I know a guy who fantasizes all the time. I mean, this guy even walks down the street with his eyes shut. One day, I’m sitting in the passenger seat of his car and I look over to the left and see him with both his hands on the wheel and his eyes shut. No kidding, he was driving like that on a main street.
“Haggai,” I say, “that’s not a good idea. Haggai, open your eyes.” But he keeps driving like everything’s fine.
“You know where I am now?” he asks me.
“Open your eyes,” I say again, “come on, it’s freaking me out.” Miraculously, we didn’t crash.
The guy would fantasize about other people’s homes, that they were his. About their cars, about their jobs. Never mind their jobs. About his wife. He’d imagine that other women were his wife. And kids, too, kids he met in the street or the park, or saw on some TV series, imagining they were his family instead of his own kids. He’d spend hours doing it. If it was up to him, he’d spend his whole life at it.
“Haggai,” I say to him, “Haggai, wake up. Wake up to your own life. You have an amazing life. A fantastic wife. Great kids. Wake up.”
“Stop,” he answers from the depths of his beanbag, “don’t ruin it. You know who I’m with now? Yotam Ratsabi, my old army buddy. I’m on a jeep tour with Yotam Ratsabi. Just me, Yoti, and little Eviatar Mendelssohn. He’s this wiseass kid from Amit’s kindergarten. And Eviatar, the little devil, says to me, ‘Dad, I’m thirsty. Can I have a beer?’ Picture it. The kid’s not seven yet. So I say, ‘No beer, Evi. You know Mom says it’s not allowed.’ His mom, my ex, I mean. Rona Yedidia from high school. Beautiful as a model, but tough, tough as nails.”
“Haggai,” I say, “he’s not your kid and she’s not your wife. You’re not divorced, man, you’re happily married. Open your eyes.”
“Every time I bring the kid home to her, I get a hard-on,” he says, like he doesn’t hear me. “A hard-on as big as a ship’s mast. She’s beautiful, my ex, beautiful but tough. And that toughness is what gives me a hard-on.”
“She’s not your ex,” I say, “and you don’t have a hard-on.” I know what I’m talking about. He’s a meter away from me in his shorts. No hard-on there.
“We had to split,” he says, “I hated being with her. And she hated being with herself too.”
“Haggai,” I plead, “your wife’s name is Carnie. And yes, she’s beautiful. But she’s not tough. Not with you.” His wife is really soft. She has the gentle soul of a bird and a big heart; she feels for everybody. We’ve been together for nine months now. Haggai starts work early, so I go to see her at eight thirty, right after she drops the kids off at kindergarten.
“Rona and I met in high school,” he goes on. “She was my first and I was hers. After the divorce, I fucked around a lot, but none of the women even came close to her. And, you know, at least from a distance, she looks like she’s still alone. If I found out she has someone, it would shatter me, even though we’re divorced and all. Shatter me into pieces. I just wouldn’t be able to take it. None of the other women mean anything. Just her. She’s the one who’s always been there.”
“Haggai,” I say, “her name’s Carnie and no one’s with her. You’re still married.”
“No one’s with Rona either,” he says, and licks his dry lips, “no one. I’d kill myself if there was.”
Carnie comes into the apartment now, carrying an AM/ PM bag. She tosses a casual “Hi” in my direction. Since we’ve been together, she tries to be more distant when other people are around. She doesn’t even say hi to Haggai; she knows there’s no point talking to him when his eyes are shut.
“My house,” he says, “right in the center of Tel Aviv. Beautiful, with a mulberry tree right outside the window. But it’s small, way too small. I need another room. On the weekends, when I have the kids, I have to open the living-room couch. It’s a real pain in the neck. If I don’t find a solution by summer, I’ll just have to move.”
