Deja Vu (13 page)

“Of course, yes,” Jacob said. “Rose has a degree in accountaning too. You have a winning team here.”

Although I’d also received a compliment, I didn’t know how I was showcased when I wasn’t there. If not for Lior’s comment, Jacob wouldn’t have even bothered to bring up my name.

Almost a year after I started working at Cohen, Lifshitz and Co., Saul summoned me to his office and told me that, in honor of the Jewish New Year, I was going to get a slight raise. He explained that, usually, talks about salaries were held in December, but they decided to give me the raise earlier because of the remarkable work I’d done on the case with Lior. I was happy, but not for long. At the toast they made for the Jewish New Year, I realized that the slight salary bump I got was nothing compared to the raise Lior got. Jacob also announced that Lior was about to become the youngest partner in the firm's history. Later, putting together all of the office gossip, I slowly realized that Jacob was mainly concerned that Lior might leave to go to a different firm that was trying to attract him, and so he’d promoted him to the position of partner.

I’d done most of the work and was silenced with a meager wage bump while Lior received the prestigious status of a partner, a corner office with a sea view and a salary I could only dream of. I wondered if, in our previous lives, Lior had become a partner so quickly. Who had helped him with the case last time around? In my previous life, I had only met Lior three years after that case, and he was a partner by then, although he might have been appointed later in his previous life… so, maybe I had accelerated his promotion?

.

I was so busy working that I was almost completely disengaged from my personal life. Since David was a firefighter and worked shifts, I could afford to work long hours without significantly hurting our relationship. David was actually the only person outside of work I was in touch with. One Friday night, when we arrived for dinner at my mother’s, she complained that I didn’t bother calling her like my sisters did.

“You only call when you need something,” she said.

“But I hardly need anything,” I said defensively.

“So you don’t call at all!” she said sadly.

My friends got the same treatment, or rather the same non-treatment. Since starting work at Cohen, Lifshitz and Co., I’d spoken with each of them maybe twice. I knew Daria was pregnant, and was especially glad to hear that, this time, Inbal had gotten pregnant faster than in her previous life, only five months after Daria.

I wasn’t as involved in the details of Daria’s and Inbal’s pregnancies as I was last time. In my previous life, I was pregnant myself at that age, so the stories about the nausea, the heartburn, and other uncomfortable things interested me. This time, I was too preoccupied with my career. David asked when we’d try too. I had no answer. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I didn’t know if I even wanted to become a mother. I had been a mother. I hadn’t enjoyed it. This time, I felt that my life was going in a more positive direction. Although I wasn’t a mastermind in law, my career had progressed in a satisfactory fashion. My salary was already higher than at Smart Green, where, in my previous life, I’d started working only a year-and-a-half later. I didn’t have the money issues that I had then, and my marriage was more stable. It was much easier to be a couple with no child to get in the way. I considered not having any children. I didn’t understand why everyone had to have a child. When I dared raise the subject with David, he immediately dismissed the idea and said I just wasn’t ready yet. He, too, was still enjoying life without children, but he knew he wanted to be a father at some point. I wasn’t sure at all that I wanted to be a mother, especially because I'd been one in the past.

When Inbal texted me that Daria had given birth to a girl, I was very happy for her. I was also happy for Inbal, because I knew she wouldn’t be saddened at the sight of this baby. She was already four months pregnant this time around. I remembered my Nofar. Despite my difficulties with motherhood, I was suddenly washed with a wave of longing for my lost child. I thought the timing of Daria's pregnancy was amazing. In contrast, there was no doubt in my mind that Inbal’s current pregnancy wasn’t due to social pressure; I knew she’d been trying for a baby for a long time before Daria, and also before I’d tried (the last time around) and I assumed this time was no different. The fact that Daria was the first to fall for a baby surprised me. Perhaps her pregnancy was unplanned. That thought dazed me. I looked at the calendar and was shocked to discover that it was Nofar’s birthday… it was exactly the date of Nofar’s birth in my previous life. I knew I had to see the new baby… Nofar’s replacement. I hadn’t planned on visiting Daria at the hospital - our relationship wasn’t as strong as it once was - but I wanted to see her daughter. 

I arranged to visit with Inbal, so the visit wouldn’t seem unusual, and the two of us drove to the hospital. Daria was lying in bed when we entered the room. She’d combed her hair and put on makeup before our arrival, but we could tell she wasn’t doing so great.

“Inbal! Rose!” she exclaimed in fake happiness when we entered the room and went to hug and kiss her. “Forgive me for not getting up,” she apologized. “I just can’t move… It was a very difficult birth.”

