Three Floors Up

by Eshkol Nevo

  I remember your face, Michael, after we had him released on bail and took him home. All your features became exaggerated into a caricature: Your strong chin became completely square. Your thick eyebrows became even thicker. Your nostrils flared with rage.

  “Idiot,” you said to Adar. “You’re just an idiot. I can’t believe my son is such an idiot.”

  You know, Michael, in retrospect things become clearer: there was no love under your anger when you said that. If you listen carefully, you can usually hear the love under a parent’s anger. With you, there was only anger. All those years I had persuaded you to restrain yourself with him after his escapades, and that anger had festered and grown in your mind until it blocked out any positive feelings you had. All the school principals you’d had to ingratiate yourself with—after we discovered that you were better at ingratiating yourself than I was—so they wouldn’t throw him out of school. All the rebukes we had to endure from other parents, all the patronizing advice they gave us, all the times we couldn’t meet with friends who had small children because they were afraid that Adar would do something nasty and unexpected to them. All the times we told him that this was the last time, next time he’d be punished, the time you put him on trial (because you genuinely believed it was the way to help him, I know) when he was eight, and the way he laughed when it was over and you decided on the punishment—to be sent away to boarding school on probation. All the times that followed when he was given educational and noneducational punishments that only made him laugh, all that ongoing failure to understand him, to placate him, to bring him closer to us, all that self-flagellation—maybe we were the ones who…maybe we missed something that, if we had seen it, if we had stopped it in time, we might have been able to shift the course he was on.

  All that mutual flagellation, which we never spoke of out loud, but thought about constantly: He’s like that because of you, Devora, because you deserted him when he was three months old.

  Because of me? You didn’t desert him, Michael, because you were never there for him, you gave up on him from the beginning.

  I gave up on him? You’re the one who gives in to him, Devora, you’re the one who lets him get away with things all the time.

  All the whispering swirling around you in the courthouse corridors after the first time he was charged, Michael, and the time you went into your office and your interns stopped talking abruptly and you knew exactly what they were talking about, or the time you reprimanded a parent who began shouting during a session and told him that if they had educated their child properly he wouldn’t have been there, and the defense attorney whispered loudly enough for you to hear, “Look who’s talking…”

  It all came to a head that evening. You kept hurling painful insults at Adar and he didn’t answer. His entire body shook from the effort not to answer. Only after you stopped talking did he say, “I know I’m a piece of gum that got stuck to the sole of your beautiful shoes, Dad, but what can I tell you, the gum needs help now.”

  Avner Ashdot was silent for a long time before he asked, “But what exactly did he want you to do for him? It sounds like a lost cause. A speeding driver under the influence, a pregnant woman—what is there to talk about here?”

  A lone soldier raised his thumb for a ride at the raw concrete station for hitchhikers as we were about to drive past him. A soldier. Alone. In the middle of the day. We should stop for him. We had room in the backseat. If we pick him up, I promised myself, I’ll stop talking. As it was, I’d spoken more than enough about things better left unsaid. And what if Avner Ashdot was recording me? Suspicion began to gnaw at me again. His phone rested in the center console between us, next to the bottle of mineral water, and it flashed constantly. Could that rhythmic flashing be a sign that the phone was recording?

  Avner Ashdot drove past the hitchhikers’ station without slowing down at all. He didn’t even consider slowing down. On the contrary, he deliberately drove faster. That pushed me against the back of my seat, and the blood-chilling thought passed through my mind that he didn’t stop because he didn’t want the soldier to get in the way of his kidnapping me.

  “Why didn’t you stop for him?!”

  “Who?”

  “The soldier!”

  “I thought you wouldn’t want to, I mean, that you wouldn’t want anyone to join—”

  “Ask me next time. Ask me before you decide what I want.”

  “I can go back and pick him up if it’s important to you, Devora. Should I go back and pick him up?” I exhaled.

  I exhaled a very long breath. The way you exhale into a breathalyzer.

  I didn’t ask Avner Ashdot to go back for the soldier. But I did ask him why his phone was flashing all the time. He picked it up, looked at it, and said, “I don’t know.”

  It sounded as if he really didn’t.

  “Is it bothering you?” he asked. “If it is, I can try to figure out how to stop it.”

  “No. It’s okay.”

  Signs saying DANGER: FIRING RANGE, fixed in concrete posts, lined the right side of the road. I heard myself say, “He…I mean Adar…wanted us to pull strings. To get him out of it. He said we could question the reliability of the breathalyzer test in court. That there were precedents.”

  “I understand. And what did Michael say about that?”

  “Michael…told him the truth. That it was impossible. The unequivocal results of his test made it impossible. Adar wanted him to sit down with the lawyer and try to find a loophole or at least do something behind the scenes, talk to his best friend, the court president, and have the case referred to a more sympathetic judge. Michael told him that the only thing that would help him now was to show remorse. To run over a pregnant woman and not to be upset about it at all is—but Adar said, ‘Why don’t you at least tell the truth, that you can help me but you don’t want to?’