Every night, ever since she’d left him, he’d fall asleep in a different spot: on the sofa, in an armchair in the living room, on the mat on the balcony like some homeless bum. And every morning, he made a point of going out for breakfast. Even prisoners get a daily walk in the yard, don’t they? At the café they always gave him a table set for two, and sat him across from an empty chair. Always. Even when the waiter specifically asked if he was alone. Other people would sit there in twos or threes, laughing, tasting each other’s food, fighting over the check, while Miron sat by himself eating his Healthy Start—orange juice, muesli with honey, decaf double espresso with warm low-fat milk on the side. Of course it would have been nicer if someone had been sitting across the table from him and laughing with him, if there had been someone to argue with over the check as he struggled to pay, handing over the money to the waitress, saying, “Don’t take it from him! Avri, put it back. This one’s on me.” But he didn’t really have anyone to do that with, and breakfast alone in a café was a hundred times better than staying at home.
Miron spent a lot of time eyeing the other tables. He’d eavesdrop on conversations, read the sports supplement, or examine the ups and downs of the Israeli shares on Wall Street with an air of detached concern. Sometimes someone would come over and ask for a section of the paper he’d finished reading, and he would nod and try to smile. Once, when a sexy young mother with a baby in a stroller walked over to him, he even said to her, as he gave up the front page with the banner headline about a gang rape in the suburbs: “What a crazy world we’re bringing our children into.” He thought it sounded like the kind of statement that brings people closer together, pointing as it did to their common fate, but the sexy mom just glared at him and took the Healthy Living supplement, too, without asking.
Then one Thursday a fat, sweaty guy walked into the café and smiled at him. Miron was caught off guard. The last person to give him a smile was Maayan, just before she left him, five months earlier, and her smile had been unmistakably sarcastic, whereas this one was soft, almost apologetic. The fat guy gestured something, apparently a signal that he’d like to sit down, and Miron nodded almost without thinking. The fat guy took a seat.
“Reuben,” he said. “Listen, I’m really sorry I’m late. I know we said ten but I had a nightmare morning with the kid.”
It crossed Miron’s mind that maybe he ought to tell the fat guy he wasn’t Reuben, but he found himself checking his watch instead, and saying, “What’s ten minutes? Forget it.”
Then neither of them spoke for a second, and Miron asked if the kid was okay. And the fat guy said she was, it was just that she’d started a new kindergarten, and every time he took her there she had a hard time letting him go.
“But never mind,” he stopped short. “You’ve got enough on your plate without my problems. Let’s get down to business.”
Miron took a deep breath and waited.
“Look,” the fat guy said. “Five hundred is too high. Give it to me for four hundred. You know what? Four hundred and ten even and I’m good for six hundred pieces.”
“Four hundred and eighty,” Miron said. “Four hundred and eighty. And that’s only if you’re good for a thousand.”
“You gotta understand,” the fat guy said. “The market’s in the shitter, what with the recession and all. Just last night on the news they showed people eating out of garbage cans. If you keep pushing, I’ll have to sell high. You’re pricing me right out of the market.”
“Don’t worry,” Miron told him. “For every three people eating out of garbage cans, there’s someone driving a Mercedes.”
This made the fat guy laugh out loud. “They told me you were tough,” he muttered with a smile.
“I’m just like you,” Miron protested. “Simply trying to keep body and soul together.”
The fat guy wiped his sweaty palm on his shirt, then held it out. “Four hundred and sixty,” he said. “Four hundred and sixty and I take a thousand.” When he saw Miron wasn’t reacting, he added: “Four hundred and sixty, a thousand pieces, and I owe you a favor. And you know better than anyone, Reuben, that in our business favors are worth more than money.”
This last sentence was all Miron needed to take the outstretched hand and shake it. For the first time in his life, someone owed him a favor. Someone who thought his name was Reuben, but still. And when they’d finished eating, as they argued over who would pick up the tab, a warm feeling spread through Miron’s stomach. He beat the fat guy to it by a tenth of a second and shoved the crumpled bill into the waitress’s hand.
From that day on it became practically standard procedure. Miron would take a seat, give his order, and keep a lookout for any new person who walked into the café, and if that person started searching the tables with an expectant look, Miron would quickly wave and invite him or her to join him.
“I don’t want this to end up in court,” a bald guy with thick eyebrows told him.
“Me neither,” Miron conceded. “It’s always better to settle things amicably.”
