Disobedience

  She began to walk. And stopped. She looked around. Was she being observed? By one of the neighbors or by someone inside her own house? She walked a few steps back until she was standing in front of her house. She stopped again. She had the urge to run from the house, the feeling that it might swallow her. She rubbed her knuckles into her eyes until she saw paisley in red and green.

  “I am tired of you,” she said to herself, pushed open the gate, and walked to her front door.

  Oh, she had forgotten. Until she saw, in the hallway, the tangle of sports bag, suit carrier, raincoat, suitcases, duffel bag, and three airport carrier bags, bursting so that their sides were starting to split, she had forgotten that along with Ronit came objects, thousands of things, each with its own significance and life. That for each thing Ronit would have a story, or an opinion, loud and vivid. Esti stood, smiling, in the hallway, soaking up the Ronit-ness of everything around her. She looked at the magazines, jumpers, books, pencils poking out of the bags and tried to examine and remember each one separately. She felt it was important to note every moment.

  The sound of movement came from the living room. A glass being put down, a quiet laugh. The sound of chairs being pushed back from the table. It was too soon, she wasn’t ready. Did she have time to run? No. The door of the living room opened.

  And there was Ronit. She was as Esti had remembered her and more. At a single glance, one could tell that she did not live here anymore; she was like an exotic bloom found unexpectedly pushing its way between paving stones. She was rosily magnificent, dressed like a woman from a magazine or a poster: large bosom straining at the buttons of a red shirt, the curve of her rounded belly and backside accentuated by a long black skirt. Esti looked, simply absorbing the sight of her, focusing first on one element, then another. Yes, this was Ronit. Black eyes, black bobbed hair, dark skin, a slash of red lipstick, and a disapproving smile.

  “Esti,” she said, “it’s good to see you.”

  Esti felt suddenly overwhelmed by this immensity of experience. She was here. After so long. Here. A pressure weighed on her forehead and around her scalp, a hum like an electrical device. Ronit had seen Dovid, knew that she was married. Something should be said about that, some explanation given. She felt distracted. Ronit was looking at her. Ronit, here, was looking at her and she was aware that she was crinkling her forehead and moving her shoulders as though trying to rid herself of a skin irritation. It really was time for her to say something now. The whole of her life needed explanation. Reasons should be given for the past eight years. What could she find to say that would explain all of this? At last, she had it.

  “Ronit,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Skin-drenching regret, blisters of misery.

  Ronit said, “What?”

  It was Dovid who rescued her. She had forgotten his presence entirely. He suggested they eat dinner together. Was there, perhaps, something that could be warmed up? This was utterly wrong, she saw suddenly. There should have been a sumptuous feast, thirty courses, garlands of flowers, finger bowls, palate-cleansing sorbets between dishes, twenty kinds of chicken and forty different fish. She reheated a beef stew from the freezer and served it with vegetables and rice.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  “Esti,” said Ronit, mouth already full, “will you stop apologizing, sit down, and eat? This is delicious.”

  She was lost. Beyond apology, she could not think of anything else to say. She noted that the water jug was empty and took it into the kitchen.

  “You don’t have to serve us, you know!” Ronit called after her, remaining seated.

  Ronit and Dovid spoke about the synagogue, about the plans for the future.

  “Now, I know what you said, Dovid, but just between us,” said Ronit, helping herself to more stew, “they want you to be the new Rav, don’t they?” She smiled at the side of her mouth. “Whaddaya say, Dovid, wanna be a leader of men?”

  “What?” Dovid seemed startled. “No, no. That’s not. I mean, that won’t. I mean”—he shook his head violently—“they’ll find someone more suitable for the role. We wouldn’t, you know, would we, Esti?”

  Esti remained silent.

  Ronit smiled. “You mark my words, Dovid. You’ll be their prime candidate.”

  Esti pushed her food around her plate. She could not bring herself to eat any, but hoped that the others would not notice. She knew she should say something. She was picking up and discarding topics in her mind. Could she discuss the food? No, Ronit would not be interested in household matters. The synagogue? Dovid was more expert than she. The schoolteachers? No, no, certainly not that, but maybe the school?

