Housebroken (35 page)

He came back to the room which was messy and secretive as a cave, and leaned against the door, illuminated from behind by the fluorescent light in the kitchen, scratching his leg. “Shit!” he said. “I got bitten all over. Did you?” and I thought that he was losing the mysteriousness of who he had been an hour ago, and maybe I was too.

“The milk's spoiled.” He bent down and caressed my cheek. “I'm an idiot. I left it out. Are you okay?”

And I already began to feel pangs of guilt for things that happened only a year later, one summer evening, when I left him, deep asleep with a worried look on his face, wrapped in a floral sheet.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said and got up, shaking off his hand which was gripping mine and trying to pull me down to the mattress.

“Stop it,” I said, “I have to pee.”

I sat on the toilet and heard the fridge door slam, and a spoon stirring in a glass, and a faucet opening and closing, sending shudders through the pipes and down my spine, and I imagined him walking around naked in the fluorescent light of the kitchen, and suddenly I felt sad and it burned when I tried to pee.

17

My mother said: “You're marrying a good man, but watch out,” and I don't know if it was one of her general warnings, or if she had seen something in him, because she didn't like the way he never looked me in the eye, she said, and also he didn't hug me enough—“He respects you, and that's good, but he doesn't hug you”—and I said that as far as hugging was concerned, I wasn't perfect either.

I wanted him to know that I knew that with every hug we were hugging her too. When he turned to me in his sleep and drew me toward him, and held me in a scissorslike grip, I didn't hug him back, because I hated that young girl of his, who haunted our bedroom like a ghost.

And maybe with all those hugs in his sleep he was asking me to help him free himself of her and all the time he was sending me a message that his suffering would be my suffering too, but I didn't help him, because I was afraid of losing him altogether, which in the light of present circumstances seems stupid. But how could I have known then, at the beginning, in the era of infinite health, when I was so busy setting the rules, that those rules would be worthless in the end, because I planned that after the rules would come the love, which would keep us together until we were eighty?

I saw her once at the gas station. It was about three years ago, when Matti and I were waiting in line and she was standing there and filling her tank by herself, without help, as if she was born in a gas station, and without looking at me or at her, with his eyes staring at the dashboard, he whispered: “That's her.”

I wanted to get out and go up to her to see her from up close, maybe even introduce myself and say: “Matti's in the car,” but I didn't dare. I sat and breathed in the fumes of the gas and tried not to look upset, and behind the shoulder of the boy who was cleaning our windshield I saw her standing there, two cars in front of us, with the pump in her hand, looking at the gauge, her other hand on her hip, with a kind of self-assurance, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, chubbier and shorter than I imagined her, because I imagined something boyish, and Matti suddenly lit a cigarette and I said: “What are you doing? Are you crazy? You can't smoke here,” and he put it out and I said to myself: At least she doesn't have such a great body, and her hair looks dyed, and I wanted to ask Matti if it was her real color, that faded orange, but all I managed to say was: “I thought she left the country.”

And then I noticed that her car was rented, and I was glad, as if this was proof that she would no longer bother us, not even in our dreams, and I said to Matti: “It's a rented car,” and he said: “Maybe she's visiting her mom and dad,” as if she were still a little girl.

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“Do you want to take a shower?”

“Why are you wearing that sheet?”

“Are you okay?”

“You want to take a shower?”

“Are you sure you don't want something to drink? You want me to go down and get milk? There's a minimarket here that's open till nine. When do you have to be home? Does it hurt you there? There's hot water if you want to shower. I hope your parents don't show up here. Take off that stupid sheet already. Are you embarrassed in front of me? Me? Did I hurt you? Are you sure? Let me show you, the faucets are tricky. Here, take this towel, it's clean. You want me to shower with you? So let me show you how to regulate the water because you won't be able to do it on your own. You'll burn yourself, I'm warning you. Will you come tomorrow? I'm putting the towel here, on the chair. Look: the faucets are the wrong way around. You see? Look! You have a bruise on your thigh. Did I do that? Did you fall? This is the hot and this is the cold. The other way around. But what will you tell your parents? Are you sure I didn't do that? Tell me, are you going to shower with the sheet on? Does it hurt? Here's the soap and be careful not to lean against the faucets. They're boiling. So you'll call me if you need anything? Okay, okay, I'm leaving, I'm leaving.”

But he didn't. He kept standing there and looking at me and suddenly I was too tired to be shy but still I didn't know if I should stand with my back to him or facing him, so I sat down in the tub, and I turned my head to him and saw that he was sitting on a stool, by the door, with his legs crossed, and the look of a contented observer on his face.

When did I get that bruise, I thought, but I couldn't remember. It looked pretty new and I'm always bumping into things, and I thought that maybe he was expecting me to put on a show for him, a striptease or something, but on the other hand I was already naked, so what was I supposed to do? And he said: “Get up, so I can look at you,” and I said: “I'm too tired.”

“But I want to see you,” he said, and suddenly he sounded like a whining child.

“You already saw me,” I said and soaped myself carefully because I felt sore all over, as if I was coming down with the flu.

“Then let me soap you.”

“No,” I said, and I brought the showerhead to my mouth and drank the hot water because I was really thirsty.

“Why not?”

“Some other time.”

“But will there be another time?”

“Sure there will. What's the matter with you?”

“What's the matter with me? What's the matter with you? Suddenly you're acting like a child.” He sat on the floor next to the bathtub, touched my shoulder, and said: “I can't believe I just fucked a child.”

“What's that?” I asked and pointed at a bottle of shampoo with its lid open and black hair sticking to it. “Is it for dandruff?”

“Yes,” he said. “But it's good. You can use it.”

“You have dandruff?”

“Yes,” he said. “Sometimes. Not lately.”

“Don't you have any regular shampoo?”

