Look for Me (34 page)

“Yes, once. I can only see a tiny part of the beach from my
upstairs window, but suddenly there you were. I was sure you were here because you’d found me. But you never came. Then I found out you’d come to take pictures. I have your book of photographs.”

“Good for you.”

“I saw the review in the paper and I ordered a copy.”

“Hard to believe that it was once easy to come down here, that things were peaceful for a while.”

“It was never really peaceful. That was just an illusion everyone was happy to maintain for a short time.”

“Actually … I do remember a Leopold. Daniel, think. You knew him too. Think for a minute.”

“I have thought. I’ve thought about it a million times, of course.”

“Remember the Italian restaurant where we used to eat? Near the embassy? There was a waiter there, his name was Leopold. He had long dark hair, he wore it in a ponytail.”

“I think I vaguely remember that waiter. I’m sure I never knew his name.”

“You did. We joked about it. That’s where that part of your dream came from.”

“You did flirt with that waiter, as I recall.”

“I didn’t.”

“You flirted with everyone, Dana. Not deliberately, maybe not even consciously, but you were always flirting. And those sexy clothes …”

“Okay, that’s it. I’m going. This is obviously hopeless. I’m not going to sit here and be insulted in every possible way you can think of. Go ahead and reinvent the past. I’m leaving.”

“Don’t go. Please stay a little longer. We can’t leave things hanging like this.”

“Daniel, you
wanted
me to wear sexy clothes. I did it for you, for us. So you’d be proud of me, so you’d be turned on, and
also so I’d be turned on. I haven’t worn anything except jeans since you left. Why didn’t you ever tell me all these things?”

“You never had anything with that waiter?”

“Of course not. I don’t know anything about him except his name and that he had crooked teeth, as I remember. And he was nice. He was probably gay.”

“How’s Alex?”

“What do you care? You left all of us. You hurt your family, Alex, me. All the people you loved, supposedly, and who loved you.”

“I had nothing to offer anyone.”

“Why? You’re not even handicapped. So what’s the big deal?”

“You’re just pretending, Dana.”

“You know, I never realized what a superficial person you were. I used to say you had a narrow view of aesthetics and I was right. You don’t know anything about beauty and you obviously never will. I don’t know what I ever saw in you. You’re vain, shallow, suspicious, cruel. I don’t know why I waited for you all these years.”

“When you walked in here, I could tell you had seen me before. Because everyone reacts. And you didn’t. You must have seen me in the hospital.”

“All I see when I see you is Daniel. I’m sorry if that’s not enough for you.
Leopold. I
can’t believe it. Leopold, the phantom lover. At least you could have asked me.”

“How could I ask you when I heard you tell Alex you were going to lie to me, that you were going to stay with me out of pity? My mother was there too, and she was crying.”

“Well, that proves it! Your mother was in Greece!”

“Didn’t she come back when she heard?”

“We couldn’t track your parents down. Didn’t you know that?”

“No.”

“Did you think I was just putting on a big act when I put all those ads in the paper?”

“I thought you felt guilty.”

“Daniel, I want to touch you.”

“I’m out of practice.”

“Well, it’s like riding a bike. You don’t really forget.”

“I think we have to talk first about what you want and what I want and where we go from here.”

“No, I think we have to touch first, and then talk.”

“It’s too overwhelming for me.”

“Tough. You think you can control everything. Well, for once I’m deciding.” I pulled off my clothes and lay naked on the embroidered bedspread.

“Just like that first time,” he said.

“Has my body changed?”

“No. Incredibly, it’s exactly the same. Your arm is bruised, though.”

I looked at my arm. He was right, my upper arm had turned copper brown and blue. “It’s that schmuck who hit me. It looks worse than it is, it doesn’t hurt.”

“Everyone’s gone crazy. There’s no sanity left. Poor Dana.”

“He was angry about other things, and he was letting it out on me … Aren’t you going to kiss me?”

“No, I can’t.”

“At least sit next to me.”

He walked over to the bed, sat down at the edge, and looked at me, but he didn’t touch me.

I took his hand and put it on my midriff. His eyes filled with tears.

“What have you got to cry about?” I said. “I’m the one who should be crying.”

“You had your turn, now it’s mine. I’m not ready for this,” Daniel said. “You’re going too fast.”

“Maybe because I’ve waited such a long time. Maybe it makes me impatient.”

“A few minutes ago you were ready to strangle me.”

“Remember our fights?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“I used to get so mad. What did we fight about, apart from the mess?”

“About nothing, really. Once I laughed at something in a movie and you got mad. Sometimes you hated my jokes. Once I woke you in the middle of the night to ask you to remind me to pay some bill or other. It was just an excuse, I wanted to wake you because I missed you. You were pretty mad. Another time we argued about that television interviewer, I didn’t like her, you did, or maybe it was the other way around. After your miscarriage we argued about whether I should have been so rude to the hospital staff. You felt it backfired, I was convinced you would have died otherwise. We argued about cat food. That’s all I remember, though I’m sure there were a few more I’ve forgotten. We didn’t argue much, if you consider that we were together seven years and two months.”

“We always made up pretty fast.”

“Not this fast. And anyhow, have we made up?”

“No. I’m still pissed off at you.”

“We should wait until you aren’t pissed off.”

“You’re just looking for an excuse.”

“You’re forcing yourself to overlook how you feel.”

“You don’t know anything about me or how I feel. You used to be so in tune with me. Why don’t you just touch me if you don’t believe me?”

I took his hand and placed it between my legs.

“Yes, you’re wet.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I am surprised.” He started moving his hand the way I liked,
he remembered exactly what I liked. Then suddenly he stopped, got up, and moved away.

