Book Read Free

Housebroken

Page 8

by Yael Hedaya


  He sat her on his lap, leafed through the books with her, chose the first course with her, and then made love to her on the floor. In the great feeling of love he suddenly had for her, a drowsy love, he helped her stand up, turned her around, and brushed off the threads of dust clinging to her body.

  He took a sip of her coffee, which was already cold, and went to wake the dog to take him for a walk. The dog was sleeping in his usual place, on the rug at the foot of the bed. During the last few months his mischievousness had turned to laziness. The man had trained him well. His needs had become less and less urgent. Twice a day the man took him downstairs, in the morning and at night before they went to sleep. The collar now fit perfectly, and had two silver disks attached, one with his license number and the other a heart-shaped tag the man had bought; the leash always stayed at home. From the beginning it was clear that the dog didn’t need to be tied up.

  Sometimes the woman took him out, but the dog preferred walking with the man. The woman was always afraid he would escape or run into the road. She didn’t trust him, and whenever he left her for a moment to sniff something or stare at another dog on the opposite sidewalk, she would run over, grab his collar, and hurry him home. The man suggested putting him on the leash if she was so anxious, and once she tried, attaching the brand-new leash to the collar, but the dog sat down at the front door and refused to budge.

  On Thursday morning the man woke the woman, made her coffee, and brought it to her in bed. He also brought the radiator and placed it near her. He sat down on the bed and offered her a little box wrapped in gift paper. The woman snatched it from his hand, tore off the paper, and opened the box. When she saw the necklace she jumped on him and threw her arms around him. They had seen the necklace together in a store display window near the house. She put the necklace on and the man helped her to fasten the clasp, kissing the nape of her neck. Then he bent down, scratched the dog behind his ears, and said that it would be nice if they invited his woman friend to the dinner party as well.

  She was lonely, he said, and he felt a little guilty for having neglected her.

  The woman didn’t know what to say. She kept quiet for a minute and then said: “But it will be all couples. She might feel uncomfortable.”

  “Yes,” said the man. “I thought of that. But I thought—and if you don’t want to just say so—that maybe you could ask your friends to bring someone. My friends have been trying to fix her up for years and nothing ever comes of it. She’s been through everyone they know. Maybe your friends know somebody? I thought it might be nice. Don’t you?”

  “Yes,” said the woman. “It might be nice.”

  “But only if you don’t mind,” said the man and wound his sock around the dog’s muzzle, but the dog wasn’t in the mood to play. He looked at the sock which had slipped to the floor, lay back down on his rug, closed his eyes, and cocked one ear.

  “So it’s okay?”

  “It’s okay,” said the woman.

  “Will there be enough food?”

  “Yes,” said the woman.

  “So do you mind calling them? Do you mind asking?”

  “No,” said the woman. “I’ll call.”

  At noon the man called the woman from a phone booth, and in a babble of shouts and laughter and hooting horns she heard him saying that his friend was delighted with the invitation and that she’d come. “Well, did you talk to them?” he asked. She knew that he could hardly hear her in the noise. “Yes,” she said, “I talked to them.”

  “And what did they say?” shouted the man. “What did they say?”

  “They said they know someone but they don’t know if he’s free this evening. They’ll try to get in touch with him.”

  “What did you say?” asked the man. “I can’t hear, there’s a lot of noise here. We’re shooting outside.”

  “They said they’d try,” said the woman.

  “Are they bringing someone?” shouted the man, and the woman, who was speaking from the kitchen, standing next to the porch door, suddenly filled with anger and yelled: “What’s the matter with you? Are you deaf?”

  “What?” said the man. “I can’t hear. Wait a second, okay?”

  “Okay,” said the woman quietly, to herself, and rolled her eyes, rubbing her foot on the belly of the dog who was lying on his side next to the fridge. In the background she heard honking and distant voices, and she tried to guess if the woman whose voice she heard was the beautiful actress in the picture on the board.

  When the man came back to the phone there was less noise but there was static on the line. Now she couldn’t hear him.

  “So what did you say? That you talked to them?” asked the man.

  “What?” said the woman.

  “Did you talk to them?”

  “Yes!” she shrieked into the phone. “Yes, I talked to them! I’ve already told you a thousand times, I talked to them!” And the foot resting on the dog’s belly suddenly kicked, and the dog jumped up and began running around the kitchen, whining and confused.

  “Sorry!” said the woman. “I’m sorry!”

  And the man said: “What?”

  And the woman yelled: “Forget it! I can’t hear a thing! We’ll talk later.”

  “We’ll talk later?” asked the man.

  “Yes!” screamed the woman. “Yes!” And she slammed the phone down.

  When the man came home everything was ready: the kitchen table stood in the middle of the living room, covered with a blue tablecloth, set for eight, and wonderful smells came from the kitchen, smells that had greeted the man while he was walking up the steps. It was a cold evening at the end of winter and all the heaters in the house were on. The man took off his coat and put it and his key ring on his desk. He found the woman sitting on the sofa, with the dog’s head in her lap.