“No. But I'm telling you that you can use it. It makes your hair really soft.”

“But I don't have dandruff.”

“You don't need to have dandruff to use it. Don't be a baby. Should I wash your hair for you?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“Yes,” I said, but he just sat there and looked at me, as if the side of the tub were the railing on a balcony and I was the view, and when I finished showering I got up quickly and bumped into the faucets and burned one shoulder. To this day I still have a little scar.

19

Just because he peed in his pants once doesn't mean it's the end. I gave him a lot to drink, because they told me to, but maybe I overdid it and that's what happened. But the next morning, when he opened one eye and the other one stayed shut as if it had been stitched with invisible thread, I realized that they were right, the doctors, and I thought: But why does it have to happen so fast?

The thing with the eyes didn't bother him but it frightened the children. They went in to say good-bye before they went to school and saw him lying on his back in bed like a cyclops and it was impossible to tell if he was awake or asleep. Shahar ran to me but Uri remained standing next to the bed. “Daddy,” he said, “why do you have one eye open and one eye closed?” but he didn't expect an answer because for a few days now Matti hadn't answered them, or talked, only mumbled orders when he needed something.

Uri covered the open eye with his hand. “Can you see now?” he asked and Matti shook his head, as if Uri was another one of the countless doctors who had examined him over the past few months.

“And now?” he asked and took his hand away and Matti nodded.

“Daddy,” he said, “I can help you if you want. I know what to do. We have to close the open eye so that too much light doesn't get in, otherwise it'll get tired. You want to sleep now, right?” And Matti nodded.

“So do you agree? Do you agree to let me make you better?” And Matti nodded seriously, like an obedient patient.

Uri put his school bag down, climbed onto the bed, bent over Matti, and gently pulled the lid down over the open eye. “There, I fixed it,” he said but the eye opened again, like a rebellious shutter, full of curiosity and anger, and patiently the child tried to close it again, and again, until I came up and said: “That's enough. You'll be late for school. Let Daddy sleep.”

“But he can't sleep like that!”

“Yes he can,” I said. “He doesn't need to close both eyes to fall asleep, one's enough,” and Uri picked his bag off the floor, disappointed and doubtful, and said: “I'll fix it when I come back,” but when my mother brought them home from school they found me trying to raise Matti from the toilet.

Shahar went into the kitchen and I heard him dragging a chair to the cabinet to get candy, but Uri remained standing in the hallway looking at me as I led Matti to the bedroom, with one arm around his waist and the other hand holding the elastic of his pajama pants—growing up there all by himself, holding the strap of his brightly colored bag.

“Go to the kitchen,” I shouted to him from the room. “I'll just put Daddy to bed and I'll come and make you something to eat in a minute,” and I heard him going into the bathroom, and then I heard him flushing, because I'd forgotten.

20

He massaged my shoulder with margarine. “It's the best cure for burns,” he said. “I told you to be careful.” I sat leaning forward on the stool in the bathroom and his fingers stroked my shoulders, the one without the burn too, with the devotion of a nurse and the guarded lust of someone who doesn't want to go too far, because after all I was wounded.

“Poor thing,” he said. “I bet it hurts like hell. I keep on burning myself too. Maybe I should change the faucets for plastic ones but fuck! It's a rented apartment, why should I invest money in it?”

He had no money, he told me. He worked occasionally in film productions, sometimes as an assistant director, sometimes helping with the sets or the lighting, or as a driver, and sometimes he volunteered to work as an extra: “I have the kind of face they're always looking for in movies. I look like the man on the street,” he said and ran his hand apologetically over his hair. But there was no work now, so he sat in cafés and spent the time thinking. He didn't go anywhere in particular, because he didn't like any café in particular, and this morning he went to the Milano because it was cheap there, and because it had the atmosphere of old movies, “that you're probably not familiar with: small tables, large ashtrays, wallpaper, and old waiters who sometimes own the place and sometimes they're only there because the owner feels sorry for them. Eternal extras.”

“Why not heroes?” I asked. “Just because they're old?”

“Maybe,” he said. “It depends how you look at it. You're a little optimistic.” He thinks it would be terrible to be old and unwanted, though it seems to him that being young and unwanted is even worse. He hopes it doesn't sound like self-pity, but he feels that his life would be a lot easier if he hadn't chosen a career in film. Maybe not easy, but more secure and stable, and sometimes he thinks: What does he need this for? He doesn't have an apartment of his own or a steady job, and up until a few hours ago he didn't have a love life either.

“And now?”

“Maybe not a love life, but at least a chance of something good. Or a change. You probably have no idea what I'm talking about, but lately my life's been more or less at a dead end. And it's not that I don't meet women. I do. And it's not that I don't go to bed with them. I do. And it's not that I'm lonely or desperate or anything like that. Because I'm not.”

“My life's at a dead end too,” I said.

“Maybe. But it seems to me that you're a little too young for that. I don't want to sound patronizing, but you have to travel a certain distance before you reach a dead end. That feeling that you've already seen everything and that nothing can surprise you anymore or provide you with a real challenge. And yes, in a way you were a challenge for me. You still are. And I don't mean getting you in bed, even though I know that you think you seduced me. You know what a challenge it is not to play games?”

“We didn't play games?”

“You have a lot to learn,” he said.

He stood by the sink and washed his hands, soaping them thoroughly to get the margarine off, and then he looked at himself in the mirror, turning his head from side to side, raising and lowering his chin. “I need a shave,” he said and bent down to me. “Feel. Here, isn't it horrible?”

The stubble, which hadn't been there before when we were in bed, made a weird sound when I passed my fingers over it and gave him a sinister, criminal look. “I'll shave later, when I shower,” he said, and dried his hands. Then he looked at himself in the mirror again, smiled, and said: “Do I look old?”

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