Housebroken (26 page)

A little before midnight I considered calling Noga, but I knew she would insist on my coming over right away. And while I was hesitating on the other end of the line she would make a face at Amir to say: “Maya's having a crisis and she's coming over,” and he would nod to say that it was fine with him. I hesitated until it was too late to call. I knew I could wake them. They'd understand. They'd come to get me in Amir's car, explaining that I shouldn't drive in my present state, but I didn't want to declare a state of emergency. I wanted to think about things logically and calmly. I wanted to be practical.

I opened a bottle of beer and dragged a chair onto the balcony, sat down, put my feet on the rail, and looked at the sky, covered with hazy clouds. I closed my eyes and let my head fall back and tried to convince myself to relax because nothing terrible had happened. But I couldn't relax and I couldn't convince myself that nothing terrible had happened. On the other hand, I said to myself: What do I actually know about him? After all, we'd hardly talked. We'd had sex for five months. I'd never asked him what he did on the weekends. If I had asked he would have been forced to lie. It was too bad I hadn't asked, because then at least he would have lied, and he hated lying, and it would have made him suffer. On the other hand, maybe he wouldn't have lied, and what I now knew I might have known five months ago. Since I had been relatively happy for the past five months, I was glad I hadn't known, because five months of happiness, even a relative happiness that turned out to be groundless, was still nothing to sneeze at.

I returned the chair to the room, closed the balcony door, got into bed, and tried to read the paper. The weekend papers were strewn across my bed, and I thought that doing a puzzle would be the best way to calm down. I got up to get a pen and went back to bed, cheered up by having something to do. I solved three definitions easily one after the other, but my thoughts strayed back to Nathan's apartment, effortlessly climbing the seventy-five steps.

I looked at the clock next to my bed. It was ten to one. I wondered if they were screwing. Although the thought was unbearable, I tried to visualize it to the bitter end so I could get rid of it, and at the same time filled in some more definitions in the puzzle. I bit the pen and tried to guess: Who was on top and who was underneath? Sigal didn't seem the type to be on top, but what did I know? You can't tell what people are like in bed by the way they look or talk, or just because they have innocent-looking breasts.

I got out of bed, took the puzzle and the pen, grabbed another beer from the fridge, dragged the chair back to the balcony, and turned on the light, around which moths clustered frantically. I went on with the puzzle and thought: Tomorrow Sigal will get up and they'll drink their coffee at their leisure, not the way we drink ours when Nathan's in a hurry to go to work. And Sigal will wash her face, maybe she'll take a crap, and then she'll sit down at the kitchenette table, eat fruit from the big bowl, take the red marker out of her backpack, and solve all the puzzles in a flash; I'll come on Sunday and see the papers strewn all over the apartment and the flowers—I couldn't remember what she'd brought this time, carnations I think—wilting in the jar.

Again I felt uncomfortable on the balcony. I left the chair outside in case I wanted to go back there; it was already two o'clock and hard to tell how the night was going to develop. I closed the door, got into bed, and turned off the light. Again I thought about Sigal's breasts. Noga had the same kind of breasts. A second before I fell asleep I reminded myself that I had to make a salad tomorrow.

My mother, father, and I sat around the kitchen table and ate in silence. We never used to eat in silence, and now it was like a powerful spice that made the soup and the roast and the potatoes inedible. My father was sweating heavily, and my mother moved the fan closer to him. He crammed a little potato into his mouth as the sweat dripped from his forehead onto his plate. Mom asked if he was feeling all right and he said yes. He complimented her cooking. She took a clean kitchen towel out of the stubborn drawer, which now opened and closed without difficulty, wet it, and gave it to him. She said: “Jack, wipe your face. You're sweating like a pig.”

When we finished eating, he stood up to help clear the table, but my mother took the stack of plates he collected and said: “Sit down, Jack, you're a guest.”

He went into the living room, dragging the towel and the fan with him. He plugged it into the TV socket and sat down in front of it, in my mother's armchair. “You really don't look so good, Dad,” I said. “You're a little pale. Are you sure you're okay?”

