Accidents: A Novel

by Yael Hedaya

  Tamar took the plastic bag and jumped with joy when she saw the ice cream. Shira saw Dana, Tamar’s friend, leafing through a cookbook. She asked Dana how she was, and the girl looked up and smiled and said okay. Shira asked if she was learning to cook, and Dana nodded and went back to looking at the book. She went and looked over her shoulder at a photograph of a filet mignon in cream sauce with fresh asparagus, and said, “That looks delicious!”

  Rona said, “What does?”

  “The steaks,” Shira said.

  “My dad makes ones exactly like these,” Dana said.

  “He does?” Shira exclaimed, and the girl nodded again and flipped to the next page.

  Shira sat down at the round table. Nothing looked ready yet. Rona took a large cut of meat on a tray out of the fridge. “Veal. I’m making stuffed veal.” Tamar turned her nose up.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you like veal?” Shira asked.

  “I hate it.”

  Dana said, “I like it, actually.”

  “You should learn something from your friend, little princess,” Rona told her daughter.

  “I’m not a princess. I’m allowed to develop my own taste in food, aren’t I? You’re always encouraging me not to be like you the whole time. Well, then, here I’m not like you.”

  “Whoa!” said Rona, as she rubbed the meat with butter. “Will you listen to that? I’ve created a monster!”

  Tamar hugged her mother around the waist and tickled her. “You’re a monster!”

  “From now on, you’ll eat nothing but falafel,” Rona said, concentrating on the wine she was measuring into the pot.

  Tamar kept holding on to her mother’s hips. “Yuck!”

  “Don’t tell me you hate falafel too?” Shira exclaimed. Tamar nodded excitedly, and Shira looked at Dana, who was now standing in the corner holding a garlic press. “You too?”

  “No, I like it.”

  Tamar said, “She’s like a dog. She eats everything.”

  Shira looked at the two girls. Tamar was very thin, dark-skinned with smooth black hair, and Dana was fair, with brown wavy hair, hazel eyes, and a roundish body. She reminded Shira of herself, especially in her lack of pickiness about food, something that always touched her in children, while in adults it seemed like a delayed reaction to some kind of orphanhood.

  Tamar started making barking noises and biting her mother’s back lightly, and Rona squirmed a little but stayed focused on measuring the ingredients. “Think twice before you have children,” she told Shira.

  “Yes, think three times; otherwise you might get one like me!” Tamar said.

  Rona asked where the garlic press was, and Dana gave it to her and sat down at the table and opened the Ha’aretz supplement to the crossword page. Shira asked, “Do you like crosswords?”

  “My dad does,” the girl said.

  “Arik and Ruti are coming,” Rona said. “You haven’t met them yet, have you?”

  “No.” She had heard about them from Rona and although, like her, they often came for dinner, she hadn’t met them. “Who else is coming?”

  “No one. Tonight we’ll be a small party.”

  “Yes, we don’t have a date for you today,” Tamar said, and burst out laughing.

  “Thank God.” She was happy but also somewhat disappointed, because although she had never liked the blind dates Rona sometimes invited for her, there was something appealing about this brief period of sitting at the table anticipating the new man: the ring at the door, his entry. The expectation always filled her with the adrenaline of optimism, but as soon as the guest recognized the role he had been cast in, he would either reject it—deliberately talking more with the other guests and with Tamar than with her—or else delve into it with desperate enthusiasm, staring at her all evening, pouring her wine, and lighting her cigarettes, and the adrenaline of expectation would turn into a cynical heaviness. As she walked home on those evenings through the park, without lingering, she would sense her body mocking not only the candidate and the entire candidacy but itself too, as she dragged it along the path, listening to its rapid breaths, a few centimeters shorter than when the evening began, a little fatter, compressed.