  He looked at the table and exclaimed admiringly. He put down two bottles of wine he had bought and said: “I brought wine. You forgot to tell me to bring some, but I remembered.”

  “I didn’t forget,” said the woman. “The guests are bringing wine. You didn’t have to buy any.”

  He returned to the front door and examined the table from there in order to go on admiring it from a distance and see how it would look to someone coming in. Then he went into the kitchen, opened the oven door and peeked inside, lifted the lids of the three pots standing on the stove, opened the fridge door, and whistled appreciatively at the dessert waiting there, covered with Saran Wrap. He returned to the living room and sat down next to the woman, put the dog’s head and paws on his thighs to warm them, and said: “So everything’s ready.”

  The dog was the first to sense it. He had known in the morning that something bad was going to happen, and then came the kick in the afternoon. It was the first real kick he’d received since the day the man and the woman had taken him in, and it was unlike any kick he could remember. He had crawled under the sofa and watched the woman’s legs walking back and forth in the living room, and he heard her crying in a low voice. The crying didn’t last more than a few minutes. When he finally came out and stepped softly into the kitchen the woman tried to pick him up, but he wasn’t a puppy anymore, and while the upper half of his body was clasped in her arms his hind legs scrambled in the air. For a moment they danced a strange kind of dance until the woman let him go, and a dim memory flickered in his head of that first day, when he was five weeks old—an unsuspecting stray dog.

  “What’s wrong?” asked the man. “Are you in one of your moods?”

  The woman remained silent and held the dog’s tail in her hand.

  “You know,” she said, and the eyes she had made up a few minutes before filled with tears, “that’s a stupid question when you come to think of it. I’m always in one mood or another.”

  “It’s just an expression,” said the man. “I never really thought about it. So are you or aren’t you?”

  “Yes I am,” said the woman and caught a big tear trickling down her cheek with the tip of her tong
ue.

  “Are you crying?” asked the man.

  “No,” said the woman.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked and tried to put his arm around her, but she moved away, dragging her half of the dog with her to the end of the sofa.

  “You take me for granted,” she said. “That’s what’s wrong.”

  “What?” said the man.

  “I’m not your slave,” said the woman.

  “What?” said the man. “What are you talking about?”

  “About this dinner,” said the woman. “It was your idea. You wanted to invite people, and I’ve been slaving over it all week, and today, out of the blue, you suddenly decide to invite that friend of yours, and it wouldn’t be so bad if it was only her, but now someone else is coming too that we don’t even know.”

  “So they are bringing someone?” said the man happily, forgetting that he was on the brink of a fight.

  “Yes!” screamed the woman. “Are you happy? Yes! They’re bringing someone. All day long I’ve been busy with these stupid arrangements! All day long!”

  The man assumed his didactic tone, which made the dog prick up one ear to figure out whether the reprimand was meant for him, and said: “Look. I didn’t mean for the whole burden to fall on you. I suggested having a dinner party because I thought it would be fun for both of us. I thought it was time for you to meet my friends and me to meet yours. For six months we’ve been at home, alone, and it’s not that I don’t like it, but we never go out at all, we never meet people, and I just thought that it would be a change for us. That’s all. And besides, I did help you. We planned what we would cook together.”

  “What we would cook?” screamed the woman. “Did you cook?”

  “No,” said the man. “You. You cooked.”

  “Naturally!” said the woman, and her hand pulled the dog’s tail. He woke up and looked at her, but he didn’t whine. He got off the sofa and walked slowly, almost limping, to the bedroom.

  “As usual! You live here like a king, three meals a day, on the clock, without lifting a finger! What have you got to complain about?”

  She didn’t want to say these things. They were as new to her as they were to the man, but she couldn’t stop. “You moved in without even asking me. We were only together about a week, and suddenly your things landed here, and suddenly I turn into some housewife”—and suddenly the woman found herself taking profound pleasure in merely saying these things, even though they weren’t true, because the outburst was more pleasurable than the truth.

  But the man was interested in the truth. He said: “Are you serious?” And the woman, who felt as if she was sitting in a roller coaster, decided to test the safety bar of her seat, gripping it with both hands to see how strong it was.

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m dead serious.”

  “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

  “Neither did I,” said the woman.

  “I thought there was something between us that went beyond calculations,” said the man, and the woman, whose roller coaster had crossed the abyss and was at the beginning of a new ascent, said: “There’s no such thing as no calculations. Everyone makes calculations, all the time. Their entire life.”

  “But I thought that when people loved each other they were beyond all that.”

  “So did I,” said the woman.

  “You should have said something. You should have said something before I gave up my apartment. It was a bargain. I’ll never find anything like it again. You could have told me two weeks ago, if that was what you felt.”

  “That’s what you care about?” asked the woman. “That lousy apartment? And you talk about calculations!”

