Housebroken (23 page)

My mother came out, a fresh layer of lipstick smeared over her mouth and her thinning gray hair combed back, and smiled at us. She had a radiant smile, my mother, and I wondered whether it was the first thing my father had seen when, thirty years earlier, he had opened his eyes, soaked to the skin and in a state of shock, surrounded by flowers and his coworkers' legs.

We walked to the car where my mother said to my father: “You sit next to Maya, Jackie. I'll sit in the back.” It was a long time since I had heard her use his pet name. My father sat next to me and fiddled with the car radio, looking for public radio, his faithful friend. My mother spread out in the backseat, looking from right to left and lightly touching her hair. Maybe she was trying to view the shops, the streets, the buildings, the signs, and the trees through the eyes of a free woman. I think she was disappointed to find that they looked the same as they always had.

I drove her home. She got out of the car, leaned through my father's window, and said: “Okay, drive carefully now. Bye, Jack.” My father nodded without looking at her.

I drove him to the place he had rented, not too far from where I lived. It was a two-room apartment on the first floor, and his rent was lower than mine. The former tenant was a film student who'd gone out with Noga, which was how I'd heard about the apartment. It was a real bargain, but my father thought it was highway robbery. For thirty-five years he had been used to paying a ridiculous rent to an elderly landlord who spoke Yiddish and waited patiently for him and my mother to die so he could get the apartment back. My father thought that three hundred and fifty dollars a month was outrageous. I paid five hundred, and to cheer him up I'd suggested we change places. “I'd be happy to change places with you, Maya,” he said.

I watched my father going into his new home; he passed a row of overflowing garbage cans and glanced out of habit at the mailbox, which still had the name of the guy who had lived there before stuck to it on a big label. When I got home there was a message on my answering machine from my mother, telling me how happy she was with her new life.

7

He left me a note on the windshield of my car. I was parked next to a hardware store facing his building, and when I came out, carrying rolls of kitchen paper for lining my father's cabinets—I had arranged to meet him at noon to help redecorate his kitchen—I saw a piece of paper folded in two peeping from beneath the windshield wipers. It was a flyer advertising something and I almost threw it away without looking, but then I saw something scribbled on the back: “Regards from the clown,” it said, followed by a phone number.

I wondered what Nathan would have done if he hadn't seen my car parked by chance, across the street from his house. Two weeks had gone by since Purim, and I should have forgotten about him by now; nevertheless, just as I was about to go to my neighborhood hardware store, I remembered there was a smaller, more expensive one near where he lived. Luckily I had found a parking space right at the entrance. I stood in the store trying to decide whether my father would prefer flowers, birds, stripes, or a solid color, which I liked, but I couldn't concentrate, because Nathan's image loomed before me and kept multiplying until it became a pattern itself—a huge white sheet printed with his big body, his hands with their dirty fingernails, and his jester's cap.

I stood in the store and remembered the advice single people are always given: Love comes when you're not thinking about it, suddenly, in a moment of distraction—advice that is as depressing as it is encouraging, but mainly full of contradictions, because even if you manage to distract yourself from being obsessed about love by concentrating on
not
being obsessed, the result is that the distraction and its object are one and the same, so what's the point—especially when love is supposed to be the ultimate distraction and the greatest obsession of all.

I bought the striped paper and went out to the street, where I saw the note sticking out from beneath the windshield wipers. I stood and read it two or three times. I tried to guess whether Nathan had seen me getting out of the car or remembered the license number. It didn't make sense that he would remember something like that. I got into the car, turned on the ignition, and read the note again. I put it down on the passenger seat, and at every traffic light studied it again, four words and a number. I hurried home and read the note again on the stairs, then went inside and called Dad to tell him I'd be late.

“How late?” he asked.

“A little,” I said. “I have a few things to do. Do you need to go out?”

“No,” he said. “Where would I go? I'm waiting for you. I bought grilled chicken. It's good. From the place where your mother always buys.”

