Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 60 of a new online serial novel, Outside the Bubble, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters.
Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications.
Mike, in the end I’m going to die of this anorexia—and it will be your fault. Why don’t you agree to bring me to where you are? I’ve lost almost thirteen pounds, and Mom is very worried. But when I look in the mirror, I still feel like I’m fat, and that I need to eat even less than I’m eating. I know it’s not normal, and that I need treatment, but I’m not sending you any more faxes if you don’t answer me, you annoying brother!
Mike crumpled the paper in frustration. Dr. Skulholt looked at him from the side. “Don’t be so angry, Mike. It’s not healthy. Not for the body or the soul,” he said softly. “Do you still believe she’s doing this on her own?”
“Absolutely!”
“Lower your tone, please. What do you think we are supposed to do? Bring her here and get in trouble with the law? She’s a minor, you know that, and you need to understand us.”
“Then at least I need to see her.” The idea suddenly popped into Mike’s head. “You are so good to me; you’re helping me so much, and I’m really doing well. What’s this obstinacy? Did I ask to kidnap her? If I bring her here for two days, and leave a message for my parents, they won’t worry.”
“They really won’t worry…” The doctor’s voice was laced with scorn. “Less than twenty-four hours after you disappeared, they’d already gotten all your friends up on their hind legs. How much time do you think it’ll take them to do that after their six-year-old child disappears—especially if you’re the one who leaves them the reassuring message about her?! I think we’ve explained our view well enough, and that it’s very clear.”
He eyed Mike’s restless hands, and the jerky motions with which he folded the fax at least twenty times. “Don’t be so edgy, Mike. Let me think about this. Maybe we’ll try to do something as a gesture. I see that you are very distraught, and I want to help you out if I can.”
Mike was quiet.
“First of all, send her a nice fax in return and write how you are certainly thinking about her, and that you’ll try to find a solution. Do you have a phone number where you can reach her when nobody in the family is around?”
“Not now. Maybe when she’s in school I can try to call there and ask them to let her know she has a phone call.”
“Great. So we’ll think about what can be done about this, and the minute we have a solution—we’ll talk about it. But you realize that she can’t come here, right?”
The youth nodded. He leaned over the paper that Skulholt gave him, and wrote: Dear Becky, Don’t think I don’t care about you. There are no children in the place where I am now, and therefore I’m not sure I’ll be able to help you. But I think about you all the time, and I’m very worried. Try to eat well, and don’t look in the mirror so much. It’s not healthy and doesn’t do anything for you. Love, Mike.
Half an hour later, Jerry met his brother, the CEO, in his office. “We’ve got to put an end to this story,” he said, as he filled his cup with boiling water from the minibar. “Where are the teabags, Edmond? You hear? An end to this story, that’s what we need. Because our Mikey is not going to calm down.”
“Doesn’t he realize that we don’t want to get into legal trouble? Does the kid not have a brain?”
“He probably does, but only up until the place where he thinks about his spoiled little sister. That’s where the common sense comes to an end.” He dipped the red-tinged teabag he had found into the steaming cup. “I promised him we’d think of a solution. Maybe we should let them meet for a few hours, just to calm him down a little.”
“And what will that give you?”
“It will restore his admiration for us. There is something a bit dumb about him, and if he thinks that we don’t care about him, we won’t be able to influence him further. We’ll give him some pieces of advice to share with her, and maybe we’ll give her a little sachet of herbs, so he’ll see that we’re really concerned about him and care about him.”
***
Dov was very surprised when Schwartzman, the lawyer, called to say that he’d been able to defer Martin’s deportation for two full months. “Because of the chagim that are coming,” he explained.
The postponement was very welcome, and resolved the issue of the lost passport, but for Martin, it meant long and boring days with nothing to do. He read a lot, but it didn’t fill all his time, and Dov could not entertain him endlessly.
As it turned out, Yosef was the solution.
