“I know why you’re doing this,” Jeannette said. “You’re jealous of my happiness and my youth. You want to make an unhappy housewife out of me. You want me to be you, Mom.” Ella felt a strange, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, as if she had a giant rock sitting there. Was she an unhappy housewife? A middle-aged mom trapped in a failing marriage? Was this how her children saw her? And her husband, too? What about friends and neighbors? Suddenly she had the feeling that everyone around her secretly pitied her, and the suspicion was so painful that she gasped. “You should apologize to your mom,” David said, turning to Jeannette with a frown on his face. “It’s all right. I don’t expect an apology,” Ella said dejectedly. Jeannette gave her mother a mock leer. And just like that, she pushed back her chair, threw her napkin aside, and walked out of the kitchen. After a minute Orly and Avi silently followed suit, either in an unusual act of solidarity with their elder sister or because they’d gotten bored of all this adult talk. Aunt Esther left next, mumbling some poor excuse while chewing fiercely on her last antacid tablet. David and Ella remained at the table, an intense awkwardness hanging in the air between them. It pained Ella to have to face this void, which, as they both knew, had nothing to do with Jeannette or any of their children. David grabbed the fork he had put aside and inspected it for a while. “So should I conclude that you didn’t marry the man you loved?” “Oh, please, that’s not what I meant.” “What is it you meant, then?” David said, still talking to the fork. “I thought you were in love with me when we got married.” “I was in love with you,” Ella said, but couldn’t help adding, “back then.” “So when did you stop loving me?” David asked, deadpan. Ella looked at her husband in astonishment, like someone who had never seen her reflection before and who now held a mirror to her face. Had she stopped loving him? It was a question she had never asked herself before. She wanted to respond but lacked not so much the will as the words. Deep inside she knew it was the two of them they should be concerned about, not their children. But instead they were doing what they both were best at: letting the days go by, the routine take over, and time run its course of inevitable torpor. She started to cry, unable to hold back this continuing sadness that had, without her knowledge, become a part of who she was. David turned his anguished face away. They both knew he hated to see her cry just as much as she hated to cry in front of him. Fortunately, the phone rang just then, saving them. David picked it up. “Hello … yes, she’s here. Hold on, please.” Ella pulled herself together and spoke up, doing her best to sound in good spirits. “Yes, this is Ella.” “Hi, this is Michelle. Sorry to bother you over the weekend,” chirped a young woman’s voice. “It’s just that yesterday Steve wanted me to check in with you, and I simply forgot. Did you have a chance to start working on the manuscript?” “Oh.” Ella sighed, only now remembering the task awaiting her. Her first assignment at the literary agency was to read a novel by an unknown European author. She was then expected to write an extensive report on it. “Tell him not to worry. I’ve already started reading,” Ella lied. Ambitious and headstrong, Michelle was the kind of person she didn’t want to upset on her first assignment. “Oh, good! How is it?” Ella paused, puzzled as to what to say. She didn’t know anything about the manuscript, except that it was a historical novel centered on the life of the famous mystic poet Rumi, who she learned was called “the Shakespeare of the Islamic world.”
“Oh, it’s very … mystical.” Ella chuckled, hoping to cover with a joke. But Michelle was all business. “Right,” she said flatly. “Listen, I think you need to get on this. It might take longer than you expect to write a report on a novel like that.… ”
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