World Without You

by Joshua Henkin

  She still loves him. But it’s different now, and sometimes when she sees Amram in the pool with their boys, her husband who doesn’t know how to swim but who nonetheless insists on teaching them swimming, she remembers differently what happened at the beach—remembers less the fact that Amram risked his life for her than that he was teaching her how to conjugate Hebrew verbs, that he always has to have the answers.

  It’s worse when he’s in the States, an entire country where he doesn’t know how to swim. In Israel, they have their life, they have their friends, they have their routine, they have their customs, but here in the States, and especially in Lenox with her sisters and parents, she finds herself growing embarrassed by him. Where, she wonders, was the young man she met, Arthur, at twenty-seven, sweet and anxious, giving her that box of cherry tomatoes? He’s immersed beneath layers, covered in the sediment of what he has become, the sweetness eclipsed by something else, the anxiety redirected into bullying.

  Now, in her old bedroom, she reminds herself of the ways she still loves him. How he reads to her in bed at night, only the little pen light illuminating the page, how he continues to read to her after she’s gone to sleep because she likes to hear his voice in her dreams. How every anniversary he buys her a stuffed animal, and now there are ten of them at the foot of their bed, one for each year of their marriage. Last week, when she came down with a fever, he went out at three in the morning in the rain, driving vainly through the desolate streets, searching for an open pharmacy. In those early months, he would take her dancing, though he didn’t like to dance, his feet on the dance floor moving this way and that, his arms jerking up and down like a robot’s. How he can pop open a bottle of champagne and catch the cork in his mouth. On her thirty-fifth birthday someone in a gorilla suit walked into her classroom and strung a wreath of bananas around her neck; the gorilla, it turned out, was Amram. How he can’t wink, though he tries to—he holds his hand over one eye and winks with the other one—and she loves that about him, loves the fact that he can’t wink, because she’s never trusted winkers. How one time when she needed to pee and the women’s room was locked, he stood guard outside the men’s room while she went, shouting, “Sick lady, sick lady, out of the way, sick lady!” How they were in a restaurant when there was a bomb scare and he rushed her and the boys out to make sure they were safe, then returned to the restaurant to help out. How in another restaurant, just weeks ago, they were out on a date, eating Chinese food, and when their fortune cookies arrived she asked him to switch fortunes with her, sight unseen. “Your fortune is my fortune,” Amram said, handing her his cookie—her handsome husband like the biblical Ruth, Your people are my people, your God is my God. How he can change a diaper with a hand behind his back. How one time he tried to do it with his feet—poor Akiva!—and she was behind him in their son’s bedroom, cheering him on. How he got her that box of cherry tomatoes.

  But doing this feels self-defeating. She’s making a list of the things she loves about him, but the very act of making lists ruins things for her. Because if she really loved him, loved him the way she loves him when she’s not making lists, she wouldn’t need to make them. In Jerusalem, she thinks, she doesn’t need to make lists.

  Amram is standing outside on the balcony, smoking another cigarette.

  She calls out to him, but he doesn’t hear her. “I wish you wouldn’t smoke,” she says, but her voice is too soft to carry through the glass door and she doesn’t want to wake the rest of her family. “I’m sorry,” she says, but this, too, he doesn’t hear. She’s a smoker herself; she knows how hard it is to quit, and in a way she doesn’t want to. Neither does Amram. They like to smoke. They just don’t like that they like to smoke, like even less that their children know they smoke, so they do it out of sight, the way they did growing up. All those years you hide things from your parents until you start to hide things from your children. They’re romantics, besides, when it comes to smoking. They’ve given up so much; it’s one thing they wish to hold on to. That and Amram’s motorcycle, which he drives around Jerusalem. Noelle comes along, too; in her dresses and head scarves, her long-sleeved blouses, she rides with her arms wrapped around Amram, who’s decked out himself in religious garb, a baseball cap on his head so his yarmulke won’t fall off, his prayer fringes dancing to the sides of him. It makes them complicated, she thinks. Or maybe it just makes them a mess.

