To Be An Israeli: The Fourth Book in the All My Love, Detrick series

by Roberta Kagan

  Sometimes instead of going home after work, he would go to a nightclub, to have a few drinks and listen to American rock and roll. That had been something him and Katja, his ex-fiancé, had done together. So when he went to the clubs, he felt closer to the memory of Katja. Out of guilt, he had tried to share his love for the American music with Janice. But as he’d expected, they left the club in a heated argument. She’d accused him of eyeing some other girl and drinking too much.

  So he went back to going to the clubs alone. Sometimes on one of his darker, lonelier nights, he would find a willing woman and have a brief sexual encounter with her. He did this to remind himself that he was still the desirable man he’d once been.

  Marrying Janice had seemed like a good idea when they’d first met, but now Elan was beginning to feel trapped, suffocated—something he’d never felt with Katja. She had been a freer spirit. She had not tried to control his every move. Besides that, he missed his work in the IAF—the Israeli Air Force branch of the IDF—the Israel Defense Forces. He missed his freedom. Elan resented his mother and his wife for their constant fight for power, and he blamed them both for his miserable life.

  That night when he opened the door to the small, stifling rooms he shared with the two women in his life, Elan found his mother sitting at the kitchen table. Her small dark face was as red as oxblood, drawn in on itself and angry. He laid jacket on the back of a chair, and as he walked by, she gave him a snort like a bull. Another night in hell, Elan thought. He walked to his bedroom, to change his clothes, anticipating that his wife would be just as angry as his mother. Elan found the door to his room locked.

  “Janice, open the door.” He wanted to beat the hell out of her. He’d had enough of her childish whims. He would have liked to take a swing at his mother, too. God help him. If his father only knew the man he was becoming.

  “I don’t feel like seeing anyone right now,” Janice said. Elan could hear in her voice that she’d been crying.

  “I need to get into my room. I’m tired and hungry. I don’t feel like having this bullshit fight again. Open the door now, Janice!”

  He twisted the handle to find the door still locked. Fueled by frustration, he shouted, “I said open the door!” He began banging his fist on the door. Pain shot through his wrist, but he continued to pound.

  When she didn’t answer, his anger grew stronger. “Fuck you, Janice! Open the fucking door!” He kicked the door and hurt his ankle. This only served to fuel his rage.

  “I told you to tell your mother that it’s none of her fucking business where I go when I go out. Every time I go to the store, she expects an itinerary. Who the hell does that woman think she is? She has no right to tell me what I can and can’t do. I asked you to tell her that. But you didn’t talk to her, did you, Elan? You’re a coward and a loser, too. You barely make enough money to keep us in this shithole of a house, and I’m supposed to put up with your bitch of a mother, too?”

  “Open the fucking door!” he shouted, pounding on the wood. His hand ached, but he couldn’t stop hammering.

  She opened the door. Elan restrained himself. He wanted to slap her, slap her so hard that she hit the wall and then punch her until she would be quiet forever.

  “Get out of my way,” he said. “I want to get out of these clothes and take a shower.”

  “I don’t care what you want. Your mother is on my nerves.”

  He pushed her out of his way and grabbed the old stretched-out jeans he wore around the house and a black tee shirt. He then turned and went into the bathroom with his hand still balled up in a fist.

  The hot water from the shower relaxed him. He began to feel his muscles loosen.

  As soon as Elan pulled out the chair at the kitchen table, he felt the tension begin again. He had come home from work hungry, but the atmosphere in the dilapidated house was killing his appetite.

  As she always did, his mother was putting on her act. She was pretending to be a caring, loving mother whose only concern was the welfare of her son. But Elan saw right through her, and he knew her motives were anything but warm. His mother did small things that she knew would irritate his wife. Tonight his mother had purposely prepared boiled fish which she knew Janice despised. Although if he asked his mother, Elan knew she would never admit that she had any idea how repelled Janice was by this meal.