  “And that was it. That was when Michael exploded. He yelled at Adar, ‘Wait just a minute, what do you mean, tell the truth? Are you calling me a liar?’ Adar said, ‘Yes.’ Michael demanded that he apologize immediately. But Adar hissed, ‘Are you kidding? You’re the one who should apologize.’

  “It was like that every night for an entire week, with me shuttling between them trying to mediate, to conciliate, to explain one to the other. And you should know that when I was a judge, I was a champion mediator, mediating between Kramer and Kramer, between Rose and Rose, and now—”

  “You were stuck between a rock and a hard place,” Avner said.

  I nodded and turned my glance to the window.

  We drove through total desert. Sand and more sand, not even a single tree to hang on to. Not even a bush. Occasional streambeds wound around the hills, but they were dry. Dry as a bone.

  “Water?” Avner asked.

  “Water.”

  He took the bottle out of the center console, put the cap to his mouth, and opened it with his teeth.

  I drank. Almost the whole bottle.

  Finally, I resumed speaking—I felt that I was talking because I had to talk, not because I wanted to: “One night Michael was in the middle of one of his admonishing speeches when Adar suddenly leaped up. I think Michael used the phrase ‘It serves you right.’ He said, ‘You killed a pregnant woman. As far as I’m concerned, you can rot in prison. It serves you right.’ Then Adar grabbed the chair next to him and threw it at him. It hit Michael in the head, and when he fell, Adar kicked him in the stomach, screaming, ‘It serves you right, it serves you right.’ He kept telling me to move away or else I’d get hit too. When it was all over, he raced to his room, threw a few things into a plastic bag, and left.”

  I know, Michael. I know I promised you not to talk about that night. I bandaged your wounds and said, “We’ll tell people you fell on the stairs.” You said you wanted to file a complaint with the police. That he couldn’t get away with such an act without punishment. You used the word “act,” I remember. I begged you not to go to the police. The boy had been charged with manslaughter
as it was. I said, “I’m asking you, Michael. How many things have I ever asked you for?”

  For twenty-four hours, you raged about your injured pride and shattered principles, and in the end, you agreed. You said, “I’ll do it for you. Only for you. But on one condition: If we don’t report it to the police, then as far as I’m concerned, everything that happened here didn’t happen. We will never speak of it again—not to each other and not to other people. Ever.”

  A herd of white goats crossed the road. It wasn’t clear where they had come from. It wasn’t clear where they were going. A shepherdess with a baby strapped to her body hurried the last goat along, a black one. A refusenik. Avner Ashdot turned his whole body around to me and said, “You must have been in shock. I mean, that’s not something you expect from your child.”

  “Yes and no,” I admitted. “Adar was sixteen the first time he was charged by the police. He punched a security guard who wouldn’t let him into a club. And a month before the accident, he ran away from home and joined a gang of thugs who harassed tourists on the promenade in Eilat. The police there told us to come and take him before things got out of control. So…the signs had always been there.”

  “But still, he was his father.”

  “Yes, his father.”

  The last goat finished crossing the road. The shepherdess and her baby had also left the asphalt, and we began driving again.

  After a few moments of silence, Avner Ashdot asked, “So after that night, there was no more contact with him?”

  I didn’t answer right away. A makeshift, handwritten road sign tied to a traffic light pointed to Uziel’s Farm, and a dirt road led from the main road to the curves of the hills. I wondered whether we would turn onto it. I hoped we would. I hoped that doing so would put an end to our conversation and I wouldn’t have to speak anymore. Somehow, all the sudden frankness made me feel worse, not better.

  We didn’t head toward Uziel’s Farm. We kept driving toward an unknown destination.

  Avner Ashdot looked at me expectantly.

  Finally I said, “At that point, we were still in touch. I visited Adar in prison the entire time he was there. Every other week I traveled two and a half hours to bring him sheets and underwear. Michael knew, of course, but never went with me. He said, ‘First let him apologize.’ And Adar said, ‘First let him apologize.’

  “Then Adar went into therapy. The opportunity is offered to prisoners the system believes it has even a slight chance of reforming. After three months of therapy, he decided that we were responsible for everything that had happened in his life. He said to me, ‘You set impossible standards at home, there was no way I could come up to your expectations: “that is not our way,” “that is our way”—how could I find my own way in that situation?’

  “We sat across from each other in the visitors’ room on metal chairs that were screwed to the floor. It was very noisy. That’s how it is there, all the visitors and all the prisoners sit in a single room and talk at the same time. Total cacophony. A visit lasts only forty-five minutes. That might sound like a lot of time, but it’s nothing.

  “He said, ‘What kind of father puts his son on trial in the living room, tell me? And why? Because I took a few shekels from his wallet? I was eight, Mom, eight! And he forced me to stand on the stool and asked me what I had to say in my own defense. You think that’s normal? You think it was normal for him to threaten to banish me, an eight-year-old, to boarding school?’

  “I said, ‘Dad wanted…I mean, we…we wanted to get you back on track. Our…our intentions were good.’

  “Then he said loudly, almost shouting, ‘The hell with your intentions, the results were shit!’

