Housebroken

by Yael Hedaya

  I stood in the store and remembered the advice single people are always given: Love comes when you’re not thinking about it, suddenly, in a moment of distraction—advice that is as depressing as it is encouraging, but mainly full of contradictions, because even if you manage to distract yourself from being obsessed about love by concentrating on not being obsessed, the result is that the distraction and its object are one and the same, so what’s the point—especially when love is supposed to be the ultimate distraction and the greatest obsession of all.

  I bought the striped paper and went out to the street, where I saw the note sticking out from beneath the windshield wipers. I stood and read it two or three times. I tried to guess whether Nathan had seen me getting out of the car or remembered the license number. It didn’t make sense that he would remember something like that. I got into the car, turned on the ignition, and read the note again. I put it down on the passenger seat, and at every traffic light studied it again, four words and a number. I hurried home and read the note again on the stairs, then went inside and called Dad to tell him I’d be late.

  “How late?” he asked.

  “A little,” I said. “I have a few things to do. Do you need to go out?”

  “No,” he said. “Where would I go? I’m waiting for you. I bought grilled chicken. It’s good. From the place where your mother always buys.”

  “I’ll be there soon,” I said. “But you go ahead and eat. Don’t wait for me. I’ve already eaten.”

  “You have?” he asked with a kind of despair in his voice.

  “Maybe I’ll have a bite with you,” I said, reading the note again.

  “Then I’ll wait,” he said. “I’m not so hungry either.”

  I knew Nathan’s number by heart. I called him and we arranged to meet in the evening at a little café next to his house. He didn’t sound surprised to hear from me so soon. I drove to my father’s place and, stopping at the traffic light, I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel even though the radio wasn’t on. My father opened the door, holding a chicken leg in his hand.

  We had a nice afternoon. Encouraged by my good mood, he did his best to entertain me in his empty apartment. We still hadn’t bought any furniture. Every Friday, when I suggested that we look for garage sales in the newspaper, he made some new excuse and said that he could manage, that he didn’t need much. He had a single bed and a closet and an old fridge left behind by the previous tenant, and the two chairs I had lent him standing in the living room.

  He made coffee and opened a bag of imported cookies filled with white cream and ate four or five of them, one after the other. He lowered his eyes when I gave him a rebuking look, the kind of look he was well used to, although it was less severe than usual today. My father suffered from a dangerous combination of diabetes and an immense, almost infantile, craving for sweets.

  He asked me how I was, how much I had paid for the paper, and then looked for his wallet to repay me. I said: “Forget it. It’s a present for the new house,” and he said, “What do you mean a present? Why should you buy me presents?” and began rushing around the apartment looking for his wallet, holding the bag of cookies in his hand. He found the wallet on the counter in the kitchen, next to the dismembered chicken peeping out of the silver foil.

  I sat on the chair and nibbled cookies and gave my father advice on interior design, where we’d put what, whenever we bought it, and I reminded him that it was time to buy some furniture, that he couldn’t go on living like this, maybe this Friday we’d go, and he said: “Yes, on Friday. I’m free,” his chin full of crumbs. When I got up to leave he saw me to the door, the bag of cookies in his hand, and said: “I’m glad to see you in a good mood, Maya. Don’t be annoyed with me for saying so, but you seemed a little depressed lately.” As I walked past the broken mailboxes he suddenly called me. I went back to him; he raised the hand holding the cookie bag, stroked my hair, and said he wanted to give me some advice. He hoped I knew that he only wanted what was best for me. I said I knew. Then he blushed. Perhaps it wasn’t a father’s place to say this to his daughter, he said, perhaps it would be better coming from a friend, but a young girl shouldn’t be sad all the time. It made a bad impression. In any case, that’s how it was when he was young.

  8

  Nathan worked in a plant nursery. Every morning he got up at five-thirty and took two buses to the nursery outside the city. “It’s a long way,” he said, “nearly an hour’s trip,” but he didn’t care. He dozed on the bus, or read the paper. He’d been working there for three years. This is what he told me when we sat in the café that evening, at one of the tables outside, even though it was cold. He said: “I prefer sitting outside, if you don’t mind,” and I said that I didn’t.

