The Book of Intimate Grammar

17

Supper was lapped in unbearable silence. Papa chewed and swallowed and asked for more, the work must have whet his appetite, and Mama dished his food out carefully, as though feeding the flames of an insatiable fire. Woodenly she watched him lean over his plate, his forehead glowing red in a rising crescendo of sucking and gasping and gulping. After supper Aron took the garbage out, but as soon as Mama handed him the pail, he knew; he knew by her face and her sideways glance. Near the rusty barrel of heating oil behind the building, Aron crouched down and stuck his hand in. He groped around in the muck until he found it: a stiff package tied with string. He took it out and unwrapped it: inside he found an old pair of high heels, but there was no whiff of champagne. When he finished dumping the garbage, he took the shoes down to the furnace room and hid them in his lair, together with the flowered dress, the striped bathing suit, and the shorn braid, now full of mildew.

A year had passed since Mama and Papa put Grandma in the hospital, after the scenes she made at his bar mitzvah. Again she had fought like an animal, spitting and scratching and cursing at them, though without words this time, she could only cry and snort, so it was easy for Mama to help Papa load her into the ambulance. And later, at home, Mama put on her brown-check dress and packed some sandwiches and jars of sour cream and a bottle of tomato juice and a few squares of Grandma’s favorite chocolate, wrapped in wax paper and nylon, with a labelon every sandwich and a rubber band, and she put it all in her bag and set off for the hospital accompanied by Aron and Yochi.

They found Grandma Lilly lying in the ward, after her sedative. She quietly gazed at the visitors but didn’t seem to recognize them. It’s me, Aron, he whispered with a chill of dismay. See, Grandma, it’s me, but she didn’t remember him. Mama, who was ready to cry, with a hanky in her hand, rose swiftly to the occasion and went to work, wiping the goo from Grandma’s eyes, arranging her pillows, massaging the soles of her swollen feet. She handled her without disgust, moving over her like a nimble spider. A pockmarked nurse with a scowling face brought supper in. She was about to feed Grandma when Mama grabbed the tray from her with a benevolent smile, rinsed Grandma’s dentures in the sink, stuck them carefully back in her mouth, jiggled her jaws till they were firmly in place, propped her up, tilted her head back, and started patiently spooning yogurt into her.

Every day they went to visit her. Sometimes Aron ate lunch at home by himself, and then hurried to the hospital. Mama and Papa would already be there, next to Grandma’s bed, and usually Yochi too. Grandma lay in her bed, lost and tiny, barely moving. Maybe she didn’t notice the commotion around her, all the effort his parents had put into giving her a haimish feeling. She had a little cupboard by the bed, which Mama arranged for her as only she knew how: Grandma’s bathrobe, her soap dish, a glass for her dentures, a pillowcase from home, an embroidered serviette, her favorite comb, the elastic bandages for her swollen feet, a tube of hand cream, a jar of special face lotion, and a hot-water bottle — she had everything she needed, it was beautiful to see. With tender devotion his parents watched over her, Yochi and Aron at their side, quietly discussing the concerns of the day or the news of the world: about the Kaminers’ youngest daughter who landed herself a fiancé, but they’re keeping it a secret that her father is sick, because kidneys are hereditary, or about the latest invention, Papa told them, designed to help people like him fill in the Toto automatically, it guesses where to put the X’s all by itself, and mark my words, a hundred years from now everything will be automatic, they won’t need people anymore, everyone will be replaced by robots, there’ll be robots, robots everywhere, and Mama told them about the new counter at the supermarket, with delicacies like fish roe and lox and moldy green cheese at seventeen pounds for two hundred grams, horrid-looking stuff, but still,there’s a feeling of culture, a modern, European atmosphere. Every now and then she would get up to rearrange Grandma’s pillow, to change her position or wipe her nose. She performed her duties with lofty dedication, refusing to entrust her to anyone else, and there were already arguments at the hospital, with the nurses and with Yochi too, till Mama finally relented and gave Yochi the task of combing Grandma’s hair, and Yochi fought like a lion to stop Mama from cutting it when it started growing long, and Papa’s task, besides his calming influence, was to pick Grandma up so Mama could smooth the sheets or put the bedpan under her, and even though he was very strong, his face would turn a bright red. Mamchu’s getting heavy, he blurted, she looks like a bird, but she weighs a ton, and Aron, whose special task was to make sure Grandma’s little toe, the rebel, didn’t start sneaking up on its neighbor, reflected that maybe she was heavy because there wasn’t enough life left in her, it’s life that gives lightness, and a moment later the sneaky little toe was curling up again.

