Chapter 10
The ten-agorot coin worked. Once again, there was a delay after the initial contact of the coin in water, and then a phosphorescent explosion in my head—the sense of being drawn in, a transition through a kind of hollow pipe, and then I was ejected out.
I found myself lying on muddy earth, half my body wallowing in a large puddle.
I stood up hastily, with a sharp intake of breath, and the air hit my lungs, accompanied by particles of soot and gasoline fumes, and I immediately threw up the bread, dates, and nuts, and a bit of wine.
I didn’t have any water to wash my mouth with, so I drank from the puddle.
The taste was similar to the water in Jean’s bottle.
I stumbled back to the car, praying it was still there, and that I really was home and hadn’t accidentally landed in the Ottoman period or something.
The car was there, and the humdrum, familiar reality—the bustle of the coastal road with all its smug indifference. The date was correct, the time of day seemed right. I covered my face with my hands and inhaled deeply through my nose, which had begun to drip.
Should I seek help? If I were to tell someone what had happened to me, if I were to insist it was real, no professional in her right mind would hesitate to send me for observation, if not have me committed. No two ways about it.
I sat in the car opposite the rock with the Phoenician engraving and smoked, lowering the volume of the 5:00 p.m. news that had just begun.
The heat was on full blast, and I wondered how I was going to explain why my clothes were so muddy to Halimi.
Still panting, after I switched on the cell phone in the car, texts began popping up from him: “Where are you?”, “Diti?”, “Diti, what’s going on?
”, “Diti don’t drive me crazy”, and a few more.
Six missed calls: five from Halimi and one from my mom.
My finger hovered over Libby’s number on my phone.
It had been ages since we’d seen each other.
The last time we met was when I took refuge at her house the previous winter, resolved to divorce Halimi.
The affair with Nina was worse than anything that had come before.
Despite my appalling crying spells and my nonstop suffering, Halimi kept seeing her.
Nina wasn’t just some random chick he met at a party. She was stunning, passionate with purpose, one of the most valued and beloved writers of Free to Be. Next to her, I always felt inferior. When I discovered they were having an affair, I thought I would lose my mind.
Libby was adamant. “Find a good attorney who can get you decent alimony, move to a cute apartment, and I’ll help you raise Lily,” she said repeatedly, fussing as I lay on her couch. She made me tea, covered me up with her best blanket, found us a binge-worthy TV show, and rolled joint after joint.
But Libby never really liked Halimi; after he and I first met, she had told me he had hit on her once at some party, but he was too sleazy for her.
She ultimately accepted his existence and even managed to enjoy his company, although it was obvious that my relationship with Halimi came at the expense of my relationship with her.
She tried to hide the fact that she was insulted and angry, but when Halimi was around, she acted like he had won a competition and I was the trophy.
But he acted like that around her too.
Libby didn’t hate men, but she had been collecting statistics on their emotional intelligence since we were in high school. There had been a few men she had gotten very attached to, but as a rule, she always expected the worst from them. Particularly from someone like Halimi.
A day or two later, when Halimi rang the intercom of Libby’s building—I’d lost all sense of time there too—she trotted out every possible cliché ever used in romantic comedies.
“You don’t deserve her, you piece of shit,” she yelled at him from the window while I laughed pathetically.
Halimi, standing in the street below, spotted me cowering behind Libby.
And then, despite everything, I went down to talk to him.
He told me he had decided to leave Free to Be and said that all he wanted was for me to be happy. He showed me a few photos on his smartphone of Lily at preschool that morning. The teachers had taken them to a show, and they were so cute lined up in pairs, holding hands.
Unlike his usual behavior during a crisis, he was neither grief-stricken and remorseful nor cold and surly. He was deadpan, and his hands shook a little. I went home with him.
Since then, Libby deliberately took a back seat.
She displayed only superficial interest in our decision to move to Atlit and made several empty promises that she would come visit.
It pained me—Libby had been my best friend since high school, and the only one, aside from my sister, whom I could talk to about anything and everything.
But she had never been in a relationship for more than a year, or had kids of her own, nor did she believe that Halimi and I really loved each other.
