Apart From Love (5 page)

Perhaps she is eager to impress him—and me as well—by putting her skills on display. Or else, she likes excess. This woman may be in the habit of overdoing things. There is a fever of excitement about her, which could easily be contagious.

Meanwhile she goes on humming, in a perfectly flat voice, with no pause and to no end. “Look! look! look,” she hums tediously, never actually reaching the rest of the phrase, “Look at me.”
 

Anita does it totally out of tune—to the point that the original song has gone missing, or else it is impossible to recognize—but in a cheerful manner all the same, which in a strange way, starts to make it endearing to my ears.

My father listens to that dull, repetitious noise until he can take it no longer. “Now, why on earth do you sing?” he interrupts her. “What is all this chirping about? No songs, for God’s sake, and no more food. And that thing, that egg salad. You know how much I detest it, don’t you.”
 

“Fine,” she says, shrugging. “How about an omelette, then?”

Before he can open his mouth I set my chair across from him, and flopping into it I say, “Sure!”

My father folds his arms and stares out, with deliberate focus, through the window. There is not a cloud in the sky, so who knows what it is that he sees out there. “No, nothing for me,” he grumbles. “This breakfast would have been so much better, don’t you think, Ben, it would have improved so much if there was nothing here at all, if instead of all this, there would be just a plain cup of coffee.”

I cannot help noticing how Anita manages to ignore what he has just said. Incredibly, she does not take it as a slight. Her face shows no sign of feeling hurt. There is nothing there, nothing but freckles. By contrast, my mother would have pouted, because of all the careful planning and all the work, you know:
 

The shopping for ingredients, and kneading the dough, and letting it rise hours in advance of the meal, and braiding it, and rinsing and chopping and slicing the vegetables, and squeezing the juice—in short, all that went into preparing such an elaborate breakfast, which men, mom would say, never seem to note, let alone appreciate.
 

She was such a proud woman. I can just imagine her pursing her lips, until the line defining her mouth became rumpled, erasing itself by turning as pale as the skin around it.
 

Unlike my mom, Anita just laughs it off.
 

“Soon,” she tells him, “you will get your wish: before you know it, there will be nothing left. Nothing to eat but crumbs. Don’t you wait too long.”
 

And she turns the bread knife around, so that now the blade is pointed at her, and the carved wooden handle at my father. This way, it would be safe for him to take hold of it.
 

“Here,” she says. “Cut yourself a slice.”
 

The wheelchair creaks, tilting away in a shaky manner. “I have no appetite for it,” says my father, with a stubborn tone in his voice. “No appetite for anything, really.”

She turns from him, impatiently this time. “Enough!” she says. “Snap out of it! You must get stronger. Someone needs to bring in the dough. Between the two of us, it’s you who’s the bread winner, no? Ain’t you?”
 

Instead of an answer, his jaws tighten. He hangs his head with a sense of pain, even desperation, worried perhaps about his job, or his health, or both.
 

And at once, without missing a beat, she bends over and gives him a real reason to suffer, because she elbows him right there, between his ribs; which immediately sets him straight, and gets his full, undivided attention. I can sense, somehow, that she is about to play us one against the other.

“Seriously now,” says Anita, pointing the bread knife at all the food, heaped so bountifully on the plates and the bowls. “What d’you think? This is all for you?”

“Who, then?”
 

“It’s for the boy,” she says, rising up from him and bumping her hip against me. “He’s hungry, see? Look at his eyes.”

I doubt either one of them can figure out what I am about to say, because my mouth is full—but all the same I venture to spit out, “I am not a boy.”

To which she just smiles. Her eyes are cast down at me, cast in the shadow of her eyelashes, so I cannot really read her—but I can recall how they looked last night: bright, even luminous, they shone at me from the dark, that first moment I saw her, like the eyes of a cat.
 

“Not a boy,” I swallow, and take another bite. “I am a grown man.”

And she says, in a taunting tone of voice, “Now, who asked you.”

“I want you,” I start telling her, and find myself having to stop, and gulp down. Then I repeat, “Really, I want you to stop this! I mean it. Call me by my name. Now, why can’t you do that.”

“And I want my coffee,” my father cuts in. “Now, when am I going to get it.”

“You will get it,” she says, turning on him, “when you give a little.”
 

He says, “My God, you are in heat. Now how does that happen, in your condition? Cool off already, in front of the boy! What do you expect of me? You wanted to get married, so now we’re married. Mazel Tov! What more do you want?”

“I want you to look at me,” she says, thrusting her chest out in front of her. “You haven’t been here for two weeks, since the wedding. And now that you’re here, you ain’t really here. Am I even wanted here? I’m a woman. I need to feel desired, and I need to be held by a man.”

At this point I feel obliged to peep in, for the third time, “I am not a boy.”
 

And she wipes her brow. “My God,” says Anita, as she turns away from my father. “I’m so hot. Don’t you wait too long.” And with a harsh motion, she flings the knife on the cutting board, right there between us.
 

It gives a sharp sound, which startles my father. His mouth is mirrored in the surface of the blade, and suddenly it becomes clear to me that the oven is not the only one fuming—so is he.
 

