by Yael Hedaya
She knew what an orgasm was, but thought that to have an orgasm with someone else was a completely different experience, a climax in and of itself. That’s what Galia had told her. “You have no idea what it’s like,” she said, as they sat on their bench, her face turned to the sky, thin wisps of smoke coming out of her nostrils. “You just have no idea what it’s like, to come at the same time with someone, together!” She opened her eyes for a minute, her eyelids were almost transparent in the sunlight. “You’ll see, you’ll see,” she said, almost to herself, and handed the joint to Shira; there wasn’t much left of it.
She had discovered masturbation when she was eleven. One morning, as she was waking up, she rolled over on her stomach onto one of the big stuffed animals she slept with, a beloved gray teddy bear. She started rubbing up against it, hesitantly at first and with a sense of guilt, because the bear was a childhood friend, but then she moved faster, without being able to stop and without wanting to, until she was surprised by her first orgasm, brief and stingy. She had not yet lain under someone and waited, with painful anticipation, for his movements, feeling so strong and yet so helpless.
From Ariel’s diminishing tears came another erection, and without exchanging a word, without lifting his head from her neck, as if afraid that if he moved or said anything it would all go wrong, he entered her with an ease that contradicted the stories they had both heard about losing one’s virginity, and they both uttered surprised sighs. She ignored the dim pain and the burning sensation and moved her hips quickly and whispered, “Don’t come yet.” Ariel nodded seriously into her neck, and as she moved beneath him she felt his body straining to remain frozen. In those seconds she could no longer feel his penis or the pain or the burning, only the weight of his body on her like the weight of her body on the teddy bear, and she whispered, “Don’t move.” Ariel nodded briskly again, and emitted a whimper of effort, and perhaps of sorrow at discovering that it was not he who was pleasuring her now, that he was a weight for her, not a lover. As she came, she notified him matter-of-factly. He whispered to her, “Yes,” and tried to sound excited, even though he was disappointed that she’d abandoned him like that, inside her. But the currents from her dying orgasm thought otherwise and, free from constraint, he began moving inside her quickly until he came, suddenly straightening up, throwing his head back, closing his eyes, and arching his back authoritatively.
Three years later, he was killed in Lebanon. A sniper hit him in the rearguard of a convoy, his friends from the unit told Shira and the other girls who met at a memorial evening at his high school. Shira, who had slept with a few other guys since then, remembered that movement of his: his closed eyes, his arched back, and his face that looked distorted in pain.
They had stood at the door and kissed for hours when she went home that night. He called her early in the morning and asked her to come to his place again, as if he would ask her over every night from now until eternity. He said his mother would bring home some lasagna and a salade niçoise at lunchtime. She asked herself if she was his girlfriend now and told herself she was, she must be, and after they ate cold lasagna and salad they got into bed, and this time they did it slowly, naked, on top of the comforter that was still full of the night’s smells and stains. Ariel moved as if his first experience had turned into years of practice, and this time she didn’t come, nor did she when they did it again the next day, and a week later she went to Galia’s gynecologist and got a prescription for birth control pills, and they met almost every evening and sat naked on his youth bed and read each other the short stories they wrote. Within the unripeness of those stories there was also a huge certainty, like the certainty of their being a couple as soon as they had slept together, simply because they didn’t know any different. She missed both those things now: both the certainty and the lack of knowledge.
In the twelfth grade, roughly around the time she broke up with Ariel, Galia dropped out of school, and despite mutual promises to keep in touch they didn’t see each other. Here and there Shira heard things about her: She had gotten married; she had left Israel; she had gotten divorced, had come back to Israel, and was hospitalized in a mental institution. Once she saw a picture of her in the paper, holding up a sign at a rally protesting cruelty to animals. She looked even thinner than she had as a girl, her hair still fell over her eyes, but she wasn’t as pretty.
A few months after Shira’s novel reached first place on the bestseller list, the phone rang very late at night, and Galia was on the line. “Remember me?” she asked, and before Shira could say yes, Galia said, “I’ve been looking for you for ages. You’re not listed in the phone book.”
“I’m in a rental apartment.”
Galia ignored her reply. “I’ve been looking for you forever. You’re hard to find, but you were hard to find back then too; you were always kind of slippery; that’s why I liked you.”
Groggy from sleep and a little embarrassed, Shira took the phone into the kitchen and put the kettle on. “How’s it going, Galia?”
“I read your book, and I wanted to tell you that I really liked it. I was very moved. I thought of us. I remembered our talks.”
“Yeah?”
“Do you remember?”
“Yes, of course I do.”
“I thought we could get together.”
Shira heard her lighting a cigarette. “Do you live in Tel Aviv?” She didn’t want to meet her but didn’t know what to say.
“I live on a moshav, not far. I run a cat shelter.”
“That sounds nice.”
“So I thought we could get together, if you’re not too busy or too famous.”
“Of course not. We should definitely get together.”
“What are you doing now? Are you going to sleep? Did I wake you?”
“Kind of.”
“What time is it?”
“One forty-five.”
“And is that late for you?” she asked, instead of apologizing.
“Yes, sort of.”