“Just remember I don’t do night shifts,” a Botox-lipped bleach blonde announced.
“Just what do you expect? Everyone else will do night shifts except you?” Miron grumbled back.
“Gabi asked me to tell you he’s sorry,” said a guy with rotting teeth and an earring.
“If he really was sorry,” Miron countered, “he should have come and told me himself. No middlemen!”
“In your e-mail you sounded taller,” a skinny redhead complained. “In your e-mail you sounded less picky,” Miron snapped.
And somehow everything worked out in the end. He and Baldy settled out of court. Botox Lips agreed to ask her sister to babysit so she could do one night shift a week. Rotting Teeth promised Gabi would phone, and the redhead and Miron agreed they weren’t quite right for each other. Sometimes they picked up the tab, sometimes he did. With the redhead, they split the bill. And it was all so fascinating, that if a whole morning went by when nobody took a seat across from him at the table, Miron felt let down. Luckily, this didn’t happen too often.
Almost two months had passed since the meeting with the sweaty fat guy when a man with a pockmarked face walked in. Despite his skin and the fact that he looked at least ten years older than Miron, he was good-looking with loads of charisma. The first thing he said as he sat down was: “I was sure you wouldn’t show.”
“But we agreed to meet,” Miron answered.
“Yes,” said the pockmarked guy with a sad smile, “except that after the way I yelled at you on the phone, I was afraid you’d chicken out.”
“So here I am,” Miron said, almost teasingly.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you on the phone,” the guy apologized. “Really, I just lost it. But I meant every word I said—you got that? I’m asking you to stop seeing her.”
“But I love her,” Miron said in a choked voice.
“Sometimes you can love something and you still have to give it up,” the pockmarked guy said. “Listen to someone a little older than you. Sometimes you have to give it up.”
“Sorry,” Miron said, “but I can’t.”
“Yes you can,” the guy shot back. “You can and you will. There’s no other way. Maybe we both love her, but I happen to be her husband, and I’m not about to let you break up my family. Got that?”
Miron shook his head. “You have no idea what my life has been like this past year,” he told the husband. “Hell. Not even hell, just one great big stale chunk of nothing. And when you’ve been living with nothing for so long and suddenly something turns up, you can’t just tell it to go away. You understand me, don’t you? I know you understand me.”
The husband bit his lower lip. “If you see her one more time,” he said, “I’ll kill you. I’m not kidding, and you know it.”
“So kill me.” Miron shrugged. “That doesn’t scare me. We’re all going to die in the end.”
The husband leaned across the table and socked Miron in the jaw. It was the first time in Miron’s life that anyone had hit him so hard. He felt a hot wave of pain surge up somewhere in the middle of his face and spread in every direction. Seconds later, he found himself on the floor, the husband standing over him.
“I’ll take her away from here,” the husband kept shouting as he went on kicking Miron in the stomach and ribs. “I’ll take her far away, to another country, and you won’t know where she is. You’ll never see her again, you got that, you fucking piece of shit?”
Two waiters jumped on the husband and managed somehow to yank him away. Somebody yelled to the barman to call the police. With his cheek still glued to the coolness of the floor, Miron watched the husband run out of the café. One of the waiters bent over and asked him if he was okay, and Miron made an attempt to answer.
“Do you want me to call an ambulance?” the waiter asked.
Miron whispered that he didn’t. “Are you sure?” the waiter insisted. “You’re bleeding.” Miron nodded slowly and shut his eyes. He tried as hard as he could to imagine himself with that woman. The one he’d never see again. He tried, and for a moment he almost succeeded. His whole body ached. He felt alive.
My son wants me to kill her. He’s still young and doesn’t express this perfectly just yet, but I know exactly what he’s after. “I want that Daddy should hit her hard,” he says.
“Hard so that she cries?” I ask him.
“No,” he says, turning his little head from side to side, “even harder.”
He’s not violent, my son. He’s nearly four and a half, and I can’t remember him ever asking me to hit anyone. He’s also not the kind of kid who goes around asking for things he doesn’t need, like a backpack with a Dora on it or an ice-cream cone. He asks only when he feels he deserves it. Like his father.