“I'm fine,” he said. “It's just so hot today.”

Mom brought out ice cream and cake. She apologized for not having time to bake, so she had bought a Black Forest cake. She said: “It's for Maya, Jack. You shouldn't eat it. It's got tons of sugar.”

My father looked at the cake in disappointment. Mom said she'd wash some fruit for him. She went into the kitchen while he cut a big slice for me and a smaller slice for himself. I forgot to scold him, or perhaps I was just too preoccupied with my new situation, the state of knowledge, which demanded a new mindset. Maybe I just didn't care; my father was a grown man, let him eat what he liked, let him enjoy himself.

I heard my mother washing the fruit, and I looked at my father sitting in the armchair, gobbling cake.

My mother returned carrying a glass bowl full of fruit: apples, apricots, and peaches glistening with water, and a cut melon with three little forks stuck in three of the cubes. My father's face was glistening as well, from the sweat and from what looked almost like happiness. The cake was delicious, and he gathered up the crumbs with his fingers and popped them into his mouth.

Mom held the bowl of fruit in one hand and the melon plate and forks in the other, and turned from him to me with an accusing look. “Eat the melon, Jack. Eat the melon instead of the cake,” she said, lifting the bowl and the plate as if raising them in the air would elevate their status, but my father didn't answer. He smiled apologetically and his wet face turned pale, his head flopped to the side, and he passed out.

My mother stood there a moment longer with the fruit, not knowing what to do, and I hurried over to my father who, although he was unconscious, was still gripping the edges of his plate with both hands.

By the time the ambulance arrived he had regained consciousness and was mumbling all kinds of apologies. The paramedic took his blood pressure and said he was all right. “He's got diabetes,” I said. “It's nothing,” my father said. The paramedic asked a few questions, how old he was, if he had had other fainting spells recently. I said that he was seventy; my mother corrected me and said: “Seventy-one, he had a birthday in May.” My father looked around apathetically. The paramedic asked again if he had fainted before, and my mother said: “No. He hasn't.”

“I have,” my father mumbled.

“You have, Jack? When?”

“I have,” he said.

“When, Mr. Lieberman?” the paramedic asked and suddenly decided to take my father's pulse, and while he was kneeling next to him and holding his wrist my father mumbled again: “I fainted.”

“Maybe we should take him to the emergency room?” said my mother.

“No need,” said my father.

“There's no need,” said the paramedic. “His blood pressure's normal. I want you to keep an eye on him, Mrs. Lieberman. You and your daughter should monitor his condition. See that he takes a lot of liquids. Especially in this heat. And maybe you should go and lie down, Mr. Lieberman.”

“Yes,” said my father, “I feel a little tired.”

“Come along, let's help you up,” said the paramedic and bent over him, raising him by his armpits. Dad and the paramedic walked together with measured little steps to the bedroom, the paramedic holding him gently by the elbow. My mother whispered to me to follow her to the kitchen. She dug her nails into my arm and said we couldn't leave my father alone at night.

I said I knew that, and I would stay with him. She said she'd gladly let him stay in her apartment, but the sofa was very uncomfortable, you sank right into it. “And in the room with me”—she turned her head in the direction of the bedroom with a panicky movement—“isn't such a good idea.” I said I understood, but we should let him sleep for a while because it was too hot to go out. She said: “Of course,” and the paramedic came in and gave us instructions. He told my mother to keep an eye on him, he was sleeping now, but when he woke up he had to drink, by force if necessary. During the night, he had to be woken up and given liquids, and my mother said: “Yes, thank you very much, I'll see to it that he drinks.”

She saw the paramedic to the door, thanking him all the time, and I went to see Dad. He was lying on his side, covered to the waist with a floral sheet, his mouth open, one hand under his head and the other lying limply on his thigh, the fingers trembling in his sleep. The paramedic had rolled up his sleeve to take his blood pressure, and there was a row of insect bites on his arm. I went out on tiptoe but he called me.

“Aren't you asleep?” I asked. He must have heard us talking in the kitchen.

