What Was Left, page 13
‘The little dog in the window,’ Rachel says. ‘I would like to buy it.’
The woman frowns and nods. She goes to the window and picks up the dog.
While she wraps it, Rachel walks past the other shelves and runs her fingers across the beautiful toys. There is a doll with porcelain skin and thick, red curls. A miniature Ava. Rachel picks her up and turns her over so that the price tag peeps out of her skirt. The curls hang upside down and Rachel can see where they have been stitched in even rows. The doll costs as much as her coat, and much as two nights in her hostel.
‘This as well.’ She carries the doll up to the register. ‘Can you gift wrap it for me?’ The shopkeeper nods but doesn’t say another word.
Later, Rachel takes the train and walks to the address on Ben’s card. It is an apartment building just south of the old part of the city. She is early, and walks through a park to slow herself down. The people around her are on their way home from work; they carry briefcases and shopping; they return to families, dinners, bedtimes.
This is the time of day she couldn’t bear with Lola, when she would watch the clock, waiting for Peter to come home, only to get a call saying that he was still with a client or stuck in traffic and wouldn’t return until seven, eight or nine o’clock. That dread whenever the phone rang at this time: she knew it would be him and she knew it would be some valid excuse. How she hated the way she sounded in return—her voice filling with tears and anger. She couldn’t cry and beg him to come home again—that was getting so old.
So she would grit her teeth and harden her voice and say, ‘Fine, we’ll see you when we see you,’ and slam her mobile down on the bench. Lola would wail and the sky would grow dark and Rachel would pick her up from the high chair and walk through their empty, echoing house. She would sing to Lola, talk to Lola, anything to stop imagining the sound that Lola’s head would make if she dropped her—crack—on the polished ironbark floor.
At six precisely, Rachel walks back to the apartment building and presses the button. A small, high-pitched voice answers—Ava—and she is buzzed in. The lobby is furnished with soft, white couches and carpets, lilies and mirrors. Rachel checks her reflection, frowns, and finds the lifts. They live on the fourth floor.
Ava opens the door, dressed in her school uniform. She sucks the tip of a red plait. ‘Come in,’ she says, and points down the hall to the left. ‘Daddy is in his office.’
‘Thanks,’ Rachel says, ‘what are you doing?’
‘Finishing homework.’
Ava skips into what must be the living room; Rachel can hear the muffled sounds of the TV. She takes off her coat and drapes it over her arm. She is damp with perspiration. She is closer to Gunther than she has ever been. She takes a deep breath, knocks, and opens the door to Ben’s office. He is on the phone, pacing in front of the window, but he waves her in, to a chair in front of the desk. She can see the lake from here. He has three computers open—a desktop and two laptops—and two photographs in frames. One is of Ava as a toddler, on a swing, coming towards the camera, her curls flying. And the other is a tall woman who stands on a beach, a cotton frock blowing in the wind, toes buried in sand, hand resting on her pregnant belly. Ben talks, rapidly, in what sounds like German, and Rachel leans into the picture. The woman’s hair is a muted shade of Ava’s red.
‘Ava’s mother, I’m sure you can tell,’ Ben says, and she jumps back. He sets the phone on the desk and runs his fingers over the stubble on his chin. ‘You’re wondering what happened to her.’
‘It’s okay, it’s none of my business.’
‘It is, though. I wouldn’t be helping you otherwise.’
‘Really? Why is that?’
Ben motions for her to sit in the leather chair facing his desk, and he sits in front of his computers. He closes the laptops, and saves something that was on the desktop.
‘It was six years ago,’ he says, ‘Ava was two. Talia and I married when she became pregnant, but not for that—we were in love. We met in college. She was studying law and I was studying forensic science. I met her in the library. She always studied at the same desk, on the third floor beside the reference books. It was a desk near a window, and around five o’clock at that time of year the sun would come in and set her hair alight. I watched her for a week before I could bring myself to talk to her, and then I had to make up an excuse. I think I asked if she had a pen I could borrow.’
‘What did she say?’ Rachel asks. The pink in Ben’s cheeks has risen.
