Textile (5 page)

Mandy wasn’t bothered by the bad press. In any case, most of her customers only read the ultra-Orthodox newspaper.

3

LIRIT PREFERRED THE TRIPLEX IN TEL BARUCH NORTH TO the penthouse in Neve Avivim. Although she never said anything out loud, because she had hardly ever had the opportunity to stay in Telba-N., it was evident that she was glad to move there after life close to the earth and close to Shlomi. Indirectly, therefore, her mother’s plastic surgeries did her a favor. And since this time, as it sometimes happened, Gruber was abroad, Lirit took over her parents’ handsome suite and settled down to reflections of a futuristic nature, about how her own apartment would look when the day came. In these plans for her future, neither Shlomi, nor his enlarged nature photographs decorating the walls, appeared in her mind’s eye. She lay in bed like a princess and watched her favorite channel on the huge television facing her, the E! Channel, reporting on the difficulties in the lives of Hollywood stars in the past and present. She was in no hurry to get to the factory in the mornings, she knew that Carmela was on the job, and only when it was nearly lunch time she dropped in to Nighty-Night to see that everything was under control. In the meantime she saw a repeat showing of a program about Winona Ryder, and allowed herself to drift off into different thoughts. For example where should
she
have her children, in a Jacuzzi or in a dolphin pool? It was clear to her that she would go for one of these options, after hearing a videotape of some actress, not Ryder, who gave birth to her first son in a Jacuzzi, and then her first daughter in a dolphin reef.

On no account did she wish to repeat her mother’s mistakes,
giving birth to her and to Dael in a hospital and relying on a local anesthetic. Lirit didn’t want any anesthetics, local or general. She knew that the secret of her strength was to be the antithesis of her mother.

On the other hand, the design of the new house was definitely something she could adopt. For weeks Mandy had searched for an architect to plan the interior before the contractor went for the standard. She drove to see the houses in Arsuf at the suggestion of recommended architects. She saw five possibilities in Arsuf, and three in communities where well-known people had built themselves homes. She didn’t like any of them. Luckily she heard about a certain Oz Bonfil, a gifted Israeli designer who had gone to live in Tuscany and changed his name to Pasquale Bonfil. The person in question came to Israel twice a year, on Passover and Rosh Hashanah, to visit his sister. Mandy flew him over and put him up in the Dan Panorama at the end of winter, beginning of spring, and he stayed in the hotel for two months, for at a certain stage he saw fit to supervise the progress of the work himself.

Before Bonfil began work, Amanda presented him with two no-nos. One, that there be nothing in the apartment reminiscent of the Levant, nothing exotic, oriental, or Indian. And two, he was on no account to exceed the generous budget she had allowed him, because although from a socioeconomic point of view they belonged to the top 10 percent, they didn’t belong to the top 1 percent and not to the top one-thousandth either. There was a difference that wasn’t a nuance between the top 10 percent and the top 1 percent.

“In the top 1 percent, the sky’s the limit,” said Mandy, “but with us the limit is lower,” and she told him the sum she had in mind.

At first Bonfil grumbled about the second veto and argued that he only worked with people for whom the sky was the limit, but afterward he agreed and said that if he had to stay within the framework she had given him, they could forget about the possibility
of uniting the first and second levels in one big space, and crowning it with a ceiling that had become available from a cathedral in Bologna.

Mandy took a week to think about the possibility of bringing the ceiling from the Bolognan cathedral for the unification between the first and second levels recommended by Bonfil. Sometimes the idea seemed fine to her and sometimes it seemed silly. She took into account the cost of bringing an entire ceiling from Bologna, with the insurance and the headaches, asked herself why she should do away with a level and turn a triplex into a duplex, she could have bought a duplex to begin with, so what if the ceiling would be high and ecclesiastical? And after she had considered every aspect, and calculated the cost, she decided: No!

