The UnAmericans: Stories (20 page)

“I know,” Tomer said, spearing a chickpea. “I Googled you.”

Talia frowned. “You’re not supposed to
say
that.”

“I found a couple stories you wrote on Yushchenko.”

“Oh,” she said, trying to sound offended, though the idea of him searching for her online was oddly flattering: she couldn’t even get her own family to feign interest. Tomer had seemed so nervous and overeager outside Café Noah, but here, signaling the waiter for another order of naan, he was surprisingly at ease. Or, rather, at ease with his overeagerness, as if he knew it afforded him an accessible charm. He was more attractive than she remembered, a large, hairy man with the harmless and comforting quality of a stuffed bear. The entire time she’d been talking he’d sat there smiling, as if experiencing a certain delight just being across the table from her. There was something so reassuring in that—for all the stress and disappointment she’d been feeling the past few months, all she had to do was share a meal with this man to get him to light up.

“And that piece on Gongadze,” he said. “Do you have a boyfriend back in Kiev?”

“We broke up. When did you get divorced?”

“How do you know I’m divorced?”

“You have that look about you,” Talia said. “Like you just ran out of a burning building.”

“Well,” he said, “we’re not divorced. She died.”

Talia twisted the napkin in her lap. Tomer picked up his fork, as if all he could focus on was his curry, and she wished the waiter would appear with a water refill or a dessert menu, anything to break the silence. “When?” she said, finally. “That’s horrible.”

“Sixteen months next week.” Then he stopped. “I’m making you uncomfortable. What’s this one-man band—you’d do all the reporting and filming yourself?”

“Yes,” Talia said, more quickly than she intended. Then she said, “It’s okay. You should talk about it,” but when he started to, his gaze shifted right past her, as if he were staring at some indeterminate spot on the wall. He’d met Efrat after the army, he said, through a friend of a friend here in Tel Aviv. They’d spent their twenties breaking up and getting back together, filling their lives with the unnecessary drama kids always do, Tomer said, as if he’d forgotten, or hadn’t noticed to begin with, that Talia was still muddling through the tail end of that decade, the graduating senior showing up at all the high school parties. “We married at thirty and had our daughter Gali a year later. We kept telling ourselves we wanted to wait until we had everything figured out,” Tomer said. “First we had no money, then Efrat was getting her catering business off the ground, and then
my
job started taking over—I’m a contractor, mostly vacation homes in Herzliya,” he said, almost as an afterthought, as if he’d only now remembered he was on a first date. Talia already knew that (she’d Googled him, too), so she said, “And then?”

“And then we went skiing in France. Our splurge every couple years. I was with Gali in the lodge and Efrat went on one more run. She came back looking dazed and said she’d fallen and hit her head. She said it hurt but that it wasn’t a big deal. But that’s what Efrat said about everything. So I took her to our room to rest. And she seemed fine. The next morning she still had a headache and wanted to stay in and nap. She told Gali and me not to waste a day hanging around inside when we could be skiing. So we left. While we were gone she went out for some air, and on her way back into the lodge she dropped to her knees and started vomiting. And then she just tipped over. Right on the deck and everyone ran out, and when Gali and I got the news we were on top of a mountain. No one knew it was a brain injury, at first they thought she was drunk. And everyone kept saying how lucky we were that Gali was with me, that she didn’t see it. They kept saying we were lucky.” Tomer was speaking quickly, his eyes darting around the restaurant as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was saying was actually real, let alone that he was divulging it to a near stranger, and he kept lifting his glass and setting it down, as if he could no longer remember its use.

He pushed his plate away and stared at his lap. His hands were wrapped so tightly Talia could see the crescents his nails made in his skin, and she had never, in her entire life, felt so bad for another person. She’d interviewed people who had lost loved ones in fires, bus accidents, a massive train wreck outside Kharkiv that killed forty-three people, but this—being alone with a man so openly grieving—was even harder to watch. A waiter cleared their dishes, and as Tomer continued to talk, about his therapy sessions and his daughter who, he said, was essentially a good girl but, at fourteen, going through what one of her teachers called a “very understandably difficult phase,” something strange happened, something Talia wouldn’t want to admit to anyone: She realized she was enjoying herself. That she hadn’t, if she was going to be completely honest, had such a good time in months. Getting Tomer to sidestep the terrible first-date small talk and move straight to the core of things was making Talia feel, for the first time since she’d lost her job, like a journalist.
This
was what she was good at: being the blank, understanding face across the table; putting people so at ease they revealed the things they didn’t want to share with anyone, the things they wished didn’t exist at all.