‘She laughed. She asked me if after a week of staring at her I couldn’t think up a better come-on than that. She told me she had been reading the same sentence for thirty minutes and still didn’t understand it, and said I could buy her a coffee. So I did. I still don’t know what she saw in me. Every moment I was with her I was waiting for my luck to run out, for her to look at me and think, what am I doing with this bore? Why did I end up with him?’
Rachel shook her head, ‘You’re not boring.’
‘How do you know?’
She shrugged.
‘I don’t mean to be rude. I apologise. I will tell you what happened. Ava was two years old and she was in childcare three days a week. Talia would usually volunteer at a veterinary clinic in the neighbourhood, but that afternoon Talia decided to visit her uncle, who had heart problems and was in the hospital. I had taken the car to work that morning because I dropped Ava at the centre. So Talia took the bus. Already that year there had been two suicide bombers on buses in Tel Aviv. I told her to never take the bus, I always said a taxi was better—not to worry about the money. But Talia was one of those people—she was reckless. Her life had always been blessed.’
‘What happened?’
‘Around one o’clock I called her, to ask her to pick up some more toothpaste if she went to the store that day. I had used the last of it that morning. She was forgetful about that sort of thing. She said she was on the bus to see her uncle. I wanted to get angry, to tell her she should have taken a taxi, but I held back my words. All of our conversations then seemed to turn into arguments. I told her I would like to pick her up, and she was telling me not to bother, that she could take a taxi, when there was the high pitch of a scream, then a deafening noise. The line went dead. I felt this certainty at my core, this knowledge. That she was dead.’
‘I called my mother and asked her to pick up Ava from childcare. Everything seemed in slow motion. I felt strangely calm. The first thing I thought of was Ava. Thank God it was her day at the creche. I drove to Talia’s uncle’s neighbourhood, and on the way I came across the intersection. I drove as close as I could get, then just abandoned my car in the middle of the road. You could see it from two blocks away, the smoke and the roadblocks, and people clustered around charred bits of metal. The bus was destroyed. The sides were blown out. It must have caught fire because everything was blackened. There were ambulances, paramedics, police, and bodies everywhere. People bleeding and burned, a man with a missing leg. The suicide bombers, they pack their vests with ball bearings, screws and nails around the explosive, so that when it goes off, it causes the most damage. And there were sheets—it took me a moment to register but there were at least a dozen sheets, covering the bodies of those who were killed.’
Ben twists the wedding band on his ring finger as he talks, using the thumb of his left hand, pressing the metal into the skin.
‘The police, the army, they were running around, and it was Eli who came up to me. He had seen it happen, from across the road. He was sitting in a cafe, the plate glass shattered with the force. He ran over and began helping. When he came to me he was covered in blood.’ He paused.
‘I was shouting for Talia, and he came and held my arm. He knew me, he knew her, from the veterinary clinic, and he had seen the whole thing. He’d been in a cafe across the road. I told him how we had been on the phone—I knew she was injured, at least, if not dead. We found her body. She was already dead. There were her beautiful freckled arms and legs. Her body was unharmed, but she had been hit in the neck and there was blood all over her face. Eli wept with me. He didn’t have to but he stayed with me, he drove me home, he made strong coffee for me, he called my mother. I almost died with sadness, I almost let myself die, but Eli convinced me I needed to stay alive. For Ava. He’s the reason she has a father still. I owe him my life.’
Rachel sits across from him, tears flowing down her cheeks. She thinks how strange it is that they are both alive because of Eli.
Ben makes a tent with his hands and covers his face. He sits like that for a minute and then folds his hands on the desk. His expression is a mask again.
‘But now you know about Talia, and Eli. Now let’s talk about why you are here.’
Gunther, it turns out, has been found. Ben located him through contacts in the German police department. He is in Stuttgart, listed under a different name.
‘It’s likely that he’s in a kind of witness protection program,’ Ben says, ‘so he’s probably given evidence of some sort.’
‘For what?’
‘Anything. They didn’t say.’