  He was thirty-four. He had studied at the university for a few years, seven or eight, he said, political science and history, and then philosophy and theater. He had wanted to study law too, but not for money, for justice, even though it sounded silly and romantic. I told him that it didn’t sound silly and romantic, and asked why he hadn’t been accepted.

  “I didn’t apply,” he said. He’d never finished his B.A. because he didn’t believe in degrees. “Neither do I,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, “but you already have three.”

  “Two and a half,” I said. “I haven’t got my Ph.D. yet. And I’m not studying for the sake of the degree.”

  I had no idea why I was still in school. I wasn’t interested in research, I hated libraries, I didn’t want to teach, I didn’t know what I was going to do after I got my Ph.D., but the university gave me money to carry on so I did. I told all this to Nathan, casually, mocking myself and the university, but he looked at me sadly—perhaps he was already familiar with this female ploy, women putting themselves down so he would like them—and said: “Nobody ever offered me anything like that.”

  “Maybe you never asked,” I said.

  “So who did you suck up to?” he asked without looking at me, and dipped the tip of his thumb into the foam on his coffee.

  “I didn’t suck up to anyone. I had a professor who for some reason thought I was gifted.”

  “I never had a professor like that,” he said.

  “Maybe you never stayed long enough in one department,” I said.

  It was clear that Nathan didn’t particularly like me. I thought he would like me more if he knew that I was unhappy, but I remembered what Noga had said about unhappiness and how you had to introduce it carefully, in small doses. “School is depressing,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, “I think so too.”

  “Sometimes I just don’t understand what I’m doing there.”

  “Getting a Ph.D.,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said, “but sometimes it seems like a total waste of time.”

  “Some people waste their time on less important things,” he said and licked his thumb.

  “It doesn’t sound so terrible to me, working with plants,” I said.

  He snickered bitterly and said nothing.

  “No, seriously. It sounds relaxing. I wouldn’t mind doing work like that.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “sure.”

  “You know what?” I said, to change the subject. “I thought it was cute, the way you danced.”

  “Cute?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Like a child.”

  “That’s the way I dance,” he said. He looked insulted. “So what will you do after you get your Ph.D.? Teach some boring course?”

  “Yes, I guess I’ll teach some boring course,” I said.

  “Maybe you’ll write a book,” he said, with a kind of pent-up mockery in his voice.

  I said: “Maybe I’ll write a book.”

  “What about?” he asked without raising his eyes from the table.

  “About men who dress up as clowns and ask women with Ph.D.s to go out with them, and spend the evening making them feel guilty.”

  He smiled and said: “I didn’t ask you to go out with
me.”

  “No,” I said, “you just had an urge to write something and leave it under my windshield wiper. Maybe you’re the one who should write a book.”

  “Yes,” he said, “except that I’m not the talented one.”

  He signaled the waitress to bring the check, and it was clear I wouldn’t see him again. I tried to summon Noga’s calm voice. Noga would have asked herself what she saw in this guy in the first place. Noga would have stood up and walked away, but I went on sitting there.

  We both leaned back in our chairs and stared at the empty mugs and waited for the check. He looked very surprised when he raised his eyes and saw me crying.

  He said nothing. He sat and looked at the empty mug and then back at me again, but he said nothing. Then he cleared his throat, leaned forward, and touched my hand with his thumb. I let my hand rest on the table, under his thumb, consoled. He asked me what was wrong, and I said I didn’t know.

  Nathan took his thumb off my hand and said: “If you like, we can go to my place. I don’t like sitting too long in cafés. I get restless.”

  “Yes,” I said, “me too.”

