Three Floors Up

by Eshkol Nevo

  “No, thanks. I…I don’t really have an appetite.”

  “Okay. Continue. So what happened? I understand that you started to lose money and you gave your clients a false picture of the situation, but how—”

  “Ever hear of loan sharks?”

  “Of course.” (It’s true that I’ve been at home for five years already and I’ve gone a little crazy and I can’t always distinguish between daydreams and pipedreams, but still, give me a little credit, bro-in-law.)

  “You have to understand, I had no choice,” he pleaded, sounding like he was standing in the dock, arguing his case. “I had to take loans so my clients would keep believing that everything was fine, and I couldn’t go to the banks, so I said to myself, it’s temporary. Just until the prices abroad start going up again. But—”

  “They kept going down,” I completed his sentence, sounding more teacherly than I’d intended.

  “Yes. And now they’re after me.” He clasped his hands behind his head, something that Assaf also does, a gesture they’d both copied from their father. Originally, it was a masculine gesture, very self-assured, the elbows spread to the sides in satisfaction that bordered on arrogance. But with Eviatar, at that moment, the elbows tilted forward, neither in satisfaction nor in arrogance. They seemed to be trying to protect his head.

  “Who exactly is after you?”

  “Everyone. The thugs the loan sharks send. My clients. Even the police will be in the picture soon. I’ve been on the road for three days already. Sleeping in citrus groves. You see, I really want you to get the whole picture. So you know what it means to take me in. My quarrel with Assaf is no secret, so it’s hard to believe that they’ll show up here. But I want to be 100 percent open with you.”

  “How long will you have to stay here?” I asked. (At this point, you’re probably pulling your hair out and screaming, are you a retard?!! But wait, Netta, in a minute, you’ll be screaming even louder.)

  “Forty-eight hours at the most. An army buddy is arranging for a yacht to take me to Cyprus the day after tomorrow, at night. From there, two flights he already booked will take me to Venezuela. Then some plastic surgery, and I start a new life.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I called Assaf,” he said. “He hung up on me before I could explain. But I have nowhere else to go.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I’ll pay back what I owe. To everyone. I just need a little time.”

  His lower lip trembled. His whole jaw trembled. I was afraid that in another minute, he’d fall to his knees.

  “You can stay here until tomorrow morning at the latest,” I said. “I won’t throw you out now, but tomorrow morning, you’ll have to find another solution.”

  Okay, Netta, now you can let me have it with both barrels.

  And yes, I’m an idiot. Of course I’m an idiot. Always was. On school trips, I always lagged behind on the end of the line. In math class, I was behind in the material. I was the last one to lose my virginity (I know that your first time was terrible, but even terrible first times count), and the last one to speak at Nomi’s funeral (the eulogy I wrote was too funny, and I didn’t realize how inappropriate it was until the funeral was under way, so I had to edit it in my head before I could read it).

  But I’m avoiding the subject—I know—and the question is, why? Why did I let him stay when the list of pros and cons that Nomi’s mother told us to make every time we were undecided were all cons?

  I know that 99 percent of women caught in a similar situation would have thrown Eviatar out, if only because of their simple concern for their children. So why was I in the remaining one percent? If anyone touches even the edge of the tip of Lyri’s or Nimrod’s fingernail, I attack them like a tiger. When Lyri was in the first grade, some kid named Itamar used to bully her at recess, so I went to the school at around ten, told the guard that Lyri forgot her sandwich so he’d let me in, went over to that Itamar and told him that if he bullied Lyri one more time, I’d make shakshuka out of him (that’s the word that came out of my mouth, shakshuka).

  So what happened that made me let Eviatar in?

  The truth is that I don’t know, Netta.

  It’s just that sometimes, all your insides scream the command at you: Do the wrong thing! Do the wrong thing!

  Do you understand?

  Not completely?

  It’s all right if you don’t understand. I don’t either. And neither do the owls.