  “Hey, you,” she calls out. If they could just connect a tube from his brain to hers, if she could know his thoughts, share them, if they could be like conjoined twins, one brain for a single organism. She doesn’t mind feeling alone when she’s alone; it’s when she’s not alone and feels alone that she grows desperate. “Come to bed with me.”

  “It’s seven in the morning,” Amram says. “The kids will be up soon.”

  “I just want to hold you.” He’s her husband, she thinks, but it’s been months since they’ve held each other. She wants that, certainly, but she also wants sex, because sex has always been a kind of forgetting. When it happens, Amram is touching her there and he’s touching her there and he’s touching her there, and she’s retreating into nothing but skin and nerves, everything obliterated into sweet thoughtlessness.

  Amram sits on the bed in his T-shirt and dungaree cutoffs, his prayer fringes draped across him. Now he strings the fringes over the nightstand. He’s lying beside her with his hand on her stomach.

  She sits up.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Taking my clothes off.”

  He hesitates.

  “What?”

  “It’s just so sudden, that’s all.”

  “What’s wrong with sex at seven in the morning?” Most men prefer sex in the morning. At least that’s been her experience.

  He’s staring at her as she undresses, and she feels an awkwardness overtake her and she wants to cover herself. It kills her to feel this way, in front of her own husband.

  “The boys are down the hall,” he says.

  “In Jerusalem they’re down the hall, too.” In Jerusalem, in fact, they’re even closer to them.

  “They’re on Israel time,” Amram says. “It’s afternoon for them now.”

  “I checked on them earlier. They’re out cold.”

  He looks out the window, to where he was standing before. “I’m not in the right mood. It’s not the right moment.”

  “That’s what you always say.”

  “I can’t help it. It’s true.”

  She sits on the bed, half undressed.

  “We could try tonight,” he says. “We could go to bed early.”

  “And then tonight will come and you’ll suggest tomorrow night instead. It’s never the right mood”

  He doesn’t respond.

  “Something has happened to your sex drive, Amram.”

  “That’s not true.”

  But it is true. Or, if it’s not true, then something else has happened. Already the laws of family purity are designed to help the mood. For the five days of her menstrual period and seven days afterward, she and Amram are forbidden to have sex. Then she goes to the mikvah and comes back clean; they’re supposed to be rejuvenated.

  “There’s nothing wrong with my sex drive,” Amram says. He’s sitting up now, looking as if he might walk away.

  “Okay,” she says, because she doesn’t want to fight about this. Besides, it’s not the route she wants to take. It might make him have sex with her, but it would be for the wrong reason. He’d be proving something to himself, and so in a way it would be as if he were having sex with himself, which would be worse than not having sex at all.

  But it’s too late—her insinuation has worked—because Amram is unbuttoning his dungarees, saying, “We can try.”

  She hesitates.

  “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  It was what she wanted. And she’s thinking about what her rabbi said, Me’toch she’lo l’shma ba l’shma. If you start to do something not for its own sake, you will eve
ntually do it for its own sake. The rabbi was talking about Torah study, but can’t it be true, Noelle thinks, for sex as well?

  She’s naked now beneath the covers, and Amram is naked, too, but there’s a noise downstairs, a clanking of pipes. She hears the bathroom door open and the sink go on. The sound of the television comes up from the living room.

  Amram is on top of her now, the weight of him square on her, and Noelle, gasping for breath as he pushes down on her solar plexus, says, “Good God, Amram, what did you eat last night?”

  “What?”

  “Go easy on me. I’m a featherweight here.”

  He’s utterly still, poised above her, his arms taut against the mattress, bearing his bulk. He rolls off her.

  “Amram.”

  “I’ve been trying to lose weight.”

  “I was kidding.”

  “No you weren’t.”

  “Amram, please. I’m sorry.”

  He rolls over onto his back and stares up at the ceiling. His hands are clasped behind his neck.

  “I apologize,” she says. “That wasn’t fair.”

