I sprinted from building to building, from bush to bush, and trying to show myself as little as possible, I crossed an area filled with junk and picnic tables. Finally, I reached my destination. I circled the building and the yard it shared with other buildings to get to the window, but when I did, the curtain was closed. I couldn’t see what was happening inside from any angle.
Then she came out. When I heard the door open, I moved cautiously toward the path in the front yard. She was holding her cell phone close to her ear, but when she saw me, she said, Just a minute, I’ll get right back to you, then opened her eyes wide and asked: Dad, what are you doing here?
Instead of replying, I knelt down and said: I’m sorry, Shira, please forgive me. She looked around and then said, Dad, get up, don’t embarrass me. I asked if I could come in. She nodded slowly and we went into her room and talked. Finally, we talked.
—
All that happened in my imagination. In reality, I retreated through the shadows to my car and drove home with a heavy heart. When I walked in, Dikla was on the phone. From her tone, I could tell it was Shira on the other end, and from the content, I understood that she wasn’t feeling too well. She had a cold. Nothing serious. Nadav was taking good care of her. Do you ever feel like changing or correcting your books after they’ve been published?
Usually, after a book comes out, I regret not having deleted more. Sometimes, when I read from my books to an audience, I edit them: take out a word here, a paragraph there.
But there’s one story I would cut completely. All of it. The one that Shira came across on the Internet.
It takes place in Haifa, in the eighties, and the protagonist is a sixteen-year-old girl who is in love with a boy a year ahead of her in school. That boy is tall and handsome and popular and doesn’t notice her at all. So, under the influence of the romantic movies she watches with her mother on pirated cable channels, she decides to do something about it. Her mother tries to dissuade her, tells her that men don’t like that kind of woman, but one night, she stands under the boy’s window with a guitar and serenades him with the cover of the Smiths’ song “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me,” over and over again. Neighbors open their shutters and shout at her, Enough! But she keeps singing. People walking their dogs so they can do their business stop near her. And she keeps singing. A dog pees on her, and she keeps singing. Until a kid who lives in the building begins to feel sorry for her and wakes up the father of the boy she’s in love with, who goes out onto the balcony and tells her that the boy isn’t in, he’s at his girlfriend’s place. So shut it down and go home, he says. She doesn’t go home. She continues to sit in the street and play until the kid who shouted to the boy’s father calls her mother. When she arrives, wearing an Adidas tracksuit and an old-man’s undershirt, she doesn’t reprimand her, doesn’t say “I told you so.” She just sits down next to her until the sun rises over Haifa Bay and the stench from the oil refineries fills their nostrils, as the kid from the building looks longingly at the girl.
—
If Shira agreed to talk to me, this is what I would tell her:
I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I published that story. But I just want you to know—
That girl standing under the window is me.
You and I are alike. More alike than you think.
That’s why you saw yourself in the story, and it infuriated you.
And that’s apparently why you have to distance yourself from me now.
And that’s okay. I mean, it hurts, but it’s okay— What kind of father are you?
So what brings you to me?
Our son, Yanai.
Tell me a little about him. How old is he?
Seven.
Second grade?
First. We kept him in kindergarten another year. He was born in December. We thought he wasn’t mature enough yet.
I understand.
We were wrong, of course. I am a parent, therefore I err. But that’s not why we’re here.
So why are you here today?
The boy—how can I put it nicely—is a liar.
I understand.
No, you don’t. You can’t believe a word he says.
Children sometimes tend to blur the boundaries between truth and imagination. You must certainly be aware of that.
No blurring and no boundaries. The kid’s a liar. You want an example?
You can give an example, but I’m asking myself—
I ask him whether he did his homework, okay? So he says yes, and it turns out that he didn’t. I ask him whether he saw the TV remote, and he says no, but it turns out that he hid it in the crack between the couch cushions.
I understand. Is it possible that what you call “lies” are, in fact, means—age-appropriate means, by the way—of bypassing or denying the difficulties life poses for him?
Terrific interpretation. Really, hats off to you. And how does that explain the fact that in the shoe store, he insists that he wears size thirty-seven, when he barely fills a size thirty-five? That he tells his teacher he was born in America and came to Israel when he was two years old? That he tells the kids in the playground his name is Nimrod? That his surname is Ben-Yochna? We don’t know anyone whose surname is Ben-Yochna. The kid just can’t stop lying. He was always like that, but this last year, it’s gotten completely out of control.
And is that so…bad?
Excuse
