Support

Vincent Rendoni

Ronit and I should’ve have broken up years ago, when we still believed in things. But being that we were believing in things then, namely in each other, that wasn’t happening.

The problems started after we got married and moved to a high-rise apartment in Tel Aviv. Ronit got a job at some hi-tech firm called something something ventures and I stayed at home with the cats and our herb garden and wrote abstract fictions. I don’t think I need to tell you that of the two of us, Ronit was the breadwinner. At first, it was okay. When we got married, we pledged our undying support for whatever the other wanted to do. When she traded in her shovels and overalls for power dresses and pearls, and asked me if she sold out, I told her no.

“Omri,” she told me. “If you want to sit in your pajamas until noon writing about talking boils and Knesset conspiracies, you do that. I’ll support whatever you do.” She said that a lot, even when I didn’t ask what she thought. Writing it down now, I see that Ronit, whenever she said that, always had a bit of condescention in her smile. I was a fool to think that support would last forever. I had some success early on, even had one of my works, the one about talking boils, put into an anthology. But the ideas, the will to write, ran out and I lived out the next few months on our balcony smoking a lot of weed and looking down at the city below. The day when I didn’t bother to change out of my pajamas, Ronit came home, looked me up and down–appraised me with no expression on her face.

“Did you take a shower today?” she asked.

“No.”

“You need to do something with yourself, Omri. You are not good-looking enough to be a trophy husband.”

* * *

After a sexless couple of months, Ronit recommended that we take our vacation early. I brought up the idea of visiting the States, maybe seeing my folks. But flying was out of the question as Ronit was not a good flyer. She was one of those fearful-narcisistic types that thought of all the planes taking off and landing every minute in this world, it would be hers that would fall out of the sky. The one time we did go to the States, for her to meet my family, she had to get medication for the flight. It didn’t work. Halfway into the night, she woke up and dug her nails into my wrists for the next four hours to Dulles.

The fact that Ronit didn’t fly limited our options. Her first choice for vacation was a road trip to Petra, as she had lived in Israel her whole life and it was just across the way and it seemed silly that she hadn’t been. Ronit and her ruins. I personally don’t understand the appeal. But Petra wasn’t an option. When it was time for us to take a vacation, it was the time of the Arab Spring. I don’t need to tell you about Syria and Lebanon, but Egypt was rabble after Mubarak. So Sinai really wasn’t happening. But Jordan had backed its Trekkie king into a corner and we were unwelcome in the Hashemite Kingdom. We were living on an island again.

Ronit’s second choice was always the same: A spa on the Dead Sea. I wasn’t particularly a fan of spas or the Dead Sea, but it’s not like I had a say in where we went on vacation—Ronit was the breadwinner. “It has hot springs,” Ronit went on, mostly to herself. “A freshwater pool, massage, and shopping.” I was making dinner and was smiling like Ronit did when she told me she supported me in my endeavors.

But Ronit saw right through it and turned to me, “Don’t worry, honey,” she told me. “I’m sure there will be beer and weed, too.”

* * *

Ronit didn’t show weakness and didn’t ask for much. She was beautiful and strong and didn’t need me. The only time she did need me was when her eczema flared up and needed me to put calamine on her back, the only place she couldn’t reach.

“Can you help me, Omri?” she would say quietly. I would gladly move my hand up and down her back, massaging her sores until long after the cream was applied. Ronit would be a grateful and give me a little kiss when we were done, and our apartment would have this blissful stillness for the rest of the day. Even the weeks leading up to our vacation to the spa, when we went from passive-aggressive to just aggressive, when I was sure she was sleeping with her boss, there would be a reprieve when the eczema was too much to bear, and Ronit would say, “Can you help me, Omri?” There were few things more intimate than what Ronit and I did with a tube of calamine.

That week at the spa would end up being our last great moment, before we went the ways we were always supposed to. Ronit let me have that first day in our room with the premium cable and beer, but by the next morning, she had me out with her on the beach and side-by-side at the massage table. With the exception of that first day, we rarely spent time apart. It was like when we were first dating and I would follow her to every room. She didn’t look the least bit annoyed.

But the one thing Ronit couldn’t get me to do was go into the sea. I first visited the Dead Sea during birthright. I was initially excited, eager to float and have that picture with the newspaper taken. The first few moments, before I was waist-deep, were fine and everything I hoped for. But then when I got all the way in, the tip of my penis burned like no other. They don’t tell you about that. It was like shrinky dinks for a week down there. Plus, the salt would just not come off. I had to throw away my towels and my suit.

So I sat on the shoreline and watched as Ronit swam around in circles. I was sad that it was the one other thing we couldn’t do together: float. I wouldn’t have done a lot of things different with Ronit, but given the chance, knowing what would happen next between us, I would have gotten in the water.

* * *

When things were at their worst with Ronit, I held on to two things. The first was that week at the spa. But when I learned later on that Ronit really was sleeping with her boss, it kind of ruined that experience. So I had to go further back to when Ronit and I first met at Lotan, a Kibbutz about fifty kilometers north of Eliat. We probably ran into each other hundreds of times the first few months, but never noticed. I am not the type to say hello to a stranger or really even look up when I’m walking. She mostly spent her time in the gardens and maintaining the trails whereas I was gathering strawbales for our quarters. I always thought of myself as pretty good at what I did—that is until the roof of one of the domes caved in one night. No harm done. Just gave the occupants a little bit of a scare. Still, I was reassigned to gardening, to “limit my damage potential” as the director at Lotan told me.

That’s when I met Ronit. She was tending to a tomato vine when I introduced myself. She looked up at me and smiled.

“I heard about you,” she said. “The home-wrecker.”

I bent down next to her and moved my fingers about the vine.

“How do I do this?”

Ronit slapped my hand away. “Oh, no no no. You’re not ready to give life.” She clipped away at a few strands of the vine, not saying a word, and then went for the toolshed. She came out holding an axe and telling me to follow her. We took a walk down a trail of flowering acacia trees—I only know this because Ronit told me what they were. Ronit remembered them time and again as bright and gold like nothing else she had ever seen, and I agree, but in all honesty, I wasn’t looking at the trees. Ronit was leading the way and I was looking her up and down from behind. After studying her ass for what seemed like a very long time, as if I were trying to find meaning, I remember finding Ronit plain, unremarkable but not necessarily unattractive.

After what seemed like an eternity, we stopped at a somewhat dull looking acacia with bark missing in parts. Its leaves were pale, the color of talcum.

“Powdery mildew,” Ronit said. “Spores haven’t spread to the other, but it’s too late for this one.” She handed me the axe. “Get to it.”

“Step back,” I said. I had no idea what I was doing. I’m from the city. Where would I have learned to swing an axe? I didn’t think much of Ronit yet, but I didn’t want to lose face in front of a woman, especially after the dome debacle. I wound up, put the axe above my head in a dramatic fashion and took a baseball style swing at the tree where my blade landed with a dull thud. Ronit told me to stop and moved her finger around my unimpressive cut.

“I was a little off,” I said.

“No, you just swing like a pussy.”

“Did you just call me a pussy?”

“Give me that axe. Let me show you how it’s done.”

And then away Ronit went at that acacia. A few chops and down it went. I fell for her then. I got a good look at the front of her when she was swinging that axe. Sable-black hair, good teeth—I went for all of those things. But it was mostly the way she called me a pussy, in that sabra accent of hers. Most guys don’t go for women who emasculate them or show them up at a physical task. It used to drive me wild once.

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