by Nora Gold
“What?”
“I don’t know. We’re not completely broken up yet, are we? I mean, we’re in a process, but we don’t have to stop everything cold turkey, do we?”
“No,” he says. “But if that’s where we’re heading, then maybe the best thing is to just tear the band-aid off all at once. Rather than inch by inch.”
She is silent.
“I thought,” he says, “of going to my brother’s tomorrow night. They’re always inviting me, and I never go.”
Because of me, she thinks guiltily. You never go because you know I can’t stand them. It’s my fault. I’ve come between you and your brother.
“What about you?” he asks.
Again she doesn’t understand the question.
“Where will you go?” he asks.
Oh. Now she understands. Where will she go for Friday night dinner? She has no idea. She can’t picture a single place in Toronto. “I’ll manage,” she says.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
There’s a pause.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he says. “I have to go. Bernice is waiting — she’s signalling me.”
She doesn’t answer.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“No. I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.”
“I can’t believe this is happening,” she says.
He doesn’t answer.
“I’m so mixed up.”
“Don’t ask me to comfort you, Judith. This is your doing, not mine. You can change it back anytime you want.”
“This is so hard.”
There’s another pause.
“Bobby, do you love me?”
“Yes.”
“I love you, too.”
“I have to go,” he says.
“Okay.”
“Bye.”
She lies on the couch with her arm over her eyes. Am I making a terrible mistake? she wonders. Am I making the worst mistake of my life? I love this man and he loves me. Something like this may never come my way again.
But Israel. She can’t imagine her life without Israel. Now she thinks of her friends there and tries picturing what they are doing. Then, as if her legs have a will of their own, they have walked her to the dining room, where she checks her email for letters from home.
— 2 —
The next day, Thursday, is much like the one before. But on Friday morning she awakens exhausted from a terrible night. She woke up three times, each time after a horrible dream. In the first one, she saw two yeshiva boys, lynched, swinging from a tree. She recognized them: the two sons who get lynched in the novel The Sacrifice. In her dream, their bodies were swinging in the wind. She awakened sweating and nauseated, and then lay there listening to the wind wailing outside her window. She noticed yesterday on the kitchen calendar that something called Purim Katan is in just three days, and after she woke from this dream, she thought about Purim, Haman, and his ten sons swinging back and forth on their gallows trees.
Then she slept again, and dreamed she was at Anna Ticho’s House, one of her favourite places in Jerusalem. She was sitting on a bench in the charming restaurant-garden of this artist’s house, sipping lemonade, when a man came and stuck his hand down her pants. In her dream, before entering the garden she had toured this house, enraptured by Anna’s powerful, evocative sketches of the Judean hills. After awakening from this dream, her first thought was: How could that man do this to me in the midst of all that beauty?
She dozed a third time and dreamed she was strolling in an orange grove somewhere near Netanya. She was happy and slightly dazed, intoxicated by the fragrance of the oranges. The trees around her swished gently in the breeze and the oranges above her head were plump and glowing. She reached up, plucked one, and gazed at it in her palm. But as she did so, the orange began to change before her eyes. Almost imperceptibly at first, because the change was so gradual, like a slow-motion film of a rose opening its petals. It was only when the transformation was complete that she recognized what it had become. An orange grenade. And at the exact moment that she understood this, it exploded suddenly in her hand, its sticky mess all over her like some deadly spore or sperm.
She snuggles under the covers. She feels wretched after all these dreams and is in no mood to get up. Plus the house is freezing, and she wants to stay here in bed where it’s warm for as long as possible. But after a while, bored and hungry, she gets out of bed. She is shocked by the wave of coldness that hits her: a physical force like a wall of icy air slapping against her. She hurries downstairs, and from the hall closet takes out her father’s long, heavy army coat. It smells vaguely of him, a manly smell, and she wraps herself in it as if wrapping herself in her father, in his large, safe warmth. The closet is still full of his things. She has not yet gone through all the closets and drawers; she must do this sometime, and decide what to give away. But now she gazes transfixed at a sweater. Every time she sees this sweater, fishbones comes to mind, and how if you are not careful, and swallow one, it can stick in your throat and kill you. Flora, who many years ago was their next-door neighbour, once came for supper, and halfway through the meal she swallowed a fishbone. Daddy was worried about her, but Flora laughingly brushed off his concern.
