happen. This irrational expectation was part of the charm of her new mood, for despite all the
secrets, charming it was.
By this time e-mails weren’t enough. It was Ella who first called Aziz. Now, despite the five-
hour time difference, they talked on the phone almost every day. Aziz had
told her that her voice
was soft and fragile. When she laughed, her laughter came in ripples, punctuated by short gasps,
as if she weren’t sure how much more to laugh. It was the laughter of a woman who had never
learned not to pay too much attention to the judgments of others.
“Just go with the flow,” he said. “Let go!”
But the flow around her was unsteady and disruptive as several things were happening in her
house at this time. Avi had started taking private classes in mathematics, and Orly was now
seeing a counselor for her eating disorder. This morning she had eaten half an omelet—her first
substantial food in months—and though she had instantly inquired how
many calories there were
in it, it was a small miracle that she hadn’t felt guilty and punished herself by throwing up
afterward. Meanwhile Jeannette had set off a bombshell by announcing her breakup with Scott.
She had offered no explanation other than the fact that they both needed space. Ella wondered if
“space” was a code for a new love, given that neither Jeannette nor Scott had lost any time in
finding someone new.
The speed with which human relations materialized and dissipated amazed Ella more than ever,
and yet she tried not to pass judgment on other people anymore. If there was one thing she had
learned from her correspondence with Aziz, it was that the more she remained calm and
composed, the more her children shared with her. Once she had stopped running after them, they
had stopped running away from her. Somehow things were working more smoothly and
closer to
her liking than in the times when she had tirelessly tried to help and repair.
And to think she was doing nothing to achieve this result! Instead of seeing her role in the house
as some sort of glue, the invisible yet central bond that held everyone together, she had become a
silent spectator. She watched events unfold and days waft by, not necessarily coldly or
indifferently but with visible detachment. She had discovered that once she accepted that she
didn’t have to stress herself about things she had no control over,
another self emerged from
inside—one who was wiser, calmer, and far more sensible.
“The fifth element,” she muttered to herself several times during the day. “Just accept the void!”
It didn’t take long for her husband to notice there was something strange about her, something so
not Ella. Was this why all of a sudden he wanted to spend more time with her? He came home
earlier these days, and Ella suspected he had not been seeing other women for a while.
“Honey, are you all right?” David asked repeatedly.
“I am right as rain,” she answered, smiling back each time. It was as if her withdrawal into a
calm, private space of her own stripped away the polite decorum behind which her marriage had
slept undisturbed for many years. Now that the pretenses between them were gone, she could see
their defects and mistakes in all their nakedness. She had stopped pretending. And she had a
feeling David was about to do the same.
Over
breakfasts and dinners, they talked about the day’s events in composed, adult voices, as
though discussing the annual return on their stock investments. Then they remained silent,
acknowledging the blunt fact that they didn’t have much else to talk about. Not anymore.
Sometimes she caught her husband looking at her intently, waiting for her to say something,
almost anything. Ella sensed if she asked him about his affairs, he would gladly have come
clean. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
In the past she used to feign ignorance in order not to rock the boat of her marriage. Now,
however, she stopped acting as if she didn’t know what he’d been doing when he was away. She
made it clear that she did know and that she was uninterested. It was precisely this new aloofness
that scared her husband. Ella
could understand him, because deep inside it scared her, too.
A month ago if David had taken even a tiny step to improve their marriage, she would have felt
grateful. Any attempt on his part would have delighted her. Not anymore. Now she suspected
that her life wasn’t real enough. How had she arrived at this point? How had the fulfilled mother
of three discovered her own despondency? More important, if she was unhappy, as she once told
Jeannette she was, why was she not doing the things unhappy people did all the time? No crying
on
the bathroom floor, no sobbing into the kitchen sink, no melancholic long walks away from
the house, no throwing things at the walls … nothing.
A strange calm had descended upon Ella. She felt more stable than she’d ever been, even as she
was swiftly gliding away from the life she’d known. In the morning she looked into the mirror
long and hard to see if there was a visible change in her face. Did she look younger? Prettier? Or
perhaps more full of life? She couldn’t see any difference. Nothing had changed, and yet nothing
was the same anymore.
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