The World Without You (21 page)

“And who, may I ask, is this famous person you’ve concocted?”

“I haven’t concocted him,” Amram says. He quotes to Lily. “
Eldad u’Meidad mitnabim ba’machaneh
 …”

“In English, please.”

“Eldad and Meidad were false prophets,” Amram says. “They’re in the Torah. Or the Bible, if you prefer. The Old Testament? The Pentateuch? I take it you’ve heard of those books?”

Lily doesn’t so much as move an eyebrow.

“But have you read them? Did Leviticus make it into the syllabus at Princeton? Or did you only read the Bhagavad Gita?”

Lily holds up the clue in front of Amram and tears it in half. “That’s very clever of you, Amram, quoting some obscure biblical figure. Do you think that makes you smart?”

“He’s not obscure,” Amram says. “My eight-year-old knows him. Hell, my three-year-old knows him.”

“I don’t care what your eight-year-old knows or what your three-year-old knows. My dog knows as much as they do, and he’d have been happy to demonstrate were it not for the fact that your three-year-old is allergic to dogs. Or is it your four-year-old?”

“We don’t have a four-year-old,” Noelle says.

“You say the name of this false prophet is Eldad?”

This time it’s Noelle who corrects Lily’s pronunciation.

“Well, there’s no end to your false prophets, starting with Moses and Joshua and continuing on down to Sharon and Netanyahu. You and Amram, too, living in your warmongering country, practicing your delusional religion.”

“It’s your religion, too,” Noelle says.

“It most certainly isn’t.”

“Amram’s and my country,” Noelle says, “we’ll welcome you whether or not you deserve it. Have you heard of the Law of Return? Every Jew gets automatic citizenship, no questions asked? If the Holocaust comes to America, what will you do then?”

“The Holocaust!” Lily says. “Always the Holocaust! The world’s greatest conversation stopper!”

“You don’t think it’s possible?” Noelle says.

“Anything’s possible. Right now, the world has more pressing concerns, and so do I.”

“Like what?” Amram says. “Your little bleeding-heart job? Your boyfriend’s new restaurant—that pipe dream of his?”

“It’s not a pipe dream. And let me remind you, in case you forgot, that when Malcolm first had the idea to open his own restaurant it was you, Amram, who wanted in.”

“Holocaust or no Holocaust,” Amram says, “Israel will welcome you, because you’re a Jew and it’s your homeland.”

“Oh, spare me the Moonie-in-the-airport talk.”

“Why?” Noelle says. “So you can continue to live your soulless life?”

“What makes my life soulless? Because I don’t believe in God?”

“Because you’re a single woman in your thirties,” Noelle says. “Because you’re essentially alone.”

“I’m not alone. And before you tell me I’m living in sin, let me say this as clearly as I can. I would take my relationship with Malcolm over your relationship with Amram any day of the week.”

“Lily!” their mother says.

“Listen to the two of them, Mom, with their self-righteousness and false prophets. All these Orthodox Jewish couples with their marriage certificates framed on the wall. Have you read about spousal abuse in the Hasidic community?”

“We’re not Hasids,” Noelle says, “and you know nothing about Amram’s and my relationship.”

“And you know nothing about my relationship. But I’ll say it again, in case you didn’t hear me the first time. If I were a betting woman, I’d bet on Malcolm and me over the two of you.”

“In that case,” Noelle says, “why isn’t he here?”

“What?”

“Leo died a year ago, it’s his memorial, for God’s sake, and your boyfriend can’t make it because he’s too busy? Amram’s busy, too, but he flew six thousand miles so he could be here.”

“Malcolm wanted to be here,” Lily says. “He practically insisted on coming.”

“Then why isn’t he here?”

“Because I wouldn’t let him come.”

“Why in the world?”

“Because that’s just what I’m like, Noelle. So would you get off your fucking high horse for once and stop blaming Malcolm?”

Now Thisbe starts to cry. Still in her running shorts, a couple of clues gripped in her hand, she’s hunched over on the floor, sobbing. Marilyn touches her arm, her hair, says, “What’s wrong, sweetie?” Lily’s hand is resting on her, too, and Thisbe just wants everyone to stop touching her. Soon the boys come inside, Calder among them, in front of whom Thisbe has resolved not to cry on this trip, and now she’s breaking her promise. “What’s wrong?” Calder asks, but she can’t get the words out, doesn’t even know what she would say if she could. She just wants to be left alone, but all she can do is sit there, the bowl of clues at her feet, being attended to by everyone, her former family, as she cries and cries, unable to stop.

