Pain

by Zeruya Shalev

  Coming from the open window, a rush of dusty wind strikes her like a slap, and she hurries to close it. She needs to act now, not analyze. She hears Mickey’s steps behind her as he pours himself coffee and sits down across from her in his checked boxer shorts, his chest broad and heavy, his dark potbelly sagging. He has gotten fatter recently, or perhaps she has already grown more familiar with Eitan’s thin body, and Mickey’s flesh surprises and repulses her, as if she is seeing it for the first time. “We’ll drive down to see her after work,” she repeats, “we have to be more present in her life.”

  “I am not participating in this drama,” he insists, running his hand over his shaved head, which is tilted slightly forward as if it is about to butt something. “Shira is a hysterical girl who likes to exaggerate, and you know that. I won’t just get up and drive down there because of an unfounded rumor. What’s happening to you? It’s not like you to react like this. What cult? What guru? I talk to Alma every day and she sounds perfectly fine!”

  “What’s your problem with driving to Tel Aviv?” she says, hearing her voice shrill with anger. “It’s less than an hour’s drive! People do it every day!” They both know that underlying this complaint is another one about a wonderful job offer with a much higher salary that he turned down a few years before only because it meant driving to Tel Aviv, which meant getting up earlier.

  Immediately defensive, he says, “I have no problem about driving to Tel Aviv, it’s a matter of principle! I trust her and you don’t. I believe in her and you don’t!”

  “Enough of that ridiculous competition!” she counters angrily. “You know what, I don’t believe you! It’s just more convenient for you to deny it so you don’t have to deal with it! You’d rather play chess with people you’ll never meet than try to solve your daughter’s problem. When you say you trust her, you’re actually saying that you don’t care, that you want to be left alone. Maybe that’s legitimate, but at least don’t act superior with me!”

  “How dare you talk to me like that,” he says heatedly. “I don’t care? Which one of us would rather spend her life with kids who aren’t theirs, you or me? You have more patience for every kid in school than for your own kids!”

  “You blame me for being dedicated to my work?” She shakes with rage. “You fat chauvinist! You would never talk to a man like that. Maybe you’re jealous because I’m more successful at my work than you are!”

  “No way,” he hisses, “I’m not competitive like you! I’m successful enough, I don’t have to be the best in order to be happy, I don’t constantly look back to see if anyone’s passing me.”

  She takes a sip of her coffee. It’s bitter, like those words, like seeing herself through his eyes, seeing the amount of filth that has accumulated during the years of their life together. Only a thin line separates the routine of their daily life from piles of garbage, she thinks. Maybe I should write about that in my next letter to the parents? We think our home is clean when we throw bags of trash into the bin every day, we think that our bodies are clean when we shower every day. But the really dangerous garbage accumulates under our skin, and there is no way of throwing it away because even when we spew it out the way he has just done, it doesn’t disappear, it only multiplies. And now it has taken up residence inside her as well. Every person is a small universe that accumulates trash, and even when we shower and perfume ourselves, even when we dress well and go out to a restaurant, to the theater or the opera, even when we converse politely, even when we make love, we are two piles of garbage. It becomes apparent at the first opportunity, like now, when he refuses to stop.

  Buttoning his light-colored shirt over his potbelly, he says, “I have no problem with your success, it’s just too bad that it comes at the expense of the children.”

  Slamming her mug down on the table, she shouts, “Just exactly how did it come at the expense of the children?”

  “It’s a fact that you know every kid in your school better than you know your own daughter!”

  It’s almost funny that, through the window, she sees the garbage truck stop in front of their building as if it’s an ambulance come to take away someone.

  Suddenly, she doesn’t know how to reply, maybe he’s right, I hope he’s right, and she asks in a thin voice, “So you won’t go with me?”

  To her surprise, an answer comes immediately, “I’ll go with you,” but the words don’t come from Mickey’s mouth. Omer says them as he stands at the end of the hallway, clearly upset. “I’ll go with you, Mom,” he repeats, emphasizing the first word, exposing in the merciless morning sun the almost transparent cobwebs along which they move as Mickey predictably grumbles, “Of course, you’ll always take Mom’s side.”

  “What does Mom’s side have to do with it?” Omer says. “I just happen to think that Alma’s in a bad way too.”

  She feels compelled to say to Mickey, “Is that all you have to say to him instead of praising him for being worried about his sister?”

  “I apologize, Omer,” Mickey mutters as he hurries into the elevator. “I just think this trip is unnecessary, and I hate unnecessary things.”

  “You yourself are unnecessary,” she blurts out, but the elevator doors drown out her words. “I’m sorry, Omer,” she groans, utterly drained. She sits down on the couch, her eyes burning. “I’m so sorry you heard that.”

  “Never mind,” he says, “I can handle it. I’m a big boy.” With an innocent voice that doesn’t go with his height, he announces, “I’ll have a different kind of marriage, Mom.”

