by Beth Miller
‘What is it?’ he said, then followed my gaze. ‘Oh.’
I called Alex’s name, but he turned and walked away as if he hadn’t heard. I hesitated. Should I run after him? Why had he come here? What did he think when he saw Nathan and me come out of the garden?
‘Are you going after him?’ Nathan said.
It was a simple question, and also a line in the sand. Was I going to go after Alex? Or was I going go back to my parents’ home? With Nathan?
It was still early in the morning – only seven or so – when I let myself into the flat. I’d spent Sunday night tossing and turning, causing Becca to complain that I was keeping her awake. I wanted to see Alex before he went to work. You couldn’t help who you loved. I knew that Nathan was starting to reignite his feelings for me, but I also knew that I loved Alex. I loved him, and there was nothing I could do about it. I knew I needed to tell him that, and tell him clearly.
I crept quietly about in the kitchen making breakfast, a funny echo of my morning stints in the annex. I thought the smell of coffee would wake Alex up, but he didn’t appear, so after everything was ready, I went into the bedroom. The curtains were still drawn, and still Alex didn’t stir; odd as he was usually such an early riser. I opened the curtains a little. I wanted him to wake gently and lovingly. I went over to the bed and whispered his name. It took me longer than it ought to realise that he wasn’t in the bed. I couldn’t quite believe it. I patted the lumpy duvet but it was just rucked up. There was no one inside it. I turned on the light and now I could see that the wardrobe was open, his clothes gone.
There was a note for me on the table next to my side of the bed. It was sitting on top of the Re-education book.
Eliza, I’ve gone to stay with Kim and Vicky for a while. Please take the Book with you, it makes me sad to see it. Love you, always. Alex.
It made me sad to see it, too. The Book was the symbol of all that was new and exciting, and wrong and difficult, in my short-lived marriage. I picked it up and cried, tears which felt as if I’d been waiting to shed them for weeks, maybe months. I lay down on the bed and let it all out. And after I couldn’t cry any more, I packed a bag, and went back to my old life.
Twenty-Eight
April 2016
I’ve been staying at Deb’s for a week when she tells me her secret. When I finish work and get on the Victoria line – no confusion any more, Pam no longer needs to remind me of my correct platform – I find her harassed and yelling. Michael’s out and the children are fretful and whingey. I take over with them, and of course, because I am not their mum, they are quickly fine, and soon settle down to some drawing. Deb looks like she has aged ten years since this morning. She crashes about in the kitchen for a while till she calms down (‘I nearly walloped the little blighters, lucky you came in when you did!’), then we feed them and get them into bed.
‘Glass of wine?’ Deb says as we creep downstairs, and seeing my astonishment says, ‘I’m bloody having one.’
‘Things sure have changed since I left the faith, Deb. I would never have imagined you having a drink like this.’
‘I don’t know if things have changed,’ she says, taking a bottle of wine out of the fridge, ‘but I have. Tell me this doesn’t last for ever.’
‘This stage is very tiring,’ I say, ‘but it goes quicker than you think, and then you’re into the next thing. Teenagers are exhausting too, in a different way.’ I think of Leah, and her grunting at me while staring at her phone, yelling furiously that she is perfectly capable of talking to me and texting at the same time. I really miss her.
She slugs down her glass and pours another one. ‘When they’re teenagers, I’ll come and stay with you and Alex for a bit.’
‘I hope there will be a me-and-Alex to stay with.’
‘There will, this is just a blip.’
‘Shall I make something to eat?’ I say. ‘You don’t want to get too pickled.’
‘Pickled, like a cucumber.’ She giggles, in a pickled way.
‘I think you were so smart, Deb, not to have kids for a few years. Alex and I were barely together before Leah came along. You and Michael built up a solid base before you let the little intruders in.’ Deb starts laughing, so I join in, then I realise that actually she’s crying. ‘Hey, love, what have I said?’
