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Chapter 8
I Need You To Come
Dafna brushed her hair. Tom was asleep, and she was preparing to pop into the pub for a short time. She wouldn’t bring Erez home tonight, not when her son was here. But she wanted to hear Erez’s deep voice, smell his sea scent, feel his weight on her again. Once wasn’t enough. They could make their one-night a two- or three-night thing.
Her landline rang.
There were only two people in the world who used this number to call her. One was her father, and the other was her mother. When she picked up the phone, no one spoke, and there were deep breaths, as if on the other side there was a stalker.
“Dafna…” a whisper and loud sobs. Her heart clenched with fear, but she kept her voice calm.
“Hello, hello…Abba, Imma, who’s there? What’s going on?”
“Dafna, it’s me.” Her father’s voice, finally. “Your mother is…she is… she took the wrong dose or something…I don’t know what to do.”
Her father had been completely useless when it came to her mother’s illness.
“Okay, I’m coming.”
Twenty years ago, when Ilan and she had just gotten married and looked for a place to raise their children, Dafna, an only child, insisted on her home moshav, near her parents. Ilan’s older brother, Orna’s husband, was building his house here as well. They bought their plot, five minutes’ walk from her parents. This past year, with her mother’s Parkinson's getting so much worse, she appreciated her own foresightedness.
Her blood pumping adrenalin in her veins, she ran all the way to her parents’, short cutting the familiar lanes of her childhood. Her parents’ house dated back to the 1970s, maintaining the one-story structure. Dafna flung open the always unlocked front door, skipped through the dark anteroom, and burst into the living room, where Hannah, her mother, was standing. Her eyes were vacant yet filled with disdain at the same time.
She was stark naked.
Dafna had never seen her mother naked before, not even in her bra. She fought her shock and dismay. Her cultivated mother, who liked to say that how you looked is how you behaved, who’d never gone in public without wearing makeup, properly dressed, elegantly shoed, was nude. Her hair, always coiffed and made, she would go once a week to the hairdresser, was tangled and loose.
“Where is the police!” Hannah snarled. “There are bandits! I won’t let them have anything. I’ll break it before they’ll get it!”
She swiped her arm and the pile of family photos, framed in silver and glass, cluttered noisily to the floor. Luckily, nothing broke. Dafna had just noticed her father frozen in the doorway that led to the kitchen. He looked frail and old, his shoulders shaking in silent tears.
“Where is Ilan? I need to talk to your husband.”
The mention of her ex pushed her out of her stupor. This wasn’t her mother. These were the drugs and the frustration at her decaying health. Pushing down her tears, she made a beeline around her mother and ushered her dismayed father into the kitchen. He’d never known how to confront his wife.
“Sit, Abba,” she ordered him, and he slumped heavily onto a hard-backed chair. Dafna opened the pantry and shoved the knives rack in.
“Dafna!” her mother cried. “Come here! Are you hiding? Shlomo, where are you?”
“Call Ilan,” her father begged, his eyes frantic.
“I can handle Imma.” This wasn’t about their children, and she’d never budged from the custody agreement.
She secured two wine bottles, which would make a hell of a mess if thrown and broken, then returned to the living room. Her mother’s light cardigan, the one she liked to use when watching TV, was draped in its regular place. Hannah stood, moving her balance from leg to leg. Dafna approached her with the garment, proffering it like a carrot to a wild horse.
“Imma…” Her mother stretched her arm, and Dafna came closer to help her mother fit it through the sleeve. She felt a powerful shove on her chest, lost her balance, and fell backwards, narrowly missing the coffee table. She threw out a hand and landed on her butt, feeling the hard smack all the way up her spine. Her palms burned, and sobs climbed up her throat.
“Go away!” her mother said. “You’re useless. I want Ilan to be here. Where is your husband?”
“We’re not married anymore,” she said from her lowly position on the floor, her misery weighing her down, making her heavy and dull.
Her mother moved from side to side, apelike, and bared her teeth.
“Stupid! Stupid girl. How did you let him go? Stupid!” Her mother threw the remote control at her, and she ducked, hearing it hit the floor, the batteries rolling out. She stared at her mother, numb with shock.
“Dafna,” her father called from the kitchen, his voice laced with worry. Her mother swirled towards the kitchen.
“Imma!” she called to her, afraid her father would break completely if Hannah attacked him as well. She got up from the floor and tried to approach her mother again. Hannah’s insane eyes followed her, then she casually grabbed her cellphone and threw it at Dafna. It hit her shoulder, hurting her more than it should have. She swallowed the wail that threatened to break out of her throat. She couldn’t handle both her mother and her father by herself. It was time to put her pride aside. She dialed Ilan.