  And it’s all right if you decide to stop reading this letter in the middle. After all, I’m turning you, against your will, into my partner in crime. Bonnie to my Clyde. As far as I’m concerned, you can throw all these pages into the blue trash can, the one for recycling paper, anytime you want. There’s one not too far from you, if I remember your park correctly.

  But I have to keep writing to you. I just can’t choke it back anymore.

  I told him he could take a shower. I said, “Listen, Eviatar—how can I tell you this gently—for the good of humanity, you should shower.”

  He smiled sadly. “But I have no change of clothes.”

  I brought him Assaf’s tracksuit. (I left this out of the list of petty examples, but in addition to everything else, Assaf isn’t at home on Saturday mornings because he’s training for the triathlon, because he needs the adrenaline that races through his blood, understand? Without it, he withers.)

  I put a sheet on the living room couch, along with a thin blanket. I took the pillow from Assaf’s side of the bed and put it on the couch too.

  He came out of the shower. Wearing Assaf’s clothes, which were a couple of sizes too big for him, he looked like a scarecrow. A scarecrow dripping water. His legs were dark and thin. Almost reedy. If he had been a woman, they would have been sexy. But he was a man. And he had hair from his ankles to his knees. Ugly tangles of hair dampened with water.

  “Thanks,” he said, nodding toward the makeshift bed. “I haven’t slept in seventy-two hours.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “I’m not sure I’ll be able to fall asleep here either.”

  “So watch TV. But keep it on mute, okay?”

  I handed him the remote. He hesitated for a minute.

  “Take it,” I encouraged him. “There’s nothing like other people’s troubles.”

  “You’re an angel, Hani,” he said, suddenly focusing his blazing eyes on me. “Assaf’s lucky to have you.”

  “No, I’m no angel. And I’d like to remind you that tomorrow morning—”

  “I’m gone. I haven’t forgotten.”

  I didn’t expect to fall asleep. After all, I had a criminal on the run in my living room. But I fell asleep quickly and slept fantastically. I dreamed about Monteverde. You were in the dream too, I think. We were in Andy and Sarah’s house. Inside, in the house, it was raining cats and dogs and outside, in the yard, flames were dancing in a fireplace between the hammocks. It was weird, but in the dream, I treated it like another one of the many surprises we had on that trip.

  When I woke up, Lyri and Nimrod were sitting in the kitchen eating cornflakes. They were both perfectly dressed, although I didn’t remember leaving clothes for them on the railings of their beds, as I usually do. “Mommy, Uncle Eviatar’s here,” Lyri announced. Only then did I see him. He was standing with his back to me, making something. A few seconds later, he turned around, holding three closed plastic boxes, and said with a flourish, “The sandwiches are ready! Cottage cheese for Lyri. Tuna for…Andrea, right? And ham for you, Nimrod. Hani, I hope this is okay”—he turned toward me. “We wanted to let you sleep a little longer.”

  “But…how…what…?”

  “This princess woke me up”—he pointed to Lyri—“and asked who I was. I explained to her that I’m her father’s brother. She asked me how come she never heard about me. Then I explained to her that her father and I had a fight. A big fight. And that’s why I never came to visit before now.”

  “I told him that Andre
a and I fight all the time, Mommy,” Lyri interrupted, “but we always make up in the end, and I told him that he should make up with Daddy!”

  “So I promised her I’d do that the first chance I got,” Eviatar went on. “And then she asked me if I could help them ‘organize the morning.’ She explained to me what I had to do.”

  “And I tied my shoelaces all by myself,” Nimrod said.

  “Yes, Mommy, he really did,” Lyri said.

  “That’s wonderful, sweetie!” I really was thrilled. He’s been trying for six months without any luck.

  “Here are our schoolbags,” Lyri said, and went over to Eviatar. “You have to put Andrea’s lunch box in my bag. That’s how she likes it.”

  I felt uncomfortable standing there in the shabby clothes I sleep in. Usually I’m too lazy to change in the morning, and drop the kids off in my baggy sweatpants and wrinkled T-shirt. Now I went to my room, undressed quickly, put on jeans and a black shirt, and looked in the mirror. Then I changed from the black shirt to a red one that’s been hanging in my closet for a long time. And I put on heels. Not high ones. And went into the living room.

