Actually, this whole letter is an attempt to postpone opening them for another few hours. To leave us a chance, even a small one. Were you ever in therapy?
I decided to surprise Dikla at the Watsu pool. Once every two weeks, she took off early from work, went there to do Watsu, aquatic shiatsu, and came home a different person. More radiant.
I thought, We’ll go out to eat after her treatment. It could be a propitious time.
I arrived a few minutes before two thirty. There’s a kind of waiting space there with cushions and poufs. And a pleasant breeze. A thin partition separated it from the pool.
At first, music came from the direction of the pool. Just music. And then the music stopped and I heard Dikla say something. Her therapist, Gaia, replied. Then there was the kind of trickling sound of someone coming out of the water. Then some more trickling, similar but different. Now they were both standing close to the partition and I heard Dikla say, “In any case, before the bat mitzvah, I don’t plan to make any deci—”
In the middle of the word, they moved the partition and came out together.
Dikla is tall and narrow-shouldered. Gaia is short and broad-shouldered.
A thought ran through my mind: I wonder how they look when they’re in the water.
Dikla completed the word—“sion”—before she realized it was me, sitting on the pouf. She stopped talking.
In the tenth of a second it took for her to dredge up a reasonable response to my being there, I understood that she wasn’t happy to see me and they had apparently been talking about me. About us.
Hi, I said.
Hi, Dikla said and kissed me on the cheek. Not on the mouth.
I have a free hour, I said. I thought we could go to Goferman’s for something to eat.
They’ve closed, Gaia said.
And I have to drive Gaia home, Dikla said.
Right, I said, and casually took a step back.
But we can have coffee at Aroma, near the house, Dikla said.
Okay, I said, see you there. Then I said to Gaia, I want you to know that I’m really jealous of Dikla. The way she looks when she comes home from here makes me think that Watsu therapy is just what I need.
You’re always welcome, Gaia said, her tone reserved.
—
We didn’t have coffee at Aroma. Dikla got stuck in traffic on the way back from Gaia’s and then it was time to pick up Yanai from day care.
But I did go for Watsu therapy. A week later. Not at the same pool Dikla goes to, so as to not invade her territory (that’s how I felt, like an unwanted invader).
On the way to Safed to give a lecture, I stopped at Amuka. There’s a therapeutic pool there too. From the outside, it looks like a greenhouse, and inside—water and a wooden deck, a small dressing room, and robes for men.
I don’t remember the name of the therapist who greeted me. Fifty-something, long hair gathered into a ponytail with a rubber band, soft eyes.
The water was hot, but not too hot.
I leaned on the rim of the pool and asked her, How exactly does this work?
You’ll see in a minute, the therapist said with a smile, and asked, How are you?
How am I?
Yes, how are you?
So many people have asked me how I am these last few weeks, I thought, but no one asked like that. With simple curiosity. Not prying. In a way that required an honest answer.
I hurt, I said.
Where?
In my posterior heart.
Your posterior heart?
Not the one that pumps blood, the one that’s afraid of losing people.
Where exactly is it located, this posterior heart.
In my back, between my shoulders. That’s where I feel it.
Is there someone in particular that you…are afraid of losing?
The truth is that I’m afraid of losing a few…someones.
Okay, she said, and instead of asking me about my childhood and my relationship with my parents, she leaned forward and put floaties around my ankles, took hold of my fingers, and in a slow, continuous movement, cradled me into her body and began to slide me through the water. Gently, at first, like a paper boat, and then slightly faster. I closed my eyes, but a series of practical concerns kept me from abandoning myself to it: I hadn’t asked her how long the session lasted. I still had to drive to Safed, a minimum of twenty minutes away. Do they accept credit cards? And if not, where the hell would I find an ATM in this out-of-the-way place?
Slowly, the water separated me from my thoughts. Of all the images that came into my mind during that session in Amuka, I remember only two—
The first very brief, really only a flash—Shira walking into the boarding school at Sde Boker, her curls bouncing on her back, dragging two suitcases, one in each hand, as I wondered whether she would turn around for a last look.
The second slightly longer—Dikla and I cutting and running out of the Arad music festival because it was too crowded for her and going down to the Dead Sea. We found an unpopulated beach and went into the water. Before that, I had never been able to float in the Dead Sea. I always thought it was something that happened to other people. But that evening, Dikla and I found a position: her legs on my shoulders, my legs on her shoulders. We held hands and floated, looking at each other and talking. Balance was very precarious. One wrong movement, one wrong word, and we both might lose our equilibrium.
Other images followed. I might have fallen asleep for a few minutes. At some point, the therapist massaged a few shiatsu pressure points between my shoulders, where my posterior heart is, then hummed a song I didn’t try to identify.
In talk therapy, you can tell the session is about to end when
