Accidents: A Novel

by Yael Hedaya

  “Great. And it doesn’t look old-fashioned at all.”

  They turned back and hurried to the store, which was the first one they had visited, and suddenly Dana began to fear that someone else had bought the backpack—someone with good taste, like hers, but no hesitation.

  “Hey,” Shira said breathlessly, “you’re walking too fast for a fat old smoker like me.”

  Dana slowed down, and when they waited at the pedestrian crossing she tried to calm herself. It will be there, she thought. They crossed and turned onto King George, and she didn’t know what she would do if it wasn’t there, how she would forgive herself, so she sped up again and heard Shira panting behind her.

  “No one’s going to snag it.”

  “How do you know?” Dana looked at her.

  “Because I do.”

  “But how?”

  “Because it’s yours, that’s why. You and that backpack were meant for each other.”

  When they left the store with the backpack—which had briefly looked pathetic again, simply because it had waited for them—in a large plastic bag swinging from her arm, she was struck by an embarrassing urge to hold Shira’s hand. They stood close to one another, their hips almost touching, waiting to cross the street on the way home, but she didn’t want to go home. From her point of view, the afternoon had just begun, and the purchase, the relief, the heat that had started to ease up, and the coolness entering the air filled her with happiness. If they went home now, the spell would be broken. They would each go into her own territory, each back to her role, and she was sick of that and of her room, which had become a large cage, and of her life, which seemed old and tiresome and maybe a little too small for her.

  As they walked toward Bialik, she wondered if her father loved Shira for the same reasons she did: because of her brain; because of her beauty, which was so round and soft and sad and ever-changing in front of your eyes; because she hated herself; because he saw himself in her. She hoped not; she hoped he loved her for different reasons, ones that she did not know and could not guess, men’s reasons, because she didn’t want to share this love with him or steal it from him. Because he did deserve to have love, just as anyone did, her sense of justice told her as they turned onto their street, but he especially, because he had suffered, because he had lost his wife, because he had a daughter who tortured him. She could see a light on through the drawn blinds and wondered if he was home. Although it was a little after six, the clouds had darkened the sky and a huge downpour was clearly brewing and would arrive tonight or tomorrow, and she thought that yesterday at this time it was still fully light, a violent summer light. The three of them hated the sunlight, the three of them shared the same hatred—and when she looked at the light flickering between the slits of the blind as she walked toward it, she wanted to confess to him: I hate summer too; I hate the sun and the sea and the market, just like you.

  “Do you feel like getting something to eat?”

  She heard Shira’s voice as if it were very distant. “What?”

  “What to eat or what did I say?”

  “I didn’t hear.”

  “I asked if you wanted to get something to eat.”

  “At home?”

  “No, out. All this talk about dieting has made me starved.”

  “Should we get my dad?”

  “No. I don’t think he’s home. I think he went out to look for a book for his course.”

  They stood at the corner of Allenby and Bialik and Dana wondered if she should tell Shira she’d seen the light on at home, that her father must have come home and might even be cooking something for them. She purposely avoided looking at the house so Shira wouldn’t see, and said, “He’ll probably be home soon.”

  “So what? He’s not a child. Well, actually he is.” She dug around in her bag for her cigarettes. “But for now let’s say he’s not.” Dana watched her fingers as they fiddled with the lighter that refused to work, and thought it was a sign from above, that maybe she shouldn’t smoke this cigarette, because just a moment ago she had heard her wheezing. “And anyway,” Shira said, as she took a book of matches out of her bag, “he’s probably sitting on the floor in some bookshop now, forgetting we even exist.” The book of matches was empty. “So do you want to?” Her unlit cigarette dangled between her lips. “They opened this diner-style place around here, where you can get hamburgers. But you don’t eat meat, so that’s no good.”