  “Shall we go?” I asked so that no one would have to react to the way I looked (Lyri could easily say something like, “Mommy, you look so dressed up today!”).

  “You don’t have to drive us, Eli’s mother is coming to take us at a quarter to eight,” she announced.

  “Lyri said that instead of waking you, we should call her,” Eviatar completed the picture. “I understand that you help each other with the driving sometimes.”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “Our kids go to the same schools.”

  Eli’s mommy (it’s embarrassing, but I never remember her name. On my cell phone list of contacts, she appears as Elimom, and in every conversation we have, I find ways to avoid saying her name) called to say she’d already left the house. I zipped up the schoolbags and we were about to go out to the parking area when Eviatar said, “Wait, where’s that hug for your uncle?” And my kids walked over to him and kissed him, each one on a different cheek (at that time, I still didn’t see that Nimord resembled him slightly, that only happened later), and he hugged them. Like an experienced uncle. “Andrea wants to give you a hug too,” Lyri said. And Eviatar played the game: spread his arms as if he were adding another child to the cluster and said, “Have a great day, Andrea.”

  When I came back from the parking area and went into the house, he was standing in the doorway, gym bag in hand, ready to move.

  “Where will you go now?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  How many really desperate people do we get to meet, Netta? People camouflage their desperation so well that we don’t sense it at all. But Eviatar’s desperation was totally exposed. It was in his eyebrows, in his stooped shoulders, in his spread fingers as they tapped his thigh in a slow, steady rhythm.

  “So at least have some breakfast before you go,” I said.

  He put his gym bag on the floor.

  Breakfast went on until noon. Surprisingly, we spoke mainly about me. Every time I tried to shift the conversation to his situation, he said, “Forget it, the less you know, the less you’ll be involved.” I leaned back in my chair, occasionally sticking my fork into a stray bit of salad left on my plate. He leaned forward, resting his face in his hands, one hand on each cheek. Gray stubble filled the spaces between his fingers. This surprised me—the younger brother isn’t supposed to be the first to turn gray.

  He asked me questions the whole time. Profound questions. No one had been that interested in me for a long time, Netta. So openly. First Nomi died, then you went away, and there was no one left for me to be that way with. You know, sometimes I spend entire mornings having conversations in my head with the both of you, playing Nomi’s part, playing your part, I can get so into it that I forget myself completely. Not long ago I heard Paul Auster explain in an interview how the characters in his books talk to him while he’s writing, argue with him, rebel against him. And it calmed me down to know that I wasn’t the only hallucinator.

  He (Eviatar, not Paul) asked, “So what do you actually do in the morning after they go? Being alone in the house doesn’t drive you up the wall?”

  And he asked, “How’s your mother?”

  And he asked, “That business with Lyri and…Andrea? Isn’t she a little too old for an imaginary friend?”

  There were many more questions, so spot-on that they hurt. And he didn’t take his eyes off me when I spoke. Didn’t look at his cell phone as Assaf does. Didn’t keep his head in the same position, making you feel he’s thinking about something else. It was so weird, that with that whole mess closing in on him he could still take an interest in me. It’s like a prisoner being led to the electric chair taking an interest in tomorrow’s weather. And suddenly—I was this close to telling him about the owl—it was 12:30, and I panicked because I still hadn’t made lunch and I had to leave to pick up the kids in another minute, and he said, “I can heat up schnitzels too, and I’ll make mashed potatoes. Do they like mashed potatoes?”

  “Yes,” I said. And I still hadn’t gotten up from my chair. I should have gotten up from my chair already. But I wanted to enjoy the curious look he was giving me just a little bit longer. It had been a very long time since anyone had such an intense desire to know me.

  “Fruit salad for dessert?” he asked.

  I stood up and said, “Yes. I’ll stop at the store and buy some oranges. You can’t have fruit salad without oranges. It comes out too dry.”

  “Right you are,” he said.

