The Others, Sarah Blau [hardest books to read txt] 📗

tell she’s going to inherit her mother’s complexion. C’est la vie. Blood always leaves a trail.

We stand perfectly silent, engulfed in the delicate aroma of eggs and politeness. I can feel Taliunger’s eyes giving me a once-over and notice her face is stripped bare of its usual mask of make-up. Her skin is thick and riddled with cavernous pores, as if ploughed by a thousand tiny needles.

“Fine, let’s get this over with.” Neria finally relents, and starts heading towards what turns out to be a study. I quickly follow, feeling Taliunger’s eyes burning holes in my back, and regret choosing this grey skirt that only looks good from the front.

“Do it quickly,” she blurts. “I need your help here.”

The very existence of this study is surprising. How many rooms are in this house anyway? I know Neria is some sort of a high-tech big shot, and Taliunger does something education-related, do you need to be reminded that you also happen to be in the educational field, and may very well have more in common with her than you think?

But the modest dimensions of this room force a strange kind of intimacy between us. It’s been a while since we were squeezed into such a small space together. The last time was in his car, back then, when my love for him fizzled in a flash.

“What do you want?” he asks flatly, but I sense he has rehearsed the neutral tone. I still remember all the different shades of his voice.

I lean back, he didn’t invite you to take a seat, on a drawer cabinet without realizing it has wheels; I trip and almost fall flat on my butt, but Neria leaps in and catches me in the nick of time. It’s a tight clasp that pulls us together, bodies pressed against each other for a split second, in which I manage to catch the scent of fabric softener from his shirt, like a dog marked by its owner, before we break free of each other.

It’s remarkable how certain feelings never truly disappear; they merely ebb and flow, in and out of the heart, because instantly I’m overcome with the desire to make him like me, a desire to reignite the spark that flickered in his eyes when he held me. Oh, no, Sheila, not that again.

You see, I specialize in the field of unfulfilled potential. It’s kind of my thing. Any man who has ever shown any sort of interest in me before, even if he has since moved on with his life, will forever remain in my secret pool of men. I still enjoy thinking of myself as someone’s unfulfilled option, an object of desire. Eli insists this is the most problematic feature of my psychological make-up. “You like thinking of yourself as some kind of future possibility, but you can’t commit, which is why you keep all your options open. But they aren’t truly open, Sheila, and even if they are, they won’t stay that way forever.”

That’s what you don’t understand, Eli, it’s basically Schrödinger’s cat. Until you actually try to pursue an option, it’s neither open nor closed.

I look up into his face, searching for that spark I saw earlier, What will that give you? Don’t you understand that’s exactly what’s keeping you stuck?

“The night Ronit was killed, at what time did you leave the party?” Uttering these words, I realize I’m mimicking the feigned intimacy in Micha’s tone.

A spark flickers in his eyes, his pupils dilate and shrink, but it’s not the right kind of spark. “What? Are you crazy?!”

I haven’t even started.

“Do you mind answering the question?”

“You really have gone mad. You think I killed her?”

He isn’t shouting, Neria, but his voice is loud enough to echo off the walls, one of which is decorated with a framed diploma proclaiming Taliunger a certified psychotherapist.

“All I want is to narrow down the suspect list, so I’m talking to people who hated us,” I say.

“Who’s us?”

His tone gives him away. Poor Neria doesn’t know that pulling off a casual, innocent tone takes years of hard work.

“Who’s us?” I repeat. “Come on, you’re honestly trying to say you don’t know who I’m talking about?”

He doesn’t reply.

“I’m talking about Dina, Ronit, maybe myself as well.”

No flicker.

“I’m talking about the Others, who else?! Can’t you see we’re disappearing?”

Finally, there it is, the flickering spark, and it looks like the right kind, but then he opens his mouth, “Tell me, do I look stuck in the past like you?”

A sharp pain pierces my side, almost making me double over. Taking a step back, careful not to lean on anything this time, I say, “It isn’t the past.”

“Oh, yes, it is. You come here, accusing me of things that happened twenty years ago.”

How did you become such a loser?

“But these murders are happening now,” I reply.

He looks at me with the same look Dina gave me. The eyes couldn’t be more different, her bulging, dark cow eyes and his light, sunken ones, but the look carries the same sentiment, How did you become such a loser?

It stings, but I’m past it. Like Dina, Neria can say whatever he wants; he can keep standing in his study, surrounded by framed certificates and other visual aids illustrating his present life while the next generation waits in the living room, but he won’t be able to escape the fact that the past never rests. The past is the future.

And it’s this very insight that gives me the strength to go on and tell him, “Neria, you hated the Others, and you hated Dina, and we both know why.”

I mean, now we both know. Because there were those two days when only he and Dina knew.

She obviously couldn’t stand him from the very first minute. I never knew if it was something about Neria specifically that rubbed her the wrong way, or if she would have reacted with the same animosity to any man I took a romantic interest in, any man