By now he knew all the labyrinths of the hospital. On his way to the canteen at four o’clock, he would slip away, peek in at patients, accidentally on purpose walk through corridors marked FOR STAFF ONLY; he had a little game he played with the cracks in the tiles: on the fourth floor there were big tiles, and once a day he would stroll nonchalantly past the children in their blue hospital robes, not all of them looked sick, and whenever they tried to talk to him he simply wouldn’t answer, he was a tourist, no speak Hebrew, he would walk to the end of the ward, pause, turn around, and walk right back again through a double file of children, amusing himself with his private game — never stepping on the cracks. All the doctors and nurses on Grandma’s ward knew him already. Every day he checked the roster to see who was on duty, and he would offer to do errands for the nurses and doctors, and when they saw they could rely on him, they even let him answer the telephone; he would pick up the receiver and say: Neurology, good afternoon. When Purim came around he volunteered (What are you volunteering for, they’re lousy with money, these hospitals) to premiere his new Houdini act for the staff and patients of the hospital, and he could hardly wait, he went over and over it in his head, it was a long time since his last show, he imagined himself escaping out of boxes and crates and vaults, they would stream in from all the wards to see him. And now, ladies and gentlemen, the dignified administrator would announce,the wonder boy, our own Israeli Houdini, will show us his breathtaking feats, and then a pair of twin musclemen would lock him in a medicine cabinet, the kind with a skull and crossbones painted on it, and Aron would be inside, his wrists handcuffed, running out of air, and a worried murmur passes through the audience. Sixty seconds of oxygen left, whispers the administrator in his black top hat, and Aron pries the little saw blade he swiped from shop class out of his trouser cuff and cuts through the knots with his sweaty fingers. Thirty seconds left, counts the administrator with a worried frown, and there in the darkness, he inhales the medicine smells and nearly suffocates, but reassures himself that it’s only a cabinet, made of steel; yet it emanates a certain nastiness the way a seemingly courteous salesman can be nasty, or the way a teacher can be really vicious behind a façade of decency. So sorry, my boy, I have my orders, they made me into what I am, a padlocked medicine cabinet, and from under the label on his corduroy trousers he takes out the passkey, turns it coolly, coolly my eye, just thinking about it makes him break out in a sweat, yes, he turns this celebrated key in the lock of the handcuffs, with precision and finesse, the way Eli Ben-Zikri, the hood, taught him, and suddenly he touches it, that tiny thing that makes them squeal, Stick it in, stick it in, and then there’s a click and his hands are free. Twenty seconds to go, whispers the administrator, anxiously running his finger over the whip in his hand, and the crowd begins to swish like foam in the sea, the crowd of strangers, that’s how it always is, strangers, maybe there were people there who secretly hoped Aron would fail this time and stay locked up forever, and that was weird, because if he came out alive, they would be happier than anybody, they would burst with happiness, for they, most of all, would be redeemed, and he turns his belt buckle inside out, feels around for his black lead nail, and with the virtuoso fingers of a guitarist, he fits it into the padlock on the cabinet; five seconds left, four, three, two, and at the last second, when the oxygen’s almost gone and the administrator cracks his whip, out bursts Aron, and the audience goes wild: What a feat, how did he do it, and Aron stands blinking in the light, his name on their lips, shouted to the rhythm of their applause; without his name they would be sitting in silence like frozen statues, but his name on their lips fills them with life, go explain that to someone like Shalom Sharabani, who sneers at him whenever he performs at parties, go explain what it means to burst out like thedawn, beloved as a baby, as if hearing your name for the first time on their breath, feeling like a person who has been allowed to peek at his cherished guitar in a dark pawnshop, but Aron pays no notice to the applause, he scorns the cheap fleeting love of the audience, he leaps off the stage, pursued by the spotlight, and the people stand up to look for him: Where is he going, who is that old woman in the wheelchair, what’s so special about her, still pretty, with a porcelain complexion but vacant eyes, and he leans over her, his hands on the arms of her chair, and watches the excitement in the air stirring her back to life, making her lashes flutter. It’s me, Grandma; a finger goes up, trembles antennalike in front of his face. It’s me, look at me, see; her lips wind around the core of his name, because she has to remember, she has to dredge it out of the mire. So what if she’s confused, he revolts, so what if she doesn’t even recognize Papa, her own son, she’s not allowed to forget my name, I’m not him, I’m me …