  And something told her—someone who had been working at the theme park for years—that this was the moment to get off the roller coaster, before it rose to the height of its arc and began a new drop, which on any serious roller coaster was sure to be more extreme than the one before. And that someone was generous enough to whisper: Listen, he said the word love, he said “when people love each other.” But because of the other passengers shrieking she couldn’t hear him.

  “Look,” she said, “our guests are coming in half an hour. There’s no point in continuing this conversation now.”

  “No, there isn’t,” he said. “And to tell you the truth I don’t know if there’ll be any point later either.” And all at once the safety bar opened, and the old man in charge of the roller coaster, who was disappointed in her, said: Get up, the ride’s over. You weren’t injured, but you can’t get on again. And she burst into tears, the tears of a child who’d fallen off a swing, but the man felt no pity for her. He stood up, put on his coat, took the keys, and whistled to the dog.

  The dog didn’t want to go out in the cold. He pricked up one ear, raised his head a little from the rug, and wondered whether to respond to the whistle. There was always the possibility that it was a mistake, that his ears had misled him, that the man hadn’t whistled for him. But the man wanted to go out, the cold didn’t bother him, and he went into the bedroom, bouncing the key ring in his hand. The dog opened his eyes and wagged his tail, and when he heard the soft, rebuking, reasonable tone, the loving, disappointed tone, and when he heard the woman slamming the bathroom door, he got up and followed the man out.

  22

  When the man returned from walking the dog, he found the woman sitting on the sofa with his friend. He and the dog had roamed the streets for nearly an hour, going as far as the beach and filling the dog—who had loped reluctantly at his side at first, with the strange limp he had suddenly developed—with a renewed burst of joy and a feeling of adventure. When he saw the promenade spread out on the other side of the street with its brilliant lights he stood up on his hind legs, rested his forepaws on the man’s thigh, wagged his tail, and barked approvingly. But the man suddenly turned around and began retracing his steps. The dog went on sitting on the curb, looking alternately at the traffic lights—at the standing figure changing to the walking figure, which he always liked best—and at the man disappearing.

  A few minutes passed before the man realized that the dog wasn’t at his side. He knew he was late, that the guests had probably arrived, and he began running back to the promenade, sweating inside his overcoat. From a distance he saw the dog sitting with his back to him and staring at the traffic lights. He whistled angrily, one long whistle, and the dog pricked up his ear, turned his head toward him, and limped over with his tail between his legs. He walked home with his new walk, constantly bumping into the knees of the man, who scolded him and told him to hurry up, asking: “What’s the matter with you? What’s wrong with you today?”

  The woman and the friend sat on opposite ends of the sofa, turning their faces and necks and shoulders to each other. When the man came in his friend stood up and embraced him, and then bent down and patted the dog, jiggling his body between her hands and murmuring all kinds of nonsense into his ears. She was his first guest and he didn’t know what to do. He held back a little growl in his throat and waited for her to leave him alone. When she let go he limped into the kitchen and drank a little water and then retired to the bedroom, turning his head to look at the guest, who danced enthusiastically around the beautiful table, and at the man, who gazed at it proudly. The guest asked if she could help.

  The woman went into the kitchen and the man followed her, asking his friend what she wanted to drink.

  “Whatever you have,” said the friend, standing in front of the big bookcase, scanning the contents, and pausing in front of the man’s familiar books, touching them with her fingertips.

  “Does she know that we’re fixing her up with someone?” asked the woman.

  “Yes,” said the man, and touched her chin with a finger still cold from the walk.

  “Are you talking to me?” asked the woman.

  “Of course I’m talking to you,” said the man.

  “So does that mean we’re friends again?” asked the woman and glanced at the dog�
�s full dish.

  “It means that I’m talking to you,” said the man. “Has he eaten today?”

  “No,” said the woman. “I gave him his food this afternoon but he didn’t touch it. I don’t know what is the matter with him. He’s in one of his moods.”

  The man smiled. “Can I help you with anything?”

  “No,” said the woman. “Everything’s ready, I just want to check on the potatoes. Get her something to drink, I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  The bell rang and the man went to open the door. The woman heard the voices of her friend and her friend’s boyfriend, and the man’s voice introducing himself and saying: “Nice to meet you.” She emerged from the kitchen and hugged her friend, and the man took the bottle of wine they had brought and admired it loudly and put it on the table, next to his two bottles. The woman went back into the kitchen and heard the man’s friend asking him all kinds of questions about the wine, and the man and her friend’s boyfriend answering with long explanations.

  Her friend came into the kitchen, put her hand on her shoulder, and asked: “Have you been crying?”

  “Yes,” said the woman, “we had a fight.”

  “What about?” asked her friend, tossing the big salad standing on the kitchen table in a glass bowl.

  “About nothing,” said the woman. Then she opened the oven door and said: “Have a look and tell me if they’re done.”

  “He looks nice,” said her friend and poked the potatoes with her finger. “They’re done,” she said and licked her finger.

  The bell rang again and again the man went to open the door, holding the bottle of wine that had sparked the discussion in the living room, and had already led to a friendly little argument between himself and the woman’s friend’s boyfriend.

 

‹ Prev