Deborah isn’t one for crying. She must be even more wrung out than I thought. ‘They’re gorgeous kids, wait and you’ll see,’ I tell her. ‘They’re just at a tricky age, and twins are hard enough in anyone’s books. When they get a bit older they’ll…’
‘They’re not Michael’s, you know.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Michael can’t have kids.’
I stare into her big blue wet-lashed eyes. ‘Deb, why didn’t you tell me? So you did IVF? Was it awful?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry. I wish you’d told me.’
‘I am telling you. In fact,’ she takes another gulp of wine, ‘I’m going to tell you what really happened, and nobody in the whole world knows that. Apart from me.’ She slurs slightly. ‘You said we were sensible to wait to have kids. Well, we didn’t want to wait. We tried and tried, from the moment we married.’
‘Oh, love. You never said.’
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ she gives me a watery version of the old Deborah grin, ‘it was fun trying. For the first few years, anyway. If I could ignore his mother going on and on, alav ha-sholom, may she rest in peace, although not too much peace.’
‘Ah, she was awful. Do you remember how vile she was that time we were helping at Ezra’s bar mitzvah?’ I smile. ‘It was the first time I ever heard you say the word “bitch”.’
‘It was a word that came in handy several times subsequently. Always about her.’
‘It must have been really painful if you did want kids, Deb; I just assumed you were happy to wait.’
‘That was the story we told everyone. When nothing happened, we saw doctors. Can you imagine how long it took to persuade Mikey that we should see someone? Anyway, they said it was unlikely, that his sperm count was pretty low. Well, he wouldn’t consider IVF.’
‘I thought you said…’
‘He wouldn’t do it, because we’d need to have a donor.’
‘I’m a bit confused.’ I put my glass down and lean forward. ‘You said yes when I asked if you had IVF.’
‘Nuh-uh. I said yes, it was awful.’
I gestured for her to go on.
‘We had terrible arguments. I was desperate for a baby. Bit ironic now, as I would give anything for an afternoon off.’
‘I’ll give you an afternoon off. You will fall in love with them all over again when they get out of the Terrible Threes, honestly.’
She waves a hand, to hush me. ‘So I was desperate. I was nearly at the baby-snatching stage. And you know what it’s like round here, these are big families. Some of those frummers with two or three babies in prams all at the same time, barely nine months between them, I thought to myself, would they really notice if there was one less? Might they even be secretly relieved?’
‘That isn’t what you did, is it?’
‘Yeah, I stole the tiny Baby Pinkus from his mother’s arms.’ She smiles. ‘Of course not! I kept on at Michael, begging him to consider IVF. But he refused. We nearly split up.’
‘Deb, all this time, you never told me about this.’
She mimics my voice: ‘Aliza, all this time, you never told me about sleeping with Nathan.’
‘OK, OK.’
‘Look, you were busy, you had your own little family, yada yada.’
So, uh, what happened?’
‘Finally, Michael said, “Do what you have to do.”’
‘What does that even mean?’
‘Who knows? He said, “Do what you have to do, I don’t want to know about it.”’
‘Oh my god, how annoying!’
‘I know, right? So at first I was going to do IVF by myself. They gave me the fertility drugs
, you know the ones that make multiples more likely. Believe me, that is not a myth.’
‘Hang on a minute. You were going to do IVF at first?’
‘Then I thought, well, there is a less medical way…’
‘Deborah, what are you saying?’
‘I will have to kill you if I tell you.’
‘How is this going to work, then?’
‘You can have ten guesses. I will only answer no. If I don’t reply, you can draw your own conclusions.’
‘Did you have sex with another man?’
No reply. She pours herself another glass of wine and smiles enigmatically.
‘Christ, Deb, no wonder you drink.’
‘I drink because three-year-old twins are hard work.’
‘Is the father someone I know?’
‘No.’
‘Is it someone you’re in touch with?’
‘No.’
‘Is he Jewish?’
‘I didn’t ask.’
