The Seven Good Years (9 page)

W
hen I was a little boy, my father took me to visit a family friend who was missing a finger. When he saw me staring at his four-fingered hand, the man told me he used to work in a factory. One day, his wristwatch fell into a machine, and when he instinctively reached into its guts, the sharp blades severed his finger.

“It was just a split second,” he said with a sigh. “But by the time my brain told my arm it was better off not digging into that machine, I had nine fingers left.”

I remember listening carefully and trying to look sad. But the powerful sense of hubris pulsing deep inside me told me that these sorts of things may happen to unlucky strangers, but not to me.

“If I ever drop a watch into a machine full of blades,” I thought to myself, “there's no way I'll do something stupid like reach in to get it.”

I thought about that story a few weeks ago, on the morning my wife and I told our son, Lev, who is almost six years old, that we were going on a family trip to Paris. My wife talked excitedly about the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, and I mumbled something about the Pompidou Center and the Luxembourg Gardens. Lev just shrugged and asked wearily if we could go to Eilat instead. “It's just like going abroad,” he reasoned, “except everyone speaks Hebrew.”

And then it came, that split-second error that I would pay for dearly. The kind of mistake that leaves you with the right number of digits, admittedly, but inflicts an emotional scar from which you can never recover.

“Have you ever heard of Euro Disney?” I asked in a cheerful voice, bordering on hysteria.

“Euro-what?” asked Lev. “What's that?”

My wife immediately stepped in with her well-honed survival instincts. “Oh, nothing,” she said. “It's just this place where—you know, it's really far away and very silly. Come on, let's look at some pictures of the Eiffel Tower on the Web.”

But Lev had perked up now: “I don't want to see the Eiffel. I want to see pictures of the place Dad just said.”

That afternoon, when the boy went to his capoeira class, where they've spent the past two years teaching him how to expertly kick his peers to a Brazilian beat, I approached my wife and asked for forgiveness: “He sounded so unexcited about the trip, and I just wanted to cheer him up.”

“I know,” she said, and hugged me warmly. “Don't worry. Whatever it is we have to get through, it'll go by quickly. However horrible it is, it's just one little day in the rest of our lives.”

Two weeks later, on a gray, damp Sunday morning, we found ourselves shivering in the square outside what's now called Disneyland Paris. Sad employees in happy uniforms physically blocked our access to the rides. “Entrance is currently permitted only to residents of the Disney Hotel and holders of the Disney Passport, which may be purchased at the box office,” one of them explained in a throaty, doleful Amy Winehouse voice.

“I'm cold,” Lev whimpered. “I want that lady to let us in.”

“She can't,” I said, and breathed some warm air on his nose in a pathetic attempt to melt the frozen snot hanging from his nostrils.

“But those kids went in,” he wailed, pointing at a cheery group of children who waved their shiny Mickey Passports at Ms. Winehouse. “How come they get to go in and I don't?”

I tried an inappropriately serious response: “Remember how we talked about the social protest in summer? About how not everyone gets the same opportunities?”

“I want Mickey!” the boy whined. “I want to talk to Mickey about this. If he and Pluto knew what that lady was doing, they'd let us in.”

“Mickey and Pluto don't really exist,” I said. “And even if they did, how likely is it that a dog and a mouse could influence the profit-maximization policy of a successful publicly traded conglomerate? Chances are, if Mickey came to our aid, he'd be fired in—”

“Popcorn!” the boy yelled. “I want popcorn! Glow-in-the-dark popcorn like that fat girl is eating over there!”

After two boxes of unusually sticky popcorn that would become phosphorescent poop later that evening, Winehouse let us and another thousand or so desperate families in, and we all lunged at the rides. My peacenik wife, in her desire to avoid trampling a crying baby, briefly stepped aside, costing us another twenty minutes' wait for the Dumbo carousel. The line seemed very short when we were standing in it. That, perhaps, is the true genius of the place: the ability to snake the lines around in a way that always makes them look short. While we were waiting, I read a few interesting tidbits about Walt Disney on my iPhone. The site I was on claimed that, contrary to urban legend, Disney wasn't really a Nazi but just a regular anti-Semite who hated Communists and was overly fond of Germans.

Scattered around us in the confusing labyrinth of lines were some ornamental stone posts sprouting tiny plants. Lev complained that the miniature trees stank. At first I told him he was just imagining it, but after I saw the third father hold his son up above a post so he could pee on it, I realized that the same god who had blessed the park's designers with transcendental architectural wisdom had also blessed my son with keen senses. It was a little warmer by now, and Lev's snot was liquid again. My wife sent me off to find a tissue. On my quick excursion I discovered that anything you can buy with money could be easily obtained in the park, but unprofitable items such as bathrooms, straws, or napkins were virtually impossible to find. By the time I got back to my family, Lev was gleefully climbing off the Dumbo carousel. He ran over and hugged me.

“Dad! That was fun!” As if on cue, a huge Mickey Mouse appeared and started chatting with the visitors.

“Tell Mickey,” Lev instructed me, “that we want to open up a Shekel Disney just like this one in Israel.”

“What's a Shekel Disney?” I asked.

“It's like here, but instead of taking euros from people, we'll take shekels,” explained my financial midget.

Mickey came closer. Now he was within touching distance. I threw out a
“Bonjour”
in his direction, hoping to break the ice. “Welcome to Disneyland Paris!” Mickey replied, waving at us with a white-gloved, four-fingered hand.

I
have a good dad. I'm lucky, I know. Not everyone has a good dad. Last week, I went to the hospital with him for a fairly routine test, and the doctors told us that he was going to die. He has an advanced stage of cancer at the base of his tongue. The kind you don't recover from. Cancer had visited my father a couple of years earlier. The doctors were optimistic then and he really did beat it.