  She smiles at him and says, “I hope so. Even though we’re really not the worst. I don’t know how we deteriorated so much this morning, usually it doesn’t go that far.”

  “I have a problem with Dad,” he says, sitting down on the couch across from her, so good-looking in his denim shorts and green tank top, which brings out the brown-green of his eyes.

  “I know Omy,” she says with a sigh. I hope your relationship with him improves when you get older.”

  “What’s it got to do with age? It’s the kind of person he is, the kind of person I am! He has a problem with me.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she denies quickly, “he has no problem with you. He loves you very much. If anything, he has a problem with me.”

  “So what does that have to do with me?” he asks, so naive.

  Her heart goes out to him. “It really shouldn’t have anything to do with you, but in families, things get mixed together. We all have good and bad qualities, Omy. I hope that in the future, he’ll let you see more of his good qualities.”

  “Why did you marry him?” he asks. “Were you really in love with him once?”

  Trying to curl her lips into a smile, she says, “Love has many faces.” The wall clock above his head reminds her how late it is, but she can’t get up from the couch, can’t cut their conversation short. How many intimate conversations do they have left? Is she doomed to replay them in her mind for the rest of her life? Once again she sees the letters of his name seeping into the plaque, the older he gets, the worse it is. “It’s late,” she says, “what kind of sandwich should I make you?”

  While frying the omelet for him, she thinks about how wrong Dafna was with her hypocritical advice, as if she were a rabbi. What is the point in working so hard to preserve the family? Maybe there are families that are worth the effort, worth making sacrifices for, but unfortunately, the family she built with Mickey is not one of them. They never had special Sabbath or holiday meals, didn’t take many family trips. The few traditions they had managed to maintain crumbled after she was injured, and she never bothered to restore them because when she came back to life, she was so busy. Is he right, does she really know her pupils better than her own daughter? And even if he is right, who knows whether work pressure is to blame. Dafna works hard in her architects’ office, and it never keeps Shira from being close to her. But all of that is ir
relevant now, past its time, like yesterday’s sandwich, which she takes out of Omer’s backpack before she puts the new one, fresh and fragrant, inside. Everything Mickey said to her is irrelevant, as is everything she said to him this morning and all the other mornings they spent together, even the one when he stood in front of her in his mustard-colored jacket. She doesn’t look back, she looks forward, through the kitchen window, and sees the edge of the desert momentarily peek out between the buildings in a rare appearance. In that attempt to see into the distance, it seems to her that this family she built over a quarter of a century has run its course and no longer has a reason to exist.

  How quickly morning turns into afternoon, and how much work she still has waiting for her. One meeting after another, one appointment after another. The yellow Post-its mushroom on her desk like groundsels after the rain, and the painkillers mushroom in her stomach, blending with strong coffee. She sees that Mickey called her and Omer left a message: Yotam has a birthday that evening so he can’t go to Tel Aviv with her. She didn’t plan to take him with her anyway, she was just happy that he offered. Before she can reply, a young teacher who has come for a work interview enters her office. She’s wearing a long, light-blue dress and has light-blue eyes, and Iris likes her immediately.

  “I was accepted by a university in London, and quit my job, but then I met the love of my life and decided to stay in the country,” she says candidly. “So now I have love but I don’t have a job.”

  “You’re just beginning your life,” Iris hears herself say. “How can you know that this is the love of your life?”

  The young woman’s beautiful eyes flash as she says, “I just know. When it happens, you know. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been willing to pay such a price.”

  Iris listens to her with concern. I hope you won’t be disappointed, that you won’t be abandoned. I hope that in another year, he won’t tell you that you remind him of a tragedy. I hope that in another twenty-five years he won’t tell you that you neglected your children, that he won’t ever look at you with eyes full of anger and complaint. Right then and there, she decides to hire her as a substitute teacher even before the end of the year, to lessen the price she will have to pay for love. And what about the price she herself will have to pay?

  Tired, she stares at the accumulating Post-its on her desk. During these sweltering afternoon hours, the price seems negligible. Even if Alma needs them now, that doesn’t mean they have to stay together. Separated couples take care of their children too. Alma and Omer have grown, and along with them, the frustrations, angers, resentments, disappointments. Only the love hasn’t grown, and even if it hasn’t diminished, its place in the scheme of things has become limited. If at least we knew how to love as well as we know how to argue, knew how to be kind as well as we know how to be mean. If only we knew how to enjoy and give pleasure as well as we know how to torment and be tormented. It seems as if, with the years, their ability to hurt has improved while their ability to enjoy has atrophied. Does it have to do with our age or the age of our relationship? Or perhaps, in the end, it’s about the nature of the relationship, its qualities and abilities. She and Mickey have apparently taken the connection between them as far as it can go and haven’t left behind any still-unrealized possibilities. Though she sometimes feels that she never gave him a chance, she certainly can’t do it now, not after seeing Eitan again, not after she has stepped onto the lost continent of the pleasure that will never end, after she has become immersed in a body of water that will never dry up.

