Housebroken (38 page)

And at the gas station, even though it was summer, I suddenly felt cold and I tightened my grip on the handle of the pump, as if that would speed it up, and I listened to its clicks and hoped that he wouldn't see me because the embarrassment would kill me, and I looked awful too, with messy hair and jeans that made me look fat and without any makeup.

If I'd only known, I would have gone up to the car, smiled, kissed him on the cheek, and said to his wife, “Nice to meet you, I'm Alona,” exhibiting maturity and nonchalance, oblivious to the past—if only I'd known that in a few years' time I would find myself hiding in the corridor of the hospice without the courage to say good-bye.

When he dies, in a matter of days, maybe even hours, he'll take part of me with him. The uncensored version, like the lost draft of a short story that got too complicated—a whole suitcase filled with old belongings that someone had lovingly kept for you all these years, and now didn't want to give back. And I would have liked to ask him: But what was I like then? What did I look like? What did I sound like? And why me? It's a small town, and bad news spreads here as fast as gossip. Only a month ago I came back from Boston, and on the way from the airport I could already sense it in the air: “Have you heard?” said the girl whose apartment I rented, who was in high school with me and with whom I'd never exchanged a word, “Have you heard?” whispered the grocer in his old neighborhood, who remembered me even though I never bought anything in his store, because Matti forbade me to go in there so as to avoid suspicion, “Did you hear what happened to your boyfriend?”

28

“Pee pee!” he yells. “Pee pee! Mira. Pee pee!” And even though he's hooked up to a catheter, he keeps wanting to get up, yelling: “Take me to the bathroom, Miraleh, I have to go pee pee!” And I'm surprised that he still recognizes me.

At first I was ashamed for him, for both of us, and for all the people whose relatives were dying in different ways, quietly or noisily, in the other rooms. Whenever the nurse or the doctor walked down the corridor and he began screaming “pee pee,” I'd try to shut him up, but the nurse or the doctor smiled at me understandingly and walked past the room.

“Pee pee!” he yells and tries to pull out the catheter. “Take me to make pee pee!” And I already miss last week, because last week he wasn't as restless and the only thing he said was “No.” And now it's as if he's suddenly remembering other words, like “pee pee” and “take me” and “have to” and my name, and he yells them all the time, maybe so he shouldn't forget them again.

The children have also become difficult lately. Uri's in the third grade and Shahar's in first, and everyone at school looks at them with pity. I don't know what I'd do now without my mother, without her help, it's strange how she doesn't get on my nerves anymore, and what am I going to tell them when he dies?

“Tell them the truth, Mira.” I was surprised she should say this, 'cause it would have been more like her to say: “Tell them he went away on a trip.” She brings them back from school and cooks for them and cleans and does the laundry, and yesterday she even took our car to the garage and came back crying because the mechanic said: “Please accept my condolences.”

“What a nerve!” she said. “Offering his condolences when Matti's not even dead yet?”

“He was only trying to be nice.”

“He's not nice at all,” she said. “He's a crook! Did you know he was a crook?”

“Yes,” I said, “but at least he's a polite crook,” and we both smiled for the first time in months.

“Remember what you said about Matti when you first met him?” she said, a little embarrassed, seizing a moment of intimacy between us which would soon disappear into the general tragedy.

“What, what did I say?”

“You said he aroused your maternal instincts.”

“Really? I said that?”

“That's what you said, Mira, that's exactly what you said. And I knew you were in trouble.”

“Why?”

“I just knew it, I had a gut feeling. You'd been dying to meet someone for so long, you poor thing, so many blind dates, all your girlfriends trying to fix you up, and nothing ever came of it, and I knew that you'd fall in love with the first man who even smiled at you.”

But he didn't smile at me. Not even when he showed up at my door two weeks after the time he arrived drunk. He had a plastic bag in his hand and said: “I brought back your sweatshirt. I even washed it.” I invited him in and waited for him to apologize for the other night, but he said nothing, so I took a sip of my tea and said: “Why are you here?”

