Accidents: A Novel

by Yael Hedaya

  Dana’s room was vast. It had a large window divided into three long narrow panes, set in old wooden frames painted dark blue. The panes were covered with Disney stickers, some of them peeling off. On the floor beneath the window was a large wooden trunk painted in the same shade of blue, on whose lid was written, in faded gold letters, DANA’S SECRETS. Up against one of the walls was an old grandmotherly bureau with keys in its locks. By the other wall was a bed covered with an Indian fabric with a procession of elephants surrounding the bed: each black elephant held the tail of a white elephant with its trunk, and they in turn held the black elephants’ tails. In the center of the procession she saw her book. She looked at the colorful wool rug at the foot of the bed.

  “It’s from the Old City,” Dana said, having followed her eyes, and sat down on the bed, holding the book. “We’re reading your book now.”

  “Really?” She felt pangs of embarrassment for the man shaving in the bathroom.

  “Yes. My dad’s already finished it and now I’m reading it.”

  “Well”—Shira faked an amused tone—“what do you think of it?”

  “I’ve only just started,” Dana said, and opened the book to the first page. “I’m only here, but my dad finished it in two days. He reads fast.”

  “Do you always read grown-up books?” she asked, instead of asking what her father thought about the book.

  “No. But because we know you I wanted to read it.”

  “That’s nice. I’m flattered. So is this where you do your homework?” She pointed to a desk that looked like an old butcher’s table next to the bed, and Dana nodded and went on flipping through the pages.

  From the hallway Shira heard Yonatan announce that he was getting dressed and would be with them soon. They were both quiet. Through the open window she could hear Allenby: a store alarm blaring and the constant hum of pedestrians. The girl’s room suddenly looked like a huge square of loneliness. A sour metallic smell spread through the apartment. Shira sniffed the air.

  “It’s the artichokes,” Dana said. “They must be ready.”

  “Yes,” Shira said.

  “I’ll go and turn them off soon,” Dana said. She lay down on her side, propped up on one elbow, and started looking through the book. “It looks interesting” she said, as if to herself, and Shira heard a closet door slamming in the next room. “I think I’ll like it,” the girl said, and looked up.

  “Hi,” Yonatan said, and stood in the doorway, flushed and shaven, his hair wet, wearing wrinkled, freshly laundered jeans and the same gray sweatshirt he had worn when they first met. “I’m dressed.”

  He went up to Shira and ran his fingers over her arm, and she felt the shiver of someone who has sworn to herself not to feel that shiver again.

  “Are you two coming to help me in the kitchen?” he asked, and when he noticed the book on Dana’s bed, he smiled at his daughter and then at the speckled floor tiles, and said, “Your book is amazing.”

  “Really? You liked it?”

  “Very much. And I’m consumed with envy.”

  “Envy?”

  “Of your honesty.”

  “Thank you.” She wasn’t sure what he meant but didn’t ask, so as not to sound too interested. “So what needs to be done in the kitchen?”

  “Everything!” he said, and with a gentlemanly motion he gestured to the hallway and said he needed urgent rescuing. Shira walked in front of him, inhaling the artichoke scent that welcomed her, warm and violent, while behind her the tickling smell of shaving cream and laundry detergent lingered, and the smell of renewed hope—but this time, she told herself as they went into the steamy, bubbling kitchen, hope without expectation, if there was such a thing.

  Dana was in charge of setting the table. She wanted to know how. “What style should I use?”

  “Your style. That’s the style I like,” Yonatan said and kissed her hair. She shook him off, twisting her face, but he didn’t care; he was happy.

  Shira offered to make vinaigrette for the artichokes, and he said, “Vinaigrette? How could I not think of that? I’ve been racking my brain all day for a sauce to make.”

  “It’s just a dressing, don’t get excited.”

  He said anything she made would be wonderful. He took out a wooden platter of steaks from the fridge.

  “Wow!” she said. “This is exciting!”

