by Yael Hedaya
( 2 )
When she woke up, she heard him washing the dishes. She listened to the water running, the dishes chinking, sounds of a pan being scrubbed, spoons and forks dropping in the sink, and closed her eyes again. There was something calming about those sounds, the noises made by someone who has risen first and is keeping himself amused, trying not to disturb the other person but hoping she’ll wake up. When she heard the faucet squeak shut, she yawned loudly. She smiled at him when he appeared in the doorway, wearing a sweatshirt and underwear, drying his hands with the dish towel. He asked if he’d woken her and she said no. She asked how long he’d been awake. “About two hours,” he said, and sat on the edge of the bed and stroked her cheek with the back of his hand, which was cold from the water and smelled of detergent. He does that a lot, she thought, the cheek stroke. She couldn’t think of any other men who did that and wondered if it had anything to do with his being a father, accustomed to pinching cheeks or wiping tears away, and she thought, I’ve never before slept with anyone’s father. She took his hand and kissed it. She thought her own touch had softened too, turned from fearful to devoted. With him, she was learning unfamiliar movements, or ones that had long been dormant, too timid to come out. She liked herself this way, passive in movement, passive in thought, someone who wakes up second rather than first.
She glanced at the clock and was alarmed to see that it was only eight; if he had gotten up so early he may not have slept well—perhaps he never fell asleep at all and was just waiting for her to wake up so he could leave. She thought about the ten years that separated them. She hadn’t thought of their age difference all week, and in bed she had forgotten about it, but now she wondered if the fact that he was older had any significance—a reassuring significance, like the sound of dishwashing, which only a moment ago had made her feel safe.
He asked if she wanted coffee and she said yes, in a sleepy, indulgent voice, although she was no longer sleepy or indulgent but rather alert and extremely nervous. “With the pot?” he asked. She said it was complicated, and he said it wasn’t and that he already knew where everything was. “But did you buy any coffee?” he asked, and she wasn’t sure what he meant. “You ran out last week,” he said.
“I bought some, it’s in the freezer,” she replied, and tried to gain confidence from the knowledge that he remembered such things, knew his way around her inventory, had studied it as he had studied her body.
When he got off the bed, she asked him to open the blinds and the balcony door to let in some air. She lay on her side and watched him struggle with the door’s stubborn handle. It reminded her of how he had tried to force the window open at his mother’s the previous day. She missed that day, and thought about clothes and how they made different puzzles of the same person. Last night, when they ate and he wore only his jeans with no top, he had looked like a boy. Now, without his jeans, wearing only a sweatshirt that reached down to his thin hips and a pair of underwear, which in the light of day she saw was pale blue, he looked almost old.
“I want to call my mother,” he said from the kitchen, “to find out if Dana’s already on her way. What time is it?”
“Eight. Exactly eight.”
He said it was still early, they were probably only just getting up. He knew his daughter, she liked to sleep late. “Did you know you have to pierce a hole in the coffee container before you open it, otherwise it spurts out all over the place?”
“Yes. I learned the hard way.”
“It gives new meaning to the term caffeine explosion.” He stood in the doorway again, holding a spoon in his hand, and she laughed and thought there was nothing to be afraid of. He was in a good mood, and her interpretations—of yesterday, of his clothes, of his shout when he came, which had scared but also flattered her—were redundant and exhausting and could very well blow up in her face just like the vacuum-packed coffee.
He went back into the kitchen, and she wondered if she’d be able to hear the coffee percolating from bed, and what kind of sound it would have this morning. She needed to pee but didn’t want to move, wary of spoiling this photograph of their morning-after scene, still damp from developing chemicals: he making coffee in the kitchen, she lying in bed, half relaxed, half paralyzed with terror.
“Should I heat the milk for you?” he asked from the kitchen.
“No need. I like it cold.” She got up and went to the bathroom after all, smiling at him when he watched her pass by in the hallway.
“Should I bring your coffee to you in bed?” he asked, and from the bathroom she shouted no; she would come to the kitchen.
She brushed her teeth and looked at herself in the mirror and thought of all the mornings she had brushed her teeth and looked at herself in the mirror, when on the other side of the wall was a man for whom she had ambivalent feelings and whom she might not even like but was still afraid might leave. But she did like this man. She had had all week to take comfort in various definitions of him, and to treat her disappointment as regret over something that shouldn’t have happened anyway, and perhaps it was better that it hadn’t. As long as the physical aspect was absent she had had room to maneuver, but now she felt trapped, as if this new three-dimensional form of their relationship had erected fences around it.
They drank their coffee in the kitchen. She looked outside through the balcony door, and the sun shone a white triangle on Yonatan’s cheek. He said he was warm, took off his sweatshirt, and put it over the back of his chair. She considered saying something about the weather but feared that trivial conversation would disclose a failure, as if they no longer had anything to say to each other.
“Looks like there’s going to be a heat wave today,” he said as he looked out.