“Because I thought I might pop over to see where you live, see how a famous writer lives. But you probably want to go back to sleep.”
“Yes. Why don’t you give me your number and we can talk tomorrow?”
“You won’t call.”
“Why wouldn’t I call?” She felt herself being assaulted. “Of course I will.”
“I’ll call you, okay? I’ll call tomorrow morning. What time do you get up?”
“Nine or ten.”
“Then we’ll talk. Good night, sleep well.”
“You too,” Shira said, although she knew Galia wasn’t planning to go to sleep. She imagined her sitting in her garden on the moshav and smoking, with those nervous movements of hers, surrounded by darkness and cats.
The next day at lunchtime they met at a café. Shira was a few minutes late, and when she walked in she saw Galia sitting at one of the tables. They hugged, briefly; Shira could feel Galia’s ribs beneath her transparent chiffon blouse, spiky and brittle, like the embrace itself.
“You haven’t changed at all,” Galia noted, in a tone that sounded more accusatory than flattering.
“You haven’t either,” Shira lied.
She now looked like the roughness her voice used to have. Her hair was no longer black but dyed an eggplant shade and looked very dry, almost flammable. Her eyelashes were coated with black mascara that had smeared on her eyelids and pooled in the corners of her eyes. It was the same makeup she had worn eighteen years ago, but the black circles around her eyes had an aura of mystery back then.
Instead of the cheap Noblesse brand, she now smoked long brown cigarettes, and when she moved her hands her bangles chimed. She ordered soda water and a latte, then a beer, then another, and talked incessantly. She told Shira everything she had been through since leaving high school. Oddly, the story of her chaotic life was very organized and told in a businesslike fashion, and she never took her panda eyes off Shira for a minute, as if she were examining her, as if she ex
pected that when the speech was over Shira would tell her things that would erase everything she had said, or at least rearrange them and offer revisions, as if what she had said was just a bad text and not her life story.
“Wow, you’ve been through so much,” Shira said, when Galia finished talking, and finally turned her head away to face the window. Shira noticed a fleshy scar on her neck and asked what it was.
“That’s from a long time ago,” Galia said, and ran her fingers over the scar. “It happened in Paris. Someone I was living with. He cut me.”
“Why?”
“He was crazy, forget about it.”
They were silent for a few minutes. Shira was fascinated by the scar, but Galia called the waitress and asked for the menu again.
“I was pregnant with his child,” she said, and crushed her cigarette out in the ashtray. “He wanted the baby, I didn’t. I had an abortion behind his back and he found out. That’s it.”
“Wow,” Shira repeated.
“I don’t regret it,” Galia said, as if answering an unasked question. “I want you to know that I’m not sorry. It was the right thing to do, period.”
“Of course. You have nothing to regret.”
“I got pregnant lots of times after that.”
“Lots of times?”
“Twice. Another time in Paris, by him.”
“The same guy?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “He had good sperm.”
“You mean you stayed with him after he cut you?”
“I left him, I went back to him, don’t ask.”
“And then?”
“Then in Israel, by some married guy. And I’m not sorry, I’m telling you. First of all, I’m not meant to be a mother, and second, if I want to there’s still time, isn’t there? We’re still young.”
“Young enough.”
“It’s good material for a book, my life, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely.”
“So maybe you can write about me?” Something in her panda eyes lit up again.
“Maybe,” Shira said. Was that the purpose of their meeting—to turn Galia into a character in a book?
“Because I have lots of fascinating material,” Galia said, as if she hadn’t just been talking for a whole hour. “Don’t ask, the pregnancies are peanuts compared to the other stuff.”
“I can imagine,” Shira said, and wondered why Galia had said pregnancies rather than abortions. She suddenly felt tired and wanted to get up and leave. When she looked at Galia she was filled with pity, wondering why the weak always manage to deceive the strong, how their weakness turns into a trap. “So what’s up with you now? You’re taking care of cats? Is that how you make a living?”
“I don’t make a living from it. It’s volunteer work. My dad left me some money; he died three years ago.”
“So you’re set.”
“You could say so.”
“At least you have that.”
“Yes, at least I have that.”
They were quiet. Galia ordered another beer. When she saw Shira restlessly shredding a napkin, she said, “You know? I always knew you’d make it. I always knew.”
“Really?” Shira looked up from her heap of paper shreds.
“Yes, really. Something in you really wanted to be successful.”
Shira nodded but couldn’t remember herself that way.
“Some people are like that.” This time Galia didn’t pour her beer into a glass but drank straight from the bottle. “You can just see it in them.”
After saying goodbye and promising each other they would keep in touch and knowing they’d never see each other again, Shira felt as if she had now met the angel of death. There was something so demanding about Galia’s failure, something that made her feel so healthy and happy with her life, that when she walked into her father’s apartment and saw Emmanuel sitting in the armchair, she was struck by how relative everything was: in her eyes, her father’s house was full of illness and Emmanuel was a healthy breeze who sometimes entered it, but to her father the situation was reversed. And the guest himself, she thought, as she leaned over to kiss his cheek, had no idea what role he was playing here, with his one leg and his boundless cheer.
