On the Road to .... Where? (13)

Rita programs the GPS on her phone to wherever she plans to go—I have only a vague idea that we are heading north and toward the coast—and takes to the road like a local. Vera reads the road signs aloud while Rita checks the dashboard gadgets and activates the windshield wipers, probably unintentionally. She maneuvers the car out of the airport and quickly finds the entrance to the freeway. We all breathe a sigh of relief even though I had no doubt that Rita would manage to find it quickly.

Now that I am sitting next to Anna, I wonder if I should try to build some rapport with her and get to know her a bit better. Until now there has not been much to build on. She has kept to herself most of the time, waiting for us on a bench, staying behind in the apartment, avoiding restaurants, and not saying much about anything. I ask her where she met Rita.

“I met Rita more than twenty years ago, when she bought jewelry from me,” she says.

“And you invited me into your house afterwards,” Rita interjects from the front seat. 

“My mother was already sick then and I was taking care of her, that’s why I had a table by the door, outside the house,” Anna explains.

“Where was the house?” I ask.

“In Tel Aviv, near Shuk HaCarmel,” Anna says.

“Not far from your brother’s house,” Rita adds, looking at us in the rearview mirror.

“I love that area,” I tell her. “I used to live not far from there before I left Israel.” I want to make the exchange feel more like a conversation than an interview but I can’t help myself. “How long did you live there?” I ask again.

“About ten years,” Anna says as she pulls her phone out of a side pocket of her backpack. “My mother bought a small house when we came to Israel, but after she died, I had to sell it because I needed the money.” 

Too bad she had to sell it. That neighborhood became one of the most popular spots in the city, with all the little bars and restaurants that sprouted around it in the last decade. Had she kept that house she would now be a millionaire and wouldn’t have to eat boiled potatoes and carrots for dinner. I don’t say anything because I assume that she knows that too, and I don’t need to rub it in. Instead, I offer my sympathy. “She died young,” I say in a way of “I’m sorry.” I don’t need to do a lot of math to calculate that her mother was younger than me when she passed. 

“She had a stroke when she was forty-five and became almost paralyzed,” Anna says, looking for messages on her phone. “Then she got cancer and other stuff. I had to take care of her for years. It was not easy.” Her voice is flat, as if she is talking about people she doesn’t know.

“She was a beautiful woman,” Rita contributes her part to the conversation. She strains to hear us while paying attention to the road. This setup makes it harder for her to commandeer conversations that I initiate, and that’s good for me because I can steer the conversation to where I want it to go rather than quietly disappear into the background.

“Beautiful and difficult,” Anna says. I can tell it’s not the first time that she is describing her mother in these terms.

Since the landscape outside the window is not terribly captivating, it’s easy to continue my little interview. “Where did you live before you came to Israel?” It looks like Anna has an interesting story and she’s not too shy to share it.

“France,” She says.

“You’re French?” I am definitely caught by surprise. She doesn’t sound French at all when she speaks Hebrew and she doesn’t have that French je ne sais quoi about her. She gives me the vibes of a mournful Earth Mother, not a femme parisienne. Sorry about the stereotyping.

“Actually, I was born in England. We moved to France after my mother married a French man when I was really young, so I grew up there.” That explains it.

“You speak French?”

“I went to school there, so yes, I did, but I forgot most of it,” she shrugs and smiles apologetically.

“How old were you when you moved to Israel?” 

“Twenty-four,” she says without missing a beat.

“Why in the world did you come to Israel of all places?” I know it’s unpatriotic of me to ask something like that in the company of other Israelis, but considering the tense political situation in Israel, I don’t think I sound too controversial.

“Because of her mother,” Rita shoots from the front. “She wanted to live there.” Rita doesn’t like to be excluded from the conversation and will do anything to stay involved, even though it’s hard to hear us from the front seat. 

“After my mother got divorced, she met a Jewish man who got her interested in Judaism, so she converted. After she separated from him, she decided that she wanted to live in Israel.”