There was a long silence, the kind that I got used to later, and then he said: “I was thinking, that if you have enough patience, maybe we could see each other after all, but I wanted to warn you that you might get hurt, with no intention on my part.” And I said: “There's no such thing, ‘with no intention,' and I'm not at the age when I can play games.”

“But I'm not playing games,” he said.

“You're not serious,” I said, “and you're not even attracted to me. Why do you want to waste our time if you're not attracted to me?”

“Are you attracted to me?” he asked and for a moment there was a kind of childish curiosity about him that wiped out all his anger.

“It doesn't matter. Besides, it's hard for me to be attracted to someone unless I know that he's attracted to me.”

“Now you're playing games.”

I was attracted to him the minute I saw him. I was attracted to his face, even though he wasn't good-looking, and to his hands, which started playing with that lighter again, the silver-plated Zippo from the café, and his fingers stroked it so lovingly that I couldn't resist and asked: “Is it from her?”

“From who?” he asked.

“From the girlfriend you used to have.”

“Yes,” he said, “Alona gave it to me.”

And I didn't ask about Alona anymore and I didn't want to know about Alona, and three months later he moved in with me, and brought Alona with him, and clothes which I knew Alona had worn, because whenever I threw them into the washing machine I saw it caused him grief, as if I were destroying fibers of Alona, stains of Alona, and her shadow followed me around the house, kept me company in the kitchen, and made me feel older than I was every time I did something like cook or bake—especially bake—or wash or clean, and the shadow slept in our bed, as our children did later on, and there was nothing I could do about it except set limits, wherever I could, for the shadow and for Matti.

And after we got married, when I went with him to sign up for a computer programming course, and when I set up job interviews for him, he hated me for arranging his life, but he said: “That's life. We all become middle class in the end,” and sometimes, in his sleep, he smiled, and I knew that it wasn't intended for me.

29

It occurred to me that maybe I was his brain tumor. There was a weird expression on his face after the second time, when he stared at the ceiling and said: “I'm in trouble.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I'm falling in love with you.”

“So why are you in trouble?” I said, flattered in a way only little girls can be.

“Because I'm fifteen years older than you, and in a month's time you'll probably realize it and you'll leave me and find someone your own age, some horny, pimple-faced boy who won't be able to keep his hands off you.”

He was really sad then, staring at the ceiling and lost in thought about the terrible future awaiting him. “Yes,” he said, “it's clear to me that you'll leave me,” but he was already embracing me as he said it, and then he said: “Too bad you have to go home.”

“I can call my parents and tell them I went away. To
Lake Kinneret,
or somewhere.”

“Lake Kinneret?”

“Sure, why not? People go there.”

“And they'll believe you?”

“And if they don't, so what? At least I'm letting them know I'm not sleeping at home. At least I'm responsible.”

“But I don't want us to get into trouble.”

“I'll say I went with a friend.”

“And what if they check up on you?”

“They won't. They wouldn't dare.”

“And what if they do?”

“They won't.”

“But are you allowed to just take off like that and go to
Lake Kinneret
without asking their permission?”

“I've never done it before, so I don't know. I hate
Lake Kinneret.
”

“Me, too,” he said. And in the dark I found the phone and dialed, pulling a cigarette out of his pack, feeling his fingers stroking my back, speaking to my mother in a hushed voice charging the room with a new tension. She said, of course, that I was irresponsible. “It's after dark,” she said. “We were terribly worried about you. How can you do this to us, tell me: taking off like that without telling us? And where have you been all day? You're totally irresponsible.” And when was I coming back? And who was this friend who she'd never heard of before?

“Matilda? What kind of a name is that? Is she an immigrant? Where is she from, Russia? Holland?! What's going on, are you lying to me?” And when are we coming back? When tomorrow? Before dark? And where are we going to spend the night? “And what about Matilda's parents, do they know? And what do they have to say about it? How, how can you do such a thing? We really thought that something happened to you, Alona. And who is this Matilda anyway?”

And it was strange sleeping with someone for the first time in my life, and suddenly I wanted us to go out somewhere, because it was stifling in the room with the shutters closed, but he said, “No. We can't be seen together,” and wouldn't even open the shutters.

