Chapter 3
Richard drove from the airport in a rented car, arriving early Thursday evening.
Lily didn’t really remember him from the previous summer, but he swiftly won her over.
After giving Simone a hug, slapping Halimi on the back, and kissing my hand chivalrously—I responded with a curtsy—he sat down on the rug with Lily in his suit and tie and fancy shoes and showed her how to make fruit from Play-Doh by using plastic molds.
Richard whipped out gift after gift—a snow globe with a candy cottage à la the Brothers Grimm, a music box with a twirling ballerina, and a wooden sword.
The hilt of the sword was decorated with delicate engravings in silver and green.
Lily held it tightly in her fist and refused to let go, even when she went to sleep.
Richard and Simone retired early to the guest room while we tidied up.
Then, Halimi went to take a shower. He’d left early that morning to pick up the mushrooms in Tel Aviv.
I had expected him back just after noon, assuming he wouldn’t pass up the chance to swing by the Minzar or Prince bar.
I imagined him extolling the details of his new bourgeois life to random acquaintances (“When you grow up, kids, you’ll come to appreciate the difference between life with and without a dishwasher”).
At two o’clock, still with no sign of him, I was seething with anger, and by four I had retreated into my usual frosty mood when I can’t cope with Halimi.
There was no time for cross-examination—I was bringing in the laundry when I heard him come in, and then Simone returned with a huge bouquet of flowers, rye bread, and treats from the deli.
Lily was watching Robin Hood but kept demanding things (“Chocolate milk!” “In the pink cup!” “Where’s my sword? ” “Mommy, come sit with me!”).
When Halimi went to take a shower, I walked into the bedroom, thinking he would have undressed there.
But he must have stripped in the bathroom, so I went in, pretending I needed to pee.
He poked his head around the shower curtain.
I made a pathetic attempt to smile, and he retreated behind the curtain without saying a word.
Without moving off the toilet seat, I reached into the pocket of his pants, which were on top of the laundry basket.
I pulled out his phone and dropped it into my pocket.
I stood up and flushed the toilet (Halimi said, “Ouch”).
Alone in the kitchen with the despised metallic beast, I tapped in his password and began scanning the apps that usually most aroused my suspicion: Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram.
I went through his Web history and checked whether he’d installed Tinder or some other dating app and stashed it away in a hidden folder.
I went through his call log, his text messages.
I tried going through his timeline on Google Maps, but he must have turned off GPS.
Apart from that, everything looked innocent.
A text message to Dan in the morning and then two phone calls—one to Zozo, his good friend, and another to Simone.
A one-minute conversation. He’d probably asked Simone when she was coming home.
I checked what time he’d made that call: 12:10 p.m.
“You won’t find anything there,” Halimi said. I was startled and jumped, and the phone fell from my hands.
“I know you hate it, but it’s a bit much to smash it on the floor,” Halimi joked. I wasn’t in the mood. With shaking hands, I picked it up; unfortunately, it had survived the fall unscathed.
“Diti. What’s up?” Halimi asked, still keeping his distance, standing by the fridge. His ridiculously large white bathrobe was wrapped around his big body.
“What’s up? You know exactly what’s up,” I said. “Where were you?”
Halimi took a deep breath. “I was in Tel Aviv,” he said purposefully.
“I stopped by Dan’s place and got us some mushrooms, then I sat in the sun with Zozo for a couple of hours and had a beer, and I praised our life here until Zozo wanted to bury me alive, then I went to the beach and walked along the shore from the northern part of the city to Jaffa and back again. ”
“Really?” I wanted to cry, but the lump in my throat just hurt in my ears and pricked at my eyes.
I saw a hint of a smile and got mad all over again.
“But you get why I’m paranoid, right?” My suspicion bloomed in the silence.
“Why did you go walking on the beach?” Halimi liked walking, but he hardly ever went to the beach in Tel Aviv, and now he had the entire Atlit seashore at his disposal, and it was so much nicer.
Probably lying again, I thought. He came nearer, and I felt ready to erupt.
“Diti, you’re right, you’re so right, relax,” Halimi said quietly. Blood pounded in my ears. I imagined myself scooping up Lily in the middle of the night and fleeing by car.
