’t someone who gets ghosted after sex. Right now Dina is someone who’s dead, so you can ease off a little.

  “So who was the father?” I ask.

  “I don’t know.”

  “And who’s the killer?”

  Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

  “Don’t know that either.”

  But I do. And I know it’s not you, it could never have been you: because it’s a few sizes too big on you, because you’re just a little boy who happened to stumble into a grown-up’s world, because I find it ridiculous to even think Dina was into you, and that you yourself were? Because even this conversation, which should be dripping with drama, is plain boring. Because you’re boring, sitting here, a little boy in a wife beater, an empty shell of self-importance.

  “So you have no idea who the father could be?”

  “I think she went to a sperm bank. And I’m telling you, sometimes the sperm bank is probably best for everyone.”

  A small, bitter smile appears on his face, and his hand reaches for his tattoo. “You know Dina was the one who suggested I get this tattoo? She knew the story about my dad.”

  I look at him as he launches into a long monologue about an emotionally absent father and a hard-knock life, and I wonder why he’s telling me all this. Why now, when it’s all over? He’s sitting in front of me, going on and on, a diatribe full of rage and accusations against his father, with a passion that’s usually reserved for the early days of a relationship, especially if he’s the younger partner and you’re there to play “understanding adult,” even if we never played that game, thank God, and he’s still holding forth, and I can’t help but think how it always goes back to the starting point, the scene of the crime, the source of the genes, to what will be passed on from generation to generation; what is crooked can never be straightened. Never!

  “You know that tattoo of yours is a commonly misconstrued verse,” I cut him off in the middle of his sob story. “That sentence actually ends with a question mark. It’s ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge?’ The children are not supposed to pay for the sins of their fathers.” Or mothers.

  “I know, Dina explained it to me,” he says, again with that yearning in his voice, “she was the smartest person I knew.”

  I look at him and wonder whether I’ll ever stop feeling that prick of jealousy whenever someone praises her, and realize it’s probably just a matter of time. Tick-tock, sometimes it can actually work in your favour.

  “You see, my father is a sorry excuse for a human being, and this tattoo makes sure I never forget that.” He strokes his arm slowly, with lustful rapacity. It’s a spine-chilling gesture.

  “Fortunately, my uncle was there to save me,” he adds.

  “The precinct commander?”

  “Yeah, I owe him everything.”

  “And what will the illustrious commander say when he hears about what you did to me?”

  “What did I do to you?” He’s not playing coy, he genuinely thinks he did nothing wrong and I’m just being dramatic. I feel like knocking him off his armchair and kicking him so hard he’ll need that back brace again.

  “You tricked me! You lied!” You had sex with me, you left!

  “Oh, come on, Sheila, you’re a smart person.” I keep myself from asking if I’m “Dina smart,” and he goes on, “She talked about you a lot, Dina, and at first I thought there was a chance you did it. Although I have to say, the moment you opened the door, I knew it wasn’t you.”

  He says this as if he’s disappointed in me, that he thought less of me once he learned I wasn’t someone capable of murder. Although neither is he. Look at him sitting there, fondling his inane tattoo, eyeing me with self-satisfaction, when God only knows what he could possibly be satisfied about.

  “What are you looking at?” he asks.

  “I’m looking at an overgrown baby who’s pleased with himself, even though he has zero reason to be.”

  Yes, it’s definitely liberating. He seems surprised, and for a moment even insulted, but then he narrows his eyes and leans in, smiling, and says with an almost friendly tone, “So just for the record, and so you won’t leave here empty-handed, you should know that Ronit Akiva was also undergoing some very intensive IVF treatments.” When he notices my expression withering, he adds, “So Dina wasn’t the only one who wanted to become a mother. Turns out that in the end, they all want to become mothers; I mean, all the normal women do, so what does that say about you?”

  25

  MY LEGS ARE SHAKING but I keep walking. Dina wasn’t the only one, Ronit wanted it too.

  He obviously meant to hurt me with that, Micha, meant and succeeded, Ronit too! But it’ll take me some time to feel the full impact of that blow; right now my mind is racing with other thoughts, old insights, a muffled realization kicking and screaming inside me, trying to get out, Ronit was also undergoing IVF. Intensive treatments. Ronit too!

  I recall the party at Ronit’s, with Eli, all that crying, the mixed messages, running hot one moment and cold the next; it all makes sense now, as do her red eyes and that eerie whisper to me at the end of the party about her “last birthday.” She probably meant it was going to be her last birthday as one of the Others. By her next one, she’d be like everyone else.

  It’s all turning upside down. I pick up my pace, hurry, hurry!

  The realization sinks in deeper with every step I take: Dina and Ronit weren’t murdered because they didn’t want to be mothers, they were murdered for exactly the opposite reason; they were murdered because they wanted to be, they yearned for it, but someone out there decided it wasn’t going to happen, decided these women had to live with the choices they made long ago, and once they wanted something else, that someone made them pay for it.

  When that someone opens the door for me, I hear the sound of running water coming from the bathroom. It’s a slow, menacing burble.

  So this is what she has in store for me? The witch test? My senses perk up.

  “You’re early,” she says. With her auburn hair carefully combed and her smooth, fresh face, she looks like a little girl. Make no mistake, she’s not your little munchkin any more.

  She signals me to follow her into her room. I immediately notice that Jezebel’s cage is empty. A salty, metallic scent of blood still lingers in the air, bludgeoning my nostrils. Blood for blood.

  “I finally discovered who sent you that picture of the witch,” she says.

  “Who?” I ask dutifully, like a mother playing a very private game with her baby, trying to mollify her in a wor
ld whose rules no one understands but them.

  “Guess,” she says with a sly grin.

  “I really don’t know.”

  “Neria Grossman.” Noticing the disbelief in my eyes, she adds, “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  Holding up her phone to my face, she shows me a text sent to her: “The number is registered under the name Neria Grossman. Remember I did you a favour, and don’t tell anyone who you got this from!”

  Her small face beams with a proud smile.

  “You could have faked that text too.”

  “Oh, please,” she scoffs, “why would I want to frame that idiot, Neria?”

  “Maybe to shake me up?”

  “If I wanted to shake you up, I’d go for Micha,” she says. “By the way, I hope you know he was never into me, not even for a moment.” Now she sounds like a young woman trying to comfort the spurned spinster, but maybe she’s right. Maybe Micha wasn’t into her because of her tight black dress, maybe he was suspicious of her and that’s why he was so eager to get her over to my place. But why are you even thinking about that idiot now? He doesn’t exist! He’s not who he claimed to be, and maybe Neria Grossman isn’t who you think he is either? You were never good at choosing your love interests, were you?

  “Where’s Jezebel?” I ask.

  “Dead,” she replies.

  Like everyone else who wanted to become a mother.

  She approaches the empty cage and stands in front of it, and like last time, her hunched, thin back and slouched shoulders tug at my heart.

  “You want the cage?” she asks. “You look like the pet hamster type.”

  I know she’s trying to be cruel, but for some reason the remark makes me laugh, and while I can’t see her face, I can feel her smiling. Chemistry is a very mysterious thing. And it can be just as dangerous.

  “Gali, I know.”

  “So you want the cage or not?” she asks without turning to me.

  “I know.”