by Yael Hedaya
The elevator stopped on the eighth floor and I went into the cardiology ward. I passed an old woman shuffling her feet in terry-cloth slippers and dragging a pole with intravenous bags swaying back and forth like transparent fruit. Next to her, a young woman held her elbow, trying to match her steps to the impossibly slow gait of the old woman. It was hard to tell if the young woman was a daughter, granddaughter, or hired help. And I thought: Mom has exactly the same slippers. And maybe later this morning I would take her for a walk in the corridors, and hold her elbow and crawl along by her side. I looked at the two women disappearing at the end of the corridor and thought of the night before.
Every morning when I came home—Nathan always insisted that we meet at his place—I would lie down in bed and go over every detail and the day would pass quickly. I checked papers and exams and gave everyone high marks, in the lazy haze and sudden generosity I felt toward the world. And when evening began to fall I tried to guess if Nathan was on his way home, if he’d changed buses at the central bus station, if he’d found a seat, if he’d reached his building, and if he was climbing the seventy-five steps to his apartment, standing in the kitchenette, drinking water from the bottle in the fridge, glancing at the note stuck to the door with a magnet, where I had written my phone number which he hadn’t learned by heart, dialing and saying: “Hi, I’m home.” And I would ask: “So how was work?” And he would say: “The usual,” and I’d be sorry I’d asked, because we didn’t ask each other questions, especially not the mundane kind couples asked each other—and he would say: “So do you want to come over?” and I’d hear him swallow a big gulp of water and say: “Yes.”
We had been seeing each other for two months every night except for weekends, which he wanted to keep for himself. I had no idea what he did on the weekends and I didn’t ask. I didn’t tell anyone about Nathan, except for Noga, who of course took a dim view of the whole thing. “You can’t build a relationship on sex,” she said, when we sat in her and Amir’s kitchen on Saturdays, and I said: “I know,” and she said: “You don’t give a damn about what I say.”
In the mornings, when I came down the seventy-five stairs in Nathan’s building—I always went up fast and came down slowly—I thought about Nathan getting dressed in his little room on the roof, rubbing his eyes and splashing cold water on his face, searching for his wallet because he always forgot where he’d put it during the night, standing at the deserted bus stop, dozing or reading the paper on the bus, looking out at the garages and the orange groves, the landscape that could have been part of my daily routine as well if we’d been a real couple. But there was an element of quiet bravura in me which said everything would be all right, that you couldn’t go to bed with someone almost every night with such passion for such a long time without something happening in the end, good or bad. So I waited. I stood in front of the nurses’ station and asked about my mother and the nurse said: “Mrs. Lieberman is in room number two,” and pointed the way.
Room number 2 was quiet and bathed in sunlight from the eastern window. My father was sitting next to her bed, on an orange plastic chair, reading a newspaper. My mother was lying on her side, facing the door. When she saw me, she sat up in bed and smiled and said: “You can go now, Jack. Maya’s here. Thank you very much for coming. I appreciate it very much.” My father stood up, folded his paper, and looked at me, confused and embarrassed, as if he wanted me to intervene on his behalf and prevent his banishment from the room.
“Tell your mother to stop smoking,” he said as I got into the elevator after him and rode down to see him to the bus stop. “There’s no need,” he said. “Go be with your mother. Don’t leave her alone,” but I said that it was all right, that I’d keep him company for a while. In the entrance lobby he stopped at the kiosk and scanned the rows of candy. I wanted to remind him that they were forbidden, but I said nothing. He bought a chocolate nougat bar and slid it into his coat pocket. My father had a gray woolen coat that he had worn every winter for as long as I could remember. I don’t know what he saw in this coat, which was bulky and ugly, and in any case it was already too warm for a coat. Perhaps he liked it because of the big pockets where he could hide things.
When the bus came I kissed him on the cheek, and promised to call and fill him in when I got home. He hadn’t shaved and had prickly stubble on his cheek. I went back to my mother’s room, which she was sharing with an old woman who was lying with her back to us with her face to the window, and all I could see was a mop of white hair sticking out of the blanket like mattress ticking. I thought: Maybe it’s the old woman I saw in the corridor, exhausted from her walk. I asked my mother if they’d already told Tali.
“Why worry her?” She smiled at me. “It’s nothing. The doctors say it’s nothing. In two or three days I’ll be back home.”
“Still,” I said, “I think we should let her know.”
“There’s no need, Maya,” she said. “It’s really not worth it. Do me a favor, don’t call her. I don’t want to worry her. The little one has an ear infection and Tali hasn’t had a good night’s sleep for a week. Leave it. In a day or two I’ll be back home and we can call her then.”
She was sent home after a week. My father didn’t visit her in the hospital again, but he called me twice a day. I don’t know if he was really concerned, or just bored. The doctors gave her a list of strict instructions. She wrote it all down in her notebook, which she asked me to bring to the hospital. In the car on the way home she read the list aloud to me in a resentful voice. She had to stop smoking, lose weight, give up fried foods, and start doing moderate exercise, walking or swimming, for example. “I can’t make so many changes at my age,” she said, cramming the notebook into her bag, opening the window, and lighting a cigarette.
