When we arrive in Israel, Rita’s sister, Sigal, meets us at the airport. Because I am not sure my brother would be home, I join Rita and we all go to Sigal’s apartment, which is located several miles east of Tel Aviv. I am not a stranger to the family. I met Sigal, her husband, and three kids in the summer when they came to visit Rita. When they see me at the door with my luggage, they immediately make me feel at home. Sigal insists on serving me a plate of green beans, a piece of chicken, and potatoes she cooked for her kids’ lunch. Her youngest daughter, Yonit, waits impatiently for me to finish everything on my plate so she could give me a tour of her pink bedroom and the rest of the apartment. Rita’s mother is there too. Apparently, luck was on her side and she had bought a ticket on the same flight as us to Portugal. She paid three times more than we did, but hey, life is short and I have to keep my mouth shut before I say something snippy.
Mom, who I’m going to call Vera, is a tiny ball of energy full of anecdotes about life’s mishaps and good fortunes. Her short, auburn hair is well coiffed, her bright lipstick is not smeared, and her clothes spell comfort mixed with an active lifestyle. She is definitely not the grandma type. She can probably run me to the ground if she puts her mind to it. I should bond with her as soon as possible.
I move to the balcony where Vera is sitting to look at the sunset and the high-rise buildings that have sprouted in the suburbs around Tel Aviv. We talk about this and that, mostly about how Sigal scored that modern tenth-floor apartment, and we get to know each other a little better. Rita comes to check on us with a cup of Nescafe in her hand and exclaims triumphantly, “You see, I told you, you’d get along with my mom.” Right. What else did she think I was going to do? Punch her mother in the face? I have nothing against her mother. I just hadn’t planned on going to Portugal as a sidekick of her family reunion.
When I start dozing on the couch, Rita offers to give me a ride to my brother’s house in Tel Aviv, in her mother’s car this time. She explains that his apartment is on the way from her sister’s apartment to her parents’ apartment so it’s no big deal. I think that it is quite out of the way for her, but I am so happy she is willing to do it that I don’t try to argue. This woman loves to drive. I think she also wants to see where my brother lives, because I spoke about his fabulous place many times.
It’s already dark when we arrive in the city. On the wide street that runs parallel to the beach, Rita nearly hits a young dude on an electric scooter. “I didn’t even see him,” she complains, slightly unnerved. “He doesn’t even wear a helmet.”
“You have to watch out for them,” Vera interjects. “They think they own the road.”
Welcome to Israel, I think to myself.
When I call my brother to come downstairs and help me with my suitcase, he is as surprised to hear my voice as I expected. He completely forgot that I was coming. I let it slide because it is my fault he forgot. I usually have to text him every day for a week prior to my arrival to ensure that the information sticks, but this time I forgot to text him from the airport in San Francisco.
I spend the five days before the flight to Portugal in a jetlag haze. I lie awake through the nights chasing mosquitoes, and sleep during the days. My brother’s bookshelf keeps me company when no one is around. Edward Snowden’s scandalous memoir, translated into Hebrew, attracts my attention and helps me pass the long wakeful hours. In the hours my body can function, I go to the beach, visit the outdoor market, and hang out with my brother in night clubs. He lives in one of the best neighborhoods in Tel Aviv and I take advantage of it.
I call Rita one afternoon to see if she wants to meet—after all, she has asked me to travel to Israel with her numerous times so I can meet her friends and visit all the best places she knows in Galilee and the desert—but she happily informs me that she is going to Jerusalem with an old friend of hers. The plan, however, does not include me. I consider canceling my ticket to Portugal, but on second thought decide that the drama that would ensue from such a radical move would be worse than going, so I stay put. I can probably survive a week of sightseeing in the company of an oblivious friend, her mother, and another woman I’ve never met.
I don’t educate myself about Portugal. Since my ability to influence the direction of anything that might happen on the trip is very limited, I feel that going there unprepared is the better option. This way I am not going to have unfulfilled expectations. I brace myself and hope for the best.
When I mention my upcoming trip to a childhood friend I meet for dinner at a small neighborhood restaurant, she makes an astute observation over a plate of hummus: “Sounds like you’re going on a geriatric trip.” It stings. The youngest among us is in her early fifties, the oldest is approaching eighty. I am somewhere in the middle. I try to understand how I got myself into this. How did this happen? I can’t picture myself traveling with three middle-aged women, playing tourist.
* * *
For the same reason I agreed to fly to Israel with Rita, which still baffles me, I also agreed to spend the night before the flight at her parents’ apartment so we can travel to the airport together at four in the morning. This time I also meet Rita’s father. He is planted on the couch and never moves from there until I go to bed in a little bedroom converted into an office. He also does not sleep. At two in the morning, when I visit the bathroom, he is still sitting in front of the TV, watching something. When he finally goes to bed, I get up. I am ready long before anyone else wakes up. Sleeping on an unfamiliar sofa is not a recipe for a good night’s sleep. Combine that with jetlag leftover and having to start the day before dawn, and two hours of unconsciousness sound good. I am not particularly troubled by my sleeplessness, though. It comes with the territory, as they say.
We take a cab to the airport. The driver starts a conversation with Rita’s mom, who sits next to him, in fluent Russian sprinkled with a little Hebrew. I pick up names and a few words here and there. It’s politics. I think the driver is lamenting the ignorance of the young generation and the good life he left behind in Russia. I throw in a couple of sentences in Hebrew about Stalin’s persecution of Jewish intellectuals in the early 1950s to show him we are not all ignorant, and he floods me with so much Russian that Vera has to intervene and tell him she is the only Russian speaker in the group. According to one of Rita’s stories, her mom learned Russian when she was a small child. The family escaped from Poland before the Holocaust and got off the train in Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan, where she was born. At the end of the war, back in Poland at the age of four, Vera also learned to speak Yiddish and Polish and suffered a number of untold traumas.
Vera’s turbulent past did not stop her from becoming a highly functional adult, and as soon as the cab stops in front of the terminal she pays the fare which comes up to around 15 dollars.
This time around at the airport no one sneaks into first class. We’re all in economy on a direct flight to Lisbon. After we pass through security and immigration, we settle in the terminal to wait for our flight. Rita and Vera go to look for a bathroom and I am tasked with looking after the bags until they return. What else did I think was going to happen? When you travel in the company of women, half of the time is spent looking for bathrooms and sharing bathroom experiences. It is a woman thing. A few years ago, when I shared an office with three other women, one of the main daily activities involved going to the bathroom together or looking for another woman in a neighboring office to go to the bathroom with. I never understood it, but apparently this is part of womanhood.
When the two come back, I tell them I am going to get a cup of coffee. Rita sits down, puts her feet up on a chair across from her and practically commands me, “Bring us coffee too.” I try not to live by cliché, but I send her a look that I hope can kill. So that’s why I am traveling with you? To watch your bags when you go to the bathroom and buy you coffee? I am so mad, I can barely hold myself back. Okay, it’s not the first time she is trying to make me pay for something that she feels entitled to, but this time it does not sit well with me. I am pissed off and we are not even on the plane yet.
Surprisingly, Rita senses that she crossed a line. “I’ll go with you,” she says, lifting herself slowly from the chair and collecting her purse. I assume it is the same purse holding the five-thousand-dollar credit card Fred gave her.
At the coffee counter, I order a small coffee. Rita orders two, one large latte for herself, a small coffee for her mother. Then she turns to me, “You can pay for our coffee instead of giving my mother your share of the cab fare to the airport.”
“Sure, no problem,” I say. I already can’t wait for this trip to be over.
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