Chapter 7 #2
A few weeks earlier, Halimi and I had decided against going on a honeymoon in my ninth month—I was nervous enough about giving birth before the wedding—and planned on a long vacation after the baby was born.
Dina claimed that if everything went according to plan and I recovered quickly, this would be our best option for the next few years.
“Remember, two months after Eva’s birth, Georg and I went to the Glastonbury Festival?
It was perfect. Two years later, we went back, and it was a nightmare.
I spent every minute of the day running after her to make sure she didn’t drown in a puddle or accidentally drink MDMA. ”
“Let’s go there!” I said decisively.
“Go where?” Dina asked.
I rolled my eyes at her. “To the café where they’re meeting,” I said, feeling both pathetic and like a cat ready for the kill at the same time.
“Be my guest. I’m staying here,” Dina said.
I gave her a withering look but said nothing.
In her place, I’m not sure even I would have gone along with what might easily turn into a juicy family scandal for everyone to see.
I quickly found a taxi—one of the advantages of my huge belly—and ten minutes later, I was there.
I went inside as unobtrusively as I could, heart beating wildly.
They weren’t inside, so I walked through to the pretty patio where everyone sat when the weather was nice.
I saw Halimi right away, with a skinny, good-looking girl who was laughing at one of his jokes.
Halimi’s hand reached out to remove a crumb from her hair.
I kept going as if possessed, until I was standing in front of Halimi and the girl.
“Oh my God!” the girl blurted as my huge belly blocked her line of vision.
“Diti,” Halimi said, alarmed. “Is everything okay?”
“Just wonderful!” I snarled. I reached behind me with one hand and pulled up a chair. I sat down with a thud. Halimi’s mouth hung open. He stared at me for a few seconds, and I stared back.
“Idit,” Halimi said icily.
“Saul,” I replied, matching his tone. He opened his eyes wide and shook his head slowly.
I didn’t know whether he was berating me or apologizing.
He probably didn’t know either. His Camels lay on the table.
I helped myself to a cigarette and lit it with deep satisfaction.
“Idit,” Halimi repeated, squirming uncomfortably in his chair.
“Sorry, am I embarrassing you?” I asked, panting heavily. Halimi was quick to assume an expression of amusement. I gaped at him like an open grave.
“Diti, why are you looking at me like that? Chill out,” he said, turning serious again. “Please, meet Annabelle.” I snickered bitterly and immediately felt embarrassed. “Annabelle’s a highly successful artist from Stockholm, here to work on an important project in Netivot.”
Halimi mumbled the last few words into his chin as I turned my attention to Annabelle (“She had killer style and a beautiful face,” I later described her to Dina. “Thick, fair hair, pale blue eyes, and all that. A face that reminded me of Miss Piggy, but really beautiful. Yup.”).
Annabelle looked me in the eyes, and I could imagine a lump gathering in her throat. “Do you think I’m an embarrassment too?” I asked her without even trying to control the tremor in my voice.
“I don’t think so,” Annabelle’s voice shook.
“Diti, Diti, enough,” Halimi begged.
In the taxi home, we each looked out of a different window.
The streets flashed by slowly, and all the usual things that people did—crossing the street, dragging shopping carts behind them, casually chatting, waiting for a bus—seemed to me superfluous, like some dumb show that kept on going long after the audience had left.
“You told me you wanted us to be free,” Halimi said in a flat voice, without turning to face me.
I nodded my head sadly at the window. “But we agreed you’d share, that you’d tell me.”
“To share what with you?” Halimi lunged at me. “That I’m attracted to someone? That I flirted with someone? That I got a boner when I imagined her giving me a blowjob? How much detail do you want?” The taxi driver froze in his seat and took a hard look at us in the rearview mirror.
“Idiot! We’re newlyweds!” I yelled at him with all the strength my whale-body could muster. “We just got married last week! What the hell is your problem?”
Halimi’s eyes locked with mine resolutely.
“Perhaps I really am a bit of an ass,” he admitted.
“But maybe that’s part of this whole issue—I feel so free with you that it’s kind of become a way to celebrate what we have together.
The fact that I’m truly free.” I tried to work out if this was even logical, and I caught the driver nodding his head.
“He really played her,” I imagined the driver telling his wife later. “And she fell for it,” I imagined him adding, knowing there was no way on earth his wife would stand for something like that.
They’re clueless, I thought. They know nothing.
I woke up with a start on the couch. My hand reached out for my huge belly, and for a moment I panicked at its absence. But Lily was born a long time ago, I remembered with relief, turning over onto my back.
When I told Dina about my mushroom adventures, she took it kind of badly.
She was full of concern; all of a sudden, she looked old.
She even called Georg and asked me to tell him everything all over again.
Sheepishly, I briefly repeated the trip I’d had, my rusty German making me feel a bit ridiculous.
Georg listened patiently, asked a few questions, and nodded his head gravely.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he reassured my sister, and then he turned his attention to me, his voice full of good intention. “It’s part of the whole thing.”
It was truly magic, I told myself, recalling the glossy manes of those magnificent horses, in fine fabrics and exquisite embroidery, better dressed than I’d ever been.
I was stressed by all that magic at the time, and yes, I freaked out, I only wanted to arrive back home in one piece—but if it were to happen again …