Assaf Gavron - The Hilltop

Anna would get back late — sometimes after Mickey’s dinner and bath and sometimes after he had fallen asleep. It seemed a little strange to Gabi, but when he tried to raise the subject, Anna called the line of questioning chauvinistic, because when fathers work hard and get home late and don’t see their children, no one says a word, but when a woman does it, then there’s something wrong with her.

“I didn’t say there’s something wrong with you,” Gabi parried. “A father who doesn’t see his children is also something strange to me.” But she was angry. He understood that the demands and responsibilities of motherhood were hard on her. She asked for a little more freedom for herself, and he accepted it and gave it to her.

He said to Mickey, “You’re five months, two weeks, and three days old,” and took him for a long walk by the sea. He offered to dress him in long-sleeved shirts in the fall and winter, but Mickey insisted on short sleeves all year round, and because he never got the flu and the confrontations were exhausting, Gabi gave in. He said, “You’re six months and six days old,” and took Mickey on a rare visit to Uncle Roni, who was always busy and under pressure. “It’s your eight-month birthday, mazel tov,” on the way to an activity class for babies that accomplished nothing other than to pass time for the mothers — they were all mothers aside from him.

“Today you’re ten months and one week and one day old,” he said the day he found out that Anna had been lying to him. He was out walking with Mickey at Tel Aviv Port and a pretty young girl smiled at Mickey and made faces at him. It was nothing out of the ordinary, of course, Mickey attracted a lot of attention from strangers and loved it; Gabi frequently brought the stroller to a halt and allowed his son to babble with the nameless female admirer.

But this girl, after the obligatory coochie-coo, said, “Just a sec, is this Mickey?” She studied together with Anna. She recognized Mickey from a photograph Anna had shown her. She continued tickling and caressing and making sounds and eventually looked up and asked, “Where’s Anna?”

“Anna?” Gabi questioned, like it was the first time in his life he had heard the name.

“I mean, what’s she doing on the day off ?” Anna hadn’t said anything about a day off school. Gabi shrugged disconcertedly. “Ah, hang on,” the girl continued, “didn’t she go with Sami to Afula?” Sami? Afula? Gabi was about to open his mouth to respond, but Mickey shrieked in order to recapture her attention, and got it. And then her phone rang and the father and son continued their walk, and she waved good-bye while talking to some “darling.” Gabi didn’t get her name.

When Anna returned late that evening, Gabi didn’t ask, and she didn’t say a thing. Years later he’d think, if he had asked, perhaps she would have explained. But that evening he looked at her as she slept and felt something unfamiliar, a new wind blowing. What do we say to ourselves and to the world? he thought. We think that love is good and life is good and all that, and still. He didn’t confront Anna. Didn’t investigate and didn’t probe and didn’t question. Didn’t check her cell phone while she was sleeping. Didn’t look through her notebooks for inadvertent doodling, telephone numbers, or reminders. He didn’t want to hear about the anguish and the excuses, didn’t want to play along with self-pity and give her a chance to blame him or to make him responsible for her actions, for denying her the warmth and passion that she went elsewhere to find. Perhaps he feared that if he allowed her to explain, he’d understand. And he didn’t want to understand. So he told himself again that Anna was asking for time for herself, more freedom.

He took Mickey in the stroller to the swings and merry-go-round in the park and told him he was ten months and two and a half weeks old. Drove him to a swimming lesson for toddlers at the age of eleven months and nine days, and dressed Mickey after the pool in his short clothing despite its being the rainiest day of the year. As usual, the boy didn’t catch a cold, but was suffering during that period with pain caused him by his sprouting teeth. When he cried, Gabi would lay him down on his chest and gently stroke his yellowish, soft hair, until he dropped off and slept like an angel.

On his first birthday, Mickey suddenly waved his arms like a butterfly: rapid movements, for several seconds. Anna looked at Gabi with a smile and shook her head in wonder. Her eyes shone with pride. The boy uttered a syllable and started walking. The first step merged into a fall, which merged into a wail and brief sob, and a gleeful crawl until his father picked him up and sat him on his knees, and everyone burst loudly into a melody of Israeli birthday songs for children and a Hebrew rendition of “Happy Birthday to You” to the traditional English tune. And then the boy got to taste chocolate cake for the first time in his life, and loved it with passion.

They were at Anna’s kibbutz, at the grandmother’s (the English grandfather sent a greeting card, had yet to see his grandchild). The step-grandfather, Yossi, who now had a girlfriend, came from the kibbutz, and Uncle Yaron, the brother of Asher, Mickey’s long-since-dead grandfather, was there, too, was very excited by the antics of the blond toddler. Uncle Roni didn’t come.

Where Mickey got the blond from, no one could say. The grandmother thought it came from the English volunteer, she was certain he once told her he had Nordic roots, although he himself was ordinarily pink-cheeked and brown-haired — the entire area of northeast England was once a colony of Norwegians and Swedes who set sail westward in their Viking boats until they struck land. That’s why the northeastern accent, the most difficult to understand in the English language, aside perhaps from certain variants of its Scottish neighbor, sounds similar in tone and emphasis to Nordic languages. There’ve been studies about it, you can check, the grandmother said, and Gabi made a note to himself to look it up on the Internet. The blond, whatever the case may have been, remained, and only Mickey’s eyes were, without doubt, the almond-brown eyes of his father.

After the sugar high sparked the energy level of a Duracell bunny in the birthday boy, he crashed into a deep sleep on the hammock in the yard, brown crumbs and fresh drool encircling his mouth. The adults rounded things off with coffee and adult talk. Neighbors and childhood friends came over to wish Anna well and marvel at her son and her stories about the business management studies. Gabi sat mostly with Yossi and his new partner and Uncle Yaron. He thought about the possibility of making a quick visit to his kibbutz, but couldn’t think of a good reason. He was pleased, however, that Uncle Yaron invited them to spend a day at the far edge of the Golan Heights.

Mickey was happy at Uncle Yaron’s kibbutz, and when a one-year-old is happy, babbling syllables, crawling all over, trying to put excited wobbly steps together, his parents cannot help but smile. Anna agreed that the place was stunningly beautiful, that the cool wind and basalt landscape offered the pleasant sense of being in another country. They had planned to return home in the afternoon to beat the Saturday-evening traffic, but Mickey was having so much fun, and they felt so at ease, that after lunch all three fell asleep on the large bed in the guest room, and decided when they woke to take advantage of the daylight hours and head home after darkness fell. The birthday boy would sleep on the way south well fed, bathed, and exhausted after two action-packed and exciting days.

When Uncle Yaron bade them farewell on the road outside his house, the tears fogged the lenses of his thick glasses. “Almost thirty years,” he sobbed, “but I remember it just like it was the day before yesterday. You were right there.” He pointed toward the car seat in which the little blondie nestled. “There weren’t car seats, but you were sleeping, too, worn out from all the wild running around on the kibbutz. You were exactly a year old. And next to you, your brother the troublemaker, tired but fighting off sleep to show he’s a big boy. And in the front, Dad and Mom…” Gabi rested a hand on Uncle Yaron’s shoulder, and afterward Anna hugged him and told him how much she’d enjoyed herself, how much everyone had enjoyed themselves, and he hugged her back and continued to cry.