Riki Baruch's Day Off

At 5:35 on a Friday morning, I open my eyes. I don’t have to be up yet, but I feel what I call the “awakening of the brain”: that immediate alertness that resigns you to the fact that you won’t be going back to sleep. For a few minutes, I lie there listening to Avner’s breathing, soundlessly inhaling and then that almost inaudible honk as he exhaled. To think I had once found that endearing. I gently pull off the thin blanket we share – although it’s June, the nights still get chilly – and pad to the toilet, where I sit and close my eyes. I will go to work, get a cake for Shabbat, and meet the girls for coffee.

Working on a Friday was not my choice. I hate reaching the bank, watching the neighboring café coming to life, with the fat weekend editions read by thin weekend ladies. I hate having trouble finding a parking place because most Tel Avivis are enjoying their breakfasts and have yet to move their cars. I hate watching my customers, all in a hurry to complete their Friday errands so they can get to their lazy brunch meetings on time. And if I wasn't the assistant manager, I wouldn’t be working either. My boss, that schmock – he doesn’t work Fridays.

I get up and go to the kitchen, nearly tripping over Avner’s damned gym bag on the way. He has the self-discipline to work out three times a week, but can’t bring himself to put his stuff away. I pass the boys’ rooms, peeking through Yoni’s open door, tiptoeing past Omer’s sealed fortress. I have to wake them both before I leave but it’s still early. I make the Elite instant coffee which only I will drink – Avner calls it rat poison – and step out onto the tiny balcony. Only a minute away from the bustle of Yehuda Maccabi Street in the old north of Tel Aviv, our street is surprisingly peaceful, and at this early hour, it is already completely light, but silent, taking its time coming to life. I look at the buildings across the street. The birds perch anonymously on the humming air conditioners. Cats still pick leisurely through the big green trash cans. It seems that every morning there are more of them, as if they multiply in the nights, screeching among the trees and the cars, and the municipality does nothing.

These moments alone are precious to me. When I was working at the Holon branch, I would have 37 minutes of pure solitude, to enjoy singing in the car, pretending to be someone else.
But five years ago, I had been relocated to the Bavli branch, and those commutes had been taken away. Work was five minutes away from home and I could walk if I wanted. And when you hear your own footsteps, it’s difficult to pretend you're someone else. I hadn’t wanted to switch branches. I had applied for the position of branch manager at Holon, and got relocated instead. Riki, this is a great opportunity for you. You can be closer to your kids and work shorter hours – at the same job with the same pay. We’re being more than generous here. As if I need to be closer to my children. Yoni is twelve years old and has a schedule which is busier than mine, and Omer is seventeen and barely acknowledges my existence.

I am startled by a sound from inside. It’s almost six thirty and I go inside to get dressed. In our bedroom, I can hear the toilet still gurgling, but Avner was already fast asleep again. Lucky bastard. I sleep lightly, and once sleep has gone, it’s gone for good. I step into our walk-in closet and get dressed, pulling on the nylons: torture at this time of year, but since I hate the beach and any form of tanning activity, a necessity for my pale legs.

Criminals don’t wear light colors. On TV they’re always in jeans and dark faded sweatshirts. I bought the cream suit – the saleslady had called it eggshell – they have so many names for such a parve color – because it shows off my legs, which are still great. I hadn’t intended on wearing it that morning, but my navy skirt was still in the wash, and I would be meeting the girls later – I had no choice. Funny, actually, that I ended up wearing that, when you think of the weather that day – the sky itself was as white and glaring as the suit, almost crackling with heat and dryness.

Inside the bathroom, I take my time with a high-SPF moisturizer and foundation. The sun can be brutal, and I take pride in how well my skin has aged. My mother used to say that the most tell tale part is the neck, and so I take special care to cover it with sunscreen and moisturizer in circular motions every single morning. Apart from some traitor crow’s feet, no one would guess I am closer to fifty than forty. You’re still young, they had said. You can apply for manager the next time around. There will be other jobs, more promotions. That had been the last time I was overlooked for branch manager, this time at my current branch. They had promoted that ben zona Ohayon. That smug manyak whom I had taught everything he knew, introduced him to our key customers-
I realize I am stabbing angrily at my face with the makeup sponge and take a deep breath. This is not who I am.

