That’s what she told the surprised young man who looked at her questioningly. “I don’t know how to play.” He smiled and said, “That’s okay, what I really love the most is playing against myself,” and in retrospect, that sentence takes on an additional meaning that neither of them was aware of then, because life with a woman who almost died of love is a game against yourself, and in any case, not for yourself. She found herself telling him about her father, who had been addicted to the game, which was why her mother had to go looking for him at the chess club and force him to come home. If he lost, he was despondent and angry all evening, but if he won, he’d take her in his arms and whirl her around, so happy that it was impossible to be angry at him.
The large young man listened to her patiently, and his black eyes, which at first seemed slightly veiled, showed greater depth when he heard how young that chess lover had been when he died and how young his daughter had been. “Do you want me to teach you how to play?” he asked cautiously, as if he were afraid of making a wrong move.
“No,” she said, “I’ll just watch,” and so she observed in silence as he played against himself, his large, dark, slightly doughy face changing expression rapidly from trepidation to satisfaction, from arrogance to frustration. It occurred to her that had her father played against himself, her mother would have been spared those humiliating forays to the chess club and she herself would have had more hours with him—their time together had been so short. As she watched the young man, who seemed gentle despite how large everything about him was, she tried to calculate how many father hours she’d had in the few years that their lives had overlapped. So focused was she on her calculations, counting on her fingers and mumbling, that she didn’t see that now he was the one watching her, and when she did notice, she laughed in embarrassment, he must think she’s weird.
She placed her pale hands on the sides of the board and looked at his dark hands, thinking that if they laced their fingers they would look like pawns lining up to face each other in battle. She wanted so much to lace her fingers through his that she heard herself say suddenly, “I’ve saved my father’s chess set all these years. If you want, I’ll give it to you.”
Surprised at the gesture, he said, “Wow, thanks a lot, but I can’t take it from you, it should stay with you.”
She replied quickly, “You’re right, it should stay with me, but I really want it to be yours too. After all, I don’t know how to play.”
“I have the perfect solution,” he said, “we can live together,” and they both laughed as if it were a joke, which turned into reality faster than expected. She was enchanted by his enthusiasm and total lack of doubts about her. But how could she have known that while they were planning the merger that would enable her to give him her father’s chess set without parting from it, Eitan Rosenfeld was climbing the steps to her mother’s house to ask about her, and her mother was throwing him out as if he were a beggar or a criminal.
How could she have known that as time passed, she would begin to hate the very thing that had attracted her to him, just as her mother had hated it in her father, even though the chess clubs had become the computer screen and the long games had become lightning-fast ones. The addiction and the complete disconnect from his surroundings only became worse, until she could barely speak to him in the afternoon and evening because he was utterly focused on the games. Even when she called him during work hours, she sometimes thought she could hear the impatience so typical of addicts.
“Not now, I’m in the middle,” he’d say curtly when one of the children asked him for a ride somewhere or help with homework. And she would take consolation in the thought that if this was the father she had lost, perhaps the loss wasn’t so great. Now she says to his back, the same back she walked over to, trancelike, twenty-three years earlier, “They say that the tendency to addiction is genetic. She saw her father addicted to chess, and now she’s addicted to drugs.”
“Not now, I’m in the middle,” he mutters.
“Maybe if you weren’t so involved in your games, Alma would be in better shape today,” she says, even though she knows that Alma is the only one who sometimes manages to get his attention even in the middle of a game, the only one willing to be shown a brilliant move he made and be happy for him when he won, but mainly to console him when he lost. The loss was utterly meaningless in the real world, after all, he didn’t know who his opponent was in most games, and no one had the slightest interest in the points he won or lost. But it stung him deeply, as does the loss he is suffering now on the screen in front of him. Making no effort to hide the pleasure she takes in his defeat, she says, “Don’t start a new game now so you can make up for the one you just lost. We’re going out.”
“Where to?” He stands up and trudges into the kitchen as if he has only just awakened from a deep sleep.
“To see our daughter,” she says.
He yawns. “Aren’t you getting a little carried away, Iris? She just wanted to have some fun.”
“Have some fun,” she repeats the hackneyed phrase derisively. “What planet do you live on? Seducing her brother’s best friends indiscriminately—you think that’s normal?”
“Who am I to say what’s normal? At least I know now that she’s not asexual like her mother.”
She flinches as if he’d slapped her and walks in stunned silence to her bedroom. Asexual? Where did that suddenly come from? It isn’t like him to talk to her that way! She knows he was hurt because she left their bed that way and because, like many friends her age, she hasn’t been particularly excited by sex these last few years, but to say such a thing to her? He must be more stressed than he’s been willing to admit. She sits down on the bed—she’ll take another painkiller in a minute and drive to see Alma without letting her know she’s coming, go directly to the bar and surprise her there. She’ll certainly resent the invasion, but she won’t be able to do anything about it, or maybe she’ll be able to watch her from outside without attracting her attention, if there is a window, and the thought of what she might see through it horrifies her.
