“I do know,” he said, with such emphasis that it came to her all at once. Of course he knew.
She wasn’t sure whether she should lean over and kiss him, or simply hold him close, or something else entirely. Then Talia saw his blank, distant gaze and knew she wasn’t expected to do anything. She wasn’t even sure Tomer was aware she was still in the room. It was as if he’d opened his mouth and tumbled directly into some dark, private tunnel whose entrance Talia couldn’t see. He couldn’t even sit through a moment like this, reading the paper on the floor while long rectangles of light came in through the window, Talia thought, because it was still incomprehensible that this was now his life. She looked around this adult apartment, with its coffee-table books and actual art on the walls, at the care Tomer and Efrat must have put into every detail, following their own private manual of what a beautiful marriage should look like. And now here was Tomer, hunched on the floor, pain shooting past his eyes. This was all so scarily mature, Talia thought. She knew she was doing nothing good for him by being there. She was still sipping her juice and flipping through the paper, but all the while her mind churned for a way out of this. She’d never been good at breakups — and in fact had ended things with a boyfriend in Kiev in such a passive, roundabout way that he’d sat around Baraban telling all their friends he’d broken up with her. Here she knew to do it quickly, a needle in the arm before the nurse counted to three. She scooted beside him, conjuring up the least hurtful way to phrase it, when Tomer said, “This is happening too fast, isn’t it?”
“I’m just not ready to be part of — this,” she said, gesturing clumsily around her. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve felt better with you than I have all year. But it’s like I forgot how to enjoy myself.”
“You will again.” Talia wished she could say it with certainty.
“I used to be the kind of person who could eat a really good sandwich and that would be enough,” Tomer said. “And now I walk around and see people laughing, at the movies or wherever, and it’s like I’m a separate species.”
“But with me you feel better?”
“Definitely better than before.”
“Did your therapist teach you to talk that way?”
“Gali and I go to him together. He’s good. But you want to know the truth? All the stuff I’m supposed to do with you in the beginning, all the not saying what’s on my mind. it just feels exhausting. It’s like I’m learning how to put sentences together again.”
Talia’s heart jogged, thinking about him struggling through every minute.
“But you’re leaving,” Tomer said. “Let’s say that if in five years you’re back in the country and I’m less of a mess, we’ll try again.”
“Deal,” she said, wondering how such a self-proclaimed disaster could be this deft at breakups. She kissed him goodbye, and when he kissed her back, she decided not to overthink it as she followed him into the bedroom. They fell back on his mattress, pulling up shirts, kicking off pants, spending so many hours back in bed that when Talia finally looked up, the sun was going down. Tomer propped himself on an elbow and smiled at her. “I forgot how good breakup sex is,” he said, and Talia pushed away her niggling disappointment at the finality of his comment, when it had been just as much her idea. She slipped on her clothes and headed down the block, and when the bus pulled up and Talia took a seat in the back, exhaustion swooped right in. Ending things was so obviously the right idea, she told herself, gazing out the window at the rows of baby palms lining Har Zion Street. A prostitute leaned against one of them, pulling at her nylons, probably beginning her day just as Talia was ending hers.
Then Tomer called. “I found your hair band under my pillow. I miss you.”
“I miss you too. But Tomer—”
“I know, we’re broken up,” he said in singsong. “What are you doing?”
“I’m watching an Orthodox guy pick up a prostitute. He’s acting like he’s asking for directions.”
“Ah,” Tomer said dreamily, and Talia said she had to go. The only way to get over this, she knew, was to put him out of her head. And though she thought she was doing a decent job of it, Talia wasn’t home fifteen minutes before her mother looked up from the table, which they were setting for dinner, and said, “What’s his name?”
“He’s just a guy, okay?” Talia said, knowing she sounded more like Gali than she wanted to admit. “I’m sorry,” she tried. “It’s just weird talking about something that turned out to be nothing.” She glanced around the kitchen, at the scratched wood table, stained with decades of art projects and baking disasters; at the stack of bills on the chair; at the new counters Talia’s father had promised to install for her mother’s fiftieth birthday, still half-finished as he waited for a time they could afford to complete the project. Her parents weren’t planning to interrogate her tonight about her love life, Talia thought. It was seven-thirty and her father wasn’t even home from work. This was the year he was supposed to retire and instead he’d signed on for two more.
“It’s good being back,” Talia blurted, but it came out as more of a question. She pulled her mother into a hug. Talia was shocked by how tiny she felt, her shoulders delicate and narrow as a girl’s.
TALIA WOKE the following morning feeling gratefully, dizzily free of Tomer, as if the whole relationship were a brief and delirious flu she had kicked with aspirin and hot tea and a night back in her own bed. Even coming home from work that evening felt comforting, and she surprised herself by offering to cook dinner while her mother worked in the garden and her father puttered around the garage. She was chopping eggplant when her mother walked in and said a girl outside was looking for her.
Gali was standing in the driveway, the whole dusky sky behind her, wide sweeps of orange and gray. She was panting and her eye makeup was smeared, as if she’d just stopped crying, or was about to start all over again. “You live in the middle of nowhere,” she said. “I got lost even from the bus stop.”
“How do you know where I live?”
“I looked you up.”
“Gali.” Talia wished she could be done with the conversation before it even began. “You know your dad and I broke up.”
“Yeah, it’s obvious. He’s pretty much been on his period since I came home last night.”
“Then why—” Talia struggled with a tactful way to phrase it, then gave up and said, “are you here?”
Gali was kicking gravel around with her sandal, and for a second she didn’t answer. Then she mumbled, “You said we could listen to records?”
Talia stared out at the silhouettes of olive trees on the distant brown hilltops, the city hidden beyond. Winding up the road, so quickly dirt flew out behind, was a silver truck, and as it came closer Talia could see Tomer behind the wheel. He threw the truck in park and hopped out. He looked like he was coming straight from work, in jeans and boots and a button-down, his cell phone clipped to his belt loop. Even before he opened his mouth, Gali stiffened and said, “Where was I supposed to go?”
“Nowhere,” Tomer said. “Because you’re grounded.”
“I can’t believe you followed me,” Gali said.
“I can’t believe you stormed out of the house like a three-year-old.” Then he turned to Talia. “I’m sorry my daughter’s so rude, showing up unannounced.”
“And I’m sorry my father’s such a two-face,” Gali said, “sneaking into my room and going through my stuff.”
“And I’m sorry my daughter gives me so many reasons to think I need to search her things.”