  Now he allows her to mount him, but he’s cold beneath her, his gaze slack, his heart beating dully against her chest.

  “You don’t think I’m attractive,” he says.

  “That’s not true.”

  “Remember when you said you didn’t like the hair on my shoulders?”

  “I was joking.”

  “You weren’t.”

  “I don’t even remember having said that.”

  He’s inside her now, though he’s still half dressed, his T-shirt on one shoulder and off the other, his boxers coiling around themselves, down at his ankles. He thrusts—once, twice, three times, four times—but there’s an obligatory cast to the movement. She takes his face in her hands. “Look at me, Amram. Please look at me.”

  His elbow knocks into her ribcage.

  “Ouch!”

  “Are you all right?”

  “No,” she says, “I’m not.”

  “Well, okay. I’m sorry.”

  She rolls back on top of him, but he’s just lying beneath her, unmoving, his palms placed against her ribs, as if he’s preparing to push her away.

  A moment passes, and he does just that.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I need to go to the bathroom.”

  She waits for him, lying as still as she can, as if by not moving she will make him come back to her.

  But when he returns he says, “Great, I’m not hard.” He guides her hand to his penis, which, sure enough, is shriveled as a fig. She flinches at the touch of it.

  “You could use your mouth.”

  She hesitates: oral sex is prohibited by Jewish law. The spilling of seed, like Onan.

  But Amram assures her he won’t come. “It’s just to get me going.”

  She tries to go down on him, but she feels self-conscious. She hasn’t done this in years, not on him, not on anyone. She doesn’t want Amram’s semen in her mouth—the very thought of it repulses her—and now her jaw is bumping against his pubic bone and she feels his hair, rough as steel wool against her chin. She takes him in her mouth, and her head is going up and down, up and down, but she feels leagues away. She has taken him in too deep, and she’s coughing now, lying beside him on her back, gagging quietly. “Maybe you’re the one not attracted to me.”

  “Of course I’m attracted to you.” He’s lying next to her, his organ at half-mast, flopping to the side like a fish.

  “It doesn’t seem like it.”

  “I could masturbate,” he says.

  She gives him a look: this, too, is prohibited.

  “Just to get us going,” he says again.

  She catches sight of herself in the mirror still wearing her baseball cap. She was already dressed, had her hair covered to start the day, and she neglected to remove the cap when she took her clothes off. And there she was, hammering at Amram’s crotch as she went down on him, and she laughs now, recalling this, thinking, What a turn-off, of course he couldn’t get hard.

  “We could do it from behind,” he says.

  That’s how dogs do it, she wants to say. But even the thought of it sounds absurd. When did she become so squeamish? She’s on her hands and knees, and Amram is behind her, pounding against her like a rump roast, and as she looks over her shoulder she can’t see him, only feels him ramming against her flesh. She closes her eyes, presses her face against the pillow, and when she looks back from between her legs she can see nothing but her breasts hanging pendulously from her. “Amram, are you hard?” But he doesn’t answer her, and she’s thinking, Enter me already, for God’s sake!

  He’s inside her now, but then she’s not sure. She feels a smothering pressure; she’s being rammed in the rear as if with a cattle prod.

  There’s a wetness against her buttocks, and before she can say “What was that?” she realizes.

  “Oh, man.”

  “You came.” Semen drips down her rear end, viscous as egg yolk.

  “Fuck,” Amram says.

  She reaches around with the pillow to wipe herself off.

  “Oh, God, Noelle.”

  She covers her breasts with the bedspread, shielding them from his gaze. “You weren’t inside me.”

  “No.”

  She burrows deeper beneath the covers. “You said you weren’t hard.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “But you came,” she says. “I thought that wasn’t possible.”

  “Me, too.” He’s mopping at his pelvis with a wadded-up tissue, and then he’s mopping her up as well.

  Already the backs of her thighs are caking up. Regret sloshes through her, rising in her stomach.

  “The sheets,” he says. “They’re soiled.” He grabs at the edge of the fitted sheet, and now it has come off and he’s lying on the mattress pad, trying to extricate himself, and she’s trying to extricate herself, too.

