“I’m going to sleep,” I announced and got up from my chair. Roy followed me with his eyes until the door of the bedroom closed and separated us.
21
One week later Mickey called and invited me for the weekend again. I hesitated a bit at first, then, in a snap decision, replied that I’d be happy to. When Roy came home that evening, I informed him that he was off-duty this weekend. When he asked why, I replied casually that I was going to Chicago. The name Mickey was not mentioned, even though we both heard it quite clearly.
The scenery on the way to Chicago had become familiar, as well as the roads. The signs on the side of the road became irrelevant, and I could concentrate on my driving and the music playing on the radio. I was in a good mood. It felt like a heavy, frustrating burden had been lifted from my shoulders. This weekend I would clear my head of thoughts and my heart of confusing emotions. I liked Mickey very much and knew that he would do everything in his power to make sure I enjoyed my visit.
He was already waiting for me as I drove into the driveway of his house. His embrace was warm and genuine. As we walked into the house, he put his arm around my waist and his head tipped a bit toward my shoulder. This was how Rivka found us. She was just coming from the kitchen, wiping her hands. She put the towel on her shoulder so she could hug me to her ample chest and said, “I am so happy you came. I’ve constantly been asking Mickey when you are coming.”
I smiled at her warmly. She smelled of the familiar dishes, the smell of home.
“Come, sit in the living room and see what I made for you.” She then went into the kitchen and came right back with a glass of cold carrot juice mixed with orange juice. It was exactly what I needed after the long journey. I poured the cold drink down my throat and felt even better than I did before.
“You changed the picture,” I said, seeing that the painting previously hanging over the sofa had been replaced.
“Yes,” she answered. “Shlomo painted it a few years ago.”
I looked at Mickey and we both remembered the painting that had been on the wall at the office, the painting that brought me to his home. We smiled at each other.
She said, “OK, my dear, I’ll let you get organized; Mickey will give you a hand and then we will all meet up at dinner.”
Mickey helped me carry my light bag upstairs. He set it down on a chair, sat on the bed, and motioned for me to sit next to him.
“I missed you,” he said.
“I missed you too.”
He kissed me on the lips, and his hand hovered over my hair. I felt tiny pinpricks running up and down my body, and I kissed him back. He smiled at me and stroked my cheek. “We need to do this more often…” he said and kissed me again. His lips caressed my cheeks and over my ears. My whole body was aroused, feeling like the petals of a flower opening, one after the other, until I could no longer control them. Mickey stroked me more and more; his hands were like delicate paintbrushes drawing rapturous lines all over my body. My breathing became faster and my hands broke free on their own to explore his body.
Suddenly everything stopped. Mickey, with a flushed face and a hoarse voice, said, “We should wait a bit. I want you very much, but not like this.”
I remained sitting for a while on the bed after he left, trying to control my breathing—we should have continued, without planning and without too much thinking, just letting things develop on their own. I took a shower in order to cool my body down and relax. When the water began to wash over my body in little streams, I promised myself that there wasn’t going to be a lot of thinking going on during this visit; I was going to try to relate only to what was happening at that exact moment. With this promise, I got into bed. The cool sheets relaxed me and put me to sleep until a knock on the door urged me to get ready for dinner.
Dinner was good and the atmosphere was terrific. Mickey’s older sister arrived with her husband, introducing me to the entire family. I felt very comfortable. Rivka treated me like one of her daughters. She clucked around me to no end and asked if the food was tasty and if it reminded me of home. Mickey was somewhat quiet, but glanced over at me every so often. At the end of the meal, he asked if I wanted to take a brief walk outside. We left the house and only then did I appreciate how big it was. Behind the house was a large garden with fruit trees. There was a cherry tree surrounded by blueberry and blackberry bushes, which formed a necklace around the trunk. Mickey said, “Around July or August, we pick the fruit and my mother makes jam. She freezes the remaining fruit for several months and then makes more.”
It was a rather chilly May. The blackberry bush scattered white flowers that would become the sweet ripe fruit. Further on, I saw a large piece of land covered entirely with other fruit trees. There were pear trees, plum, and apple—even peach trees, which Mickey explained were a special kind, the only one able to withstand the cold climate of the area.
The aroma pervaded my nostrils and a chill passed through my body. I took a deep breath of the marvelous scent and was sorry there wasn’t still some fruit I could taste. “Toward the summer, we can pick the fruit, and then you can taste every one of them,” he promised.
My senses had awoken. A new energy pulsed through me. I asked Mickey many questions and he answered each one patiently. Every so often he would hug me and laugh enthusiastically.
“It’s so beautiful here,” I said.
We walked back to the house in silence. His sister had already left and his parents had gone up to their room. Only our footsteps could be heard in the empty space.
“Would you like something to drink?” he asked.
“No, I’m completely full,” I answered.
Mickey poured himself a glass of cold water from a bottle in the refrigerator.
“What has happened since you found out your mother is Jewish?” he asked suddenly. “Have you researched the subject at all?”
“Let’s leave the serious subjects for tomorrow,” I said. “Today everything is good and pleasant and simple.”