  When she reached home after these dinners, she felt she needed compensation, or at least a form of repair: so much hope and desperation had been crammed into such a short time—and the transition between the two was so rapid—that she would sit on the couch for a few minutes, staring ahead, trying to reset herself, although nothing had occurred that evening to throw her out of balance; and perhaps that was why she felt this way.

  The girls were running around the kitchen now, throwing cherry tomatoes at each other, and Rona turned to them, brandishing her wooden spoon, and said, “You’re fired!”

  “You can’t fire me. I’m your daughter.”

  “Oh, really? You don’t say!”

  “I do say!”

  Rona grabbed her daughter’s shoulders, leaned over her, and rubbed her nose against her cheek. “Well, then, let me tell you the truth, because you’re old enough to hear it now. I’m not your mother!”

  “Very funny! Who do you think you are then?”

  “Who am I?” Rona asked with fake innocence, and it was clear this was part of a regular act.

  “Yeah. Who are you?”

  Shira looked at Dana, who stood by the fridge watching them expectantly, her mouth slightly open and an amused but slightly troubled look on her face.

  “I’ll tell you who I am!” Rona said, as she squeezed the girl against her body. “I’m the boss!”

  “Yuck, gross! You spat in my ear!” Tamar jumped out of her arms, and Dana ran over to Rona, who was still squatting on her heels, as if she wanted to squeeze her way quickly into the embrace Tamar’s body had left vacant, but instead she leaned over, picked up a tomato that had rolled into the corner, and threw it in the trash.

  The smell of butter and garlic spread through the room. The Voice of Music was playing a Schubert quartet, and in the living room the TV was tuned to the National Geographic channel with the sound turned off. Shira looked at the girls. They stood beside each other at the counter chopping vegetables and chattering: Dana, the shorter of the two, on a plastic footstool. Then she looked at Rona, who was at the stove with her back to the room, stirring something in a pot. Her movements were slow and precise, like the other things she did in her life—Tamar, for example—and she embodied no haste and no yearning, no incidental relationships, with men or with the world. Her life was full and busy and replete with the troubles of making a living, but it was not frenetic. Rona is a family, Shira thought, and families can’t make any sudden movements. She looked at Rona and at the girls and at the huge window, which was steamed over, and for a moment she no longer heard the sounds around her. The kitchen seemed like a kind of air pocket, and she was struck with reverse claustrophobia: the suffocation was on the outside.

  PART THREE

  ( 1 )

  He sat in the kitchen with the pile of dishes in the sink, the challah peeking out of the bag, and the sections of Ha’aretz scattered everywhere, in that domineering manner of weekend newspapers, and reminded himself there was a book review he wanted to read. He looked in the magazine to see what was on TV, although he had promised himself he would really try to write this evening. Then he got up, opened the fridge and peered inside, closed it, sat down again, and regretted having turned down Rona’s invitation. He wondered why he had automatically resisted, whether it might be a holdover from his bachelor days, when he was fierce in protecting his wolfish routine. He wondered whether this resistance was still relevant to his life, to the routine that was no longer wolfish but canine, full of worry, restlessness, and a constant hunger.

  Rona had said he could make up his mind even at the last minute, he recalled, but it was already nine and the last minute seemed to have passed. He couldn’t show up for dinner now without receiving a second, insistent, last-minute invitation, and he made up his mind not to think abo
ut it—it was just dinner, after all. He gathered up the newspaper sections and took them into the living room, where he sprawled on the couch and looked for the review he had wanted to read. But when he found it, he wasn’t able to concentrate and his thoughts wandered to the literary critic, whose name he recognized but whom he had never met. He tried to imagine what the critic was doing now and whether he was having dinner with his family, because it was clear to him, at least from the tone of his writing, that the critic was a family man. For a moment he thought of himself and wondered what conclusions a stranger might draw upon reading his own writing, and it flattered him to think there might be someone in the world who envied him without knowing him.

