GRANDPA DIDN’T COME home the following Friday, nor did he answer his phone. I made a few calls to people I knew from the army and finally reached a welfare NCO at the Golani training base. After looking into the matter, she told me that Grandpa had been granted a lone soldier status. Having informed them he couldn’t live alone, he was being housed at the Senior Citizens’ Center in Rehovot. According to the NCO, he said he was being neglected by his family, and she subtly inquired whether social services were involved.

I couldn’t believe he had lied like that. Badmouthed the only two people in the world who looked after him. The day Grandma Miriam died, I quit my job at the restaurant I’d been working at before the call center, and Dad took a month’s leave from work even though he couldn’t really afford it. And despite the fact that for the past thirty years he and Grandpa had only been pretending to talk to each other. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because of Alma, or maybe there are other reasons. Actually, I’m not even sure they know, but it was hard not to notice the distance between them; how they always settled for a hesitant handshake, like businessmen in a useless meeting. Dad tried laughing it off, said it was just the way of Ashkenazi families, and left it at that.

I walked into Dad’s study. He was sitting at his desk in front of piles of papers. The moment I entered, he folded the letter he was reading. I couldn’t see what was written in it, but I spotted the logo of a law firm. I preferred not to ask.

“Listen, you were right,” I admitted, not without frustration, and told him everything. “I’m going to call his platoon commander right now and tell him they have to send Grandpa home.”

Dad opened one of the drawers and took out a pill sheet. “Headache,” he said and swallowed two pills without water. “You’re going to do no such thing.”

“Have you lost it? Any second now they’re going to charge us with abusing the elderly!”

“Don’t be dramatic.”

“Listen, I’ve talked to people in the brigade, you have no idea what he’s telling them about us.”

“I know,” he answered. “The NCO called me.”

“What?”

“Someone called me last night. Some soldier. She said Grandpa wants to move to one of those homes for elderly soldiers, but that they only accept soldiers who don’t have a supportive family.”

“Well, did you set things straight?”

“Yes. I told her we didn’t look after him at all.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“Absolutely not,” Dad said. “I told them we’d be happy if the home could take him off our hands.”

“What? How could you even say something like that?”