Halimi was surprised that I was home early, but pleased. Lily shouted, “Mama!” from the couch in the living room, and I knelt down in front of her. She ran at me so fast that I nearly fell backward when she slammed into me. “What are you wearing?” I laughed. She was dressed in sea-blue tights dotted with gold stars, a pink tutu, and a black wool vest with glittering black sequins that Simone had given her.
“We were playing Vikings,” Lily said and showed me a plastic helmet with horns. “Daddy bought it for me.”
We had a nice dinner during which I told them, with total ease, about my journey to Tel Aviv, the stress at the publishing house, and everyone’s excellent work, thanks to which we were let go earlier than expected.
Halimi told me that one of the aides at Lily’s kindergarten had gone on maternity leave and that the kindergarten WhatsApp group was in an uproar.
Lily said that she wanted to be Egyptian, like a Pharaoh. “Pharaoh was strong, and Moses and the Israelites fled,” Lily said with disdain. Halimi and I made a face at each other.
I gave Lily her shower that turned into a bath, at the end of which she persuaded me to join her. Ever since she was really little, since she could sit up on her own, we played a game in which I would pretend to catch her fingers with my feet. It developed and took on a somewhat dark twist over the years and by now had morphed into a whole saga about two sorcerers and a dwarf, with almost no remaining connection to fingers and feet except that we still called it “fingers and feet.”
In bed, I read her the Robin Hood book with pictures from the Disney movie, and when she fell asleep, I carried on reading quietly to myself. Suddenly, I wanted to read the original version, or at least one not adapted for children, like the edition with beautiful illustrations that I devoured as a girl and that remained on my parents’ bookshelves.
“I thought you were asleep.” Halimi’s head appeared in the doorway.
“Robin Hood got me,” I said, smiling at him.
We sat across from each other in the old Tel Aviv apartment, me on the armchair and him on the couch. I didn’t even take off my jacket. I looked around without saying a word and remembered how the apartment looked before I moved in—a dusty, slightly moldy bachelor pad of thrilling intrigue. Now, it was warm and homey, tidy and fresh, and everything was visible and plain to the point of nausea.
“So, Zozo told on me?” I asked finally in a strangled voice.
“You could say that,” Halimi replied. He looked tired. There was a bottle of arak on the table next to a glass filled with the milky liquid,mixed with water. “She phoned, worried; called me a pig; and told me that you seemed really upset.”
Of course she’s more loyal to him, I thought bitterly,but at least she called him a pig.
“I suppose you had to cut your cozy evening with Nina short?” I said. “Did you at least get around to finishing your hot cider?”
Halimi looked up inquisitively. “Instagram,” I said. He rubbed his nose and shook his head wearily.
“I knew she would get me in trouble,” he said. “She can’t help herself. She probably wanted you to figure it out.” As always when he was drunk, his diction was slurred.
It drove me insane that he pinned this on her. “Get you in trouble,” I said scornfully. “What a repulsive way of putting it.”
“That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you,” he said, stealing a glimpse at me, then looking back down. “Because I knew you would react like this.”
“You are so stupid,” I said quietly. “I want to break up. Tomorrow, I’m taking Lily to my parents.”
Halimi let out a lengthy sigh. “Ditush, I get that you’re really mad. But be reasonable …” His eyes darted around, while I didn’t take mine off him. “I let off a little steam,” he said finally, angrily. “Just like you did at those clubs last year. You want to break up over a little nonsense? And what about Lily?”
Like in some soap opera, at that exact moment, we heard our daughter’s voice. “Mama …” she called weakly. I shook my head in disbelief, dumbstruck by his nerve, and went to her. She asked for water. Something in her voice was a little off. I gave her a kiss on the forehead. She was burning up. I went to the kitchen to fill her plastic cup with water, and as I passed Halimi in the hall, I said, “She has a fever. I think it’s high.”
Halimi leaped from the sofa and to the bathroom for the thermometer. As I filled the cup, he took her temperature.
“Thirty-eight point four,” he said as I came into the room.
“Get the Advil,” I said and sat down beside her.
I stroked my daughter, who sighed and turned over, shaking and shivering. She looked so miserable, and somehow I felt like it was my fault.What will I do?I thought over and over. Halimi brought the dose of children’s Advil in its measuring cup and administered it with excessive gentleness.
“Let’s go to the living room, Ditush,” said Halimi.
“Don’t call me that,” I said. In the living room, Halimi opened an app on his phone and made an appointment with the pediatrician. He had a remarkable ability to sober up at once. “I don’t think we need to drag her to the doctor right away,” I said. “It’s probably a virus. Let’s just let her rest.”
“Better to book it, who knows how the rest of the night will go,” said Halimi. “Worst case, we cancel at the last minute.”
He went to make tea, and I rolled myself a joint. It felt as if my brain were on pins and needles. It was hard to admit, but until then, I felt like we had triumphed over all preconceptions. We had an expression—“the librarian who tamed the libertine”—which came up in a variety of situations, and now it was clear that no one had tamed anyone. All of our lengthy wanderings in our first week together came to me while, at the same time, one question was bouncing around my mind nonstop:How did I attach my life to this snake?
Halimi set the two cups of tea down on the table in the living room and, uncharacteristically, took a small puff from the joint.
