by Yael Hedaya
And when I returned from the bathroom I saw the tips of her shoes from the corridor, and I stood still for a minute and thinking, how strange, this intimacy, after seeing her wandering around here for two weeks, and the head nurse once asked me: Who is she? Do you know her? After almost ten years in which I tried to exorcise her from my life, those shoes, this circumstantial intimacy.
I feel like such an idiot, I said when she came back and sat down beside me, smelling of hospital soap, not having the guts to go in. Chickening out like this. Don’t feel bad, I said, I can understand. For me it was a gradual process, you’ll be seeing him like this all at once. Yes, I said, but I must. Or else I’ll never forgive myself.
And I stood up and walked down the corridor, and quickly passed his room as if I’d made a mistake, and got to the big window at the end and turned around, and saw her standing there holding the tissue in her hand and playing with her pearl necklace, and I wanted to call out to her: What do you need this for? Give it up, go home! Go home to your parents! And I wanted to run to her so that she would put her arms around me again and say: You don’t have to. Don’t go in. But she just stood there, frozen next to the window, looking at me. And I was choking on my tears, and I started walking back slowly, and I passed his room, and turned back again, and stood outside the door, and listened, and I thought that maybe I should go and sit down again, so that she could do what she had to do, because maybe my presence was what was stopping her, and I saw that she was turning to go and I waved to her and signaled: Wait for me!
We sat and stared at the TV. She lit a cigarette and stared at the screen, breathing heavily, as if she had just run a marathon and she was resting. I was so ashamed, for being such a coward, and I was glad that at least the TV was there, so I didn’t have to look her in the eye. I glanced at my watch and saw that it was already after ten, and I didn’t know whether I should go home and wait, or wait here. We were together for just a year, just a year and such a long time ago, so why is it so important to say goodbye now? And if I ever start a new life, what would it be like? Because maybe I never said good-bye the proper way. And how much time has to pass before I’m allowed to think of a new beginning without him? Because I want a family. Definitely. Like hers. Two kids. And a home. And I’ll be a widow now. Like my mother. And I really have to decide what kind of a life I should have. And maybe settle down. Find someone. And buy a car. I don’t have the strength to sit in mourning for seven days, and what will I wear to the funeral, and should I bring the children. Because I never really had a real life, just plans, and maybe if I stayed with him, let him mature me at his own pace, I could have been a widow now instead of her. And the neighbors will come over, and offer to help, and get on my nerves, especially the one who said Happy New Year, she’s a real pain. Because who am I now? What status do I have? I don’t even qualify as an ex. And I don’t have anyone to talk to either. About the sorrow. Because how can I go and confess to my mother now? She knows anyway. She always knew. And I don’t have any friends. I never had. And I can already imagine them all coming: Eli and Hagit and Dan and Liora, bringing food, playing with the kids, whispering in the kitchen and talking about him in the past tense. Because I want to be normal. Not someone who runs from one man to the other, from one continent to another, and dyes her hair a different color every day, and wonders now if she lost out on the one true love of her life. I wonder if she’ll come visit while I’m in mourning. If what started between us here will last, our little romance. Because it’s much more normal to lose a husband than to be someone who’s never had a real home and maybe never will. And I envy her a little for being able to walk out of here and not having to explain anything to anyone or console two little children, or be consoled. If only I’d let myself spend that second summer with him. What harm could it have done? Relatively speaking I’m still young. Maybe I would have fallen in love with him. And maybe I should really try and do what I’ve always been so terrified of: being alone. Because the truth is that I’m sick of wandering, and I’m tired of feeling so old. I don’t want to be her big sister. I don’t want to be a myth, but something real. If she only knew how much I hated her.
I’ll walk out of here and get into the car and turn the radio on and light another cigarette and start the engine, but where will I go? My apartment is still empty, there’s only a mattress on the floor and books in boxes and the big ugly closet the previous tenants left. And my mother will hug me and say: “Yes, Mira, it’s over. Now you can cry. Cry, Mira,” and I’ll ask her: “Did you keep my poems, by any chance?” And she’ll say: “What poems, Alona?” As if she didn’t know, as if the real sin was not writing them, but keeping them, and I’ll say: “You know, Mom,” and she’ll go to their bedroom and climb on a chair and open the closet and pretend to be searching and take down from the top shelf an old shoe box with a shoelace tied around it, and give it to me. And I’ll cry, oh how I’ll cry, but this time not tears for him, or for the children, or obligatory tears for the world to see, but tears for myself, which might even have a little joy in them.
I ran into his room and took the duffel bag out of the night table. It was quiet in there. Not a breath. Not a rustle of sheets. Nothing. I was on my knees with my back to him, and I quickly went through the contents and for a second my fingers touched the folded underwear, and I pulled my hand out as if I’d been burned. It was cold in the room, even though it was warm outside, and the white light from the corridor came in through the open door and cast the shadow on the wall of the legs of his bed. And then I remembered it was in the side compartment, where the zipper always got stuck, where I put his cigarettes, and I didn’t want to start battling with the zipper now but I knew that she was waiting there, in front of the TV, and that I had to hurry, because maybe she wouldn’t be there anymore when I returned, that she’d leave without saying good-bye, just like she couldn’t say good-bye to him either, and the zipper opened without effort, without a sound, and my fingers delved deep into bits of paper and lint and crumbs of tobacco, and a sticky sucking candy, until they suddenly touched it, cold and metallic, and I closed the bag and pushed it under the bed and left the room and ran back, and she was sitting there staring at her shoes and smoking and when she raised her head and looked at me and smiled I saw that there were no tears in her eyes anymore, and the look of guilt was gone too, that childish glance expecting punishment, and I walked up and handed it to her.
About the Author
Yael Hedaya was born in Jerusalem in 1964. A former humor columnist for the Hebrew daily Yediot Aharonot, she teaches journalism and creative writing. Housebroken has been translated into Dutch, German, French, and Italian; it is Hedaya’s first book to appear in English.
HOUSEBROKEN. Copyright © 1997 by Yael Hedaya. English translation copyright © 2001 by Metropolitan Books. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hedaya, Yael.
[Short stories. English. Selections]
Housebroken : three novellas / Yael Hedaya ; translated by Dalya Bilu.
p. cm.
Contents: Housebroken—The happiness game—Matti.
ISBN 0-312-42090-0
1. Hedaya, Yael—Translations into English. 2. Love stories, Hebrew—Translations into English. I. Bilu, Dalya. II. Title.
PJ5055.23.E33
A23 2001
892.4'36—dc21
00-046908
Originally published in Israel under the title Shlosha Sipurei Ahava by Am Oved, Tel Aviv
First Picador USA Edition: July 2002
eISBN 9781466855205
First eBook edition: September 2013