Just as it was with my Nofar, I thought.

“Where’s the baby?” Inbal was looking around the room for Daria’s little daughter.

“She’s in the nursery,” Daria explained. “They’ll bring her in soon so I can try and feed her again.”

“You haven’t breastfed her yet?” Inbal sounded disappointed.

“Of course I have,” Daria replied in an insulted tone. “I mean, I tried, but I haven’t succeeded yet.” My Nofar had refused to nurse from me.

“Don’t worry,” Inbal said in a motherly voice, “it’ll work itself out.”

Or not, I thought. Nofar wouldn’t nurse from me at all.

“It’s a shame you came,” Daria said, and Inbal looked at her in shock. “I mean, I'm really happy you’re here,” Daria immediately corrected herself, “but it would have been even better to meet you at the party in honor of the birth.” I knew that, without Asi’s deep pockets, Daria's parties wouldn’t be quite as luxurious as they had been in my previous life.

“We’ll come to the party as well,” Inbal laughed. “But we couldn’t resist coming now, especially Rose.” She ratted me out.

“Rose?” Daria looked at me, stunned. “I thought you weren’t interested in children.”

“I'm interested in you,” I lied. I was eager to see the baby.

A few minutes later, Amir rolled the transparent hospital infant crib with the baby in it into the room.

“You’re just in time,” Daria said. “Look who's here.”

“Oh, hello, girls,” he smiled. “Rose, I think it must be… well, I haven’t seen you for a year now.”

Even more, I thought. One of the reasons I chose to break away from the pack was my difficulty with seeing Amir at social gatherings. There was a limit to my acting talent; I found it hard to treat Amir like an acquaintance.

“Busy,” I smiled at him.

“How is she?” Daria inquired about her daughter. “Calm?”

“Not very,” Amir said, lifting the baby. “But they were able to give her some formula in the nursery.”

“Bring her here. Let’s see if she's ready to nurse,” Daria said, holding out her hands to Amir and the baby.

“Wait up,” Inbal jumped in, holding out her hands. “Let’s just take a little peep at her… you said yourself she’s been fed in the nursery.”

Daria nodded to Amir that he could hand the baby to Inbal. “You're not afraid to hold her? I’m scared to death.”

“No, I have lots of tiny little nephews, and I really need to practice,” she laughed and patted her belly instinctively.

Amir passed the baby carefully into Inbal’s gentle embrace. Inbal looked lovingly at the baby. “Man, she’s so cute!” she gushed. “You know what you’re going to call her?”

“We have some ideas,” Daria said.

“Can I see too?” I said and bent toward Inbal.

“Sure.” Inbal smiled and slightly loosened her cradling embrace.

I stared at the baby, and I knew immediately that my suspicions were correct.

Inbal was holding Nofar.

My Nofar.

Who was now Daria's.

She was always Amir’s, and now she had another mother. During my new life, I’d had quite a few moments of déjà vu. I didn’t always know if they were real memories of my past or a normal feeling of déjà vu that every person experiences from time to time. Now, I was confused. The original Nofar, my daughter in my former life, was a genetic combination of Amir and me. How could Amir and Daria have the exact same child? I once read that children are often more like their father. When Nofar was my daughter, opinion was divided: Some people had argued that she looked like me, and some had said she looked like Amir. I thought she didn’t look like either of us.

I looked at her in horror. For the first time, I saw the similarities between her and Amir. Were his genes so strong that they overwhelmed both my genes and Daria’s genes? My Nofar was created despite the birth control measures I took. Was Amir’s sperm so dominant that he beat the contraception and definitively established the identity of the baby?

“Is something wrong?” Daria asked, noticing my stunned look.

“Nope,” I lied. “I’m just stunned that you’re a mother, that you have a baby girl,” I said after a long and heavy silence. I found it difficult to find an excuse for my stunned look.

“Yes,” she said. “It's hard to believe.”

“She’s so tiny,” Inbal continued to coo. I wanted to be sure. After all, all babies look alike… maybe it was all in my head. I went to Inbal and the little baby and pulled at her clothes gently. My Nofar had a birthmark between her right shoulder and her neck.

“What are you doing?” Inbal protected the baby.

“Nothing,” I apologized. “I thought there was something there.”

“Where?” Inbal asked and pulled her one-piece aside, which allowed me to see Nofar’s birthmark in all its glory.

“Nofar,” I whispered.

“What did you say?” Daria asked.

