by Yael Hedaya
I drank the coffee, swirling the ice cubes from side to side. Noga looked at me, troubled, and I smiled at her. “You’re not really happy for me,” she said, but I told her that I was. She said she would understand completely if I wasn’t, but I said again: “I am. I really am.” She said they were expecting guests, friends of Amir’s she couldn’t stand, but that’s the way it was when you lived with someone. You made all kinds of compromises. You’ve got no idea how many, she said, and she asked me to stay, because these friends depressed her. “They’re so boring,” she said. “They got married two months ago, but from the way they behave you’d think they’d been married for fifty years. Stay,” she said. “We’ll gossip about them in the kitchen,” but I said I had to go because of all the work waiting for me at home. I leaned toward her and took her hand in mine—her left hand with the silver rings. There were three new rings: one from Amir, one from her mother, and one from Amir’s mother. I squeezed her hand in mine and said: “Congratulations, really, with all my heart,” and we stood up and hugged, and her curly hair touched my cheek. It was soft and smelled of shampoo and onions.
15
I waited for my mother outside Orna’s clinic, which was located on the ground floor of a new, marble-covered apartment building uptown. I sat in the car and waited. It was four in the afternoon. We had told my father we’d be coming around four. He had insisted on holding the meeting at his place. My mother wanted him to come to her. She said on the phone: “Why don’t you come to the house?” But he was firm and said he preferred us to come to him. When I told him Mom wanted to talk about their getting back together, he said: “All right. I don’t mind talking if she wants to, but at my place.” He wanted her to see him in the rented apartment he hated so much, still without any furniture. I don’t think he wanted her to feel sorry for him. I think he wanted to let her settle the score. He didn’t need Orna to explain that Mom had divorced him out of revenge for Violet. He wanted her revenge to be complete. He wanted her to know he had served his sentence.
My mother came out of the building. I honked and waved at her. She got into the car, fastened the seat belt, lit a cigarette, and didn’t say a word. I wondered what they’d talked about, my mother and Orna, in the air-conditioned clinic on the ground floor of the marble building. Mom was wearing one of her nice dresses—a sleeveless dress with a triangle pattern. She sighed and looked out the window. She was in the pensive mood that people sink into when they come out of a therapy session.
When we reached my father’s street, she noted that it was nice. I parked outside his building and she asked: “Is this it?” I said: “Yes.” His building was ugly, old, neglected. She walked up the path, looking at the gas balloons and garbage cans and the broken mailboxes. She asked if there wasn’t a tenants’ committee and I said no. She stood and examined the mailboxes until her eyes stopped at my father’s. “Jacob Lieberman” was written on the label in print letters, in childish writing, under a label which said: “Nitzan Alon. Zoom-in Productions.”
“Why doesn’t he remove it?” she asked and touched the previous tenant’s label with her fingernail, as if she was asking my permission to peel it off. I knocked lightly on my father’s door, and my mother asked why there wasn’t a bell. I said there was, but it didn’t work, and she said that you should fix things, that you shouldn’t leave things too long, because they take their revenge on you. I knocked on the door again. Mom stood behind me, clutching her little handbag. “Why doesn’t he answer?” she whispered at the back of my neck. My father opened the door. He was pale and unshaved.
We went in, he closed the door behind us. My mother stood in the entrance hall, examining the few bits of furniture in the living room. She pointed with her chin at the two chairs and said: “Those are ours, aren’t they? Didn’t you once take them from the house, Maya?” and my father said: “She loaned them to me, until I get settled.”
I went into the kitchen to make coffee. My mother and father remained in the living room, staring at the chairs, until she came into the kitchen and said: “What’s taking so long?” I said: “It’s this electric coil. You have to boil each cup separately.” She said: “It’s too bad he hasn’t got a table and chairs in here. We could have sat in the kitchen. Why doesn’t he buy a kettle? He can take one from our place. We have two. He knows there’s an extra kettle. I told him he could take whatever he wanted. Why didn’t he take it?” Then she asked if I’d noticed that Dad hadn’t shaved today. She said he did it on purpose, to annoy her. To look more pathetic than he really was. I told her he hadn’t been paying too much attention to shaving lately. She tasted her coffee to see if it was sweet enough, and said that I didn’t need to give her lessons on my father, that she knew him better than I did.
