Cafe Nevo (35 page)

She was still beautiful, but it was a different, uprooted beauty; she was a lily floating in a pond instead of the hardy wildflower she had been. Ilana looked permeated in money; she looked as if she had never been poor.

“They're beautiful children. What are their names?”

“Maya and Dror. They're twins, a real pair of rascals. Ruti, my wife, does a great job with them, but you know, children need a father, too.”

Her voice hardened, and he knew her again. “You're not suggesting that I give my baby up?”

“No, God, no. Why should you?” Hezi tugged at his hair, which was thick and curly like their father's. “I'm making a mess of this,” he said. “Papa told me that you're not planning to get married. Since the kid won't have a father around, I thought that maybe the next best thing would be an uncle.”

“Hezi,” she said after a moment, “my baby will have a father, even though I don't intend to marry him. I hope that doesn't mean he can't have an uncle, too.”

“I'll be an uncle if you'll be an aunt,” he said. “Ruti is dying to meet my glamorous sister. She wants you to come to dinner Sabbath eve. Will you?”

“I'd love to.”

Hezi reached out and shyly touched her hair with a calloused finger. “Snow White,” he said.

Ilana leaned forward, wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her cheek to his. He smelled of sweat and sawdust.

Thank you, Papa, she thought.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Two

 

Daniel was going through a rebellious phase. Vered worried that his crankiness and hair-trigger aggression sprung from the tension at home, but their pediatrician blamed it on his age. Three and a half, she told Vered, was the adolescence of infancy; the baby stands on the threshold of childhood, and a painful transition it is. Vered's desire to believe this was bolstered by the observation that as much as she and Caspi strove to protect the boy from their troubles, he protected himself more effectively. Whenever both his parents were home, Daniel would either coerce Vered into playing with him in his room or else run giddily, prattling like a baby, from one parent to the other. He never acted spontaneously with Caspi but, with a slyness that troubled her, did all the things expected of a child: sat on Caspi's knee, pulled his beard, kissed him good night. Outright rebellion he saved for his mother. At least three times a day he told her, “I hate you!” following this with a frenzied leap into her arms, where he clung like a monkey.

This morning he had insisted on dressing himself and got hopelessly tangled up in his shirt. Vered's attempts to release him met with shrieks of rage. Finally she left him to it.

Within minutes he was on the floor, kicking his heels and screaming for her. Vered rushed into his room. The shirt was wound around him like a straitjacket, pinning his arms to his body. She ran over to help, but Daniel screamed and kicked at her.

Just then Vered caught sight of her face in the mirror above Daniel's bed. Her mother's face overlaid her own reflection, revealing a similarity less of feature than of expression. Jemima, Vered realized, had often looked at her with just that blend of pain and frustration, never more so than on the day Vered announced her intention of marrying Caspi. I have done things to my mother, she thought, that I pray God Daniel never does to me. She imagined having a child like her young self and shuddered. Daniel resembled her too much, with his slyness and reserve, so different from Caspi's habitual acting out of every stray impulse. As a child she had been even worse than Daniel, hoarding secrets the way other children hoarded candy and treating her mother like a foreign spy.

This sudden attack of empathy knocked the breath out of Vered. She had always known that Jemima the mother was lacking in ways that Jemima the businesswoman was not, but now she said aloud in wonder, “I was a rotten kid.” Daniel was so shocked, he stopped screaming in mid-shriek and sat up.

She bribed him with a lollypop and planted him in front of the television. Then she called her mother.

 

They sat on Jemima's patio overlooking the sea, while Daniel puttered about on the beach below, safely out of earshot. He was, not surprisingly, given his situation, the kind of child who likes to eavesdrop on adult conversations.

Ever since Vered had accused her of coveting Caspi, an accusation that had taken days to sink in fully, Jemima had been most uncharacteristically afraid of opening her mouth. As a consequence, she remained in the dark while rumors flew like bats around her head. When Vered called and asked if she was free, she said yes, then hung up and canceled her hairdresser and luncheon date.

Vered sipped her lemonade. Staring out to sea, she said, “I'm pregnant.”

“Mazel tov.
Who's the happy father?”

“Not Caspi.”

“Thank God,” said Jemima, before considering the alternative.

Vered looked at her in amazement. After some moments she said, “I don't know what to do.”

“What are your options?”

“Abortion's one, of course.”

“Do you want an abortion?”

“It's the logical choice.”

“Do you
want
an abortion?”

“No,” she admitted. “Strangely enough, I don't.”

“Then don't have one,” Jemima said calmly.

The conversation was not going along the lines Vered had anticipated and rehearsed. Jemima seemed so businesslike: interested, certainly, and not unconcerned, but unmoved by her concern.

“Does Caspi know?” Jemima asked abruptly.

“No.”

“Are you sure? If he did, it would explain—”

“What he did to Khalil?”

Jemima nodded, clamping her lips together. Years of dealing with Vered had taught her to approach sensitive matters the way Alice negotiated the looking-glass garden: by moving away from her destination.

“The other day,” said Vered, “in Nevo, he read a letter he wrote to Khalil. The most vile, racist, stupid letter... And he sent him a donkey.”

“Caspi is a pig,” Jemima observed. Always was, she added to herself.

“The letter was even more malicious than the bomb. It was meant to humiliate Khalil
as an Arab.
Caspi always had a temper, but this is something else. He's turned into a racist.”

“Has he admitted to planting the bomb?”

“He doesn't trust me. But he knows that I know.”

