The Two Hearts of Eliza Bloom

by Beth Miller

  I don’t think I have ever been so grateful to anyone in my life as I am right now, and what an odd person to be grateful to. I smile at Nathan, trying to send with it my complicated feelings of admiration and relief, but I doubt he gets it.

  ‘I didn’t know you knew my dad,’ Leah says.

  ‘I only saw him twice,’ Nathan says, ‘but I remember him clearly.’ He stands up. ‘Good to meet you, Leah. I hope you find the peace you’re looking for.’

  He shakes hands with Dov, then changes his mind, and hugs him. I get a grave nod, before he turns and walks towards the door. I know he won’t like it, but I go after him.

  ‘Nathan, thank you. Thank you so much.’

  He turns, and though his face is calm and unemotional, his voice is not. ‘We all did stupid things when we were young,’ he says. He walks behind the reception desk and disappears through the door.

  I return to my seat, and the three of us look at each other. It feels as if a whirlwind has passed through, leaving us shaken but unscathed.

  ‘Can we go home now, Leah?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes,’ she says meekly, like the child she once was. ‘Sorry, Mum.’

  ‘You believe that Dad is your dad now, do you?’

  She leans limply against me. ‘I do look like him, don’t I? I look nothing like Nathan.’

  I hand her my phone. ‘Your poor father is going mad with worry. Why don’t you call him?’

  When she’s spoken to Alex – from the noise coming out of the phone I’m guessing he is a lot crosser with her than I am – Dov pulls us out of our chairs, a hand each.

  ‘Back we go,’ he says. ‘Back to our real lives.’

  Leah is stretched across the passenger seat, her head on my lap. As if she has regressed to childhood, she asks me to tell her a story, and from somewhere deep in my memory, I begin, ‘Once there was a little girl called Leah, who was very brave…’

  Like Zaida’s tales of Brave Aliza, thirty years ago, I weave truth and fiction together. I tell the story of Leah leaving home before her father is awake, taking her savings money and buying a train ticket, working out how to get from the station to an address in a city she doesn’t know at all, so she can meet a king in a palace who turns out not to be a king after all.

  She is asleep before Dov gets us out of the centre of Gateshead, long before the story gets to the yeshiva. I mean palace. The weight of her head on me, the softness of her hair under my fingers, moves me almost to tears. I think of her, aged about ten, saying ‘It’s been emotional,’ in a cod American accent; it was something she’d heard on a TV show.

  Dov glances at me in the rear-view mirror. ‘Are you crying again?’

  ‘Definitely not. A bit. I’m just so utterly relieved.’

  ‘Me too. Everything’s back to how it was.’

  ‘Well, not quite everything.’

  I wonder how Alex is feeling, and how long it will take him to forgive me for lying, or whether he will forgive me at all. I text him, holding my phone stiffly in the air so I don’t disturb Leah, who emits adorable little baby snores and snuffles. I tell him that Leah is fine, and that Dov and I will drop her off at the house. Alex immediately replies, saying he wants me to come in too. I allow myself a moment to feel hopeful, then I text Deborah to update her.

  ‘Dov,’ I say, ‘what do you think about what Nathan said? About how you’re always covering up for me?’

  ‘He was just trying to get at you.’

  ‘I think maybe you did do a lot of covering up for me when we were younger.’

  ‘Maybe a little.’

  ‘All those weeks I was visiting Zaida at the home secretly, remember? And you never told anyone.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I still miss Zaida, do you?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Think how much he would have loved our kids.’

  Zaida did in fact get to see Leah, just about. She was only a few weeks old, but his face as he held her carefully in his arms was an absolute picture. I don’t have to imagine it as I have an actual picture of it; Alex took one on his camera and it’s in a frame on our bedroom wall. Zaida may not have known who she was – by that time he wasn’t all that sure who I was – but in the photo he is beaming with delight. He knew she was somehow connected to him. I was glad I had the chance for them to see each other. Dov wasn’t so lucky – Zaida died even before he married Ilana.

  There was something I’d been wondering for a while, and there was probably never going to be a better time to ask.

