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“Do you have pickles?” he asked, taking out the hard-boiled eggs, washing them in cold water, then peeling them.
“Sure! Vinegar or salt?”
“Salt, of course.” And he added two sliced pickles to the salad.
She poured boiling water into a large French press cafetiere, the coffee smell tantalizing.
“I like to cook,” Dafna said.
“Me too. I love to eat, but I watch my weight.” He patted his flat, hard-earned stomach.
“My mother-in-law loved my cooking. It was a real badge of honor to be praised by her. It earned me infinite brownie points.”
“This is what my father used to make on Saturday mornings,” he told her. For the first time in a long time, he was having a positive thought about his father. “When me and my brother were kids. Vegetable salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, pickles, hard-boiled eggs, and lots of mayonnaise. After you’re finished…”
“You dip the challah in the salad juice,” Dafna broke in, slowly pressing the coffee grinds in the jug. “The classic Saturday morning salad. My father used to make it too. Best in the world.”
She plunged the coffee dregs onto the bottom, while he cut thick slices of the soft challah bread.
“Let’s eat outside. It’s lovely there,” Dafna said, pointing to her backyard.
She touched the living room’s electric shutters, and they rose, revealing a veranda shaded by a pergola. Mowed grass started where the porch ended and stretched all the way to her neighbor's fence, where a lemon tree grew, burdened with as yet green fruit. Heavy clusters of red and white honeysuckle flowers, bent down with buzzing bees, flooded the house with their sweet scent.
He carried the bowl and coffee jug, while she deftly placed plates, cutlery, cups, two glasses of water, and a basket with the challah slices on a tray.
“Are they alive? Your parents?” she asked. He tensed, although he should have expected a conversation about his parents, since he had opened the door.
“Yes. I call my mother every Friday. I did it yesterday before driving here. Is it parents discussion time?” He filled his mouth with salad and chewed. His parents were a painful subject.
“No. Only if you want it to be.”
She was such a psychologist.
He added salt to his salad, sipped his coffee, and remained silent, reluctant to go down a road he’d never shared with anyone but his brother.
He’d made the usual Friday call to his mother, answering questions about Gal, hearing that his father was fine, that Australia was great. Both kept the conversation shallow, dull, and short. His parents lived for themselves with themselves, thousands of kilometers from their nearest relatives.
“Our parents shape us,” she continued. “We want to be like them. Or want to disassociate ourselves from them. Either in a positive way or in a negative one, they shape us. I’m an only child. I always needed to please my parents. Be an immaculately turned-out lady like my mother, who always says: ‘how you look is how you behave’. Bring home a man my father would approve of.”
“Did they approve of your husband?” he asked before recalling that this might be a sensitive subject.
Dafna quirked her mouth in a bitter smile. “I used to babysit for a couple that never got along. I couldn’t understand why that lady stayed with him as long as she did. He was such a jerk. After she finally left him, I overheard her talking to her friend, saying she waited for her father to die in order to divorce. Back then I thought she was nuts, but now I get it.” She paused, moved a cucumber back and forth on her plate, took a deep breath, and resumed talking. “My parents never fully accepted my divorce.” He leaned forward and kissed her neck, inhaling her deeply.
“I’m very glad you divorced.”
Now her smile was genuine. He sipped the excellent coffee and relaxed back into her cushioned wicker chairs.
“My father is Professor Ben Ami.” He started. “I used to idolize him. I wanted to be just like him.”
“My boys are like that with their father,” Dafna said. “What did you like best about him?”
“He was a great dad to me and my brother. He played with us and told us stories–he was the best storyteller. He was a respected professor of economics, flying all over the world giving lectures. My mother was an English teacher working on her thesis, but she found time to help him with his studies. He was actually better known in America than here. Giving TED talks about supply and demand in infant markets to standing ovations.”
He recalled standing in a vast lecture hall, clapping his father along with the cheering crowd. A couple of years later, the scandal broke, and their lives changed forever.
“Do you remember the scandal associated with my father? It happened around ten years ago.”
“Something about false data?” She didn’t sound too appalled, which was gratifying.