  Dovid said, “I hear talk of a young man from Gateshead, in fact, a talented bocher…”

  Esti broke in. “Ronit, do you remember the old science rooms in school?”

  Ronit and Dovid looked at her.

  Ronit said, “Umm. Yes.”

  Esti said, “They’re tearing the building down, that’s all I wanted to say, just that they’re pulling it down; Dr. Hartog’s raised funds for a new building, across the road. Won’t that be funny? The girls will have to cross the road to get to their science lessons.”

  Ronit and Dovid looked at her some more.

  Esti stood up quickly, almost knocking her chair to the floor. She picked up her plate and held out her hand to take Ronit’s.

  “I’m not quite finished yet, actually.”

  Esti blinked and passed her hand across her forehead.

  “No, no, of course not.”

  She took her own plate into the kitchen. Out of sight, she listened to the murmur of conversation between Ronit and Dovid. She put her plate into the left-hand sink—the sink for meat dishes—and ran hot water on it, observing the oily residue start to lift from the plate. She put her right hand under the water. It was far too hot. She held her hand there for a little while. After some time had passed, she returned to the dining room and served dessert.

  Dovid and Esti had not shared the same bed for some time. The two single beds in their room had remained separated for several months, although no objects had accumulated in the space between. Dovid, in any case, had mostly slept in the Rav’s house in recent months; to be there, if needed, to help the old man in the night. They did not talk about these things.

  Esti often found it difficult to sleep. Regularly, she would lie awake, watching the patterns of light on the bedroom ceiling made by the occasional car driving past, creating shapes and forms out of the wallpaper patterns. This night, she could not sleep. She considered Ronit, who was sleeping just the other side of the wall to them. She thought, over and over, of how she looked now, how much better now than in memory, how she had ripened while Esti herself had shrunk. She found herself breathing heavily. She did not know whether she was about to cry or laugh or do something other, something entirely unexpected. She considered Ronit, in the very next room. She acknowledged in her own mind that she desired certain things that she could not have.

  She sat up slowly in bed and swung her legs to the ground. She padded across the room. She spoke Dovid’s name softly. And when she lifted the covers, climbed in next to him, and sought him, he sought her in return.

  All in all I was feeling quietly self-congratulatory when I went to bed. No sudden movements from me, certainly not. No panic attacks, no weird silences, no shouts of “Esti! You’re married! To a man!” Which is not to say I wasn’t shocked. Esti and I hadn’t parted on the best of terms, but things had been different between us then, sweeter. She had been different then, not so strange. To see her this evening, it was almost impossible to glimpse the girl she had once been in the thin, awkward woman she’d become. Only once or twice, as she sat listening to my conversation with Dovid, did I suddenly see her as the young woman I’d known. It was strange. For the most part she seemed just another exhausted, drained-dry Hendon housewife, and then, suddenly, not in her motion but in her stillness I would see the Esti I remembered. Observing her calm
, I found myself remembering intensely the way she used to look up at me when I leaned over her, how her looks were more than my words. As if I could taste her sweetness still, and everything that had been between us.

  I fell asleep early, jet lag–exhausted, into a honeyed sleep, stretching my limbs against cool sheets and leaving the world happy. I dreamed something bright and shimmering. Something to do with closed boxes and locked doors, twisted keys, screwdrivers, axes, and lock picks. I dreamed about decades-old rust flaking from hinges and shrieking latches being pulled back. It made very little sense, just a series of confused impressions.

  I woke up, gasping, far too warm. My watch told me it was three a.m., my body thought it was ten p.m., and my brain was just wondering where the hell I was. I turned on the light and looked around. I hadn’t taken anything in before I went to sleep, just registered a welcoming bed and sank into it. Everything was old and shabby and poorly matched and patched together. The wallpaper was some 1970s pattern of brown and orange swirls, the wardrobe was brown melamine. I was sleeping in a single bed with a saggy mattress under a duvet decorated with a faded Magic Roundabout pattern that I was absolutely sure I’d last seen on Esti’s bed when we were both children. My suitcases took up most of the available floor space, thankfully concealing the carpet: green and blue spots on a gray background. I shouldn’t care about these things, I know I shouldn’t. But I do.

