by Yael Hedaya
A few weeks before he died, his father was snoozing in his bed in the old-age home in Jerusalem, and Yonatan was sitting beside him on a plastic chair, reading the paper. The kitchen lady came in and put his dinner tray on the little retractable table attached to the cabinet. His father, who barely spoke anymore, woke automatically and sat up. Yonatan took the two slices of brown bread off the tray, as he always did, placed them on the folded newspaper, and started peeling the hard-boiled egg. Then he mashed it with a fork and mixed it in with the yogurt, but when he took a spoonful and held it up to his father’s lips, his father shut his mouth and shook his head.
“What’s the matter? Aren’t you hungry?” he asked, and his father kept shaking his head. “I don’t understand, Dad. Explain to me what you want.”
His father pointed with his chin toward the tray, which held a few slices of hard cheese, a pad of margarine, a quartered tomato, and a clementine.
“Do you want the fruit?” he asked, and his father kept shaking his head and motioning at the tray. “The cheese?” he asked, and his father nodded. “Should I put it in the yogurt for you?” he asked, surprised because he had never shown any interest in cheese before. His father narrowed his eyes angrily and beat his fist on the sheet, motioning with his chin toward the newspaper.
“What is it? Do you want me to read to you from the newspaper? After dinner, Dad. Let’s finish eating first.” But his father’s chin didn’t move and his eyes, which showed a glimmer Yonatan had not seen for a long time, locked in on the bread, almost toasting it with their gaze.
“Bread? You want the bread?” The torn eyes and nodding chin told him yes.
“I don’t believe it, Dad,” Yonatan said in a vexed tone, and thought it might be the first moment of happiness he had experienced in that place. “I just don’t believe it,” he said, and spread the slice with margarine—not before receiving another nod of the chin in approval—and then put a slice of cheese on it. When he held the revolutionary sandwich up to his father’s lips, waiting for him to take a bite, his father’s hand emerged from beneath the sheet and grasped Yonatan’s wrist. When Yonatan asked, “Don’t you want it?” the fingers loosened their grip, snatched the sandwich away from him, folded it in two, and stuffed it into his mouth. Before he could swallow, his father was making that same, now intelligible, gesture toward the second slice, and Yonatan quickly spread it with margarine and put a piece of cheese on it too, and garnished it with a slice of tomato. Then he put it in his father’s waiting hand, and knew he would never forget the moist sounds of chewing and the crumbs covering the sheet; he also knew he would never be able to tell with any certainty whether the memory was happy or sad.
He paid for the rye and went out onto the street. He turned right at Allenby, waited at the long pedestrian crossing light, which always got on his nerves, crossed the street, and went into the pharmacy. The pharmacist came out of the back room and smiled at him like an old acquaintance, which he really had become, considering all the medicine he bought there every winter. “How’s it going, Luria?”
“Thanks. How are you?”
“What will it be for Dana?” the pharmacist asked, and they both smiled.
The pharmacist’s elderly mother, who always sat in the back room, called out, “Who is it, the writer?”
Yonatan said, “Hello, Mrs. Gorman, how are you?”
“Is the girl sick again?”
“What can you do?”
Yonatan heard her click her tongue and say, “Poor child,” at which point the pharmacist said, “Enough, Mother.”
Yonatan said, “That’s the way it goes, Mrs. Gorman—children get sick.”
“Yes, but not like this,” she replied, and the pharmacist—who was no longer a young man himself—rolled his eyes.
Yonatan gave him a forgiving look. “I’m making her some soup.”
Mrs. Gorman peered out of the room. “Soup is good. What kind?”
“Cream of tomato.” He couldn’t understand what possessed him to let the pharmacist’s mother in on the menu. Perhaps he hoped she would have a tip or a recipe.
“Cream of tomato is no good, it’s too heavy. She needs broth or chicken soup.”
“I think tomato soup is all right; it’s what Dana likes.”
Mrs. Gorman said it didn’t matter what Dana liked, Dana had to get better, and the pharmacist said, “Mother, will you please stop meddling?”
Yonatan smiled shyly and Mrs. Gorman pursed her lips, insulted, but she soon perked up and asked, “And how is your mother? Still with the high blood pressure?”
Yonatan had once consulted with her about his mother’s health, wrongly assuming that a woman who spent most of her life in a pharmacy would have some medical inside knowledge. “She’s fine,” he said.
“Is she being careful with the salt?”
“Not really.”
Mrs. Gorman said he needed to watch her, and he said he tried, but it was difficult because she cheated. Mrs. Gorman said, “Elderly people like to cheat, but you mustn’t let them.” Yonatan thought about how Mrs. Gorman and his mother were roughly the same age, and the old lady said, “And you must watch Dana too.”
“I do.”
“Children cheat too,” she told him.
He said he was doing his best, and could tell that the pharmacist was losing his patience, so he said, “I hope you feel well, Mrs. Gorman.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me.”
