The Last of the Wise Lovers (13 page)

   She was very hurt.  I could tell
by the color of her face and the line that was furrowed in her brow, a chink in
her armor of deception.

 She said, "I don't think you're judging
me fairly.  I have problems and all I ask is that you let me solve them
myself.  Nothing bad is going to happen.  I'm sure of that, but I'm
asking you not to interfere."  These were the first honest words I'd
heard from her on this subject.  

I was so taken aback that all I could do was
mutter, "Wait, you mean to say that...” but the screen door slammed behind
me, and I shut up.  Mom went back to her cup of coffee, and the openness
that had hung in the air for a moment was gone.

   It was Aunt Ida.  "I heard
you talking about Harry, you must be very careful.  He knows everything.
 He has special machines that record everything you say...”  Mom
twisted her face in disgust.  Aunt Ida grabbed me by the arm and hissed in
my face from a mouthful of malodorous night breath, "He's been with them
full time, you know, since before the war."

  
Those were the most difficult days.  When I think back to them I want to
die.  Even your goons are a more cheerful lot.  I'll call one of them
now, so I can go take a leak.

Where were we?  Ah, yes.  Aunt Ida.
 Dad saved me from her pestering.  He came in from the yard and
turned to me, aware of Mom sitting there finishing her coffee.  

"That's it. I'm off.  I don't mind going
a bit out of my way to take you to the library before I go to Kennedy, if you'd
like a ride."

   The prospect of riding alone with him
for almost an hour both enticed and frightened me.  For a moment I toyed
with the idea of going with him and saying something that wouldn't give anyone
away, but that would warn him not to bring any more of his "work"
home - or at least to do a better job of concealing it.  Except that right
away this spellbound loyalty to Mom cropped up, the sensation that I was
supposed to be on
her
side, and when Dad asked impatiently, "So,
what have you decided?" I mumbled something about deciding to stay home
that day to finish some schoolwork that we'd been assigned over vacation.

   Dad shrugged his shoulders, went back
to the yard, folded up his easel, and rinsed his brushes in a way that was
meant to signal something to Mom - but she didn't respond.  Then he
disappeared into the bedroom, came out with his overnight case and went out to
his car.  Suddenly, I felt sorry for him.  I wanted to say something
nice to him, like that I love him, or that the painting he'd started looked
promising.  I called to him, "Wait up, I'm coming with you."
 Something flashed across Mom's face - but maybe that was just my
imagination.

   It had been a long time since I'd
driven anywhere with Dad.  It had been a long time since I'd been alone
with him at all.  As I said, life had consisted of me and Mom, Mom and me.
 I think Dad, too, was a little uncomfortable.  He turned off the air
conditioner and opened the window, driving slower than usual, as if he intended
to say something particularly important to me.

   But we just shot the breeze about a
bunch of stuff: how things were going at school, how things were with Debbie,
whether I was getting along all right with Aunt Ida.  

We were already in the middle of Palisades Parkway
when I asked, "Where are you flying, anyway?"

   He said, "West."

   "Why?"

   "Work."

   From the tone of his answers I could
tell he didn't really want to think about work just then, and he certainly
didn't want to talk about it.  But there was something else bothering him,
something that had him sunk so deep in thought that he wasn't quite paying
attention to the road.  Suddenly he asked, "Has something happened to
you?"

   "No," I said immediately.

   "You seem restless to me."

   I smiled uneasily and I searched for
an answer that would be close to the truth.

"I'm having a tough time with Mom...”

   "I thought you were good
friends.  What's wrong?"

   How could I tell him without giving
her away?  I decided to keep things general.

"All sorts of stuff's been getting on my
nerves...”

   "Things you never noticed
before?"

   "Exactly," I answered
quickly, grateful for his empathy.

   But what he said next was
disappointing.  "That's part of what happens when you grow up.
 When I was your age, I couldn't stand my parents, either."
 There was a note of satisfaction in his voice, as if he'd resolved a
sticky problem for me.

   "Good," I said, leaving
things at that and turning on the radio.

   He turned it off.

"What exactly bothers you about her?"

   I weighed each word very carefully.

