DAPHNE MERKIN
405
"Arnie," she says, addressing a man wearing clothes the color of
a beach ball- royal blue Bermuda shorts and a red and white checked
shirt-"who does that guy think he is? There's a line here. This is a
democracy!"
"Take it easy, Edith. Maybe it's an emergency."
Her husband stands several yards in front of her, and he talks
to her from over his shoulder, as though it were imperative that he
keep watch on the view ahead.
"This is a democracy!" the woman repeats. "We're all Americans
here."
Her husband turns his head, and the two of them look back
toward me. I smile at them sadly, hoping they will take me for an or–
phan, a young but diligent visitor, a reconnoiterer of foreign opin–
ions-a reader of
The Jerusalem Post.
"This is Israel," her husband says. "Wait till you get home ."
I wonder what is to happen when she gets home. Is she the kind
of woman who thrives on creating fusses wherever she goes, in super–
markets and movie lines? Has her husband become desperately
peace-loving in the face of her willingness to take up arms? And
what will she do when she discovers that my father isn't an American,
after all?
"Well, I still think we should say something," she says, but she
sounds pacified. "Where'd Sheila say she was going?"
"There she is now," her husband says, smiling broadly at the
tall girl coming toward them. "We missed you, sweetheart."
"I just went to get a Coke. Mom, please, it's fine."
Sheila, who is very tanned and looks several years older than I
do, shrugs off her mother's efforts to straighten the Peter Pan collar
of her short-sleeved Villager blouse. Her mother's bangle bracelets
click whenever she moves her arm, and I note enviously that Sheila
is wearing a pair of elegant high-heeled sandals.
"God, their Coke is so bad! I can't wait to get home and taste
real food again!"
Sheila doesn't pronounce
Coke
the way I do; she hugs the
0,
making it sound almost French:
coeuq.
Her mother seems to have
completely forgotten my father's undemocratic behavior in the light
of her daughter's return. She stands close to her , watching with an
almost fearful affection, as though at any moment Sheila might go
off again in search of another substandard refreshment.
"Daddy felt the same way about the ice cream here, didn't you,
Arnie?"
