Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 68 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.
So Chani and Penina were both planning to come for Shabbos. Hinda prayed that all should go smoothly, and discovered that she didn’t have any energy to spare on fretting. She peeled vegetables distractedly, and got a burn on her left hand as she sautéed the onions. “It should be kaparas avonos,” she muttered as she stuck her hand under the running cold water.
She heard Dov come in and quickly glanced over his shoulder. Phew! There was no sign of Martin.
“What happened?” Dov asked her.
“Not a big deal, a little burn. Nu, what did Reb Shlomo say?”
“That we should do it. He says that Martin makes a trustworthy impression. Although he did ask him to sign for us that he won’t use the passport for anything illegal.”
“And he signed?”
“Yes. The Rav drafted the wording of the commitment.”
“And besides that?”
“He gave us a brachah that the mission should succeed.”
“Amen.” Hinda took a deep breath. “Now I have to call the number Michoel left me, the official number.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, sometimes he calls from the office, and can’t speak too much because there is staff around. But sometimes he calls from a private number; he must have gotten a hold of a different phone, and then he speaks much more freely.”
“Like this last conversation.”
“Yes. I told you, he was literally crying.” She opened the freezer, took out some ice cubes, and wrapped them in a thin dish towel. Then she put it on her stinging hand. “Soon I’ll call to find out how to send Yosef’s medical documents, and how he is supposed to get there. But I have to find a way to tell Michoel that I have something private to tell him, and that he should call me when they are not around him.”
“I hope he’ll understand,” Dov said, as he walked over to stir the sizzling onions.
Hinda went to her room. On a top shelf, in two green files, was all of Yosef’s paperwork from the past six years. She sat down to find the relevant ones, and found herself looking at one of the papers from the National Insurance. There was a photo of Yosef affixed to it with a paper clip, and she studied it. His eyes did not return her gaze, and he didn’t look good at all. It was one of his worst times.
Would she be able to convey to Michoel that the “Yosef” who was coming to him was not the Yosef he knew?
***
“Mr. Perl?” One of his fellow patients touched his shoulder politely. “Um, um, um, the office asked for you to stop by.”
Michoel nodded and turned back in the direction from which he’d come. Since his phone call with Hinda, he’d been feeling drained, ill, and old. Still, he tried to walk with a spring in his step, because if he wanted to put Plan B into effect, he had to give the staff the impression that he was healthy and vibrant. Plan B was to approach the management and clearly ask to leave. The subject had come up two or three times in his conversations with Dr. Jerry, but the latter had patronizingly made it clear that right now there was nothing to discuss.
He had said that of course, he would pay well for his stay and his care, but the doctor had looked offended. “I’m sure you will do that, but do you think that’s the issue? Before anything else, I want you to be healthy!”
They would have to understand that there was what to discuss. He did not want to spend the next thirty or forty years rotting here, and if his good niece in Israel refused to understand that, and kept evading him with foolish excuses, he had no choice but to take action on his own.
“Ah, Michoel.” Dr. Jerry, sitting at the front desk, smiled broadly at him. “Your niece called three minutes ago. Let’s call her back.”
“What does she want?” he asked flatly.
“Maybe it’s about her son; I didn’t ask any questions. I don’t usually pry into conversations about my patients and their families.”
Michoel took the phone, and with an expressionless face, dialed Haifa. “Hello, Hinda,” he said tonelessly when she picked up.
“How are you, Michoel?” she inquired.
“Baruch Hashem, okay.”
“I wanted to talk to you about Yosef. I don’t know who answered the phone before, and I didn’t want to ask; I prefer to do this through you.”
“Okay.” He sat down on a chair that was near the desk. “So, you do want to send Yosef here?”
“Yes. You’ve convinced me, and I think they might really be able to help him. Where should I send his medical files? To the number you gave me last week?”
“Yes.” He sounded a bit more encouraged. “When would you send him?”
“I think very soon.” Martin had to leave the country the following week.
“But I thought you told me he had a problem renewing his passport. You were able to work that out?”
“Yup, baruch Hashem. Don’t ask me how…but we managed to do it.” She forced a chuckle. “His last passport was from when he was eight. He’s changed a lot since then… a whole lot.”
“That’s fine—I’ll recognize him.” Michoel laughed in return. “I saw him less than a year ago.”
“Right, but he became very thin since then.”
“Thin? That’s a good sign. If I remember correctly, his pills made him gain weight.”
“Right,” she said again, and then paused. “Your memory is very good, Uncle Michoel. It always was.”
“Not especially, at this point in time,” he answered glumly, and then recovered. “But I am improving a lot, I’m telling you. Send Yosef, and you’ll see tremendous progress with him too.”
“Hashem will help. Okay, I’m faxing over the papers. Now tell me: where am I booking this ticket to?”
Michoel turned to Dr. Jerry. “She’s asking where she should book the ticket to.”
“First we want to see the papers,” the doctor said. “Based on that, we’ll make the final decision about accepting him. We’ll probably come pick him up from the airport, but we’ll talk about those details when they’re relevant.”