  ‘Dov?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘You know the day I left with Alex?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘I’ve always wondered why no one came after us.’

  ‘Mmm?’ I can only see the back of his head, but I can tell that he’s smiling.

  ‘Dad. Or Uri. I can’t believe they let us get away. They were both so macho. Seems astonishing they didn’t try and drag me back, don’t you think?’

  ‘Maybe they knew there was no point. That you were too wanton to listen to reason.’

  I laugh at him using Nathan’s word. I think of that last glimpse of Dov that day, as he asked which way we were going, then ran back towards my family. I lost sight of him after that, but now I follow him in my mind’s eye. He is running back, not very fast, and when he reaches my father and Uri he breathlessly tells them that we turned left at the end of the road.

  But we had turned right.

  ‘Thanks, Dov,’ I say.

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  Leah doesn’t wake until we’re on the outskirts of London, then she uncurls herself from me and stretches, my baby giraffe, her hands scraping along the ceiling of the car, toes pointing out straight, far under the seat in front.

  ‘Sorry you had to come all that way,’ Leah says to me. ‘Sorry, Uncle Dov.’

  ‘It was a nice day for a drive,’ Dov says, gamely.

  ‘Mummy?’

  ‘Yes?’ I try but fail to hide my delight at her calling me that.

  Her bottom lip wobbles. ‘Is it my fault you and Daddy are cross with each other?’

  ‘Hey now, come on. Of course it’s not your fault.’

  She starts crying. ‘I just,’ sob, ‘wanted to be,’ sob, ‘Jewish!’ she wails.

  I catch Dov’s eye in the rear-view mirror. He’s grinning broadly, and I have to use all my willpower to stop myself from doing the same.

  ‘Is that what all this has been about?’ I say.

  She nods, tears and snot rolling down her face. I give her a tissue.

  Dov says, ‘You are Jewish, Leah.’

  ‘I want to do Jewish things.’

  ‘You can do them with us,’ he says, ‘if your mum is OK with that.’

  ‘I want to do them at home, with Mum and Dad.’

  I’m about to make false promises, just to soothe her. But Dov steps in. Covers for me. As always. ‘Leah, it wouldn’t make sense for your parents to do that. They don’t believe in it. It would make them hypocrites, and they are absolutely not that. They have always lived according to what they believe, and I don’t think you should want them to be any other way.’

  I wish I had always been able to be Dov’s vision of me. I try and see myself through his eyes, and manage a fleeting glimpse in which I don’t look quite so bad as I’ve always imagined.

  ‘When your mum was a young woman,’ Dov says to Leah, ‘only nine years older than you are now, she realised she couldn’t go through with a marriage to a man she didn’t love. Even though all her family rejected her for it, she had the guts to leave. You wouldn’t want her to pretend that she is someone different, would you?’

  ‘No,’ Leah says.

  This interpretation makes me sound utterly heroic.

  ‘So, Leah, you can come to us every Friday, and Saturday too, if you want, and celebrate Shabbos with us. And you can come for all the festivals. And if your mum wants to come too, and your dad, they would be more than welcome. How’s that?’

  ‘That’s rea
lly good. Mummy, will you come to shul sometimes with me?’

  ‘Sure, honey.’

  ‘I don’t mean you have to believe in it or anything. I just want to go with you.’

  ‘I’d love to.’ And I mean it, more or less. ‘I’m sorry. I feel a lot of this is my fault, for denying you your heritage.’ Something occurs to me. ‘Why were you skipping your clubs after school?’

  ‘Oh.’ She looks embarrassed. ‘So I could get clothes. I went to charity shops, I didn’t spend all my birthday money.’

  ‘You have lots of clothes.’

  ‘Clothes for being Jewish in.’

  I think of her bulging backpack in the boot of the car, presumably full of second-hand long skirts and turtle-neck tops. And I think of me, sixteen years ago, dragging my own heavy bag full of clothes between my life with Alex and my life with my family. I guess we aren’t so different, Leah and me.

