Chapter 12
Abstract
Later that night, Rachel drove us back to the apartment.
The moment I walked in, I felt as if it had always been my home.
I couldn’t explain it even to myself, what made me feel that way.
The place? The atmosphere? The paintings?
Lily? The energy flowing between us? Just a few days earlier, someone else had lived here, and suddenly it was me.
Not just me, but me with Lily, who had turned my life upside down.
“How was it?” she asked after pulling free from my arms and catching her breath.
“Contrary to all my fears, it was fine,” I reassured her. Later, I told her a little about Rachel. I left my brother the doctor out of the story. I knew I wouldn’t be able to hide her illness from him. But everything in its time.
“So, was I dissected at the dinner table?” she asked, half in medical jargon.
“Not just dissected – practically grilled alive. Why do you ask?”
“Seriously…” she pressed.
“I gave them a little information, that’s all. They had other things on their minds.”
“And what exactly did you say?” she insisted.
“My parents didn’t comment about me moving apartments. I think they’re counting on the officer’s course and believe I’ll come back home as a soldier – mainly for the laundry. That’s how it always starts…”
“And that’s it?”
“That’s it. Lily, there are things in the world besides our relationship, believe it or not…”
After more kisses and hugs, she insisted we look at the paintings in the living room. We picked up where we had left off, moving slowly around the room, among the walls crowded with her work, while still holding each other.
“Which painting do you like best?” I asked.
“That’s like asking a mother which of her children she loves the most,” she teased.
“Don’t you think some stand out more?”
“Of course some stand out – but why play favorites?” she shot back, her mischievous smile flashing.
Seeing me study them so intently, she wanted to know what I was looking for. I told her I was searching for something unusual, maybe provocative. She pointed to one canvas.
“You probably mean this one,” she said, showing me a piece with five distorted faces, each expressing horror in a different way.
“Not that one,” I laughed.
“Want to try again?”
“This really isn’t my field.”
“This one’s called ‘Ma’alot’ she explained, pointing to a meter-by-meter canvas, more realistic than the rest.
On the canvas were several dark figures surrounded by red stains.
“It feels familiar. I think I’ve seen this image somewhere before.”
“You haven’t seen this painting. You saw the photograph it’s based on. After the terrorist attack in Ma’alot in May 1974, a picture was published of a brother carrying his dead sister on his back.”
A shiver ran through me. An entire country had wept at that photograph. Her painting conveyed the same terror – raw, almost too real.
“You are right,” I said, and we continued through the crowded room.
Some works felt calmer, others stormier.
When she noticed me tilting my head, trying to make sense of her abstract canvases, she touched my neck gently and promised she’d explain.
She told me about lyrical abstraction, expressive abstraction, and how every painting had its own system of colors, shapes, textures, and balance – or imbalance.
It was obvious this was her true world. If it were up to her, we’d have spent the entire night analyzing her art.
At the end of the “tour,” she suddenly remembered a cake she had baked.
“Want to taste?” she asked. Later, I’d realize she had put enormous effort into baking that cake. Her creativity lived in painting, not in the kitchen.
Later still, as we sat listening to the Beatles, she asked if I wanted to see another painting.
Even if I didn’t, she said she needed me to.
I imagined she had hidden away a room full of dark canvases, ones she was afraid I’d see.
I agreed. She asked me three times if I was sure.
She stressed it was unique, impossible to sell, and only her parents and Ralf had seen it.
“Where is it?” I asked.
“On me,” she said. I thought she was confused, or maybe she had a tattoo I hadn’t noticed.
“Okay, where are you hiding it?” I asked, suddenly nervous.
“On me. I carry it everywhere.”
“A tattoo?”
“Maybe. But that’s not how I think of it.” I was embarrassed. We’d already been intimate. How could there be something I hadn’t seen?
“It’s an abstract painting someone drew on me,” she said.
“Who could have drawn on you?”
“Your friends did,” she cut me off sharply. Anger tinged her voice.
I froze.
“Is it expressive or lyrical abstraction?” I tried to joke.
“It’s not funny,” she said, her green eyes wide.
“Come,” she said at last.
“I want you to see it in our kingdom.” I liked that phrase – our kingdom.
In the bedroom, she lowered her pants slightly below the knee and slid down her sock.
“You understand the doctors painted this,” she said, pointing to a discolored patch, over twenty centimeters, covering the lower part of her leg.
For the first time, I saw her scar.
“Medical abstraction?” I tried again, half to ease the moment.
“Doesn’t it repulse you?” she asked, tears gathering.
“Why should it? I love you – with or without it. I love you, Lily.”
“I had to show you everything. I hope you’ll be the last.”
“Last what?”
“I don’t want to show it to anyone else again.”
“I’ll be the last. I promise,” I said, not realizing the weight of those words.
“Do you want to know how I got it?” she asked me of her own accord. And then, she punished the scar with her words. I’d never heard anything like it. It was, unfortunately, a tragedy with Lily in the leading role.
Eleven years earlier, at the age of fourteen, she had been ill with what seemed at first like an unremarkable throat infection. After a week of high fever that didn’t respond to antibiotics, strange symptoms appeared – uncontrollable movements, and severe memory lapses.
“The doctors said chorea?” I guessed, playing doctor.
“I think that’s what they called it.”
“But chorea doesn’t leave scars. So what caused this?”
“Please, just listen.” They’d given her blood thinners, thinking she had clots in her leg veins, and admitted her to the Hospital. On a Friday night, she suddenly felt unbearable pain in her right shin near the ankle. By the time the doctors came, the leg had turned black.
“What do you mean ‘by the time the doctors came?’” I asked in outrage, imagining the situation.
“The on-call intern came first. He had no idea what he was looking at. The nurse told him to call the physician on duty at home.”
“And did he?”
“He was too scared. Remember – it was Friday night.”
“So?”
“The nurse realized that he was confused and that I had something serious. She called the doctor on duty, who was also the deputy director.”
“And?”
“He finally came – two hours later. He said he had family obligations to take care of first,” she said bitterly. “The pain was unbearable, and the leg was really black. By the time he came, the damage was irreversible. The bastard apologized, and that was it.”
For the first time, I heard the repressed fury in her voice.
“The next day, they transferred me to New-Hope Medical Center. My parents demanded it. And since then, I’ve been in internal medicine. If I’d been in your hospital back then, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Her arms dropped for a moment, then she wrapped them around me tightly.
“You’re the first doctor I’ve ever dated,” she whispered.
“Since I was fourteen, even then, the doctors never stopped hitting on me.” Her embrace, and her words, sent a shiver through me.
“So I’m bothering you too?” I said, half dazed. In response, she pushed me down onto the bed with a sudden intensity.
“You think I showed you this scar so you’d run? I want you more than anything. I wanted you to know it from me – not from them.”
I pulled her close. She didn’t resist. The gravity between us only grew stronger.