—
I don’t feel like going back to Israel, I confess.
Don’t I know it, she says, and looks at me. She’s wearing blue mascara. Like she used to back then. And there are small wrinkles under her eyes. Not like back then.
I wonder whether to tell her that the David Bowie CD didn’t soften Dikla, that she wouldn’t open her arms when I come home. And maybe she wouldn’t take her eyes off the TV. But I don’t want to sound desperate. So I say: This is the first time it’s happened to me, you know? I enjoy my trips, but I’m always glad to go home.
Of course, she says, and shifts her glance to the darkness. What I don’t understand is how people live in Israel with all the tension there.
Yes, I say.
A war every summer, she goes on, and if not in summer, then on the holidays—it’s not normal.
It’s not, I agree.
How can children grow up there without having a few screws loose?
I agree.
Sometimes I log on to Ynet—and it’s enough for me to see the name Yoram Sirkin in the headlines to remember how much I don’t miss any of it.
But still—I think but don’t say—you log on to Ynet.
My father died two years ago, she says. I flew there for the funeral.
Her father—I remember. A large man. A crane operator in the port. Came home from work wrecked, barely spoke, didn’t interfere when her mother harassed her at dinner but looked at her with compassion. And he’d pass her the salt a minute before she asked for it. Only once during the four years I was his daughter’s boyfriend did we talk. She was in the shower when I arrived to take her to the movies. Her mother wasn’t home. Her elder brother was in the army.
There’s something that…he began a sentence, but didn’t finish it—and pointed to the living room. We sat on the black leather couch. The TV was on, a soccer game. He was silent. He seemed to still be trying to choose his words. I almost said, It’s okay, don’t worry, she takes birth control pills. But I wasn’t sure that was the issue.
Be careful with her, okay? he finally said.
Okay.
She’s…much more sensitive than what she…he said, then stopped again.
I nodded.
And that was it. The shortest man-to-man conversation in history came to an end. His eyes and his body turned to the TV, and so did mine. The game being broadcast, I remember, was between two Haifa teams, Hapoel in red and Maccabi in green. Since I’m color blind, I couldn’t tell the difference between them, so I just pretended to be watching, while I was actually only waiting for his daughter to finish her shower.
—
I’m sorry for your loss, I say now.
Thank you, she says, no one’s said that to me for a long time. People stop saying that at some point, even though the loss still hurts.
That’s true, I agree, and almost tell her that Ari is dying. But I don’t want my own sorrow to encroach on hers.
I counted the minutes until the shivah would be over, she says. All those pastries, and the never-ending conversational loops. And the picture albums being passed around. I was the only one—the only one who wouldn’t look at them, the only one who remembered all the family trips, which were actually nightmares. And my mother, you know, she can’t be around me more than a few minutes without saying something nasty. I don’t get insulted anymore, you know, but I won’t keep quiet either.
—
Back then—she would feel hurt, come to my room in the middle of the night. Two knocks on the door of the separate entrance, and I would open it, in my sweats. She would take a small step inside, say, Hug me, and stay with me the rest of the night. In the morning, we’d walk hand in hand to school and French kiss in the corridor before she went into her class and I into mine.
—
When I went into the army, I sent her at least one letter a day from the base. So there would be something to keep her from going out with all the guys who were constantly after her. We always laughed, saying that the military censor who opened those letters definitely looked forward to reading them.
During my last year in the army, my parents went on a sabbatical to Boston, so the apartment she shared with her roommates on Hess Street became home for me. That’s where I went on weekends. That’s where I moved the few items of non-army clothing I had, my CD collection, and the Hapoel Jerusalem scarf.
Until one night—
She was babysitting for my older sister in Ramat Gan. And I was given a rare twenty-four-hour pass in the middle of the first intifada nightmare.
Hug me, I asked after she closed the door behind me, and as she hugged me, she opened the belt of my army pants and pulled me inside. We made love on the living-room couch for a long time, while Danielle, my sister’s two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, should have been sound asleep in her room. She had an afternoon nap every day, Danielle. Between one and three. Regular as clockwork. Today I know that there’s a moment when little kids stop taking afternoon naps, all at once, without warning. Every kid and their particular moment. But then—
—
Now she suggests we start walking again. There’s a kind of observation point she wants to show me.
It’s clear to me that as soon as we get up from the bench, she’ll notice that my lower back is slightly out of joint, and she’ll definitely say something about it.
But she doesn’t comment on it. Instead, she intertwines her fingers with mine.
I calm myself: It’s okay,