“And you went with her?” 

“Yes.” Anna sounds somewhat surprised by my question even though for me the answer is not so obvious.

“Did you want to live in Israel?”

“No, I liked my life in France but that’s what happened. She made us go, and she made us convert to Judaism.” 

“Us? Who is us?”

“My sister and me,” she says.

“You converted to Judaism because of your mother? How could she make you do that?” I am beyond incredulous. This story is getting weird. I find it hard to wrap my head around it. She was not a child when she came to Israel. She did not have to convert. She did not even have to leave France. 

“You don’t know my mother,” Anna says. “We had an unusual relationship. She was very abusive.”

I am starting to wonder what I got myself into by asking all these questions. I definitely got carried away, but Anna is not hiding anything. She is a willing participant. Our conversation is starting to feel like a therapy session. We are entering sensitive territory and she is not shy about sharing her story.

“Did you have to serve in the military?” I ask. I have a feeling that she didn’t, partly because she didn’t know Hebrew at the time, partly because she was too old to be drafted, and partly because she doesn’t seem like someone who served in the military. I know it’s strange, but I can tell if someone had that experience or not. Israeli women of my generation have a rough edge and directness that we developed as a way to survive the macho culture of the military, and Anna doesn’t have it. 

“I didn’t, but my sister did.”

“Where did she serve?” Rita asks, looking at us through the rearview mirror. She can’t help herself. She has to be part of the conversation.

“In the air force.”

“Did she leave Israel right after she finished military service?” Rita asks, showing off her knowledge of Anna’s situation, and the few gaps that still need to be filled.

“No, she stayed a couple of years,” Anna responds. Then she turns to me to explain that her sister eventually met a French guy on the beach in Tel Aviv, married him, and moved with him back to France.

Suddenly a light bulb goes off in my head. During our many walks, Rita told me that she had a friend from England who converted to Judaism but not because she was enchanted with the religion. She might have explained why but I can’t remember now. She also told me about an artist friend from France who had a rich aunt in Hollywood; when the aunt died, her friend had to leave her cute house in Tel Aviv and rent a shack somewhere in Israel. Another story I remember was about a friend who left Israel because she had a sister in France who promised to help her buy a house in Spain. The stories kept popping up during our walks and I never registered them as being about the same person. Now, I realize that all these stories were about Anna, the woman sitting next to me. 

Rita used to talk about Anna’s millionaire aunt from Hollywood with such reverence and detail, I never understood why. I also can’t understand why she became friends with Anna. Maybe because both of them sell jewelry on the street; otherwise, I can’t see the attraction. Rita devours life with insatiable greed and shamelessness while Anna looks like someone who has to think twice before taking a breath. 

“I just got a message from Monique,” Anna breaks into my sudden insight. I assume it’s the adult daughter that was left behind in Spain. Yesterday, Anna mentioned that she was worried about leaving her alone for a week. 

“How is she? What does she say?” Rita asks. She once told me the sad story of Anna’s daughter, too. Now that I realize who Anna is, I connect many dots that Rita has mentioned during our walks. Anna’s daughter was gangraped at a young age and was taken away by social services for I don’t know how long. To this day she suffers from a variety of problems because of it, and her removal from home affected her relationship with her mother for the worse.

“She ran out of dog food.”

“Tell her to go to the grocery store and buy some more,” Rita commands Anna in no uncertain terms. “It will be good for her to walk outside and get some exercise.” According to one of Rita’s stories, the daughter is overweight and a chain smoker who watches TV all day and never leaves the house.

“It’s too complicated to explain all this to her. If she is texting me about things that she is running out of, it means that she is not doing well.” Anna contemplates. She’s definitely been there before, and knows what she is dealing with. “I might have to go back to Spain sooner than I thought.”

“Tell her to go buy more dog food,” Rita insists.

“OK,” Anna says, unconvincingly.