17

I STARE AT HER, hoping that if I blink she’ll disappear, or at least the question will.

But she’s still here, standing in front of me with her pretty eyes, her mother’s eyes, giving me an encouraging smile.

Just as I try to make out what’s hiding behind that smile, my phone beeps with an incoming message again, and this time I know it’s from Micha, I can feel it in every cell of my body, but when I reach for the phone, Gali barks at me, “Don’t answer that, answer me first.” Her voice is steely and sounds just like her mother’s did that fateful night, The knife! The knife! Give me the knife!

But unlike that night, when I was struck mute, I look her straight in the eye and say, “Are you for real?” and after a moment of silent hesitation, the rigid mask cracks and she smiles at me. “I was just messing with you, Sheila.”

I am not amused. I feel like shaking her, bending her over my knee and spanking her like in the Victorian novels I used to read as a kid. Bad girl, Gali! Take that! And another one! And another!

Instead, I say, “It isn’t funny,” and lower my gaze to my phone. The text is indeed from Micha: How are you?

Not again with this how-are-you business! Let me tell you how I am, Micha: remember Gali? Naama’s daughter? Naama who was my best friend and then some? So Gali, who I used to babysit way back when, the Gali I loved more than I ever loved any human being before or since, and to whom I felt close in ways I couldn’t explain even to myself – well, that same Gali just stuck a camera in my face and accused me of killing her mother.

That’s how I am.

“Sheila, I’m sorry, it was like a half-joke,” she says with half-remorse. “I thought you had a sense of humour.”

Our eyes lock. POP go the soap bubbles, bursting in my face, and I pull a pretend angry face, “What did you do, munchkin? I’m gonna get you!” I chase after her, but oh, no! I slip with banana-peel theatrics, legs high in the air, and get a barrage of soap bubbles blown straight into my face with that sweet ring of baby laughter. “What did you do to me, munchkin? You just wait!” And again, that tiny, heart-melting laughter… Yes. I used to have a sense of humour.

“I don’t get what you’re trying to do,” I say.

“I wanted to see how you’d react.”

“Well, you saw.” My tone is officious and pedagogic, and I see Gali has picked up on it, hiding the start of a smile. The corners of my lips instinctively curve upwards, but I pull them back down. Not yet.

“It was just to give the video a funny twist, and you’re the only one I could try that with.”

“Well, turns out I’m the only one left.”

I can’t catch her reaction because just then she bends over Jezebel’s cage, looking so scrawny from behind, almost arseless with that baggy, dark jeans skirt hanging from her waist. Her flaming auburn locks suddenly seem scraggly with no mother around to make sure she uses conditioner, and I think of all those motherless years of hers, growing up with Avihu the idiot and that aunt who allegedly took care of her, but to what degree, if at all? Despite all this, she grew up to be this sharp and delightful young woman, and I think how proud Naama would have been if she could see her now, and at this thought, a treacherous tear starts tickling my throat and I order it to go away because I know that the lovely and witty Gali is fully aware of my terrible weakness for her, and I know she’ll take advantage of it if I don’t watch out. Thrump! Thrump! Thrump! Take the knife from her! And that last terrible look in Naama’s eyes, a look that said, “Et tu, Brute?” The very same look I now see in Gali’s eyes.

When I walk out of her room, I find Avihu leaning against the front door, looking weak and defeated until I notice that sinister glint in his eyes.

“I remember you vividly,” he says. “You were the worst one in the group, she trusted you.”

“I know, and I’m sorry.” He won’t budge from the door and I wonder whether I should call out to Gali, but I somehow know that she’s hearing everything and choosing to stay in her room.

“Avihu, let me out.” I take a step forward and it proves a mistake, since not only is he not moving but now he’s close enough to lean in and whisper in my ear, “It should have been you hanging from that rope.”

By the time I enter my apartment, my nerves are so shot it takes me a moment to realize someone has been here.

My home looks like it was taken apart and put back together; the changes are minute, but when you live alone, there are entire areas left untouched for stretches of time: a newspaper lying around in the same spot for weeks, a small mound of dust by the bathroom door you kept meaning to sweep up – suddenly the paper is lying at a different, straighter angle, and the dust isn’t there at all. The hairballs have gone. It’s the relative order that reveals the apartment has been searched. Don’t mess with my mess.

My suspicion falls on one man and one man alone: Mister That-Was-Fun. I cast my eyes across the apartment, Think, are you sure? Absolutely sure it was him? Couldn’t this just be a way to vent your aggression over him ghosting you? I scan the living room again, and there it is! The small pile of hairballs and dust under the lower shelf, the same one I stare at whenever I do my squats and lunges, and vow to take care of the next time I sweep – well, it’s gone. And now I know what he was looking for, although he left the albums exactly how he found them. What’s more, I know that he didn’t find the photo in question.

