Look for Me

by Edeet Ravel

  “If you said yes, I swear to you I’d never let her into this building again, ever. It would be completely over, completely. I hate her anyhow, it wouldn’t be any effort. If that’s what’s bothering you, don’t even think about it.”

  “Benny, I can’t marry you for a million reasons.”

  He looked very downcast when I said that.

  “It’s nothing to do with you personally. I love my husband, and I know I’m going to see him one day. In fact I’m getting closer to finding out where he is, I’ve never been this close.”

  “You can’t waste your life like this, Dana. You’re going to be thirty-eight, this is your last chance to have a child. Time doesn’t move backward. You’ll be eighty years old one day and you’ll look back and you won’t believe you missed the opportunity to have a life with someone, and a family. If we hurry, we could have two children, even. You said you always wanted children.”

  “Yes, my husband and I wanted children. We wanted a big family.”

  “Well, here’s your chance. Why not just think about it? I know I can make you very, very happy, if you’ll just let me. You can’t imagine how much I love you.”

  “Benny, just last week you were telling me you were in love with Miriam.”

  “No, I said I had a craving for her. It’s pure lust, that’s all it is. And it would disappear altogether if it had another outlet.”

  I didn’t say anything. We sat in dejected silence like two captured spies waiting for interrogation. I picked at the borekas and Benny poured himself more wine.

  “Do you have someone else?” Benny finally asked.

  “No.”

  “I mean, do you sleep with other people?”

  “Not really. Beatrice comes over now and then, that doesn’t really count.”

  “That woman with the curly red hair?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, what, I don’t get it—are you a lesbian?”

  “No, she’s just a friend. It’s casual.”

  “I noticed she was staying here nights, but I thought maybe she just didn’t have a place to stay in the city.”

  “She lives near the university. She’s really busy, but she likes to drop by sometimes.”

  “Who else?”

  “That’s it, Benny, no one else. Even though, really, it’s none of your business, you know.”

  “What about that doctor guy?”

  I shook my head.

  “So there’s no one.”

  “No. Just my husband.”

  “What about that new guy I’ve seen around here?”

  “How come everyone watches who comes and goes out of my apartment? What is it with you people?”

  “I just happened to run into him as he was leaving, that’s all. And it was late at night, so you can’t blame me for wondering. But I don’t mean to interfere. I was coming back from work, that’s all. Don’t get all excited.”

  “He’s just someone from one of the peace groups. He’s married, he has a daughter.”

  He sighed. “Think about it, anyhow. Promise me you’ll think about it. I know how sad you are,” he said, surprising me. He’d never said anything like that before. “But life can be great, too. It’s just a question of finding the pearls in the mud, you know. I lost thirty-six friends. Well, friends and acquaintances. In ’82, ’83, in Lebanon. Thirty-six.” He shook his head, as though still incredulous. “My best friend included. He was shot right next to me. Someone threw a smoke grenade and he lifted his head a few inches to see better, and he got shot in the chest. And then his brother went crazy because of it, so I lost them both, I was close to both of them. You have to learn to get over things. You have to go on; otherwise, what’s the point of life, you might as well just kill yourself.” He began to tremble. He was trembling from head to foot. I knew what that was all about: he was trying to gather the courage to make a pass. I felt bad for him again.

  “You’re shaking,” I said.

  “Yes, I’m nervous.”

  “I can’t have sex with you, Benny. I’m sorry. I’m loyal to my husband. Please don’t ask. You’re very handsome and I’m sure you’re a fabulous lover, but I can’t betray my husband.”

  He got up. He was very angry, but he was trying to control himself.

  “Well, I guess there’s nothing more to say.”

  “Please don’t be angry. Is this the end of our friendship?”

  “No, I’m not giving up that easily,” he said.

  Then he left.

  When Rafi came over I told him about Benny’s proposal.

  “People are picking up that things are changing for you,” Rafi said, looking inside my fridge.

  “No, it’s just a coincidence. That’s the way it is, things always happen at once. You come into my life just when I might be close to finding Daniel, so why not add a marriage proposal to the pudding! Poor Benny. Though I don’t think he really loves me, it’s just an infatuation.”

  “Do you have rice?” he asked.

  “Yes, in the closet on your left. Are you going to cook?”

  “I’ll make us a meal. You’re not very well equipped. What do you live on?”

  “It varies …”

  “I’ll bring some spices tomorrow, if that’s okay. When will you be home?”

  “You can come anytime. I’ll give you a key, just take one from the glass bowl. They’re all house keys.”

  “Dana! What are you doing with ten copies of your house key?”

  “I don’t know. I give them to people, and then they lose them, so I make more copies, then they find them …”

  “How many people have your key?”

  “Well, Volvo and his volunteers, Benny, Tanya, her mother, some friends …”

  “Why Volvo and the volunteers?”

  “Oh, in case they need something … he doesn’t have anything at his place, he refuses to buy stuff for himself. He doesn’t even have a stove, maybe you noticed. Rosa does all his cooking here.”

  “Aren’t you afraid someone’s going to steal your photography equipment?”

  “People who volunteer to look after someone without legs are not going to steal anything.”