  And that’s how it happened that he stayed.

  Are you still on the bench in Middletown? Or have you already gotten up and gone to teach your class, postponing reading the rest of this letter until later?

  You know, of everything we saw on our visit to you, that’s what made the strongest impression on me.

  Watching you teach your class, I mean. I remember the classroom with the framed posters of Israeli films, new and old (right in front of me was Saint Clara). I remember specific students (the girl with the plunging neckline on the right who was trying too hard, Jonathan Safran Foer’s double on the left), and I remember you. I was so proud of you, Netta, that I forgot to be jealous. It wasn’t because of the brilliant lecture (and it really was brilliant. I’d seen all the movies you gave examples from, but I never thought of them in terms of gender). It was because of your pedagogical ethics.

  And I shall explain. (Remember Rivka Guber, the grade coordinator, and her “I shall explain”?)

  Throughout the lesson, it was obvious that you were there not to talk, like most lecturers, but also to listen. That you really were interested in your students’ points of view. And the nicest thing was seeing those Americans slowly emerge from their adolescent acne, from their pretended indifference, and begin to say what was in their minds, or actually in their hearts—at that age, the connection between the two is so obvious that even a passing visitor like me can see it, and you saw it, I’m sure of that, but you didn’t try to call attention to the connection, as I’m sure I would have done, but integrated it into what they said with such elegance (elegance, yes! That’s the word I’ve been looking for this entire paragraph) that there were moments when it seemed like a dance class. A dance of thoughts—and you the choreographer. And the way you played “The Snake’s Shed Skin” from the soundtrack of the movie Shuroo, and explained the lyrics. And how, after class, you spoke patiently with everyone who went up to you. Including the annoying girl (there has to be one in every class) who wanted you to explain the lyrics again.

  All your fantastic qualities were on display at that lesson. Charisma, intelligence, perceptiveness, subtle humor, and a sense of timing.

  And along with them, an inner serenity. The serenity of someone who has found her place in the world.

  I suddenly realize how transparent my maneuver is: to soften you with compliments so that it’ll be harder for you to criticize me when you re
ad the rest of this letter.

  But my compliments are as real as they are manipulative, Netta. Because at the end of that lesson, I thought that if you weren’t my friend, I’d be dying for you to be.

  After lunch, he sat with Lyri and helped her with her homework. I didn’t ask him to. He volunteered. She said, “Andrea needs help in arithmetic, Mommy.” I didn’t say anything, but he picked up on the twitch of my cheek when I heard the word “arithmetic” and said, “I’ll help you, Lyri.” They went to her room. I didn’t hear what they were talking about. I only heard his tone. And I could understand why clients agreed to put their savings in his hands. (I know, Netta, I know that those people are penniless now, but just for the moment, can we put aside the moral judgment of what he did? We’ll get back to it later. I promise.) Then he “practiced” basketball with Nirmod: took a pail from the laundry room, pulled a balding tennis ball out from under Nimrod’s bed, where it had rolled, and made up an entire story in which Nimrod is the star whose perfect shots help his team of good guys beat the team of bad guys. They spent an hour and a half like that, which allowed me to sign up for all the summer camps in one fell swoop. Then he gave him a bath. You should know that bathing Nimrod is usually a nightmare. He screams every time I shampoo his hair. Before the soap even gets close to his eyes. He hates getting into the tub, then hates getting out of it. And in the middle, he always splashes me, making the grubby clothes I’m wearing even grubbier. That’s why I was so surprised when the main thing I heard coming from the bathroom was silence. And the sounds of light splashing.

  (Only later, before he went to sleep, did Nimrod tell me that Uncle Eviatar built him a paper boat and they sailed it together to “Sipress.”)

  When they came out of the bathroom, Eviatar was holding Nimrod, wrapped in a towel and dripping water, in his arms. “So where are his pajamas,” he asked, and that’s when I first noticed how much they look alike. The sharp nose, the slightly protruding ears, the eyes, the color of their eyes, the expression on their surface, the expression in their depths…