The Last of the Wise Lovers (12 page)

   When I lay down on my bed I started
practicing how I would begin the big discussion I planned to have with Mom at
the first opportunity.

"And so," I attempted, "the time
has come to take off all the masks."  Then I thought of a style that
would be more like the one she herself preferred: "There are moments in a
man's life when he must tell the truth, even if no one is
listening."  But the thought of her inevitable response, drenched
with that phony pleasantness that she reserved for children and those idiots
who dared to think of her as less than perfect, repressed my desire to continue
and even aroused my animosity.  I hated the whole world.  I covered my
head with a pillow.  And that's how I slept, too, restlessly tossed
between a headache, and lights and angry whispers.

   At some point I realized I actually
was hearing angry whispers.  I found myself still dressed, curled up on my
bed in a fetal position.  My clock-radio said 3:30 a.m.  

From the other side of the wall Dad said,
"... what exactly do you want from me?"

   Mom said, "As of now, nothing.
 You have nothing to offer me."

   "And you, what do
you
have to offer, other than complaints?"

   "I've tried, God knows I've
tried.  I told myself: you've got a gem, a real diamond in the rough, all
you have to do is make a little effort and polish it."

   "That is to make it into your
idea of how a man should act or look, a kind of slavish, pandering lackey with
taut skin and dyed hair...”

   "I never asked you to get a face
lift, and the dye was more for you than it was for me.  Isn't it nicer to
look young?  Haven't you noticed what a tire you've got around your
middle?"

   Dad was at the boiling point.
 "How else do you expect me to look with the kind of life I lead?!
 Have you ever seen what they serve on airplanes or in hotels...?”

   "There you go blaming someone
else.  You could always order a vegetarian meal or buy fruit!"

   I thought Dad would agree with her or
at least shut up.  How else could he answer such a just claim?  But
he said something completely unexpected: "Why should I bother?  You
don't love or respect me, anyway."

   Mom didn't deny it.  "So
what do you suggest?"

   There was much pain in Dad's voice,
as if he had hoped she'd say something else.  "You know very well
what I suggest."

   "Another try?" Mom said in
a dubious tone so different from her usual, conciliatory one.
 "Please, tell me how this new try will look...”

   "Just like life.  We'll be
together, we'll love each other."

   "How?  What else can we try
that we haven't already tried?"

   "I'll be home more, we can go
out on the weekends, take trips.  This is a wonderful country and we still
haven't seen it the way we ought to...”

   "I still remember your trip to
the Negev," she recalled empathically, "with a tent, a sketchbook,
and some canned food."

   "Back then you thought I was
terrific.  You called me your wild stud, your artiste, remember?
 Everything about me enchanted you...”

   "You had promise.  You
taught, you drew, you sculpted, you wrote art reviews for the newspapers... I
thought you would be
someone
...”

   "And what do I lack now?  I
have nothing to be ashamed of, d'you hear?  When they brought me here from
Africa there was nothing here.  Nothing.  I made connections, I set
things up from scratch...  "

  
Ok,
so in
that
field you're a success.  But sometimes I look at you and
I think, `There must be some mistake.  The man I married was unique,
inspired... '"

   Dad wasn't listening to her.
 "Great," he said bitterly, "Tel Aviv knows that Levin is a
success, Jerusalem knows, the Embassy in Washington calls whenever there's a
problem... but
you'll
never forgive me for not realizing your grandiose
artistic dreams.  Yermi Levin, the horse you bet on who finished last.
 And who's the next horse you'll send to the races, Ronny?"

   "Leave Ronny out of this,"
she said with a fierceness that did not suit her recent lack of attention to
me.  "What's so wrong with my wanting to see him succeed?  He's
gifted, bright, well-liked.  He could be
anything,
and I want him
to have everything that I didn't have, everything those anti-Semitic Rumanian
bastards...”

   "`Those anti-Semitic Rumanian
bastards'... as if no doctors or professors ever emigrated from Rumania.
 Besides, it's been twenty years since you left Rumania, more than enough
time to make something of yourself if you'd really wanted to, if you'd really
been
capable
...”