I didn’t take too many photos during my college days. Most of the time I wasn’t in the right mood, and this was the pre-smartphone time, when we used actual cameras, so we only took photos on special occasions, like a particular Purim party.

I try to imagine my future selfie with Micha. Both of us squinting at the camera, our colours complementing each other, and I choose just the right filter to make us look the same age. Keep dreaming, moron.

Eli picks up the alarm in my voice and rushes over with a pint of rum-raisin, my favourite flavour.

“You’re missed at the museum,” he says, “and everyone’s giving Efraim a hard time for telling you to go home.”

I assume that by “everyone” he means Shirley and himself, but I appreciate the gesture.

When I scoop the ice cream into two bowls (clean ones!), he blurts out, “Should I get you some pickles to go with that, or any other weird cravings?”

“Very funny,” I say, and realize it’s the same didactic tone I used with Gali. See what you would have turned into if you had become a mother?

Eli takes the bowl with the smaller scoop for himself, and I immediately feel a wave of warmth towards him, despite his inane pickle joke. We never seriously talked about the whole kids thing. That’s what’s so great about our relationship, that we both know the limits of this delicate tango, and we each know where not to step.

But there was that time, two years ago, when his expression suddenly took on a serious note and I panicked that he was about to profess his everlasting love and crack out the old “why not give it a try.” My mind started formulating retreat strategies, but he just looked at me and said, “We never talk about it, but if you’re planning on having kids, I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that now’s the time. I don’t want you suddenly to decide you want one when it’s too late.”

I instantly blurted, “But I don’t want one,” and my voice cracked into a high-pitched squeal, and I realized that what bothered me was the fact that he thought I wanted a baby. I felt an urgent need to explain that I don’t, that I have everything under control.

Since then we never talked about it, I mean, not overtly. But in a roundabout, subtextish kind of way, you haven’t stopped talking about it.

That same week, a distant friend called to wish me happy holidays, and somehow we got to talking about kids, somehow?, and when I very casually stated that I wasn’t interested in having them, a long silence followed. I’m talking real silence – without even the faint sound of breathing on the end of the line – which he finally broke with “So you want to be childless?”

The word slapped me across the face. Childless. The arid, lacking less of it. Childfree may sound like a trite New Age euphemism, but it’s still better than childless.

And now Eli, with his pickle jokes.

“Are you, is everything okay with…” he stammers, pointing and staring at my stomach, as if he’ll find redemption there.

Then it dawns on me that Eli is about to turn forty-two, and even if it all goes well for him, the possibility of being a young father is long gone, and my heart sinks. The decent, well-tempered line-toer Eli could have been the world’s best dad, and I suddenly realize that he’s hoping I actually am pregnant, because who knows what I’ll decide to do with it, and what could happen along the way… It’s common knowledge that in our generation there’s no one way of doing things. There are many routes and detours and bypasses, which all eventually lead to babydom.

“I’m not pregnant, Eli, drop it.” My tone sounds harsher than I intended, and Eli withdraws. I see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows a spoonful of ice cream and insult. Bad mother.

“Let’s see if we can sort this out.” Luckily, Eli isn’t one for grudges. It’s one of his nicer qualities. I, on the other hand, can let my insult (real or imaginary) ferment for years.

He takes out his phone and starts typing. “We have two murder victims. Both were turned into mothers upon death. Both spoke out vociferously against having children. Which is what we knew from the start, but then we found out they had another thing in common.”

Did they ever.

“They were both your friends, both members of your Others gang, and this was significant to the murderer. He turned them into the same biblical figures they dressed up as for your freshman Purim party.” Eli’s fingers type quickly, his face screwed up in concentration. “Dina went as Miriam the prophetess and Ronit was Lilith. They both chose these costumes themselves?”

“Of course. You think they’d let anyone tell them what to do?”

“The question is if there’s anyone else who can understand these allusions – other than you. I mean, I want to expand our suspect pool.”

My ice cream has already started to melt, the raisins drowning in the creamy rum. I fish out a frozen raisin, bite into it, and my teeth go numb with cold. What are the chances it was all staged in my honour? A diabolical play staged for one spectator? My teeth chatter in pain.

“And what was the endgame here? The purpose of all this?” Eli enquires.

Yes, what are they telling you, these two dead mothers?

Thank God for Eli and his accountant’s common sense.

Watching him type in figures and data, assumptions and theories, I finally start to calm down, imagining Hercule Poirot and his notepad, or Jane Marple and her excellent memory, but Eli and his phone will do just fine.