I asked if she wanted me to stay for a few days. She said: “Absolutely not!” I said: “Mom, you need someone with you.” She said: “Don’t start making a fuss, Maya. I’m not dying.” I said: “Still, I’ll feel better if I know you’re not alone at night,” and she said: “Okay, if it will make you feel better, then okay.”
I stayed with her for four nights. I left Nathan a message saying that my mother had had a heart attack and I couldn’t come for the next two days, and that I’d see him on Sunday night. That night, and the next, and over the weekend, I checked to see if I had any messages. There were a few from Noga and from my father. On the last night, after I got up to turn off the television, my mother leaned back in her armchair, sighed, lit a cigarette, and said: “I envy your generation of young women.” I asked her why. She was silent for a moment and said: “Because it’s easier for you. You’re more liberated.” Then she confessed that she had never enjoyed sex. “Daddy wasn’t a very good partner,” she said, and he was the only one she’d had. I didn’t know if she felt the need to confide because she was afraid of dying, or because she didn’t want to go to bed. It wasn’t too late, I said, even though it was clear to us both that it was.
10
It was pleasant sitting in Noga and Amir’s kitchen. There was always a breeze coming in from the balcony and plants everywhere. On a Friday afternoon at the end of June the air was as sticky and humid as usual, but in their kitchen, for some reason, it was always pleasant. Amir walked around the apartment in shorts, bare chested and barefoot, holding a bunch of grapes and dropping them one by one into his mouth, throwing his head back and catching them in the air; Noga jerked her head at me as if to say look at that clown. When Amir came close to her, dangling the bunch of grapes between his fingers, she sprang to her feet and plucked one and pulled the elastic of his shorts open and threw the grape into them. Then she began running around the apartment shrieking and laughing and Amir made a face at me as if to say look at that baby; he chased her and suddenly it was quiet and I heard them kissing in the living room.
They invited me to stay for dinner; they were thawing frozen hamburgers, but I said I had plans and left. I got into the car, turned on the air conditioner, and began drivi
ng around the streets. The sun was already starting to set, too slowly, and was still blazing. The radio was playing quiet Hebrew songs. I had no plans.
I thought of stopping to call my father, to ask if he wanted to look for furniture. I knew he didn’t want to furnish his apartment, that the two chairs I had lent him only served to emphasize the emptiness, which was the most powerful emotional statement he had ever made, more effective and sophisticated than his trembling. But I also knew that if I called to say I was free and offered to go bargain hunting, he would jump at the chance not to be alone on Friday night, even at the price of a few pieces of secondhand furniture.
But I didn’t call. I drove aimlessly until I found myself on Nathan’s street. I parked and got out of the car and walked around for a while. The stores were already closed, including the hardware store, whose locked shutter filled me with sudden longing for that winter morning, for the note beneath the windshield wiper—regards from a clown and a phone number, that was all—and especially for the moment when I could have chosen not to call.
A candy store was still open, and I bought a Popsicle. This must be the place where Nathan bought his newspapers. On Sundays I would find them scattered around his apartment, on the kitchen table or the bathroom floor, on the mattress and the carpet, a few pages blowing around the roof, the crossword puzzles always solved in a red marker, which seemed a little strange because he’d once said that he hated crossword puzzles.
I had climbed thirty steps before I realized what I was doing—I was going up to his apartment on a Friday afternoon. When I reached the roof and knocked softly on the tin door I was bathed in perspiration. Nathan opened the door. He was in his underwear and looked as if he’d just come out of the shower. He kept a tight grip on the edge of the door, which was boiling hot in this weather, as if he was trying not to open it but also not to shut it in my face, and said: “What are you doing here?”
“I thought I’d surprise you,” I said.
“You did,” he said.
“Are you in the middle of something?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” he said. “But I’m expecting someone.”
“Guests?” I asked.
“Sort of.”
“It’s boiling hot,” I said.
“Yes,” he said and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The whitewashed floor was blazing too.
“It’s a scorcher outside,” I said and noticed that I was still holding the Popsicle stick in my hand.
“You want something to drink?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, “water. I’m dying of thirst.”
He opened the door and said: “Okay, come in for a while.”
The apartment looked different. It was tidy, the clothes were all put away, the dishes were washed and stacked on the rack, the fridge, I noticed when Nathan opened it to pour me a glass of water, was full of food: cheese and all kinds of yogurts. In a big plastic bowl on the top shelf there were peaches, grapes and apricots, and a mango. Nathan hated fruit.
I asked: “Is everything okay? You seem a little nervous.”
He said: “You shouldn’t have come without calling.”
I sat down on the mattress and drank my water. Nathan leaned against the wall and, drumming his fingers, he said: “Someone’s coming any minute.”
“A friend?” I asked.
“Sort of,” he said.
“Not a friend?”
“No,” he said. “But you shouldn’t have come, Maya. You should have called first.”
Sigal lived on a kibbutz. Every Friday she’d leave her kibbutz in the north, spend three and a half hours on two buses, get off at the central bus station, buy flowers, and take another bus, her bag hanging from her shoulder, near the black ponytail and long earrings made of colored birds’ feathers. She would get off at the stop next to the hardware store, cross the street, climb the seventy-five steps to the apartment on the roof, knock on the tin door and go inside, and stay till Saturday night.