“I totally get your paranoia,” Halimi continued, increasingly serious, his voice pleading. “I’m a jerk, I should have texted or called. I’m an asshole, really.”
I heard the candor in his voice, and the hard knot in my stomach loosened. He took another step toward me, and I shrank back again. “I swear on my mother’s life that I just needed to walk and be alone for a bit. Get off the grid for a few hours. But I’m an idiot. I should have told you.”
I believed him. After all, most of the time he didn’t exactly lie but rather squirmed or sidestepped or tried to cover his tracks, and my radar was well attuned to signs of adultery.
I had good reason to be paranoid, but there was no incriminating evidence, which there always was when my suspicions were justifiable.
I took a deep breath and went over to the couch.
“Make us tea, you dumb jerk,” I told him.
Simone and Richard left early Friday morning. Lily busily packed her giraffe backpack with colored crayons and her Mr. Happy book. Richard stowed the sword he’d given her in his duffel bag. Halimi transferred Lily’s car seat to the rental.
Lily and I waited on the front porch. We’d left her several times with my parents, and my sister Dina when she came to visit, and even with Simone and Richard in Paris, but we’d always put her to bed, and we were always back by morning.
I didn’t want to make a big deal of it, but I looked at Lily playing with the zipper of her backpack and couldn’t help myself.
“You’ll have fun,” I blurted out and immediately regretted it.
Lily looked up at me and smiled. “Have fun,” she repeated.
“I got colors, you wanna draw?” she continued, yanking out the pack of crayons.
I began explaining that she was going away with Simone and Richard any minute.
Naturally, there were tears when we parted, and when I kissed Lily’s wet cheeks, I had to hold myself back from crying.
“Bye, sweetie,” Halimi said, leaning through the window on the other side of the car. “Au revoir, Maman, au revoir, Richard,” he added, straightening up as the car reversed out of the driveway.
“She’ll be fine, right?” I said.
“Sure,” Halimi said, with more confidence than he was probably feeling. “By the time they’re out of Atlit, she’ll have forgotten you ever existed.”
I snorted, and we went inside. The uncanny silence of the house put me at ease.
Light shone warm gold through the windows onto the tile floor, the furniture, and Simone’s bouquet of flowers—anemones and chrysanthemums. “So, what’s on the menu?
” I asked Halimi. I rolled myself a cigarette and filled the kettle.
“Whatever you like, Diti,” said Halimi. He went over to the computer and put on Nick Cave’s Let Love In. I smiled at him. “I suggest coffee, then sex, then food and drink while watching whatever show you like, then either a power nap or a real good sleep, and then we’ll head out.”
“Sounds perfect,” I said. “But is it okay to eat before we do mushrooms? I can’t remember. The last time was in Amsterdam.”
“We’ll eat around noon. By the time it begins to take effect, whatever we ate will be long gone,” he said amenably.
“Whatever, but forget about sex because I have my period,” I announced.
“I’m not worried,” Halimi answered, rummaging through the fridge, pulling out soft cheeses, salami, pickled vegetables left over from last night’s dinner. He made coffee using the blend he’d bought in Tel Aviv the day before and brought the food out to the balcony.
When the coffee was ready, I poured out two cups and went out to join him.
Halimi was sitting there with his phone (I slipped by and glanced in his direction—he was checking his Twitter feed).
We ate and drank and smoked. I read for a while, and Halimi messed with his phone.
“Come over here, sit in my lap,” he suddenly said.
We made out for a while and then retreated indoors.
I started going down on him, intent on pleasing him.
It really turned me on, but I had a strict no-fucking policy when I had my period, despite Halimi’s efforts to persuade me otherwise.
During my adolescence, my mom had hammered into me the four hard rules of a menstruating woman: Never sit on cold stone, never let a cold wind enter your panties, never bathe in cold water, and on no account allow a man to penetrate you.
When I was young, I thought this was all superstition, but my mom insisted it was a surefire way to avoid cervical cancer.
Although I was never totally convinced, I stuck to it.
Halimi tried his best to convince me for years but knew exactly how stubborn I was.
At the beginning, it turned him on; he thought it was a religious thing.
Later, as the years went by, it became a kind of sport, a challenge to get me to “drop the complex,” as Halimi called it.