  Dana said a diner sounded good; she could get fries or something. She stopped a young man wearing baggy pants and an embroidered shirt, who was smoking a cigarette, and asked him if he had a light. Before Shira could protest, the young man pulled out a lighter from his little leather bag and lit her cigarette. Shira took a relieved drag, looked around, and said she couldn’t remember if it was left or right.

  Dana said it was to the right. “I saw it on the way. It’s on the other side of the street.”

  “Are you sure?” She looked from side to side again, squinting, and Dana prayed she wouldn’t turn back and see the apartment, which now seemed to be illuminating the entire street as if it were Allenby’s sole source of light: the pedestrian crossing, the stores, the beggar by the bus stop with his healthy leg tucked under his body today and the diseased one stretched out.

  “Yes, I’m sure. Come on, the light’s green.” She took hold of Shira’s hand, and they crossed the street.

  ( 22 )

  She was expecting the phone call, but still it surprised her. She was distracted, sitting on the bathroom floor waiting to see if a blue stripe would appear in the little window on the ovulation kit’s plastic stick. Like a ray of light in a dull sky, she thought, as she carefully monitored the white background that had turned gray when her urine touched it. But there was no stripe yet, and it was now of all times—now, when for a brief wonderful moment she had ceased to be the usual tired observer, watching her body from the outside—now the phone rang and she stood up quickly, careful not to kick the stick, and hurried to the bedroom. She knew what it was even before she picked up the phone, yet was still surprised to hear the nurse telling her they had found an infection in her father’s blood and she should come to the hospital soon.

  From that moment on, everything was technical, like the phone call to the secretary of the literature department, asking her to let Yonatan know he should call Shira’s cell phone urgently; technical like the efficiency with which she threw underwear, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a book, two packs of cigarettes, and a lighter into her bag; technical like the thought: Why the book? And technical like the panic that waited for her to finish her business before making its dramatic appearance; technical like her quick glance, a moment before she left the apartment for who knew how long, at the stick lying on the bathroom floor just as she had left it but completely different, with a dark admonishing stripe in its window.

  In the car, which started immediately without its usual morning hesitation, as if it had also been expecting this day, she continued to feel nothing. She sat in traffic on Bograshov and tried to decide which way would be quickest, because, although she took this route every morning and knew the roads well, she had never left at rush hour; everything looked different, alien, the buses and the cars, the drivers and the pedestrians, even the stores and the buildings, as if she had accidentally wound up in someone else’s daily routine. Still in a traffic jam, far from the stoplight, she thought about her sudden efficiency, how she hadn’t forgotten to remove the evidence from the bathroom floor, how she had put the stick back in the package and thrown it into a trash can outside the next door building before getting into her car, how another woman would probably have forgotten, perhaps intentionally—another woman, she thought, would have taken the opportunity to cleanse herself of guilt, confessing without saying a word. She remembered a particular look on Dana’s face, how she had suddenly darkened like the afternoon sky. She had been in such a good mood yesterday, such a rare mood. Now Shira felt guilty for failing to restrain herself from s
haring something several sizes too large for Dana, something unclear even to herself.

  They had sat in a red booth in the diner. As Dana read the menu, one hand on the Formica-topped table, the other on the bag next to her, Shira thought, She’ll never be beautiful. She had her father’s eyes, but they looked better on a man than on a girl. Her lips were thin, almost erased, and there was something vulnerable in her little nose and chin. This is his daughter, she told herself, as if it were a sudden discovery. This is the result of one of his cells encountering another cell. This is what one possibility of Yonatan looks like; other ones perhaps were now inside her.

  “What are you getting?” she asked, and Dana said she couldn’t decide. “What are your options?” she asked helpfully.

  Without looking up from the menu, the girl said, “Hamburger or cheeseburger.”

  “But you’re vegetarian. What happened?”

  “I don’t know. I really feel like a hamburger.”

  “Then get one! I’m getting a cheeseburger.”

  “Me too, then.”

  “And fries?”

  “Of course.” Her face had the same look of relief as when they left the luggage store.