“I'll be there soon,” I said. “But you go ahead and eat. Don't wait for me. I've already eaten.”

“You have?” he asked with a kind of despair in his voice.

“Maybe I'll have a bite with you,” I said, reading the note again.

“Then I'll wait,” he said. “I'm not so hungry either.”

I knew Nathan's number by heart. I called him and we arranged to meet in the evening at a little café next to his house. He didn't sound surprised to hear from me so soon. I drove to my father's place and, stopping at the traffic light, I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel even though the radio wasn't on. My father opened the door, holding a chicken leg in his hand.

We had a nice afternoon. Encouraged by my good mood, he did his best to entertain me in his empty apartment. We still hadn't bought any furniture. Every Friday, when I suggested that we look for garage sales in the newspaper, he made some new excuse and said that he could manage, that he didn't need much. He had a single bed and a closet and an old fridge left behind by the previous tenant, and the two chairs I had lent him standing in the living room.

He made coffee and opened a bag of imported cookies filled with white cream and ate four or five of them, one after the other. He lowered his eyes when I gave him a rebuking look, the kind of look he was well used to, although it was less severe than usual today. My father suffered from a dangerous combination of diabetes and an immense, almost infantile, craving for sweets.

He asked me how I was, how much I had paid for the paper, and then looked for his wallet to repay me. I said: “Forget it. It's a present for the new house,” and he said, “What do you mean a present? Why should you buy me presents?” and began rushing around the apartment looking for his wallet, holding the bag of cookies in his hand. He found the wallet on the counter in the kitchen, next to the dismembered chicken peeping out of the silver foil.

I sat on the chair and nibbled cookies and gave my father advice on interior design, where we'd put what, whenever we bought it, and I reminded him that it was time to buy some furniture, that he couldn't go on living like this, maybe this Friday we'd go, and he said: “Yes, on Friday. I'm free,” his chin full of crumbs. When I got up to leave he saw me to the door, the bag of cookies in his hand, and said: “I'm glad to see you in a good mood, Maya. Don't be annoyed with me for saying so, but you seemed a little depressed lately.” As I walked past the broken mailboxes he suddenly called me. I went back to him; he raised the hand holding the cookie bag, stroked my hair, and said he wanted to give me some advice. He hoped I knew that he only wanted what was best for me. I said I knew. Then he blushed. Perhaps it wasn't a father's place to say this to his daughter, he said, perhaps it would be better coming from a friend, but a young girl shouldn't be sad all the time. It made a bad impression. In any case, that's how it was when he was young.

8

Nathan worked in a plant nursery. Every morning he got up at five-thirty and took two buses to the nursery outside the city. “It's a long way,” he said, “nearly an hour's trip,” but he didn't care. He dozed on the bus, or read the paper. He'd been working there for three years. This is what he told me when we sat in the café that evening, at one of the tables outside, even though it was cold. He said: “I prefer sitting outside, if you don't mind,” and I said that I didn't.

He was thirty-four. He had studied at the university for a few years, seven or eight, he said, political science and history, and then philosophy and theater. He had wanted to study law too, but not for money, for justice, even though it sounded silly and romantic. I told him that it didn't sound silly and romantic, and asked why he hadn't been accepted.

“I didn't apply,” he said. He'd never finished his B.A. because he didn't believe in degrees. “Neither do I,” I said.

“Yes,” he said, “but you already have three.”

“Two and a half,” I said. “I haven't got my Ph.D. yet. And I'm not studying for the sake of the degree.”

I had no idea why I was still in school. I wasn't interested in research, I hated libraries, I didn't want to teach, I didn't know what I was going to do after I got my Ph.D., but the university gave me money to carry on so I did. I told all this to Nathan, casually, mocking myself and the university, but he looked at me sadly—perhaps he was already familiar with this female ploy, women putting themselves down so he would like them—and said: “Nobody ever offered me anything like that.”

“Maybe you never asked,” I said.