Even Sima, the pockmarked nurse with the scowling face, started to like him and sang his praises to Mama and Papa: he is the brightest most helpful child she has ever seen, not like other children, who have no use for the sick and elderly. He’s an old-fashioned boy, she said, and Aron noticed Mama watching her face so she’d know how to imitate her later at home. Even the doctors spoke highly of him, and he loved to accompany them on their rounds before supper, tagging modestly along, waiting behind the hospital curtains, where he could hear the soothing hum of the long words they used to describe symptoms and medicines and treatments; how awesome death is, sending out a thousand dread diseases like long, thin arms to embrace humanity, and maybe every illness is different somehow from the same illness when another person has it, maybe doctors are wrong to call them by the same name, who knows, because how can you compare. From his hiding place behind the curtain he peeked at the doctors and nurses around the bed. All he could see of the groaning patient was his long, crooked fingers, speckled brown, gripping the mattress, hanging on to it for dear life; maybe the man had never even heard of the disease he was about to die of, maybe he’d lived his life contentedly, in ignorance of the new disease that would come into the world, especially for him, and Aron wanted to escape, it wasn’t right to peek, those fingers were very disturbing, the way they clutched the mattress like they would never let go, refusing to acknowledge what even Aron knew, that a week agosomeone else had been lying there, and a week from now this man too would be gone, and suddenly he heard a gasp, and the doctors’ coats began to flutter as though a breeze were blowing on them, and the man sat up with a supreme effort, and for a minute his face was reflected in the window, hollow and bony like the skull of a prophet or an animal, vouchsafed a glimpse of the eternal. And now the haggard eyes saw Aron hiding, and gaped at him with the toothless mouth, and Aron was petrified: I’ve had it, he found me out and he’ll expose me so everyone will know — he froze at the idea — but that’s ridiculous, what could they do, and suddenly the head turned and vanished. Only the groans persisted. Aron drew the curtain and quickly fled through the ward, annoyed with the patients for lying on their beds and squawking at the nurses, never realizing that death was on its way, their own terrible death, and what did they complain about, that their slippers were too tight, that they didn’t get a boiled egg for supper; but why is he trembling. Death, death, he whispered to himself to see if anything would happen, if anyone would peek out at him to see who was calling; nothing happened, of course, and yet he trembled inwardly as he said it again, as he whispered “Death” behind his hand, so they wouldn’t see him and be suspicious, who wouldn’t, it’s all in your mind, maybe this was what his bar mitzvah rabbi had sensed about him, and what if you were, say, a secret agent sent by Death to prepare humanity for its sorrows. “Is that you again?” He was startled by an amiable old doctor with a croaking voice, the one who told the family that Grandma could be cured simply by draining the blood from her brain. “A minor surgical procedure,” he said, but Mama and Papa weren’t about to entrust Grandma to the likes of him. “Know what I think, boychik, I think that after hanging around us doctors so long, you too may wind up, God forbid, a doctor.” And the nurses joked with him and asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, but they said it in the false-impression voice, one of them even patted his head, so he answered in his corrective tone: “I’m still debating whether to become a brain surgeon or a classical guitarist,” hoping that would set them straight, but as they walked away, amazed at his maturity, he felt a pang of regret, maybe he should have been a little more direct about their error, so they’d understand, why not, they were used to problems, that was their job, after all.