“You were brilliant,” Amram says.

“
Brilliant?
” says Noelle.

“We won,” he reminds her. It was twenty-two to nineteen to sixteen, in favor of him and Noelle. “And what you said to Lily? You were absolutely amazing.”

But if she was amazing, why does she feel remorse running through her? She told her sister off, said the things she has wanted to say to her for years, but now she’s upstairs with Amram, the walls pressing in on her again, their soiled sheet still affixed to the bed, the stain staring back at her.

“Come on,” Amram says, poking her in the ribs. “How about a little smile?”

She tries to give him one.

“Perhaps a measly congratulations?”

“Congratulations to us,” she says gloomily. She’s happy they won, too, but whatever pride she felt has been erased by how Amram is carrying on. His semen is still spackled to her thighs; she feels a mute humiliation.

Amram is whistling a song, but she doesn’t want to hear music coming from him; she doesn’t want to hear anything at all. He’s lying on the bed in only his T-shirt and boxers; a red spot stains his sleeve. “I proved something,” he says.

“The only thing you proved is you could make Thisbe cry.”

“Are you kidding me? If anyone made her cry, it was you.”

She retrieves her pocketbook slung over the bedpost. She rifles through it, she has no idea for what.

“Look—”

“Could you please stop talking to me that way?”
Look. Listen.
Amram always starts his sentences like that. She hates how he hectors her, how he holds forth.

“Why can’t you just be happy we won?”

“It was only a game.”

But if it was only a game, why can’t she let him enjoy his victory? She’s always attacking him, diminishing his small pleasures; she detests herself. She drums her fists so hard against her thighs welts start to bloom beneath her skirt.

“You think I’m not as smart as Nathaniel, is that it?”

“Oh, Amram.”

“Well, do you?”

“Honestly?”

He nods.

“No,” she says, “I don’t think you’re as smart as Nathaniel. Not many people are. Certainly no one I know.”

“Then why didn’t you marry him?”

“Because I didn’t want to marry him. I wanted to marry you. There’s only one thing Nathaniel has that I want for you.”

“What’s that?”

“A job.”

“A job?” she says. “Is that all you can ever think about? A fucking job!?”

“I’m worried,” she says. “Don’t you understand? You have a family to support.”

“Do you know how long it took Nathaniel to get his PhDs?”

“If you say his name again, I’ll scream!”

“Thirteen years total. And do you think Clarissa was hounding him during that time? Do you think she was telling him to make a living?”

“Clarissa didn’t even know Nathaniel when he was getting his PhD. He already had it by the time she met him.”

“Not the second one. And do you think she told him not to get it?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, I do. She allowed him to pursue his dreams.”

“Is that what I’m doing? Preventing you from pursuing your dreams?”

“In a way, you are.”

“We have four children,” she reminds him. “That was our dream. To raise our boys and settle in Israel. We’re
living
our dream, don’t you remember?”

“Maybe I want to change careers.”

“To what?” Ever since she’s known him, Amram has worked in computers. It’s hard for her to imagine him doing anything else.

“What if I want to go back to school?”

“You hated school. You cursed the very town of Oneonta.”

“I was twenty then, and I’m almost forty now. Maybe I’d like to experiment.”

“Doing what?” All her life has been one big experiment. Amram’s life too. Finally, she has stopped experimenting. It scares her to hear him say this.

“I used to be good at art,” he says. “Or emergency medical training. That’s something else I’ve been thinking about.”

She’d like to be more patient with him, she would, but something stops her. “You need to send out your résumé. That’s the first step. The next step is to get an interview.”

“I’ve already gotten one.” Amram is standing over her now. It’s as if he’s inflating before her, like one of those balloon animals released to the sky. “I got an e-mail last night. This company wants me to come in and talk.”

“Amram! That’s wonderful!”

“Not when you consider what the job is.”

“What is it?”

“It’s entry level, the kind of thing I did when I was just starting out.”

“Entry level’s better than nothing.”

