From a Sealed Room Read online

  The Thinker, my friend Ina called me. That was back at school in Purchase. Ina said I was quirkier than anybody she knew and she’d never understand me. One minute I was flirting up a storm with the guys in the dance group, the next I sat on the sidelines looking desolate.

  It wasn’t that I was thinking about anything in particular at those parties. It was just that sometimes, even around my best friends, I drifted wide. I accepted the drink thrust into my hands by the stranger working the keg, slipped onto a bench and sat between beer cup and wall. Then my friends were a noisy stream glinting and flashing in the near distance. I watched them windmill their arms at the ceiling in imitation of the new dance director’s tantrums and, as conversation lulled, sling them across one another’s shoulders. Sipping warm beer and letting the barely diminished cup hang from my hand, I found myself teary with affection for this loudmouthed group. I loved these friends so much it was absurd; I would have done anything for them. Sometimes I wished they would ask. I would stand, step forward. Offer everything I had. But I knew, in the end, that I wasn’t truly one of them. I couldn’t have said what was wrong with me, only that I was different. Somehow I couldn’t take life as lightly as they seemed to.

  So when the blaring music stopped for the DJ’s break and my friends wandered by to ask which problem of the universe I was solving now, I offered a laugh to show I meant no harm. I wrinkled my nose at my warm beer, set the cup down, and popped off the bench. “If the universe is relying on me,” I assured them, “it’s in deep trouble.”

  In Purchase, at least I could slip back into the group, join Ina in exaggerating the effort of pulling our feet off the beer-sticky floor, until the mime became a stamping, whooping dance. Here in Jerusalem, I kept my voice soft—speaking too loud might cause the Hebrew words to tumble out upside down. Here in Jerusalem I crept past others’ laughter with the hope that no one would call attention to my uncertain Hebrew, my uncertain spirits, my shaky grasp on this strange and clamoring country. I sank hard into the armchair’s embrace, wary of the roving conversation that might at any moment turn on me and find me unprepared.

  When I finally retreated to the kitchen on the pretense of looking for some ice, a lanky stranger was standing alone in the room, leaning against the stove and drinking a glass of ice water. He looked at me, then nodded in greeting.

  “Shalom,” I stuttered. I had dropped my cautious smile on entering the kitchen. Now my cheeks ached with the effort of resuming it.

  He said nothing. But the motion of his hand began as a gesture of dismissal toward the living room, swept on to indicate where I should sit at the kitchen table, and ended with a raking of his tousled red hair. I could almost see the arc of his movement hanging in the air, even though his hands, large and corded with veins, now rested at his sides. I thought, as I sat, of a Calder mobile I’d seen near Purchase. I thought: He moves like he’s not creating shapes in the air, but showing me ones that already exist.

  From the living room rose a wave of laughter. In the kitchen it was quiet. A newspaper was spread on the table, and on it was a pair of eyeglasses. The lenses magnified part of a headline, and the letters were slanted and beautiful.

  Regarding me as though nothing I said could surprise him, he waited for me to speak. And before I even opened my mouth, I knew that, unlike other people, he would listen and wouldn’t just let things roll off him.

  Speaking Hebrew into that silence was as easy as falling. “It’s just for one semester, but it’s important to me,” I told him. “My mother was here years ago, and it made such a big impression she almost moved here. She used to tell stories about Israel, but I never paid attention. Now I want to learn.”

  “That’s perfectly right,” he said. “You should.”

  Three weeks later, when he asked me to move in with him, I said yes on the spot. As I walked back to my dorm to tell Orit, I could hardly suppress a grin. For the first time since arriving in Jerusalem, I looked passing Israelis square in the eye. I, too, could be confident and unquestioning. I could act in the world, follow my heart. See here, I thought, I can be bold.

  April 16, 1993

  Maya,

  I’ve read your last several letters closely, and I want to tell you I’m happy for you and Gil. It seems you’ve finally found yourself a place and a person you care about.

  To know you’re on your own two feet and will make a way for yourself in the world, this satisfies me more than I can explain.

