Apart From Love

Apart From Love. ©2012 Uvi Poznansky.
 

All rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Published by
 

Uviart

P.O. Box 3233 Santa Monica CA 90408

Website: uviart.com

Email: [email protected]

First Edition 2012

Printed in the United States of America

The characters in this book are fictional. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Book design, cover design and cover image by
 

Uvi Poznansky

For my husband

As Told by Ben

A
bout a year ago I sifted through the contents of my suitcase, and was just about to discard a letter, which my father had written to me some time ago. Almost by accident my eye caught the line,
I have no one to blame for all this but myself,
which I had never noticed before, because it was written in an odd way, as if it were a secret code, almost: upside down, in the bottom margin of the page, with barely a space to allow any breathing.
 

The words left some impression in my memory. I almost wished he were next to me, so I could not only listen to him, but also record his voice saying that.
 

I imagined him back home, leaning over his desk, scrawling each letter with the finest of his pens with great care, as if focusing through a thick magnifying glass. The writing was truly minute, as if he had hated giving away even the slightest hint to a riddle I should have been able to solve on my own. I detested him for that. And so, thinking him unable to open his heart to me, I could never bring myself to write back. In hindsight, that may have been a mistake.
 

Even so, I am only too happy to agree with him: the blame for what happened in our family is his. Entirely his. If not for his actions ten years ago, I would never have run away to Firenze, to Rome, to Tel Aviv. And if not for his actions a couple of weeks ago, this frantic call for me to come back and see him would never have been made.
 

And so I find myself standing here, on the threshold of where I grew up, feeling utterly awkward. I knock, and a stranger opens the door. The first thing that comes to mind: what is
she
doing here? The second thing: she is young, much too young for him. The third: her hair. Red.
 

I try not to stare—but to my astonishment, this girl with the kittenish eyes seems to be my age, so much younger than I have previously expected. Her name is the one thing I know for sure: Anita. She moves fast, and with a slight sway of the hips, just like my mother, which makes me want to forget, for a moment, that she is not.
 

She lays a hand on my suitcase, and she drags the thing—as if it were a wounded hostage—into what used to be my room. I walk in behind her, captivated, at each step, by folds playing across her tight, short skirt.
 

“There,” says Anita.

And she kicks the thing to the corner of the room, shoving it along the way from side to side to make it fit, somehow, under the shelf, where some of my old childhood knickknacks are still on display.
 

And there, half hidden behind my old baseball mitt, is a flimsy metal frame with a dusty glass, under which is a picture I have nearly forgotten: a picture of my family from ages ago.
 

Here is me, a ten years old boy smiling timidly, with a metal brace shining across the front teeth. Here is dad, hugging me with his right hand, and mom, hugging me with her left. The ring on her finger happens to catch the light. Their cheeks nearly touch, because they were such a perfect fit—or so I thought.
   

Meanwhile, Anita turns on her heels to ask me, “You tired?”
 

“No,” I feel compelled to lie, because who is she to ask me anything.
 

“OK, fine,” she says, shrugging. “Want some warm milk or something, before bed?”
 

To which I say, “What, you think I’m a baby?”
 

With one swift step Anita is right here beside me, which takes me entirely by surprise. With no shame whatsoever, she looks me up and down and bursts out laughing, a deep, throaty kind of a laugh.
 

“You? A baby? Oh, no,” she says. “Definitely not that. What are you, twenty-five now?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Your father told me so much about you.”
 

“Really? He did?”
 

“I feel like I know you already,” she points playfully at the picture. “See there, how tight they used to hold you?”

I shrug, and she goes on, “I can almost hear them say, Don’t touch this, Ben. Don’t touch that. I can almost hear you, too, like, Don’t touch me here. Don’t touch me there. Just don’t. Don’t you dare.”

And before I can say anything, she takes hold of my right hand, then my left, swings me playfully around the room, and pushes me directly to bed, with a twinkle in her eye. “So? Want a goodnight kiss?”
 

“No,” I say, because who is she to play mother to me.
 

“You sure?” she says.

Which is when I sense for the first time that she may be lonely here, in our old apartment, surrounded by these yellowing pictures, besieged by forgotten history, which must seem so distant to her, because it belongs to others. She must be lonely as only a new bride can be, with my father out there in the hospital.
 

“Sure, I’m sure,” I say, with an unsure voice.
 

“You look awful tired, lying there,” she says. “Don’t fall asleep with your clothes on.”

“What do you care?” I say. “And oh, by the way, Mazel Tov... So sorry, I totally forgot, I ought to congratulate you.”

But she does not seem to mind what I say, or for that matter, what I do not, and I know it, because a second later her lips are on me—on my forehead, really—moist and soft, and her hair brushes my face, it is fragrant, and this is like no goodnight kiss I have ever felt before. So I close my eyes and breathe her in, wishing, suddenly, for more.
 

Anita spreads the blanket over me and it comes down heavy, heavy enough not only to stop me from shivering—but also to fix me in place, straighten my limbs for me and then, iron out every fold on my skin. I am home, the same home I was in such a hurry to leave ten years ago, just before my parents divorced.

I turn over to the wall, and immediately turn back, trying to catch her scent, which Anita has left behind her, quite carelessly, before halting there, by the light switch. Which makes me wonder: will she stay—or will she go?
 

With a click she turns off the light, and then closes the door on her way out.
 

I find it hard, you see, to be hostile to her, or to blame her for the accident, because at first glance she looks innocent, almost, and because her fragrance is so potent, to the point of making it known that she is in heat, and because this place, where I grew up, seems to play tricks on my mind.
 

In my weakness I feel, all of a sudden, like a child, a man-child gazing at the light, the pencil of light rolling in right there, under the door.
 

So there I lie, staring at the ceiling, where shadows are flickering, as if they were trapped here from a time gone by. I remember the voices seeping through the wall from the direction of my parents’ bedroom.
 

Mom said, “What’s the matter, Lenny?”

And dad said, “Oh nothing, dear.”

There was a long silence, after which mom said, “Are you having a
thing
again?”
 

And dad said, “What thing?”

And she says, “You know exactly what I am talking about.”

In place of an answer he tries to hush her, saying, “The walls here, they are so thin, dear. The neighbors, they may hear you. And the boy, he’s barely asleep—”

“Don’t—don’t you hush me now, Lenny! I want an answer from you. I want the truth.”

“Please, Natasha, not that again.”

“Yes or no, Lenny! Are you having an affair?”

“No, dear, but even if I did, you know well enough that it would mean nothing, just nothing to me.”

“Who is she, this time?”

“You,” he said, turning serious now. “You are the woman I adore.”
 

That was no lie. He did adore her—but at the same time, dad seemed to believe that a man was entitled to have some fun on the side. After all it was mom who encouraged him to leave the apartment every evening when her students came in for piano lessons. Which was why he started idling around, and spending so much time at some ice cream shop, down at the pier, where that girl, who stood behind the counter with her two scoops on top, was only too happy to serve him.