“Thank you, Ima.”
Ziva wanted to tell her son that she loved him, but even though this could very well be the last time she would ever see him, she couldn’t. She gathered the breath for the words, but she couldn’t say I love you on the night he ended the kibbutz. The air left her mouth carrying only the sour taste of medicine and the mucus collecting in her throat.
Eyal squeezed his mother’s hand again as the pleasant realization came over him that life never stopped doling out surprises. Yes, they came less often than in one’s youth—longer and longer interludes of uneventful life came between the surprises—but then, when they did come, they were all the more staggering and bittersweet.
“But make no mistake, my son, you have all just evicted yourselves from the Garden of Eden.”
Eyal nodded, grateful for this last ember from his mother, the extinguishing firebrand. He continued to hold her hand, the way he had wanted to hold it when he was a little boy and she was the young woman on duty in the children’s house. He held it until her grasp relaxed and her head fell to the side in sleep. Then he stood, picked up the folder of votes, and walked out, quietly closing the door behind him.
Ulya laid her hand on Adam’s knee. They were sitting on his bed, Adam swilling the bottle of vodka she had brought him. This was the second night she’d come over with vodka. Adam had run out of money, and she knew it wouldn’t help her if he were forced to sober up. Not to mention, he had stopped opening the door for her. This changed quickly when she started showing up with a bottle.
Adam eyed the hand traveling up his thigh. “What are you doing?”
She had no choice but to stoop to this. A week had passed since the rave, and she was lucky that Adam, who had called in sick for the second time in a row today, was still on the kibbutz. Eyal was probably too busy with the referendum to kick him off, but tomorrow the referendum would be over. Last night she had summoned the courage to try to take the brooch after Adam passed out. Terrified, she slowly, slowly inched her fingers into his pocket while he seemed dead to the world—dead until he suddenly smacked her arm away. It was so shocking and painful, she barely caught her scream in time. With a welt blooming on her arm, she had backed out of the room, unsure whether he had done this in his sleep or immediately fallen back to sleep and forgotten. Tonight, she had to get the pants off him before he passed out. And for that, she had to offer more than friendship.
“What do you think I’m doing?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.”
He didn’t. He couldn’t understand why she was stroking his thigh, bringing him gifts, bottles of vodka. If she wasn’t into him when he was sober and a hell of a lot more fun to be around, why would she like him now? Was it the green card? In any case, she was wasting her time. When her hand reached his crotch, he closed his eyes to concentrate, but it was no use. She might as well have been rubbing someone else’s dick.
He opened his eyes to take a swig and was confronted with Ulya’s frustrated, even angry, expression. She was quick to replace it with an encouraging smile, but it was too late. He brushed her hand away. “It isn’t you, Ulie. You know how much I wanted you. I’m just depressed.”
Golda, curled up on the other bed, looked depressed too. He wasn’t playful with her anymore. Poor little thing, she had hitched herself to the wrong wagon.
Ulya sat back on her heels and started unbuttoning her work shirt. He shook his head. “Seriously, it’s no use.”
She ignored him, working her way down her buttons. He watched. She dropped the shirt off her shoulders and hurried to hold it in front of her small belly. Adam ogled the swollen breasts, barely contained by the overstretched bra. A tiny white bow was recessed between two swells of nylon stretched to such sheerness it looked as if the pink nipples might poke through. Ulya had to laugh at his dumbstruck expression because even she found their current fullness titillating. She arched her back to undo the clasp.
Adam smiled, sadly, one corner of his lips turned down. “You wouldn’t even kiss me. I tried to kiss you . . .”
“Forget before. I’m letting you kiss me now.”
She leaned forward, balancing on her arms, breasts hanging beneath her. Adam hardly seemed to be breathing, but the little air puffing out of him smelled so bad it brought her back to the filthy drunks who used to hang around the railway station, begging for vobla. She pushed through her nausea and planted her mouth on his. Cold. His lips were disturbingly cold. When she pulled back her face, Adam noticed for the first time a black freckle under one of her eyes.