   That was breaking the biggest rule in
the house, a rule so basic that I'd never quite realized it existed until I
heard Dad's heretical words: never, ever were you supposed to doubt how
wonderful Mom was, to doubt that she was terrific, bright, intelligent,
successful and God knows what else.  And the few times that I'd done so,
Dad had forced me to apologize and Mom had gone into an alienating blue funk
that had only ended when I'd admitted that I'd been wrong or sworn up and down
that she was mistaken and I'd never said any such things.  So it wasn't
tough for me to imagine what was going on there, on the other side of the wall.
 I could see Mom sitting there, her face frozen as if she'd just been
slapped.  Dad didn't talk, either.  I heard the closet door creak and
I knew he was getting ready for bed.  Afterwards there were footsteps.
 They were small, hesitant, coy.  And they stopped when Mom hissed,
"Stop it! I don't want to!"

   I understood that Dad had tried to
kiss her.  I know the feeling, when you're rejected in mid-kiss.  I
hurt for him.

Mom said, "How could you say I never wanted
to make anything of myself, that I'm not capable...”

   Dad solved the problem by doing a
quick about-face.  "I didn't say that
you
weren't capable, I
said that over there, by those anti-Semites, you weren't able.  I meant
that
no one
was able, there...”

   I pounded my mattress in frustration.
 Maybe it wasn't fair, but I wanted him to fight back for me, too, wanted
him to force her to face the truth, force her to say something decisive and
responsible, once and for all.  

It was still possible, because she didn't let go
easily. "You said I didn't want to, as if I were limp, some sort of
rag...”

   But Dad cleverly opened up a new
front by bringing in another factor, one that never disappointed, the fear
factor.

"Look," he entreated, "we're not
getting any younger, in a year Ronny'll be going into the army, and we'll be
left alone, just you and me.  We need to be good to one another...”

   "That's what troubles me,"
Mom said sadly.  "Everything's gone: beauty, youth, friends.  Who
am I left with?"

   Dad was ready to promise
everything.   "I'll talk to them at the office.  I've been
at this job long enough.  It's about time they managed to arrange a job
for me close to home.  Maybe I'll even leave the Service and go back to
studying art or writing reviews..."

   "Forget it.  No one stopped
the world to wait for you.  The market's full of new talent...”

   "I could still work in the field
of security, maybe even make it into a commercial business.  Harry talked
to me once about...”

   "That was three years ago, and
even then he was talking about a one-shot deal...”

   "There'll be other things.
 A guy with his kind of business - factories in South America, acres of
land in Asia, trade posts in Africa, his connections with the administration,
his little services for the C.I.A... it's hard to stop those kinds of things
overnight.  I don't believe he's going to
be sitting still in Florida.  He'll undoubtedly start up some
business, maybe he'll renew his connections with the administration, and if so,
he could always use a resourceful and experienced security man, someone who
knows how to keep his mouth shut.  Just think, Florida...  you and me
lying on the sand, in the sun, the warm sea, just like Tel Aviv in the good old
days."

   Mom said suddenly, sharply,
"Enough."

   "What's the matter?  Have
you got something against Harry?"

   She was silent.

   "What's wrong?" Dad asked
again.

   There was no answer.  I heard
the door to their bedroom open and shut, and then the rustling of newspaper and
the slamming of the bathroom door.  As the silence dragged on, I thought I
could hear muffled sounds.  I pressed my ear against the wall, and only
after listening long and hard did I realize that she was leaning against it on
the other side, crying.

*

The next day I again rose early.  I was
hoping to cut out before I ran into one of them.  However, as if just to
annoy me, everyone was up early; what was even more aggravating was that they
acted as if nothing had happened.  Perhaps because of the previous night's
argument, Dad took all of his art stuff out of the basement, set himself up on
the garden patio in the back yard, stretched a new canvas, and began painting
stripes of green and fluorescent purple.  Mom sat in the kitchen sipping
coffee with her eyes closed, looking as if she had a very bad headache.
 Aunt Ida was still on the lookout on the kitchen porch, laying an ambush.
 I wondered if there wasn't somebody else out there, too, watching us from
the grove at the end of the street, waiting for us to leave the house so he
could come back to search for something - or worse.