  And as I sat in silence, I noticed a sound, a very distinctive sound, coming from the room next door. Just the other side of the wall to me, a bed was making a slight, rhythmic squeak, squeak, squeak sound. On and on and on.

  “God Almighty,” I said to the room.

  “Squeak, squeak, squeak,” said some old, rusty springs next door.

  I needed to get out of this room, out of this house, and, potentially, out of this country. More than that, I needed a cigarette.

  I pulled on some clothes, grabbed my bag, and left the house, pulling the door closed behind me. The night was cold and clear, delicious after the cloying warmth of the house. It was utterly silent, only the swoosh of an occasional car passing by a street or two away. I rummaged at the bottom of my bag, coming up with a crumpled packet of cigarettes. As I put one to my lips and fished out my lighter, I realized I was shaking. Not shivering, shaking. And I thought, shit, this is going to be harder than I thought. I lit my cigarette and inhaled.

  I don’t smoke, not really. Only at parties, I’ll steal someone else’s, and I usually have a few in my bag, in case I’m walking down the street and I want to experience that New York feeling, of being one of those women who wear high-heeled boots and smoke cigarettes.

  So I went walking, like the independent woman I am. And maybe the cool air, or maybe the walking, or maybe the smoking returned me to myself. I shouldn’t expect these people to make sense; they weren’t my people anymore. And although I’d thought I’d known Esti better than anyone, clearly I’d been wrong. It made perfect sense. I trod out my first cigarette and lit another one. I smiled. All these years I’d been saying how insane it is here, how abnormally these people behave, and here, look, I was right. Dr. Feingold would even have an explanation for Esti: societal pressure, yada yada, normative expectations, yada yada. But that wasn’t my business. Esti was a grown woman, she could work out for herself who to sleep with. I had a simple mission here, there was no need to complicate it. All I was achieving here was to upset people’s lives, probably reminding Esti of things she’d rather forget. In fact, I expect that was the reason behind her oddness the previous night. Who hasn’t got a few things in their past they’d rather forget? Get in, get out, get back to New York, that was the way.

  The ridiculous thing is that with all the smoking and marching and thinking, I almost walked straight past it. I was only brought up short by the sight of the uneven place on the pavement, where a tree root had pushed its way through, slowly and persistently, shaking off the stones like a dog would shake off water so that it stood, nakedly twisting in green and brown amid the concrete. Not just any tree root, the tree root. The root that is part of me. I tripped on it when I was thirteen, whacked myself, spun round, and managed to cut open my elbow. I bled all over it. There’s a tiny bit of root still in there, small and dark beneath the skin. Scott asked about it once. I stopped to look at the root, and then I remembered where I was.

  I looked to my left and there, just there, was the house I grew up in. I’d expected to feel, I don’t know, something more than I did, but I found myself eyeing the place with a real estate agent’s detachment. Paint was peeling from the ledges of the upper windows. One of the glass panes in the front door was cracked. It seemed quieter than the others, more alone and gaping. I thought that I was just projecting from what I knew, but then I realized what the difference was: all the curtains were open, the windows staring at the streets, hollow and vacant. I looked at the bunch of keys in my hand and I thought: right. Tonight’s the night.

  I pushed open the gate, grains of rust and paint coming away in my hand, and walked down the dank mildew-smelling passage at the side of the house to the back garden. I looked around the dark garden, making out the shapes by the trickle of light from the street. The lawn was overgrown and tangled—couldn’t have been mown for a couple of months—but the apple trees were still where I remembered, and the hydrangea bush was still there, huge now against the fence. I did feel something then, just slightly. A prickle at the back of my mind, a locked-in hum. I looked at the bush, couchant. I could almost taste again the vegetable scent of hydrangeas in midsummer. I turned back to the house.

