Yoni came to her, looking relaxed, purposeful. He reached out and took her hand. “Come here.”
He led her down the hallway and into the bathroom, where the tub was half full, the water tumbling into itself. He closed the door behind them.
“What’s that smell?” she asked.
“Sandalwood. It was a gift.”
Remy found herself laughing. “I bet it was. It smells nice.”
“Here,” he said, and untied the scarf around her neck.
“Oh, this is brilliant,” she said. “This is just so smart of you.” Yet she was laughing; the nervousness, the racing pulse, the fear, was gone.
“You said you were cold,” he told her, placing her scarf on a hook on the door. “Here, raise your arms.”
Off came her sweater, and her silk chemise. At her bra, Yoni paused, seemed to question his rights. When Remy reached out to unbutton his shirt, he looked pleased, and even, perhaps, surprised. She unbuttoned the shirt in a diligent, efficient manner, not allowing herself to touch the skin of his neck, his biceps, his torso. She removed the shirt and tugged his T-shirt out of his pants, over his head, and let it drop to the ground.
Reaching behind her back, he unhooked her bra and peeled it slowly away, let it fall to the floor. He cupped her breasts in his hands. When he brought his mouth down, the flame shot through her. Remy said, “Oh . . . no.”
He stepped back. As if to convince himself that nothing had occurred, he began unhitching his belt, unsnapping his pants as though Remy weren’t even there. Remy removed hers, too, and her underwear and socks, and stepped into the tub as if it were her only refuge.
What am I doing? What am I doing?
Was she really doing this? It seemed to her almost like a daydream, or a mere consequence of the weather. The water, silky with sandalwood oil, slid itself around her.
In stepped Yoni, sending waves around the both of them. When he sat down, his legs made a vee around hers, her feet at the sides of his hips. They fit there as if they did this all the time, the water containing them, warming them, so that it almost seemed to Remy that what they were doing was perfectly natural.
“I never think to take baths,” he told her.
Remy rubbed her toes up and down his side; to speak would make this fully real. Yoni’s hand encircled her calf and moved up her leg. He said, “I haven’t stopped thinking about you. I don’t want to have to stop. To have to try to make myself stop.”
It was what she wanted to hear, and yet she could not bear it.
She reached out for his bad hand, the wounded one, and held it. Touching the darker patch of skin, she felt fully the realness of this moment—that, without giving it much thought at all, she had allowed herself to move beyond the merely precarious. She rubbed the darker patch with her thumb. “Where did this come from?”
“The graft, you mean?” Yoni took her hand and brought it down to his hip, toward his buttock. “They took a swatch from here.”
Remy thought she could feel a scar. “You’ve never told me what happened. Just that it was an accident.” Despite what he had always said, part of her had imagined him in a Green Line skirmish, or maybe detonating a suspicious package.
Yoni leaned back, frowning, dislodging Remy’s hand. He was quiet for a long time, and Remy felt her heart drop.
“I had a friend,” he said, and his voice seemed to catch. “His name was Elan. We grew up together. We were even born in the same week. But Elan was taller and smarter. Beautiful, actually.” The words had a rusty, halting quality. “He was very funny, always playing practical jokes. That’s not how the accident happened. It was when we were in the army, when we were eighteen. We were off duty, and we were setting off fireworks. It was just the two of us. We wanted to get away. It was hard being in the army, you were always in groups, never alone.”
His voice cracked, and Remy feared what he might say. She had done something awful, she realized, in making Yoni recount this. She told him, “You don’t have to.”
But he did not seem able to stop. “In a way it’s a fluke, what happened. Not to my hand. But a piece of metal ended up in Elan’s arm, and then it got infected. They didn’t stop it in time. He died.”
Remy watched the shift in his face, first an awful twitch and then a horrible softening she had never seen before. In a broken voice he said, “I think he was my first love, actually.”