He looked at me for a moment and then he placed the used glass in the sink, turned out the light and gently prodded me to go upstairs. He opened the door to my bedroom and followed me inside. His hand held mine and he led me to the bed at the far end of the room. He held my face between his hands and kissed me. It was a different kiss from that of the afternoon, more demanding, and with the last vestiges of my sense of reality, I knew there was no coming back from it. My hands responded to his and my body to his body. It was a dance we both knew how to perform. First he led, then I did. I was a different Eva than the one I knew. Unburdened Eva, untraceable, without a thought. Just Eva. No strings attached, without a past and no fear of the future.
We woke up in the morning in each other’s arms. It was the first time I had ever slept in the nude. I woke up before he did and discovered my head resting in the crook of his arm. I tried to move away slightly, but he caught me and said, “You are not moving away from me.”
I liked it there. The rattle of dishes could be heard from the floor below. His mother was busy making breakfast. I didn’t want to get up.
“Let’s stay in bed and skip breakfast,” I said.
He said, “OK, but I don’t want to just lie around in bed.”
“What do you want to do?” I asked with fake innocence.
“Let me show you.”
Lovemaking in the morning was different from that of nighttime. My body seemed to want to finish all that it had missed thus far. We finally fell asleep again in utter fatigue. Nobody bothered us, nobody knocked on the door. We woke up at noon and decided it was time to start the new day.
When we went downstairs, Rivka was watching television and Shlomo was reading the newspaper. Rivka tried her best to avoid my eyes and I was thankful for that. I was embarrassed and went straight into the kitchen. Mickey made us both a cup of hot coffee.
“What are your plans for the day?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered.
Mickey sug
gested we take a trip.
“Where to?” I asked.
“We’ll see,” he answered.
We said goodbye to his parents and Mickey asked them not to wait for us for dinner. When we went outside, Mickey walked over to the car and sat in the passenger’s seat.
“Hey, you made a mistake,” I cried.
“Nope, no mistake. You drive!” he ordered.
“Me? But I have never driven this kind of car before; it’s huge.”
“A car is a car. If you know how to drive one, you can drive them all.”
“But—” I began.
“No buts. Get in and start it up. I want to watch you for a while. I still don’t know your profile that well,” he said, smiling mischievously.
I got into the car with trepidation and looked forward in fear. “Mickey,” I tried again.
“It will be fine,” he said calmly. “Just start the engine and start driving slowly. You’ll see that in a short time you’ll get used to the size of the car.”
“Where are we going?”
“I’ll direct you.”
Even though I was afraid to drive, another thought entered my mind: He trusts me; he believes I am capable. The thought gave me confidence and filled me with gratitude. As time went by, I in fact did feel more confident behind the wheel. My seat became more comfortable, I loosened my grip on the steering wheel to some degree, and the muscles in my body relaxed.
The car glided along the road like a boat on the waves. The shock absorbers floated up and down and created an agreeable atmosphere. Every now and then Mickey would direct me where to go, and once in a while I would catch a glimpse of him staring at me.
“Turn right at the next street and then take an immediate left,” he instructed.
“But what are we doing here? This place is locked.” I said, recognizing exactly where we were.
“I owe you something,” he answered.
I stopped the car near the door. He took out a key and opened the door for me. The room was completely different from the last time I saw it. It was totally exposed. The little cabinet that had held the many index cards—disappeared. The shelves had left their imprint with holes in the wall, and the table where he used to sit had apparently been moved somewhere else. If the dust covering the place was any indication, I would have guessed that no one had visited for quite some time. The room was deserted except for two round wooden chairs and one large familiar painting on the wall.
Before he could begin speaking, I said, “Mickey, there’s something you have to know.”
He saw the seriousness of my expression and didn’t try to change my mind.
“Do you remember when you visited me last time, and I told you that Roy was staying with me to protect me from George and his gang who are trying to get me to withdraw my complaint?”
“I remember,” he said.
“Well, besides the fact that George is a vile and disgusting man, he belongs to a group of neo-Nazis operating out of our area—”
“I’m not surprised,” Mickey interrupted me. “By your description, this is the perfect type of man to belong to a group like that. These are ignorant thugs who think that a stupid ideology gives them the right to hurt people.”
“Mickey—” I tried to stop him, but he kept going.
“These are scum, murderers. There are a few groups like this in Chicago too. They should be outlawed.”
“Mickey!” I tried again. Every sentence he uttered sucked up a little more of my courage to tell him about my father.
His face grew red and suddenly he had aged. There were lines of fury etched like veins into his cheeks. The room suddenly became scary. The dark and naked walls, which looked like a bodiless skeleton, began to close in on the compressed and suffocating air. The hard chair hurt my butt and my body turned to stone; I swallowed my fear of this man’s wrath.
Suddenly it grew silent. I looked at him. He looked like a runner who had just run a great distance; a runner who has been running and running, the wind and the rain etching inerasable memories in his face. And while he was running, he had turned into an old man. His body was folded over on the chair and his hands rested on his knees like fragile sticks. His breathing was labored and irregular. His father’s story was unquestionably his story.