She took his hand, the one not holding the bottle, and placed it on her breast. He appreciated the weight in his palm, the knob of nipple. Pressing his fingers into the flesh, he felt a stir in his groin. He let her take the bottle and set it on the bedside table. She kissed him again.
Ulya struggled to decide which would be less repulsive: his cock in her mouth or in her vagina. Both prospects sickened. Most tolerable would have been to lie on her stomach, bury her face in a pillow, and let him do his thing while she daydreamed that she was already hurrying down the dark country road with the brooch. But Adam was never going to wake up and take the helm. He lay like a saggy pouch of yogurt. It was a lot harder to have unwanted sex when you were the one doing all the work.
She brought her face to his fly. Adam still didn’t get why she was doing this, but every button she opened made him a little hornier and more forgetful. Nothing compared to the forgetfulness of arousal, better than booze even. It wasn’t always available like booze, and it didn’t last long, but while it did, the amnesia was more complete.
To Ulya’s revulsion, Adam wore no underwear. She freed his warm, half-flaccid cock and put it in her mouth. She sucked, thankful that at least he didn’t have Farid’s massive thatch of hair with its smell of dank soil. Bobbing up and down, she imagined herself out on that country road, the kibbutz gate behind her.
Adam swelled in her mouth. He groaned and clutched the hair on the back of her head. She groaned too, pretending this was a turn-on, and gripped the sides of his jeans. She tugged them down to his hips. This was working. Repulsive, but working. She pulled the jeans down to his thighs. Almost there.
A knock at the door.
She tried to ignore it. Was it Eyal come to kick him off? Now? Please no. Please let this person go away. Adam seemed to be trying to disregard it too. To help him with that, she cupped his balls in her hand, sucked more enthusiastically.
The knocks got louder and longer, causing Golda to run and bark at the door.
Adam pushed Ulya’s head away. As he hiked up his jeans, she wiped the saliva from her face with the bed sheet. Her heart pounded from the humiliation, the anger. She searched for her bra, couldn’t find it, and hurried to button on her shirt while the knocking intensified.
Adam called out. “All right, all right! Coming!”
He chugged vodka and staggered for the door, remembering when Bones’s messengers would come knocking, how he would step into the hallway so Zayde wouldn’t hear. Like Ulya, Adam figured this was Eyal, or one of his messengers, here to walk him to the gate. And so what? He didn’t need to stay on the kibbutz anymore. He was never going to find Dagmar. He opened the door.
“Claudette?” This was the person pounding like that? “What’s the big panic? Is Jesus back?”
Golda ceased barking and stood beside Adam, still his faithful bodyguard. Ulya rose from the bed, ready to kill.
Catching her breath, Claudette said, “It’s the old woman I work for! Ziva! She’s Dagmar!”
Adam didn’t understand. Couldn’t. Maybe he was too drunk.
Claudette tried again. “She’s the one your grandfather tried to give the brooch to.”
Adam shook his head. “No, it’s not possible. I asked her. I sat in her apartment and asked her.”
“Was your grandfather’s name Franz?”
Adam turned back to his room, eyes darting around, at first in shock, then increasingly as if looking for somethi
ng, someone, to punch. He grabbed the bottle from the bedside table. All this time, she had been right there. Dagmar had sat in front of him on a bench, fucking inches from him, and asked how his search was going. What kind of psycho did that? He had known something was off about her. He fucking knew it. That fucking bitch—if she had told him the truth, he wouldn’t be in this room right now chugging vodka. He would be at home, in the apartment, sober and several months into his new life. He wiped his mouth and threw the emptied bottle at the garbage, knocking the plastic bin over.
Claudette edged into the room. “You need to come see her. Now.”
“Now?” Adam laughed. “Fuck you, and fuck her.”
Dizzy, Adam leaned on the dresser. Ulya hurried over. She had to keep him from going to the old lady. If he left to give her the brooch now, she would never get it. She rubbed his back. “Yes, fuck her. If she needed to talk to you so bad, she wouldn’t have lied to you.”