30

And I didn't know how to tell him that I spoke to the doctors and saw the scans, and that they explained everything to me, and all we're waiting for now is a bed. He was lying on the sofa watching TV, his legs covered with a thin blanket, one eyelid drooping and the other open, and the room smelling of shit.

He actually had a good day, no pain or nausea, and I said: “Move over a little, Matti, I want to see if you need changing.” And he tried to raise himself but couldn't, and I said: “Please, Matti, make an effort, I can't do it alone.” And he tried again, staring at the screen the whole time holding the remote control in his hand, and he managed to raise his hips a little, but before I could look into the diaper he sank back onto the sofa, and I said: “Forget it, Mother will be here soon and she'll help us.”

Because I couldn't do anything without her. She helped me lift him from the bed and put him in the wheelchair and transfer him to the sofa, which had become his small territory, with the big tin ashtray he liked so much and the cigarettes he forgot he lit and left burning in the ashtray, two or three at a time, turning into heaps of ash.

He spent his days in front of the TV—with the children ignoring him, making detours around him careful not to bump into him while they played—and when it became too difficult to take him to the bathroom, my mother said: “That's it, Mira. He needs diapers.” And when I said: “I can't do it,” she said: “I'll help you.” “No,” I said, “I can't emotionally,” and she said: “Patience, Mira, until there's a vacancy in that place. In the meantime think of him as a baby.”

But he wasn't a baby, and when my mother came back from the drugstore one day with a package of disposable diapers and said: “I got the biggest size,” I started crying so hard that she grabbed my hand and dragged me into the kitchen, holding the diapers under her arm, and said: “That's enough, Mira! It will be over soon. You can cry then.”

But I wouldn't let her help me, at least not the first time, because I wanted to leave him a little self-respect, and even if he had to be my baby, he didn't have to be hers. I dried my tears and took the package from her, and we waited for the children to fall asleep, and in the meantime he lay on the sofa in his soiled pajamas staring at the TV and I said: “Let me change the channel for you,” because there was a soccer game on and he hated soccer, but he shook his head and said: “No!” And that's where that business with the “No” started.

I went back to the kitchen, and I saw my mother sitting at the table and smoking a cigarette she took from Matti's pack, and I said: “Mom? You're smoking? Since when do you smoke?” And she said: “Sometimes. Lately I get the urge. I guess it's because of the stress.” And I said: “I didn't know you smoked,” and she said: “Daughters don't know everything about their mothers,” and with an amateurish flurry, she blew out a couple of smoke rings, coughed, and said: “But these are too strong for me.”

I went to look at the children, and then I kissed them and shut the door, even though I never do because they get frightened when they wake up in the dark and the door's shut, and I went back to the kitchen and said to my mother: “Don't come out now, okay? You promise?” And she said: “Yes,” and put out the cigarette and said: “Disgusting!”

“I'm going to make myself a cup of coffee. You want one, too?” “No,” I said, and opened the package with a knife, and took out a folded diaper, and looked at it as if there hadn't been millions of these in the house only a few years ago, and she said: “I bought wet wipes too,” and I thanked her and took the wipes which were in a blue container shaped like a teddy bear out of the shopping bag and went into the living room.

“Matti,” I said, “I think you need a diaper,” and he didn't answer, just went on staring at the players running around the soccer field silently, because I'd turned down the volume when I was putting the children to sleep. “Okay, Matti? It's not that bad. It's a little difficult for us to take you to the bathroom. You're getting too heavy,” and all that was missing was for me to say: “God, you became such a big boy!” But he didn't react, not even when I pulled down his pajama pants and his underpants, and he didn't see the look on my face when the smell suddenly hit me, and it wasn't at all like a baby's smell. “Raise yourself on your elbows a little, Matti, just a little,” I asked him and he obeyed, and then I remembered that I'd forgotten to bring a towel, and what was he going to lie on now? But I didn't want to call my mother, so I whispered: “Just stay like that for a minute. Keep your behind up,” and that was the first time I'd used that word, but I couldn't say butt, or tushie either.