She kissed her father’s stubbly white cheek too and offered to make them some coffee. Her father said he’d already had some, but Emmanuel gladly accepted. In the kitchen she thought it was unfair what she was doing to her father, thinking of him as handicapped, as someone for whom one despised friend was better than none. She opened the fridge and took out disposable plastic containers with lentil soup, cooked beets, and stuffed cabbage, all of which her father had bought at the delicatessen across the street. She put the containers out on the counter, gave them a sniff, and threw them in the trash.
( 8 )
It was two and the café was packed. Yonatan was convinced people were watching him and his daughter while they waited for tables in the long line stretching from the bar out to the street. The waitress was going down the line taking people’s names, scanning the tables with her eyes, trying to guess who was about to finish and who was not yet done, throwing desperate smiles at Yonatan as he drank his espresso and smoked a cigarette with faked serenity. He signaled to her and she hurried over with the check. He paid and got up and made his way through the crowd with Dana until they came out into the early spring sunshine. “Crappy place,” he said, and his daughter concurred. “Home?”
“Home,” Dana said, and Yonatan told himself that in the end he really did like his apartment—their apartment. The morning’s adventurous restlessness, the night’s troubling thoughts, and above all the sudden longing for change, or at least renewal, had been nothing more than a passing anxiety attack.
They walked down Sheinkin, the street that for Yonatan had turned from friend to foe; he hoped they wouldn’t meet anyone they knew. But then, at the intersection with King George, he spotted her. She was standing at the pedestrian crossing with her back to them, her bag slung over her shoulder, wearing jeans and an old gray sweatshirt, just like the one he had on. He thought it was her, but he wasn’t sure; he didn’t know if he hoped it was, but before he could decide, Dana shouted out, “Dad, there’s Shira. Shira!” The woman turned around, and he felt the blood rushing to his head and then draining out, and Dana waved, although she was only a few steps away. Shira smiled and waved back.
For a moment Shira thought they looked like twins, she and Yonatan. They were wearing the same sweatshirts and similar jeans, and when she looked in his face, which seemed paler than it had last night, it reminded her of the skin tone her own face took on after a sleepless night. She touched Dana’s shoulder lightly and asked, as if she were addressing her and not him, “What are you doing here?”
“We just had lunch,” Yonatan said, then looked at his daughter and touched her shoulder too. “And you? Just hanging out?” He thought he sounded like an annoying old man again.
She said, “I’m on my way to buy some cigarettes.”
“I need some too.” The light changed, and the three of them crossed over toward the kiosk.
Only then did she begin to feel her heart racing and her brain trying to catch up. She mustn’t miss the opportunity she thought she had missed yesterday. She could already see the café on the corner, which she didn’t like because it was too noisy, and the kiosk a few yards in front of it, and she thought that if it weren’t for Dana she might have been bold enough to ask if he wanted to get some coffee somewhere.
The shade of Yonatan’s face stabilized, but something inside him kept changing colors. As he stood next to Shira at the kiosk, leaning slightly against the stainless steel vats of nuts and snacks, he was suddenly struck by the thought that he was not interested in a relationship—interested, perhaps, but incapable. He asked for a pack of Winstons, then decided he wanted a lighter. He told Dana to pick one out, knowing she would take a long time to decide, and a new thought shot the previous one off course—the fixed course that was so familia
r it didn’t need Yonatan as a pilot—he had to buy time and not let this minute get away. In the sunlight he saw things he hadn’t seen yesterday: that she had good skin and a few gray hairs hiding in the mass of curls. They both waited for Dana, who examined the lighters, picked up two of them, told the shopkeeper, “This one,” and then, “No, wait, wait a minute, this one,” and then changed her mind again, and then, “Dad, which one do you guys think is prettier?”
The phrase you guys was so intoxicating that Yonatan chose a transparent lighter with ducks on it, looked at Shira, and asked, “What do you think?” And she, without even seeing what he was showing her, said, “Pretty.” He paid the shopkeeper, and Dana skipped ahead, then stopped and waited for them. Something had filled her with energy, and Yonatan wondered if she felt his excitement now, transferred to her, as if by dialysis. She hopped a few steps, then waited again, then skipped ahead, and suddenly he thought he heard Shira say something, but he wasn’t sure. He heard his daughter’s pleading voice, “Dad, please! Please!” “What?” he asked.
Shira, who suddenly looked embarrassed, said, “I asked if you felt like going somewhere for coffee.” As it turned out, she had taken courage from the girl’s presence, because she had realized that it would be easier to say you guys than you.
Yonatan said, “Yes, sure, we’d love to!”
The new café turned out to be empty and quiet, and they wondered whether to sit inside or out. Dana eventually decreed, “Outside.” Yonatan looked at his daughter sitting on the iron seat, swinging her legs under the table. She looked at the menu and hummed to herself but was focused solely on them. He kept quiet.
He tore the cellophane wrapper off the pack of cigarettes he had just bought, even though there was another pack in his pocket that he had opened just before they left, and offered one to Shira. She said, “No, thanks. Do you want one of mine?” and offered him a Camel Light.