The Others by Sarah Blau (e reader for manga txt) 📕

Micha’s lingering look at her long legs and shapely little behind packed in her tight dress. Joseph Pilates himself couldn’t whip my arse back into that shape. Nope, it would take a dip in the fountain of youth.

“A paragon of professionalism,” I can’t help but blurt out the second the door closes.

“Nice of you to worry about my job,” he retorts.

In lieu of answering, I get up and bend over the coffee table to start clearing the nasty dishes, to clear everything that’s nasty, but he grabs my arm and pulls me back to the couch, next to him. His touch is strong and intimate at the same time. I sink into the cushion.

“Say, how did Dina react to Naama’s suicide?”

The question – which makes it clear that he’s abandoned the theory that Naama was murdered – surprises me. I’ve already learned that it’s better not to show him too many of my cards, so I keep a calm and composed expression. Free of worry wrinkles.

Obviously, there was nothing calm or composed back then. None of us could be calm, not with her suicide taking place only a day after that get-together. The knife! Take the knife from her! I wondered if Naama told Avihu about it. After he kicked us out of her funeral, I thought she must have told him, but I’m not so sure any more.

“Dina is the key,” he says, and there’s something in his tone that I can’t quite put my finger on, “the first victim is always the key to solving a case, especially when it’s someone like her.”

“So now you’re positive she was the first victim?” I want to make sure.

“A woman like Dina will always want to be the first.”

Now I can put my finger on it, and I don’t like it. Not one bit. I stare at the nearly empty bowls in front of me. Even the crumbs look gross.

“From what I understand she was the dominant figure in every area of her life, even in the Others, even the decision to not have kids.”

“We made that decision together,” I say. “It’s what we all wanted. It worked for us.”

“Is it still working?” he asks very quietly.

“It’s something that sinks in and sets,” I reply, surprising even myself. “It forms inside you slowly, and then you realize it’s where your life is heading, even if there are questions and doubts along the way.”

I fall silent, realizing I said more than I wanted to, but it’s the truth. With or without Dina, the choice of a childless life is something that settles and congeals very slowly, maybe too slowly, along with other life choices. And what was right for us during our youth, for the women we were back then, isn’t necessarily right for us in our adult life.

Because what we wanted back in college was one thing and one thing only: to make sure we didn’t become like everyone else, didn’t veer down the popular path of snagging a prince and popping out babies and accidentally falling asleep for a thousand years. The Others was our act of defiance against this path. Today I realize it was a pretty juvenile gesture. Today I can also understand that the “everyone else” that used to terrify us isn’t so bad; it’s just not for me, and not necessarily out of defiance but out of a deep, visceral knowledge.

I look at Micha with what I hope passes as indifference. If only he knew what his question sparked in me, or maybe he does know and that’s exactly why he asked.

My gaze drifts across the armchairs, stained with the marks of other people’s children. No matter how hard I scrubbed the upholstery, the stains wouldn’t budge; they’re still here, as if celebrating a private victory. But over who?

“You sound less decisive than usual,” Micha says, and I see a hint of a smile. “What would Dina say?”

Again with Dina?

“I don’t know, she’s dead,” I say, and head to the toilet, only to discover the first bloodstain, dark and curdled like all first stains, and I stare at it and then reach down and touch my pants, worrying the fabric, waiting for the sweet wave of relief to wash over me, and it indeed arrives, but not as quickly as I thought it would, not at all.

I stay there, sitting on the toilet, counting the floor tiles in front of me over and over again like a record stuck in a groove, until I hear Micha calling out from the living room asking if everything’s okay, and I shout back, Yeah, sure, of course, everything’s fine, fine, fine, fine, fine.

Just fine.

21

DINA’S SPRAWLED OUT on the grass, her hair spilling over her face like a veil. To the innocent onlooker she probably looks calm and at peace, but I can see how tense she is. She wants to catch you.

This memory is alive and vivid. Funny how I’ve forgotten everything I learned inside the classrooms of Bar-Ilan University ages ago, but everything I learned outside the classroom is still as fresh as if it happened this morning.

In that memory, Ronit and Naama are also splayed on the grass, surrounded by open notebooks, the air rich with the warm and sweet end-of-spring scent. Maybe I knew while it was happening that that’s how I wanted to remember us, a bunch of students lazing on the grass under a soft sun. I think there was even a butterfly fluttering around us, landing on the tip of Dina’s nose, but I have to say I’ve begun to doubt the accuracy of this memory.

“Having a kid is supposed to be a guarantee that you’ll leave something behind,” Dina says, with a semi-sleepy voice that doesn’t fool me for a minute. “That a part of you will live on, that you’ll be remembered.”

“It’s not completely far-fetched,” I reply, and hear Ronit giggling behind me (maybe the butterfly landed on her nose?).

“What’s your mum’s name?” Dina asks, and