  I’m sure living with Gil is a good way for you to learn the language and culture. And I trust that Emek Refaim is a pleasant neighborhood. I hope you’ll write to me about it. I have high hopes for this “semester abroad” of yours. Just one bit of advice—remember to study. You’ve gone to learn about another country. Don’t waste your time in discos, which, as you know, are only imitations of the shallowest of American culture. A new country is a new start. A chance not to repeat the mistakes you made in your first years of college.

  I don’t mean to start another fight, only to tell you what I think is best.

  I trust you’ll call Tami as soon as you can. Perhaps the next time you take a break from your studies and your touring and traveling. By now they’re all probably wondering what happened to you. Tami is sometimes a bit thorny, if I remember right, but my visit to Israel was many years ago, and since then I’ve corresponded mostly with Tami’s mother, Fanya. In any event, I know you’ll enjoy meeting them.

  Everything here is all right. The children at the Center are flourishing, just last week they put on a variety show for a fund-raiser. We made more than $300, and the children voted to put the money into the recreation hall.

  I’ve been back to my full-time schedule for several weeks and feeling fine. There’s no need for worry. Dr. Green says the chemotherapy is going phenomenally well.

  I’ll look forward to receiving another letter from you.

  Your Mother

  P.S. Remember to see the whole of Israel, not just Jerusalem. Travel, learn from the people you meet. It’s a beautiful country. It’s many years since I’ve been there, but as you must know, I hold those memories dear.

  The day after Gil told me we had an apartment, I climbed a chair and retrieved my bags from the shelf of the dormitory closet where I’d placed them only six weeks before. As I packed, Orit’s younger cousin Michal perched on the edge of my bed, brimming with advice and curiosity. “Don’t forget about your classes,” she said. “Don’t forget to get some sleep. Don’t forget to use birth control, Miss Swept-Off-Your-Feet.”

  While I hefted an armload of clothes from dresser to suitcase, Michal weighed a pair of my socks in one hand. “So how do you know this thing is right, with Gil?”

  “I just know.” I smiled at Michal, but my answer was directed at Orit, who was working at her desk across the room, ignoring my activities.

  “Don’t forget to visit us.” In Michal’s thin voice was an apology for Orit’s refusal to participate in my excitement. “It won’t be as much fun without you.”

  I pointed to the socks, which she dropped into my suitcase. “I’ll come visit.” My words were loud in the small room. “Don’t worry, I’ll be here so often you’ll be sick of me.”

  Orit paged through her textbook.

  I zipped the suitcase shut, my throat tight—whether with a plea or a rebuke, I didn’t know. Ever since I’d told her of my plan to move in with Gil, Orit had been distant. But I had hoped that now that Gil had signed a lease on our apartment, she might be pleased for me.

  Instead, she was making no effort to hide her boycott of my happiness. Perhaps Gil was right—Orit was jealous of what he and I shared. After all, Orit had broken up with her boyfriend only a month before my arrival. Now, as she sat at her desk, her slim neck supported by one hand, she seemed nothing but lonely.

  Relieved at the notion that she might be simply hurt rather than annoyed with me, I concentrated on feeling sorry for her.

  The truth was, I was eager to get away. During the pa
st weeks I had stopped bringing Gil to the dormitory except when it was unavoidable. As soon as he entered the building, he was restless to leave. We would sit in the cramped bedroom Orit and I shared, Orit speaking and Gil answering in monosyllables. Under her eyes I was aware of every motion of Gil’s body—the way he tapped his foot on the floor, the way he slouched in the hard plastic chair. As the silences lengthened, I noticed the defensive set of Orit’s chin. Nervously I would offer Gil tea or coffee. I knew my fussing didn’t escape her attention, but I couldn’t help it. I would ask Gil about his work, trying to draw him out. In my mind I urged him, Show yourself.