And if it’s all right to point fingers, then
not
like his mother. Back in the day, she’d roll into the house with tears in her eyes and some story about a guy who’d cursed her on the highway or ripped her off at the store. I’d ask her to go over the specifics three, four different ways, ask questions, investigate down to the tiniest details. Ninety percent of the time it was clear she was at fault. That the guy in the car was right to curse her, and the one at the store—all he did was add the sales tax to her bill.
But my little Roiki isn’t like her. And if he asks his father to hit harder than to make her cry, I know there’s really something going on. “What’d she do to you?” I ask. “Did she hit you?”
“No,” Roiki says. “When Mommy goes out, she babysits me. She locks the door with a key. She leaves me in my room in the dark and won’t open it. Even if I cry. Even if I promise to be a good boy.”
I hug him tight-tight. “Don’t worry,” I tell him, “Daddy will make it so Grandma stops.”
“You’ll hit her harder than hard?” he asks me through tears.
It’s plain heartbreaking to see your son cry. Even more when you’re divorced. And it fills me with a deep urge to answer Roi with a yes, to swear that I will. But I don’t tell Roiki a thing. I’m careful. Because the absolute worst is promising something to a child and not seeing it through. An experience like that scars for life. I straightaway change subjects. I say to him, “Do you want to go to the parking lot at Daddy’s work and I’ll put you up on my lap and we’ll drive the car together—teamwork style?”
As I say
teamwork
his eyes light up, shining with excitement, and the tears that remain from before make them shine even brighter. We drive like that for maybe half an hour in the parking lot, him turning the wheel and me working the pedals. I even let him shift the gears. Reverse cracks him up the most. There’s nothing like the laughter of a child.
I bring him back fifteen minutes early. I know they’re keeping an eye on us, so I’m extra careful about those things. Before we head up in the elevator I check him twice over to make sure he’s looking polished, that I’m delivering him dirt and stain free. Then I give myself the once-over in the lobby mirror, checking for the same things.
“Where were you?” she asks before we’re even through the door. “At Gymboree,” Roiki answers—exactly as we agreed. “We played with children.”
“I hope this time Daddy played nice,” Sheyni says, looking all pleased with herself, “and didn’t push any kids around.”
“Daddy didn’t push anyone,” I say in a tone that makes it clear I’m not pleased she’s baiting me in front of the boy.
“He didn’t,” Roiki says. “We had a lot of fun!”
He’s completely forgotten his crying after the playground, and that he asked me to beat Grandma. That’s what’s great about kids. Do with them what you will, an hour later they’ve forgotten all about it and they’ve found something else to think about, something good to be happy with. But I’m not a kid anymore, and when I get back to the car, all I’ve got in my head is a picture of Roiki in his tiny room, banging on the door, and that old sour mother of Sheyni’s on the other side, not opening it. I have to be smart about this. I need to make sure it stops—but without putting myself in danger and jeopardizing my visits with my son. Even these pathetic biweeklies cost me in blood.
I’m still paying for that one nonincident in the park. A fat little girl attacked Roi in the rope-bridge section. She was pinching him hard and I was just trying to get her away from him. I gave her what is like the absence of a yank, barely pulling at her with my left hand, and the girl—she falls and bangs herself on the metal frame. Nothing, not a scratch, not even enough to get her clearly hysterical mother making a scene. But when Roiki mentions this to Sheyni by accident, she and Amram are suddenly crawling all over me like locusts. Sheyni says if I have another “violent outburst” in front of the child, the two of them will make sure the agreement we signed finds its way back to court for appeal.
“What violence?” I say to her. “Five years we were together, did I ever once raise a hand?” She knows she’s got nothing to say on that front. She had it coming to her a boatload of times, and I was the picture of restraint. A different guy would have kicked her right on over to the emergency room at Ichilov. But me, on my life I’d never raise my hand against a woman. And somehow, before I know it, Amram’s gone and got himself involved. “Even now, right this minute, you’re violent,” is what he throws out at me. “You—you’ve got a crazy look in your eyes.”