“Not for me, it isn’t. Anyway, it’s too late. I told them I wasn’t interested.”

“You what?”

“Don’t act so surprised, Noelle. You’d have done the same thing in my position.”

“I most certainly wouldn’t have.”

“If they offered me a job that was worthy of my talents, I’d consider it.”

Worthy of your talents? she wants to say. What talents? But she’s not being fair. And if he’s not talented, what does that say about her? She married him. What talents does she have? Part-time teacher’s aide. Mother. It took her five years to graduate from high school, another five years to finish college; she got expelled from institutions up and down the East Coast. And here she is, vacillating between self-pity and self-reproach, issuing her scattershot accusations.

“Look,” she says, pointing at the bed. The stain has gone through to the mattress. “What am I going to tell my parents?”

“You don’t have to tell them anything. You’re thirty-seven years old.”

“And just leave it like that?” She glances up at him, but the sight repulses her and she turns away. “It happened once before.”

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

“A few months ago. Don’t you remember?”

He gets up from the bed and walks across the room. He’s standing far away from her. “You humiliate me, Noelle. Every day you wake up and humiliate me.”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s the truest thing I’ve ever said.”

She’s quiet.

“I’m tired of everything.”

“Tired of me?”

He rushes out of the bedroom, and she follows him. Down the stairs they go and out into the garden, where it has started to rain again. They’re getting wet beside her mother’s rosebushes. “Amram, what’s happening to us?”

He walks around the perimeter of the house and heads straight for their car.

“Where are you going?”

“For a drive.”

“You can’t just take off like that.”

“Watch me.” He has the key in the ignition; he’s talking to her now through the open window.

“Amram, please, it’s my brother’s memorial!”

“Believe me, I won’t be missed.”

Would you please stop feeling sorry for yourself? she wants to say, but the car has jerked forward, Amram is peeling out of the driveway. He’s just a taillight now at the foot of the road, and then not even that. Standing in front of her parents’ house, she screams, “I’m sorry, Amram, we’ll work this out! I promise we’ll do better!”

But he’s already gone.

When she steps back inside, her mother and sisters are seated in the living room, having witnessed what took place.

“Well,” she says, and she lets her hands drop against her thighs; they make a little thud of resignation.

“What was that?” her mother says.

That, she wants to say, was my idiot husband stalking off. But she understands that to cast Amram in such light is to do the same to herself. “He just went for a spin,” she says, and since everyone knows this isn’t true, they simply sit there, not saying anything, until Dov comes in and starts to bang on the piano keys. Ari follows, saying, “Eema, if I fall from somewhere high will you catch me?” and Noelle feels briefly rescued. But then the boys are gone and she’s alone again, and her mother says, “Come here, Noelle, sit down next to me.” Her mother places her arm around Noelle’s shoulder. “Dad left, too. All the men in the family have run off.”

“Great,” Lily says. “We should stage a bra-burning.”

“Amram will be back soon,” Marilyn says. “How far could he have gone?”

But that’s the problem, Noelle thinks. He could have gone anywhere; he could be on his way back to Israel, for all she knows.

An hour later, Amram still hasn’t returned. Noelle looks out the living room window, but she sees no sign of his car, no sign of anything besides her boys playing tetherball in the yard. David, meanwhile, has come back from the hardware store with a bucket of paint and a paint roller and two large bags of supplies. He’s in his and Marilyn’s old bedroom when Noelle knocks on the door. “Am I bothering you?”

“You’re never bothering me, darling.”

She steps softly inside. Her father’s on the bed with his clothes on: a pair of cargo shorts and a khaki T-shirt, his tube socks pulled up to his knees, his running shoes tightly laced. He’s holding open a book whose title she can’t make out. “Were you taking a rest?”

“That’s okay. I can rest later. I always like company, especially yours.” His hair is disheveled, zigzagging across his scalp, as if it can’t make up its mind which way to go. His nose is red, and there’s a crumpled-up tissue on the bedside table.

She has brought him a bowl of ice cream, which she lays now at her feet. “Are you okay, Dad?”

“I guess.”

Across the room sits a photo of her, and another of Clarissa on all fours, Leo perched on top of her, taken when they were just children. Her mother’s dresser is unlatched; a pink camisole peeks out of the drawer. “I’m glad you came back.”