We returned to the living room, my mother holding her cup with the tips of her fingers, and me holding mine and my father’s. He was sitting on one of the chairs with his face to the window. On the western wall there was a high, rectangular window, which was closed most of the time because it overlooked the entrance path and the garbage cans and gas balloons.
My mother sat down on the other chair. She moved it closer to my father, out of habit, but stopped halfway. She put her cup down on the floor, rummaged in her bag, and took out her cigarettes. She took one from the pack, then took out her lighter, lit it, and brought it up to the cigarette, but suddenly she removed the cigarette and, still pressing the lighter spring with her finger, held the flame out to my father and asked: “Is it all right if I smoke, Jack?” He nodded and said: “There aren’t any ashtrays,” and I said: “I’ll find something,” and my father said: “There are some empty cottage cheese containers under the sink. You can use one of them.” My mother, happy to have obtained permission to light her cigarette, took a deep drag, exhaled, and said: “Why do you keep empty cottage cheese containers, Jack?” He said: “For ashtrays.”
I brought one, and she put it on her lap, balancing it against her bag. “Should I open the window a little, Dad?” I asked. “I don’t think so,” he said. “It’s noisy outside and it smells of gas.” “Isn’t there a tenants’ committee?” my mother asked. “I don’t know,” said my father. “Apparently not,” I said. “That’s no good,” she said and bent down to pick up her coffee from the floor. I said: “But it has advantages too. There’s less to pay. Less hassle.” “Oh, Jack, I forgot to tell you!” My mother snatched at the conversational tidbit. “Our tenant committee’s changed! Did Maya tell you? You know who’s the head of it now?” My father didn’t answer, shrugging his shoulders like a child who doesn’t want to appear too interested. The committee had always been my father’s favorite chore. For years he had volunteered as chair, to the relief of the entire building. He had kept the accounts and the receipts and had taken them with him when he moved. Now they were packed in a manila envelope at the bottom of his suitcase in the bedroom, and my mother said: “Gottlieb!”
“Gottlieb?” he asked.
“Yes, Jack. Gottlieb! Can you believe it? It’s a disaster! We don’t know what to do.”
She was trying to butter him up, prodding his soft spot. Telling my father that the tenants’ committee was a disaster, that Gottlieb didn’t know what he was doing, that he forgot to collect the dues, that he didn’t give out receipts, that the water supply had been nearly cut off twice, was like telling him that she missed him, and not just her, but everybody. The whole building missed him.
My father digested the news in silence. I sat on the floor and leaned against the wall and drank my coffee. I hugged my knees and said: “Okay, enough small talk.”
They both looked at me with sorrow and surprise.
I said: “Dad, you’re not well.”
My mother said: “Maya’s right. You have to take care of yourself.”
I said: “You’re not well either. You know you could have another heart attack.”
“Yes,” she said, “but I don’t think about it. You have to live your life Maya, and not think too much.”
“In any case,” I said, “we’re here to solve the problem. We’re here to find a practical solution.” Suddenly I felt as if I was Gottlieb, a failed chairman, facing two quarreling, obstinate residents, the only ones in the building. I said: “Dad, Mom says she’s ready to think about getting back together.”
“But only for a trial period,” she said, and burned a hole in the cottage cheese container as she tried to put out her cigarette. “Only for a trial period, Jack.” Suddenly my father rebelled—I should have seen it coming. I had seen his shoulders charge like batteries—he turned to her and said: “I don’t need any favors, Deborah. Please don’t do me any favors.”
I stood up and opened the window because it had become unbearable in the room, and the smell of the garbage and the gas seemed preferable. I leaned against the wall and said: “Stop it, both of you. It can’t go on like this. You’re behaving like children, both of you. We came here to talk, not fight. You’ve fought enough. You’ve been fighting for thirty years. Aren’t you sick of it?”