  “Don’t be so naïve, Dana.”

  “I’m not naïve. If you knew the volunteers, you wouldn’t worry. Miss Fitzpatrick is some sort of nun, Alex is Daniel’s oldest friend, and Joshua is about ninety years old. And the idea of Rosa stealing is about as plausible as the idea of Rosa deciding to be a porn star.”

  “If you give your key to everyone, eventually it will get into the wrong hands—don’t you see that? Aren’t you afraid someone will come in while you’re sleeping?”

  “I have a chain on the door.”

  He laughed. “Yes, that chain is really something. We should recommend it to the army. They should come and take a look, they could learn something.”

  “I guess you’re right. I guess I should be more careful. I just don’t care, though. I don’t care.”

  “You’d care if you were raped in the middle of the night.”

  “I feel safe here.”

  “I want you to get a new lock. I’ll pay for it. Call a locksmith tomorrow, get a new lock installed, a decent one. And don’t hand out your key to the volunteers. Or to anyone else.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you want me to look after it?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Have you heard from Coby?”

  “Not yet. But I have a good feeling. I feel he might find out for me. I might be seeing Daniel in a few days! What are you making there? It smells good.”

  “Well, I’m doing my best, with what you have here. I guess I was lucky to find an onion.”

  “Mercedes bought that. How’s Graciela?”

  “She’s the same. Working hard.”

  “I’m jealous of her.”

  “Of what?”

  “She’s elegant. She has nice clothes. She has your child.”

  “You can have all those things.”

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nbsp; “Coby said you’ve had a hard life.”

  “Did he say that?”

  “Yes. Have you?”

  He put a lid on the pot and lowered the heat. “This has to simmer. Let’s wait on the sofa.”

  He cleared the sofa and stretched out, and I lay down on top of him. “Did you? Have a hard life?” I asked again.

  “I don’t know. These things are relative. We were poor, it was a tough neighborhood. My father was violent. He broke my arm once, and it lowered my profile. I cried when my profile came in. I wanted a ninety-seven, but I lost over twenty points because of my arm, because I don’t have total flexibility. That’s why it hurt so much yesterday, when that asshole grabbed it.”

  “Why did your father break your arm?”

  “I was bad, he was frustrated. I set a shack on fire with some of my friends. We were all frustrated, we fed each other’s frustrations and made them worse. But some things were pretty good. My father was okay in his calm moments. My older brother’s a great guy.”

  “What did your parents do?”

  “My father had a lot of jobs. My mother made pottery. She could have done a lot more with her life, but she never had the opportunity.”

  “It’s sad to think of you living with someone who hurt you.”

  “I don’t think of it that way at all. It all made me who I am. I can’t imagine a different past, I have no idea who I’d be or whether I’d like that person.”

  “Are your parents still alive?”

  “My mother died while I was in the army. My father’s still around, but he’s in poor health—he’s in a home. He was forty-five when he married my mother, and she was only twenty. So he’s pretty old now.”

  “How did he break your arm?”

  “He pushed me down some stairs. I was bad, too. I kicked him, I bit him. I was totally out of control. But he was bigger, and he had a belt.”

  “I was so spoiled all my life. My parents were so protective. I was their only child, they really doted on me.”

  “I can’t imagine not having brothers and sisters.”

  “Yes, I really did want a big family. But on the other hand, I liked getting all the attention.”

  “How come your parents stopped at one?”

  “They waited awhile to have me. And they were busy with their careers by then. They really invested a lot in me—I guess they weren’t too keen on doing that more than once.”

  “Invested, how?”

  “Just, you know, trying to give me the best of everything. Getting mad if my teachers weren’t perfect. Being involved in my life. My father started reading the newspaper to me when I was four. That continued right through the years, we were always looking at articles together and talking about them. He and his brother used to go to refugee camps, to do volunteer work, and they took me along. I was lucky, I had a great childhood. At least until my mother died.”

  “Was that hard?”

  “The first week was terrible, and I did some pretty crazy stuff. I kept thinking there was an invisible starfish clinging to my chest, this cold, self-satisfied, smirking starfish. I took shower after shower trying to get it off. Then I tried ice cubes, and I can’t remember what else. I had to keep my arms against my chest all the time, under my shirt, otherwise the starfish feeling came back. Then I sort of got involved with things again, I got back into life. It was strange …People respond in different ways to things. After Daniel left, that’s when her death hurt me, years later. I had a delayed response, I think. What about when your mother died?”

  “It was hard, but I was in the army—I didn’t have time to be sad. I felt guilty, mostly. I wished I’d been nicer to her, more supportive. I wished I hadn’t worried her so much.”

  “This is going to end, between us,” I said. “It’s going to end as soon as Daniel comes back.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not free either.”

  “We’ll just enjoy the time we have together, and we’ll remember it as something short and sweet that we had together, is that all right? Daniel won’t mind. I was loyal to him for eleven years, he won’t mind if I loved someone for a few days right at the end. I won’t tell him, so as not to hurt him, but I think if he knew he’d forgive me.”