‘Does he know you got pregnant?’
‘No.’
‘Did you meet him online?’
‘No.’
‘The zoo?’
‘Now you’re being silly. You’ve had seven questions. Look, it doesn’t matter where, OK?’
‘I can’t picture you going off to a singles bar and picking someone up.’
She says nothing. There is a strange look on her face.
‘There’s so many things I want to know.’
‘You can have three more questions, then we will never speak of this again.’ Her face is deadly serious. ‘I mean it.’
‘Does Michael know they’re not his?’
‘We have never discussed it. I hope he assumes we finally got lucky. Thank Ha-Shem, they look like me.’
‘Do you have any regrets?’
‘No. Not now they’re asleep, anyway. Last question. Michael will be back any minute.’
‘Are you completely happy?’
There’s a long silence. Then she says, ‘Is anybody completely happy?’
‘Wow, Deb. I’m so,’ the word in my mind is ‘shocked’, but I say instead, ‘so honoured that you told me.’
The front door slams – Michael coming in.
Deb says, ‘So you know you liked Pearl’s shoes that she was wearing at the Seder the other night?’ She puts the wine bottle back in the fridge, and her glass in the dishwasher, seemingly unhurriedly, but she is sitting back down alcohol-less by the time Michael comes in. It looks as if only I’m drinking. ‘She gave me the name of the shop – they’re not cheap, though. Oh, hello, darling.’
‘Hello, ladies,’ he says, and I see him clock my glass. That outrageous Deborah. I look at her, and she looks innocently back at me.
‘Have you two not eaten yet?’
‘We got lost in conversation,’ Deborah says, jumping up and taking a Tupperware out of the fridge. ‘Do you want some, darling?’
‘Yes please,’ he says. ‘I’ll just pop up and look in at the kids.’
‘He’s a great dad,’ Deborah says, heating a casserole in the oven, and that’s the end of it.
Deb’s spare bed is another surface that she’s covered in cushions. I remove nine or ten and pile them up on the floor before I can get into bed. I text Leah good night, as usual, but she doesn’t reply. Maybe she’s already asleep. My head’s absolutely whirling with what Deborah told me, and I have to admit, though I know this doesn’t reflect well on me, that I am relieved. Relieved that I am not the only one who messed up. Relieved that other people’s lives, not just mine, are full of secrets, compromises, and ambiguities.
It takes me an age to get to sleep, and it feels only minutes later when my phone rings, calling me up from the depths. I fumble for the phone and drop it, luckily on to a safety-net of cushions. I answer it moments before it goes to voicemail.
‘She’s gone,’ Alex says. He is breathing hard, and his voice is much higher than usual.
‘Leah?’ I sit up, wide awake. ‘Gone? Where?’
‘I don’t fucking know, do I? I got up and she’s not in her bed.’ There is panic in his voice.
‘Have you checked everywhere? The bathroom? The kitchen?’
‘Eliza, the front door’s unlocked. Her school bag’s gone. She’s even taken her coat.’
I squint at my watch on the bedside table: 6.30 a.m. Leah would know that in order to sneak out before Alex got up, she’d have to be very early. For her to do that, she who can barely function before 10 a.m., it must be something she is absolutely desperate to do.
‘Have you phoned her?’
‘Yes, and left five voicemails. Plus loads of texts.’
Alex has waited a while to call me, then. Presumably he hoped he could sort this out without me ever knowing.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he says, and starts to cry. This is not crying that can be passed off as being caused by an onion. This is full-on sobbing. I have never known him do this, and I grip the phone tight, saying soothing things.
‘It’s going to be OK, Al. It’s all going to be OK.’
When at last he calms down, he says, ‘Do you know where she might have gone?’
‘I have an idea,’ I say.
Twenty-Nine
January 2001
Six in the morning. I slipped out of the annex into the main house, hoping not to see anyone, but Mum was of course bustling about in the kitchen.
‘Have you already been in to make Nathan’s breakfast, Aliza? It’s terribly early.’