  But Gil’s expressive hands, which mesmerized me when he read aloud from his favorite books or told wickedly funny stories about art classes at Bezalel, would lie on the armrests. He was bored with Orit’s chatter and made no effort to hide it. As for Orit, she would give him a look whose meaning I knew far too well from all those times Ina and I had rolled our eyes at a particularly smug classmate at Purchase: intellectual snob.

  When Gil would at last stand and announce that we had to leave for our movie, I felt both glad and resentful. Too uncomfortable to look at Orit, I would make excuses not to join her later for coffee at the student center.

  “Why don’t you give Magen a chance?” Orit said to me out of the blue one afternoon. We had washed our laundry in the bathroom sink; now we were hanging it on the line outside our window. “He’s been asking me about you since the party. Maybe a few of us can go to the beach this Saturday and he can come.”

  “I can’t go to the beach this Saturday. I’m going to Gil’s.”

  Orit snapped a blouse in the air. A shower of droplets flecked the sidewalk below. We watched the dark spots on the sidewalk lighten, then disappear. “Be careful,” she told me. “What I mean, Maya, is I don’t care for guys who come across so surly. Plus, Yossi says Gil was discharged from the army. Of course there are reasons for discharge that aren’t bad, but it’s a little strange that no one seems to know why he didn’t complete his service.”

  Slowly I formed a sentence: “But why would I go out with Magen if I’m in love with Gil?”

  “Do you know why Gil got discharged?” Orit insisted.

  I felt the rebellion taking shape on my face. “You think my boyfriend is some kind of criminal?” I asked in English.

  Now Orit blushed. “No, Maya,” she answered in Hebrew. “Look, all I’m saying is I get a bad feeling from him. That’s all.”

  I held out a pile of water-darkened clothing, a grudging offering. “He draws, you know,” I told her in Hebrew. Orit took a pair of pants from the top. She said nothing.

  “Did you know that he draws?”

  Orit shook her head. Leaning out the window with a clothespin in her mouth, she flapped the pants in the air.

  “He doesn’t just work at the gallery, Orit.” I steadied her by the belt loop of her jeans. “He’s an artist. You didn’t know he draws?”

  Orit pinned the pants to the line and ducked back into the room. “I told you a hundred times, I hardly know him at all. I’ve just seen him around campus now and then.”

  “Well, he draws.”

  Orit appeared to be holding back some stinging comment.

  “And paints. The other day when I was at his apartment, he showed me some of his work. He explained every single piece, every single one. I’d never heard anyone talk about art that way before. Like it was so important. And then he pulled out a sketch pad, and he made a few strokes with his charcoal.”

  I tried to catch Orit’s eye, but she was busy with another piece of laundry. “He showed it to me,” I went on. “And it was me he’d drawn. A picture of me dancing. And it was . . . I looked, I don’t know, whole. There I was, right on the paper, just like that.”

  But it was coming out all wrong. How to explain to Orit what I had seen that day? I had already thought that I might be falling in love, but nothing could have made me love him more than what he showed me in that crowded French Hill apartment, with fragments of charcoal littering the floor beside his drawing table, and sketch pads stacked in every available space, even the narrow hallway to the bathroom. On the wall over the mini-refrigerator, in the apartment’s one amply lit spot where the light poured in through a window, were two pictures: a Chagall print with bold colors sweeping over the silhouette of a woman’s face, and a charcoal sketch of a handsome young woman seated beside a window. The woman in the sketch had straight, thick hair that draped her shoulders like a shawl. Her eyes were dark, and she was looking hopefully at something in the distance.

  “It’s my mother when she was a girl,” Gil said. “I drew it from an old photograph.”

  I looked at the two pictures and I understood why he had hung them side by side. The young woman in Gil’s drawing was as intent and as beautiful as the woman in Chagall’s, but there was something else that connected the drawings. The rushing colors in the Chagall, the impression that any second the painting might careen into another world of floating figures and prancing cows with umbrellas, was matched by a fierce energy in Gil’s drawing. The clock behind Gil’s mother was upside down; on the table beside her, a saucer sat atop a cup.

  “The man was a genius,” Gil said. He indicated the Chagall print. “He understood the world he lived in better than any realist. He showed the truth behind the façades.”

