for my vast misunderstanding, and many other things of which I was guilty. He feels hurt by you, she said when, in the course of a gratuitous argument, I lashed out about her complicity in your silence, the special glass silence you reserved only for me. And you think he has a good case for these feelings? I asked. You think he is right that—what? I didn’t treat him fairly? That I didn’t love him properly? Aaron, she said sharply, sucking in her breath in frustration. I loved him as I knew how to love him! I shouted, aware even as I shouted I was only adding to her mounting evidence, yours and hers. Perhaps I even threw a bowl—a bowl of strawberries it was—across the room, and the glass shattered. It’s possible I did this. If memory serves. It’s true there were times my temper got the better of me. The glass shattered, and in the wake of that crash her righteous silence seeped into the room. I would have liked to throw more.
I only had to open my mouth for you to grow angry and pained. He is a victim in everything now, I said to your mother. He toils to cultivate his right to suffer. But, as always, she took your side against me. One night, fed up, I shouted at her, So now it is I who am responsible for the commander’s death? It was unfair, yes, and I regretted it immediately. A moment later I heard the front door slam and knew you had heard me. I went after you and tried to bring you back. On the street you were crying and tried wildly to throw me off. I grabbed you and held your head to my chest until you stopped struggling. I hugged you to me as you sobbed and if I could have spoken I would have said, I’m not the enemy. I’m not the one who wrote that letter. I would rather a thousand died instead of you.
The months passed and nothing changed. Then one day you came to see me at the office. I returned from a meeting with a client, and you were sitting there at my desk, gloomily scratching a design onto my message pad. I was surprised. For so long you had barely left the house and now you sat before me like the living dead. I couldn’t remember the last time you’d come to see me at work. At a loss for words, I said, I didn’t know you were coming. I came to tell you I’ve made a decision, you said gravely. Good, I said, still standing, wonderful, although I had no idea what the decision was. Just the idea that you had begun to be able to imagine a future for yourself was enough. You sat in silence. So? I said. I’m going to leave Israel, you said. To go where? I asked, trying to control a flare of anger. London. To do what? You hadn’t met my eyes until then, but now you lifted your head and looked squarely at me. I’m going to study law, you said.
I was speechless. Not only because you had never before expressed an interest in law, but because since you were a child you had made a point of not modeling yourself on me. No, it was more than that—a point of defining yourself in opposition to me. If I spoke loudly you would be the one who always spoke quietly, if I loved tomatoes then you would hate them. I was flabbergasted by this sudden reversal, and struggled to understand what it could mean. Had you not been so earnest a person, I might have thought you meant to mock me. I admit that I couldn’t picture you as a lawyer, but then to picture you as anything in those days was not at all easy.
I waited for you to say more but you didn’t. Abruptly, you stood and said you had to go meet a friend. You who had refused to see anyone for months. After you were gone, I called your mother. What is the meaning of all this? I asked. All what? she asked. One day he is catatonic in his room, I said, and the next he’s enrolling to study law in London? He’s been talking about it for a while, she said. I thought you knew. Knew? Knew? How could I know? In my own house there is no one who