  He looked at the beef affectionately, and then at her, and said, “Yes, pretty exciting. I’m actually quite good at this.”

  She stood by the sink and washed the lettuce, and then the potatoes he handed her one by one as he stood next to her with a dish towel to dry them. “Will seven be enough?” he asked, before putting them in the oven. She smiled, and he said, “No, I’m serious,” although the potatoes were huge.

  “Of course it’s enough. Too much, even; look at their size.” He examined one of them in his hand, nodding, as if he hadn’t purposely chosen the largest ones in the market. “If you ask me, one each is plenty,” Shira said.

  “No, I always prefer to have too much food than too little.”

  “Me too,” she said, and wiped her hands on the dish towel he was holding. “You know those people who always make too little spaghetti?”

  “Oh, yeah! The pasta criminals.”

  “I hate them,” Shira said.

  “Me too! I despise them!”

  “If you don’t have any spaghetti left over in the colander, that means someone’s going to be hungry,” she said.

  He laughed and wanted to hug her. He sat down at the table and lit a cigarette. “Want one?” he asked, and she nodded, and he lit a cigarette for her. She stood opposite him and took a drag, and her stomach was once again at kissing height.

  He suddenly felt as if he had just returned from a long journey that had lasted only four days but had exhausted him. And he hadn’t liked the destination. Last time he had been there he was a student, and now he felt like an elderly tourist. That morning, the image of Esti in a fetal position had finally stopped haunting him. “Nothing happened,” he had repeated to himself as he drank his coffee on the balcony. “Nothing at all happened,” he reassured himself, until he realized that was exactly what was troubling him: the nothing—that complex, urgent, nonrecurring nothing—they had shared.

  When he went down to the store to buy some last-minute supplies and tried to guess what flavor of ice cream Shira preferred—forgetting that Rona had called to say she would bring dessert, forgetting Rona and the girls and their preferences—he realized he had fled from Shira because he didn’t want that nothing with her; he wanted everything but was afraid that the nothing was inevitable, perhaps a stage he had to go through, that the nothing was still something that needed to be shared with someone.

  He put out his cigarette and went to deal with the steaks. Shira sat in his place and shook the vinaigrette she had made in a jar. She watched his dance steps as he twisted the big pepper shaker, then covered the cuts of meat with crushed pepper and piled them carefully back on the wooden board. He looked for the dish towel, which she was absentmindedly clutching, took it from her, and wiped off his bloody fingers. She realized Dana was standing in the doorway, leaning against the door frame and watching them with a dreamy, satisfied look.

  The doorbell rang and Dana opened the door. Rona came into the kitchen with Tamar, holding a pan covered with foil. “I made panna cotta, and I really hope it didn’t fall apart on the way.” She sat down at the table and looked around. “You know, I haven’t been here for years,” she told Yonatan.

  He tried to remember the last time someone other than Nira had been here. Tamar came over sometimes after school, but Dana usually preferred to go to her place—more and more so recently, and he wondered if she was ashamed of the apartment, of him, of the life they led here among his books and CDs and moods and cigarette butts. The idea seemed appalling but not implausible. In her place, he would also have chosen a different parent.

  “Dad.” She came up to him holding a w
ineglass with a napkin fanned out inside it. “How’s this?”

  Rona and Shira were impressed, but he pulled her to him and hugged her close, and she squirmed and got out of his arms and said, “Don’t! You’ll ruin it!” He said it was lovely, like in a wedding reception. “Good job,” he said, and knew that the sudden hug he had imposed on her was not for her but for the benefit of the two women watching him: for Rona, to remind her that her daughter didn’t have a father who could hug her like that—he hated himself for it, but he suddenly felt like bursting the perfect hermetic bubble she had created—and for Shira, he didn’t know exactly why, perhaps to show her what a skilled hugger he was.

  Dana and Tamar dragged chairs from all over the apartment into the living room and arranged them around the table. It was strange for him to see his desk chair, his torture chair, wheeled in and positioned at the head, as if it was happy to escape the study.