“Oh. Baby.” Remy moved closer, reached over and held him, his head on her shoulder. Of course—of course. The stream of young girlfriends, perpetually slim-hipped and flat-chested, forever eighteen years old . . . Was Yoni even conscious of this? Remy could not help kissing his moist face. She leaned her forehead against his and imagined this other boy she had never known.
“I want you to know,” Yoni said. “I really want you to know—” It seemed he could barely continue. “You’re precious to me.”
Remy thought she might cry. Yoni reached up to stroke her shoulder. He was running his other hand up and down her thigh. Remy closed her eyes, melting into the water.
That was when he leaned over to kiss her, his face moist with heat. Remy tasted his lips, his tongue. They moved toward each other with their limbs and with their hands. For a long while they were entwined, their breath in each other’s mouths. She didn’t know how much time had passed when they unpeeled themselves from each other, only that the water had cooled. A sudden shiver coursed through her. She said, “We should get out.”
“Right,” Yoni said. And then briskly, “Please don’t leave.”
It seemed to her that if only she were out of the tub, she wouldn’t have already made an enormous mistake. Water fell from her as she stepped onto the natty bath mat and reached for a big, wide towel. She dried herself and draped the towel over her shoulders like a long cape. Yoni stepped out of the tub, toward her.
He had already lost one person he loved. At eighteen years old, Remy thought to herself, I was just heading to the conservatory, just beginning my new life. When he was eighteen, he was burying his best friend. His first true love.
Slowly he ran his fingers through her hair. Remy nodded to him, to let him know that it was all right; she had decided to stay.
She saw the relief in his face. He leaned into her, kissed her cheekbones, her ears, her forehead. “I love you so much. Thank you for allowing me to say it.” Then he led her across the hall into his bedroom, where she had never been.
When she left, it was without plans for another meeting. Silently she pulled on her coat and retrieved her violin case. She thought to herself that she would take a long walk, in order to return to normal.
“Okay, see you,” she told him, as she often did.
“I love you,” Yoni said, almost desperately, as if sensing her unease.
Remy realized that she was looking at the floor. “I love you, too,” she said, without looking up. As she stepped out the door, Yoni said, “See you soon, I hope.”
Chapter 7
IN JUST ONE WEEK, THREE MORE WHITE SPLOTCHES APPEARED ON Hazel’s face; the next week, three more. She briefly considered seeing her doctor, but there was no point, really; she had been assured, years ago, that her condition was purely aesthetic, no threat to her physical health. She had been told, too, how these things usually progressed, knew that this proliferation was, like so many other things, inevitable. After all, remissions always come to an end, she found herself thinking, and recalled the homeopath telling her, so easily, to “embrace” what was happening to her body—as if Hazel did not hate, truly hate, the mottled person she had become.
That Monday night she spent a full thirty minutes reapplying her makeup. There was a meeting at Jessie’s school, and Hazel couldn’t help thinking she might possibly run into Hugh.
A midterm report had arrived explaining that Jessie was having trouble in her Earth science class, which was why her parents were being called in. This would not be a private meeting, the letter explained; each term the school held “open classrooms” for parents
whose children were not excelling in a particular topic, as “a chance for the teacher to address in a more comfortable manner the main problem areas and typical points of contention.”
We find this a nonconfrontational way for teachers to communicate more generally their own expectations as well as the ways parents might help their children improve personal performance in a specific class.
Hazel had telephoned Nicholas about it, but he hadn’t been at all worried by his copy of the letter. He pointed out, as he always did, that Jessie would have other talents; she possessed them already, within her, just waiting to make themselves fully known, like the scent of baking bread. And really (he always reminded Hazel) these talents—athleticism, her good nature, her physical beauty—would propel her further than even the best grades. For now Jessie was simply waiting out seventh grade, where, Nicholas explained (based on some sort of journalistic knowledge from his friend Gary), all the worst teachers were employed, the ones with unchecked psychological disorders, the ones who had been reprimanded by administrators, who spouted extreme politics, and whom the high school teachers couldn’t bear. If she could just make it through this awkward time, Nicholas told Hazel, he was sure Jessie would make something wonderful of herself.