  When she thinks about him, she can’t concentrate on work, can’t respond to the demands of the yellow Post-its, so she tries her best to avoid doing it. She sends a short text saying that she will drop by his place in the afternoon, on her way to Tel Aviv. She hasn’t seen him since she recovered from her illness, and this meeting will be brief as well. She glances at the clock—four hours left. How hard it is to wait; the closer the day comes to its end, the slower it moves, as if it has grown tired from the race. This week, she has been trying to weave the elements of her life together, because she cannot devote her entire life to love. She neglected her school and now she has to gather everyone around her all over again, project the confidence she knows how to project, infuse them with the necessary certainty that they are in the right place, are doing the right thing. Alone in her office, her mind wanders, but when someone comes in, she manages to pull herself together, so she’s relieved when there is a knock at her door and a woman her own age walks in, her expression grim. “Do you have a minute for me?” she asks.

  Surprised, Iris says, “About what? Did you make an appointment?”

  “No,” the visitor says, “I only came to have a look at the school and decided to see if you’re free. I registered my son here, but I’m worried. I’m afraid that your program may be too rigid for him.”

  “Were you at the parents’ meeting last winter?” Iris asks. It feels to her as if many seasons have passed since she gave a talk before dozens of parents, speaking proudly about the school’s principles and the path it is taking. Today, it’s difficult for her to feel pride. She may know her pupils well, but not her own daughter, she may have succeeded with other children, but not with her own daughter. She listens to the woman describe her son’s difficulties: ADHD, behavioral problems, rebelliousness. “On the one hand, I know he needs a framework, but on the other, I’m afraid that an overly rigid framework will make him even more frustrated. I’m totally helpless. I must be a failure as a mother.”

  “You’re not the only one in this room,” Iris hears herself say, then laughs as if she were joking. “We have a lot of experience with children like him, and in most cases, we succeed.” The woman reminds her of Sasha’s worried mother. Sasha was the most difficult pupil she ever had, and Iris gave his mother her constant support. Can she devote so much time to this mother as well? “Send me his diagnoses,” she says, “I’ll go over them and tell you honestly whether we’re the right school for him.” She never makes such generous offers, but the uninvited guest’s distress touches her. When she leaves full of gratitude, the room fills with the familiar faces of the Integration Committee members, the guidance counselor and the psychologist, the homeroom teacher and the parents. Iris tries to be as she has always been, believing in herself, in the system she built, but her concern about Alma deepens, and she wants to send the confused parents away and discuss her own daughter with the professionals.

  Theoretically, she can consult with the psychologist at the end of the meeting, but she shouldn’t—she is still the principal and it isn’t a good idea for her personal failure to resonate between these walls. There are only two possibilities for her now, to speak only about Alma or not to be Alma’s mother at all, to be with him, seventeen years old, before Alma was born. But for the time being, only the middle road is open to her, and she pretends to listen to what is being said around her table. How young these parents are, the mother still looks like a girl. She too was a young mother, only a few years had passed between her breakup with Eitan and Alma’s birth, fewer than those that have passed between her injury in the terrorist attack and now. Obviously she had not recovered, obviously she had not matured. She had been so anxious to have a family, to prove to herself that her life was good despite everything, to belong to a family that had a father. But apparently a father isn’t enough, there has to be a mother.

  “Of course she had a mother,” she hears herself argue with her thoughts out loud, to the surprise of everyone in the room. Embarrassed, she pulls herself together immediately and says, “Forgive me, I was someplace else for a moment,” hurriedly restoring the vestiges of her authority. “We’ll give him four hours of integration and try to hire an assistant,” she says firmly. That may be more than the boy needs, but she has to compensate the parents for her lack of attention. When the next pair of parents comes in, the discussion shifts to another pupil, a girl whose difficulties are completely different, tho
ugh the extent of her distress is similar, and Iris steals a glance at the clock. In another hour, she will be in her car on her way to Eitan. She knows that without the promise of seeing him, she wouldn’t be able to endure all this. She no longer understands how she could have lived so many years without the expectation of seeing him, unless it has always been there, invisible but persistent, pushing her onward from day to day, year to year.

  Finally, she is on her way to him, stopping at a roadside store, undecided about what to buy. How can someone be so familiar and so unknown at the same time? Does he prefer wine or beer, red or white, sweet or savory, vegetables or fruit, cheese or meat, tea or coffee? She knows so little about him—even about Alma she knows more—so it’s probably better to choose what she likes, salty cheese, olive bread, cherry tomatoes, walnuts, red wine. What did they take with them then, when they walked along the blossoming wadi on their way to the spring, on the only day between winter and summer that was no longer cold and not too hot yet, and the air was filled with the aroma of honey? In those days, teenagers didn’t drink liquor, even if they were about to be orphaned. She has a dim memory of a package of plain cookies, and she looks for something similar on the crowded shelves, but what’s the point, her arms are already full with too many things for the too-short time they will have together. After all, she will have to be on her way to Alma soon.