“Let’s go,” he said suddenly.
“But Mickey—” I tried to speak, but he had already risen and was walking toward the door. I wanted to insist he hear what I had been trying to tell him, but he was hurrying me up, closing the door behind us and locking it with an old lock.
We walked into the alley and this time, he sat behind the steering wheel. Something had made him extremely angry, an anger that couldn’t let go of him. Even so, I still hoped to unburden myself from the weight of my father’s story. I waited for him to calm down so he would be able to listen to me, but he was silent the entire way back. I tried to rekindle the light mood from before, but he was deep inside his anger, his reaction surprising me to no end.
“Mickey, what’s going on?” I asked.
“Nothing is going on, Eva, everything is fine.”
“Then what happened earlier, why are you so angry?”
“I’m not angry anymore,” he said, avoiding the question.
I decided not to push it; in any event, he wasn’t going to give me a straight answer right now. We returned to his home in the suburbs. When we walked in, Rivka joyfully welcomed us back and suggested we set the table because they had been waiting for us for dinner, but Mickey ignored her and went up to the second floor. After a moment, we heard the door to his bedroom slam shut. I didn’t know what to do, whether to also go up to my room or stay with his parents. Rivka saw my embarrassment and suggested I go freshen up a bit. She said and she would leave me a covered plate of food in the kitchen for me to eat whenever. I thanked her with a nod of my head and went upstairs, where I sat down on the bed and went over everything that had happened to me since we left the house.
Mickey’s easiness during the drive into the city was the complete opposite of his behavior in the little abandoned room. I had never seen him explode like that before. He always seemed so calm and reserved. In the end, I had never told him about my father. I packed up what little stuff I had and went downstairs. Rivka gave me a quizzical look.
“I have to leave,” I said.
“Maybe you should wait a little longer. I’m sure Mickey will be down in a few minutes.”
“No, Rivka, I really have to go.” I kissed her cheek and left the house. The drive home was faster than the trip to Mickey’s house. My thoughts gave me no rest. I was surprised at Mickey’s reaction, but also angry at myself for not insisting on telling him about my father. If our relationship is to have any chance, then he has to know everything about me. These thoughts and more were shaking around my head all the way home. The scenery got on my nerves; the light on the gas tank indicator became nothing more than an insignificant and unimportant glimmer. My foot on the gas pedal didn’t change its pressure for a long time and the car continued on its own, in the familiar lane, right up until it drove into my driveway, gasping from thirst.
As soon as I walked into the house, the sight hit me right away. My first thought was that I had entered a stranger’s house. The bureau that stood next to the front door was lying upside down on the floor and the vase that sat on it was shattered into amorphous blue shards. The fragments on the floor were just a sign of what had happened in the rest of the house. The living room, which I had left neat and orderly, had turned into a room paved with broken pieces of furniture, with a couch full of holes made by a sharp object, and curtains hanging at the end of their rods. The newly replaced window was shattered and bits of glass littered the seat underneath it. The television was also damaged, shattered to pieces. I was in complete shock. My gaze moved toward the kitchen, where I found a similar sight. The cabinets were wide open, their contents spilled onto the floor; the refrigerator was savagely emptied of the food it had stored; the kitchen t
able was upside down, one of its legs ripped off. There was not one single object that hadn’t been battered. It was a thorough destruction of property that left no room for doubt. Whoever did this did it out of enormous rage. The situation in the bedrooms was the same, save my parents’ bedroom. The destroyer had not gone in there. My hand reached out automatically and dialed Roy’s number. He answered on the first ring.
“Yes.”
“It’s me.” Silence. “Can you come over?”
“Where are you?”
“At home.”
“I thought you were coming home later tonight or tomorrow.”
“No, I came home now.”
“So…?”
“Someone came in and turned the house upside down…” My sobs could be heard before the tears even began to flow.
“I’ll be right there. Don’t touch anything.”
Roy was also stunned by the destruction. “There is not one thing they didn’t touch,” he noted dryly.
When he went through the bedrooms, he saw that my father’s room remained intact. He looked over at me and came back toward the kitchen. The policemen arrived half an hour later and began to collect evidence. Roy answered their questions and I went out and sat on the stair outside the front door.
When we were finally left alone, he said, “I don’t think you should stay at home.”
“I have nowhere to go,” I said.
“What about Donna?”
“No, I’m not going anywhere.”
“Eva, this is not a game, this—”
“Roy, I am not leaving this house!”
After a brief silence, he said, “Fine. Let’s start putting things back in order.”
22
We settled back into our routine. He no longer asked me about my trip to Chicago. We were on high alert during those days. It was obvious that the breakin was just one of many incidents yet to come. The trial was set to begin in one month. They were surprised by my stubbornness, but they were convinced they would break my spirit. If I left the house when it was dark out, it was always with someone else. Sarah came over once in a while and begged me not to leave the house, not even to visit her. I wasn’t about to tempt fate. I was very scared, but I was also determined not to relent. Roy tried to get home as early as possible. If he had to stay late, he would call me to let me know and stay on the line until he heard the sound of the door locks clicking into place.
Life in a Box Page 17