‘Er, yes, he said he wanted it first thing today.’
She looked at me oddly. ‘You went in without the sheitel? And you’re wearing the same clothes as yesterday?’
‘Just rushing, Mum. Right! Better get ready myself.’
‘It’s Sunday, you don’t have work.’
‘No, I’m, er, I’m going to Deborah’s.’ I hastened out of the door, but her voice followed me upstairs.
‘At this hour?’
I slipped into my room, but unfortunately Becca was awake, lying in bed and reading. Gila was snoring gently. Becca regarded me with an ironic expression.
‘Where have you been, Aliza?’
‘Got up early to do Nathan’s breakfast, that’s all.’
‘Sure you did.’ She propped herself up on an elbow. ‘So early you didn’t actually bother going to bed in the first place.’
I glanced at my bed which clearly had not been slept in.
‘Well, no, I, uh, you didn’t wake up when I got up, I made my bed before I—’
‘Save it, Aliza.’ She turned back to her book, but not before throwing me the filthy look of the century. ‘I don’t care what you do, any more.’
I hid in the bathroom, and as soon as it was a decent hour, I rang Deb and begged her to let me come over. Since Alex and I broke up, a month ago, I’d gone over to hers at least three times a week. If she was getting sick of me, she didn’t show it, and today, more than ever, I was grateful to her for being there. My mind was in such a mess, the ever-persistent ants crawling all over it, an army of thousands.
Deb was dependable, but other than her, everything was odd and different in my life. Living in my parents’ house didn’t feel the same as before I married Alex. I’d been out in the Real World, seen and done things none of my family could imagine. And they didn’t trust me not to disappear again. The simplest action – such as walking from one room to another, or into the hall, or heaven forbid, towards the front door – ignited everyone’s attention. One of my siblings would say, ‘Where are you going, Aliza?’
If I said I was going out, they’d say, ‘Where? Does Mum know?’ They all did it, even Dov and Gila. Especially Gila. She was a complete pain. If I admitted that no, I hadn’t told Mum, but I was in a rush, she would race through the house, yelling, ‘Mum! Mum! Aliza’s going out!’ It was very annoying.
Actually, lots of things were annoying, about being back home:
1. Sharing a room. Of course, I’d shared with Becca and Gila all their li
ves. Almost all my own, too – I could barely remember a time before Becca came along, when I must have had the room to myself. But since marrying Alex, I’d got used to my own space. Alex was never an invasive presence the way my sisters were. As they had the same daily goal (to avoid Dad) as me, and as Dad never went in the girls’ bedroom, they were mostly to be found in our room, lying on their beds, keeping up a running commentary. I must have once been used to this, but now it set my teeth on edge. ‘Oh, is that a new top, Aliza?’ ‘Can I come with you to visit Zaida, Aliza?’ ‘Have you seen Nathan today, Aliza?’ ‘Where are you going, Aliza?’ ‘Where have you been, Aliza?’
It made me want to scream.
2. The food. Everyone seemed so conservative, but of course, it must have always been like this. I must have always been like this. I slotted back into taking my turn at cooking the evening meal, alternating with Mum and Becca. Everyone comprehensively rejected any attempts I made at innovation. My lamb curry, for instance – kosher lamb, with kosher coconut milk instead of yoghurt – was only eaten by me. Everyone else pushed theirs aside. You should have seen the face on Jonny. Dad threw his in the bin, along with the plate it was on, just as he’d done all those years ago with the roast lamb. I’d have asked him what his problem with lamb was, but it didn’t seem quite the right time. Also, he wasn’t speaking to me.
The curry was really nice. Alex would have loved it.
3. The assumptions. It would never have occurred to Mum or Becca to ask why it was us who did the cooking, rather than Dad or any of the boys. It hadn’t occurred to me, either, before. Now it was absurdly obvious. I felt too uncertain of my place in the house to raise it. But I did notice it.