"Especially the fact that she has to feel
she's perfect, that she never admits to making mistakes... every time she does
something foolish she invents an excuse for it, and the more foolish her
mistake, the more elaborate her excuse... haven't you ever noticed that?"

   Somebody behind us honked, and Dad
increased his speed.

"Sometimes she's not so realistic," he
said indulgently, "but that's a feminine trait, and it's even part of her
charm.  She's got a lot of style, she's quite elegant."  His
face bore an expression of tenderness.  "I remember the first time I
saw her.  A small, wisp of a girl, in a huge coat.  A new immigrant.
 It was at an exhibition opening.  She stood in a corner, slightly
awkward; she was beautiful.  When I went up to her, I noticed her hands.
 Her fingernails were so well-groomed that even that horrible coat she was
wearing looked all right.  She could hardly speak Hebrew, but she was
fluent in French, could even quote whole passages in Latin...” he smiled sadly,
"that's what's so beautiful about her, her style."  Now his
voice carried the pain that I had heard the previous night, from the other side
of the wall.  "I never told you all this?"

   "Mom told me.  But her
version sounds different.  You had this awful hat and dirty work pants,
but she immediately saw that underneath there was a diamond in the rough just
waiting to be polished."

   Even before he had time to cringe, I
remembered that those were the exact words she had said to him the night
before.  He gripped the steering wheel in silence.  I was overcome
with sorrow - so much so that I didn't even say anything when he missed the
turnoff to the library.  Finally he stopped at the back entrance to Penn
Station.

"It's around here, right?"  It was
just before 9:00. I still had plenty of time to get to the library at a brisk
trot, but I felt like I couldn't part from him like that.

"I'm going with you to Kennedy."

   "You'll be late for work."

   "It's all right," I lied.
 "I'll make up the hours later."

   We drove on in silence.  Dad was
sunk deep in thought.  I tried to guess.  Was he going over what had
happened between him and Mom last
night?
 The task ahead of him?  Something else that I didn't know about?
 Somewhere around Queens it all became clear.

"They
bother you, my absences?"

   If I hadn't have listened in on their
conversation, perhaps I would've told the truth: his trips neither added nor
detracted, they were simply part of the lifestyle we'd all become accustomed
to.  But now I had the idea that Dad's presence at home might restore a
little security and order.

"Yes," I said, "a lot."

   He picked up on the note of despair
that must have played behind the words.

"I never realized I was so important to you.
 Well, my contract will be up in another two years; maybe I'll look for a
small business or a more comfortable position."

   "With Uncle Harry?"

   He threw me a suspicious glance.
"What makes you think that?"

   "He's the richest one in the
family."

   "He is quite wealthy," Dad
confirmed proudly, as if he'd had something to do with it.

   "Aunt Ida doesn't like
him."

   "That's an old, unsettled score.
 Marvin really did help him in the beginning, and Aunt Ida thinks Harry
was ungrateful...”

   "How so?"

   "Well...” he said uncomfortably,
"Harry's always liked beautiful women and... that was a particularly sore
point between him and his wife Rosie, Aunt Ida's sister."

   You most certainly will not be too
pleased to be reading this, so it's important that you understand I had no
intention of delving into the family gossip, I just had to know what his plans
were based on, how serious they were, and what roles you and Aunt Ida were to
play in them.

   "She hates him as if it all
happened yesterday.  No one forgets anything in this family.  Over
the years they even invent new memories. When Harry's wife was killed in a car
accident in Chicago, Aunt Ida was convinced that Harry had arranged it
long-distance from New York in order to get rid of her.  But of course
that's nonsense...”

   "What will you do for him?"
I cut him off.

   "What I know how to do."

   That was the typical response Dad
gave to those who knew what he did but still wanted to hear it spelled out,
from the horse's mouth. At that moment, it annoyed me.

"Couldn't you do that in Israel?" I
asked.

   "There are five men for every
job like that in Israel.  That's one of the few things that Israelis are
better at than anyone else."

   "But what is there for you to do
here?  After all, we're not at war with the United States, we're
allies...”

   "Alliance does not necessarily
mean love," he said with a decisiveness that may also have been directed
at the events of the previous night.  "Even where there's love there
are suspicions, and the need arises to investigate and interrogate and gather
information in all sorts of ways...”