He wanted to share his experiences with Gideon: once on their wayhome from school he tried to describe the special emotion he felt when the family was together at Grandma’s bedside, and how rewarding it was, truly rewarding, to care for her down to the smallest details, like her meals and medicines and laundry, even her evacuation, that’s what they called it now, and the hospital generally — the wards and corridors and intercoms, and the charts and the daily roster, with everything so neat and orderly and serious, said Aron, knowing that the word “orderly” would grab Gideon’s attention, and you get a sense that everything in life and in the hospital and in the body is logically planned, like math, like an equation, and when you put the details together you see the larger picture, you start to understand what it’s all about. Gideon was quiet a moment, and then said with a sideways glance that personally he wouldn’t want to be involved with things like that for so many hours a day, and Aron answered, vaguely superior, Sure, oh naturally. And then he said, “Okay, bye, see you tomorrow, they’re waiting for me,” and just like that he walked away. Who cares about Gideon. Who cares about Zacky. Who cares that spring is bursting out with a warmth and a golden light that made everyone in class seem a little tipsy, and the girls were wearing their minis, those new short dresses that let you see practically everything, and Zacky invented a special mirror tied to his sandal with a rubber band, you stick your foot out in front of a girl, that’s the kind of thing he’s good at, and the girls haven’t caught on yet, it’s the boys’ secret, they walk up and burst out laughing, it’s pathetic, while here he is, at the center of a battlefield, striving against suffering and death, shoulder to shoulder with Papa and Mama and Yochi, marching to a single drum, with grim determination and nerves of steel.

Their devotion to Grandma was simply incredible, how quickly they had grown accustomed to the changes and disruptions she brought into their lives: all their leisure was spent at Grandma’s bedside, observing her expressions, guessing her unspoken wishes, rolling her over to prevent bedsores, spoon-feeding her water when she had the hiccups, and thinking up a thousand and one ways to make her take another bite of egg, another sip of tea … Never a grumble or word of complaint, as they put everything else aside and concentrated on Grandma, though they didn’t deceive themselves, they knew exactly what lay in store, when it comes it comes, the will of heaven, it was a miracle she’d lasted this long, but they treated her with so much dignity, their every movementappropriate and precise, that Aron was proud to take part in this ancient rite of leading Grandma Lilly out of the family and into the outstretched arms of Death.

Only once was the rite spoiled for him: he was alone at home with Mama when suddenly she rushed to his side. What happened, what did I do? And then she grabbed him and hugged him so hard she nearly cracked his bones. She never behaved like that unless he was sick. With trembling fingers she held his chin and he saw that her eyes were full of tears. He was frightened. Mama, who didn’t let anyone see her cry, was biting her lip to control herself, and suddenly she started sobbing: For God’s sake, haven’t we paid our debts with interest on the interest; oh please, let the troubles with Mamchu make amends so from now on, everything will turn out, and everything … Aron buried his face in Mama’s hand, alarmed at the urgency in her voice, because it wasn’t him she was talking to; she gripped his face with flinty fingers, tilting it reproachfully, as though exhibiting a piece of evidence to a judge, and her sadness made him want to be even smaller and he was scared suddenly that he, a child, had been privy to the procedure, the mysterious balancing of the family accounts with Fate.