  They ate the artichokes. Tamar said the way people put down their chewed leaves said something about their personalities.

  “What do you mean?” Yonatan asked.

  “Look,” Tamar said. “Dana and Shira just put them on their plates in a messy way, but me and my mom and you make neat piles. See?” She pointed to his plate and dragged a leaf through her teeth.

  “Yes,” he said, and looked at the tower of leaves he had erected on the edge of his plate. “So what does that say about us?”

  “It says we have a very good aesthetic sense, that we like things to be clean and tidy, and that we’re a good match for each other.”

  “Who, you and me?”

  “No!” She laughed and dipped another leaf in the dressing. “Let’s say, you and my mom.”

  “And what about us? Don’t we match?” Shira asked.

  “You?” she said, and pretended to think about it. “Not so much.”

  “Why, because I don’t have an aesthetic sense?”

  “I don’t know.” Tamar shrugged her shoulders. “It’s just a theory. I didn’t make it up.”

  “It’s a pretty dumb theory,” Yonatan said, “considering that being clean and tidy is not exactly my strong suit.” He stacked the plates and announced ceremoniously that he was going to broil the steaks. “Does everyone like them done medium?”

  “No! Gross!” Tamar said. “I hate blood. Make mine well done.”

  “I told you we weren’t a good match!” he teased.

  “To be honest, I also prefer mine a little more well done,” Shira said. “Medium-well, but you poor man, I’m making things difficult for you. Make mine medium too.”

  “No, it’s okay, you’re not making things difficult.” For a moment he was disappointed that the woman he had seriously decided to devote himself to falling in love with liked her steaks cooked longer than he did.

  He stood cooking the meat in the cast-iron skillet he took out of the cabinet. It was still greasy from the last time he had used it, almost two years ago, he recalled, on Dana’s ninth birthday. It was the kind of skillet that wasn’t supposed to be washed, which was why he liked it—“a lazy man’s pan,” Ilana called it—but he was also fond of it because it stored memories of past dinners.

  He watched the juices running into the pan and thought, After the steaks we’ll probably rest a little and have some coffee and panna cotta. Then the guests would leave. Dana and he would take the rarely used extension leaves out of the table and put them back in the closet. They would push the table back into its corner, close to the piano, where it was usually loaded with books and newspapers and bills and a few pairs of balled-up socks that somehow always ended up there. Tomorrow they would go and have lunch with his mother, who was probably snoozing in front of a TV talk show now, her hand with its large freckles and prominent veins resting on the remote control. They would have chicken soup or some new experiment, a recipe from the paper, something Chinese or Thai, although recently his mother had stopped trying out new recipes and stuck to the ones she knew. For a main course she would make brisket, because it used to be Dana’s favorite dish. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her that his daughter had since developed more sophisticated tastes and he wouldn’t mind a change either. They’d have fruit salad or compote for dessert and then a marble cake with coffee.

  They would sit in the living room or the garden like three stiff characters in a British drama. His mother would tell him things he’d already heard, and when she asked what was new with him he’d say nothing; what could be new? Dana would say the same when she was asked, and he would be a little angry with her for not trying harder to have a conversation with his mother, but he would understand her, although he wouldn’t know if her impatience was a mirror of his own behavior or a symptom of her adolescence. Even before he told his mother they had to leave, she would go into the kitchen and pack the leftovers for them in plastic containers, which they’d bring back next month on their next visit. At the door she’d ask why they were leaving so soon. “It’s early,” she’d say, and he’d say he still had to write today, even though he knew he wouldn’t write a single word and wouldn’t even try. It was the magic excuse that no one dared dispute.

  Driving the bends on the way out of Jerusalem, he would tell his daughter for the thousandth time how much he missed the city of his childhood, how sorry he was that it had changed and become religious and had sent people like him into exile. Dana would look out the window and nod, just as Ilana used to, a yes, yes containing some empathy but also scorn for the campaign of self-pity that was always part of these trips.