   I got myself some milk and a roll and
sat down opposite Mom.  It wasn't the most ideal situation for a talk
between us, but what I had heard the night before made me feel that if I didn't
talk, I would burst.

"I'd like you to hear me out," I began
in a low voice, so that Aunt Ida wouldn't hear.  "Now I understand
everything that's happened since the night of the party, over a week ago.
 I know a lot of things, more than you realize, but I don't think ill of
you, really I don't.  I'm just asking that we talk about it, because the
silence is killing me...”

   She opened two tired eyes.
 "What?"

   That was frustrating, but I went over
everything from the beginning, and I also went on and told about the guy I had
found in the house the night before.  I didn't say anything about the
letters I'd copied, the night I'd seen her getting out of a car at the end of
the road, the slide I'd found, the notch in the tree, or my listening in to
Dad's conversations - all stuff I didn't feel I should tell.  When I
finished, she poured herself some more coffee but didn't speak.

   "So, what do you have to say to
me?" I asked.

  
"Nothing new," she answered blankly, "just what I've already
told you before.  You're mixing ten percent reality with all sorts of
fantasies."

  
"What fantasies?  I'm not imagining things, I
know
what's
going on...” I was beginning to get carried away, "I heard you fighting
last night...”

   "You had no right to listen.
 What goes on between your father and me is intimate."

   "But you want to know the
intimate details of
my
life...” I said, highly insulted over the tens of
crushes, white lies, shoplifting, and other embarrassments that I had confessed
to her.  "Whenever I wonder whether I should tell you something or
not you remind me that we're soul mates and so alike and all, that we belong to
one another...”

   "I won't consent to this
score-keeping.  Our friendship is too sacred to be discussed as if it were
a baseball game...”

   "How will we know this
friendship exists if we can't even discuss it?"

   "Friendship," she said with
a measure of conviction that proved she was in it deep, "is something that
you feel, and feelings - if you'll remember we read about this together -
cannot be coldly dissected...”

   "We didn't read that," I
shouted angrily.  "Uncle Harry said that...”

   "Watch your tone of voice,"
she shot back.

   "And he didn't say you couldn't
dissect feelings, he just said you can't argue with feelings...”

   "You see, and you're trying to
argue with me over how much friendship I feel for you...”

   I remember asking myself whether she
was slipping or whether I was sobering up after a long, long period of
delusion.

"I'm not doubting your feelings, I just think
that your feeling that way doesn't make it reality."

   "What do you know of
reality?"

   "At least
I
don't think
fruit is sweet...”

   A slight twinge of embarrassment
flickered in her eyes, then passed.

  
"And
if we're already on that subject, when are you going on that cruise?"

   "I...
 
I'm
not going.  There was some sort of problem and the ship isn't going to
sail.  Instead I won a bunch of beauty products and a five-year discount
card for Macy's."

   "Five years!" I squawked.
 "If you keep on ignoring what's going on you won't have time to
enjoy that card for even five days!"  I went around the table and
bent toward her.  "Somebody is going to die on the 7th of September
and you are liable to get hurt.  You don't want to believe it, but I think
it's serious, in fact after yesterday, I'm certain...” I was overcome by a wave
of self-pity.  "Have you ever thought about what
I'm
going through?"
I asked.  "Did you ever try and imagine what I think of
you
,
how I've felt from the moment I realized that your behavior doesn't fit with
everything you've taught me and told me about yourself, with all your
declarations about courage and having a sense of obligation to yourself and to
the world... what am I supposed to understand now?  That all our
conversations, all the places we've been, all the big words and the grandiose
conclusions, were just lies, nonsense, bullshit?"