  ‘Why couldn’t you go clothes-shopping with your friends?’

  ‘I didn’t want to have to explain it. And sometimes I met Gidon to do planning.’

  ‘It’s a right old tangled web you’ve gone and woven, Leah. You made your friends worried about you.’

  She shrugs. Let’s face it, it’s hard to think everything through to its logical conclusion when you’re fourteen. Like Nathan said, we all did stupid things when we were young. It’s hard enough to think everything through when you’re twenty-three. And actually, was I doing so much better on this front even now, at thirty-nine?

  Leah looks at her phone. ‘Dad has sent me eleven texts,’ she says.

  ‘He really loves you, you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You are so like him.’

  ‘How?’

  I tick the similarities off my fingers. A new list. ‘Even Nathan, who has barely ever seen your dad, recognises that you look just like him. You both have dark Italian hair and blue eyes and wonderful high cheekbones. You both have small earlobes and you can each do that weird double-jointed thing with your elbows. Until you became a teen, you both got up at the crack of dawn. You both like penguins, Terry Pratchett, and playing Frisbee.’

  ‘Everyone likes penguins,’ Leah says, smiling.

  Dov drops us outside our house. ‘Good luck,’ he whispers to me.

  ‘Do I still owe you?’ I ask. ‘I’ve lost track.’

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘we are completely even.’

  Leah and I walk up the path, and before we knock, Alex opens the door and flings his arms round both of us. He looks awful, as if he hasn’t slept for a month. The quotation marks between his eyes are thick, permanent grooves. He pulls us inside, and closes the door. We are all back home.

  Thirty-Three

  Winter-Spring 2001

  From: elizasymons

  To: myfriendmarriedagoy

  23 January

  Dearest FBF,

  Back, forth, back, forth. I can see you rolling your eyes, raising that famous eyebrow. ‘If it’s Tuesday it must be Brixton…’ Don’t worry, I’m done now. Done with dithering. I’m back with Alex, and it’s for keeps. I have the best of all worlds. I have Alex, but I also have Mum, and Dov, and Zaida. I have everything (except Dad, though that’s not a hardship. And Alex and I probably won’t be hanging out with Uri and Esther any time soon, but you know – also not a hardship).

  When I told you I was going back to Alex, you asked how was I sure this time. I told you how I’d gone to see him, and how overwhelmed I was, as if I was seeing him for the first time. He said he felt the same way, like starting again. I really love him. And I really want to live outside of our world, the one we have always lived in. I know it’s for you, but it’s not for me. And that’s OK. I think I’ll be allowed to move between the Real World and our world, as long as Mum is in charge, and that’s as good as it gets, for me.

  One thing I didn’t tell you before I came back home, was that I’m pregnant. Roughly 18 weeks, apparently. I have an attractive round belly. I’ve actually bought my first pair of jeans – maternity jeans – and you should only see what my tuchas looks like in them, but I don’t care. You should also see how huge the waist goes. I can’t believe I’m going to get that big. Anyway, I’ve been wondering if we can somehow use this to distract Michael’s mother from her surveillance of your womb. How about you borrow the baby when it arrives, and pretend to her that it’s yours and you didn’t gain any weight while pregnant. Worth it for the look on her face?

  Thanks for your tough talking, Deb. I hated it at the time but you were right. You always are.

  Aliza (GG) x

  From: myfriendmarriedagoy

  To: elizasymons

  24 January

  Dear GG

  Wow, you sure know how to keep those revelations coming. Pregnant now, noch! Listen, I’m genuinely happy for you. It almost made me think I’d like to have a baby of my own soon, but then, nah. I’ll wait till you really know what you’re doing and can pass on a load of wisdom and hand-me-downs. You’ll be a lovely mother. I look forward to meeting the new arrival, and the father of the new arrival too, at some point.

  Love ya, Crazy Kid,

  Deb-Who-Is-Always-Right xx

  From: elizasymons

  To: myfriendmarriedagoy

  20 February

  Dearest FBF,

  Sorry for the email silence. But it was so good to see you and Michael the other day, and for you both to meet Alex. Thanks for not calling me ‘Goy Girl’ in front of him, though you could have – I’d warned him. He thought you were great, and he seems to think that he and Michael will be hanging out every weekend talking about whatever boysy stuff they talked about for all those hours.

