But now she was dead, and Lirit sat on her executive chair and adjusted it to suit her. The air-conditioner was set at freezing, the way Mandy liked it, the computer was dark, and when Lirit pressed enter, to see what was on the screen, she was surprised to see a picture of herself and her brother as children, sitting and eating popsicles on the beach. It was very moving, but Lirit had no time for such luxuries, and she took a pen and paper and started to write down notes for her speech.
She didn’t want to lie, and so she noted to herself to say that she didn’t want to lie or mislead any of the loyal workers, but there was no doubt that they were in a period of uncertainty and it was impossible to know what was going to happen. Only six days had passed since Mandy had passed away. She crossed out Mandy and wrote Amanda. And she continued that she herself had not yet started to digest what had happened and why, and she had no, she repeated, she had no detailed plans with regard to the factory and the future of its workers.
This, in fact, was the gist of what she had to say. And when she said it in the canteen, some of the girls burst into tears and others talked about compensation. She repeated that the situation was not clear, and that they all had to understand that she had received a harsh blow, and she did not yet have the strength either to carry on from where her mother left off, or to set out on a new path.
Somebody pointed out that this wasn’t what she had said a few days ago on the phone. They reminded her that she said they had to continue on Mandy’s path, and Lirit admitted that she had said so because that was what people always said, but they didn’t mean it literally. It was impossible to swim in the same river twice, she said, and stressed again that she didn’t know what was going to happen. They had to understand that there wasn’t only a crisis in the textile industry, there was also a crisis in Nighty-Night, and it was impossible to jump straight into a resolution of the crisis before the crisis had spoken its last word.
The women had no idea what she was talking about. They were resentful. They had unemployed husbands and families to feed. They couldn’t live like this. But she raised the banner of uncertainty again and the need for everyone, including herself, to go with the flow of this uncertainty for the time being.
ON THE WAY BACK from Netanya she wondered what she was really going to do with the pajama factory. What changes should she introduce? Should she renovate, or continue the tradition? Was it tradition or stagnation? And what about what she had once thought could be a big hit today: pajamas for babies and toddlers made from organic cotton?
Clearly people in the top 10 percent would buy them for the use of their offspring, and maybe the 30 or 40 percents below that too. People would buy them as gifts for baby showers too, if the babies were dear to them.
Yes, why not? Lirit mused, and nearly missed the turnoff, but managed to change course in time, though fortunately for her there were no traffic cops or cameras in the vicinity. Pajamas from organic cotton! She began racking her brains for slogans for a future advertising campaign. And perhaps not only for infants? She expanded her plans. For all ages! Yes. Why discriminate against the parents? Lirit let her thoughts range far and wide: first she would put out a line of pajamas for infants from organically grown cotton, and later on the same thing for all ages, under the slogan, “Why shortchange the parents?” She already had a vision of what an advertising campaign for both items at once would look like: Give them to your children and also to Mom and Dad and Granny and Grandpa, who gave their all to their children. .
Today, said Lirit to herself, people take great care of their bodies and their health because of the security situation in the world, not only in Israel. The more the security situation deteriorates, the more people will invest in sporting appliances, vitamins, nutritional supplements, organic vegetables, and organic cotton.
She remembered that a year ago she had been on a shopping expedition with Mandy at the up-market Ramat Aviv mall. They both tried on bras, and nothing felt comfortable. Mandy said that all the bra manufacturers should be forced to use organic cotton in their products so that they wouldn’t scratch people.
“You and I are actually in the same position as far as gravity is concerned,” Mandy said to her on the same occasion, having just undergone breast-lifting surgery.
After they had each bought two bras, and they went down to the underground parking garage, they heard people in the elevator talking about some new outrage that had taken place an hour ago. Mandy was stressed out until she extracted the information vital to her from the passengers in the elevator: the casualties were civilian.
“I don’t even care about civilians anymore,” she said when they got out of the elevator, “only about soldiers. You know?” she looked at her nodding daughter. “About children and babies I don’t feel anything anymore. I don’t want to know anything about them. Not four year olds and not one year olds. Or one month. But when a soldier dies, I die. I think about his mother. Naturally after I find out that I’m not his mother. If it happens to my son, I’ll kill myself on the spot. I’m sure a lot of mothers feel the same way. My life’s not worth living without Dael.”
“And without me is your life worth living?”
“You’ll manage very well without me,” said Mandy and pressed the remote that opened with a shriek the car whose beauty stood out even among the cars of the shoppers at the Ramat Aviv mall.
“And Daddy?”
“Your father doesn’t need anyone,” said Mandy and made her way through the parking garage to the exit to Einstein Street.
She dawdled a bit, because it was their old neighborhood, and they even passed their old house at 44 Tagore Street, and sat and looked for a moment at the place where they used to live, and then they continued driving east on Keren Kayemet Avenue.
While Lirit was remembering all the above, Bahat was trying to call her, but Lirit didn’t hear the ring because she was playing a tape very loudly to herself. The radio had been tuned to a station playing Hebrew songs, but Lirit had soon put a stop to that.
Accordingly, Bahat was obliged to remain with the facts seething inside her, without an outlet in Israel.
She wanted to complain to Lirit, or anyone, about the phenomenon of Gruber, and she wanted to demand that Lirit come and get him. No, enough was enough, she couldn’t stand him anymore.
It was the little things that broke her. Gruber left the bathroom in a disgusting state, even if he only went in to brush his teeth and comb his hair. He behaved as if seven chambermaids were following him around wherever he went. And in the toilet, the way he urinated annoyed her. It was many years since she had had to clean leftover urine from the toilet bowl. And now that she had to do it again, she felt great annoyance.
The man, it turned out, raised the toilet seat, but failed to lower it again, and sometimes, albeit rarely, he didn’t even take the trouble to raise it, and this, in her opinion, was the height of chutzpah. Who did he think he was, an animal? He finished the toilet paper and didn’t change the roll. And he still had the nerve to argue that Mandy had allowed him not to change it, because he had trouble with the spring. What kind of an argument was that? Was that the way he behaved with his wife, or did he think that his wife’s laws were valid for her as well?
She began to detest the guest more and more, and he, for his part, grew more and more demanding and dependent, and was convinced that everything he did stemmed from his outburst of feelings for Bahat. All this was not at all what the enthusiastic Reform rabbi had in mind. The prayer shawl, and the big skullcap, which she hadn’t yet decided whether to wear or not, were in a drawer in her closet, folded up.