Chains of Sand by Jemma Wayne

Author:Jemma Wayne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Legend Press

Now

11

Orli is coming to London for my birthday. I haven’t seen her in over a month though we speak daily, usually twice. Sometimes I get a call from her mother, or occasionally from Ittai. They let me know when Orli is down, more down than usual, because she won’t tell me herself. She began a new series of paintings the day after the shiva ended but she won’t let me see them, won’t let anybody see them.

Safia tells me not to push. We have finally got back to normal, sort of. I suppose it could have been difficult – my coming back from holiday with a girlfriend. But Safia was the one who didn’t want to complicate things between us, the one who enforced this, and she was right, it would have been far, far too complicated. If Gaby’s example wasn’t enough, being with Orli’s made me see that. Orli challenges me but our relationship is not the challenge. What we have is uncomplicated. As though she pushes me but from behind, from my side. Whereas with Safia it is like jousting. In any case Safia’s been fine, more than fine. We have been coffeeing. I am again the recipient of her daily anecdotes. She is again the analyser of mine. It was she who told me to send the plant. An idea she got from a TV programme apparently, but specifically a plant, not flowers, not a quick fix but something that would need care and take a while to bloom, when it did bringing that long awaited freshness. I wrote something to that effect in the card and Orli loved it. I didn’t tell her it was nicked off TV.

After the funeral I stayed in Israel for another two weeks. Orli didn’t ask me to be there, but during those first seven days of shiva she gripped my hand as she greeted the constant stream of friends paying their respects, wishing her long life. I’ve always found that an odd thing to say to the family of the deceased: I wish you long life. It’s handy to have a proscribed script, something to say, but it feels sometimes like rubbing salt in the wound. After Papa died I remember watching my Nana closely. People kept wishing her this long existence and I could see all she wanted to do was curl up next to her not-existing husband and join him in his sleep. But as I stood next to Orli that week I uttered it in my head again and again – I wish you long life, I wish you long life, I wish you to get through this, to look to life not death, to remember to live. Orli’s eyes revealed that she had not yet remembered. Her heart was with David, and on the morning after the seventh day of prayers, she told me to go.

I took her at her word. I told her I was there, that I would be there, but I drove her to her apartment and hugged her goodbye and for the whole of the following week I didn’t call.

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