  Wow, if you were shocked when you saw the size of my bump, you should see it now. It seems to get bigger every day; by next week I might not be able to get through the front door. Which reminds me, we are looking for a new front door. Yes, the latest in Aliza’s rollercoaster life events is that we are going to move house. Ideally before the baby comes.

  Deb, I am so happy.

  Valentine’s Day this year was very different to my first one. I tried to put in Alex’s card what he means to me. I don’t know what Michael means to you, but I know that you love him with your whole self. I didn’t feel exactly like that before about Alex, but I do now. What I tried to tell him in the card was, I chose him twice. I chose him first when I didn’t know what I was doing, and my decision was clouded by needing to get away. The second time I chose him was completely different. I chose him not to be rebellious, not to be Crazy Kid, but because I couldn’t do otherwise. I realised I loved him with my whole self. I wrote an essay in the card, trying to explain this. Then I put a line through it, and wrote, ‘I choose you.’

  When Alex gave me my card, it was blank inside, like the one I gave him last year. I said, ‘You’re supposed to write it in it!’ and he said, ‘Someone I know and love a great deal taught me that it’s not always possible to put feelings into words.’

  Well, I’m trying to put it into words now, for you. But I am failing. Thanks for everything, Deb. Thanks for always being there.

  Eliza (GG), signing off with my Real World name x

  We spent our weekends walking arm in arm round the streets of Ilford, being shown ‘desirable properties’ by spotty teenage estate agents. Alex’s wish-list ran to just two items: a garden for the baby, and near a good school (also for the baby, obviously). Mine was a little longer, but it didn’t take us long to find the one – a three-bedroom house in a quiet street near the park, a short walk from the town centre and a kosher deli. With a big bath.

  Alex’s flat sold quickly, so we were able to move in early April, and a week later, still surrounded by unpacked boxes, we hosted a small house-warming party-cum-Easter-Sunday dinner, with Dov, Sheila, Kim, Vicky, Holly and their new baby Freya. Dov brought along the words to ‘Tradition’, so he and Alex could do a duet. It was pretty bad, as Dov was, if anything, a worse singer than Alex. The rest of us were nearly sick laughing.


  Alex and Dov were old friends by this time. Mind you, the first time they met, in the Brixton flat, it wasn’t such a warm occasion, at least, not to start with. The two most important men in my life sat stiffly at the kitchen table eyeing each other, while I bustled about making tea and wittering inanely. For Dov, Alex was the outsider, the goyische stranger who’d stolen his sister away. And for Alex, Dov was still the boy he’d last seen the day we ran away together, a black-clad boy indistinguishable from all the others, who came after us and watched as we took the road to freedom.

  I put their cups in front of them.

  ‘I want to say thank you,’ Alex said to Dov, unexpectedly.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For always being there for Aliza. For not giving up on her.’

  ‘She is my special person, always has been.’

  ‘And,’ Alex said, colouring slightly, ‘she told me what you said to her. About how you thought she still loved me.’

  ‘Ah,’ Dov sat back and shrugged. ‘She’d have worked that out eventually.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it a lot,’ Alex said. ‘To your family, I must seem like the devil incarnate.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far!’ I said, after a moment’s pause that felt like an hour.

  ‘Dov’s silence is eloquent,’ Alex said. ‘No, it’s OK. I know what they must think of me, and of the way that Eliza and I left. But despite that, despite what you must have been feeling, you helped get us back together.’

  ‘But I knew you must be a good person,’ Dov said quietly. ‘Because Aliza wouldn’t have chosen you otherwise.’

  ‘Your faith in me is touching,’ I said, using sarcasm to deflect the tears that were threatening. Alex put his hand on mine.

  ‘I only want Aliza to be happy,’ Dov said to Alex.

  ‘And you think she’s happy with me?’