  The thick, black skin was hanging loosely from the white flesh of the whole fish in the dish in front of him. Its dull, golden eyes stared out at nothing. Elan dared not look up at Janice’s face because he figured she was probably gagging. She’d told him how nauseating the black fish was to her. So instead of giving Janice the opportunity to react, Elan kept his head down and ate quietly. No one spoke. The only sounds were the sounds of silverware clicking against the glass dishes.

  Janice had her arms folded over her chest. She had not touched a single morsel on the table and finally got up and walked out of the room.

  “She doesn’t even help me clean up,” Elan’s mother said to him. “This is how a daughter-in-law should treat her mother-in-law?”

  “You know she hates this fish. You did this on purpose, Mother.”

  “How could you accuse me of that? Why would I do something like that?”

  “Because you two don’t get along, because you’re constantly looking for ways to aggravate each other.” Elan threw his fork on the table. “It’s driving me crazy. I’m trying to keep peace here. I go to work every day. I pay the rent and all the bills, and then I come home, and every night it’s this…”

  “This what?”

  “You know what you’re doing, Mother. Janice is as stubborn as you are, and to tell you the truth, I’ve had it with all of this.”

  “So you’re going to divorce her?”

  “That’s what you want, isn’t it? You want me all to yourself.”

  “That’s terrible that you should think of me like that. I want you to have a wife and children.”

  “Of course, you do, Ma…”

  “Elan!”

  “Just like you want Aryeh and Brenda to be happy. You’re always causing trouble between them, too. But they don’t live with you, so you can’t get to them as much. Janice and I live here, and you’re right in the middle causing of all of our troubles.”

  “I feel sick. My own son, my flesh, and blood, the child who I sacrificed everything for, thinks of me as his enemy. All I ever wanted was what was best for you.”

  “You never liked any of the women I brought home.”

  “Are you talking about that Katja? Elan, please, how could you bring such a girl home to me? She was not for you, Elan. She didn’t even look Jewish.”

  “But she was Jewish, Mama.”

  “Not from what Aryeh told me. He said she was adopted and her birth parents…”

  “She was raised on a kibbutz. She knows nothing else but Judaism.”

  “Her parents were Nazis. That makes her not Jewish, in my book.”

  “And what book is that, Mama? It’s not the Torah, that’s for sure.”

  “Hmmm,” she grumbled. “I’ve had enough. I never thought you would talk to me this way. You’ve turned on me. I feel like I have a serpent living in my own house. If your father were still alive, you would never show me disrespect.”

  “I’m not being disrespectful. I just know how you think.”

  “What did I ever do to anyone that I should have such a terrible son?” She crossed her arms in front of her chest and glared at him.

  Elan walked out of the room and went to his bedroom where Janice waited, sitting propped up against the headboard of the bed, with her arms crossed over her chest.

  “All day long she treats me like shit. I want you to get us our own place. I want to move out of here, Elan.”

  “We can’t. I can’t afford to pay two rents. I can hardly afford to pay for this place.”

  “I don’t understand why you have to take care of your mother. Didn’t your father leave any money for her? My God, Elan.
I can’t stand it anymore.”

  He shook his head “I don’t know what to do, Janice. She has no place else to go and no money.”

  “Why doesn’t your brother take her for a while?”

  “Because this is her home. She was living here with me before I married you. How can I just put her out on the street?”

  “So you choose your mother instead of your wife? That’s it, isn’t it, Elan? That’s all there is to it? I don’t really count as anything important in your life.”

  “I can’t choose between you and my mother. I just wish you would try to get along with her. Can’t you just let her have her way for a while? She’s older and set in her ways. Try a little harder to make her like you. She’ll get used to you if you do that, and then she won’t be so difficult.”

  “Fuck you, Elan. Why don’t you tell her to kiss my ass instead of telling me to kiss hers?” she yelled at him. “I’ll tell you why…because she is more important to you than I am; that’s why.”