‘Why would they help you find him if they’re trying to protect him?’ Rachel asks.
‘Maybe he’s been in the program a long time. Maybe they don’t think he’s in any danger. Maybe they don’t care.’
‘Did they give you any other information?’
Ben shakes his head and hands her the address. He stands, and Rachel gets up to follow him out of the office. Her head is slow to comprehend this news, but her body feels light and tingly. In her hand is a connection to her father. Somewhere, right now, he is alive. It is a moment she had imagined so often but hardly allowed herself to hope for. In the living room Ben turns off the TV and ruffles Ava’s hair. Rachel remembers the doll and draws the box from her bag. She passes it to the girl, who sits on the couch beside her. ‘You’re probably too old for these—’ she says, but Ava tears the wrapping paper off and examines the red hair and porcelain skin with wonder. In the kitchen her father chops vegetables.
‘Come show me,’ he says, and Ava carries her over. Ben kneels and ruffles her hair, saying something in Hebrew.
Ava returns. ‘Thank you,’ she says, and sits on the edge of the couch, the doll in her lap. Rachel’s not sure, but she thinks Ava is happy. Ben brings Rachel a glass of white wine and she settles back into the cushions, watching Ava stroke the doll’s hair.
Could Gunther have raised her on his own, like Ben has with Ava, and like Judy did with her? Now that she must go see him, the thought of what she might find terrifies her. A criminal. A bad man. Why has she done this, she wonders. Does she really need to know?
Talia would think her crazy. Talia, who has been robbed of her daughter, of everything, by a thousand bits of shrapnel. Talia, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ava scoots over to be closer to Rachel. The doll sits between them, her cotton legs crossed, head lolling to one side.
‘Daddy says you have a baby,’ Ava says in a loud voice—not a question but a statement.
‘Ava,’ Ben says, then speaks rapidly in Hebrew.
‘It’s okay,’ Rachel says, and turns to him: ‘Did Eli tell you?’
Ben nods. He cuts a steak in thin strips and places the strips into a clear bowl of dark liquid.
She turns back to Ava. ‘I have a daughter. She is now almost seven months old. Her name’s Lola.’
‘Where is she?’ Ava asks, and Ben interrupts her again, harsh words that Rachel doesn’t understand.
‘It’s okay,’ Rachel says. ‘I don’t mind. Most people are afraid to ask.’ She absentmindedly strokes the doll’s hair. ‘She is with her daddy, like you. When I had Lola I got very sick and it made me sad. Even though she is a wonderful baby, I needed to go away to get better.’
Ava picks the doll up from under Rachel’s hand and places it in her own lap again. ‘But if you’re sick, don’t you need to go to the doctor?’
Rachel nods. ‘But I needed to go away first. I needed to find out some things, which is what your father is helping me do.’
‘Tell me what Lola is like.’
Rachel takes a big sip from her glass. The wine makes her feel slightly adrift from this conversation, as if watching from the next room. She closes her eyes and sees Lola float past. A single dimple, the leanness where other babies are fat, the large curious eyes. ‘She is a clever baby. She has dark hair and blue eyes. She is determined about things. She screamed a lot when she was born.’ Rachel’s eyes are still closed.
‘Do you love her?’
‘So much,’ Rachel says. She puts her hand to her chest and opens her eyes. In the kitchen, smoke is rising from a wok as Ben dumps something into the sink with a clatter.
‘Somebody set the table, would you?’ he calls out. ‘Dinner is almost ready.’
The stir-fried beef with broccoli and black bean sauce is the best thing Rachel has eaten in months. Ava only picks at her dinner, but her bowl of chocolate pudding is larger than either of theirs afterwards. Ben holds up the conversation through dinner. Rachel asks him about the logistics of living in Switzerland and the details of his business. Many of his investigations, it turns out, are private ones—spouses checking up on one another, parents checking up on their children. Ben says he finds it a little distasteful, but it is easier to get than the business contracts, for insurance companies and so forth, though not as well paid.