The doctors said there were several options this time. We could do nothing and my father would die in a few weeks. He could undergo chemotherapy, and if it worked it would give him another few months. They could give him radiation treatment, but chances were, that would hurt more than it would help. Or they could operate and remove his tongue and his larynx. It was a complicated surgery that would take more than ten hours, and, considering my father's advanced age, the doctors didn't think it was a viable option. But my dad liked the idea. “At my age, I don't need a tongue anymore, just eyes in my head and a heart that beats,” he told the young oncologist. “The worst that can happen is that instead of telling you how pretty you are, I'll write it down.”

The doctor blushed. “It's not just the speech, it's the trauma of the operation,” she said. “It's the suffering and the rehabilitation if you survive it. We're talking here about an enormous blow to your quality of life.”

“I love life.” My dad gave her his obstinate smile. “If the quality is good, then great. If not, then not. I'm not picky.”

In the taxi on our way back from the hospital my dad held my hand as if I were five years old again and we were about to cross a busy street. He was talking excitedly about the various treatment options, like an entrepreneur discussing new business opportunities. My dad is a businessman. Not a tycoon in a three-piece suit, just a regular guy who likes to buy and sell, and if he can't buy or sell, he's ready to lease or rent. For him, business is a way to meet people, to communicate, to get a little action going. Just let him buy a pack of cigarettes at some kiosk, and within ten minutes he's talking to the guy behind the counter about a possible partnership. “We're really in an ideal situation here,” he said, totally seriously, as he stroked my hand. “I love making decisions when things are at rock bottom. And the situation is such dreck now that I can only come out ahead: With the chemo, I'll die in no time at all; with the radiation, I'll get gangrene of the jaw; and everyone's sure I won't survive the operation because I'm eighty-three. You know how many plots of land I bought like that? When the owner doesn't want to sell, and I don't have a penny in my pocket?”

“I know,” I said. And I really do.

When I was seven, we moved. Our old apartment was on the same street, and we all loved it, but my dad insisted that we move to a larger place. During World War II, my dad, his parents, and some other people hid in a hole in the ground in a Polish town for almost six hundred days. The hole was so small that they couldn't stand or lie down in it, only sit. When the Russians liberated the area, they had to carry my father and my grandparents out, because they couldn't move on their own. Their muscles had atrophied. That time he spent in the hole had made him sensitive about privacy. The fact that my brother, sister, and I were growing up in the same room drove him crazy. He wanted us to move to an apartment where we would all have our own rooms. We kids actually liked sharing a bedroom, but when my dad makes up his mind, there's no changing it.

One Saturday a few weeks before we were supposed to leave our old apartment, which he'd already sold, my dad took us to see our new place. We all showered and put on our nicest clothes, even though we knew we weren't going to see anyone there. Still, it isn't every day you go to see your new apartment.

Though the building was finished, no one lived in it yet. After making sure we were all in the elevator, Dad pressed the button for the fifth floor. It was one of the few buildings in the neighborhood that had an elevator, and even the short ride was thrilling. Dad opened the reinforced-steel door to the new apartment and began to show us the rooms. First the kids' rooms, then the master bedroom, and finally the living room and the huge balcony. The view was amazing and all of us, especially my dad, were enchanted by the magical palace that would be our new home.

“Have you ever seen such a view?” he said, hugging my mom and pointing to the green hill visible from the living room window.

“No,” my mom replied unenthusiastically.

“Then why the sour look?” my dad asked.

“Because there's no floor,” my mom whispered, and looked down at the dirt and exposed metal pipes under our feet. Only then did I look down and see, along with my brother and sister, what my mother saw. I mean, we'd all seen earlier that there was no floor, but somehow, with all my dad's excitement and enthusiasm, we hadn't paid much attention to that fact. My dad looked down now, too.

“Sorry,” he said. “There was no money left.”

“After we move, I'll have to wash the floor,” my mom said in her most ordinary voice. “I know how to wash tiles, not sand.”

“You're right,” my dad said, and tried to hug her.

“The fact that I'm right won't help me clean the house,” she said.

“OK, OK,” my dad said. “If you stop talking about it and give me a minute's quiet, I'll think of something. You know that, right?”

My mother nodded unconvincingly. The elevator ride down was less happy.

When we moved into the new apartment a few weeks later, the floors were completely covered in ceramic tiles, a different color in each room. In the socialist Israel of the early 1970s, there was only one kind of tile—the color of sesame—and the colored floors in our apartment—reds, blacks, and browns—were different from anything we'd ever seen.

“You see?” My dad kissed my mother on the forehead proudly. “I told you I'd think of something.”

Only a month later did we discover exactly what he'd thought of. I was alone at home taking a shower that day when a gray-haired man wearing a white button-down shirt came into the bathroom with a young couple. “These are our Volcano Red tiles. Direct from Italy,” he said, pointing to the floor. The woman was the first to notice me, naked and soaped up, staring at them. The three of them quickly apologized and left the bathroom.

That evening at dinner, when I told everyone what had happened, my dad revealed his secret. Since he hadn't had the money to pay for floor tiles, he'd made a deal with the ceramics company: they would give us the tiles for free, and my dad would let them use our place as a model apartment.

The taxi had already reached my parents' building, and when we got out, my dad was still holding my hand. “This is exactly how I like to make decisions, when there's nothing to lose and everything to gain,” he repeated. When we opened the apartment door, we were greeted by a pleasant, familiar smell; hundreds of colored floor tiles; and a single powerful hope. Who knows? Maybe this time, too, life and my father will surprise us with another unexpected deal.