  He tossed the newspaper onto the rug, picked up the remote control, and switched on the TV, but he turned it off immediately and got up abruptly, almost pulling a muscle in his back, and went to turn the radio on. He meant to go into the kitchen and tear off a piece of challah, spread it with mayonnaise or store-bought hummus or chocolate spread, and then hole up in his study for a few hours and try to write until Dana came home. Then he would ask her how it was and what they ate. But he skipped the kitchen and went straight to his study, where he flipped through his phone book and dialed Rona’s number.

  Tamar answered the phone, and Yonatan could hear in the background the sounds of dinner: silverware and glasses chinking and lively conversation. He said, “Tamar? It’s Yonatan. How’s it going?” The girl said, “Okay. So, are you coming over?” She sounded so natural that he almost said yes, but instead he said, “You mean you haven’t eaten yet?” She said they hadn’t, and he said he needed to ask Dana something. Tamar said she’d call her and added, “So, are you coming? You should, we’re having stuffed veal.” Not wanting to appear as if he were wangling an invitation out of a little girl, he said, “I don’t think it will work out for me tonight, but thanks anyway.” During the seconds that passed until his daughter picked up the phone, he listened through the earpiece to the same music playing in his own living room.

  When Dana picked up, he asked, “What’s up? Aren’t you eating yet?” She said they weren’t, and he asked if she happened to know where the can opener was; he couldn’t find it anywhere. She asked if it wasn’t in its regular place in the drawer. “I’ve looked there,” he said. He got up and walked with the phone into the kitchen and said, “Here it is. It was here all the time. I didn’t see it before.” Dana asked what he was eating, and he said, “We’ll see. I haven’t decided yet.” She asked if he was sure he didn’t want to come over—Rona would like it—and he said, “I don’t think so. I want to do some work tonight.” “Okay then,” she said, “don’t worry. Rona will walk me home afterward, and it will probably be late because we haven’t started eating yet.” “So how’s Rona?” he asked. “Fine. Do you want to talk to her?” He said, “No, no, there’s no need.” In the background he heard Rona yell, Tell him he’s still invited! “Rona says you’re still invited,” Dana said. Yonatan said, Yes, tell her thanks, another time, and knew he was in trouble; only a direct invitation from Rona could save him now. Dana said, “So you’re not coming?” He could see how the dinner that was within reach a moment ago was again becoming unattainable, and he said, “I don’t think so.” Dana said, “Wait a sec, Dad, Rona wants to talk to you,” and Yonatan was flooded with happiness.

  “So what do I have to do to convince you to come?” Rona reprimanded him from the other end of the line, and he said he would really love to come, but he had to work a little; he purposely emphasized a little, so she would realize this was not a genuine obligation. Rona said, “So what’s the problem? Eat and leave; we don’t stand on ceremony.” And because he was afraid to seem like someone waiting for a last-minute invitation, he said he wasn’t all that hungry. He felt like a gambler risking an entire evening’s winnings, and Rona said, “So just eat a little.” “You really haven’t started yet?” “No, but come now. Let’s go. We’re waiting for you!” And he set the phone down, put on his jacket, and left the house, feeling equally victorious and defeated.

  The girls opened the door. They stood on either side of him as he went into the kitchen and told Rona, who was at the stove, stirring something in one of the pots with a long wooden spoon, “I came empty-handed.”

  “Nonsense,” she said. “The main thing is you came.”

  Yonatan smiled at the people sitting at the round table. Dana took his coat and hung it on a hook in the entryway. Then she stood by the counter and shredded lettuce leaves. Yonatan noticed she was wearing a large apron that was tied around her neck and reached down almost to her ankles. It said SUPER MOM, and he wanted to hug her but was afraid to extract her from the busy happiness that radiated from her as she stood there on a plastic footstool and cautiously tore lettuce leaves into small pieces.

  “Yonatan,” Rona said, and went up to him and kissed his cheek. “Meet Ruti and Arik, and this is Shira.”

  The people sitting at the table smiled at him and he said, “Nice to meet you.”