They also gave up their social life. There were no more evenings with the few friends they had, and Papa stopped going over to Peretz Atias’s on Sunday afternoons to watch wrestling on Lebanon TV, and Aron was relieved not to have to watch those cruel giants anymore, in front of Sophie Atias yet, who kept parading around with her baby and showing her off. And there were no more Friday-night rummy games either. Mama confessed she hadn’t enjoyed them in years, enough already, she said, it was fine when we were younger, the cards and the joking, but we have to act our age, she said, and suddenly Aron realized that his parents were getting older, soon they would be forty-five. They’d even stopped listening to the news every hour on the hour. “So what could happen already?” Papa would say, and Aron would think, A currency devaluation, but then he realized that what was happening here overshadowed everything else in their lives, effacing it completely, it almost seemed.

And once, or maybe twice, as the four of them sat around Grandma’s bed, figuring out how long the effect of the tranquillizers lasted or reviewing the food she’d eaten that day and the number of times she had evacuated since they started feeding her pablum, and talked aboutclipping her nails on Friday, and the new ointment Mama discovered at the Romanian pharmacy, and about the Araber from Abu-Gosh who was going to whitewash the apartment, because there were stains on the walls again, pretty soon there would be people coming to pay condolence calls, once or maybe twice it happened that Aron was startled out of the peace that bore him gently over the voices and the words: as he looked up at Mama and Papa and gratefully beheld their serious faces, the way they kept pondering those unknowns with silent sighs like an endless lament, and beside them, Yochi, who was equally devoted and probably loved Grandma Lilly more than anyone, though as usual she barely spoke, she merely listened blankly to what they said, as if here too there were things to be learned which would one day serve her in good stead, like an anthropologist collecting specimens of conversation about the coldhearted nurse who had changed for the better, about white blood corpuscles and the social security forms that cheated them out of welfare money only because Grandma could still be continent sometimes, Aron suddenly looked up and caught sight of something in Yochi’s face — she was choking with rage, shuddering with hatred.

Aron trudged upstairs from the furnace room, wiping the expression off his face so Mama wouldn’t know. Seven months had gone by since his last visit to Grandma. Just before his parents fizzled out: he’d seen it coming, he was really sensitive to things like that these days, so he stayed away. They didn’t even know they were fizzling out. They simply started grumbling to each other, in front of him and Yochi, that it was hopeless, neither here nor there, said Mama sadly, like not being able to swallow or to vomit either, and Aron understood and kept silent. And then they started explaining on the phone to Gucha and to Rivche that it didn’t matter anyway, since Grandma didn’t know whether she was dead or alive. It’s a wonder she’s still breathing. She only wakes up to take another sleeping pill. It’s true she’s young, relatively speaking, but when it comes it comes, once it has you by the claws it never lets go. And then just before Passover they did some redecorating, the house looked like a hovel, so they painted and hung new curtains and wallpaper, and they bought a buffet; at first they considered fixing up the old one but the carpenter found a worm in it, and Mama swore it didn’t get the worm in our house but from a stranger’s furniture at the carpenter’s shop, and she would never let it back in our salon; and thenthey bought a new lamp fixture. All this kept them busy for a couple of weeks, months, months and months of shopping and checking and comparing prices and debating half the night, and there wasn’t always time left for other things. Occasionally Mama went to feed Grandma and roll her over and put the ointment on her bedsores, but when she came home she didn’t tell what was new anymore, and no one asked. So what could be new already? Once, though, she confessed to Yochi that sometimes when she was taking care of Grandma Lilly she would pour out her heart to her, to her body, that is, the way you do when you visit a grave, and Yochi thought, Ah, I guess I have to die before you’ll talk to me like that, but eventually Mama gave up, she wasn’t made of steel, you know, and at first Mama’s heart pounded every time the phone rang, maybe they were calling from the hospital to tell them it was over, but she got over that in time as well; Grandma wasn’t living in the street, she was in a proper institution, receiving excellent care; and sometimes a whole week went by without anyone saying, Grandma.