“Nothing,” I apologized. “I was just confused.”

“I thought you said Nofar,” Daria said in shock. “That’s weird, because Amir really likes that name and that’s what we think we’ll call her.”

“It really is a nice name,” Inbal said and passed little Nofar to her current mother.

“What do you think, Amiri?” Daria turned to my former husband.

“You know I love that name,” he smiled.

“So, there you are, then - you guys are first to know,” Daria declared. “Our baby is called Nofar.”

“Congratulations,” Inbal said.

“Yes, congrats,” I said almost in a whisper.

“Well,” Daria said to Nofar in a babyish voice, “Let's see if you’ll finally agree to nurse from your mother.”

I couldn’t tell her now she wouldn’t. Nofar wouldn’t nurse. It was just not worth the effort and guilt. Now I understood that Nofar simply didn’t want to breastfeed. She had no problem with my milk, specifically.

On the way home, I asked Inbal. “When did you say your due date is?”

“Mid-February,” she said in surprise. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason...” I pondered for a minute. “Do you know what you’re having?”

“Probably a boy.” She smiled and stroked her stomach with excitement.

Roy, Asi and Daria’s son in my previous life, was born on 18
th
February 2008. I remembered the date because it was also my mother's birthday.

I waited impatiently for February. I was anxious to find out if the ‘new’ Roy, in my current life, would be completely identical to the Roy in my previous life. The thought filled me with horror. Biologically, there may be some similarity, but the genes of a different spouse would surely result in a different baby, at least in some respect. I spent my time until the birth watching Nofar. Unlike in her previous life with me, her picture was constantly taken, and I got a photographic update almost daily. With every day that passed, my hope that I was wrong and that this was a new Nofar faded away. She was exactly the same Nofar. Once again, just like last time, despite Daria’s efforts to hide it, Nofar wasn’t an easy child, and, once again, she preferred her father over anyone else.

It was over eleven years since I’d woken up in the hospital – again - into a new life. I was used to the strange reality of my life, but Nofar’s birth was a far cry from what I'd known so far. Because I had made different choices in my new life, my life wasn’t an exact repeat of the previous one. I’d married another man, and I’d chosen a different career and therefore the sequence of events and experiences in my new life were not identical to those of my previous life. My sisters and other relatives made similar choices to those I remembered from my former life, and, therefore, they had the same children and grandchildren I had known in my former life. But Daria, Inbal and I had switched partners, so a ‘replay’ of offspring seemed like science fiction to me.

On February 18
th
2008, Asi and Inbal had a baby boy. Everyone except me was impressed by the fact that the child was born weighing over 9 pounds. Roy weighed exactly the same. The circumcision was held, like last time, a week late, because the baby suffered from neonatal jaundice. Inbal and Asi named the child Roy. I was as surprised by the choice of name as I was that he was the exact same child. I remembered that in my previous life, Daria chose the name, but now she wasn’t the child's mother. I guessed a person’s name was given to him in a more mystical way than I’d thought.

Unlike Nofar, who was my daughter in my previous life, I didn’t really remember Roy. I certainly couldn’t say that they were definitely identical. The realization that this was the exact same Roy came to me over time. In my previous life, I saw Roy mainly in pictures Daria constantly sent out. Most of the time, I simply deleted the pictures before even looking at them, but I remembered that Roy had a funny shock of black hair, even as a newborn. I recognized him from miles away. Among the many bald babies, he stood out like a lump of coal on a bed of white ice. As time passed, the little doubt I had disappeared; he was exactly the same child.

After Roy’s birth, I realized in the coming months that I was supposed to get pregnant. If, in my new life, the fathers got exactly the same offspring they’d had in their previous lives, then Coral, David and Inbal’s eldest daughter, was to be born to David and me at the end of 2008. I didn’t know if I even wanted to have children in the current round of my life and now faced a dilemma. I could avoid a pregnancy by using the safest contraceptive around: abstinence. Although David's sex drive was much higher than Amir’s, I could come up with various excuses for two to three months. Since Nofar was conceived while I was on the pill, I knew that only avoiding sex would prevent me becoming pregnant with Coral. Was prevention of certain pregnancy the same as having an abortion? I’d considered aborting Nofar when I was first pregnant with her. Now, I knew in advance that I might be pregnant… I knew the daughter I thought I’d have. The thought that I was standing in the way of Coral’s right to come into the world troubled me, and I decided I wouldn’t stop her from being born, not actively, anyway. I didn’t stop taking the pills, but  nor did I abstain from sex with David.