“The nerve. Considering it’s only March.”
“So another week begins,” he said, and stared over her shoulder.
“Yes,” she answered and was suddenly hit by a sense of loss. “Another week.”
“So what are you going to do today? Write?”
“Maybe.” She knew she wouldn’t write a word, because she would spend the day mourning him. “And you?”
“I hope I’ll be able to do a little writing. Although even saying that is a lie. I mean, I don’t write at all.”
“No?”
“No.” He shook his head and lit a cigarette. “I stare. I stare into space and feel sorry for myself. That’s what I do best. I excel at it.”
“But everyone has those phases, don’t they? I’m going through one too.”
“Does five years sound like a phase?”
“Five years?”
“More or less.”
“But you started a new book.”
“I started one, so what? How many first pages are on your computer?”
She smiled. “But you said you had about fifty pages. That’s respectable.”
“That’s the opposite of respectable.”
They smoked quietly, and she conquered the urge to go up to him and kiss his chest, as she had done at night, because she was afraid it would seem like a cheap effort to comfort him over his writer’s block or prevent him from leaving.
“It must be nine by now.” He got up abruptly. “I have to go. Dana’s supposed to call from the bus station for me to come and get her.” He put his cup in the sink, went over to her, and stroked her cheek again, but this time she thought his touch was condescending and she told herself that the whole thing was hopeless anyway. There was something about Yonatan that was as evasive and misleading as his yell, something that pierced her heart and then disappeared.
He went into the bedroom and came back with his shoes and jeans. She was sad to see him get dressed in front of her, every item of clothing increasing his strength. He tied his shoelaces, stood up, made sure his wallet was in his back pocket, and motioned with his head that he was leaving. She walked him to the door and felt suddenly very naked, despite her T-shirt and underwear. She thought her legs had grown shorter and thicker, and that even her toe
s, which she now looked down at so as not to meet his eyes, had swollen and were slightly distorted. He turned the key in the lock, opened the door a crack, and touched her cheek again, a touch she suddenly thought was neither soft nor condescending but final.
“Want to come over to see us this evening?” he asked.
She said nothing. She stood quietly staring at her toes and ankles and knees and thighs, which had now gone back to looking normal, rehabilitated, as if her panic were a growth that had turned out to be benign. She stretched, arching her back and pushing her chest out, and Yonatan leaned down and kissed her nipples through her shirt. Then she reached her arms out to the sides, truly sleepy and indulgent this time, and said, “Yes, I’ll come over.”
( 3 )
It seemed odd, she thought, as she climbed up the stairs, but she missed the girl. After they said goodbye that morning, she suspected that missing her was a mask for missing him, but when Dana opened the door with her hair still wet, wearing brand-new blue sweats, she could hardly hold back from hugging her.
“Dad’s in the shower,” Dana announced, and Shira was struck by a sense of déjà vu. She had been here only two days earlier, but it was a different home.
“Did you have a good time at your grandmother’s?” she asked and went into the living room with Dana, where they sat down together on the couch.
“It was okay.” Dana bounced the remote control in her hand, and Shira thought she had grown up a little since yesterday.
The TV flickered with the sound turned down, and there was piano and orchestra music playing. “That’s nice,” Shira said. “What is it, Tchaikovsky?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute.” Dana went over to look at the CD cover. “Rachmaninoff. But you were close. They’re both Russian.”
“Do you play?” Shira pointed to the piano.
“I quit. You?”
“No, but I wanted to learn.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“At first, because we didn’t have a piano. And later, when I was twelve and my parents said they’d buy me one for my bat mitzvah, I didn’t feel like it anymore.”
“I can understand that,” Dana said, examining Shira with a look aimed at locating further points of similarity. “Did you have lots of friends at school?”
“No. How about you?”
Dana shook her head.
“But you have Tamar. She seems like the best friend you could ever have.”
“Yes. She likes you too.”
They sat and watched the news on Channel 2, which seemed surreal against the Rachmaninoff backdrop.
“Do you always watch the news with classical music in the background?” Shira asked and took her cigarettes out.
“No. Dad put this CD on before he took a shower. He said you’d be here soon. Did you eat yet?”
“No. Why?”
“We haven’t either. We waited for you. We didn’t know if you’d eaten.”
“I’m not very hungry,” she said, but when she saw the disappointed look on Dana’s face she said she’d be happy to join them, because she could always eat.
“Me too. Unfortunately.”
“Why unfortunately?” She had another urge to touch the girl.
“Because it makes me fat.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“I don’t know.” She flipped through the channels until she got to MTV. “Most of the girls in my class are skinny. They’re always dieting.”
“Tamar too?”
“No, Tamar’s actually a big eater. But she’s lucky, she’s always been thin. She has good genes. Do you like MTV? I hate it.”
“Me too.”
Dana flipped over to the Science Channel. “I like nature programs.”