  “That’s not it at all. It’s because she’s a lonely, old woman. You’re young. If you could just see her for what she is…”

  “And what is that, Elan. What is she?”

  “My mother has nothing left but her sons, two boys who have both grown up and no longer need her. My sister has married and moved to America. She never even calls, not even on my mother’s birthday. Don’t you see how sad my mother is? She is a woman whose husband is gone. Be gentle with her, Janice. She has it harder than you know.”

  “She’s a bitch. She does everything she can to make my life a living hell. I wanted a dog. She says she’s allergic. Of course, she is. How convenient. If I had wanted a bird, she would have been allergic to that.

  Every time I leave the house, she wants to know where I’m going. She watches the clock and times when I leave and when I get back. Elan…she has the nerve to time me, to see how long I’m gone. Can’t you understand? I can’t take her anymore. Every time I cook something and put it in the refrigerator, I find it in the trash. She makes me feel like I don’t belong here. I can’t stand her. I can’t.”

  With each passing minute, his head felt like it was swelling, and soon it might explode. The throbbing was unbearable. If anyone knew how hard his mother was to live with, he did, but Janice was no picnic either. Even though right now he had no desire to touch her, he knew what he had to do to settle Janice down. “Come here,” he whispered, pulling her close to him. “Shh…I love you,” he cooed into her hair, and she melted in his arms. This worked like a charm most of the time. They made love and for a while she was quiet. But just as Elan was drifting off to sleep, Janice said, “I really would like to get our own place, Elan. I think you should tell Aryeh that it’s his turn to take her. You’ve done your part. Have your mother move in with Aryeh and Brenda.”

  Elan took a deep breath. His headache was getting so bad he thought he might vomit. “I’m tired. Let’s talk in the morning,” he grunted at her in exhaustion and disgust andthen turned over and fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 24

  Janice adored Elan for the same reasons she hated him. He was strong, sexy, irresistible, and incredibly attractive. Wherever they went, women still turned to admire him. He was the confident Israeli with his oversized muscles and his shirt open to reveal a tanned but hairless chest. Elan was the first person Janice had ever been close to that she could not dominate, and that drove her crazy. She kept trying, but he was too strong for her.

  On the other hand, Elan felt that he’d lost all of his sex appeal. He felt old and flabby, even though it was not true. His job didn’t challenge him. Instead, it gave him an overwhelming feeling of uselessness. His present conditions seemed to have thwarted all of his dreams. Where he had once been so strong, he now felt weak and defeated, and he’d begun to hate himself. Somehow he’d found himself burdened with supporting his mother while his brother was off living his life as he pleased. Although Elan would never admit it to Janice, he resented his mother.

  And even worse, any feelings he’d ever had for Janice had dimmed. As time went on, he realized that he really might not have ever loved her at all. He damned himself for it, but Katja was still the love of his life. He knew that when they were together, and he still knew it now. A full week never passed that he did not think of her, that he did not remember some small thing they’d shared, or the sound of her laughter, or some other haunting memory that drove him to despair.

  When he’d broken their engagement, he felt the obligation to marry someone who was of pure Jewish blood. He’d been raised to believe that this was his purpose, and he’d felt it so strongly that he could not see beyond that obligation. Now that it was over, Katja was gone, and he was married to Janice. All of his days were filled with regret.

  The night following the fight with Janice and his mother, Elan stopped at a dance club on his way home from work. He wanted to have a few drinks, listen to some music, and unwind before he had to return to the ever-constant misery that engulfed his life. When he entered the club, the jukebox was playing a song that he loved by the American musician Jerry Lee Lewis. The dance floor was filled with young people jumping and jiving. Elan loved the atmosphere and the life all around him.

  He ordered a whiskey and sat down to watch the dancers and began tapping his fingers on the bar to the rhythm of the music. Elan loved to dance. He couldn’t help but remember the night when he had taught Katja to jitterbug. At first, she was clumsy. Elan smiled to himself. But by the end of the night, she’d moved so gracefully in sync with him that he hardly felt her presence. It was as if they moved as one body.