Claudette clasped her hands, crept toward Adam. “You said your grandfather never stopped loving her. She should hear that. But you have to go tell her now, because she’s coherent tonight. She might not be coherent tomorrow. She might . . . she might not even be . . .”
“Be what?” Ulya bore her eyes into Claudette. “Alive? Please, the woman isn’t dying tonight. You’re crazy! We all know, everybody knows, that you’re crazy, Claudette.”
Adam rubbed his forehead. He couldn’t think. He needed to think. He didn’t want to give the brooch to the lying bitch. But what else could he do? Keep it? Put it back in the Florsheim shoebox like nothing happened? Donate it to a museum as Mr. Weisberg had wanted him to, so some strangers could give it a glance and forget about it? He had set out to give it to the only person Zayde had deemed worthy, and he could still do that.
“Fine, I’ll go.” He had trouble moving his mouth around the words and could hear he was slurring. “Just give me a second to calm down.”
“All right.” Claudette sat on the unused bed. “I’ll wait.”
“You don’t need to fucking wait!” Adam stood over her. “I know exactly where she lives.”
After Claudette left, Adam stood waiting for the room to stop wheeling around him. Whenever the world spun like this, he thought of the Rotor ride on Coney Island. Once a summer Zayde would take him on the N train all the way out to the amusement park on the seashore, where he would claim to be too old for such nauseating rides and would wait, holding Adam’s baseball cap, while Adam rushed up to the Rotor three or four times in a row. Round and round the rotor would go with the promise that any second the floor would drop.
He bent over, swiped his Converses off the ground.
“Wait!” Ulya grabbed the shoes from his hands.
Standing up too fast, Adam saw gray speckles, like TV static. He squeezed his eyes and opened them again. “What? What are you doing?”
She held his rancid sneakers behind her back. “It’s stupid to give the old lady the brooch. You heard Claudette, she’s going to die soon, maybe in a few days—and then what? Your family’s brooch will go to the kibbutz. Or—oh my God—Eyal! You hate Eyal.”
He didn’t hate Eyal, not after he gave him a second chance. That didn’t mean he loved the idea of the brooch ending up in his fat fist, but that was beyond his control. What Dagmar did with the brooch was on her conscience. “I don’t care. I have to get it to her.”
“Why?”
“Please . . .” Adam fumbled for his shoes. “Give those back.”
“Why? Tell me why you have to give this old bitch the brooch.”
“Because I promised myself, okay? After Zayde died, I fucking promised myself I would get the brooch into the right hands.”
Ulya’s mouth dropped. “What? You mean, you didn’t promise him? Your grandfather? You only promised yourself?”
“It’s still a promise. I’m tired of not keeping my promises.”
Adam lunged for his sneakers, and the walls and floor lunged with him. He stumbled, then forced himself to stand straight, but this time the walls didn’t follow, or followed too slowly. He was going to be sick. He staggered for the bed and sat with his head hanging between his knees.
Ulya sat beside him, resting her hand on his back. “Adam, why do you have to give the old woman the brooch?”
His voice was muffled. “Because it would make me feel better.”
“Why would it make you feel better?”
He raised his head. His face was bright, his eyes glossy. He was on the verge of tears. A grown man crying, it disgusted Ulya. Why did he feel so sorry for himself? He could hardly be luckier. He was free. He was a man. He had American citizenship, an apartment in Manhattan. He didn’t have to run away from his country, leave his family, not knowing whether he was ever going to see them again. He wasn’t told he couldn’t get pregnant and then got pregnant. He was his own biggest problem.
She wrapped her arm around his shoulders. “Just tell me, Adam. Why are you doing this? What do you want?”
Adam’s face crumpled. He took the brooch out of his pocket, and Ulya’s insides lurched. Gazing at it in his hands, Adam sobbed so hard he had to gasp for breath. His nose pinched and whitened while the rest of his face blotched under a film of tears. Snot poured over his lips. In a high voice, barely getting the word out between the gasps for air, he said: “L-l-l-love.”
“What?”
“I w-w-want l-l-love.”