“Never mind, Izzy, I’m fine,” she said to him when he suggested driving her to the hospital. Several minutes later, though, he prevailed, as he often did in his gentle but persistent way, with Flora coyly succumbing to his caring — flattered by it, in fact, the lonely single woman. Judith can still see her protesting as her father helped her on with her coat: “This is so unnecessary, Izzy. I’m 100 percent fine.”
But the second Daddy and Flora walked into the emergency room, Flora began to cough, and then choke, and the doctor afterwards said that if she hadn’t been in the emergency room at that exact moment, she would be dead by now for sure. It was soon after this that Flora started knitting for Daddy. Every year on his birthday she would present him with another sweater, to Mummy’s thinly disguised annoyance. Flora’s sweaters were always 100 percent wool, sufficiently thick and warm for Canadian winters. They were also all simple in design: solid colours, or at most with a single stripe. Judith removes her father’s coat and puts on the first sweater Flora ever made for him. A plain, solid grey, rather lumpy in places. Then on top of this she rebuttons her father’s coat. Now she sees another of Flora’s sweaters hanging in the closet: bright blue with a yellow horizontal stripe, same as the cover of Suzy’s book. She closes the closet door.
She sneezes. Shivering, she checks the thermostat at the entrance to the kitchen. It says sixty degrees instead of the usual sixty-eight. Why has it gone down to sixty? Could Toronto Oil and Gas have already cut off the heat? That’s doubtful. Their policy was quite clear about not cutting off people’s heat in the winter. No, they would not do something as drastic as that. As her father liked to say, this isn’t Communist Russia.
But what about that metallic clunk she heard yesterday? Could that have been the furnace breaking down? She hurries to the basement to check. It is absolutely quiet down there. The furnace is not making any of its usual hissing, clanking, groaning sounds. And it is perfectly still — not vibrating or trembling as it always is. It looks like an enormous dead thing. A dead mammoth.
She runs upstairs, alarmed. In front of the thermostat, she stares anxiously at the number. Oh my God. It’s just going to keep getting colder and colder. Now it’s at sixty, soon it will be fifty-nine. Then fifty-eight. Then fifty-seven. And she can’t call Toronto Oil and Gas to come fix it, because there is “immediate withdrawal of all other services” if you haven’t paid your bill. For a second she thinks of calling Bobby and asking him to lend her the $362 for the heating bill. He would agree, of course. But she can’t do this. They are in the middle of breaking up. I’ll manage somehow for the next eight weeks. All I really need during this time is food and gas for the car.
Food. She came downstairs automatically for breakfast, forgetting there
isn’t any food in the house. Literally nothing except a dozen crackers. Yesterday she felt lazy, and instead of going shopping she just ordered in pizza. She really must buy food today. But looking out the living room window, she sees it snowed again last night. Everything is buried under snow: her front lawn, the front lawn of the neighbour facing her, and the street in between (which, not having been driven on yet this morning, is nothing but a slight dip in the snow between the two lawns). Her car in the driveway is a white snow-covered hump. It will take her twenty minutes at least to dig it out from under all that snow, and anyway, what’s the point? The street is impassable. She’ll have to postpone going food shopping until they’ve cleared it. Not that she minds. She is so cold now that she is sneezing again, and all she wants is to be warm in bed. She grabs the crackers and some articles she has to read for school, and runs upstairs. Quickly she pulls on some extra clothing — gatkes, ski pants, hockey socks — adds two more blankets to the bed, and dives under the covers. Then she reads an article for Hetty’s course, the first chapter of a “stats-for-dummies” book, getting caught up instantly in the joy of numbers and the games you can play with them. She reads it with interest and pleasure. Then she reads another article. And another. Then she dozes off.