  He shifted the steaks around the skillet and pierced one of them, which was cooked through to medium, and he took it and the two next to it out and put them on a plate that he covered with another plate, and left the other two in to cook. Shira stood behind him and he turned to her, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sweatshirt sleeve.

  “Is that one mine?” she asked, pointing to one of the steaks in the pan.

  “One of them is. Whichever one you want. Take the big one.”

  “It looks wonderful.”

  He touched the steaks with his fork, and she thought she was capable of being his friend, she was fairly certain of it, now that she had overcome the disappointment of discovering he didn’t want her.

  ( 23 )

  He hadn’t planned it and was slightly shocked to hear himself say it, but a little before midnight, when he said goodbye to them at the door, he asked his guests if they wanted to go with him and Dana to Jerusalem the next day; he was sure his mother would be happy to see them.

  Rona said they were already invited somewhere, but definitely another time; she hadn’t been to Jerusalem for ages, she loved Jerusalem, and she’d be happy to meet his mother. Shira said she would come. He said he’d pick her up at noon, and she asked if it was really all right and his mother wouldn’t mind.

  “Mind? Will she mind if we bring a guest?” Yonatan asked Dana, who was standing next to him, yawning.

  “No way,” she said. “She’ll be thrilled.”

  * * *

  When Shira woke up in the morning, she realized her father would be deprived of his usual Saturday visit and called quickly to ask how he was. She said she’d stop by if she got back early enough, and if not she’d visit him tomorrow. A year ago, or even a month, he would have asked who Yonatan was, where they were going, and when they’d be back. But the old man on the other end of the line didn’t even bother to say what he always told her, his regular mantra that had started as a warning and a farewell and had turned into a habit: Drive carefully, please. He sounded as if he had lost his language.

  “Okay,” he said, when she told him she was going out of town and would probably not see him that day.

  “Are you all right? Have you had something to eat this morning?”

  “Fine, yes.”

  “Do you feel well, Dad?”

  “Fine. Fine, yes,” he said, as if he were answering a completely different question.

  She went out onto the balcony to check the wea
ther. It was warm again, and she wished it was raining. A rainy drive to Jerusalem could have been more romantic. On the other hand, she reminded herself, what was being forged between them now was friendship, and the weather had no effect on that type of relationship.

  When the Subaru drove up, Dana got out and moved to the backseat, despite Shira’s protestations. There was a school-trip atmosphere in the car. The last time she had been to someone’s mother for Shabbat lunch was when she went with Eitan to see his parents on their kibbutz. She liked them. Being around them gave her a temporary sense of normalcy, and she couldn’t understand what Eitan meant when he said he hated their arguments. At the dinner table, his parents would reminisce about trips overseas, completing each other’s sentences and casting doubts on the veracity of each other’s descriptions. To her, this was not arguing but communicating. Her parents had never talked at the dinner table, and their silence always sounded like a noisy fight to her.

  “How sad that summer’s almost here,” Dana said, and looked out the window.

  “I know,” Yonatan said.

  “Let’s move to Sweden.”

  “Okay,” he said and lit a cigarette.

  “Dad, I’m serious!”

  “Me too. We’re moving to Sweden. Want to come to Sweden with us?” He smiled at Shira.

  “Yes. But it gets hot there too sometimes.”

  When they got to Jerusalem and made their way to the German Colony, Shira noticed that Yonatan’s driving seemed different. He drove slowly and looked very calm, almost dreamy, as he turned his head to look outside. He drove as if he were taking a walk, as if the streets belonged to him, or used to. When they reached his mother’s house, a beautiful stone building behind a wall covered with climbing vines, they got out of the car and walked into the garden down a gravel path that crunched beneath their feet. She felt weak in the knees. There was something somber about this garden, something cold and secretive that reminded her of the first meeting with Yonatan, at Rona’s dinner, which now seemed so distant, irrelevant, but still somehow moving, like the memory of a mundane event that emerges in one’s mind as a turning point, even if nothing extraordinary happened.