“I’m sorry,” Tomer said, reaching for the check. “You’re the first person I’ve been to dinner with and I probably shouldn’t be let out of the house.”

And though Talia knew he was right, and though she knew there probably wasn’t a man less ready to date in all of Tel Aviv, possibly the entire Middle East, somehow that was making him all the more appealing. Since coming home she’d felt it impossible to hold on to the spontaneity she’d embraced so effortlessly in Kiev, as if it had been confiscated with her liquids when she passed through airport security. The past couple weeks she’d found herself waking in the middle of the night, startled and breathless, the top and bottom sheets untucked and twisted around her, her feet hanging off the edge of her narrow bed. It occurred to her now that she might as well enjoy herself while she was stuck back here, and that if there was one person even less equipped for anything substantial, it was the man across from her. And so as she watched him sift through his wallet for his credit card, such a jumbled mess of shekels and receipts it more resembled her mother’s kitchen junk drawer than something he could actually slip back into the pocket of his jeans, Talia said, “I’m not looking for anything serious, but I’m guessing you haven’t had sex in a while—”

“Sixteen months,” Tomer seemed to shout. He stood up and sat beside her, and then he pounced on her, like a squirrel spotting a nut in the distance. He smelled more boyish than she would have imagined, and he was a desperate, handsy kisser who used his tongue right away. There was something about being pushed against the leather booth right there in the restaurant that made her feel as if she were shrinking in a weirdly pleasurable way, as if she were becoming half a woman, no longer the Talia with her name in print, who always needed to be working, traveling, writing—all of that was gone now and there she was, a pared-down version of herself, perfectly balanced beneath this man.

“Ilivesixblocksaway,” Tomer said all in one breath.

“But your daughter.”

“She’s staying at a friend’s,” he said, taking her hand and leading her out. He lived in Neve Tzedek, one of the prettiest parts of the city, with its cracked brick roads and squat stucco houses, orange and white and pink as the bougainvillea that snaked through fences and blanketed the roofs. Tucked between the beach and the high-rises that blinked and hovered overhead, the neighborhood always made Talia wish she’d been an adult here in the nineties, before all the wine bars and gelato shops and French millionaires moved in—a time when, Tomer said, unlatching his gate, he and Efrat had been smart enough to buy. A rusty bicycle was parked outside and all the plants in the terra-cotta pots hissed dryly in the wind. He unlocked the door and ushered her inside, where the lights were on and the stereo was up at full blast, some bass-heavy electronica that Talia didn’t recognize.

“Gali!” Tomer yelled, and when his daughter emerged from her bedroom, the telltale sign of too much air freshener wafted out with her. “Seriously?” he said, flicking off the music.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gali said.

“I thought you were sleeping at Dana’s.”

“I thought you were on a date.”

“So you threw a party?”

“It wasn’t a party. No one’s here.”

Tomer looked at Talia—for alliance, support, she didn’t know what. Gali, for her part, seemed to have had the foresight to use eyedrops before they came home, but the way she kept tugging on her ponytail let Talia know she was high. She was pretty, Talia thought, with full cheeks and brown eyes and thick blond curls, but obviously still learning to apply makeup: her concealer a shade off, her black eyeliner heavy and frightening. Plus she had on so many plastic necklaces and bangles that the whole effect was dizzying and distracting, and Talia wondered why no one had told her she was overdoing it. Certainly not her father, whose idea of fashion seemed to be to pull the top shirt and pair of pants from his dresser, which meant that one day Tomer could look haphazardly artsy, like that first time in Café Noah, and another, like tonight, as if he’d gotten dressed in the dark.