At 4:15 she awakens very hungry. Except for the twelve crackers, she has eaten nothing all day. She looks out the window: the street has been cleared, so she could go shopping now. But she is tired and doesn’t have the energy to shovel off her car. I’ll order something in, she decides. Something fancier than just plain pizza for my Friday night dinner. But first, before Shabbat begins, I’ll check my email.
Downstairs, she sits shivering at the dining room table with a blanket over her shoulders and turns on the computer. She has a letter from Bruria — the first in two weeks — so she clicks on it right away. Reading it, she sharply sucks in her breath. In Netanya today, exactly when she was dreaming about that orange grove near Netanya, there was a suicide bombing in the main shopping mall, and Bruria’s neighbour’s sister, Chana, was seriously hurt. In Hebrew, thinks Judith, “Netanya” means “given by God,” but it keeps having suicide bombings. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. It seems Chana had already finished her food shopping for Shabbat, but realized she had forgotten lettuce for the salad, so went back into the mall to buy some. Now she is internally hemorrhaging and may die.
Bruria has other bad news, too. Rina’s son Gidi is doing his army service in Ramallah. Ramallah. In Arabic Ram plus Allah means “the height of God.” There, in the Height of God three days ago, according to Bruria, Gidi got injured.
Don’t worry. It’s not life-threatening. Just shrapnel in his right leg, and they’ve already managed to get out most of it. They couldn’t get all of it out because some of it was too close to the bone. But the doctors say his leg should be okay in time. Though he may end up walking with a bit of a limp.
A bit of a limp?! Judith envisions clearly the red-haired freckled boy — no, she tells herself; man — who recently led his younger brother and sister in rebellion against their parents, and got them to agree to let them go to a club in downtown Jerusalem. Now that spirited young man will be one of Israel’s war veterans, limping down the stairs into the same downtown club. She shudders, feeling the circle of violence and death winding its way closer to her. Like a lasso that formed itself around her and Israel at a distance of six thousand miles, and then, tightening, at six hundred miles, then sixty, then one mile — until now it encloses her within it, and she can feel its noose around her neck.
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Bruria writes. But I know you would rather know than not know.
This is true, thinks Judith.
Then Bruria writes, responding to Judith’s last letter: As for this Suzy chick, I can’t believe she kicked you off that committee. That is so sick and fucked-up. But anyway, soon you’ll be back here, and I’ll have you on more committees than you’ll know what to do with. Seriously — I have some ideas.
Judith smiles. That is so Bruria. Next Bruria expresses concern about Judith’s health. She feels Judith’s illness has dragged on way too long. Don’t they have any decent doctors in Canada? What’s happening to you there?
What is happening to me here, Judith thinks, is a sickness called galut. Which unfortunately there is no pill for. But don’t worry, Bruria — I’ll be home again soon, and then I’ll be fine.
Bruria signs With love, and adds a P.S.: Do you know that in your last few emails, you’ve been typing aslo instead of also? Maybe you long for Oslo — for peace. What can I say? Don’t we all.
The blanket has fallen off her shoulders. She stands, wraps it tighter around her, and as she sits back down, the computer screen goes blank and the dining room lights go off. She feels her way downstairs to the electricity box in the basement and flicks all the usual switches, but nothing happens. Back upstairs, she looks out the living room window: the whole street is a deep indigo. There are no lights on anywhere, not in the houses, not even the street lamps. She sees trees thrashing around violently in the wind and a hydro pole lying across the road. If the electrical wires are down, all the roads will be closed. This is a major storm. The last time there was a storm like this, the power was out for two days. The phones were cut off, too. She checks the phone. Nothing. Nada. She is filled with dread. It is dark outside, she is all alone in a freezing house with no food, and she is cut off from the rest of the world. In theory, she could knock on a neighbour’s door. But that would be very awkward. They are her father’s neighbours, not hers, and she doesn’t know any of them. There is no one left on this street from when she lived here.