Ben’s mother would like them back in Israel, her only grandchild closer, but the opportunities here are much better. And it is safe. Ben looks at Ava as he says this. Ava doesn’t notice—she scrapes her bowl clean of the chocolate.
‘Time to start your bath, Ava,’ Ben says, and Rachel stands to clear the dishes.
‘I should go. Thank you for feeding me as well as everything else. You don’t know how much it means to me.’
Ava walks over and pulls on Rachel’s hand. ‘Don’t go yet. Read me a bedtime story after my bath.’
Ben shrugs and finishes the last of his wine. Rachel can’t help but notice that most of the bottle ended up in his glass.
‘Okay. Come and get me when you’re ready.’
With Ava in the bathroom, Rachel rinses the plates and loads the dishwasher. Ben tries to stop her, but she insists. ‘I didn’t even help with dinner, and with all that you’ve done for me—’
‘Will you go and look for your father now, since you know where he is?’ Ben asks. He stands at the sliding glass balcony doors. It is dark now and the lights of the city stretch on either side of the river and up to the base of the mountains.
Rachel nods as she stacks the glasses in carefully.
‘Just don’t expect much,’ Ben says. ‘That is what I tell my clients. Keep your expectations low. There is often a reason they don’t want to be found.’
‘Okay. I will. What did Eli tell you about my situation—about Lola?’
Ben takes a swig from his glass.
‘He said that you left her with your husband, that you had been really depressed, that you thought you were going to hurt yourself, or her. He said he thought you needed to get help, but that also, you needed to do this.’
‘What do you think?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Just asking.’
Ben sighs and sets his glass on the counter. He sinks into the couch across from the view.
‘At first, I didn’t like you. Before I even knew you, for leaving your baby and going away. It is a selfish thing to do. I see Ava growing up without a mother, her pain, and I judge everything by that. Talia didn’t choose to leave her, but you made that choice—to go away.’
Silent tears run down Rachel’s cheeks. ‘I see,’ she says. She wipes away the tears with her shoulders, her hands still in the dishwater.
‘Then I met you. I saw that you love kids, you love Lola, but that you’re struggling with motherhood. I saw that this isn’t a vacation for you, but that maybe going away was an attempt to save things. Not that I don’t think you should have gone to get help.’
Rachel rinses the last of the pots and sets it in the drying rack. ‘I tried,’ she says, ‘but thank you. For being honest.’
Ben walks over to the counter, grabs a teatowel and starts to dry.
‘The funny thing is, as a single dad, people think I am a hero. Women especially. At Ava’s parent nights at school, they flock around me, asking how I manage. My mother thinks I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for it. But how many single mothers are out there doing the same thing? They are everywhere. If you were a man, people wouldn’t think twice about you leaving. But you are the mother, and mothers get the world’s expectation heaped on them. The expectation, the guilt and the blame. I do it too.’
Ava walks out from the bathroom. Her hair hangs in damp coils above sky pyjamas covered with white clouds.
‘What are you talking about?’ she asks. She grabs her doll from the couch.
‘Grown-up stuff,’ Ben says. He tosses the damp teatowel so it lands on Ava’s head.
‘Gross,’ she flicks it onto the floor. ‘You’re so immature.’
Rachel can’t stifle her laughter. She curls up on Ava’s narrow bed to read her a book from the Lemony Snicket series. Ava says it is her favourite English book. She has favourite authors in three languages: Hebrew, English and Swiss-German. Then the girl reads a Hebrew book to Rachel, and even though Rachel has no clear idea what is happening, the rhythm of the words lulls her. It reminds her of being small, Judy taking her to the local reform synagogue on Friday nights, where the Hebrew prayers always lulled her to sleep. Afterwards, there was wine and grape juice and biscuits, and Judy flirted with the single doctors, lawyers and accountants while Rachel played with other kids, running in and out of the empty rooms. But by the time Rachel was old enough for her bat mitzvah, Judy had lost interest in Judaism. Politics had become her new religion. Rachel didn’t mind either way; none of her school friends were Jewish. Besides, it made her different from everyone else, and thirteen was an age when she wanted to be the same.