I tie a mauve scarf around my neck. Squinting to make my image blur, it almost looks like a dead body with a severed neck. A slash of color always adds a nice touch to neutral tones. Satisfied, I step back. My hair falls gently on my shoulders, a light brown wave which is the most appealing haircut I’ve had in months – must praise Avram for his work this time. My makeup hardly shows. My legs look great in the short beige skirt. The only problem with this suit is that the sandals that go with it are rather uncomfortable – a rash purchase made while Avner waited impatiently outside the shop. Life is full of compromise, I mutter, pulling them on. No one can say I’ve lost my sense of style.

I have no appetite, but I need a full stomach for my iron supplements, so I make a sandwich: salted 5% ricotta cheese on whole wheat bread, a sliced cucumber, and some olives. Chewing disinterestedly, I bring in the weekend paper and try to read, but can’t concentrate. Bits and pieces of what I see slip into my mind: an interesting interview with a young new authoress who has written about murdering her illicit lover; the dollar is down again; the Chief Justice has decided not to indict the Prime Minister, the education system strike is in its 51st day, and still, the government does nothing. You can get away with anything in this country. And people do nothing: nothing.

I walk over to Omer’s room and by force of habit raise my fist to knock, but then remember that he is asleep and won’t hear me anyway. God only knew what time he had gone to sleep. This strike was driving them all crazy. He and his friends, and more than one hundred thousand other high school students, had not gone to school for almost two months. The teachers were protesting their conditions, and as much as I sympathized with their cause, it was starting to cost me, in takeout meals and movies, and time on that internet game he played. Today, however, he had asked me to wake him for a weekend trip with his friends.

The room is like a black cave, except for the bouncing screen saver on his computer. It is close, almost stifling, and smells like socks. Omer had insisted on dark shades for the windows. He cannot sleep in the light, like some sort of vampire. For a young man, his room is rather neat, and I am surprised to realize that this makes me proud. I look over at him. “Omer, sweetie,” I say softly.
“I’m awake.” I still can’t get used to that baritone, though god knows I’ve had a good four years of it already.
“All right. Wake Yoni in fifteen minutes please.”
“Would you knock the next time.”
Teenagers.

I should get going. The bank opens at 8:30 and I like to have an hour to myself at my desk. In the elevator, I recheck my hair, patting it down. I force a smile at my reflection in the mirror: I always feel like there is a hidden camera watching me.

I could have walked to the bank, but as I have my heels on and don’t want to work up a sweat, I look around, trying to remember where I had parked my Fiat. Parking was hell on these little streets, and it seemed that the city was marking off more and more parking spaces as illegal every day, in order to make more money off the fines. I locate my car across the street, almost unrecognizable. It’s covered with splattered fruit that would be a pain to take off. The bats would come at night, darting among the trees, and shake off the fruit which falls on the cars and leaves a sticky residue that was impossible to clean. I had called the municipality three times this year already, but they said that there was nothing they could do. And Avner, Avner does nothing, because he can park his precious Ford in our building’s lot. It’s the company’s, I need to take good care of it, he whines.
I step into my Fiat and grimace as I hear the creak of the door. I had asked him to fix it several times, but he conveniently forgets. Avner and his company car, his cell phone, his executive lunches, his MBA buddies. The MBA I had put him through. I had missed the bank’s executive training when I was on maternity leave with Yoni. You can come in and take the course now, and extend your leave later, they had offered. We’re being more than generous here. How could you explain to them that this was not an option with a husband who was completing his MBA in the evenings? I had declined, counting on the fact that the training took place twice a year, confident I would simply jump on the next train. After that, they began closing the course, offering it to branch managers only. Good thing at least Avner has his MBA, I think bitterly. You really need a high class education when you’re a supervisor for a construction company, watching concrete being mixed.

