by Yael Hedaya
She emptied the ashtray into the trash, threw away the empty beer bottles, transferred the leftover nuts back to their paper bags, and went into the bathroom to turn the washing machine on, because although it was after midnight she knew she wouldn’t fall asleep and she was full of a bad kind of energy: not the kind that enabled writing but the kind that brought on a frenzy and turned to sadness. She sorted out the dark laundry from the whites and thought perhaps what had happened wasn’t so bad after all, and that her sense of catastrophe was exaggerated, even slightly comical; he had a little girl at home and couldn’t be expected to behave like a bachelor. Still, there was something insulting about his departure, like a man who walks into a store to examine the goods, but bolts outside when the shopkeeper approaches him; you can’t tell whether he ever intended to buy anything or whether he just went in out of curiosity or boredom.
She sat on the rim of the bathtub, stared at the machine drum filling with soapy water, and reminded herself that at the beginning of the evening she had been embarrassed to be seen with him. She hadn’t particularly liked his books either, which she had read a few years ago. They were full of verbal acrobatics and showing off and they lacked soul, or so she thought at the time. They lacked evidence of true suffering. She thought they had been written by an arrogant writer. She felt uncomfortable in the clothes she had worn to seduce him, and only now, sitting on the side of the bathtub, did she realize how hard she had tried. She took her sweater off, then the skirt and stockings, and remained sitting in her bra and underpants, which were also black—the sexiest items in her lingerie wardrobe. She took them off too and threw them into the sink. She sat that way awhile longer, listening to the machine spin, until her nakedness became uncomfortable; she would have thrown that into the machine too, if she could have. She thought of a line from a poem by Emily Dickinson, whom she had studied at the university: After great pain, a formal feeling comes. She went into her bedroom, lay down in bed, and pulled the blanket up.
( 19 )
The next morning, he phoned Irma Gutt and told her he thought it would be best if Dana took a break from the piano lessons. “It’s stressful for her, and I can see she’s not practicing. It’s just a phase she’s going through; she’s stopped going to Scouts too,” he said, as if that could soften the blow of abandoning the lessons. “Anyway, I don’t want to pressure her. She’s mature enough to know what’s good for her. With regards to the piano, I mean.”
He lit a cigarette as he waited for a response, and it suddenly seemed to him as if the conversation were not about his daughter but about him as an irresponsible parent who smoked too much, who breathed down the mouthpiece into the ear of a nice elderly American lady with an old-fashioned hairdo, entirely gentle and fragile, and now she was listening to him squirm, listening to his breathing much the way she listened to her pupils playing—pleased, but lurking for mistakes.
But Irma took the news well. She said she was sorry; she said she understood and that her door was open at any time and that Dana was a wonderful girl.
“I know,” he said.
“Simply wonderful. She has a romantic soul.”
“Really?”
“She likes the Romantics—Chopin, Brahms. Especially Brahms.”
“Yes,” he said. He felt a twinge and didn’t know why.
“It’s a shame, she was very much looking forward to playing him,” she said.
“Maybe she will one day.”
“In any case, my door is always open, Mr. Luria.”
“Yonatan.”
“Yonatan,” she repeated. “And I wish Dana the best of luck.”
“Thank you,” he said, relieved.
“And to you too, Yonatan. I wish you the best of luck as well!” It was as if he were also a retiring student.
When he put the phone down, he thought of calling Rona to ask if she was coming to the parent-teacher meeting that evening, and if she needed a ride, but he decided against it. He suspected that out of a combination of hope for them and perhaps also a hidden desire to see them fail, she was monitoring him and Shira, and she would obviously have had input, especially about last night—like a sports commentator, she would be happy to analyze every move for him. The matter of the dinner might also come up, and he didn’t know what to say. In his mind he could already hear her asking what she should bring and if he needed help, and himself clearing his throat and fumbling for an evasion or postponement. For a moment he thought he might ditch the meeting. He was planning to move Dana to a different school anyway, because she hated it. Tamar wanted to leave too, and Rona, who had connections at City Hall, had promised to try and transfer them both to a school in another area next year. He hated these meetings. They reminded him of cocktail parties, empty of content and full of everything that didn’t interest him. When he went, he always sat next to Rona and formed a mute coalition with her, silently agreeing with everything she said, as if she were his big sister or his spokeswoman.
When Dana came home from school, she informed him she would be sleeping over at Tamar’s that night. “You and Rona will be at the meeting, and we’ll have the house to ourselves,” she said.
“Why do you need the house to yourselves?”
“No reason, just for fun.”
“Okay. So you’re leaving me alone tonight?”
“Do you need a babysitter?”
“Yes.” He laughed. “Should we ask Ziv to come down?”
“We could ask Shira,” she said.
“You’re a very devious little girl. I don’t know what side of the family you get that from.”
“Yours.”
“But I’m curious. Why did you suggest that I invite Shira over?”
“You said you didn’t want to be on your own tonight. You’re chicken.”
