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“I heard Menni told you guys to stop sending follow up emails,” he said, choosing the direct approach.
“Yeah, it’s a mistake. I agree with Daniel that we should be proactive. Otherwise, clients think we forget about them, or don’t care, and then all we do here is damage control when there are bugs, and the interactions are mostly negative.”
“Do you have a sample of a follow-up email you used to send?” Erez asked. And because he liked to accumulate numbers, and Nurit took so long in sending him her lists, he asked, “Oh, and your client list, just so I get the full picture. Send it to the secure email Gil set up for me.”
“Sure,” Ron said, unperturbed.
Erez’s phone buzzed with a message from Dafna. She sent him the contact for the therapist for Gal. He passed by her office to thank her, but she wasn’t there. He prepared himself fabulous coffee and headed out of Kisharti to G&L. He was happier than he had been in days. Even if his daughter never got over herself and agreed to see a therapist, he now had a great excuse to talk to Dafna.
Chapter 20
Menopause Is A Bitch
Dafna tested the potatoes with the sharp tip of a knife—still a little hard. She returned the dish to the oven and set the timer to five minutes. Orna invited them to dinner, and asked her to prepare her famous Gratin Dauphinois, a winter dish, although it was still the height of summer. She loved to cook, and the act of cooking always did a magnificent job in calming her down. She needed it this evening after seeing Erez and Zoey in the kitchen. It had made her jealous, and she had no right to be.
Ever since their ‘scene’ in The Thinking Nook, they’d been doing their best to avoid each other. She occasionally ran into him in the hallway, and then, in a second, a rush of adrenalin would flood her body, making her heart pound and her palms sweat. He was always polite and gracious, making way for her. She wished she had the courage to confide in him, to explain why she reacted so strongly to his words. She wished she had spoken back then. Now it seemed too late, and he had almost finished his review.
“Imma, it smells great,” Tom said. “It was Savta Juliette’s favorite dish. And Abba loves it too.”
The timer went off and she took the hot dish out of the oven and set it to cool. It emitted a tantalizing smell. Her secret was adding thyme and a dash of lemon to the buttery mushroom cream that coated the thinly sliced potatoes.
“Your grandmother Juliette used to joke that she is actually an Ashkenazi. That she loves potatoes better than rice.”
Tom laughed. With him she didn’t have to worry, what you saw was what you got. A happy-go-lucky child, who loved the world and the world loved him back.
Ori sniffed the dish. “Are we almost ready?” A worried crease formed between his eyes. “We don’t want to be late.”
Her eldest on the other hand always made her wonder whether his every question was actually a lead-up to a larger issue.
“Yes. Ori, you take the potatoes, be careful they’re boiling. Tom, you can take the sliced watermelon.”
Orna and Raffi lived close by, but in the opposite direction from her parents. This was the newer part of the village. The houses were uniformly built, and the gardening formal, giving it the feel of an American suburb. After their divorce, Ilan moved to Tel Aviv, and the boys started going there more and more, on weekends and vacations, raving about how fun it was. For the first time in her life, her beloved moshav felt like a trap.
“Imma! You’re not listening!” Tom admonished her. She wasn’t. She really didn’t care to hear, once more, about the hiking trip they were going on with Ilan, and how fit and prepared they all were for it.
“Yes, I am.”
“If you listened you wouldn’t have nodded when I said I thought about piercing my ear,” Ori said. Dafna frowned at him. “Abba has an earring. He says you really liked it when you met.”
“I still like it.” She bit her lips. She’d said no when he asked her to pierce his ear. He trapped her, in the simplest way. What did Ori really want?
“I asked Abba about tattoos,” Ori said. Tattoos. He didn’t want a pierced ear. He wanted tattoos. Before meeting Erez she would have objected to it strongly.
“He doesn’t have any,” Dafna said about her ex. “Your father would never get any, either.”
“Why?” Tom asked.
“Because he’s in intelligence,” Ori answered before she did. “And he says that tattoos tell people about you. What you believe, what ethnicity or religion you are, what you like. And he doesn’t want to give anyone this kind of advantage.”
“All true,” Dafna agreed. “How would you feel if I got a tattoo?”
It was fun seeing Tom’s eyes round in surprise. She burst out laughing.
“Imma! No! Are you okay?” Tom asked.
“Yes, I was just thinking out loud.”
“Do you have someone?” Ori asked. Her son had not only gotten his father’s eyes, but his shrewdness too.