They decided to leave the ceilings as they were and dwell mainly on the division of the space and its design. And in the end what came out was such a charming little palace that Mandy didn’t feel right hanging the old pictures from the previous house on its walls. She went around a few galleries and bought a few interesting originals. Bonfil agreed to pop over from Tuscany for a couple of days and help her find the right place for each painting, and he didn’t ask a fee for his advice, and even said that it was fun.

LIRIT THOUGHT THAT what was so great about the house was that it was both as amazingly comfortable and as gorgeous as an adorable hotel in a European capital, without the artificial manners of the reception clerks.

The film about Winona Ryder came to an end and Lirit got into the Jacuzzi feeling that she had come to a certain conclusion, both as a result of her private thoughts and as a result of the film about the difficulties in the life of the Hollywood star, but in fact she hadn’t come to any conclusion at all, since she hadn’t actually defined her doubts to herself yet.

The Jacuzzi had not been used for quite a time and it took a while for the water to come out of the nine jets, but after a few minutes she abandoned herself to the currents massaging her muscles, and she thought, how can this compare to the miserly trickle coming out of the rusty shower in her and Shlomi’s house. She was sure that if she could only succeed in getting him into the Jacuzzi—perhaps if she got in with him, after all it was a Jacuzzi for two—he wouldn’t be able to deny his body this pleasure.

But she knew that after Shlomi had been shocked by their leather living room, and asked if Mandy had a fur coat, and she said she didn’t know—there was no chance he would come to her parents’ home any time soon, let alone take a dip in their Jacuzzi. She switched on the radio next to the foaming tub, and read the label still stuck to its side that informed her that the Jacuzzi possessed 1.2 horsepower, nine jets, a special regulator governing the strength of the massage, and underwater lighting. She looked for the regulator, and tried out all kinds of combinations, until she found the one she liked best. Strong on the upper back and shoulders.

Suddenly something bothered her. She felt guilty for being in the Jacuzzi and not at least at work, or perhaps even more worthy: by the side of her mother who was undergoing her surgery today. She was sorry she didn’t have a telephone with her in the Jacuzzi, because she didn’t feel like getting up, and also because she didn’t know what to say if her mother asked her why she wasn’t at the factory.

Still, she had gone to Medical Frontline with her yesterday. She was there all day, and it drove both of them crazy. They argued nonstop. Lirit took a lot of crap from her until she finally lost her temper and said that her stomach hurt and she was going home. And Mandy had explicitly asked her to go to the factory today, but she, Lirit, didn’t have it in her
system
to be with her mother on the day of the operation, or at least in the factory from 8:00 a.m. People are sometimes mean and I can be mean sometimes too, she
thought to herself and sighed. It wasn’t clear yet, maybe she would still go, maybe she would still make it, although how much could a person be expected to take?

Her heart contracted, and she got out of the Jacuzzi steeped in guilt.

While she was drying her hair she remembered that yesterday, when they gave her mother an EKG, they told her she had the heart of a thirty-year-old, and how happy it made her. The cardiologist said that it wasn’t a compliment but a fact. All day Mandy basked in this fact, because she always felt bad about not taking part in serious sports with an emphasis on heart-lung endurance.

“You see?” she said to Lirit, “And you nag me for not going to a gym.”

“I never nagged you, I just said that physical activity would do you good. It can also dispel anxiety. Endorphins.”

“Okay okay okay,” Mandy dismissed her, “you know everything. About endorphins too.”

Mandy had a lot of anger against Lirit in her heart, at this moment and in general. She was not satisfied with the rate of her daughter’s progress in life, even though she had never asked herself: Progress to where? And to what? Except perhaps once or twice when the girl was a teenager.

After they made up, Mandy urged her daughter to go to the factory, “So things won’t descend into anarchy there like in the Palestinian Authority.”

“In any case I have to go in for a tête-à-tête with Dr. Carmi Yagoda,” she reinforced her words.

“Can’t I come with you?”

“No,” commanded Mandy and went into the room, leaving Lirit to drive to the family factory.

