Some Stories

Some stories seem to write themselves without any effort by the writer; others need to be stretched in different directions, pound on, pressed upon and all kinds of varied gentle, or harsh, manipulations like dealing with a resistant piece of dough.

When Rachel received a phone call from her mother one early Friday morning, she was in the process of struggling with a particularly stubborn story. When the phone rang, she was still in bed recuperating from a sleepless night full of dreams that all had one thing in common. She was tearing, in a fit of rage, pages and pages and the pieces of paper flew out the window.

When she heard the loud ring, she was trying to chase, desperately, the last piece which she just discovered had on it the one story she wanted to write.

She rolled on her side and picked the receiver and mumbled a sleepy “Hi,”

“Rachel, wake up,” that was her mother, and as always, she avoided what she called “unnecessary introductions.”

Rachel looked at the clock next to her bed; it’s numbers glowed in angry red – 6:00 am.

“It’s only 6:00 am,” she protested faintly. “What the rush?”

“You have to make it to the hospital ASAP, Aunt Eva had a heart attack, last night, she wants to see you, “that was her mother alright, no small talk.

“Me, why me?”

“She wants to tell you about her younger sister before it is too late.”

“Too late? she does not have a younger sister, what is going on?”

“Well she/us obviously do/did,” it was not like her mom to stumble all over her words, this must be important.

An hour and three buses later, Rachel stood in the entrance hall of the Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem. Planted at the end of a twisting road, with steep mountains on each side, made this hospital, a huge conglomerate of buildings, appear like an aloof space station, as did the breath-taking Chagall glass windows encircling the hall and throwing eerie blue shades rich with Jewish motifs.

Aunt Eva, her mother’s younger sister was found after a short search, in a room with two other beds looking surprisingly well and energetic.

“Rachel, my favorite niece,” she exclaimed, seeing her at the door.

“So glad you could make it,” she added as if this was a casual everyday meeting in her Jerusalem apartment.

“Mom said this is urgent, and you need to tell me something,” Rachel was not going to let the moment slip away. If there was a story, she wanted to hear it.

“Ah, old stories die hard,” her aunt, who was a passionate and skilled storyteller, waved the sentence aside.

“A younger sister, no one ever mentioned before?” Rachel was unbending.

Somewhere in the back of her mind faded pictures, in black and white, accompanied by hushed conversation late at night seemed to press on. There was another sister no one ever spoke of, suddenly she knew it with an unexplainable certainty.

“Lea, “startled, Rachel looked at her aunt.

“Her name was Lea,” Eva annunciated the words as if she, Rachel, was hard of hearing.

“She called me last night, she is here, in Tel-Aviv, after all these years something like that can give a person a heart attack.”

Rachel refrained from stating the obvious, that they were indeed sitting in the hospital, and instead set her goals on establishing guilt, a much better technique, she learned over the years.

“Ok, so an aunt no one ever mentioned and here she is in the flesh, a little too late to deny her existence.”

Eva gave her a troubled look, “We did not know where she was, or if she was even alive,”

“You cannot understand, these were different times, people did disappear during the war, and no one knew where they were and if they will come back.” She added as response to Rachel’s skeptical look.

“Did you look for her?” Rachel cannot let the moment vaporize.

“I was still mad, “Eva said in a hardly audible voice, “and your mother, I guess she was mad too,”

“And the years went by, and the dust covered any trails, so we stopped thinking about her,” Eva’s last sentence hung in the air when a long quiet took place.

“So what’s now,” Rachel’s voice sounded loud in the quiet room.

“Do you want me to meet her, see who she is,” It seemed like a cheap detective story, but at this point of her writing career, any story will do.

“Would you?” Eva’s voice was small and imploring.

“Sure, no problem, I will knock on her door, introduce myself,”

“Hi, I am Rachel your lost nephew, so glad to meet you, an aunt I did not know existed.”

Rachel was playing out the meeting, trying to ease the thick atmosphere.

“and then what?”

 “Tell her I am not mad anymore, “

“Tell her I forgave her,”

“Tell her I forgive her for stealing the man I was supposed to marry.”

“Tell her I am an old woman and probably dying.”

With that Eva closed her eyes and turned towards the wall.

“Should I bring her here to see you?” Rachel tried to draw her aunt back into the conversation but from years of experience knew it would not work.

This was all she was going to get and from here on it was her story to chase, following her Ariadne’s Thread into the labyrinth of family secrets and denials. Hoping to emerge with a story worth telling. A story that will tell itself.