“Me?”
“Yes.” She laughed, and he was glad to see her happy.
“Then you’re a platypus!” he said.
“Well, you’re a marmot.”
“And you’re a mongoose.”
“A mongoose?” he said. “Now you’re just making up animals!”
“No, I’m not! There is such a thing. You’re an author, you should know.”
“What is it, a cross between a monkey and a goose?” he asked and pinched her backside.
“That’s sexual harassment,” she said, and pinched his butt.
“And that’s parental harassment.” He grabbed her wrist, sensing her fragility.
“Sue me,” she said.
“You should go over to Tamar’s early, okay? Otherwise I’ll drop you off on the way to the meeting. I don’t want you walking in the dark, talking about harassment.”
“You’ll drop me off? Are you crazy? It’s twenty feet away!”
“Madam,” he said, “you know I don’t like Allenby Street. I don’t want you walking around there at any time of day.”
“Then I won’t go down Allenby, I’ll walk through the square.”
“I’ll take you,” he said. “I want to pick up Rona anyway.”
“Okay.” She gave in. “I’m going to do my homework.”
“Nerd,” he said.
“Mongoose.”
At a quarter to eight, he dropped her off outside Rona’s, and a few minutes later Rona got into the car, kissed his cheek, and said she couldn’t be bothered with the meeting. “So what’s happening with Friday?” she said, before she had even put her seat belt on. “Are you going to leave us all hanging? Is there a dinner or isn’t there?”
“There is,” he said, “just like we arranged.”
“Arranged?”
“I think so. Didn’t we? Didn’t we make an arrangement? We said Friday night, didn’t we?”
“I don’t know. I thought it was left open. Did you talk to Shira?”
“When?” he asked, startled, then quickly confessed. “Oh, by the way, did you know we went out yesterday?”
“No! How should I know?” She sounded sincerely surprised, as if she did not possess
the telepathic spying skills he had attributed to her.
“We went to a gallery opening.”
“The photographers’ exhibition? I was supposed to go too; I had an invitation.”
“Why didn’t you come then?” he asked.
“Give me a break. I don’t have the patience for that kind of thing. So how was it?”
“What? The exhibition?”
“That too,” she said and raised her eyebrows pointedly.
“Oh, really.”
“Yes, really. It was so obvious that you fell for each other.”
“We fell for each other? That’s taking it a little too far.”
“She did, then.”
“You think?”
“I know.”
“Why? Did she say anything to you?”
“Oh, come on!”
“Well, what do you want? I haven’t done this sort of thing for ages.”
They were near the school now, and he started looking for parking. He would have been glad to ditch the meeting and go to a café with Rona, or even sit with her in the car, so they could continue their conversation. There was something about her interrogation that made everything seem less scary, as if by extracting the details from him, she also salvaged them from what his mind had managed to inflict upon them during the past day and night, turning them from dry facts—he went out with Shira, she wants him, he might want her too but he fled the scene—into something completely different, into tiny living creatures, little mongooses that nibbled away at the events, consuming them like so much mongoose food.
Talking with Rona not only made everything less frightening but also newly tempting. In the past, too, he had found that talking with her—about school, about the girls, about Ilana, about cooking—reassured him. He had attributed it to the fact that she was a psychologist and listened closely, but now, as he begrudgingly squeezed into a space Rona had spotted from afar and had pointed to excitedly, he tried again to understand what it was about her that made him feel so normal—normal and foolish, but without the self-hatred—and he realized it was not that she was a psychologist but that he could gossip with her; she brought out in him the side that liked to gossip, that excelled at it.
They walked toward the school. He told himself that after the meeting he’d ask if she wanted to go and sit somewhere. He hoped the girls hadn’t killed each other or burned the house down or been kidnapped; he wanted to keep gossiping about himself.
Esti, the nurse, greeted him as if she were the hostess at a formal event. “I’m so glad you came,” she said, and shook his hand, and Rona left him standing at the entrance to the gym and went over to chat with a group of parents in the corner. “You look great,” Esti said, as if she had forgotten that she’d seen him only a week ago. “You look really great.”
He glanced at her and said, “You too,” and looked at Rona, whose shoulders were now shaking with laughter. He wanted to join her, to take shelter in her shadow as he always did. He wanted to snag a seat next to her and win her company for the rest of the evening, because he suddenly felt that his entire happiness now depended upon his conversation with her; like a proportion junkie, he needed a few doses to get him through the next three days, until the steak dinner, from which he now realized there was no escape.
Esti said they were starting soon; the PTA chair was pressed for time so the meeting would probably be very short. “A quickie,” she said.
“What?” he asked, because he hadn’t heard her.
“It’ll be a quickie today! A short meeting.”
“That’ll be good,” he said, and smiled at her.