Hazel supposed this was Nicholas’s way of convincing her that there was no need to attend the meeting.
“I can’t, at any rate,” he had said, explaining that there was a concert at the conservatory that night. In retaliation, Hazel informed him that she was to help Maria with an event at the fabric store that same evening. And though she knew deep down that she would end up going to the school instead, she told Nicholas that it was time he stepped up and took more interest in Jessie’s academic life, hoping he might at least feel briefly guilty.
Really, though, she was less worried about Jessie’s scholastic record than about the possibility of crossing paths with Hugh. She hadn’t seen him since the night of the chestnuts, and who knew if she might bump into him in the school parking lot, or the corridor. Already she had planned how she would act if that happened: calm, content, glad to see him. As if he had not crumpled her heart in his palm. After all, she told herself, he had suffered his wife’s untimely death and was better than those other men, who just wanted someone younger than themselves. In fact, even now it seemed to her that there was still a chance he might become “able.” It even seemed possible that if she wore just the right thing (the green silk blouse, with her black pencil skirt and narrow sling-backs), that alone might be enough for him to see, finally, that she, too, was lovable, she, too, could be (had once been) a person accorded happiness.
Hazel shook her head at herself. Pathetic, to think that could ever happen for her. Her aloneness was part of who she was, part of her daily embarrassment. Especially at these school events, couples all around, so that each year she told herself that next time she would not show up alone. Worst of all was the annual holiday performance. Already she was dreading it, as she did every December, arriving alone while Nicholas and Remy and the rest of the parents all had each other, their own small circles of love, as if there existed only so much joy to be ladled around, and none left for Hazel.
Two years ago had been the worst. Hazel had been making her way toward Jessie after the concert, pushing slowly forward among the throng of parents, when Nicholas and Remy had somehow ended up just a few paces ahead of her, chatting happily, their arms swung casually around each other, and Nicholas had leaned over to spontaneously place a kiss on Remy’s cheek. At that moment, the parents of one of Jessie’s classmates had recognized Nicholas and Remy, and while the two husbands began chatting, Hazel heard the wife tell Remy, “Your daughter’s a real firecracker, isn’t she?”
Hazel had stopped in her tracks, horrified by the error. Mistaken identity, as if she were a minor character in some British farce—only now her very motherhood had been usurped.
And to think that Remy might be having a daughter of her own now! And that her pregnancy might be visible by the time of this year’s holiday concert! As if the usual spectacle were not painful enough.
Hazel added one last dab of foundation. To think that she had allowed herself to imagine that this year she might not have to go there alone! That she might have gone there with Hugh!
Even now, though, as she finished her makeup with a protective layer of powder, she permitted herself a fantasy, just briefly, that Hugh might come running up to her in the parking lot tonight. In a low, desperate voice he would say that he had been wrong, that in fact he was able to be with her. He simply hadn’t realized it until now, the chestnuts had thrown him off. . . . He might even kiss her right there, unworried should anyone witness them, so sure he would be of his love for her. Things like that happened, sometimes. At least to other people they did.
Hazel let the fantasy slip away. The truth was, Hugh might not even be there tonight. Luke was surely a responsible student. Probably Hugh hadn’t received any school letter at all.
REMY ARRIVED AT THE SCHOOL EARLY, A VESTIGE OF HER LONGTIME effort to make a good impression wherever other parents were concerned. She made her way down the brightly lit, oddly quiet halls to the science classroom, where three other people sat: in the front row an oldish man whose face looked familiar (perhaps his child had been in Jessie’s elementary school) and toward the back a blond couple she hadn’t met before. “Hello,” Remy said, and all three said hello back, with little enthusiasm; it was nothing to be proud of, this visit. The oldish man introduced himself and said the name of his daughter, and Remy did the same, shaking his hand. The blond couple mumbled their names quickly, as if not wanting to be recognized.