Yehuda Hamaccabi is already busy at 7:15, and traffic is slow. I look wistfully at the people sitting leisurely at the cafes – mostly the elderly, who are early risers. A group of middle aged men sit in a circle around a table, bobbing their heads and puffing cigars. I wish I could spend the morning alone with the weekend papers in a café.

I hear a savage honking from behind me and realize that the cars have moved. But my eyes are stuck on the men at the café and for a moment I cannot put my foot on the pedal to go. An impatient Audi overtakes me, its bald driver looking at me and mouthing metumtemet! making the universal sign of the “dumbass” – finger tapping on temple. Men. Constantly hurrying. As if those three seconds would change something. He disappears and I am instantly sorry I didn’t give him the finger, or speed up and overtake him. I’m too nice.

“You’re too nice,” my former boss Levi had said when retiring from his position as branch manager. I cannot forget that day: he had avoided me all day, after announcing Ohayon’s promotion to the staff. I had been sure it was mine. After waiting and pestering all day, I finally got five minutes with him, and he had been organizing his things and was getting ready to leave for the day. Pulling on his jacket, he had said: “they need a sales shark. You are a whiz at customer service but you’re not pushing the pension and investment consults. You sympathize with the customers and don’t give them the hard sell – you treat them like they’re your children. They get to you. Ohayon- he’s tough. A moneymaker. He works long hours and doesn’t take any boohooing.”
“I’m sorry,” Levi had added. “But hey, look at the bright side. No assistant branch manager makes the salary you do, especially not a working mother assistant manager. They’re being more than generous.”

More than generous indeed. Damn them. I had gone over to Ohayon’s desk, congratulated him, the words spit painfully out of my mouth as if my teeth were crumbling on each syllable. He stood up, taller than I, and thanked me in an official tone which puzzled me. This was, after all, the guy I had trained to handle investment portfolios for business clients. In the two years we had worked together, we had gone past such formalities. We had compared stories of our children and had lunch together on several occasions.

I should have seen it coming, with that sudden curtness. “I’m going to want to sit down with you and talk about the business department,” he said stiffly, as if the entire staff were watching, although it was past six and we were the only ones left. “Next week.”

That’s how it had started. Our daily briefing sessions in the kitchenette, where we would trade information as colleagues, were replaced by weekly updates, where I would be summoned into his office to report on my clients. His office: more like a foyer after he expanded it at my expense. Where my own little office had been, was now a fake leather couch and chrome coffee table with a tiny Zen rock garden upon it. I had been sent back out alongside the tellers, to a cubicle. “An assistant manager should not be behind closed doors. The customers should always have access to you.” Access to me, and yet when I do all I can to help them out, to make them stay at our bank, you veto me, overturn my decisions, make me feel like an idiot.

Our bank is located in a small building in Shikhun Bavli, a nice residential neighborhood on the banks of the Yarkon river, popular with newlyweds and young families because of the Yarkon Park. Because it is a neighborhood bank, I am familiar with most of my customers, and as I step out of the car and rifle through my bag for my key, I nod my head at Mr. Gotgold, who is walking his dog. I know them all: the elderly widows trying to make sense of what was left to them along with their pensions, the younger couples wanting their own homes. These were my favorites. The young couples who would come in, asking for advice, asking for a mortgage. I could help them. Here my experience meant something. These young couples with the hope, and the plans for the future. “But we need three bedrooms,” they would say, their eyes full of giggling toddlers and building blocks. I would search those eyes: one pair would be full of determination and choice, the other dull with dead ambition. When two people in a relationship make a decision, only one of them is actually choosing: the other has, by virtue of choosing the first, relinquished any further ability to decide.

Couples like Eitan Greenberg and his girlfriend Gali – no, Galia. They had applied for a mortgage in order to buy the apartment they were currently renting – no point in throwing that money away, when I could be buying the place, the young man had smiled. I had agreed – the boy was in hi-tech, after all, and produced a decent salary – and tried to get them a sub-prime interest rate. This was within my authority, something I could do for someone. At least so I had thought.