She’ll see her daughter’s sexuality. Parents aren’t supposed to see such things. Maybe Mickey is right, the normal state of affairs is that children should see their parents as asexual and parents should see their children the same way, anything else would be extremely uncomfortable. But that’s irrelevant at the moment because if Alma is behaving strangely, she has to help her, even if Alma doesn’t want her help. She undresses and lingers in front of the closet. She doesn’t usually take much care about her clothes, but tonight she wants to look good so that her daughter won’t be ashamed of her. She chooses a tight black skirt—since the pain came back, she has hardly been eating and the skirt is no longer as tight as it used to be—and the white blouse with the black polka dots that always looks nice on her. But as she hurriedly puts on lipstick, he comes into the room, the phone in his hand, a supercilious smile on his face.
“Mom’s already getting dressed in your honor, sweetie,” he chats comfortably into the phone. “She wants to drive over to see you, she’s worried about you.”
Then she hears their daughter say quickly, “There’s nothing to worry about, Dad, I’m really fine. I’m doing a double shift today, there’s no reason for you to come. I’m always on my feet and I won’t have a minute for you, and I’m closing the bar, get it?”
“More or less,” he chuckles. “I get that you don’t need to see us urgently.” And the conversation continues before Iris’s blazing eyes. “I heard that Omer’s friends were there yesterday. How was it?”
“Don’t ask,” she complains. “They’re nerds like you wouldn’t believe, they totally don’t know how to drink, one shot of vodka and they’re groping everything that moves. I had to throw them out. They really messed up, and I had to lie for them and tell Boaz they were eighteen! Tell Omer not to send me his friends anymore.”
Mickey listens t
o her gleefully, his smile broadening. “Who’s Boaz, the owner?”
She sings into the phone, “Yes, my boss. He’s really thrilled with me. Next week I’m going to be shift manager.”
“So when are you coming home? How about this weekend? We haven’t seen you for almost a month.”
“But Dad,” she protests, “we get the best tips on the weekends. It’s a real bummer to miss shifts like that. You know what? Maybe I’ll come on Sunday, okay? It’s the slowest day.”
“Sure, sweetie, whenever it’s good for you.” He purses his thick lips to the phone. “Kisses, sweetie, take care of yourself.”
“Bye, Daddy.”
In the silence that ensues, Iris’s anger at him for giving away her secret plan is mixed with a host of other things: enormous relief at hearing Alma’s steady, cheerful voice; the reassuring uncertainty about the information Omer conveyed; the realization that despite his chess games, he has greater success than she in his relationship with their daughter; an acutely painful sense of failure that momentarily masks the pain in her pelvis, which radiates to her leg; the foolishness of the fancy outfit she put on as if she were going to her daughter’s wedding; the discovery that she is still applying the red lipstick, coating her lips with a thick layer of the sticky substance; and his smile, which appears in the mirror behind her, pleased and expectant, as if he has given her an offering and is waiting for her cries of surprise and joy.
“What are we going to do, Mickey?” she mumbles, her lips stiff with color.
And he, pragmatic as always, says, “Let’s go out for something to eat. We haven’t eaten out in a long time, and you’re already dressed.”
She gives up on all the excuses because despite her pain, despite the fact that she isn’t hungry and has to get up early the next day, despite the fact that he hurt her, she knows that this is a moment she cannot not let pass.
“Anything but rice and beans,” he jokes as he reads the menu. “What do you have that’s as far away as possible from rice and beans?” The waitress doesn’t really understand what he says.
Iris looks at him warmly. This is her Mickey, who loves her in his way, who loves their children, who saw them being born, who disappoints but also pleasantly surprises her. Who took such good care of her when she was injured, who supported her when she decided to apply for the principal’s job and was so proud when she got it. She feels a profound sense of security beside his large body, as if she were a turtle and he her shell. The closeness she feels toward him is growing stronger from minute to minute, until she almost tells him that the doctor with the white beard is apparently the boy she loved when she was young, Eitan Rosenfeld, and that from the moment she saw him again, she has been totally preoccupied with him. The words are already on her heavily coated lips, but she swallows them with the spicy cold pepper soup. What is the point of telling him something that will never happen, because she has already decided not to return to the hospital and try to see Eitan again, she won’t open the door to her life for him to enter. The pain he caused her belongs to her former life, and even if he throws himself into her arms or prostrates himself at her feet to beg forgiveness, he cannot undo what he did. Her mother was right to send him away just as he had sent her away, and she will do the right thing by not allowing that old-new pain to lead her to him, because he can’t heal her, and she will not allow him to make her sick again.
SIX
Absolutely not, she decides once again the next day, and the day after that, I will absolutely not try to see him again, I will absolutely not make myself known to him. Sitting in her office and staring at the pupils’ drawings that hang on the wall, she thinks about the childhood she never had because of her father’s death, which placed an enormous responsibility on her shoulders, instantly catapulting her from childhood to maturity. Perhaps that is why she sometimes feels so old, because at the age of four, she was already a grown-up, which might explain why she feels a bit fed up and vaguely angry with elderly people. But none of that is important now, she breaks off her reverie, she will stop thinking about her own youth and focus on her daughter’s. Today she’ll leave work early because Alma promised to finally come home, and even though she has her doubts, she’ll act as if the visit is a sure thing and make the biscuit cake, sweet layers of biscuits and vanilla and chocolate cream that her daughter loves so much. They used to make it together every Friday, and Alma’s face would be covered to her forehead with creamy smears, but after Omer was born, that became a rare event reserved mainly for birthdays.
