“Why? What happened?”
“My mother’s still crying, and my father…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
Lily pulled the car over. I told her everything.
“Do you want us to go to them? What should we do?” she asked anxiously.
“Not now. We’ll marry properly, like everyone else. There’ll be no choice.”
“My father thinks we’ll have to divorce first if we want a proper wedding,” I repeated his words.
“What? Divorce? That’s crazy!” she cried.
“He doesn’t know for sure. He’s just guessing…” I tried to soften his words.
“I’ll ask Sara from Savyon, her husband’s a Reform rabbi. He’ll know.”
“He asked that we plan a regular wedding, and that we arrange a meeting between the families.”
“My father wants that too, especially since we’re already married…”
“How many witnesses do you need to get divorced?” I tried to joke.
“Stop with your nonsense. I think we really got ourselves into a mess.” Lily restarted the car, turned her head toward me, shook it, and smiled.
I withdrew into myself, watching her. At that moment, it hit me that I had crossed a line – and I should have known better.
I tried to ease the tension, shifting to practical matters. I reminded her that for the next three weeks I’d be unavailable – we were heading out to the desert for training.
“But you’re married now. Don’t you get time off?”
“They’ll want official paperwork. Imagine if everyone just said, ‘I got married,’
“and went home for a week.”
“Do you know what? I’d be happy to marry you again, every day if I could!” Her words lifted me, easing some of my self-directed anger.
When we reached the apartment, her face lit up. “Now I have a surprise for you.” She stood before me, radiant.
Behind her, on the easel in the living room, leaned the painting she had started right after we met.
“I finished it the day before yesterday,” she said with a mysterious smile.
Instead of focusing on the faces that filled much of the canvas,my eyes were drawn to the hands. They reminded me of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” in the Sistine Chapel. There is something about hands that can symbolize, without words, love itself. And in this painting, where the figures did not look at one another but their hands did – yearning, reaching – it was as if their hands carried all the longing, and with the distance, the fear too, that perhaps that yearning would never be fulfilled. The muted colors and the imaginary circle the hands seemed to form, hinted at the possibility of completeness.
As I gazed at the painting, Lily moved around the room until she stopped in front of me, just like in the picture. Tears welled in my eyes.
“This is my first perfect painting since I met you,” she said. I turned to her, and she added, “Michael, this is us in the painting. That’s how I feel.” We fell silent. I couldn’t define what I felt. On the one hand, the painting radiated her immense talent and her ability to capture deep emotions. On the other hand, it was so intense, so unsettling, that I found myself looking away from it, back to her, and then back again, until I calmed down.
“So, do you like it?” she asked.
“Honestly, I’m confused. It’s not that I don’t like it – it’s just … it’s very complex. Maybe too complex.”
She didn’t respond immediately.
“Are you disappointed?”
“Yes and no.” She seemed disappointed, though unwilling to admit it.