He raises his eye to her, and jealousy escapes. He glares at me, and a warning shoots out. What does he want from me? There is nothing I can do. He hates me for staring at her and he hates me for trying not to stare.

Now there she stands, by the counter, measuring the coarsely ground coffee, one tablespoon then another, right into the basket of our coffee percolator. He groans, which sounds like a bubble over a flame.
 

I can tell they have a language between them, a language without words: Anita glances back at him, he gives her a nod with his head, and in turn she secures the top, as tightly as she can, on the percolator. Her feet tap around the linoleum floor. For whom is she performing this dance, I would like to know.
 

Anita is bare legged, buttoned up in an oversized, short sleeve cotton shirt, which probably belongs to him. It is crumpled, maybe from rolling around in her messy bed. Although, judging by my father’s condition, as well as his mood, that may have been the only action she got last night.
 

I can easily see her the way he does: his shirt hangs loosely around her, refusing to disclose any hint of her curves. You can only guess her nipples, because even as you try to pin them down, they sway on her body, roll with every step, when she walks and when she stops, right there by the stove. And only when she turns the button, raising the heat to medium, do they mark their place, briefly, by pressing against the coarse fabric.
 

Then, rising to a tiptoe Anita takes a peak through the clear glass knob, right there on the top of the percolator, to check if the coffee is sufficiently brewed. Her hair is gathered loosely, and coiled into a French twist. Some strands have unravelled, and they are dangling around her face and over one shoulder, hemmed in by a soft, reddish fuzz. I try to imagine how it would feel to twirl that curl around my finger.

The same reddish fuzz flashes, for an instant, right there, from her armpit, as she lifts her arm to pour out his coffee. Anita hands him the cup and he sets it away from him, far in the middle of the table, saying, “Now go, go get dressed already. We will take care of things here.”

“We?” I say. “Who’s we?”

“You,” he says. “And I.”

I rise up against him.
 

“You?” I say. “You can barely move, and what kind of things are we talking about? I don’t know much about taking care of anything here, especially when I am hungry, and right now I am hungry, very hungry, and what about my omelette?”

“And what about me? I’m hungry too,” says Anita. “I’ve got such a huge appetite this morning. And you know,” she hints at him, “there is a bun in the oven.”

This is when he makes his move. My father leans forward in the wheelchair and to my surprise, he wraps his arms around her waist, gathering her to his breast. She lets out a cry and lays her hands over his shoulders. Her fingers flutter around his neck, and glide down to his back. And so she stands there, embracing him.
 

It is amazing to hear her now: by contrast to her singing, her giggling voice is full and rich. In no way can I explain it.

He rests his head gently against her belly, rubbing his forehead against it. I think I smell his scent on her, which makes me turn my eyes away, because I know I am the stranger here, and this moment is so private, so intimate between them. Touching her, and being touched in return, seems to bring out a change in him.
 

“Look at you,” he says, and for the first time this morning, there is laughter bubbling up, deep down in his throat. “Now where is that bun? I cannot feel it. It is slightly flat, no? No wonder you have such a big appetite! Why, it is an appetite big enough for two.”

She tickles his earlobes and he smiles. “So let me do this for you, he says. “Today I will make you an omelette, a big one, like you have never tasted before. Don’t say No, Anita.”

“Mrs. Kaminsky,” she corrects him, playfully.
 

“Yes, indeed, sweetheart,” he says, because it is so easy to please her. “Now go, go already, put some clothes on you, my dear, slightly pregnant Mrs. Kaminsky.”
 

Up to this moment no one has told me anything, in a precise and direct manner, about her pregnancy. Maybe they decided to let me figure things for myself, if I can; which makes me feel a little indignation. The entire situation is new and baffling to me. Also scary, somehow. I am ashamed to admit that I have no clue, looking at this woman, how far along she might be.
 

She does not look pregnant, not in the slightest, does she.
 

My father is no longer grouchy—but now I am. I am mad, really: mad at him, mad at Anita. With burning eyes I try to pierce through her, even as she places herself, ever so slowly, deeper in his embrace. In this position I can spot, for the first time, the round line of her belly.
 

There: now she freezes. Anita stands still, and so does time. Then, by barely perceptible degrees, it is starting to happen: each of her limbs softens, and then changes position—at the slightest measurable angles—until she is about to release herself, perhaps with the thought of turning, little by little, towards the door.
 

She seems so vulnerable. With a penetrating gaze, I imagine laying my hands on that shirt, which hangs so loosely around her. I strip her of that thing, and cast it aside. In my mind she is bathed in morning light, and naked. I imagine seeing clear through the skin, that fair, translucent skin of her belly. I wonder then if it is as freckled as the tip of her nose. Then I lose control over my fantasy. Somehow, it takes an unexpected turn.

Eyes closed, I immerse in darkness, the deep, dense darkness of her flesh, which is moist and marbled, here and there, by blood vessels. I find myself floating inside. And the pulse, which at first was but a faint echo in my ears, is now becoming more pronounced, as if—even without knowing where I am headed—I must be getting there. I lose myself, blindly and completely, in the beating of that sound. And it is then that finally, I arrive.