  I waited for Gil to say more, but he was studying the print. It occurred to me that I’d seen such passion for work in only one other person—my mother.

  I was tired from the day’s classes, and I took a nap on Gil’s bed. An hour later I woke and, calling his name, went to find him. The air of the apartment was close, the windows were darkening. In the dim light I could see Gil hunched over his drawing board, deepening the lines of a sketch of a wadi. I moved closer and, when he didn’t turn to greet me, lowered myself onto a chair behind him. Soon my shoulders were cramped from leaning forward, my eyes teared from straining. At last he put aside the drawing and lit a small shaded lamp. Still facing away from me, he opened his sketch pad to a fresh page. His arm moved down and up, he tilted his head to watch the lines emerge under his hand, and I spiraled before him on the page. I was turning on one leg, my head tucked. My arms wrapped my waist, and a few strands had escaped my ponytail. The speed of my turn was dizzying. If I just set down my other foot, I understood, I would shake loose of the ground.

  I was embarrassed by what he’d drawn, and riveted. The figure on Gil’s page was intent, lonely—even, it seemed to me, prayerful. Longing for flight, almost touching it instant by instant. Was this how he saw me, this whirling, hopeful figure? He’d looked past the person brooding on the bench at those Purchase parties, alone and unapproachable. He’d seen who I wanted to be.

  Staring at his drawing, I wanted nothing more than to be that unashamed dancer. I wanted to dare more—push off from my other foot, break free at last.

  Gil set down his charcoal. Then he stood and turned to me. I stood, too.

  “I’ve never let anyone watch while I worked,” he said. A warmth charged the air between us. He reached out to touch my chin.

  I opened my mouth and told him I loved him.

  Orit was seated on the windowsill, her arms crossed. Beyond her, the laundry flapped in the breeze. Her voice was flat. “Has he seen you dance? Did he ask you to show him?”

  “He said he could see it in his head.”

  “Tell him he’s missing the real thing.” Orit’s vehemence surprised me. “Tell him you’re a damn good dancer.”

  “His drawing was incredible, Orit.” The words shot out of me. At last I understood what must be bothering my roommate: Gil was stealing her new American possession.

  As though reading my mind, Orit went on. “Maya, I just think you might be rushing things. You’re new to this country, you hardly know anyone, and now you’re spending all your time with Gil. Why don’t you spend a little more time here? I’ll show you Israel. I’ll get a field trip together, we’ll camp out in Timna, w
e’ll go north. We can have a lot of fun.”

  I spoke deliberately, like a native addressing a newcomer to the language. “I’m sure Gil can get a few days off from work. Then we can all go.”

  A student passing beneath our window broke stride as droplets rained down on his head. He glanced at the cloudless sky, then at us, and waved before moving on across the courtyard.

  Orit straightened. “Yeah, sure.” She turned her attention to securing the last of the laundry with the remaining clothespins.

  Panic rose in my chest. Gil and Orit were all I had in this country, other than my schoolbooks and the telephone number of some unknown relatives. “Orit.” I caught her elbow. “Haven’t you ever met someone and just known that this was it, this was the person you’d been waiting for?”

  Orit looked at me. “No,” she said. “No, Maya. Because I don’t wait for someone. I live my life.”

  I hefted my suitcase with difficulty, and tugged a lock of Michal’s hair. “I’ll see you in class. I’ll see you all the time.”

  “Maya?” Gil’s voice sounded from the hall.

  “You’d better. No cutting class just because you’re in love.” As Michal released me from a quick hug, Gil walked, grinning, into the room. He kissed me on the mouth, then straightened his glasses and took my suitcase with exaggerated effort. “What, that’s all you packed?” he groaned.

  “Hi,” Michal said, and Gil nodded in response. Orit was silent.

  “So where are you taking our Maya?” Michal asked.

  “To Emek Refaim, near Gonen.”

  “Which part?”

  “Off Rahel Imeinu. Down the hill from the new development.”