  Rona said, “This is Dana’s father.”

  Arik said, “Oh! So you’re the writer?”

  “Guilty as charged,” Yonatan answered, and thought that although the phrase he used belonged to a different type of man, not his type, he actually enjoyed being that man for a moment—more pathetic, less sophisticated but far more alive.

  Ruti said, “So we have two writers here tonight.”

  “We do?”

  Rona gave him a glass of red wine and said, “This is Shira Klein; she wrote Accidents.”

  “Oh, of course, I know the name, but I haven’t read your book.” He didn’t know why he said that, whether out of a desire to apologize or to jab at her or, as usual with him, some combination of the two.

  Shira said she had read his books, and he sat down in one of the empty chairs and Arik said, “We read your first book.”

  “We really liked it,” Ruti said, “but we haven’t gotten around to the second one yet. What’s it called?”

  “Silence.”

  “Silence?” Arik repeated.

  Yonatan nodded, inexplicably afraid of him.

  “And the first one was Desire, right?”

  “Passion,” said Ruti, and Yonatan smiled.

  “Passion, desire, what’s the difference? They’re both the same thing.”

  “Arik!” Ruti scolded him.

  “Well, they are, aren’t they? What’s the difference?”

  “There is a difference, isn’t there?” Ruti looked at Yonatan.

  “I have no idea,” Yonatan said.

  “You have no idea about that either? Then how can you write that kind of book?”

  “Oh, Arik, really.”

  “Really what?” he grumbled. “Shouldn’t a writer know what he’s writing about?”

  “There’s no rule against inventing,” said Ruti.

  “Yes, all right, but he should have some basic knowledge, don’t you think?”

  He looked at Yonatan, and Yonatan—the same Yonatan who had earlier said “Guilty as charged”—said, “You’re right; of course you are.” From the corner of his eye he saw Shira smiling to herself, or perhaps to him.

  “Well, then, we have a lot to read in the near future.” Arik sighed and looked at Shira. “We haven’t read your book either.”

  Shira said, “That’s all right,” and Yonatan looked at her and saw in her eyes the same blend of embarrassment and impatience he knew in himself.

  “So what’s your book about, traffic?” Arik asked Shira.

  Ruti said, “Oh, come on.”

  “I know, I know, I was just kidding. But really, what’s it about?”

  “It’s hard for me to say,” Shira said. Yonatan commended her silently for not answering the question he so hated.

  “Come on, give it a try,” Arik persisted.

  “Yes, give us a little hint,” Ruti said, “so we’ll know what we’re buying.”

  “It’s a little complicated to explain,” Shira said
. “And you don’t have to buy it.”

  Yonatan hoped she would keep up her resistance, but Rona interfered. “It’s a book about relationships.”

  “Oh, relationships!” Arik said. “That’s an important topic.”

  “Yes,” Shira said.

  “And a very interesting one. I have a lot to say on that topic.”

  “Don’t we all,” Ruti said. “Your book was about relationships too, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Yonatan said, and looked at Shira. She took a pack of cigarettes out of her bag and offered one to Ruti and Arik, who refused, then to Yonatan, who drew one out of the pack. When she leaned toward him with the lighter, he looked briefly into her eyes, which seemed sad and exhausted, although her face looked young, and there was something childish and eager in it, as if she were running through the rain. She suddenly looked familiar to him: he remembered the orange corduroy pants from somewhere, and the leather jacket hanging by the door next to his.

  “We’ve met before,” she said.

  “Really? When?”

  “Monday, in the bread store on King George.”

  He remembered the woman who had bought the last loaf of onion bread, and what he had told her when she’d said if the bread weren’t for her father she would give it up. “Are you sure? When was that? I don’t remember.”

  “You wanted an onion loaf and I had taken the last one, and you were about ready to murder me.”

  “Really? Was I that bad?”

  “And I said I would give it to you if it wasn’t for my dad.”