Shelly Oria - New York 1, Tel Aviv 0

2. Going Back

He takes me to an area outside of Tel Aviv where signs claim a beautiful mall will soon dazzle every passerby; for now, there is nothing but sand dunes. His car is an old Subaru; he parks it and tries to recline, but the seat screeches its resistance. When he wins this small battle, I see clearly that he’s a man who can’t leave his wife behind; I know the type, and I’m disappointed. Invisible wives make men’s bodies seek only a sense of accomplishment, not pleasure. When he climaxes, I am a magician halfway through her show, with a passed-out audience. Then he sighs, relieved that it’s behind us. Reaching for the Kleenex on the tiny dashboard, he asks, Did you come? but doesn’t seem to expect a response. I roll down the window and let the sandy Israeli air tickle my nostrils until I sneeze.

* * *

I call Lizzie right when I get back; it’s a transatlantic call, but I tell myself my parents must not mind the charge, judging by how often they call me when I’m in New York. I say, Liz, I fell off the wagon. She says, I knew it. She’s upset, and probably disappointed, which is sort of why I called; this way I don’t have to be. I can hear one of the Lizzies thinking: She’s really hopeless, this one. That’s always the scariest moment, and it stretches out like a whole life, a life in which I’m alone with my problems. I know better, I know Lizzie would never give up on me, I know to wait for the other Lizzie; but there’s always that moment, and that voice that says, But what if. Finally she says, Are you ready to work hard. It doesn’t sound like a question, and her voice is gruff. I say, Of course, of course. But the truth is, I can’t feel it. I can’t feel my readiness to work hard. When are you coming home? she asks, although she knows the answer.

* * *

On the plane, on the way back, a man is sitting next to me. His wedding ring flickers. I think, By now, what’s the difference if I do or don’t? Then I think, Be strong be strong be strong. And he’s not even good-looking. But then I look at the ring again and think, This has gotten so bad that clearly I’m going to clean up when I get back, and so what’s the difference, really, if I have a little fun right now? It doesn’t matter, when you think about it. I close my eyes and imagine us in the tiny lavatory, a voice-over announcing impending turbulence. Ooh, he says. Apparently, the turbulence turns him on. Ooh, I say to his neck, and then fake another one, ooh.

* * *

Back in New York, the world speeds up again and I’m left behind. I sleep for two days, and then it’s time for work. I am a grief counselor. Israelis consult me about their grief, and I offer efficient ways of coping. The Israeli government pays me to tell Israelis Living Abroad that if their son died in a suicide bombing they should stick to a rigid sleep regimen and drink green tea every morning. When I moved to New York to run away from my addiction (I was under the impression then that my drug was exclusively Israeli married men), the counseling job was supposed to be temporary, until I figured out what I wanted to do; but it turned out not to be temporary at all, maybe because, like Lizzie says, nothing ever is. I get a lot of death-related grief, but sometimes more interesting cases, too, like people who don’t feel at home in New York but don’t want to go back, or like that woman whose cats kept dying; she adopted a new kitty every time as an affirmation of her trust in the universe, and every time the universe failed her. Any grieving person who proves their grief to be related to the situation in Israel is entitled to twelve hours of free counseling. Put the word free in the title and you’re guaranteed long lines of eager Israelis.

* * *

Every visit takes a few weeks to shake off, and this one isn’t any different; skipping back and forth between my two worlds feels like some maniac kid keeps pushing Reset on a computer that controls my behavior. I’m more aggressive, more impatient with my clients. I find it impossible to hold the door for the person behind me, or to smile at a stranger on the street just because we are both human beings. People don’t do these things in Israel, and it takes me several weeks every time to remember why I should. Americans say New Yorkers are rude, but I think it all depends on your point of reference. Another difference: pacing. There is rage and rudeness in Israel, but they move around confidently, knowing nothing is ever going to change. In New York people run and run and run, because change is absolutely possible, if only they run fast enough to catch it.

* * *

On my fifth day back, Lizzie and I go out. At the bar, she follows my eyes to a man in a gray sweater. He’s alone, and we can’t see his left hand from where we sit, but I feel the tickle and know, and because of me Lizzie knows, too. Lizzie is an addiction expert; she’s helped many people and even invented her own method for adults whose addiction is not 12-steps compatible. There’s a clinic in Vermont that practices her method, and they call it the Brinn Method, because Brinn is Lizzie’s last name. Mention the word clinic , or method , or Vermont , and there’s no escaping a ten-minute lecture titled Why I Am Great, by Lizzie Brinn.

I make fun of her sometimes (though not often to her face), but the truth is, she’s my map to the treasure; a day without her and I start to think maybe there’s no treasure at all.

Lizzie always says, You really are a special case. By that she means I’m more messed up than most. Every time she says it, I feel like somebody put pride and anxiety in a one-shot glass and said, Drink. Now, at the bar, she says it again and adds, But I have a new idea. I want to say, Can we talk about it another time? but I ask, What is it? Lizzie says, We have to do something drastic and dramatic because nothing we do seems to stick with you. I say, I’m listening. Lizzie says, You can skip work next Tuesday, right? Because I’m thinking Monday night will be good for this, so you’ll need the morning after for sleep. I say, Sure. Lizzie says, I’ll need you to go over everything you own, absolutely everything. I’ll tell you what to look for, she says, but I’ll need you to be thorough, ruthless, brave. Can you do that? she asks, and before I have a chance to answer, she says, Tell me if you can’t, I need to know now if you’re not up to it. There is urgency in her voice, which makes me uneasy, but I still say what I know she wants to hear. What choice do I have, Lizzie? Her eyes nod at me.

* * *

At the end of the night I walk home; the bar is exactly six blocks north of my apartment and south of Lizzie’s. I think about the man in the gray sweater, I think about going back. He was still there when we left, sitting on his stool and drinking slowly, deep in thought like he was contemplating different ways to stop some war. Like possibly he was briefing the president in the morning. It appeals to me, this sense of duty in a man.

I think how sex with him would feel. I think how his face would look in that one moment that matters, the moment that relieves my guilt of its weight, the moment I wait for. I always look them in the eye throughout, so as not to miss my moment, and that can be tricky, because they mostly try to avoid the intimacy of eye contact. I wait, and then suddenly it’s there, passing through them like a wave. In that moment, their entire lives turn to air — their mothers, babying them too much in the early years, or leaving on the eve of their thirteenth birthday to reunite with a salesman in Kentucky, or fighting cancer for years, being so damn brave ; their fathers, the memory of snow caves, of absence, of Camel Lights; their wives, that moment when their eyes first locked through Halloween masks, and this morning, the way she turned her face away in bed, so many gentle moments, so many small heartbreaks; and their children, those scary hours at the hospital, and the first time the baby girl said Daddy, or Home, or Clementine, and they realized the true meaning of the word devotion . It all disappears. What’s left is something from years ago, an idea of the men they wanted to be, long abandoned. For one brief moment, they go back in time, they make different choices, they are different men. And my body is the time machine that takes them there.