*
I wanted to say thank you, Yotam’s mother said and remained standing in the doorway.
Please come in, I said. She came in and stood in the middle of the living room. Are you in a hurry to go somewhere? I asked.
No, she apologised and sat down. It’s just that there are so many things to take care of before we go.
It was all pretty sudden, wasn’t it? I asked, lowering the volume of the CD player. Elvis Costello was probably not her cup of tea.
Yes, she said with a sigh. I don’t know if we’re doing the right thing. Maybe we’ll feel worse there. But we can’t stay here any more.
I understand.
Sometimes you make a change just to make a change, don’t you?
Yes, I agreed, thinking about Noa in Tel Aviv, making a change. Tell me, I said, barely dragging myself away from my thoughts about Noa, have you found a school for Yotam yet?
No, she said. That’s why we’re leaving a week early. The school year starts in June. Because everything’s upside down there, all the seasons. Yotam and I are leaving at the beginning of next week and Reuven will stay here another week or two to close his business and empty the house.
You mean you have buyers already?
Yes, a young couple with two children. Very nice people. He’s an engineer and she’s a teacher. I think you’ll both get along with them very well.
I thought: who’s ‘both?’ Do you see any ‘both’ here? And I said: so how’s Yotam taking the whole thing?
He runs hot and cold. Sometimes he gets up in the morning and says he’s not going with us and he doesn’t care what happens. And sometimes, he asks me little questions, things he’s curious about. As if we’re just taking a trip. This whole year, he’s been wanting to go on a trip.
Yes, I said, thinking that she still doesn’t know I didn’t open the door that Saturday.
And, she went on, he told me that he talked to you and you told him that Australia was a fun place.
Yes.
So that’s why I came. To say thank you.
You’re welcome, I said, moving uncomfortably on the sofa. Maybe some day I’ll have the courage to stand with my chest exposed and let the compliments in. Meanwhile, I have a tendency to evade them, the way cowboys in films dodge bullets.
Really, Amir, thank you for everything, Yotam’s mother said. You have no idea how important you were to him. He didn’t stop talking about you all year. Amir this, Amir that. And last week, he had the idea that you’d come with us to Australia.
Yes, I heard about that idea, I said, smiling.
He loves you very much, you know.
I love him too, I said. And stopped for a second to celebrate that word, which is not spoken every day. He’s a wonderful boy, I said. Sensitive. Full of ideas and imagination.
Yes, he is, his mother’s nods said.
Besides, I said, trying out different words in my mouth before I found the least hurtful phrasing, I understand what it’s like to be at home and feel alone.
You know, Yotam’s mother said, ignoring my last remark, I think you’ll be a really good psychologist.
Maybe, I said, again evading the compliment shot at me, but there’s a good chance I won’t be a psychologist at all.
Why not?
Oh, don’t worry, it’s complicated.
She didn’t say anything and looked at the wall. Her eyes travelled around for a few seconds, then stuck on Noa’s photographs from the East.
And what about … your girlfriend? she asked and immediately blushed. It’s all right if I ask, isn’t it?
Yes, I said. Of course it’s all right. But I don’t really have an answer. I hope she’ll come back. I think she has to come back. But I’m not at all sure if and when it’ll happen.
Tell me, Yotam’s mother said, averting her eyes, did the girls I sent come here?
What girls?
With the food.
Aha, I said and laughed. Now the mystery is solved. You sent them.
Yes, she said, looking at me again. I thought you’d probably be hungry. I would have cooked for you myself, but I only started cooking again this week. I didn’t have the strength before, you know.
Of course.
Was the food good?
Very good. I’m already addicted to kubeh.
And how were the girls?
The girls? I flashed up in my mind the parade of girls who’d been in the apartment during the last month. The girls were lovely. But you know, I’m still waiting for Noa.
Of course, yes, Yotam’s mother said and smiled — unbelievably — a mischievous smile. It’s amazing how a smile changes a person’s face. A different woman suddenly showed through.
OK, she said, looking at her watch. I have to go back to packing.
I walked her to the door and before she left, we hugged. On both cheeks! she scolded me after I’d made do with only one kiss. Yotam will probably come to say goodbye himself, she said. I asked him to come with me, but he said he wanted to come alone.
He’s right, I said, and she nodded and turned to go. I watched her until she disappeared past Moshe and Sima’s house, and then I went back inside.
I paced around the house for a while, hands behind my back, like a professor who’s finding it hard to solve a mathematical mystery. In a few more days, Yotam and his mother will leave, I thought. And Sima has been avoiding me ever since that almost-kiss of ours. The delicate threads that bound me to this neighbourhood are coming undone one by one. And I’m left unravelled. If Noa were here — I turned and started walking in the opposite direction — it wouldn’t bother me. If Noa were with me, I’d even be ready to live in a neighbourhood of meditators. But the way it is now, I feel like the new kid in class.
Funny, I thought. I’ve looked at that picture a million times and always thought it’s a bed in a hotel room in another country and that the man is looking out at the moon, feeling homesick. Now a different story suddenly popped into my head: the man is sitting in his own house. The house that used to be his. He’s looking out with the hope that the woman who left him will return and give him back that feeling, because without her, that bed is just a bed like any hotel room bed. And the sheet is wrinkled from tiredness, not from lovemaking. And the four walls are just four walls, nothing more, and the door is a hole in the wall filled up with wood, and the roof is pitch black, and the armchair, the table, the chairs — they’re all cold, dead pieces of furniture.
Only the phone is alive. A sudden ring. Filling the space with a strident sound. I pulled myself away from the picture and went over to it. I’m sick and tired of hoping it’s Noa, I thought, and picked up the receiver.
*
Hi.
Hi.
Are you OK?
What happened?
A terrorist attack. On the number fourteen bus.
You know I don’t take buses.
Still, I wanted to know that you’re OK.
Wait, I’ll turn on the TV.
Horrible, isn’t it?
Yes, it is. But what’s even more horrible is that it doesn’t affect me any more.
Well, how much can a person take.
Yes, but what’s happening to all that pain we don’t let in? It doesn’t really disappear.