He asked if the new thermometer from the commercials was worth anything, and the pharmacist, relieved that the small talk with his mother was over, said it certainly was but that it was expensive. He took down the box of thermometers from one of the shelves and put it on the counter, and Mrs. Gorman peeked out from the room again and said there was no reason for that thermometer to be so expensive, and it was only because of the commercial that everyone was buying it now. She ordered her son to show Yonatan the other thermometers, which were also fine and much cheaper, and Yonatan said there was no need and that he was in a bit of a hurry. He picked up the package, which was wrapped with a brochure showing the sick man with the sorry face, glanced at the price, which was much more than he had intended to spend, and said he would take it.
PART TWO
( 1 )
There was something lonely and yet, at the same time, comforting in the short walk from Borochov Street to Hess Street on a Friday night. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was but thought it had something to do with crossing Meir Park, which at this time of day was populated mainly by dogs and their owners and a few homeless people sleeping on benches, unlike the daylight hours, when the same benches were inhabited by mothers with their children or by nannies rocking strollers with mechanical indifference. During this changing of the guard and especially at wintertime, the park seemed different to Shira: quieter, wilder, open to interpretation.
She strolled down the pathway, which was wet from the rain that had fallen all day, and the yellow leaves stuck to the soles of her shoes. She was carrying a plastic bag containing a bottle of Chilean wine, a container of vanilla ice cream, and an umbrella. She walked slowly, deliberately, taking steps that looked almost artificial, so as not to be the first guest to arrive for dinner at her friend Rona’s. Friday-night dinners at Rona’s were always a culinary event and sometimes a social haven; Shira viewed her friend’s home as a lighthouse that transmitted quiet flashes to call in boats full of weekend refugees like herself. She had no idea who else would be there tonight but knew that, despite her delaying tactics, she would still be morbidly punctual.
More than punctuality, she was driven by restlessness. She had inherited from her father a chronically fast internal clock that prompted her to leave home too early, spurred by an acceleration she was unable to control. She would then find herself trapped in a cage of idleness for fifteen minutes or sometimes more—time that swelled into huge proportions and which, like any monster, was hard to kill. Sometimes she tried to be late, but she was never succ
essful. If she was walking, she walked slowly, choosing the longest route, scanning shop windows with an intrigued look but without truly seeing their contents, and if she took the car she slowed down as she approached lights, hoping they would change to red, and prayed for traffic jams or a wrong turn that would lead her astray and waste another ten minutes. But the trips always turned out to be quick and smooth, as if to aggravate her, and at the end she had to stay in the car a little longer, listening to the radio and staring at the digital clock flashing above the glove compartment, waiting for the green digits to indicate a reasonable hour, taking into account that she still had to get out of the car, lock the door, and perform her check to make sure she hadn’t forgotten to put on the steering wheel lock, all the while telling herself she could have passed this time at home; but at home she had told herself the minutes would go faster if she went out. She envied people who were always late, who tried to buy time, because sometimes she felt like a wholesaler with an embarrassing quantity on her hands, unable to get rid of it.
Now she thought that if the benches were not wet she would sit down and smoke a cigarette, join the bench dwellers who had nothing to be early or late for, and pretend she owned one of the dogs running around on the lawn. But she knew she would never have the courage to sit down in case someone, another of Rona’s guests, walked through the park and saw her. If they knew each other, they would strike up a conversation. Hey, what are you doing here? he would ask. Nothing, she would say. He would say he was on his way to Rona’s, and she would say she was too, and he would glance at his watch. What time is it now? she would ask, as if she had no idea. He would say, It’s almost eight, and she would say, We’d better get going, then.
Or perhaps the person who saw her in the park would be a stranger, one of the men Rona was always trying to set her up with. He would walk past her as she sat smoking and watching the dogs, also carrying a bottle of wine or a bunch of flowers, and later, when Rona opened the door for her at ten past eight, he would be there, sitting at the round table in the kitchen. She would look familiar to him and Rona would introduce them, and in order to save herself she would say, quickly but calmly, “I saw you before in Meir Park.” “Really, when?” he would say, as if he were the one with something to hide. She would say, “I was sitting there earlier,” as if it were the most natural thing in the world to sit alone in the dark on a Friday evening with wine and ice cream on a wet bench in a public park.
She walked through the gate to Tchernikowsky Street and glanced at her watch: still seven forty-five. It had taken only three minutes to cross the park. But in fact there was nothing wrong with being the first to arrive. She could help Rona set the table, or make a salad, or chat with Tamar, who was one of those children who were great conversationalists without pretending to be adults. Fridays were always difficult for Shira. If she wasn’t invited somewhere, she would stay home and watch television or read the papers, solve the crosswords, and leave at least one—usually the cryptic crossword in Ha’aretz, which took up more time—for Saturday morning. Or she would go and visit her father, whose restlessness was also worse on Friday nights, when routine and its side effects reached their climax, ebbing slightly the next day—Shabbat, with its laziness, was somehow more tolerable—and gaining momentum again on Sunday. Sometimes a distraction came along: a dinner invitation, a housewarming, or an evening spent watching TV at a friend’s house. Shira found it strange to think that she was her father’s distraction, that he looked forward to her visits as she looked forward to Rona’s invitations, that a whole hierarchy of distractions were at work; she wondered who was at the top.