Ohayon had then passed by my desk and I had asked him to sign off on the approval. This was a matter of procedure, and as far as I knew, the terms were nothing he hadn’t approved before. But he had shot me down: new policy, I sent the emails out last week. See what happened in the States. No sub-primes without collateral, and even if there were, you’re not married – you don’t qualify. We can give you a regular mortgage with a fixed interest – we’re being more than generous already. Sorry guys, he had shrugged to the young couple, Riki doesn’t read her email often enough.

I sit at my cubicle now, pulling their paperwork out of my tray. I have to close their file. It had been sitting on my desk for over a week now, but I hadn’t had the heart to make it official, to enter our denial into the records. Damn this country. Damn the interest rates. “Isn’t there anything you can do?” he had asked, that Eitan. A young boy like that, doing so well, all he wants to do is buy his own apartment, but can’t, unless he’s married. The anonymous overpowering government making the most private of civilian choices for us. What happens when Omer wants his own place?

My computer finishes its creaking morning workout and the picture of my sons – taken at a family outing to Nachal Zavitan three years ago – smiles cheerfully at me. This had been the last time I managed to snap a photo of both my boys together. They grow up so quickly.

I double-click on the bank’s intranet and point the arrow at my inbox. Riki doesn’t read her email often enough. Two daily exchange rate updates, a response from customer service regarding a request I had made on behalf of a client, something that looked like one of those silly forwarded jokes from my father – I had to get him to stop sending those – and a quarterly report from HR. I open the latter. “Congratulations to David Ohayon for making Q2’s Best Branch Manager!” It reads in boldface. I scan it quickly. “David Ohayon, manager of Bavli branch, has an excellent record of customer service, sales, and retention. In Q2. the Bavli branch has been the most profitable neighborhood branch with an 18% increase in sales and 25.5% customer retention.”

My head began spinning. This was too much. That prick. Could no one see him for what he was? There was a difference between encouraging sales and actually rewarding this kind of behavior. I thought of Eitan and Galia. I thought of Mr. Gotgold and his monthly pension – his measly 2000 shekels for which we insisted on making him see an impatient investment consultant who screwed him out of most of it. I thought of the stiff tones, the embarrassment in front of the customers, the denied mortgages.

I couldn’t help what happened next. I had not chosen to be there on a Friday, to be an assistant manager entering the data for a decision I didn’t make. I had not chosen to work at a bank which valued numbers over people; I had not chosen to stay home all those nights while my husband made new playmates on the executive field. I had not chosen to wake my son up early, only to miss seeing him for the rest of the weekend. I had not chosen to live in a country that did nothing to get its teenagers back into school, did nothing to get its cats off the streets and its newlyweds into homes.

I had to do something; something that would stop that endless train of useless days in which I smiled and nodded and punched in my numbers and swiped my card. I look around to make sure no one else is there – it’s only 7:45 – and click “log out”. I get up to make some coffee, my mind reeling with possibility.

I’m being more than generous here, I think, as I punch in Ohayon’s system ID and password. The bank’s red and grey logo flashes, rotating lazily as the system loads. More than generous. The main menu appears and I choose “private banking”. I thumb through Eitan’s papers on my desk, and type in his account number. I select “pending requests” and their mortgage application pops up. On the next menu I click “approval”, and, while the forms are printed, get up to open a new file. I pull a purple cardboard file out of the cabinet – I prefer these over the plain manila ones – and arrange the papers inside. I click “sub-prime interest,” choose “Yes” on “link to index?” and highlight “USD”. I turn around and open the drawer behind me, pulling out an application form for mortgage insurance. I will throw the monthly premium in, free of charge. I staple a pension consultation brochure to the outer cardboard, stamping “first meeting free” forcefully with the ink stamp from my tray. More than generous.

The printer is whirring, busily cranking out the forms, and I gather them automatically, stacking them in order, going over them to check that I hadn’t missed any. I work fast, almost laughing out loud, as I skim through them and mark “x’s” where the applicants need to sign.

I look at the clock on the wall above me. Eight o’clock. It’s not too early.

“Eitan, it’s Riki, assistant manager at Bavli branch. Would you like to come in and sign some forms? There’s something I can do after all.”