“I can’t,” he said.

I didn’t say anything. I lay on the bed, naked and miserable. I pulled off the bedspread and blankets, and slid under the sheets and shut my eyes. In a few minutes I was asleep.

I slept for an hour. I woke up to the sound of purring; there was a black-and-white cat lying at my feet. Daniel was gone. He’d left a note on the table:
Went to buy food, back very soon. Don’t go out, it’s dangerous.
He underlined
Don’t go out
several times and added a tiny drawing to the note, the way he used to do when we lived together. His style had changed a little—it was more abstract. He’d drawn me sleeping and dreaming of a cat pyramid.

I found a dark green T-shirt in one of his drawers and I put it on; it reached my thighs. Then I climbed the spiral stairs to the upper story of the house. The walls of his workshop were covered with postcards, clippings from magazines, cartoons from newspapers. I remembered some of the cartoons, and I remembered thinking that Daniel would like them. One showed a camp counselor who was all dressed up for hiking telling campers in a bunk,
Today, children, we’re going to the balcony.
In another, two storekeepers in a mall were laughing hysterically at a robber who was holding them up with a gun. A mock headline about an actual poisoning incident read
ARAB POISONED HIMSELF, CUT INTO PIECES, COVERED WITH BREAD CRUMBS, SOLD PIECES TO JEWS.
The headline was taped to a fashion advertisement showing a sexy woman suggestively checking another woman for bombs at the entrance to a store. Daniel had drawn a mustache on one of the women.

I went down to the ground floor and looked at the sculptures. Some were exactly my size, and some were very small, set on tables that matched the kitchen table upstairs. I was shown in various poses, naked or wearing outfits I had once owned. The small clay figures were painted in startling, witty ways. There were at least fifty sculptures in the room. I also found a stack of notebooks Daniel was in the middle of correcting. Student notebooks, compositions in English.
My name is Marwan. I am boy. I go school. Last week I jump from window and break toe. In the end only it was paper bag went boom.

And Daniel’s comments.
Very good work, Marwan.
A new part of him.

I opened another notebook.
My name is Leila. When I grow up I want to die for Palestine.
Daniel had written,
I hope you will live for Palestine, Leila.

I read all the compositions.
I am Muhammad. I have five big brothers and when they mad at me I run to mother. I am trying to learn brave.
Daniel wrote,
You are already a very brave young man, Muhammad.

I heard Daniel’s key in the lock. I ran to the door and jumped on him when he entered. He was forced to drop his bags and hold me. I wound my legs around his waist and kissed him for a long time.

“See what you’ve been missing, you stupid idiot,” I said.

“Let’s make supper,” he said.

We went up to the kitchen and cooked in silence. It was just like the old days; we didn’t need to talk. We knew exactly what we were making and what to do. We made cabbage croquettes and bean salad and baked potatoes with melted cheese and a huge pot of couscous.

Then we ate. I was very hungry. I felt as if I hadn’t eaten in several years, and I kept heaping more and more food onto my plate.

“I’m a vegetarian now,” Daniel said.

“How come?”

“I got food poisoning three times from meat here, so I just quit. And I found I didn’t miss it. Once you get out of the habit, you lose interest.”

“What else has changed about you? Tell me everything.”

“I have a good friend, William. He’s an American-born Palestinian, and his Arabic is even worse than mine. We see a lot of each other—he comes over for dinner, we play chess. He’s a lawyer. He left a cushy life to come here, and he keeps asking himself how long it’s going to be before he has a nervous breakdown and goes back to Colorado. He’s a good guy, you’d like him. He thought I should contact you. So did Ella.”

“Do you know any real militants?”

“Such a naïve question, Dana. It just shows how out of touch people on the outside are.”

“You don’t joke around the way you used to.”

“That’s true. I joke around with my students, though. They love to laugh.”

“Alex said you’d be different.”

“Who else knows that you’ve found me?”

“Just Alex and another friend. I didn’t tell your family.”

I watched his hands as he helped himself to salad. I took one of his hands in mine and kissed it. “I love your wrinkled hand.”

He pulled away. “Don’t,” he said.

“Okay, that’s new, that’s not like you … But I’ll get used to it. I dreamed I could only have you if I was blind. And I was willing to be blind, if that’s what it took … What’s it like teaching here?”

“It’s hard, of course. Sometimes it’s more about just making it through the day. Tension and fighting inside the classroom, incursion hell outside the classroom, more tension and fighting at home … the kids are under unimaginable stress. You have to get used to compromising.”

“That reminds me of something. I was at a checkpoint, and you know how these Palestinian men just hang around all day, hands in pockets, just trapped with nowhere to go. I went over to take some photographs of them. Then one guy came over to me and said, ‘We have nothing to do, so we start fighting with each other!’ He was so desperate to tell someone and he had no one to tell, so he chose me. He was pleading with me, as if I had the magic key. I felt helpless, as usual.”

“You’re doing a lot. Just being there and taking photographs and showing you understand is immensely important. It has a huge impact. Palestinians are very in tune with who their friends are.”

“What about the Migdal killing last year? Those Migdal people were on their side.”

“Yes, that really was horrible. There are lunatics in every society, unfortunately.”

“What will you do with this house now?”

“I’m not coming back, Dana.”

“You are. Because I don’t want to live here, for a million obvious reasons.”

“People depend on me here, too,” he said. “I can’t desert them. I live here now. I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to see men looking at you with desire. I don’t want to feel that they have a right to you and I don’t.”

“I never knew you were so paranoid. A nurse told me you only had second-degree burns on most of your body. Those kind of burns don’t even leave scars. Is that true?”

“I do have scars on my body, but not everywhere.”