Though gratified by this unexpected flow of confidence, Jemima was wary of responding too eagerly. A single wrong word could dam it. She wanted so badly to ask, “Why are you still with him?” that she dared not speak at all.

Vered took pity on her mother. “I won't go on living with him. That's not an option anymore.”

Jemima closed her eyes in silent thanksgiving. “If you've made up your mind,” she said carefully, “why delay?”

Vered did not answer.

“Do you still buy his bluff about the boy?”

“It's not a bluff,” she said almost dreamily. “He'd sooner die than give him up.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

She shrugged.

“And what will he do when he finds out about the baby, if you do go through with it?”

Again Vered sighed and made no answer.

Her vagary troubled Jemima; so, too, the quality of her silences. Vered had never been a communicative child, but she had always, no matter how obliquely or misguidedly, been a fighter. Her silence now, however, seemed not of thought but of exhaustion, and there was nothing combative in this miserable woman who sat slumped in her chair as if she hadn't a bone in her body. Jemima guessed that Vered feared Caspi, but could not see why this fear should leave her so paralyzed that two weeks after Caspi's terrorist outburst she was still sharing his home, if not his bed.

That Vered still cared for Caspi never even occurred to her; nor did her daughter think to enlighten her. Though Vered had come fully intending to speak frankly, she could not break the habit of a lifetime in a single day. She still feared her mother's scorn, which would surely be hers in full measure if she admitted to pitying Caspi. And why not? She despised herself. She was living not even in the past but in a world of could-have-beens, of dreams beyond redemption.

Jemima said in a brisk voice, “Where do you intend to go?” assuming without question that Caspi would not leave.

“I don't know. I thought,” Vered said tentatively, “of coming to you.”

Daniel had found a friend, a little girl. They were digging a hole together. When it was deep enough, the girl got inside, and Daniel started burying her. Like father, like son, thought Jemima. After some moments she said, “Where else did you think of going?”

“Are you saying I'm not welcome here?”

“I said nothing of the kind. You and Daniel are always welcome in my home, and you know it. I doubt, however, that it's the ideal solution. You tried it once, remember.”

“I was young and stupid,” Vered said quickly, “and I realize now how much pain I must have caused you. I know myself better now. I would never go back to him.”

“I should bloody well hope not,” Jemima blurted.

“I've thought of renting an apartment, but if I do have the baby, I'd have to hire a full-time baby-sitter, and that plus the rent—”

“But, darling, you must know I'd help. You and Daniel are my only family; could you really believe I'd hoard my money while you were in need?”

Vered began to say reflexively that she wanted no help but stopped. What she wanted was no longer the issue.

“There's another possibility,” she said. “Ilana Maimon has invited me to move in with her, at least for the time being and maybe for a longer period.” Then, having secured Ilana's permission, she told her mother about Ilana's pregnancy. To Vered's surprise, Jemima seemed taken by the idea.

“I've always liked that girl. She's one smart cookie, and she's got guts. Does she plan to go on, ah, working?”

“No,” said Vered with a hint of anger.

“It would be practical,” Jemima mused. “You could hire one woman to help with all three children... but does she really have room?”

“She says she does. Mother, do you really like this idea?”

“Why, what's wrong with it? She seems an intelligent woman, and the two of you obviously get along.”

“We do, though we're very different types. You know what people will say, though.”

“What?” asked Jemima, who knew perfectly well.

Vered blushed. “That we're lesbians.”

“So what? People will say anything. Is she?”

“No!”

“So who cares what the fools say?”

“Then you think I ought to do it?”

“Did I say that?” Jemima said sharply. “I've given you no advice.”

“But I want you to. What should I do?”

“Don't you lay that on me,” Jemima said in sudden wrath. “Don't put that responsibility on me. You've got a decision to make, and for once in your life you're going to make it without reference to either me or Caspi.” Vered reached out for her, but Jemima pulled away. “No. You must decide what's right for yourself, and then do it. If you want, you are welcome to come here. You can go to Ilana or rent your own place. You can have an abortion or a baby. You can even, God help you, stay with Caspi. The one thing you cannot do, Vered, is drift.”

Vered said with difficulty, “I feel some responsibility for what Caspi has done.”

“Really? Did you help him plant that bomb?”

“Mother! If I hadn't had the affair, or if I'd chosen anyone but an Arab colleague and rival of his—”

“Very naughty of you. But do you deserve a life sentence? Does Daniel?”

“What about Caspi? Do you know what my leaving will do to him?”

Jemima clucked impatiently. “Daniel is your responsibility, not Caspi.”

“Even so, he's in bad shape.”

“Yes he is. And so are you. Are you going to let him drag you down with him?”

Vered shook her head with resolution, which soon gave way to another fear. “I'm afraid he'll come after me.”

“Of course he will. So what? At this point there are risks in any course you take. I may not be the most perceptive mother, Vered, but I do know that it's not your nature to be ruled by fear.”

“It's not—but I'm so confused. I go back and forth in my mind, day in, day out. I can't decide.”

“Darling,” said Jemima, “I believe that people make very few real decisions in a lifetime, maybe only one or two. The rest of our ostensible choices are actually dictated by timing and circumstance. When your father died and left me with this house mortgaged to the hilt and a failing business, I had to make one of those rare, critical decisions. Friends advised me to sell the business for whatever I could get, before it went under. Instead, I chose to take over and run it myself. It worked out, but it might easily not have. Still,
I
made the decision, I took the responsibility. I didn't run to my mother, asking her what to do.