YAGODA EXPLAINED EVERYTHING again to Mrs. Amanda Gruber from beginning to end, all the stages of the operation. Afterward he asked her to remove her blouse and bra, and to lie on her
stomach and not to move. He concentrated and marked the place with Indian ink where the new shoulder blades she had chosen would be installed. And then he let her sit up and showed her, with the help of two mirrors, the sketch he had drawn. Mandy nodded her head to signify her approval, and while she was getting dressed Yagoda told her that up to recently shoulder blade surgery had been a much more complicated business, since the surgeon had to find the two original shoulder blades which had been absorbed by the back, and to return them to their rightful place, more or less symmetrically, and to sharpen the point of the shoulder blade which had been blunted by time. Many women were shocked after the operation. The new operation had been preceded by a courageous conception of surrender to the ravages of time: what was gone was gone, never to return, and therefore it was necessary to take out the used shoulder blades and replace them with new ones. The points of the shoulder blades, points, evident when the hands were moved, the patient could choose according to her taste, before the surgery was performed. Mandy had already chosen.

SHORTLY BEFORE THE OPERATION, when the nurse came to give Mandy a shot, she also asked her if she would have any objections to being photographed to advertise Medical Frontline. She was the fiftieth woman in Israel to have the operation. But Mandy refused point blank. All her life she had run away from publicity, and not because she couldn’t rub shoulders with the highest in the land, if she wanted to.

She simply didn’t like going anywhere with her husband, and avoided being seen with him in public. Sometimes, when both of them had to leave the house, he in the Buick and she in a taxi, she would linger over her makeup, or her eyeliner, just so they wouldn’t leave the house together.

Only on rare occasions did the Grubers go as a couple to a cocktail party hosted by a colleague in the scientific field, or by some big bug in the secret service, the Mossad, or the aircraft
industry. In all the years of their marriage, they went out to a restaurant together twice. Mandy detested all that “Pleased to meet you,” “How well you look,” “So glad you could come . . .”

It was time for the general anesthetic she was waiting for. She lay in surrender on the operating table, under the bright lights.

Everyone was dressed in green with masks on their faces, and they treated her like a child. They called her sweetheart and
meideleh
, and said
nu, nu, nu
, too, as if she was a naughty little girl. She liked this strange pampering. The operating-room nurse asked her to turn over and lie on her stomach if she didn’t want her shoulder blades in front. The anesthetist said, “No no. First I put her under and then
we
turn her over.”

“As you wish,” said Dr. Carmi Yagoda and moved aside, and the anesthetist jabbed her. Mandy managed to turn over by herself, and then she was obliterated. The nurse put a green sheet on her back and folded it. Only the area of Mandy’s upper back was left exposed, and on it the outlines of the operation that Dr. Yagoda had sketched the day before.

FLYING COACH CLASS to New York did not suit a man of Irad Gruber’s position. People squeezed into their seats like chickens in a coop. Nobody had told him that there would be a two-hour layover in Paris. And all around him was a group of hyperactive fifteen-year-old boys, the sons of ex-Israelis living in Chicago, whose two counselors were unable to control them. Gruber thought it was the worst flight of his life.

Earlier, on the ground, he had tried to upgrade his ticket. He was used to flying business class and there was no reason on earth why he should accept a drop in his standard of living now. But the ground attendant at boarding told him that business class was full, that all the seats next to the emergency exits were taken, and there were no window seats left.

Gruber felt as if he was trapped in a flying cage. Rubbing shoulders with the loudmouthed masses of the people of Israel made
him ill. Now he had no doubt that his status in the eyes of the Defense Minister had taken a dive, the only question was when the dive would be arrested and his body would hit the ground and they would bury him together with the whole TESU project.

The TV screen on the back of the seat in front of him showed the temperature outside and the distance from the unexpected destination city: Paris. He switched channels. Actors too young for him to know their names appeared, making the movie of no interest to him. He looked for quiet music on the audio channels, found the oldies channel, and listened to Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye singing “You are everything and everything is you.”