  “Ohhh babbby, you drive me crazy…” the voice on the jukebox came blasting through the speakers loud and clear.

  Elan poured the whiskey down his throat and ordered another. It burned as it flowed down through his chest like a hot river soothing all the way to his belly. Tonight he wanted to leave every memory of his marriage behind. He wanted to find a woman with long, flowing, blond hair and pretend she was Katja. Elan wanted to hold her in his arms and make love to her. He wanted to feel alive again, to feel strong, and to feel excited about life, to feel the way that he did when he was still engaged to Katja.

  Even though Elan had enough alcohol to ignite his imagination, he was not able to find anyone in the bar who remotely reminded him of Katja. As he watched the others dancing and laughing, he felt disconnected and alone. The music that had made him feel lighthearted only an hour earlier was now beginning to seem sad and depressing.

  He thought about Janice. He’d made a promise to Janice. Elan had stood under the chuppah and promised to love and cherish her for the rest of his life. At the time he’d made those vows, he’d really believed that he could escape from his past and from his feelings. He hoped that somehow, someway, his love for Katja would disappear with time. He’d thought that his wife would erase his pain and shelter him in the overpowering love she felt for him. In fact, he’d convinced himself that in time, he would forget Katja and fall in love with Janice. It had not happened. Instead, he felt smothered. When he looked at Janice, all he wanted was to be free of her and all of his promises to her and his promises to his mother.

  “Give me another whiskey,” Elan told the bartender.

  The whiskey no longer burned his throat. Now it just eased his mind. Soon he would have to go home and face the same old stuff. Worse, Janice would be mad that he was so late. She would carry on, yelling and stomping her little feet.

  It scared him—how much he wanted to slap her, shove her against the wall and hit her until he saw fear in her eyes. Elan wanted her to know his strength, to be so terrified that she would never dare to anger him again. The drink made it easy for Elan to smile at the thought of using his strength to subdue the spoiled brat he’d married. One more whiskey, he thought, and then I’m going to head home and show both of those women who is the real boss of the house.

  After he finished paying the bar bill, Elan went outside and began to walk home. The night air was
cool and sobering, sobering enough to make him want to sit down on the curb and weep for his loss, weep for his future…weep in his drunken stupor. Of course, he would never do such a thing. But he felt like it…

  “Where have you been?” Janice demanded before Elan had a chance to close the door to the house.

  “I went out with a friend for his birthday,” Elan said, immediately disgusted with himself for feeling the need to justify himself to her. Who the hell was she to question him?

  “Without calling me, Elan? What were you thinking?”

  “Sorry,” he said, shrugging in a nonchalant way to make sure that she knew he really wasn’t sorry.

  “Elan, you’re a married man. You can’t come and go as you please. I’ve been waiting for you, worrying about you, holding dinner for you. Everything is cold. You are impossible. I don’t know how I can go on, between you and that bitch of a mother of yours…”

  “Shut up. You hear me? Shut up,” he said, walking toward her like a lion about to attack.

  “You stink of alcohol.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. I’ve been drinking.”

  “Elan. What the hell are you doing? You listen to me. You can’t just go out on the town whenever you please and stay out as late as you want… Are you seeing another woman? Are you cheating on me?” She pushed herself right up close to him, yelling loudly.

  He pushed her away from him, pushed her hard. Her eyes flew open wide. He saw the terror on her face, and he liked the way it made him feel. It made him feel strong, like he was once again the man in his house. He wanted to push her again, to hit her and keep hitting her. Elan wanted to shut her up forever.

  “Stop accusing me—stop telling me what to do… I’ve had it with your bullshit, Janice. Every night I have to come home to this fighting. I won’t put up with it anymore. Do you understand me?” His face was so close to hers that he could see her flinch at the smell of alcohol on his breath.