Ulya tightened her arm around Adam, not only to keep him from going to the old lady, but because, to her surprise, she felt pity for him. As he gulped, chest heaving, she stared down at the brooch. Could she really take it from him? He said he would kill himself if he lost it, and now she suspected that might be true. But then, what was he going to do if he got to keep it?
And then she had a revelation. A stunning one. Not only could she take the brooch, she should. Never mind Adam’s pain. Never mind her selfish wants. She should have the brooch—objectively. If she were a stranger looking at this from the outside, it would be obvious that out of all the people the brooch could go to, it should go to her. Who else? Adam would soon lose it somewhere or pawn it for booze. The old lady was days from the coffin, if not hours. Her son would give it to the kibbutz, which would divide its value amongst its hundreds of members, leaving each kibbutznik a hundred dollars or so. A hundred dollars didn’t change a person’s life. She was the only person whose life could be transformed by the brooch. Her hands were “the right hands.”
She said, “I can love you.”
Adam had calmed some. His chest shook, but he no longer wheezed for air. He still couldn’t believe Ulya, didn’t see how her loving him was possible, but it felt so good to hear those words.
“Say it again.”
Ulya thumbed a tear from under his eye, telling herself that she had nothing to do with this pain of his, if anything she was alleviating it for a bit. “I can love you, Adam.”
“Again.” He chewed his bottom lip. “Take out the can.”
Ulya drew a deep breath. This was worlds harder than anything she’d ever had to do in the past to steal. And that was fair, she supposed. It was worth worlds more.
“I love you, Adam.”
Adam closed his eyes, while she kissed his hot, wet cheek. His temple. She could tell she wasn’t going to have to go near his penis again. Sex wasn’t what was keeping him here. She draped an arm around the front of his chest, and brought her mouth to his ear. “I love you.”
Adam felt her pushing him back, felt his head landing on the bed. He should go to Dagmar now. He really should. Even if she was a fucking liar.
Ulya glanced at the brooch, still between his index fingers and thumbs, resting on his stomach. She lay down next to him. “I love you, Adam.”
Adam couldn’t believe she was saying it again and again. Like a dream. Maybe he was dreaming? Had he already fallen asleep? If not, he should get up and go. Right now.
As Ulya kept whispering “I love you,” waiting for Adam to pass out, she again
pictured herself hurrying down that country road—maybe in just a few minutes—and it occurred to her with a shock of excitement that she didn’t know—not for sure—which direction she would walk once she got to the bottom of that road. Maybe she wouldn’t walk toward the Arab village after all. Maybe she would walk in the opposite direction, toward Haifa, where she could catch a bus to the diamond district in Tel Aviv. The brooch would provide her with more than enough money for a nice hotel while she got an abortion, a flight to New York, a green-card husband. Though she wouldn’t even get to say goodbye to Farid.
Adam’s breathing deepened, evened. Had he fallen asleep? She was afraid to say I love you again and afraid not to. What was more likely to disturb him? She gently lifted her head. His hands had relaxed, palms resting down on his stomach, the fingers surrounding the brooch, but no longer touching it. It was there for the plucking. Should she go for it now? Move too soon, she might wake him up; wait too long, and he could rouse on his own, feeling better, the chance lost.
She would wait until she was ready to run out of the room before going for the brooch. The last thing she wanted was to be caught with it in her hand and face that violence in his eyes again, especially when he was so drunk. Careful not to disturb the mattress, she held her breath and curled up to a sitting position. Then, feet on the ground, she leaned forward inch by inch, imperceptibly rising off the bed. Once again, she was a performer without an audience. Controlling her body like a dancer.
She stood over Adam, lying so peacefully. She had a flash of how he would feel tomorrow morning when he woke up. She pushed the thought from her mind. She had to concentrate. She bent forward and prepared her fingers around the brooch.
One . . . two . . . three.
She closed her fingers on it. The plan had been to gently lift the brooch from his stomach, but her hand trembled too much. She jerked her hand up, and held the brooch an inch above his body, waiting, watching his face.
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