“Yes?” Gali said then, and Talia realized she’d been staring.

“I’m Talia,” she stammered. Gali nodded, then put her hands on her hips and shot a look that sent her straight back to junior high, and Talia wondered why she was still standing there. She took a step back and Tomer whispered, “Please don’t leave,” so she slipped into what looked like his room and closed the door behind her. It was tidy and small, with turquoise walls and furniture Tomer and Efrat must have hauled in off the street and stripped and repainted themselves. This was exactly the kind of place Talia would have picked out—not just the apartment but the way they’d decorated it, everything mismatched but so carefully chosen. Tucked into the dresser mirror were photos of the three of them through the years: on the tiled apartment steps Talia had just walked up; in a restaurant; in a park at what looked like Gali’s first birthday, sitting on Efrat’s lap. Efrat was attractive in the sort of way women noticed as much as men: laughing at whoever was holding the camera, her long blond hair in a frazzled knot, holding her daughter by the shoulders as if they were both about to tip over. Tomer was squatted beside them, his mouth open and eyes wide, as though he were making silly faces to get baby Gali to coo.

Talia sat on the bed and listened. She knew she should leave—it seemed only sensible—but couldn’t find the will. Gali’s story was growing increasingly elaborate and Tomer was caving, and Talia could see when he walked in now, wearing the tired and gentle look of defeat, that his daughter had won this round.

“Didn’t she know you’d be back tonight?” Talia said.

Tomer took off his glasses and nodded. “And now,” he said, lowering his voice, as if Gali could hear anything above the music she’d flung back on, “I look like a pushover.”

“True.” Talia regretted the word even before it had left her mouth—it couldn’t be fun bringing a date home to witness this. But Tomer just flopped beside her on his stomach and said, “I can’t believe I got caught with a woman. I guess we’ll have to get married now.”

He had to be joking. But something in his voice, low and tender, made Talia wonder if a nugget of truth existed within those words—if he just might not be wired for a one-night thing. She stood up.

“I was kidding,” Tomer said. He reached for her, but she intercepted his hand. “I’m sorry,” she said.

He looked hurt, in a puppyish and confused way, as if he didn’t completely get it. He rolled onto his back. “Okay,” he said, sighing. “I’ll call you.”

On her way out, she passed his daughter’s door, cracked halfway open. “Nice to meet you too,” Gali called out, as if Talia were the rude one, so she poked her head in. Papers and makeup littered the carpet in messy but distinct piles, as if a complex order existed that only Gali understood, and the entire room smelled of burnt hair and nail polish. She was lying on her unmade bed with her hands behind her head. “You’re leaving?” she said.

“It’s late,” Talia said, though she had no idea what time it was. “I work early.”

Gali squinted at her suspiciously. “What do you do?”

“I’m a reporter,” Talia said, and when Gali said, “That’s cool,” Talia felt as if she were letting them both down when she admitted, “I’m actually between jobs. Right now I’m fact-checking for
Boker Yisraeli
, the free paper? I kind of hate it.”

“Sucks.”

“It
does
suck.” The music was so loud that Talia’s cheeks throbbed, but at least she felt a little hipper for recognizing the song that came on. “I love Kaveret,” she said. “They were my first concert.”

“My dad likes them, too,” Gali said. “My mom was kind of a music snob and this was one of the things we could all agree on, in the car and stuff.” She said it so matter-of-factly, and Talia wondered if this was casual conversation or if Gali, for whatever reason—the pot, perhaps?—was opening up.

“I’ve got a bunch of Yitzhak Klepter’s solo stuff on vinyl you can borrow. Come over sometime,” Talia said, immediately wishing she could retract it. She had a habit of over-offering when she was nervous and wanted people to like her, but why did it matter what this fourteen-year-old thought?

“Thanks.” Then Gali lay against her pillows and looked up at the ceiling, and Talia stood there, not knowing whether the girl wanted her to leave or stay, or why she even cared. “See you,” Gali said finally, and when Talia backed into the hall, Gali lifted her leg, and with one bare, red toenailed foot, kicked the door shut.