Assaf Gavron - The Hilltop

“Drive carefully, slowly-slowly,” Uncle Yaron said when they were sitting in the car, and Gabi replied, “For sure. We’ll watch out for stray cows. Worse comes to worst, you’ll know by now what to do with Mickey, you’ve been drilled.”

“Don’t you dare,” the uncle responded, and patted the roof of the car as if it were a shoulder, to send it on its way. A lone IDF flare some forty minutes into the drive made their hearts skip a beat and raised goose bumps on their skin, but they reached their rented apartment in Tel Aviv safe and sound.

It ebbed and flowed like the tide, he noticed, like spring and fall. There were times he felt that Anna had time for him again. Returned earlier. A sense of warmth emanated from her then, and he felt close, too: when he heard her laughing at something on the television from the other room, saw her piecing together a puzzle with Mickey with a degree of patience he himself didn’t have, stole a glance at her with her nightgown above her head, on its way to draping over her white skin.

He continued to tell Mickey his age, and Mickey continued to grow: a year and one month; and three months and two days; and seven months and nineteen days. He grew and walked and talked and demanded, and Gabi was at his side all the time, and Anna was at the university, close to finishing her degree, looking into options, seminars, job fairs, a year and nine months and three days. Fall winds, and again Anna disappeared, and again she blamed the studies, and again turned her back, and again from within his sleep Gabi heard the door opening and closing gingerly and the water in the shower turned on and off discreetly, and he glanced at the clock and continued sleeping, and woke with the rustling of the comforter, conscious enough to notice that he didn’t get a kiss or caress or embrace, and he didn’t ask her in the morning, but she summed up the evening in two sentences and specified a return time different from the one he saw on the clock.

They thought about putting Mickey in day care. The long hours with him were no longer smooth sailing for Gabi. The sweet and ever-smiling baby had turned more demanding, more frustrated, sometimes on edge. Gabi lost it sometimes, too, in return, and with time Mickey learned exactly which buttons to push to anger his father. Gabi wondered about what would become of him, and about what he was giving up by devoting most of his time to the child. He knew at some point he’d have to decide what he wanted to be when he grew up. On the other hand, Mickey gave him an excellent excuse to delay his decision. He couldn’t honestly think of a better way to spend his time. And he loved his boy, enjoyed most moments in his company.

The problem was, they couldn’t afford to live without salaries. Anna wasn’t going to land a job immediately, it would take her some time to find the right fit. During the adjustment period, would she be able to spend more time with Mickey? Gabi asked. She appeared to recoil at the thought. Gabi got angry, felt used. It was decided: day care.

Gabi dropped Mickey off every morning and missed him from the moment he closed the day care’s gate and went to work. The friend from the flyers business welcomed him back gladly and gave him an office job in sales and marketing, with short hours and modest pay. Mickey adjusted. Anna attended lectures and conferences and supplementary courses and job interviews. On one occasion, when she told him about an offer from a factory in Afula, his ears pricked up.

“A factory for toasting sunflower seeds?” he asked, referencing the snack the town was famous for producing.

“No, funny guy,” she answered. It was a municipal garbage recycling plant, one of the most sophisticated in the world. They had an opening in the business development department, and they liked her CV and had invited her to come in for an interview and get a feel of the place. She’d probably have to spend a night there at a hotel at their expense.

“Afula has hotels?” he asked. She laughed again. “And if you get it, will you travel to Afula every day?”

She turned serious. “We’ll see,” she said. “Maybe we’ll move to one of the kibbutzim in the area? There are wonderful kibbutzim in the Yizrael Valley. We’ve always said we’d like to give Mickey the kind of childhood we had, instead of the soot and the buses and the closely packed apartment buildings and the parks full of dog shit.” We said that? Gabi tried to recall, but couldn’t place the conversation. He didn’t “want to give” and didn’t wish a childhood like he’d had on anyone, certainly not his beloved son. And what she said about Tel Aviv, maybe there was something to it, but he was pretty surprised by the contempt Anna suddenly expressed toward the city in which they had lived for three years, felt a little offended on its behalf. When he tried to play things back, he remembered her speaking differently. Once upon a time they’d enjoyed going to the beach, the long evening walks along the boulevard on the way back, stopping on occasion at a café. Until Mickey was born.

Ebb and flow, spring and fall. She returned from Afula enthusiastic. That weekend he noticed that she held his hand when they walked along the boulevard, smiled at him and kissed him on the cheek every now and then for no reason. She felt good, was excited about the new job. It wasn’t a long-term thing, she said, she’d like to start a small business of her own one day, but it was an excellent starting point: a sophisticated and innovative plant, a product that benefitted the environment and nature, nice people she clicked with from the first moment. Gabi began to imagine life in the valley, despite his aversion to the kibbutz idea. But perhaps he’d be able to continue his studies remotely. Perhaps he’d be able to get involved in an interesting kibbutz industry. Mickey would love it. And then Anna said that if he wanted to remain in Tel Aviv, she could maybe find a room at one of the kibbutzim, stay in the north a few days a week, and return to Tel Aviv for long weekends. The idea blinded him for a moment, he couldn’t see a thing around him. It sounded to him like a suggestion — albeit delicate, veiled — to separate. Not only from him but, like her father thirty years earlier, from her only child, too. The ebb and flow of the tide are intrinsically linked. He looked at her with moist eyes and she smiled and said, “Don’t panic, it’s merely a suggestion. In the event you want to stay in Tel Aviv.”

“You’re two years and eight months and three days old,” he said to Mickey on the way to day care. And Mickey said, “Yes, Daddy?” and Gabi said, “Yes, Mickey.”

Anna worked in Afula. She was given a company car and drove there and back three days a week, and on the fourth day spent the night in a guest room at one of the kibbutzim in the area. She was content, and Gabi discovered that all was not doom and gloom. He took Mickey to day care in the morning, collected him in the afternoon, and in the interim sat in the office and missed him and tried to interest potential customers in advertising on flyers that were distributed in mailboxes and under the windshield wipers of cars.

“You’re two years and eleven and a half months old.” Two weeks later the three of them took time off and spent a day of fun at the beach and the café. Ate schnitzels and fries, and brown ice cream just like Mickey loved. And played on the playground. The experiences of that day were etched in Gabi’s memory: The sweaty, happy expressions on Mickey’s face. The sand that stuck to his forehead. The mouth adorned with a dry brown crust. And the annoying kid who tried to snatch the wolf doll Mickey brought along on the walk, an older kid, curly-haired, bored, and cheeky.

* * *

What are you doing here, you annoying little boy? Where’s your father where’s your mother where are your friends? Why do you insist on running to every ride and every game that Mickey wants to play with, pushing in front of him, stamping your feet? How dare you lay your filthy hands on Peter, my boy’s wolf ? Why do you insist on making my blood boil? My blood’s boiling, the air’s streaming from my nostrils, my child wants to climb this ladder, so I stand next to the ladder and physically block the annoying kid, once, twice, and a third time, when he tries to push forcefully with his small body and again touches Peter, I give him a little one with the tip of my shoe in the kneecap, pinching and fiercely twisting his ear at the same time, and hear the shocked, the pained cry, and clench my teeth in response to the angry look directed upward at me at foreseeable speed, in terror, to the accompaniment of undulating howls, and say to him, “Don’t mess with me,” and look around discreetly to ensure that no one saw.