“Since the police focused on you as their primary suspect, it’s possible that the murderer was actively trying to frame you, but not only are you off the suspect list, you even got a quasi-fling with the detective out of it.” He doesn’t type that last bit.

“Thanks for the reminder.”

“Sheila, I’m going to have to hear so much about him in the foreseeable future, the least you can do is let me laugh about it.”

I let him, and he carries on. “Another question worth asking is, why now? Anyone who has ever read a crime novel knows the starting point is paramount. So what was the starting point in our case? When did it all begin? What changed?”

Get the hell out of here.

“I’ll tell you what changed. Avihu. That little shit is back in Israel.”

“Avihu?”

“Avihu Malchin, you know, Naama’s husband.” And Gali’s father, but I didn’t mention that. “I checked, and he was in the country during both murders.”

“Good job!” Eli seems genuinely impressed, and I realize how seriously he’s taking his new role. He taps the new note button and calls it “Suspects,” then immediately changes the title to “The Usual Suspects.” I think I’ve already mentioned that he is a man of many fine qualities, but originality isn’t one of them.

“So we have suspect number one,” he says. “Who else?”

“It has to be someone who for some reason hated them both, and was probably at the Purim party.”

“It can also be someone who was told about the party. I’m not ruling out Naama’s daughter yet.”

“Fine. Then add Neria Grossman and Taliunger to the list. They were both at Ronit’s party.”

They both also nurtured a secret hatred at some point, and both had good reasons. Good? Excellent reasons. Especially him. Although deep down, I’m slowly starting to think that these crimes were committed by a woman, something about the aesthetics of the murder scenes, the toys, the red lipstick, someone here has been playing with dollies.

“Anyone else?” Eli asks, and despite his professionalism and innate powers of deduction, I realize this is a conversation I’d like to be having with Micha, compiling a suspect list, adding and editing out names, rallying around a cause, there’s nothing like a common goal to bring people together! But I know I wouldn’t be able to have such a rational, constructive conversation with him. I guess it’s true what they say, love really does screw with your head.

“Anyone else?” he repeats the question. “Look, I know it’s not easy,” he says, putting his hand on my shoulder, stirring up the memory of the hand that gently placed itself on me at the Purim party. The small hand of Dina Kaminer’s brother Yaniv.

I still remember the slow, pleasurable crackling of electricity between us, until Dina came and put an end to it. Dina, who protected her little brother, from what exactly, from you? Just like Miriam peeking from between the reeds, watching over her baby brother floating in a straw basket on the River Nile…

“Yaniv Kaminer,” I reply.

“The nut job? The guy who lost his marbles?”

“He’s no nut job,” I say, “trust me, he isn’t.”

Kaminer and his little hands. A few years ago, there was a deluge of rumours about him. He had left his wife and children, his promising job at the Technion, and become a hardcore Breslov Hasid. The kind that drives around in vans blasting techno music, stopping traffic every few blocks to get out and dance in the middle of the street. I remember thinking about him with a curious mixture of jealousy and concern, the same way I feel about anyone who steps outside the familiar frame of his everyday life, How did he do that? How did he pull it off?

Two years ago I bumped into him at a bus stop. At first I didn’t understand why that bearded Breslover was staring at me. Then our eyes met, and behind their glossy haze I recognized Yaniv Kaminer.

The most interesting thing about that chance run-in was the fact that until my bus arrived, we engaged in perfectly normal, polite chit-chat – from the general “How are you,” and “How’s Dina,” to the obligatory “How are the kids,” and the perfunctory “Are you still in contact with any of our old classmates?” – never once acknowledging the giant Breslov elephant between us.

“Good, good,” Eli says, “because our killer isn’t a crazy person. He follows a strict, even obsessive logic.” Yaniv’s name is added to the list of suspects.

“You actually think he’d murder his sister?”

“I think it wouldn’t be the weirdest part in all this,” he replies. “Intra-family murder happens all the time. What doesn’t make sense are the dolls, the lipstick, the whole obsession with motherhood.”

I don’t respond, still feeling the fluttering touch of Yaniv’s small hand on my shoulder.

“He isn’t the type,” I say.

“Maybe he had messianic delusions and decided to purge the Holy Land of women who won’t have babies? Maybe he had a pot-induced psychotic episode? I think that’s definitely a possibility,” he asserts and puts down his phone, markedly pleased with himself.

“Okay, I think we made some real progress. What say, Detective Heller?”

He digs out another giant scoop of ice cream and plops it into his bowl. I stare at his jaw working the frozen raisins and think to myself, if I’m the detective in this story, at least that guarantees I’ll stay alive until the last page.

But that doesn’t comfort me. Or at least not enough.