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

the air” with. She was always so methodical, so punctilious. I was on that list, of course, only she didn’t get to ask for my forgiveness because the conversation took an ugly turn too fast.

But I’m guessing that’s nothing compared to the way her conversation with Gali escalated.

“She’d called you, hadn’t she?” I ask. “Wanted to ask for your forgiveness, to apologize.”

Gali isn’t blinking, and I wonder if that’s how she was with Dina, a childlike face masking a cold and calculating mind. Little children can’t stay little forever. Dina saw her as Naama’s daughter, and couldn’t imagine that sometimes little girls grow up to wreak big havoc.

“What did she have to apologize for?” Again with the childish voice, but the look in her eyes tells me she knows exactly what Dina had to apologize for, that she had already considered the plea, decided it was too late for repentance and executed the verdict. I also know this might be the moment I should start being afraid.

That last night… the last night we were all alive… Thrump! Thrump! Give it up for all the original members of the Others!

This isn’t a reunion, but it feels like one. We graduated a while ago and while Dina, Ronit and I still keep in contact, the friendship has wavered. However, since this is the pre-WhatsApp era, we make a point of meeting up every so often.

Naama is a whole other story. She’s sitting there as still as a statue in the living room of Dina’s new apartment, a cup of punch in her hand and an emptiness in her eyes.

That emptiness scares Dina and Ronit, who haven’t seen her in a long time, but I’m not surprised by this two-and-a-half-year-old depression, only saddened.

“Is she seeing a therapist?” Dina whispers to me. “Getting some kind of professional help?”

I explain to her that Naama won’t hear of it, but I don’t tell her that the person who objects to the idea even more vociferously is Avihu, There’s nothing wrong with my wife.

“It’s just a case of mild depression that’ll go away,” I say and feel like an idiot, since Naama looks like a zombie. I want to explain to Dina that in her day-to-day, Naama is doing much better. It’s true that she hasn’t bounced back entirely, but that’s probably normal when you’re a mother to twin toddlers full of energy, especially that cute Gali, who looks like a miniature version of Naama.

But this whole get-together proves to be a bad idea. From the moment Naama walked in, she was slowly sapped of what little vitality she still had. Dina didn’t spare her the snide digs we always made at each other, but I guess there are things you can say only when you’re in daily contact, and once the relationship is no longer close, they aren’t received well. Especially remarks like “So, Naama, still dreaming big?”

Thrump! Thrump! Thrump! The tambourine suddenly appears out of nowhere, and Dina starts pounding away.

“Remember how much fun we had at the beach? Remember, Naama?” Dina provokes.

Remember, sure I remember. Dina and Ronit press their fingers together, the old oath. Naama isn’t moving, her hand clasps her cup of punch and it seems as if it’s filling up with blood, finger to finger. Like that. Our young voices chant together perfectly in sync, “No one wants kids, and no one needs kids, and we’ll never ever have them, n-e-v-e-r!”

Naama’s eyes are empty. What’s going on there, behind that hollow gaze? I know she doesn’t regret the twins. “They’re my everything,” she told me more than once, and I believed her.

I want to believe her now too, but I can’t.

Dina smells blood. “So, Naama, how’s life treating you? What about all those great ambitions?”

Naama doesn’t reply, and I want to tell Dina to shut her piehole. She’s standing there with her tambourine without realizing how ridiculous she looks, and starts lecturing us about everything she’ll do one day, and all the things she has already achieved, an action plan for a dazzling future. As she stands tall in the middle of the living room, holding forth, I look at her and think to myself, not for the first time, how self-involved and callous she is, this Dina. While that callousness may help her get ahead now, one day it’ll be her downfall.

Naama continues to stare into space, her hands now peeling an apple she plucked from the fruit bowl. She’s holding a small fruit knife, peeling the apple in one long ribbon.

I look at the swirling skin and recall reading somewhere that people once used apple peels to tell fortunes. You had to throw the peel onto the floor and the letter it formed was the first initial of your future husband’s name. But Naama already married Avihu, so what future is she uncoiling for herself there?

And Dina, as if reading my mind, laughs at her, “So, how’s motherhood? Already earned a PhD in pee-pee and poo-poo? Making good headway on the thesis about teething and that essay exploring butt wipes?”

I want to say something, but just then Naama replies very quietly, “There’s more to life than academia, Dina. Being a mother is so much more… more fulfilling, it fills you with…” Her voice trails off and the long ribbon of apple peel falls onto the floor with a light tap. She doesn’t look at it.

Dina smiles. “I don’t know what it could possibly fill you with, Princess, other than maybe regret. So why don’t you admit it?”

Then she turns to us. “Isn’t it obvious that it’s the worst thing she could have done with her life?”

I can’t describe what followed without using the words frenzy and amok. Because Naama, the same Naama who sat swathed in her zombie-like silence all evening, lunged at Dina with the sharp fruit knife gleaming in her hand, passed by her and pierced the blade over and over again into the painting of Miriam the prophetess, who was watching us the