  “And onion rings?”

  “Do you even need to ask?”

  Shira asked, “What else would you like?” and when Dana started looking through the menu again, she said, “Do you feel like, maybe, a brother or a sister?” Dana put her menu down, and Shira continued without looking at her or waiting for an answer. “Because I want to get pregnant. In the near future.” Seconds after emerging, the confession smelled like burnt oil. “Because I’m not young, I’m thirty-eight, but your dad’s not really into it; I mean, I think he does want a child, in principle, someday, but it’s not urgent for him, and I know that if I don’t confront him with established facts it will never happen, do you see?” But Dana was staring at the Formica. “So I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently.” She stopped talking when the waitress came to take their orders, and when she left she lit a cigarette. “At least it will be a good excuse to quit smoking.”

  “What?”

  “A pregnancy.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Dana whispered.

  “Listen. I know this is really unfair of me to tell you all this, because he’s your dad and all, and maybe you feel your loyalty should be to him, but I felt it wasn’t right not to tell you there’s a chance that this might happen, that I might get pregnant, maybe soon. Or maybe not, maybe it won’t work at all, I don’t know, maybe I’m infertile, maybe I’ll chicken out in the end.” When Dana looked at her with sad, inquisitive eyes, she said, “Maybe in the end I won’t do it, you know.”

  Now she couldn’t decide if Dana’s gloom had indicated knowledge, lack of knowledge, or a complete unwillingness to know. All night she tormented herself for telling her, not because she was afraid Dana would tell Yonatan—she might have even hoped she would, and in fact maybe subconsciously was using her, which depressed Shira even more. She drove through the intersection and turned onto Dizengoff and remembered how the confiding atmosphere, the tightening friendship, had instantly been replaced with something sticky and rubbery, like the cheeseburgers, and even the near-wintry chill of the evening could not revive their afternoon or lessen her error, because she had committed the crime and made the girl her accomplice.

  “Facts on the ground,” she remembered saying, although she hadn’t known the expression was in her vocabulary. Facts on the ground—like the air conditioner that arrived a week ago, a little too late, she thought, as she looked out the window at the darkening sky.

  At first he was angry. The two technicians rang the doorbell and she hurried to the door, whispered to them that it was a surprise—her partner didn’t know about it yet—and the three of them stood in the living room doorway, secretive and triumphant. One of them asked where she wanted to install it, and she said the wall between the living room and the bedroom. Yonatan was sitting in the couch reading The Sound and the Fury.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “An air conditioner, sir,” one of the technicians proclaimed. “Your wife got you a surprise.”

  “She’s not my wife,” he hissed, and put down his book.

  “Your girlfriend,” the younger technician said. “Your girlfriend.”

  “Have you lost your mind?” he said quietly, restrained in the presence of the two strangers, who rushed to her aid.

  “No, sir, she’s very smart, your girlfriend,” the older one said. “It was on sale, half price.”

  “How can you live without air-conditioning these days?” the other one said. “It’s awfully hot in here. How can you live like this?”

  “You can,” Yonatan said. “Believe me, you can.” He put the book on the table and went over to the huge box they had put down near the doorway. “How much did this cost?”

  Shira said she’d tell him later. “Is it all right if we put it here?” She pointed to the wall between the two rooms.

  “What do I care? You decide! You make decisions without consulting me anyway.” He left the room, and she was suddenly embarrassed in front of the two men.

  The younger one said, “I guess he doesn’t like surprises.”

  His friend checked the wall and said, “No big deal. It caught him unprepared. I’d be mad too if my wife pulled a stunt like this.”

  “Shelly would get her ass kicked,” the young one agreed, and when Shira looked at him, he said, “Just kidding, just kidding. She’d get her ass kissed, not kicked.”

  “Yes,” the older one said. “He’ll thank you later. You’ll see.”