They were silent for a minute and then my father said: “We didn’t fight.”
My mother, who had fallen into the trap of believing he was on her side, said: “That’s true, Maya. Your father’s right. We never fought. That’s one good thing you can say about us, we never fought.”
“We didn’t fight the way we should have,” he continued, and she frowned and said: “What do you mean, ‘the way we should have’?”
“We didn’t fight the way we should have,” he said, “and you know what I mean.”
“No,” she said angrily, “I don’t know what you mean. I didn’t know we were supposed to fight at all. Where does it say that we were supposed to fight? But you tell me how we should have fought. Go on, since you’re such an expert, tell me how we were supposed to fight.”
There was silence. My father stared out the window I’d opened. Outside we could see the roofs of parked cars and the heads of passersby. Suddenly a car alarm went off, wailing without stopping, or perhaps we had only just noticed it. The smell of the garbage and the gas filled the air, and my father turned to face my mother, turned his head and neck and shoulders toward her, and whispered: “With passion, Deborah. That’s how people should fight.”
I stood with my back to the wall and stared at the floor. I was witnessing one of the few intimate moments in my parents’ lives, maybe the only one but certainly the most solemn. It was like catching them in bed together. But it was worse. They sat on those two ugly chairs, dressed in their familiar clothes, my mother in the dress with the triangle print, and my father in brown pants and a white long-sleeved polyester shirt, and both of them more naked than I had ever seen them.
“With passion. People should fight with passion,” he said again, and looked back at the window. “We always went through the motions,” he said to the window. “We always behaved like a couple who knew when they should fight and when they shouldn’t. I never heard you scream at me, Deborah, really scream from your guts, from your heart, not just getting little digs in and criticizing me about this and that.”
“You’re not such an innocent either,” my mother hissed and lit another cigarette. “You’re not innocent at all, Jack! You know it very well. As if I’m the only one to blame. ‘Passion’! You throw out these words, where do you come up with them? Where does he come up with them, Maya?”
“You’re talking?” he said. “You, whose whole life is some Disney movie? Big words are your specialty, Deborah, that and a few other things.”
“What other things?” my mother pounced. “Tell me Jack, what other things?”
“You want me to tell you,” he said. “You really want me to? Do you think your weak heart can take it?”
“Tell me! Stop trying to be clever and tell me!” she screamed and rose to her feet, dropping the scorched cottage cheese container and her patent leather bag, which also had a little hole in it from the burning cigarette that had passed right through the plastic container. “Well! Tell me already!” she yelled and put her hands on her hips. “Get it all out, Jacob, all of it! Now that you’ve finally learned to talk.”
My father stood up—I thought he was about to walk out of the apartment—but he bent down, picked up the chair, turned it around, and sat down again, with his face to my mother, who paced back and forth in front of him, the way she always did in front of the cakes when we went to a café together.
He cleared his throat again and again, as if each cough was an opportunity to rephrase his words and take them back, and then he said, in a quiet tone: “First of all, Deborah, you didn’t even love me when we got married.”
“Jack”—she sounded horrified, as if she had only just noticed that I was with them in the room—“what are you talking about, Jack? Tell me, what are you talking about? Perhaps our oldest daughter would like to know why you’re suddenly saying such terrible things and talking such nonsense, Jack, nonsense! Maya, you want to know, don’t you?”
I stared at the worn floor tiles in silence. I tried to count them.
“Deborah,” he said, “I don’t want to hear all your stories again, about how you were in love with me for years, how it thrilled you every morning to see me coming into the building, how you waited for the moment when you could put through a call to me, how you prayed for my wife to disappear, how you bought flowers every day so I would pay attention to you. It used to flatter me, Deborah, I admit, but I don’t need lies anymore.”
“I wasn’t lying, Jack,” she said and her eyes filled with tears. “I really loved you.”
“No,” he said. “You wanted to get married, I can understand that. But you didn’t love me. You were thirty-two years old and you wanted a family. I can understand that, Deborah. You wanted a family.”