  He paid for me, even though I’d worked out my share before I burst into tears, but when the waitress came and looked at me with concern and then at Nathan with a questioning face, he hurriedly took out his wallet and pushed my hand away gently when I reached for my bag. He seemed to find it impossible to take money from a crying person, and I liked this. We squeezed into my car, where I stopped crying and was only sniffling a bit, and now and then I took my hand off the wheel to wipe my eyes on the sleeve of my coat. He said I had a nice coat. Like at the party he said I had a nice name. He said it in the same tone, as if he had a limited vocabulary and made the most of it. “Nice coat,” he said. “Thank you,” I said. “Your coat’s nice too.” He said: “Really? I don’t like it.” I said: “At least it looks warm. Mine isn’t warm at all.” He was about to take off his parka and put it around my shoulders, but I said: “I’m fine,” even though I was freezing.

  He lived in a small apartment on the top floor of an old building that looked as if it was about to collapse. He made me tea in his kitchenette and then we sat down in the room on a mattress covered with an old velvet cloth in a faded shade of orange. It began raining hard. The rain beat on the tin sheets that covered part of the roof, on the water tanks and solar reflectors standing on it, and heightened the sense that a real storm was raging outside. Our mugs of tea stood on the floor. We sat side by side on the mattress. Nathan leaned his back against the wall and pressed his knees toward his chest. He wore jeans, an old blue sweatshirt spattered with white bleach stains, and work boots with army socks.

  He stretched his hands out to the space heater and rubbbed them together. I saw them glowing in the red light of the electric coils; he brought them so close that I bit my lip in sympathetic pain, but Nathan made the little smile that children make a second before doing something naughty, and then he put his hot hands on my cheeks.

  My face absorbed the heat instantly. He left his hands there even after the heat had passed from him to me, and then took them away and put them close to the heater again, then put them on my hands and did the same thing again until the whole cycle took on the rhythm of a game. He put his hands against my neck, gathered heat from the heater as if cupping water in his hands, and quickly put them on my thighs. He asked if I could feel the warmth through my skirt and I said yes; my eyes were closed, he was the mediator between me and all the warmth in the world, and when he stopped I felt cold until he took off his blue sweatshirt and draped it over my shoulders.

  We spent the night on the mattress. I wanted to tell him about myself but he didn’t seem interested, and I too, after formulating a few sentences in my head, lost interest in what I had to say. I was worried about what would happen in the morning, when the magic of the tears and the rain and the game with the heat and the sex had vanished.

  At five-thirty in the morning the alarm clock standing on the floor went off. Nathan kicked off the blanket, got up, put on his clothes—the ones he had worn the evening before—and began moving around the apartment. Without saying a word, he washed his face, brushed his teeth, filled the electric kettle with water. I sat on the mattress and picked up my clothes from the floor. He put on his work boots and asked how many spoons of sugar I took in my coffee; I said one, and he put the coffee on the floor, next to the the mug of tea from last night, which was still full. He drank his coffee in big gulps and walked around the room, fastened his watch around his wrist, tied his laces, opened the blinds, shoved his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans, turned off the heater, and stood next to the front door waiting for me to put on my coat.

  “What time do you have to be at the nursery?” I asked as we ran down the stairs.

  “Six-thirty,” he said.

  “Do you want me to drive you?”

  “No,” he said, “it’s too far.”

  “It’s no problem,” I said. “It makes no difference to me once I’m in the car. And there’s no traffic yet.”

  “Thanks,” he said, “but I’m used to taking the bus.”

  The car was standing outside, gleaming from the rain, a wet flyer stuck beneath one of the wipers. I pulled it out and threw it in the street. I opened the door and before getting in I said: “Last chance!”

  He didn’t say a word. As on the first night when I offered him a ride, he opened the door and squeezed into the seat next to me.