“Come and sit down, there’s a seat here,” she said, so he sat next to her in the first row of about twenty rows of chairs that had been set up in the gym. It was the last place he would ever have thought to sit. When the meeting began he could see Rona looking for him, so he waved at her. She smiled with astonishment, like a classmate making fun of a teacher’s pet sitting too close to the front.
The gym was stifling and he was restless. He craved a cigarette. The PTA chair stood in front of the rows of parents and began with an apology. “I have to go to Beersheba tonight. Some family business that can’t be postponed. So I apologize in advance that we won’t have very much time.” Although he couldn’t stand the guy, Yonatan thanked him silently. “At least we’ll try to be efficient,” the chair said, and invited Esti to come up and speak.
Esti got up and pulled down the hem of her blouse, something flimsy in a flesh tone that looked like silk, with the outline of her bra showing through. The chairman sat down at the end of the front row and Esti stood in his place. She said she wasn’t there to try and convince the parents to pay the fees. She knew it was a lot of money. She knew it wasn’t fair to saddle them with this burden. She just wanted to explain what it was all about, so they would realize that they were talking about basic essential equipment. “Critical, even,” she said and looked at Yonatan, as if the word critical somehow reminded her of his presence. She pulled out a folded piece of paper from her pocket and read out a list of items.
“Excuse me.” One of the parents interrupted; Yonatan didn’t know the man, who was sitting directly behind him. “But why do you need a digital thermometer? That costs over three hundred shekels, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it is expensive,” Esti explained, “but it’s very difficult to take some temperatures orally, especially with the younger children.”
“It seems like a luxury to me,” the man said.
“Excuse me? Has your child ever been sick?” Yonatan heard Rona’s voice in the back row. “You have a son in the first grade, don’t you? Have you ever tried to take his temperature?”
The man turned to look at her and then turned back to Esti and spoke to her. “I didn’t say it wasn’t easier. At home we have a digital thermometer. But in light of the excessive demand that the school is making on us—and it seems to me that five hundred shekels from each parent is indeed excessive—we can cut corners here and there.”
An argument developed among the parents, and Esti was left standing at the front of the gym with her list. Yonatan tried to figure out what he thought but he had no position, nor was he sufficiently focused to form one. He supported Rona. He trusted her. Everything she said was acceptable to him. If she were running for prime minister today, he would vote for her.
He yawned and stretched and, because it was so hot, opened the top two buttons of his denim shirt. Now he regretted wearing an undershirt. He saw Esti looking at him, smiling, and he smiled back. After ten minutes the fuss calmed down and it was agreed that the matter of the thermometer was marginal. Esti went on reading her list, and fifteen minutes later the meeting was over. It was settled that the parents would pay half the amount this year and the second half next year. The man sitting behind Yonatan sighed and clicked his tongue and wondered out loud why he had bothered coming. Yonatan hurried over to Rona, who was deep in conversation with a divorcée lawyer with whom someone had tried to set him up a year ago; he had refused, claiming he knew her from school and she was too much of a yuppie for him. When he told Rona what he thought when he went to pick up Dana one day, she said he was an idiot and he had gladly agreed with her.
“Dorit is an amazing woman,” she had said. “And she’s beautiful.”
“I know,” he had said at the time. “But I can’t be bothered with dates now.”
“Chicken,” she said, and he said yes.
Dorit smiled at him bitterly now, as if they had already had a catastrophic date.
“We’re going to get something to eat,” Rona said. “Do you want to join us?”
He refused, saying he wanted to work. Rona kissed his cheek and left the gym with the beautiful lawyer. Confused, he stood in the doorway and was taking out his cigarettes when Esti came up to him and asked if she could catch a ride.
“Where to?” he asked coldly.
“Home,” she said hesitantly, as if she had expected him to decide where sh
e was going.
“Where do you live?”
“Next to Rabin Square.”
“No problem,” he said, and lit his cigarette.
“I’ll be there in a sec. I’m just getting my coat.”
He nodded and said he’d wait. She went inside and then came back out, wearing her short coat, smiling.
“You look a little troubled,” she said, as they walked to the car.
“Really? No, I’m not.”
“Annoying meeting,” she said. “Pretty redundant, don’t you think?”
He said it was no more annoying or redundant than all the other meetings. “Do you rent?” he asked, after they had driven in silence for a few minutes.
“No, it’s my apartment,” she said.
“Good location.”
“Yes, it’s really convenient. I walk everywhere.”
“Don’t you have a car?”
“No. I don’t have a license.”
“I don’t believe it. You don’t have a license?”
“I know. People never believe me.”
“It’s just so unusual. I don’t think I know many people who don’t drive. Did you ever learn?”
“I took two lessons four years ago. And that was enough. I have no coordination, and I’m chicken.”
“You don’t look like one,” he said.
“One what?”
“A chicken.”
They drove up Ibn Gvirol and he started to feel more relaxed, as if any small talk would calm him down, no matter with whom.
“Tell me,” he said, when they stopped at a light, “who was that windbag who was being so cheap about the thermometer? The guy sitting behind me.”