She sits on the couch, gazing out the window. The sun is setting and she watches the light fade until the once-indigo sky is black. This will be her first Shabbat alone in … she tries but can’t recall when she last spent a Shabbat all by herself. In Israel Friday nights were always spent with friends, sharing an elaborate meal with laughter, singing, talk, and the joy of human company. In Canada too, for the past eighteen months, Friday night was a time spent always with people she loved. At first with her father, and then with Bobby. She visualizes Bobby now at his brother’s, sitting around the Shabbat table — white tablecloth, fresh flowers, crystal decanter of wine, the whole deal — with Richard, Annette, and their two kids, a boy and a girl, the picture-perfect family. No doubt they are eating chicken paprikash, the only recipe Annette seems to know how to make, since she has served it every time Judith has eaten there. No doubt also Richard and Annette are glancing surreptitiously at Bobby and then exchanging looks with each other, looks of subtle — or even not so subtle — gloating that finally Bobby has broken up with her. That is what they’ll assume, of course: that Bobby broke up with her. It is inconceivable to them that anyone would ever break up with someone from their family. She imagines the conversation around the table. Probably talking about the suicide bombing in Netanya, with Richard making his usual Arab-hating remarks. She can hear his deep, not-quite-bass, voice saying, “The only good Arab is a dead Arab.” The comment that prompted her first fight with him. In response to whatever Richard says, Annette, as usual, will nod like a moron. Then their kids will pipe up too with their opinions, parroting these same disgusting views. Picturing this scene, she is very glad not to have to be there tonight, struggling to keep her mouth shut and stomach these smug, stupid people.
Then again, she thinks, here I am all alone on a Friday night. No food, no heat, no lights, no friends, nothing. She is angry at Bobby for insisting on this night apart. He called her this morning, probably out of guilt, and they talked for only a minute or two. Which afterwards she thought was just as well, since they didn’t have much to say to each other. It was just chit-chat, uncomfortable and surreal. Then he commented that she sounded hoarse, and he hoped she wasn’t sick again. She did not want to tell him she hadn’t used her voice — had not talked to another human being — since speaking to him the day before. Or that she was lying in bed, and
had been all day, because there was no other way to keep warm in this house. So she said she hadn’t slept well.
“Why not?” he asked, sounding wary, like he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
She cast around for something to say. Her nightmares were another topic she didn’t want to tell him about. Inspired, she answered, “Because Dunhill hath murdered sleep.”
There was a pause, and then he chuckled. “Remember that?” he asked.
“Yes.” She smiled.
In grade nine when their class put on Macbeth, she was Lady Macbeth and Bobby was Duncan. From then until the end of high school, whenever anyone complained they hadn’t slept well, Judith or Bobby, or someone else who had been in the play, would say ominously, “Glamis hath murdered sleep.” Or “The geometry test hath murdered sleep.” Or “Last night’s party hath murdered sleep.” Or drinking. Or sex. “Sex hath murdered sleep” was what Bobby often said to his best friend, Roy, who had his first girlfriend in grade eleven and all that year was chronically tired.
She and Bobby hung up soon afterward, after he suggested they speak on Sunday and maybe meet on Monday night. She agreed and they said, “Shabbat shalom.”
Now she feels weak and dizzy from not eating anything all day. Again she tries the phone — an old phone her father had forever, and that lacks battery backup. It still isn’t working so she can’t call out for food. She wishes she had a cellphone. Bobby kept urging her to get one, but she never did. She checks the thermostat again. It says fifty degrees. As she peers worriedly at this number, it drops to forty-nine. Now she is afraid. After forty-nine it will be forty-eight, forty-seven, forty-six … She doesn’t know how to stop this. She has no idea what to do. But since it is now time to light the Shabbat candles, she goes to the dining room table, inserts two candles into her great-grandmother’s candlesticks, and strikes a match. Then she waves her hands gently in circles above the lit candles. She performs this traditional gesture to spread the peacefulness of Shabbat throughout her home, and maybe the whole world. But now, because her hands are so cold, she holds them a while longer above the flames.