They had spent the weekends together for five years. He said: “There’s someone I’ve been seeing for a few years now.” I asked: “How many?” And he said: “Five.” And I asked: “What’s her name?” And he said: “Sigal.” And I asked: “Where’s she from?” And he mentioned the name of her kibbutz and explained where it was, sketching a map of the country in the air. I asked what she looked like, and he said: “What difference does it make?” And I said that it made a difference and he said: “She’s about your height, she’s got long black hair in a ponytail.”
I invented the earrings, but not the flowers. When I came on Sundays and saw the flowers standing wilted in a jar on the marble counter, I had been touched, as I was touched by the down on Nathan’s back. I liked the fact that he was a man who bought himself flowers.
I asked: “So the flowers are from her?” And he said: “Yes,” and I asked: “And is she the one who does the puzzles?” And he smiled and said: “Yes. Sigal’s addicted to crossword puzzles.”
I asked whether he loved Sigal and he said he didn’t know. They had been together for such a long time, he supposed he loved her. He stood in his underwear leaning against the wall, drumming on it with his fingers, and glancing at the clock.
I asked if he loved me, and he shook his head. I asked why he and Sigal didn’t get married, and he said it wasn’t that kind of relationship. “So what kind of relationship is it?” I asked. “Different. There’s no obligation,” he said. “That’s why it was okay for me to be with you, too. I didn’t feel I was cheating on her, or anything.” “And me?” I asked. “Did you feel you were cheating on me?” “I don’t know,” he said. “Does Sigal know about me?” “No,” he said, “I didn’t tell her.” “So you’re cheating on Sigal,” I said.
“I didn’t lie to you, Maya. I never lied.”
“No,” I said, “you didn’t lie. You just didn’t tell me that on the weekends you were fucking somebody else.”
“Don’t talk like that,” he said. “I understand that you’re angry, you have a right to be angry. But that’s not the way it is.”
“Sigal’s late,” I said. “Shouldn’t we be worried? She’s late.”
“I guess you don’t want to see me anymore,” he said.
“I didn’t say that.”
“So you want to?”
“We don’t really have time to talk about it now. We’re expecting company.”
“Right,” he said, “but I’m willing to go on as before. I like you, Maya. I like being with you. I have no problem with going on as before.”
“Sure you haven’t,” I said. “Enjoying the best of both worlds.”
“It’s not about enjoyment. Things just worked out that way.”
“No,” I said. “It’s not about enjoying yourself. You’re really suffering. Anyone can see how much you’re suffering. Sunday through Thursday you screw the city girl and on the weekends you screw the country girl.”
“Don’t talk about her like that. You have no right. You don’t even know her.”
“But she’s your girlfriend. So maybe it’s time I got to know her.”
“She’s not exactly my girlfriend.”
“Like I’m not exactly your girlfriend?”
“Yes,” he said. “Exactly.”
“So who’s the other woman: me or her?”
“I don’t know, Maya. Why does it matter?”
“It matters. Who? Me or her?”
“Neither.”
“Neither?”
“Both of you.”
“Both of us are the other woman?”
“No.”
“So who?”
There was a loud, confident knock at the door, the knock of someone who had come a long way and knew she was expected. Nathan detached himself from the wall and gave me a frightened look. I heard the door open and Sigal say: “Hi! What a scorcher!” and then the sound of a little kiss. She came into the room, with her backpack and her ponytail, shorts and a tank top. There were no earrings and sh
e wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts were as small as an adolescent’s. She put the flowers on the bookcase. She said a hesitant “hello” and looked at Nathan, who said: “This is Maya, she’s a friend of mine.”
Sigal dropped her backpack and said: “I’m Sigal,” and I said: “Nice to meet you, finally. Nathan’s told me so much about you.” And she said: “Really? What did you say?” and she hugged him and tickled him and he wriggled out of her embrace and asked us both if we would like some fruit. He said there was some washed fruit in the refrigerator.
11
I had promised to make a salad to take to lunch at my mother’s on Saturday, but I forgot and arrived empty-handed. My mother said there was plenty to eat anyway, and at the last moment she had invited Dad too. “We’re not enemies,” she said.
My father arrived, sweating, too warmly dressed, holding a bottle of rosé wine which he handed to my mother. She thanked him and asked if she should put the wine in the fridge. I told her to put it in the freezer, and she told my father that everything would be ready in a minute—he should sit down and relax. He sat down hesitantly on the sofa, testing it for comfort, as if he were sitting on it for the first time.
“I didn’t sleep all night.” He sighed. “The mosquitoes were killing me.” He leaned back, took a handkerchief out of his pants pocket, and wiped his forehead. “So, what’s your mother cooking?” he asked. I said I thought she was making her pot roast with potatoes, with cold soup for starters. “Yogurt soup?” he asked hopefully. “Yes,” I said, and he said, “Good! Perfect for this weather.” I was supposed to bring a salad, I told him, but I’d forgotten, and he said never mind, there was plenty to eat.