How difficult it was to raise Omer, she thinks resentfully, staring at his smile in the family photograph that hangs on the wall across from her. It seems to her that from the moment he came into the world, he decided that nothing would remain as it had been, neither the nights nor the days, and even a minor domestic ritual like baking a cake came up against countless obstacles. Either he would scream in fury about not being included or he would hide the ingredients throughout the house. But if they finally agreed to include him, he would argue endlessly, insist on playing a bigger role, and wreak havoc with the quantities if they didn’t agree to his demands, turning the task into a nightmare until Alma walked off in tears. She recalls how she once decided to trick him and asked a babysitter to take him to the playground so she and Alma could make the cake together for her eighth birthday. But he came back home with the expression of a suspicious, jealous lover on his face, immediately discovered the cake in the fridge, and took advantage of a moment when they were distracted to throw it on the floor in a rage. The sound of the dish shattering under the rich creamy mixture appalled her, and she looked at her little boy with horror and almost appreciation—see, you really are capable of doing anything, just as I feared you could, just as I felt you could.
From the time he was born, her friends tried to reassure her, “That’s what boys are like. You’re used to a girl, and such a quiet one at that. Boys are wild, he’s like the rest of them, he doesn’t have a problem.” She, of course, was quick to accept all the reassurances, but the reality confronted her each time anew. He was different, he wasn’t like all the others, he was wilder, more violent, and at that moment, in front of a loudly sobbing Alma, she realized that the time for denial had passed. She had to prepare for difficult years, and her daughter, whose birthday cake had been deliberately destroyed, would most likely pay the price.
After coming to terms with the situation, she rose to the challenge. She had chosen education for a reason, and if she succeeded with her little boy, she would also succeed with others like him from all over the city who had left many kindergarten and elementary school teachers feeling frustrated and helpless. And she succeeded quite well—within a few years, Omer became easier to handle and more disciplined. Years of consistent effort transformed him from an impossible child to an almost average one, a boy like all boys, though slightly more volatile. But during all that time, Alma was neglected, and it’s clear that today, no cake will make up for that birthday cake, even the new one she made for her in the middle of that night didn’t make up for the one Omer had destroyed. Nonetheless, she hurries to the grocery store now to buy the ingredients, having convinced herself that this time, the visit will go well.
But the biscuits she just bought so cheerfully would remain forgotten and crumbling in the bowl because the sound of the elevator surprises her too early, while she is still dipping them in milk and arranging them in the pan, and she turns around with a smile of happiness and anticipation on her face. But the girl who steps out is so different from her daughter that she almost doesn’t recognize her. For a moment, she seems to have changed into a boy, so short has she cut her hair, but chopping off her gorgeous chestnut tresses wasn’t enough for her. She has dyed the thatch that remains a deep shade of raven black, which brings out the features she inherited from Mickey’s mother and gives her face an entirely new expression. The shocking change fills Iris with such anxiety that she completely
gives up on the idiotic attempt to make the cake and lets the biscuits drown in the pool of milk mixed with a teaspoon of instant coffee that gives it a soft mocha color.
“Alma? What happened to you?” she asks, wiping her sticky hands on a kitchen towel and hurrying over to her, as if she is about to faint and needs her support.
That, of course, is not the right question, because her daughter, as expected, says defensively in a cold voice, “What happened to you, Mom? You’re looking at me as if you’ve seen a ghost! It’s only a haircut!”
Iris, immediately sensing her daughter’s regret for having bothered to come, tries to rectify the situation. “No, it’s not just the haircut, it’s the color, it changes you completely. All of a sudden, you look like Grandma Hana.” She hugs Alma’s tense, thin body, which seems to have a new stiffness. What is that body hiding from her, what is happening to it, that body that took root in her womb and emerged from her own body and now moves out of her embrace quickly, as if fearing that its secret will be revealed.
“Hey, what’s up, Sis?” Omer says, suddenly appearing from his room. “Congrats on the haircut. Why do you remind me of Grandma Hana now?”
She laughs with him, even though he deliberately destroyed her birthday cake thirteen years earlier, and in a chatty, brittle voice, she explains, “Every girl in Tel Aviv tries to be the most beautiful, so I decided to go against the flow and not try to be beautiful. I’m even trying to be the opposite, you know, unbeautiful,” adding a slim question mark.
He laughs, “That’s cool, Sis, as long as you like it.”
“You bet I like it,” she says, peering into the wall mirror and ruffling her hair, her smile both provocative and apologetic, Grandma Hana’s annoying smile. But her mother, anxiously observing her movements, knows what Omer and his sister don’t, that their Grandma Hana, who died of cancer when they were children, had been a battered woman for many years.
Pain Page 7