The alcove stayed empty. They offered it to Yochi, with your exams coming up and all, said Mama unctuously, if you want top marks and an army deferral you’ll need a little peace and quiet, won’t you, dear? And then Yochi let her have it: In the first place, who said she wanted an army deferral, and in the second place, she wouldn’t set foot in the alcove as long as Grandma was alive, and Mama shut her mouth, and Aron saw that look in her eyes again, as if she were remembering a terrible crime she had committed long ago, and the alcove door stayed shut, though sometimes Aron would peek in, which is how he discovered that Grandma’s embroidery with the parrots and the monkeys and the palm trees had disappeared. For a moment he was mortified and wanted to run to Mama and tell her something horrible had happened, maybe a robber had stolen it, but suddenly he remembered what Yochi told him once, that he had to learn how to survive around here, and he controlled himself and didn’t say a word to anyone, and now he kept his eyes open as only he knew how; in fact, two days later the hook for the embroidery had also disappeared, and the day after that, the hole in the wall was filled with toothpaste. And then things started turning up in the trash bin, like Grandma’s dresses and shoes, and her hairpins and ribbons, and her braid. And Aron gathered them in secret and hid them away.

Now he took the empty can out to the pantry and noticed Mama watching his face. Spiegler, Spiegel, Primo, Bellow, Drucker, Talby, Rosenthal, and Young — he named the players on the soccer team, enabling himself to walk past her without revealing anything. Papa was on the Bordeaux sofa in the salon already with a newspaper over his face. They had barely spoken to each other since the day Edna Bloom came in asking him to work at her house. Aron went to his room. Under a halo of light behind her desk sat Yochi writing, homework or letters, soon he’d know.

“Yochi.”

“What?”

By the tone of her voice, he guessed it was letters. When she was doing homework she welcomed interruptions. Better keep mum, though. But the memory of those high heels in the garbage—

“Yochi.”

She was silent. There was a little brown envelope under her elbow. A sign she was answering her soldier. She had six or seven pen pals collected from the newspaper over the years and she wrote them each a letter a week. Aron recognized them by their envelopes: the university student she’d corresponded with since he was in high school, the kibbutznik from Mizra, and the guy from the agricultural center, and there was one who was training to be an able-bodied seaman and sent her letters from the Shalomliner, and a religious guy, and someone by the name of Evyatar, an Israeli who lived in Australia and was a cripple.

“My valiant soldier, you will not believe what happened to me today …” says Aron artfully, and Yochi veers around with daggers in her eyes: “If you ever so much as touch my letters! …” “Who the heck cares about your letters. You always lock them up anyway. Tell me, don’t you get bored writing the same thing over and over seven times?”

“It’s none of your business what I write.”

“Just tell me that much.”

“Who says I write the same thing to each of them?”

“I hear that in America they invented this robot thing that can copy a thousand pages a second.”

“Aron!”

“Okay, okay, just kidding. Go on and write your boring letters. Just don’t forget to change the names each time.”

He sank down on his bed, tossed this way and that, folded his armsunder his head, pulled a coiling thread out of the hole in his mattress, tickled his nose with it; he’d been thinking of changing his sneeze for a while, because Gideon does this loud hutchoothing as opposed to his own hutchee, but he can’t even come through with a sneeze today. What now? What time is it? It’s pitch-black outside. I wonder if Edna Bloom keeps going to check the broken wall.

“Yochi is a nice name. Kind of like yokel. Or yucky. Or yak yak yak.”

“Watch it.”

“Okay okay. What are you getting so mad about. All I did was say your name. I can say anything I want.”

She turned to him: “What do you want? Why are you being such a brat?”

“Aww, why don’t you write me a letter too. That way at least you’ll ask how I am.”