  My hand found the kitchen light switch before I could remember that I might not know where it was. The light flickered on and the garden melted back into darkness, unseen and unknowable. The nakedness of the kitchen made me smile. The surfaces were bare, except for a scratched plastic vase of dead chrysanthemums and a lemon squeezer. A few bowls and utensils were visible on open shelves: blue for milk, red for meat, of course. To think I’d been dreading coming back to this place all this time. I breathed in and out and tried to work out if I was experiencing a profound revelation about my childhood. Didn’t feel like it.

  The dining room was no more help: a dining table and chairs, a silver cabinet (no candlesticks; I checked). The living room, too, seemed almost empty. The couch had been pulled out into a bed, which was made up with blankets and sheets. There was a small chest of drawers I didn’t remember from my childhood, filled with my father’s clothes neatly folded, and an oxygen tank with some plastic tubing and equipment in one corner of the room. He must have slept here once he became too weak to climb the stairs. Otherwise, there was only a bookshelf of what my father called “secular books”—no novels, of course, but atlases, dictionaries, some books about the natural world. I felt a vague sense of disappointment. No emotional breakthroughs, just a dull, empty house. If the whole house was as tidy as this, I could find the candlesticks tonight. Stay over Shabbat for the sake of politeness, get back to New York next week.

  I crossed the hallway and pushed open the door opposite. I stopped and looked. I had forgotten this. I hadn’t forgotten the kitchen or the dining room or the living room, but I had forgotten the books. They ran floor to ceiling, along all four walls, even covering over the window, though the dark red curtains were just visible, dangling half off their rails between the bookshelves. Rows of books, leather bound in black, bottle-green, brown, or dark blue, with their Hebrew titles tooled in gold on the spines, with patterns of fruit, leaves, crowns, and bells. I recognized most of the titles; the volumes were the commentaries on the Torah, and the comments on those commentaries, and the further notes on those comments and the debates regarding the notes, and the criticisms of the debates, and the discussions of the criticisms. And so on.

  The rest of the room was disordered, more so than I remembered. Papers mingled with half-drunk mugs of coffee, pens, unanswered correspondence, plates and cutlery in teetering piles and collapsed mounds on the table and the floor. But
the books were in perfect order. Each one had its place. They ran in flawless alphabetical order around the room, each tome muttering contentedly to its neighbor. Ah, I thought, and here we find the root to the weirdness of my life. I felt pleased with this evidence: no playroom in this house, no children’s room, no family room, but a huge, knocked-through, double-length room for books. How many books were here? I estimated, by counting one shelf and multiplying by the number of shelves on the walls—5,922, give or take. I wondered if I’d read 5,922 books in total in my life. But you weren’t supposed to read us, the quiet books murmured, you were supposed to get married and have children. You were to bring grandchildren to this house. Have you done so, wayward and rebellious daughter? Be quiet, I said, stop talking.

  This is the problem with having been brought up in an Orthodox Jewish home, with those ancient stories in which Torah scrolls debate with one another, or letters of the alphabet have personality, or the sun and the moon have an argument. All that anthropomorphizing gets to you in the end. There’s still a part of me that believes that books can talk. That isn’t surprised when they start to do it. And, naturally, books in my father’s house would be hypercritical. I could hear them, in that room, whispering to one another: no grandchildren, they said, not even a husband. The practices of Egyptian women. No Torah in her life, no goodness. I couldn’t talk myself out of it. I felt ridiculous.

  So I took the only route open to me. There was a radio in the kitchen. My father used it to listen to the news, carefully switching it on at precisely six p.m., then switching it off, unplugging it, and packing it away in its drawer at six-thirty. It took me till I got to New York to discover that many radio stations actually broadcast twenty-four hours a day and even, on occasion, include music in their programs. I knew exactly which drawer to find that radio in. I plugged it in, turned it on, and turned the dial until I found some pop music. I was looking for Britney, Madonna, Christina, Kylie; some woman singing indecent lyrics loudly. I turned it up as loud as it would go, counting on the thousands of books to soundproof the neighbors.