A Room of Their Own by Rakefet Yarden (best summer reads of all time .TXT) 📕

be able to go on his own? We rode our bicycles there, me on my silver bike, Yotam on his green mountain bike, and Snoopy, running after us all the way there. He’d occasionally stop to sniff something, then speed after us and catch up. I’d found it impossible to keep up with him before I got this bicycle. A hound that requires vast spaces which, in the city, can only be found by the sea. How can anyone live in a city without a beach?

After Yotam waved goodbye and went into the school, Snoopy and I continued to Rehov Bograshov and joined Yulia at our usual corner on the beach. Yulia’s been with me since pre-school, but with a few breaks. Her family had immigrated here from Russia straight to Kiryat Shemona, just like my family. Her parents worked long days at the factory, and she used to spend hours on end at our house, enchanted. “You’re so lucky that you never get left alone,” she’d say. You wouldn’t believe how lonely it can get in a house full of children, I’d think to myself, not sharing it so as not to burst the fantasy bubble, maintaining my superiority in any way possible.

When we became adults, Yulia fulfilled her dream of having a big family, and I fulfilled my dream of having a small family. I’d always insisted on keeping room for other things, while Yulia enthusiastically delved into her dream home. Forty students as a high school teacher, five children of her own and one husband don’t leave too much spare time for childhood friends or for anything else, for that matter. For years I was busy feeling insulted and keeping track of which of us was there for the other one more, and which was less. I grew distant. Along with Emily’s distance, I just told myself that I didn’t need anyone, and that it was easier to be alone and without all the petty nonsense. After a few months, when I’d already started sensing the weight of life’s burden, Yulia suddenly called me.

“How are you, Rotem? I miss you. We haven’t spoken since last Passover.”

I imagined her embarrassed on the other end, playing with her curls, but I didn’t feel like giving her an easy time. “Yeah. Why is that?” I asked.

“Why? Come on. You know: Life. There’s not much free time, and to be honest, you didn’t seem to be that enthusiastic about it either. Never mind all that. I’ve gone back to painting, after a whole year. I’ve run out of air. Will you join me?”

“But I don’t paint.”

“Of course you do, you just paint through words. Just bring your laptop with you and come meet me. Healthy snacks and herbal tea on me.” Yulia always takes care of all the details. And so, as direct as always, she re-entered my life.

At our usual corner, the mat was already spread out with a thermos on it, as well as cups, fruit, and a newspaper. Yulia was wearing comfy pants, a light-blue sleeveless shirt, and a wide-brimmed straw hat tightly covering her head. She was assembling her drawing stand and spreading out her paints the way fishermen spread their nets, preparing to catch fluttering pieces of life within them. I took the laptop out of my bag. A pleasant morning breeze came from the sea, turning the newspaper pages all the way to the headline on the back page. “Complaint filed about affair between patient and therapist. She: He took advantage of me. He: It’s true love.”

“What do you have to say about that?” Yulia gestured towards the headline that caught her attention.

“What do I have to say about it? I claim the throne, so what? You’re asking me the way people question religious folks after it turns out that some rabbi behaved immorally. There are unequal relationships everywhere, not just in therapy. There’s always someone who wants to save someone, and someone who wants to be saved,” I said.

“Saved, or taken advantage of. I get it when patients fall in love with their therapists. That seems pretty logical to me, even called for, considering someone smart and kind listens to you for an hour a week. But I don’t get it when it’s the other way around,” Yulia said.

“I think that it doesn’t really have anything to do with being a therapist. Some people just get off on it, on having someone dependent on them.”

“Has it ever happened to you?” Yulia asked me.

Snoopy was catching some waves. He then ran out of the water and shook himself dry with his tail high in the air, droplets glistening on his fur. I managed to leap up and rescue the laptop just before the unexpected shower.

“Some patients admit to it sometimes, and I try to talk about it without embarrassing them. If they were to spend one day of their lives with me, they’d soon realize that it’s not as much fun as our sessions, where they have my full attention.”

“But has the opposite ever happened to you, where you found yourself falling in love with a patient?”

“Actually, no. I don’t find mental nudity and neediness sexy, and anyway, I don’t believe that people can be saved from themselves for a long time, either within the clinic or outside it. Ever since Yochai, I’ve no longer wanted that role of keeping people alive. Which reminds me: I sat here with Omer this week, Emily’s son.” Just like every time Yochai comes up in conversation or in my mind, I quickly changed the subject. “He wants to go rescue his mom from herself. Emily got a slap in the face from life, and I didn’t manage to be there for her, as usual. On the contrary, I added more pain to her suffering. She held it together for two years, until she upped and went to Ma’ayan Baruch last year. I didn’t even know about it.”

“It’s always been like that between you two. She’ll probably get