  She heard Yonatan slam the bedroom door and suddenly felt sorry for him; he wouldn’t be able to hide there either. The technicians had already taken out their tools and the young one was banging on the wall with a hammer. “Excellent, it’s plaster,” he said. “This is going to be a piece of cake.”

  She picked up the book on the table and grew angry at herself at having invaded this den full of books and music and dust with her air conditioner. She wanted to change her mind, but the sound of a drill shook her out of it, and she suddenly felt Yonatan’s hand on the small of her back. “Move away,” he said and pushed her aside and went over to the technician who had started drilling in the wall. “Where are you putting it, at the bottom or the top?”

  “Bottom,” the man said, slightly afraid. “It’s a floor unit. She chose the floor one.”

  “And we’ll put the motor here, outside the window,” the other one said.

  Yonatan asked how much horsepower the unit had, and the older one, relieved that the ice was broken, told him happily about the unit’s merits. “Does it run quietly?” Yonatan asked.

  “Quiet as a baby!” the man said.

  “How much did it cost?” he came close to her and pushed her away again, gently this time, a little smile hovering on his lips. “How much did you spend, you nut?”

  “What do you care? It’s a gift. Don’t ask questions.”

  “But I want to know.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m nosy.” He went up to the technician with the drill. “Are you sure it will cool the bedroom too?”

  “One hundred percent!”

  “With the same power?”

  “Sure with the same power. Even stronger. You’ll see, you’ll sleep like a baby tonight. Just make sure you cover him.” He winked at Shira. “You don’t want him catching a cold.”

  “We’ll have to move the bureau,” Yonatan said to Shira. “It’s standing just where the outlet will be. Should we put the bed there?”

  “Yes. I’ll help you.”

  He turned his back to the technicians and came close to her. “Only if you tell me how much it cost.”

  “No. You’ll never know.”

  “Okay,” he said and encircled her waist. “Then don’t be surprised if I’m a little cold in bed tonight.” He went into the bedroom and she heard him dragging the bureau across the floor, making
a screeching sound that was like yelps of happiness, as if the furniture was giving away his feelings. She wondered if the technicians had heard what he’d said to her, and if they saw him sneak his hand under her shirt before he left.

  “See?” the older one said. “In the end he was happy.”

  It seemed sweet now, to replay that afternoon, which seemed distant enough to be rightfully considered a memory: the noise of the drill, the coffee Yonatan made for the technicians with the pot—they hadn’t used it for a long time and it was dotted with white spots of mildew—the launching of the air conditioner, which within minutes cooled the living room and the bedroom, and then the sex under a blanket in the freezing cold. She stopped at the light to turn into the hospital parking lot and felt nostalgic for that afternoon; it belonged to last week. One choice afternoon out of the previous life she had lived before the phone rang, so expected and so sudden, as if for years her father had been on a waiting list for a flight and a seat had suddenly opened up.

  She went into the parking lot, got out of the car, passed by the guard, went into the elevator, and up to the nursing ward. It was eight-fifty, and although there would be more monumental moments today, far more difficult, she knew she would remember the time as if it were when her life was reset.

  Her father wasn’t in his room. She stood by his bed, where the sheets and thin blanket were folded on top, and her heart sank but stopped for a moment, opening with ease: It’s over. She stood where she was, wondering if she should open the cabinet to see if his things were still there or look for the nurse. Then the roommate, who had been admitted a few days ago and looked healthy and energetic, came out of the bathroom, pulled the tie on his pajama pants, and said, “They already took him.”

  “Where to?” Her voice sounded tight.

  “I’m not sure.” He sat down on his bed. “Intensive Care, I think. The doctors came in this morning, and then they took him. I think I heard them say Intensive Care.” He sighed and shook his head. “Poor man. I talked to him yesterday.”

  She went out into the hallway, feeling like a stranger in this place she knew so well. Since when did her father talk to his roommates? She stood outside the room hesitantly, pins and needles prickling her lower back.