Remy took a seat near the windows and immediately felt like a student in detention. “Kept after school”—that was how they said it, though of course she hadn’t ever had to “stay after.” Now, though, she felt real guilt. No matter that she had made it clear to Yoni they couldn’t let such a thing happen ever again. Nothing could erase what she had allowed to happen.
“I’ll do what you say,” he had mumbled into the phone when she called him, two weeks ago now. Before that she had spent a full week dreading what she might again do with him. “I didn’t know I could feel this again,” he said when she called. “I’m here. For you, I mean. I’m yours.” And through it all she had told herself that no matter what he said, she could not allow herself to be alone with him again.
She looked down at the freshly waxed floor, at her feet in her scuffed shoes, and then up at the walls with their curling posters of aerial views of various fissures in the earth. At her left was a low shelf on top of which sat three murky tanks of greenish water. Remy’s eyes searched and found a few glum goldfish. Another tank, containing wood shavings instead of water, housed two gerbils, also inactive.
Now Remy smelled a familiar scent, subtle and hovering, somewhere behind her. Hearing the others saying hello, she turned to find Hazel standing a few desks away.
“Oh, you’re here!” Hazel sounded oddly delighted.
“Oh—well, yes, Nicholas said you couldn’t make it.” She didn’t mean to sound accusatory; she was just confused. But Hazel always made her stumble like this, made her sound like a worse person than she really was.
“I was supposed to help Maria at the shop. But since Nicholas said he couldn’t make it . . . Well, good of you to come.” She smiled in that terrifyingly civil way of hers. It was always this way with the two of them, Hazel so polite, Remy cowering a bit. It had something to do with Hazel’s briskness, her crispness. Probably it was simply that, deep down, Hazel still hated her.
Well, why shouldn’t she? Remy shifted uncomfortably in her seat. The first few times their paths had been forced to cross, Hazel had looked at her with such cold, sad eyes, Remy was sure she had been cursed. And yet there had come—quite soon, actually—a period when Hazel, Nicholas, and Remy were all three perfectly cordial, exchanging Jessie back and forth every two weeks until that transfer itself became second nature and Hazel seemed (but pe
rhaps just seemed) to have forgotten to feel the awful things she had surely felt, just as Remy forgot to feel that constant heavy remorse. By the time Jessie was seven, eight, nine, Remy had often taken a moment to chat with Hazel about television rules and homework habits, and to briefly update her on Jessie’s accomplishments and minor offenses. That was parenthood; there was no way around it.
Perhaps to prove that there were no hard feelings between them, Hazel took the desk just one seat away from Remy. Her perfume billowed over, delicately sweet, like something edible only in brief seasons. In her younger days, Remy had been in awe of Hazel and her perfume, of how elegant it must feel to be the type of woman to wear scent, to be recognizable by it. Now the scent made her feel ill. Surrounding Remy, like some awful odor of her own, was a cloud of guilt—so strong Remy was sure it must be visible.
She looked down again, suddenly ill. She really was a wreck: exhausted yet sleepless, hungry yet without appetite, every part of her—breasts, skin, heart—throbbing, as if permanently bruised.
A few more parents had joined them in the classroom. Apparently they already knew the blond couple; a lively conversation had started up. Remy wondered if Hazel knew them, too, but Hazel hadn’t even looked back. She was extracting from her purse a small spiral-bound notebook, which she opened to a blank white page. Next to it she placed a black pen. Remy looked down at her own bare desktop; it hadn’t occurred to her to bring a notepad, probably because she had been so focused on herself. She scolded herself for not planning ahead. Not to mention that she must look like a schlump, in her wrinkled pants and baggy purple sweater. In fact, Hazel was staring at the enormous sweater as if its very bagginess were an affront. Hazel saw that Remy had noticed, and quickly pulled her eyes away, but Remy couldn’t help putting her hands where Hazel’s eyes had been, across her midriff, as if to protect herself from that stare.
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