“But I loved you, Jack! I swear I did! You can ask the typists in the office. Ask Judith! She knows! Ask Malka! Malka was my friend. You can even ask Mr. Horowitz. Even he knows. Ask Maya. She’ll be my witness.”
“Deborah,” he said quietly, “you’re fantasizing. Stop fantasizing, a woman of your age.”
I felt my flesh crawl and a childish instinct urged me to put my hands over my ears. To hear my father say: “fantasizing.” There was a kind of embarrassing exposure in the word and he spat it out as if it disgusted him. There was something blunt in his voice, something masculine and sexual, which didn’t suit him, like the stubble on his cheeks and chin, which in contrast to the white hair on his head was coarse and black.
Mom was sobbing now. She sat back on her chair, which was set at right angles to his, and cried with her face to me and the wall. She didn’t even bother to look for a tissue in her bag, which was lying on the floor, with the burn mark on it like a tattoo. Then she said in a submissive tone which contained a touch of flirtatiousness: “But I’m sure I loved you, Jack. That’s how I remember it, anyway. I didn’t marry without love. I would never have done such a thing.”
My father said: “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
She sniffed, trying to decide whether the moment had come to be consoled, but then she turned to face him and said: “Look who’s talking, Jack, look who’s talking.”
“But at least I never lied to you.”
“No, you never lied,” she said. “That’s the problem. You told me many truths, Jack. Do you know what it felt like living with you all those years and knowing that you didn’t love me? It was worse. I at least told you that I loved you. And you, you were only interested in the truth. Only the truth! Not my feelings.”
“There was no point in lying,” he said. “There was no point. You know it.”
“What does it matter if there was a point or not? You could have made my life a little easier, Jack. A little, for the sake of my ego. What does it matter if there was a point or not?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know it wasn’t easy for you, but you know I hate lying. I can’t do it.”
“No? Then you should have tried a little harder. You know what it was l
ike living in Violet’s shadow? You know what torture it was? Chinese torture. And I didn’t even know what she looked like, you burned all her pictures. Everything! Like a little boy you went and made a bonfire in the yard.”
“I didn’t burn them because of you,” he said.
“Of course not!” she said. “Not because of me! Not for me. Because of you! Only you! Because you’re an egotist. Because it didn’t occur to you that I might be suffering, tossing and turning in bed at night trying to guess what she looked like. I had to humiliate myself and ask around the office, in case somebody had seen her coming in one day. Maybe she came to visit you, to bring you a sandwich, but nobody ever saw her. Why, Jack? Why didn’t she come to visit you? You were married for ten years. Isn’t it strange, Jackie? Isn’t it strange that she never came once?”
“Drop it,” he said. “I’m asking you. Let it go.”
“I don’t want to!” she said. “I won’t drop it! I deserve to know. I have a right.”
“You don’t have any rights!” he yelled. He wasn’t trembling anymore. He was just yelling. “You don’t have any rights anymore. We’re divorced. Remember? You wanted us to get divorced, so now you haven’t got any rights, you can forget about your rights!”
“I do!” her voice pleaded. “I have a right to know.”
My father was silent. Outside the alarm went on wailing. Someone walked on the path and crammed a bag of garbage into the can. We heard the bag rustling and the lid closing. “Gorgeous, Deborah,” he said. “She was gorgeous.”
My mother sniffed, took a tissue out of her bag, and wiped her eyes.
“She had a Slavic beauty. A noble beauty. She had blond hair she used to put up with two combs, like this.” He demonstrated on his bald head. “And high cheekbones, and she was tall, much taller than me, maybe even a head taller. At first it embarrassed me, but later on I got used to it and I liked it”—I had never seen my father so dreamy and full of joy—“and she dressed very elegantly. And she didn’t understand Hebrew too well. I tried to teach her, but she laughed and shrugged her shoulders, like a little girl. Like this: don’t want to, don’t want to, and she had a smile, Deborah”—he demonstrated the smile to my mother—“I fell in love with her smile.”