“Me too,” said Shira.
“My dad does too. Do you want something to drink? Want a beer? We bought some beer. Do you prefer Tuborg or Goldstar? My dad got both kinds because he didn’t know which one you liked.”
“I like them both. But I’ll wait until we eat.” Then she complimented Dana on her sweats.
“They’re new. We bought them today. We went shopping for clothes for me, and Dad ended up getting stuff too.”
“Really?” Shira lit a cigarette. “What did he get?”
“T-shirts. He bought about ten. We found a place where they sell Gap seconds. And jeans, dark green ones.”
“And what did you get?”
“This,” she said, pulling the sleeve.
“That’s all?”
“They had jeans too, but I couldn’t be bothered to try them on.” She went back to watching the news. “I hate trying things on.”
“Me too.”
“Really?”
“They always have this sickly, unflattering light in the changing rooms, and it’s crowded and sweaty, and I always look ugly and it depresses me for days.”
“Me too. Do you like tomato soup?”
“Yes, I love it. Why?”
“That’s what Dad made for dinner. I love it.”
“Excellent.”
“And I think he also bought some kind of fancy bread.”
“Fancy?”
“At the bread store. Something with rosemary. Do you like rosemary?”
“I like everything.”
“Me too.” Dana smiled at the screen. “Are your parents alive?”
Shira said her father was.
“When did your mother die?” Dana asked.
“Almost fifteen years ago.”
“How old were you?”
“Twenty-two. I was a student.”
“Oh,” the girl said.
“Not the same as in your case,” Shira said.
“No. Not the same as in my case.” She seemed to like being considered a case, as if the loss of her mother were a medical condition, something that, with proper treatment, might be cured.
Yonatan appeared in the room. “Hi,” he said, and leaned over to Shira and kissed her lightly on the lips, picking up Dana’s look out of the corner of his eye. He kissed her too, and she squirmed on the couch and said he smelled like toothpaste. He was wearing his new green jeans and T-shirt.
When he got home that morning and was waiting for Dana to call, he had decided not to hide his relationship with Shira from her. He knew that would also make it more difficult to conceal it from himself. He was afraid of his escape patterns, which only Ilana had managed to break, precisely because she had never tried—patterns that this morning, as they drank coffee in the kitchen, he had sensed rousing inside him, prickling. When he picked Dana up from the Central Bus Station, he informed her dryly that Shira would be coming over that evening and that she might stay over. He expected, even slightly hoped for, a flurry of questions that would help him clarify matters for the two of them. But Dana didn’t ask anything, as if she knew that when she got back from her grandmother’s she would not be coming back to the same home, as if she had traveled much farther than thirty miles on her first intercity trip alone—a trip that had not started that morning but long ago.
They sat in the kitchen and ate their soup. Shira wondered what they’d do afterward, whether they’d sit and watch TV together, impersonating a family. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to go home or stay over and cuddle quietly with him in bed so the girl on the other side of the wall wouldn’t sense her presence.
That morning, after he left, she found the stain of semen that had congealed on her stomach, and touched it with her fingertips, afraid to crumble it. All day she kept feeling it under her shirt, pinching her skin in a comforting way, until she took a shower in the evening. Now she spread butter on the bread, which had taken on a special status because it was from the store where they had met, and asked herself if they might already be a couple to him, and if things were perhaps far simpler than she thought.
Yonatan asked what she did today, and she told them she had visited her father. But she did not say how scared she had been when she rang the doorbell over and over again and
no one answered, although she had sensed his presence beyond the door and had eventually used her key to enter the apartment. It was afternoon and the sun was strong, but the apartment was dark and nocturnal because all the blinds were drawn. She expected to find him lying on the floor somewhere, passed out or dead, and she kept standing in the hallway, calling out, “Dad,” at first in a whisper and then loudly, until she heard sheets rustling in the bedroom and hurried in there and turned on the light, and saw him lying on his side with his cheek crushed against the pillow, eyes half open, squinting at the sudden light. On the rug at the foot of the bed was a large plastic bowl, which used to be a salad bowl, and when she got closer she saw it contained a murky fluid of an indistinct color. She asked what had happened, and her father mumbled that he had food poisoning and had been vomiting and having diarrhea all night. She asked what he’d had for dinner and he said nothing, maybe just a piece of quiche. “Which quiche?” she wanted to know, as if it had some significance. “From the deli?” Cauliflower, he said and closed his eyes. She leaned over him and touched his forehead, which was cool and damp, and she picked the bowl up and emptied it into the toilet and flushed the toilet and washed the bowl in the sink and didn’t know where to put it, because it could never go back in the kitchen, so she put it back on the rug in his room, in case he needed it again. She asked when he had started feeling ill, and he said he couldn’t remember, in the middle of the night. His speech was slow and hoarse, more exhalation than speech, and she said they had to open the blinds and windows to air the room out a little, was that all right? He didn’t answer.