  “The guards turned to look at us. One of them came over and stood close. I tried to calm things down: ‘We can talk about all this at home, Adari. You’ll be released soon.’

  “And he said, ‘I’m not coming home, Mom. I thought about it and decided that my relationship with you poisons me. If I want to be happy, I have to cut myself off from you for the time being. Build myself alone.’

  “I said, ‘You’re punishing yourself? Is that what you’re doing? Where will you go?’

  “ ‘I’ll manage.’

  “ ‘I don’t think so.’

  “Then he said, pounding a fist into the palm of his other hand, ‘It’ll end badly if I go back home…Dad and me—it’ll end badly.’ ”

  Avner Ashdot sighed. He took his right hand off the wheel for a moment, as if he planned to caress me. Then he put it back. Without a caress.

  I pulled the sun visor farther down for more protection against the sun. And also so I would have something to do with my hands.

  He asked quietly, “So what…what did you say to him, Devora? I mean, what can you say in a situation like that?”

  “I told him, I mean, I asked him to keep a channel open with me. At least that.

  “He said, ‘I’m sorry, Mom, but it won’t work if it’s not a complete break from both of you. At least for a while.’ And that was it. He just stood up and left. Prisoners never leave before visiting time is over, and we still had another ten minutes—ten minutes! But he took the bag I’d brought him, and without even saying goodbye, went back to his cell.

  “When I got home and told Michael about Adar’s decision to cut off all contact with us, he said it was manipulation. That ‘for the time being’ would come to an end soon and he’d be back in touch with us. Because he’d need money. And he’d have no choice. But six months after his release, when Adar still hadn’t called us, Michael said, ‘You know what? Good riddance. Look at how much better our lives are without the…constant fear that he’s about to get into trouble again.’

  “I shouted at him, ‘He’s your son!’ That was the first time I raised my voice to him in all the years we’d been together.

  “ ‘Good riddance,’ he said again in a quiet, steady voice.

  “I said, ‘I plan to fight for him. I won’t give up on him so easily.’

  “ ‘You’ll have to fight that war without me.’

  “ ‘Don’t do me any favors, I’ll do it without you.’

  “ ‘You don’t understand, Devora, I kept quiet when you went to the prison to grovel in front of him after he ran over a pregnant woman and struck me so violently. But now I’m telling you this in no uncertain terms: if you stay in contact with him, you will have no contact with me.’ ”

  Then I told Avner Ashdot other things about you, Michael. I had to tell him other things so he would understand what kind of person you are, what kind of person you were. I had to counterbalance that “Good riddance” of yours, which sounded so terrible when I repeated it. So I described how you went to see your father in the hospice three times a week to sit beside him and hold his hand, despite all the scars he’d left on you. I told him about your generous annual contribution, given anonymously, to My Body, the organization that promotes harsher punishment for sexual abuse (I know that by doing so, you violated ethical rules and it should be kept secret, but I just had to speak). I told him about the court reporters—other judges were always condescending toward them, but you always treated them respectfully. And not only them, but also the cleaners, the clerks, the paralegals, the guards—you always went over to each one of them before the holidays, wished them a happy holiday, and thanked them for their excellent work. And if there was a new guard who didn’t recognize you and asked for identification, you didn’t roll your eyes, but took out your identification card patiently.

  I told him about your generosity as a husband. About your ability to praise. No woman in the world has ever received as many compliments as I did. And I don’t know many women whose husbands continued to bring them flowers every week for thirty years, on a different day each time so it wouldn’t become too routine. I told him about the notes. I didn’t quote them, don’t worry. But I told him that every Saturday morning, you’d get up before me and write me a short love poem on a bit of paper and paste it on the fri
dge.

  Only after I told him all of that did I feel that I could also say, “Yes, he was as stubborn as a mule. And when you live with a stubborn person, you gradually learn that if you don’t want to spend all your time fighting, you have to learn to give in.”

  Then I said, “But in this case, I would have fought”—as the words left my mouth, I felt the bland taste of a lie on my tongue—“but there was nothing I could do. Adar vanished as if the earth had swallowed him up. I didn’t hear from him for three years. He didn’t even bother to come to Michael’s shivah.

  There might not be another opportunity. If I don’t tell the answering machine the cruel truth now, I might never have another chance to say it. So here it is:

  I could have searched harder for Adar. I could have hired a private detective. I could have overturned every stone until I found him. After all, we’re in Israel: how many hiding places could there be on the head of a pin? And when I found out where he was, I could have persuaded him to call. At least me. He did say he was sorry that he had to break off relations with me. And he said “for the time being.” A normal mother would have made great efforts to find him, to change his mind. But I didn’t do that. I didn’t do that because your warning echoed in my mind: “It’s him or me.” And I knew you well enough to know that you would carry out your threat if you had to.

  That isn’t a choice a woman should have to make, Michael, to decide which bond is stronger—the one between her and her husband or the one between her and her children. But I did make the choice. Every mother’s court would find me guilty, of course. And have me executed. A mother who gives up her son—is there a greater sin than that in the nation of Jewish mothers?