Again he sprawled out on his bed. He was pretty tired already. Watching Papa break down a wall had proven exhausting. He could fall asleep like nothing now and wake up fresh tomorrow.

“Aron.”

“Yes?” He quickly turned to face her.

“Why are you so jumpy? I was just wondering something.”

“About me?”

“About us. How is it that we never have real fights. I don’t remember the two of us ever having a real fight. Do you?”

“You mean, being mad at each other for a long time? And hitting? No, you’re right. Is that considered good or bad?”

“I don’t know. Brothers and sisters usually fight. And you and I are always together, we even share a bedroom, but whenever I get even the teensiest bit angry with you, right away I feel guilty. Don’t you think that’s a little strange?”

“I don’t know. Never mind. Hey, tell me, if What’s-her-name, Edna Bloom, got married, could she still have kids?”

“Until the age of thirty-five. Or maybe it’s thirty-nine. Once I read about an Egyptian woman who gave birth at the age of forty-seven.”

“Forty-seven?!”

“Yes, but that’s Egypt.”

“And how old do you suppose What’s-her-name is?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. But before, while you were talking, I was thinking something.”

“I know, you’ll match her up with one of your pen pals?”

“No, stupid, I was thinking about why we never fight.”

“Or hey, we could find her somebody in the personal column.”

“See, you made me forget. That’s what happens when you start to blabber.”

Silence. How stiff her shoulders were. He tried to imagine her walking into class that morning. Taking her seat. And suddenly he saw the scene, someone shot a rubber band at her and she ignored it. His heart melted with compassion for her. Couldn’t the other kids see that she was special? No one ever sees a person’s home self. If they did see, thought Aron, there wouldn’t be cruelty in the world. He needed to give her something, a present.

“Did you see the picture she has in the bathroom with the half-man, half-bull?”

“Shush, Aron, you’re being a pest.”

“And there’s this woman stroking his back. Yochi, tell me—”

“Okay, one question, and I don’t want to hear another word out of you!”

“What’s going to happen to Grandma?” How did that pop out of his mouth.

She turned to him in surprise. “It’s about time. So you finally remembered to ask.”

“Why don’t we visit her anymore?”

Yochi thought awhile. “I go.”

“You? Liar. When?”

“Twice a week, at least. I go to visit her straight from school.”

“Does Mama know?”

“No one knows. And if you dare—”

“So — how is she?”

“Same as she was. Poor thing.”

“Does she still sleep all the time?”

“No.”

“You mean she woke up? She’s awake?”

“She doesn’t take the sleeping pills anymore.”

“Then … then how … she has to!”

“The fact is, she doesn’t. She’s awake. She lies in bed looking at the sky. There’s a tree outside her window. She stares at it.” Yochi spoke gently: “The leaves are falling. I tell her things.”

“You mean she …” Oh God. “You mean she recognizes you?”

“No. But I think she feels it’s me. She holds my hand.”

“Hey, could I come with you sometime?”

“Sure. It’s a free country.”

“I really want to come.”

“You don’t scare me. Come if you want to.”

“I mean it, I will.”

“Uh-huh, sure.”

Silence. Yochi returned to her letter. Aron mulled over this fantastic bit of news. Yochi did, but Mama and Papa didn’t? From now on, he too would go. Starting tomorrow. Or maybe the day after, when Papa finished the work at Edna’s. Enough. The age of betrayal is over. How could he have behaved that way. He stood up determinedly. Rummaged through his school bag. It was pretty interesting that he and Yochi never fought. Who had the strength to fight. The little red mirror. That’s what he’d bring her as a present. Maybe she did understand something after all. Maybe she still had feelings. It would make her happy. A memento from Aron. For his little grandma, swaddled in blankets, staring through the window at the night. Maybe she was like an animal now and could see things in the darkness. He lifted the mirror to his face and held his breath. And the mirror stayed clear. There. Caught you, spy! With all his might he blew on it, fogging his reflection.