   For a moment I wondered if he had an
inkling that one of those `ways' was leaky, and I even toyed with the idea of
trying to mention it without giving anyone away.  

Instead I asked, "Don't you miss the things
you used to do - painting, reading, music?"

   "Art!  Don't you realize
that our very existence is in danger?  The Libyans are developing chemical
weapons, the Iraqis are incubating bacteria, the Pakistanis are assembling an
atomic bomb - and we have to fight all of them, without resources, without real
assistance, just with a little inventiveness and cunning...”

   "I've heard those things
already."

   He looked at me quizzically.

   "Pollard, television...”

   He was silent.  He had a sour
look on his face, maybe because of my response, maybe because he had gotten
carried away and had said too much.  In the meantime I thought of another,
more pressing question.

"And there's no danger... I mean, from the
Americans.  I mean, they're so organized and well-equipped...”

   "That's precisely their problem.
 They're too big and too well-equipped.  We, on the other hand, are a
small, sneaky bunch of bastards.  In one sense, we're the last ones to
preserve something of the true essence of good ol' Israel: to gain the maximum
with a minimum of resources, through self-sacrifice and hard work...”

   "And that, the `true essence'
and all that, is what Uncle Harry needs for a business that imports spices,
perfumes, and medicinal herbs?"

   He thought for a moment, puffing out
his cheeks as he formulated an answer.  "There are security problems
there, too."

   "What kind, for example?"

   "All kinds of problems."

   "Like somebody trying to poison
the goods and demand ransom? Or somebody trying to smuggle drugs from South
America or slaves from Africa or explosives from Asia in his cases of
ginger?"

   He didn't even crack a smile.
 "Something like that," he said, lapsing again into a long
silence.

   We drove into the parking lot and Dad
circled around looking for a good place to leave the car for the next few days.
 He talked about the day he'd be back, Rosh Hashanah, and asked that we
take Aunt Ida to Temple with us the day before that, Erev Rosh Hashanah.

"Harry's Temple," he emphasized.  "That
will undoubtedly help them make up."

   I reached in to get his flat bag,
which was lying on the back seat, but he grabbed it before I could get a hold
of it and pulled it toward him.  We got out of the car and he locked it,
first removing another bag from the trunk, which he let me carry to the
"America West" check-in counter.  I hung back while he picked up
his ticket so as not to embarrass him about his false name - Jenkins, or
whatever it was.  Then we walked together to the exit gate, and stood there
looking at each other, not saying a word.

   Finally he gave me a hearty pat on
the back.  "We should spend more time together.  Maybe when I
get back...”

   I felt awkward.  I thrust out my
arm and we shook hands, and he turned and vanished into the tube that led to
the plane.

   I didn't feel like leaving the
airport yet.  I sat down in one of the chairs and stared outside at the
guys who were feeding suitcases into the belly of the plane.  A ground
hostess lifted a microphone to her lips and announced that this was absolutely
the last call for passengers flying to Los Angeles via Phoenix.  I
wondered whether Dad had arranged a brief rendezvous in Phoenix like the one in
Vegas last week. When the microphone went dead, I could hear that dry little
cough.

   I jumped up and stood stock still.
 You're probably thinking that a cough is a pretty common thing, but I
recognized this one: a wheezy little hack, as familiar as your mom's car in the
driveway or your dog's bark.  I looked around.  There were two nuns,
an older man reading a
Wall Street Journal
, a little girl chewing on her
braid, and a woman - just a regular woman.  The old guy didn't seem
suitable, but he was the only one I could vaguely consider, even though he
seemed completely absorbed in his
Wall Street Journal
.  I stood
opposite him wondering what I should do, when I heard the cough again from
behind me.

   This time it was farther away, but
still close enough.  I looked around and around the departure lounge in
ever-widening circles, attentive to every sound.  The nuns looked at me
sympathetically.  I had no idea what I would say when I identified the guy
with the cough, or what I would do - but it didn't seem important.  It
would have been enough for me to see him, to catch a glimpse of his figure
before he could disappear again.

   But I didn't hear him again.

*

   On the way into the city, on the
train, I suddenly realized who it was I should be suspicious of.

   And what a painful realization -
because it was related to a man it would be hard to be suspicious of: Dad.