  “I’ll put it in the wash,” she says.

  “I’ll do it.”

  She goes to object, but she doesn’t have the strength to stop him. “You were right. The kids. What was I thinking?”

  He’s standing far away from her now, across the room.

  “We’ll try again later. It will be different tonight.”

  “There won’t be a tonight.”

  “It’s my fault,” she says.

  “Your fault? I’m the one who came in two seconds.”

  “Amram—”

  “I did,” he says, “and don’t try to sugarcoat it.”

  The fitted sheet is still half on, half off. She does her best to right it, but it won’t stay on. There’s a stain on the middle of it, and another one on the peak of her baseball cap; she’ll have to wash that as well. “You should get dressed,” she says. “The kids will be up soon.”

  “They’re already up. I can hear them.”

  There’s a knock on the door, and she goes to answer it, but there’s no point. The boys have burst in, decked out in their prayer fringes and knitted yarmulkes, so she herds them downstairs, the four of them in a row attached like sausages, where the rest of the family is waiting for them.

  At breakfast, Noelle sits with her bagel and peanut butter, the food she and Amram brought, while the rest of the family surrounds her, eating their French toast and eggs. She spreads cream cheese on Yoni’s bagel, but because the knife is plastic and the bagel a day old, because she’s feeling an aggression well up inside her, the knife breaks in half, one piece flying across the room and landing on the floor. She goes to retrieve it, and as she bends over she feels Amram’s semen cake against her thighs (oh, for the chance to shower!), and the humiliation revisits her once more.

  Back at the table, she sees Lily whispering to Clarissa. It’s as if they know what happened. She tries to look away, but she can’t. The mere sight of them gets her worked up. She swore on the plane ride to the States that they would have no impact on her. And now they’re here—her sisters!—and she has
lost her resolve. In bed last night, she found herself listening for them—listening in on Clarissa and Lily the way she did as a girl, her sisters in one room and Noelle down the hall, and she forgot for an instant that they weren’t sharing a room, that Lily was in her bed, alone, and Clarissa was next door, in bed with Nathaniel.

  In the kitchen, pouring one of her boys a glass of juice, she turns on Lily, who is tending to the waffle iron. “I saw you guys whispering.”

  “What?”

  “If you have something to say, why don’t you say it aloud?”

  Lily simply stares back at her.

  “I’m part of this family, too, you know.” She hurries out of the kitchen, past the table where everyone is seated, and up the stairs to her and Amram’s room.

  “What was that?” Clarissa says. She has come into the kitchen to make a waffle herself.

  “That,” Lily says, “was our little sister throwing a hissy fit. Apparently, we were telling secrets about her.”

  “We were?”

  “Big things are happening in this family—huge things—and Noelle focuses on trivialities.”

  The kitchen door swings open and their mother comes in. “Something’s burning in here.”

  “It’s the waffles,” Lily says.

  “Well, don’t just stand there, girls.”

  But that’s what they do, and so it’s left to Marilyn to pull the plug from the socket and toss the waffle iron into the sink. Smoke rises through the kitchen, and Marilyn has to stand on the step stool and remove the smoke alarm to make sure it doesn’t go off.

  When breakfast is over, the dishes cleared, Marilyn opens the porch door, and presently, a butterfly enters the house. Calder and Ari snap to attention. They’re both three, though Calder is quick to point out that he’s two months older than Ari. He has his sights set on Dov, who, at five, is playing tag with his older brothers, but Dov isn’t interested in Calder. So on the principle that a mutual enemy makes you a friend, the boys settle on stalking the poor butterfly. It’s up on a beam, out of reach, but they swat at it, and when that fails, they try to spear it with a broom. “My father carries a gun,” Ari says, in response to which Thisbe explains that Ari means back in Israel, when Amram is on army reserve duty, that Amram isn’t carrying a gun at this very moment, information she intends as reassurance but that instead seems to disappoint Calder.