chapter 3: salient

"Next year in Jerusalem!"

She'd heard it every year at Passover since she could remember.  Well, now here she was, in Jerusalem.  She hadn't seen the messiah, but she'd seen the Wailing Wall, the Temple Mount, and the Dead Sea.  She'd slept with a handsome young cab driver named Liev and had even caught a glimpse of Madonna and her entourage in an outdoor market in Tel Aviv.

She stood for a moment and watched as a group of Israeli men stood outside one of the tan, stone-block buildings, holding hands and dancing, a spontaneous outpouring of joy spilling out onto the cobblestone sidewalk from the Bar Mitzvah being held inside.  Then she turned and headed back to her hotel.

This trip had been her mother's idea.  Now that the divorce was finalized and she'd received the hefty settlement (minus the hefty lawyers' fees), both her parents had urged her to visit the Holy Land to "get some perspective".  More likely, it was to give them some time to figure out the narrative they'd tell their friends and neighbors about why their daughter was no longer married to that successful dentist of hers.  God forbid they told people the truth:  that Michael Fleischman was a mean drunk with a penchant for hitting his wife and screwing his assistants.

"No, we can't have that," she muttered bitterly.  Marrying Michael had been less her idea than theirs, and she hoped they were feeling just as much guilt about that as they were embarrassment over her divorcing him.  Doubtful, though.

She looked back, and the men were still dancing and singing and smiling.  And she was just watching them, feeling nothing, unable to share in their happiness.  And that was the point, wasn't it?  That was the glaringly obvious "perspective" she'd gained on her three-month sabbatical.  That she was all alone.  No more Mrs. Michael Fleischman or Mrs. Melora Fleischman or Michael and Melora from up the street.  Now she was just Melora Abramowitz, with two mortified parents and no friends because their friends had all really been Michael's friends, hadn't they, and no question whose side they were on.

She continued on to her hotel.  She'd tried to lose herself in this journey, she really had.  She'd had a one night stand with a cab driver more than 10 years her junior, for Christ's sake.  I wonder if that's the perspective Mother was talking about, she thought to herself with a wry grin.  In a way, that drunken night with Liev probably did give her more perspective than anything else.  It had been what she thought it would be, nice and awkward and sexy, and they both had had a good time.  But after slipping out of his apartment that next morning with one of the worst hangovers she'd ever had, she was surprised to find it wasn't the sculpted boy from last night she was thinking about.

She was thinking about Seth Gillespie.

He'd been the last decision she'd ever really made on her own.  When he'd called her out of the blue to ask her to the senior prom, that had been surprising.  When she'd said yes, that had been even more surprising.  Mom and Pop had of course been furious.  The shaygetz who stocked the shelves at the supermarket?!?!  Preposterous!  So many nice Jewish boys tripping over themselves to take her and she chooses some stockboy!

She'd be the first to admit that initially agreeing to go with him to the prom was to get a rise out of her parents.  But Seth had actually been very nice.  He'd be the first to admit he wasn't book-smart, but he was no lunkhead.  They'd gone out a few times before the dance, and he'd always been sweet and respectful and just a little shy.  It had actually been her idea to get the motel room after the dance, and it had been much then as it had been with Liev the cab driver:  nice and awkward and sexy.

But ultimately, her parents had prevailed.  Seth had been a nice guy, but he was no match for the charms of Michael Fleischman.  She'd actually broken up with Seth over the phone, and she was appalled at the memory, at how insensitive she'd been.  She remembered that he'd been sad, but also resigned, like he'd been expecting it.  And that had been that, and now here she was in Israel, divorced and ostracized and alone.

Melora swiped at a tear slowly trickling down her cheek.  It was time to go home.