“I thought that was part of the deal,” he said quietly. “You said it was. That with you I was allowed to disappear.”
“Right outside your office window,” she said, “you can see all our patio furniture knocked on its side, and there’s bird shit all over it. Like, it’s really covered in shit. And I’d look out your window and wonder what kind of person could see that every day and not just go hose it off.”
The entire time they’d been speaking Hebrew, but then something inside her seemed to rupture and Mira blurted, in English, “But I could never be upset about that — about anything — because you’ve convinced yourself I have no real reasons to be sad. That your pain will always trump mine. It’s this fucked-up game you’ve been playing since we met.”
“But I love you,” he said, a little helplessly.
She took a long breath and let it out slowly, as if thinking hard about what she was going to say next. “Being in love with my family isn’t the same as loving me.”
“That’s bullshit,” he said. But he knew he was lying. Of course he couldn’t separate that love. All at once he saw so clearly what would follow. Not just that night, or the long flight back to the States, but beyond. Winter, spring, the baby. Her family would call incessantly to check in on him, they’d probably even take his side, but after a while they’d learn to embrace Eric because there was no other choice: Mira loved him and she was blood. And Eric would be so infuriatingly gracious about the whole thing, he’d probably invite Boaz down to Albany for dinner, and Boaz would have to sit across the table from the two of them, over some elaborate meal Eric had prepared with herbs and vegetables from his own fucking garden, and beer he’d brewed himself. More images started popping up that Boaz couldn’t block. Holidays, when he’d have to make that drive he knew by heart, down to Wendy and Larry’s to pick up his kid. He’d have to park on the street and walk up their steps, and rather than going right inside he’d have to stand there, wiping his feet on the mat, listening to all their voices through the door until someone heard the bell and let him in.
“You understand this Eric thing is your fault, too,” Mira said. “Of course I fell for someone who knows how to be close to me. That’s what you do in relationships, Boaz — you try to see the world through the other person’s eyes. I mean, look at my parents, my grandparents — they’re like these model couples. Maybe what’s difficult. ”
She didn’t finish. But the sentiment existed now, there in the room: Boaz didn’t have a model, and maybe that was the problem. He’d always believed one of the most terrifying things about intimacy was another person knowing your darkest insecurities and being able to use them against you in your weakest moments, an emotional sucker punch. He realized now how wrong that was — it was much more excruciating for someone to know these things and choose not to say them, as if that person was the only one who understood just how crushing the truth could be.
He walked across the room, right past her, out to the terrace. Even that perfect view of the Old City he’d once admired suddenly looked crass and artificial, and he turned away. Mira came up behind him. “But despite all of this, I really do love you,” she said. “And I know we’re supposed to be together. That’s why I flew out here — it’s all I want. To have a family and grow old with you and to one day look back on this whole time as nothing but a selfish blip in my thirties.”
“And Eric?”
“I’m willing to never talk to him again if you promise me things will be different. That I’ll get all of you this time. That you’ll stop keeping some big part of yourself stashed away.”
She wrapped her arms around his chest. He smelled her sweat and lotion and hair, this apple shampoo that had always seemed sickeningly sweet to him, but which now made him so nostalgic he wanted to cry. The truth was, Boaz couldn’t visualize what exactly it was she needed from him, he couldn’t even describe it, but maybe all that mattered was that he’d never wanted anything more in his life than to give it to her. “Just say you’ll try,” she whispered, and then she stepped forward and touched his face and pulled the “yes” right out of him.
IT WAS impossible to forget Mira’s comment about sex with him being a race, so Boaz tried to ignore all the shortcuts — but he honestly didn’t need to. Naked, Mira was starting to show and her entire body felt different, not just her stomach but her hips and arms, and afterward they lay in the guest room and talked. Mira said she’d been reading up on what was happening with the baby, that it was still the size of a blueberry but that hands and feet were starting to form, though in the book illustrations they looked more like weird little paddles. She said she was lucky that so far she’d been spared morning sickness but that she couldn’t stop peeing, it was this annoying, ever-constant thing, and then she looked around the empty room and reminisced about staying there as a girl. And maybe because Eva was gone, or maybe because she felt as giddy as Boaz, this time Mira’s stories were happy: the Russian political cartoonist who did sketches of her and Hannah, the pancakes Grandpa Sy made when she was homesick, the nights her grandmother let her try on her perfume and beaded handbags as she dressed for a function.
It was 10 A.M. and Boaz could hear people moving around down below on Hovevei Tzion Street, but he had no desire to join them. He wanted to stay in this room the rest of the trip, just him and Mira. But he also wanted to do things right this time, wanted to be the kind of guy who’d listened to everything she’d said and would make her happy now, a guy who’d made plans in between all the foundation meetings, who would take her tonight to that restaurant inside the shuk she’d loved their last trip here, the one he’d complained was cramped and kitschy and pretentious, but he’d enjoy his meal this time and not make a dig about the prices, and then they’d walk through the city and stop somewhere for a seltzer for her and a beer for him, they’d sit up at the bar together and he’d hold her hand, her leg, never, never giving her a reason to swivel away from him again.
Only his cell phone wouldn’t stop ringing. The director of the absorption center wanted to know how his flight was, the broker asked if she could stop by in the afternoon, the man at Eden Storage said they were closing early today so the sooner Boaz came, the better.
The day was still gray, but even the exact sidewalks and buildings he’d seen hours before seemed brighter with Mira by his side, as if the entire city had been sandblasted while they’d been indoors. Even the fact that he had to spend the morning sorting through Eva’s castoffs, the task he’d dreaded most — it reminded him too much of doing the same for his mother — seemed less depressing with Mira’s hand in his pocket, her head on his shoulder as she led him down Jabotinsky Street and across Emek Refaim to Eden Storage, introducing herself to the owner in that Hebrew so technically perfect she always gave herself away as a foreigner.
“I’m so sorry,” the man said. He had a kind face, with a wide smile and a head round as a basketball. “Your grandmother really was one of the good ones.”
“You knew her that well?” Mira said.
“She was here all the time.” The man sorted through his enormous chunk of keys and led them outside to the row of sheds. “Once, twice a week.”
“For how long?”
“My wife and I have been here forty years. So that at least.”
“To visit her storage facility?” Mira rolled her eyes, as if this guy were just another crazy in the capital of crazies.