Shira was always surprised at how calmly Rona organized these big dinners. Rona never knew in advance how many guests would show up, if any, because there were people who refused to make a commitment in the morning for that evening, and Shira wondered how she knew what to cook and how much to make if she didn’t know who was coming, and why even bother. On the other hand, she thought, that was probably it: Rona Peretz and her daughter Tamar’s home always went about its business, whatever happened. It was a home that could easily take in people, but it also remained a home without them; in that respect it was modular, but it was more stable than any other home she knew; above all, it was a home that didn’t need any favors from anyone.
( 2 )
She had met Rona ten years ago, when she translated an article into English for her. Rona was about to finish her PhD in psychology at the time and was pregnant with Tamar. Shira had finished her BA in philosophy and was making a living doing odd translation and editing jobs. She was twenty-six, and Rona was ten years older. A common acquaintance had introduced them.
They met one winter afternoon in Rona’s apartment on Hess Street. They sat in the huge open kitchen that faced a backyard full of tangled growth; the tops of a few palm trees peeked out, and Shira thought they looked out of place, like the other palms scattered around the center of town. She was impressed by the large windows, squares of glass set in light-blue-painted iron frames, and said she’d always dreamed that when she had her own house it would have that kind of window. Rona asked if she wanted a tour, and Shira followed her from room to room, enchanted and full of envy: there was something that transcended Rona’s excellent taste and the massive spaces that contained it; the apartment had a tranquillity that Shira had never encountered in any of the homes she’d lived in. She knew that she took her uneasiness with her each time she relocated, and like a piece of furniture it had survived every move.
Even the Voice of Music, which was on the radio in the background, sounded different. She recognized the piece, a Mozart clarinet quintet. She told Rona that when she turned the program on at home they were always playing some screeching modern composition, and Rona said that Saturday afternoons were always a gamble. When Shira sat at the large round wooden table in the kitchen and looked at Rona, who was bending over her huge belly to take a cake out of the oven, she was suddenly overcome with hunger, not necessarily for the pear tart—although she did have two slices—but for something in the air and in Rona’s movements, which were heavy and slow, and even in the way she dressed. She wore gray sweatpants and a white undershirt under an old banana-colored sweater with buttons, only the top two of which were fastened. Shira suddenly became aware of her own clothes: a black miniskirt, with black tights and a black polo-neck sweater, and boots, also black, whose heels made too much noise on the kitchen floor.
They talked about renovations, and Rona told her how difficult it was to find a contractor, and about the delays and the hitches along the way, and how much it cost, and she said that in fact the work wasn’t over and there were still things to do, but she would probably never do them; she didn’t have the patience for it. But Rona did not look like someone who didn’t have the patience for things, and the tone she used when she said it was soft and soothing, like the taste the tart had left in Shira’s mouth. Shira asked when she was due.
Rona looked at her stomach and said, “March second.”
“Wow, that’s in three weeks!”
“Yes,” she said, in that same contemplative tone.
Shira asked who would be with her at the birth, and Rona said she didn’t know yet; two girlfriends had volunteered, but one of them was supposed to go overseas for a conference. Shira asked if the friend was a psychologist too, and Rona smiled and said no, not at all, she was a dentist.
“And the other one?”
Rona smiled and said, “That’s the thing. The other one is due to give birth too, at the end of March. Only her last two came early.”
Shira asked what the other friend did, curious to know more about her life, and Rona said, “She’s a math teacher, but now she’s on sabbatical at home, painting.”
Shira was jealous of Rona for having real friends with real professions, whose lives were full of conferences and sabbaticals and hobbies and pregnancies, and although she was younger than Rona and her friends, she felt as if the ten years that separated t
hem had already gone by; she sensed that what she was feeling now were not the little jolts of great plans for the future but premature disappointment over things that would never happen. “So you won’t know until the last minute?” she asked.
Rona sipped her tea and said, “I guess not.”
“Are you scared?”
“No. Whatever happens, happens.”
Shira wanted to volunteer to be at the birth with her, but they had only met half an hour ago, so she said nothing.
Rona said, “That’s how it is when you don’t have a partner,” but she said it without any resentment, and then she offered Shira some coffee and said she herself was only drinking tea now. Shira said herbal tea sounded great, and then Rona, with the same calm with which she had shown Shira the apartment and just made her herbal tea, told her about her decision to have a child and about the sperm bank.
Shira, briefly embarrassed by Rona’s frankness, asked, “And do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”
Rona looked at her stomach again, where all the answers must have come from, and said, “Girl.”
“I’ve always wanted a girl.”