“So who did you suck up to?” he asked without looking at me, and dipped the tip of his thumb into the foam on his coffee.

“I didn't suck up to anyone. I had a professor who for some reason thought I was gifted.”

“I never had a professor like that,” he said.

“Maybe you never stayed long enough in one department,” I said.

It was clear that Nathan didn't particularly like me. I thought he would like me more if he knew that I was unhappy, but I remembered what Noga had said about unhappiness and how you had to introduce it carefully, in small doses. “School is depressing,” I said.

“Yes,” he said, “I think so too.”

“Sometimes I just don't understand what I'm doing there.”

“Getting a Ph.D.,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “but sometimes it seems like a total waste of time.”

“Some people waste their time on less important things,” he said and licked his thumb.

“It doesn't sound so terrible to me, working with plants,” I said.

He snickered bitterly and said nothing.

“No, seriously. It sounds relaxing. I wouldn't mind doing work like that.”

“Yeah,” he said, “sure.”

“You know what?” I said, to change the subject. “I thought it was cute, the way you danced.”

“Cute?” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “Like a child.”

“That's the way I dance,” he said. He looked insulted. “So what will you do after you get your Ph.D.? Teach some boring course?”

“Yes, I guess I'll teach some boring course,” I said.

“Maybe you'll write a book,” he said, with a kind of pent-up mockery in his voice.

I said: “Maybe I'll write a book.”

“What about?” he asked without raising his eyes from the table.

“About men who dress up as clowns and ask women with Ph.D.s to go out with them, and spend the evening making them feel guilty.”

He smiled and said: “I didn't ask you to go out with me.”

“No,” I said, “you just had an urge to write something and leave it under my windshield wiper. Maybe you're the one who should write a book.”

“Yes,” he said, “except that I'm not the talented one.”

He signaled the waitress to bring the check, and it was clear I wouldn't see him again. I tried to summon Noga's calm voice. Noga would have asked herself what she saw in this guy in the first place. Noga would have stood up and walked away, but I went on sitting there.

We both leaned back in our chairs and stared at the empty mugs and waited for the check. He looked very surprised when he raised his eyes and saw me crying.

He said nothing. He sat and looked at the empty mug and then back at me again, but he said nothing. Then he cleared his throat, leaned forward, and touched my hand with his thumb. I let my hand rest on the table, under his thumb, consoled. He asked me what was wrong, and I said I didn't know.

Nathan took his thumb off my hand and said: “If you like, we can go to my place. I don't like sitting too long in cafés. I get restless.”

“Yes,” I said, “me too.”

He paid for me, even though I'd worked out my share before I burst into tears, but when the waitress came and looked at me with concern and then at Nathan with a questioning face, he hurriedly took out his wallet and pushed my hand away gently when I reached for my bag. He seemed to find it impossible to take money from a crying person, and I liked this. We squeezed into my car, where I stopped crying and was only sniffling a bit, and now and then I took my hand off the wheel to wipe my eyes on the sleeve of my coat. He said I had a nice coat. Like at the party he said I had a nice name. He said it in the same tone, as if he had a limited vocabulary and made the most of it. “Nice coat,” he said. “Thank you,” I said. “Your coat's nice too.” He said: “Really? I don't like it.” I said: “At least it looks warm. Mine isn't warm at all.” He was about to take off his parka and put it around my shoulders, but I said: “I'm fine,” even though I was freezing.

He lived in a small apartment on the top floor of an old building that looked as if it was about to collapse. He made me tea in his kitchenette and then we sat down in the room on a mattress covered with an old velvet cloth in a faded shade of orange. It began raining hard. The rain beat on the tin sheets that covered part of the roof, on the water tanks and solar reflectors standing on it, and heightened the sense that a real storm was raging outside. Our mugs of tea stood on the floor. We sat side by side on the mattress. Nathan leaned his back against the wall and pressed his knees toward his chest. He wore jeans, an old blue sweatshirt spattered with white bleach stains, and work boots with army socks.