She thought we had a sick codependency. That’s what she said when I took refuge at her place that last time.
And that’s what I told myself every time I finished a strained conversation with her, or when I considered calling but decided not to bother.
Libby wouldn’t enjoy hearing what happened to me.
She probably wouldn’t even care. And if she did, she would play the voice of reason and urge me to go into therapy right away.
She would launch a campaign and enlist my parents and sister to convince me I needed serious medication.
Hospitalization. I trembled all over. My finger wavered over her name until I shoved the phone back in my pocket.
Instant relief. I tried to recall the last time I had a secret.
I took one long final drag of the cigarette, tossed it out the window, and headed home.
When I parked the car in the street by the house, my heart began pounding in my chest. I would remain calm. What was the big deal? All I did was go for a walk.
“You’re something else, Idit. Something else.” Halimi shook his head in furious disbelief. Lily was eating strawberry yogurt on the other side of the balcony windows, swinging her legs in the high chair. She’s getting too big for that chair, I thought.
“You’re right,” I admitted. “I didn’t mean to freak you out. It’s just I needed to … go off-grid for a while.”
Halimi reacted as if I’d kicked him in the face.
“You’re kidding me, right?” he said with cold rage. “You’re like, what, taking revenge on me?”
I stared at him in bewilderment. Then, I remembered how he had disappeared last Thursday and how he had referred to it. I smiled.
“Oh, I know it sounds as if …” I said, trying to suppress my smile.
“But it’s nothing like that. My battery was already low when I left the house, but I really wanted to take a walk and see the flamingos again.
Probably the aftereffects of the ’shrooms. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.
That dumb phone has the worst battery life ever.
I’ll take care of it; I’ll have it fixed at the lab. ”
Halimi still looked grim. He stared at me with distrust. He didn’t say a word, just smoked his cigarette resentfully.
“Limi,” I said softly. He continued smoking, fixated on Lily as she licked her spoon clean. My foot began jiggling all by itself.
“I don’t understand why you’re making such a big deal out of it,” I said, sighing. “If anyone should understand the need to … you know, go off-grid, it’s you, don’t you think?” I made a supreme effort to not let in the slightest tone of sarcasm.
Halimi fell silent for a few seconds and then added, “Have you got a lover? Should I expect aftershave, smudged makeup, and the smell of semen?” There was no trace of humor in his voice. I was furious but got a grip on myself.
“You’ve got some nerve, acting jealous over literally nothing,” I said quietly.
He glared at me for a few seconds. “What do you mean by ‘literally nothing’?”
For some reason, this amused me. “Come on, Limi,” I said tiredly. “The beautiful Countess of Atlit in wet sweatpants, wowing all the knights. Honestly.” The edges of his mouth curved up slightly. I got up from my chair and went over to him.
“It’s true I’m a bit … scatterbrained,” I said meditatively, resting my chin on the soft stubble of his shaven head. “But in my opinion, Dan’s mushrooms opened up some weird-ass chakra inside me.”
“And what’s with all the mud?” he grumbled, scratching at a piece of dried mud stuck to my sweatpants.
“Stupidity,” I said lightly. “I wandered around and stared at the flamingos for a few hours, and everything was fine, and just as I was getting back to the car, I slipped and fell in a puddle.” Halimi hugged me tightly.
“All right, as long as you’re okay. Don’t do that to me again, Diti,” he said.
I went to take a shower. It looked like my period was over.
I sighed with relief. When I came back to the living room, cheeks flushed and hair damp, I stopped for a moment to look at Halimi and Lily, snuggled on the couch together under a checkered blanket, watching Robin Hood.
The sun had already set, but it wasn’t totally dark outside.
The TV flickered in the dim light of the living room, and everything felt calm.
“Scoot over, make room for me,” I said. Halimi, who was half-asleep, smiled and yawned and removed the backrests of the couch.
We both fell asleep and woke up as the final song was playing.
“I wanna watch all of it,” cried Lily, who loved the entire movie, and even the credits as they rolled up the screen.