“And I wanted to add something,” Hinda said, after hearing the doctor’s response. “Yosef is nudging me that I shouldn’t forget to tell you this. He’s been falling asleep recently to a little recitation he made up. It calms him, you know. Something that he made up as a little boy—do you remember?”
“No, remind me.”
“Call me privately,” Hinda said in Hebrew, very carefully. “Because the one who will come will be a different boy. He’s very capable, and he’ll take you out of there b’ezras Hashem.” She switched back to English. “Remember the words? How we laughed about them?”
“Yes, I think I do remember,” Michoel said, after a pause. “And I hope to remember now the exact words. And if not—Yosef will remind me, or I’ll make up something similar.”
“I hope he’ll be okay with it.” Hinda smiled, swallowing her sigh of relief. “Just make sure it’s something similar. In Hebrew.”
“Yes, sure, I’ll make up something that will work. But…” He hesitated for a moment. “I hope he still remembers his English? Otherwise, he won’t be able to communicate with the staff here.”
“Sure he remembers English. And it’s even improved a lot recently.” Another forced laugh. “But he has a bit of an accent now, a Canadian one, because during his recent hospitalizations, he became friendly with a Canadian fellow. I guess the accent rubbed off on him.”
“I see,” Michoel said slowly. “Okay. I hope they’ll approve this, so that he can come. Are you sending the papers? Oh, and they also want a copy of his passport.”
“As soon as I finish speaking to you, I’ll send everything,” Hinda promised, and the conversation came to a close.
“They want to know things, huh?” the psychiatrist asked Michoel.
“Yes.”
“What do they care?”
“People don’t like going somewhere without knowing where to,” Michoel replied. Wasn’t that obvious?
“Do you think if you would know where you are, it would calm you down?”
“I’m sure it would.”
“Okay. So I’m not telling you exactly where we are, but I’m ready to tell you that it’s near the city of Charleston. Maybe you’ll even get to see parts of the city. Sometimes we take outings there.”
“Outings? To Charleston? Like, to go shopping there?” Michoel looked at the other man, wide-eyed.
“Shopping?” The doctor laughed. “We hold marches there. We want to influence other people to learn our way of life. Don’t you think it’s worth it for them to try it out? To have a calmer, more peaceful life, and not to let the everyday pressures destroy nature. Nature is the best doctor in the world for a person.”
“Of course, of course.” Michoel nodded vigorously.
Charleston. Charleston. There were at least three states that had a city called Charleston. Which one of the three was he in?
***
Two young women sat on the couch on Friday night, chatting lightly. Hinda looked at them both. They were so different, yet so similar. Each one was marveling at the other one’s baby, and they exchanged their opinions about child-raising as if Chani’s Bracha was sixteen and not a year and a half old, and Penina’s Batsheva was at least twelve.
“I know it’s terrible to spoil them,” Penina said. “But now with this cast, she’s so pitiful. Every time she cries, I’m sure something hurts her.”
“She doesn’t look like she’s in pain at all,” Chani said. She smiled at Batsheva and offered her arms invitingly. Batsheva didn’t move; she was too young to reach out. She just grinned back at Chani. Bracha came running to her mother and buried her head in Chani’s dressy black skirt.
“Come, let’s see what she’ll do when I hold your cutie!” Chani laughed as she took Batsheva. Oops… Batsheva seemed to have been waiting for this minute, and she spit up right onto Chani’s skirt.
“Oy!” Penina leaped up, blushing furiously. “She got your skirt all dirty! I’m so sorry!”
“Please, it’s no big deal!” Chani stood up as well. “I have two other skirts here. You think I didn’t come prepared? Do you think Bracha doesn’t ever get me dirty?”
“At least she doesn’t spit up.” Penina was still as red as the beet salad she’d placed on the table just a short time before.
“I promise you that when she sits on my lap at the meal and insists on feeding herself, the results are not any better!”
Hinda, who had been perusing a Chumash until now, put her finger in the place where she was up to, and stood up to follow her daughter out of the room. “Chani,” she said quietly, near the door of Chani’s room, “on Rosh Hashanah I also noticed this: you’re wearing only real clothes, even though we’re in the house. Why don’t you wear a robe instead? You had a gorgeous Shabbos robe, didn’t you? Do you need a new one?”
“No, Ima, it’s fine.” Now it was Chani who looked like the beet salad. “The Shabbos robe you bought me before my wedding is still perfect; it looks like new.”
“Because you don’t wear it.” Hinda smiled. “You don’t have to answer me if you don’t want to—I’m just curious about it.”
“So…it’s because Eli says that real clothes are more dignified and more tznius’dig. He doesn’t have a problem if I wear a robe at home, but if I want to go outside or something like that, then I have to change, because he says that a robe looks too homey and it’s not for the street. So it’s just simpler for me to wear real clothes at home, too. I make sure to have comfortable clothes, of course, and…and that’s it.”
“That’s very nice,” Hinda said admiringly. She studied her daughter. “And if you’re fine with it, then great!”
“Of course I’m fine with it, especially since after he asked me that, I went out to buy another half a wardrobe instead of all my robes. You know how much I love to shop…”
Hinda smiled and went back to the dining room before Penina would mistakenly think they were huddling about her.
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