“I’m not coming home yet,” he said firmly to his mother on the phone. “Maybe I’ll come for Rosh Hashanah. Maybe. But for now, it’s nice that Martin comes to visit. He’s come three times so far, and we read things together on Otzar Hachachmah. I’m showing him sefarim with nekudos on the parshah, and he reads other things. It’s good that Yochai from the computer room lets me do all this; maybe it’s because they’re happy that we’re spending time together.”
“Did they ask you who Martin is?”
“Yes, Dr. Vardi asked me when he saw me, and he was fascinated to know that I actually suspected Martin in the past. We spent an hour and a half talking about it in our session.”
“I think that Martin really admires you. That’s what he told Dov.”
“He also goes to the petting zoo here, and speaks to the people there. He told me he has nothing to do all the time in Haifa, and here, there are some interesting things going on.”
“Why does it interest him so much?”
“I don’t know. I thought maybe he wants to be a psychiatrist, but he doesn’t. I asked him.”
“Michoel also misses you,” she said, as she peeled apples for compote. “I’m worried about what will be with him for Rosh Hashanah.”
Chani would be coming for Rosh Hashanah. It hadn’t been simple to decide who would come. At first, Penina really wanted to come, and that caused a dilemma, because Dov wanted to invite Chevy or Yael, and had already spoken to them both. But then one evening, without any advance notice, he said suddenly, “The truth is that my girls were here for long enough, even if not Chevy and Yael. Now it’s your turn to invite one of yours.”
Hinda had worried that Penina would be offended, but that very evening Penina had called and informed them, sounding disappointed, that Zevi preferred to daven in his yeshivah in Bnei Brak. So they would sleep at home and eat with his parents.
Hinda wondered if something had happened all of a sudden, causing them not to want to come. Maybe one of the sisters had persuaded them all to stay away? Simi?
But Dov didn’t look particularly disappointed; he walked around the house humming Machnisei Rachamim to himself, and Hinda knew that she would not allow herself to get into this whirlpool of who-wants-me and who-doesn’t and who-is-destroying-it-all-for-us. Why suspect anyone? And besides, since Simi had been there, she made sure, each Friday when she called her father to say good Shabbos, to ask to speak to her and to wish her a good Shabbos as well.
“Please send Uncle Michoel regards,” Yosef replied now. “Is he still in America?”
She sighed. “Yes.” On his last call, Michoel had been more reserved, and barely said a word about himself. Maybe they needed to ask someone what to do, get some advice. How could they know what was really happening with him? She’d asked him to let her speak with someone on the staff, but he’d replied laconically, “Not now. Right now I’m alone here.” But he hadn’t sounded like he was alone.
“Is there a phone number where I can call to wish him a gut yahr?”
“Good idea. I’ll ask him next time he calls. What goes on over there on Rosh Hashanah, Yosef?”
“I have to find out,” he replied indifferently, almost apathetically. She didn’t know if that was genuine or not. “This morning, I moved into the assisted living facility; they agreed for me to stay on there before I go back to community life.”
She had to smile when she heard his choice of words, which were clearly not his own. “And you’re not ready yet for that—’community life’?” she asked calmly.
“I don’t think so. And besides, who will I go to shul with? Dov?”
“I don’t know which minyan Dov will go to; we haven’t talked about it yet. You can go to our regular shul. It has nothing to do with him.”
“Last year, I went to shul for all the tefillos.”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t know if I’m up to it this year.”
“You would go only as much as you could, Yosef.”
“And let’s say I’m not up to it, and just not in the mood, at all?”
“Then you’ll daven at home.”
“And if I’m not up to that, or in the mood for that?”
Something in his tone was a bit provocative, and she suddenly realized that she didn’t need to use the skills she’d developed as the mother of a child with schizophrenia; instead, she needed those skills that she’d acquired about fifteen years ago, when she’d gone to a short parenting course. Mali had been the catalyst for that, if she recalled correctly. “It’s too early to talk about this, Yosef,” she said, calm as ever. “Meanwhile, you can find out if there’s a minyan there. If there definitely isn’t one, then maybe it’s a shame for you to stay there. Here in the neighborhood, at least you have the option to go to shul.”
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