“I'm just dozing,” he said. “Maya, you don't need to sleep at my place.”

“You'll sleep at my place, Dad. You'll be more comfortable.”

“There's no need,” he said. “I don't want to be a burden.”

“It's no burden, Dad.”

“Don't you have plans?”

“Not today.”

“You sure?”

“I'm sure, Dad. It's all right. You'll rest at my place. We'll watch TV and have something light to eat. I have lots of vegetables in the fridge. And we'll see how you feel tomorrow.”

“I'm not ruining your plans for Saturday night?” he mumbled into the pillow.

“No,” I said, “you're not ruining anything.” And I bent down to kiss him on the forehead. “I have no plans.”

“You're a good girl,” he said in a sleepy voice.

“Go to sleep, Dad,” I said and let down the blind.

“An angel,” he said, and I tiptoed out of the room.

12

At the end of summer Tali told us she was pregnant again. “My sister's pregnant,” I said to Nathan one night, when we stepped out onto the roof for a breath of fresh air. We stood barefoot on the whitewashed floor which was still hot; he looked down at the street and asked if it was her first child. I said no, it would be her third, and he asked how old Tali was. I said she was three years younger than I, that she had a child for every year between us; he nodded and went on looking down at the street and I realized how little he knew about me.

“Tali has a boy of two and a half and a girl of seven months,” I said. “Her husband, Yossi, is a computer whiz and makes a lot of money. They went to America seven years ago.” Suddenly I wanted to talk. “They live in Florida,” I said.

“The boy's called Michael, and the girl Jennifer. If they have another son they're going to call him Jonathan,” I said. “That's what Tali said. If it's a girl, they haven't decided yet. They can't make up their minds between Kim and Naomi, pronounced the American way. Nay-oh-mi. They'll never come back here,” I said. “How can they come back to Israel with a daughter called Jennifer?”

Nathan said he liked the name Jennifer. Then he asked if I wanted children. I said yes, very much, and he said that Sigal wanted children too.

Since that weekend we had begun talking about her freely. When I showed up at his place on Sunday night, after taking my father home, I sat down at the table in the kitchenette and picked up one of the puzzles to see if there was something she hadn't solved, but she'd done it all, and I said to Nathan: “Sigal's a whiz.” He didn't know what to say. He smiled shyly, as if I'd complimented him, and not the girl he loved. He hadn't called me during the day and looked a little surprised when I showed up as usual around nine. He opened the door, placed a consoling hand on my shoulder, and asked if I wanted a beer; I nodded and sat down at the table facing the pile of newspapers.

I asked about their weekend as he handed me the bottle. He said it had been terrible. Sigal had come down with food poisoning and they'd spent Saturday in the emergency room.

“We went to some fish restaurant,” he said. “It was her birthday.”

She must have eaten something bad. At one in the morning she began to throw up. At first they thought it would pass, but it didn't. “Poor thing,” he said, “all night long I held her head.” At five in the morning he called a cab and took her to the hospital. Sigal was dehydrated and had a fever, and Nathan said that she could have died. “You should have seen her,” he said, “the shape she was in.” They gave her an intravenous and kept her under observation until the evening. She only went back to the kibbutz this morning. He refused point-blank to let her take the bus last night, even though she was feeling much better. “Even so,” he said, “it's a three-and-a-half-hour journey.” He had wanted her to stay tonight too, to be on the safe side, and for his own peace of mind, but she had too many things to do on the kibbutz. She had promised to call the minute she got home. I might have found her here tonight too if she hadn't had so much to do on the kibbutz, and I thanked her in my heart.

We had sex as if nothing had happened. While we were in bed, I imagined him and Sigal together. It comforted me to think that at least this weekend they hadn't slept together because of Sigal's food poisoning. Then Nathan got up and went naked to the kitchenette to get a bottle of cold water; he took big gulps from it on the way back to bed. He lay next to me on the mattress and kissed me on the shoulder. His lips were cold. He said he was glad I'd come. He was sorry about Friday and the way it had happened. He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it a little and said he was glad I'd decided to come back.