Where are you? Tamar asks, because it sounds like the beach, and her mother hates the beach, is always complaining that the sea is filthy, and accusing the packed cafés on the beach of highway robbery. On one of the few occasions that Tamar can remember her mother agreeing to take her and Shlomi to the beach when they were little, Shlomi got stung by a jellyfish, which only cemented their mother’s poor opinion of the place. She is content to look at the sea from the comfort of the promenade, which she walks on her way to and from the pool twice or three times a week, but otherwise she is one of the few residents of the city who has more or less turned her back on it.

I can’t hear you, her mother repeats, I’m at the beach.

What are you doing there?

We’re having a coffee.

As in, you and him?

Who?

The Husband.

Her mother says nothing.

I spoke to Shlomi, Mom. Here I was laughing on the phone at your story, but you sure took your time getting to the punch line of the joke.

What joke?

That he stayed! That you accepted a little old man that someone claimed is your lost husband into your apartment, into—and here Tamar pauses, because for the first time it occurs to her that her mother might have gone even further than inviting him to sit in the chair by the window, that she might have accepted him into her bed.

Her mother laughs.

What’s so funny? Tamar demands.

He isn’t so little, her mother says, and then she hears her say to him, It’s only Tamar, my daughter, Tamar.

We need to talk, Mom. I don’t understand why you’re going along with this, and I’m concerned.

About what? I’m having a coffee on the beach, that’s all. I’ll call you later. And why are you up in the middle of the night, anyway? Iris stayed out late again? You’re finally getting paid back for all of the nights you stayed out when you were her age. But it’s good for her, let her enjoy. Look how serious you turned out to be.

On this new, lighter note her mother hangs up, the roaring of the waves is cut off, and Tamar is returned to the silence of her kitchen in the suburban street where she has lived for the last twelve years, since Iris was three.

Not so little! she repeats. But all that comes back is the hum of the Subzero, a sound one only ever hears when alone.