The Woman Beyond the Sea by Sarit Yishai-Levi

Author:Sarit Yishai-Levi [Yishai-Levi, Sarit]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Published: 2023-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

Eliya

When I arrived home, I found my father despondent. He was wearing his striped pajamas under his tattered robe and pacing restlessly between the rooms.

Without greeting me, he asked, “Have you seen your mother?”

“I saw her this morning. Is something wrong?”

“She still isn’t back. She never comes home this late.”

“But she always comes back in the end. Enjoy the peace and quiet. How often in your life do you get the chance to be alone without Mother bothering you?”

“I don’t like to be alone, and your mother doesn’t bother me. She sits here beside me, and I like to sit next to her.”

“Sorry, Daddy, I didn’t mean to upset you, but it’s very strange that neither her husband nor her daughter knows where she disappears to every afternoon.”

“And what makes you think that I don’t know?”

“So if you know, why are you worried?”

“Exactly. It’s because maybe I know that I’m worried.”

“Enough, Daddy, enough with the riddles. Either tell me where she goes or don’t tell me.”

“If your mother wants to, she can tell you. It’s not my place to tell you.”

“Once, a long time ago, you told me that she goes to Dizengoff Street and sits in cafés. But you and I both know that there’s as much chance of her sitting in a café as there is that she’s off visiting Grandma and Grandpa.”

I don’t know what suddenly made me think of Grandma and Grandpa. Once I used to visit them regularly with my father and sit on my grandmother’s lap and eat cookies that she’d baked specially for me. But one day, the visits had stopped.

“Daddy, why?” I asked him. “Why did we stop visiting them?”

My father sighed. “We stopped going because I didn’t want to fight huge battles with your mother. But you’re a big girl—you can visit them on your own. Just make sure your mother doesn’t know about it.”

“Secrets again. More lies. I don’t want to lie anymore for Mother,” I insisted.

My heart went out to him. He looked so pathetic and lost in his pajama bottoms and his old robe. His eyes kept darting to the door, yearning for his wife to walk through it and allow his frantic heartbeat to slow. He asked me to make him a coffee with boiled milk to settle his nerves.

I brought the milk to a boil three times, just the way my father had taught me, added one spoon of instant coffee and two spoons of sugar, and stirred. But before I had poured the coffee into his favorite glass mug, I heard the door open and my father saying, “Oy, Lily, thank God, I was so worried.”

“Why should you be worried? It’s just a little after six.”

“But it’s already dark outside.”

“I always come back when it’s dark. Don’t make a big fuss because I’m five minutes late. And why are you so pale?”

“I don’t feel well. I closed the store early. Not a soul came in today in any case, and I came home. I was hoping that you would be here.

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