  “I think you’re right. I think he won’t mind. I’m sure he wants you to be happy.”

  “Thank you. Maybe one day I’ll tell him, maybe not, it depends on whether I think it would hurt him or not.”

  “You’ll feel what’s right. You don’t have to plan it.”

  “Graciela hasn’t asked about me?”

  “No, but I think she knows.”

  “I’m sure she hates me!”

  “I told you, she’s much too preoccupied to hate you or me or anyone else.”

  “Why is she like that? So closed?”

  “I don’t know. I was supposed to study psychology, that’s what I had a scholarship for, and maybe if I’d gone through with it I’d know. But as it is, I don’t know.”

  “Maybe something happened when she was young.”

  “Almost certainly something happened when she was young.”

  “On the other hand, musical genius is often accompanied by eccentricity, maybe it’s physiological.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “Not in her case. But who knows? I think supper’s almost ready, I’ll go take a peek.”

  “It smells great.”

  “I’ll be glad if it’s edible. How can you live without cooking?”

  We sat down to eat, and Rafi had a glass of Benny’s wine.

  In the middle of the meal I pushed my plate away. “I can’t eat this. I can’t eat this. This is all wrong. You shouldn’t be here. I want you to go.”

  “Can I finish my food first?”

  “No. Yes. Oh God, what a horrible day!” I said. “What a horrible day. The two boys on the video, crumpling on the street over and over, the screen was so white, they were nothing, just alive and then dead on the street, nothing, just dark figures on the screen and their mother had to leave the room and their sister was crying in the corner and sucking her finger and pulling her hair, just pulling her hair out of sheer stress, the whole place is like a ghost town and there’s no water, shit in some corner, soldiers with faces like stone, we don’t even deserve this stupid country anymore, we don’t deserve it! Then you come here and make dinner, you come here and ruin everything and now I have to lie to Daniel. And Benny saw you leaving and every time I see him he’s going to look at me and he thinks he wants me and I’m never going to see Vronsky again, and last night I thought I heard a mouse in the walls— can’t you see, can’t you see what a mess you’re making of everything?”

  “This rice thing actually came out better than I thought,” Rafi said, helping himself to another serving.

  “I had another dream about you,” I said. “It was very strange. It was the end of days, there was hardly anyone left on the planet. Some people were standing around a huge cauldron, stirring it. It was hard to get food, and they were waiting impatiently for the food in the cauldron to be ready, even though I knew there wasn’t much in there, mostly grass and herbs and dandelions. Then you came and you were carrying a dead rabbit, covered with ants, and I was horrified but all the others were so happy, and they threw the rabbit into the cauldron and they crowned you.”

  “They crowned me? How?”

  “I can’t remember. Just some crown they had.”

  “You know, there’s a game I play with my after-school kids, they really love it. We play it all the time, they have a blast.”

  “What sort of game?”

  “I can show you if you want.”

  “Yes, I’m curious.”

  “Let’s finish supper first.”

  I had lost my appetite, but Rafi more than made up for it. He finished everything in the pot. We cleared the counter and left the dishes in the sink.

  “Do you have any kerchiefs?”

  “No.”
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br />   “Some old clothing I can tear up?”

  “Yes, I have some rags. Under the sink.”

  Rafi rummaged around and pulled out a T-shirt I had bought at a peace event, with a picture of a dove made of our flags and Palestinian flags. I used it for washing up because it was too big on me.

  He cut two strips from the bottom of the shirt. Then he turned off all the lights in the house and we sat on the living room floor, on the carpet. Rafi blindfolded himself, and told me to do the same.

  “Okay,” he said. “We take turns. We say what we’re afraid of, and why. I’ll go first. I’m afraid of nightmares, because I’m afraid of being afraid.”

  “I’m afraid of mice.”

  “You have to say why.”

  “I’m afraid of mice because they’re creepy and ugly.”

  “I’m afraid of falling from an airplane because there’s nothing to hold on to.”

  “I’m afraid of getting cancer because I don’t want to go through chemotherapy.”

  “I’m afraid of getting cancer because it’s painful and I don’t want to die.”

  “I’m afraid of tunnels and narrow places and being stuck somewhere I can’t get out of. I’m afraid of being in a car that falls off a bridge and fills with water and I can’t get out. Because … I’m neurotic.”

  “You need a better reason,” Rafi said.

  “Because I don’t want to be trapped.”

  “I’m afraid of my feelings for you because they’re so strong and I could lose you.”

  “I’m afraid of you, because you don’t belong in my life.”

  “I’m afraid of witches because they have magical powers.”

  “You believe in witches?”

  “No questions allowed, but no.”

  “I’m afraid of pens that don’t work, pencils that aren’t sharpened, traffic lights that don’t work, telephones that don’t work, because I need things to go smoothly.”

  “I’m afraid of getting blown up because I’m too young to die and my daughter needs me and the kids need me and I love you.”

  “I’m afraid of your love. I’m afraid of loving you. I’m afraid of losing Daniel forever. Because …because I’m afraid, that’s all.”

  “I’m afraid of a nuclear war because of the horror.”

  “I’m afraid of a nuclear war because of the horror.”