“It’s not a crazy look,” I say, and I smile at him. “It’s a touch of the human soul. It’s what we call feeling. Just because you have no trace of it in you doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing.”
In the end, springing from the abundance of his nonviolence, it’s Amram who starts with the shouting, and the threats, telling me I’ll never see my own son again. It’s a shame I didn’t record him. What a mouth that guy cracked open, filthy as a sewer. But I keep smiling and acting all relaxed just to wind him up. We ended up settling the matter with me promising not to do anything like that ever again. As if it was just exactly what I had scheduled for the next day, to go find myself another five-year-old girl to knock down in the park.
Next time I pick up Roiki from the playground, I go straight for the subject of his grandma. I could wait him out, let him bring it up himself, but children will sit on those kinds of things for a long time, and that’s time I don’t have. “Since our last talk,” I say, “has Grandma come by to babysit you?”
Roiki licks the watermelon ice I bought him and shakes his head. “If she does it again,” he asks, “are you going to make Grandma hurt?”
I breathe in. I want more than anything in the world to say yes, but I just can’t risk it. If they make it so I can’t see him anymore, I’ll die. “I want to—more than anything,” I tell him. “More than anything in the world, I want to hurt her. To hit her harder than hard. And not just Grandma. The same for anyone who hurts you.”
“Like that girl in ice-cream-cone park?” he says, his eyes sparkling.
“Like with the girl from the park.” I nod. “But Mommy doesn’t like it when Daddy hits. And if Daddy hits Grandma or anyone else, they won’t let me come by to play with you anymore. To do all the things we do. Understand?”
Roiki doesn’t answer. His Artik drips on his pants. He lets it melt down on purpose, waiting for me to intervene. But I don’t. After a long silence, he says, “It’s not nice for me alone in the room.”
“I know,” I tell him, “but I can’t make it stop. Only you can. And Daddy wants to teach you how.”
I explain to Roiki exactly what to do if his granny locks him in again. Which part of the head he needs to butt against the wall if he wants to leave a solid mark without really injuring himself.
“And it’ll hurt?” he asks.
I tell him that it will. I’ll never once in this life lie to him. Not like Sheyni. When we were still together, we took Roi to the pediatrician for his vaccinations. The whole way there she was messing with his brain, talking about stings and bees and special treats for good boys, right up until I cut her off mid-sentence and said, “There’s going to be a lady there with a needle who’s going to cause you pain—but there’s nothing we can do about it. There are some things in this world we just have to get on with.” And Roiki, who was then barely two, looked at me with that intelligent gaze of his and understood. When we got into the room you could see his whole being wanted to draw back. But he didn’t protest and didn’t make for the door. He took it like a little man.
Together, we go over every step of the plan. We run through the things he needs to tell Sheyni afterward. How he annoyed Grandma. How she gave him a good shove into the wall. In short, how he got himself that bruise.
“And it’ll hurt?” he asks again at the end.
“It’ll hurt,” I tell him. “Just this once. But afterward, she’ll never, not ever, shut you up in that room alone.”
Roiki gets quiet. He thinks. The popsicle is already finished. He’s licking the stick. “And Mommy won’t say that I’m just making it up?”
I stroke his forehead. “If there’s a big enough bruise on your head, then, no, she won’t say that.” After that, we take the car back to the parking lot. Roiki steers, and I press on the gas and the brakes. Teamwork. I teach Roiki how to honk the horn while we drive, and he goes crazy with it. He honks and honks and honks until the parking attendant comes over and asks us to stop. It’s this old Arab guy that does the night shift. “Let it slide,” I say, winking and holding out a twenty. “The kid’s playing. A few more minutes and we’re gone.” The Arab doesn’t say anything. He takes his twenty and starts back toward his booth.
“What’d the man want?” Roiki asks.
“Nothing,” I tell him. “He didn’t understand where the noise was coming from.”
“And I can beep again?”
“Of course you can, angel.” I give him a kiss. “More than once. Again and again. Honk until your heart’s content.”