  He stretched out his legs and yawned and rubbed his eyes and the car filled up again with that smell of his. Then he mumbled directions and stared out the window. We drove in silence for ten minutes until we left the city and turned off the main road into an industrial area, driving along a narrow road with small garages on either side, still closed. Then the orange groves began. “We’re almost there,” he said, stifling a yawn, and pointed ahead, “right at the end of the road,” and I felt that time was running out, time in which I had to do something, I didn’t know exactly what, but I knew I couldn’t let whatever it was slip away. A couple of tears crept into my eyes. They surprised me, and I wondered if I might have harmed myself yesterday by bursting into tears like that, because maybe now I wouldn’t be able to stop. I dried the tears, pretending I was just rubbing my eyes, and I yawned.

  The sex had been good, but I knew that it wasn’t just because of that; this wasn’t the first stormy night to dissolve into a morning of fatigue and embarrassment and self-hatred. I was full of dread. The good sex and the weariness and the embarrassment were all familiar, but the dread was completely new.

  I turned off the dirt road and Nathan said: “This isn’t the turn.” I said: “I know,” and stopped the car behind a low concrete building covered with graffiti. I pulled on the hand brake and stroked his neck and opened his jeans’ fly. We moved to the backseat and fucked. Then we got out of the car, each from his own side, and slammed the doors and looked, separately, at the view: Nathan stretched facing the orange groves and I stared at a brown field. We got back into the front seat, I started the car, and we continued our journey. When I let him off at the entrance to the nursery, whose huge tin sign was painted orange and decorated with plants and birds, he said: “So, good-bye,” and walked heavily to the gate. He took the keys out of his coat pocket and then turned around and came back to the car—I was still sitting there with the engine in neutral, yawning and rubbing my eyes to buy time—and leaned through the window, stammering: “You want to come over tonight?”

  9

  One day at the end of spring, in the week between the Holocaust memorial day and the Independence holiday, my mother had a heart attack. It was mild and it embarrassed her more than frightened her. What good was her freedom, she said, if her heart couldn’t take it? The attack came late at night, in front of the TV. It was ten to one. Channel One had signed off and she wanted to go to bed. She stood up to turn off the television. The national anthem was playing in the background and she suddenly felt pressur
e on her chest and the famous stabbing in her left arm. She thought it was heartburn, or gas, because she’d eaten a lot of french fries that evening, but to be on the safe side, and in a panic which she found hard to admit even in her hospital bed, she called an ambulance.

  My father was the first to be notified. He told me afterward in an accusing tone that they had tried to call me from the emergency room but I wasn’t home. I was at Nathan’s. When I got home early in the morning—after that first time, Nathan no longer allowed me to drive him to work; he said he could sleep in the bus, but I knew that he didn’t want to owe me anything—there was a message from my father on the answering machine: “Maya, it’s Daddy. Your mother had a heart attack,” and there was a note of triumph in his voice.

  I drove to the hospital in frantic haste. I didn’t know how serious it was. My father wasn’t at home when I called back, and I assumed that he must be at the hospital, that he had been with her all night. I tried to prepare myself for the sight of my mother in intensive care, surrounded by monitors, pale, perhaps unconscious. Perhaps she had tried to call me when she felt bad, and I wasn’t there. Perhaps she thought something had happened to me, perhaps she wondered whether to leave a message and what to say in it. I imagined her standing in the living room between the armchair and the television, between confusion and panic, pressing her hand to her chest, dialing the number for an ambulance while I was only a few streets away in a room on the roof of an old building, lying naked on a mattress covered with a velvet cloth smelling of dust and sweat, relatively happy. I sped through the empty streets and waited for stabbings in my own chest, for the first pangs of guilt, but they didn’t come.

  I parked in the empty hospital lot, went into the entrance lobby, and waited for the elevator. Next to me stood an orderly leaning on his elbow on a white metal trolley piled with bedpans and kidney-shaped bowls. The smell of disinfectant hit me and challenged the smell I still had on my skin. I stood next to the orderly in the elevator and sniffed my fingers and thought that sex could make a person calmer, wholer and stronger, that it beat anything: death, heart attacks, and all kinds of tragedies happening in every room, on every floor, at every minute—as if it were a big cross being waved by priests and nuns to scare off the devil.