And I think, It’s been so long since anyone touched me tenderly.
We walk hand in hand, in our regular positions, until we reach the observation point, which reminds me a bit of Atarim Square in Tel Aviv. A large, charmless concrete surface.
We lean against the railing, and then turn to each other and kiss. A brief kiss. Her lips are dry.
Hug me, she says.
And I hug her.
The feel of her body is both familiar and unfamiliar.
She caresses the back of my neck and I make my way through her curls to the back of her neck and draw circles on it with my fingers the way I remember she used to love.
We kiss again, a longer kiss. But still not with total abandonment.
My hotel…if you want…I mumble, not sure what I’m suggesting. She moves back slightly—we are still embracing but no longer pressed up against each other—and shakes her head, no.
But it’s only a story, I tell her.
She shakes her head, a bit more slowly this time, and strokes my chest with an open hand the way she knows I love, the way no one but she had ever stroked me, and says, We were lucky, you know? True love at such a young age. How many people have that?
And says, still caressing my chest, You hurt me so much. Leaving the way you did.
And says, You didn’t realize either that Danielle had left the house. You fell asleep, too. But you let your family blame it all on me.
And says, I still dream about it sometimes, you know? And in the dream there are no neighbors to come to the rescue at the last minute, it’s just me running out to the street, but my legs are heavy, too heavy, and the car hits her before I—
Tali, I—
I try to tell her something, but she puts a finger on my lips and says—
How does it help me now if you’re sorry.
And says, The only time I got out of bed for six months after we split up was when you came to collect your stuff.
And says, Since then, I have never let anyone hurt me like that.
And takes her finger off my lips and her hand off my chest and says, It’s important, the way we end things. You need to know that. And says, Don’t turn around. This time I’m the one who leaves, and you, don’t turn around.
So I don’t.
I don’t turn around. I hug myself against the spreading cold.
I look at the darkening skyscrapers of downtown.
At dawn, I walk slowly through the wide, empty streets to the hotel and check out. Aren’t you afraid sometimes that, that’s it, you’ve run out of ideas, you’ve lost it?
I’m afraid of losing it. I’m afraid of losing Dikla. I’m afraid of losing the kids if I lose Dikla. I’m afraid of losing Ari. I’m afraid of having a heart attack in another three years, at the age my father had his. I’m afraid that, unlike him, I won’t survive. I’m afraid that this plane taking me from the Midwest to the Middle East will plunge into the Mediterranean Sea. I’m afraid that something will happen to Shira at Sde Boker and I won’t be there to protect her. I’m afraid that Shira won’t ever come back from Sde Boker. I’m afraid of an economic collapse. I’m afraid of a systems collapse. I’m afraid of a knock on the door, and on the other side is a policeman with a baton. I’m afraid of how easily things in Israel deteriorate into violence. I’m afraid there’ll be a war. I’m afraid I’ll be called to reserve duty. I’m afraid that the war will be a civil war. What did you do in the army?
They picked me up at the train station in Phoenix. Or Minneapolis. I don’t remember anymore. All platforms look alike everywhere. She had moderately short hair, and he had long hair, slicked back with oil.
She said she lectured in the law department of a local college. He said he was in business and gave no details.
She drove, and he occasionally gave her instructions. Signal. Slow down. Be careful. Outside, snowflakes swirled, and she said we’d probably have a storm that night.
They spoke the heavily accented Hebrew of people who had been in America many years, and every now and then, they used a word that made me think they had left Israel at the end of the seventies or, at the latest, the early eighties.
—
I don’t remember how we came to speak about their son. But it happened pretty fast. Five, ten minutes after we set off. I think that at that point, I already felt the tension between them. It’s hard to explain how. Little things. Maybe it was because they didn’t smile at all. Not even when they met me at the station. Maybe it was her clenched, bitten lips. And the words seeming to flee from her mouth.
Our Benjamin is considering joining the IDF, she said.
Why did you say “considering,” honey. Benjy has already decided.
Maybe you’ve already decided, honey, she said.
I’m his father, he said in a voice trembling with controlled rage. I have the fucking right to offer my opinion, honey. Even if someone doesn’t like that opinion.
Was Benjamin born in Israel? I asked quickly, in the hope that a concrete question would prevent the argument from escalating.
No, she said. He was born after we moved.
So why would he want…? I asked.
Birthright, he replied. What do you call it, taglit? He toured Israel for ten days with a group of Jewish kids and felt at home. Now he wants, and rightly so, to join the army because he feels it’s part of his identity.
And I’m worried, she said, looking at me in the rearview mirror as if I were the arbitrator who was supposed to pass judgment on the matter. I’m not sure he understands what it means to be a soldier and how different it is
