Tamar waited, in the week before their departure, for her mother to say something about the living arrangements. They always stayed with her when they visited, Tamar sleeping in her old bedroom, and Iris and Remy sharing Shlomi’s, all of them taking turns for the bathroom with the shower that has next to no pressure. How did her mother imagine it would work if the Husband was there, too? The apartment, which always just managed four people, would be strained by five, especially if one was a stranger. Perhaps her mother was waiting for her to volunteer to stay at Shlomi and Dan’s place in Jaffa, big enough for the sprawling, extended Arab family it was once built for. But Tamar didn’t offer, and her mother didn’t ask, and so now they are headed in a taxi for Tchernichovsky Street.

Ilana is waiting outside, and as the kids fly into her arms, Tamar has a chance to take in the subtle changes in her mother’s appearance—her hair that is a few shades lighter, the copper dusted with gold, her leopard-print leggings, even further out on the limb on which her mother’s fashion taste has always rested, and on her hip a quilted leather fanny pack with a fake Chanel logo. Feeling around inside it for her keys, her mother gaily informs them that she hasn’t lost a thing since she started using it, she keeps it on from the moment she gets up until the moment she goes to sleep, and it has solved the problem of misplacing things: everything that comes out of it goes right back in. As she says it, affectionately patting the plump pouch like a baby’s bottom, Tamar guesses from the delight in her mother’s voice that it was the Husband’s idea, that her mother’s pleasure in the solution is also her pleasure in his ingenuity, and the fact that he’s devoted his special intelligence to her little problem. Climbing the steps behind the swaying fanny pack with the gilded double C, while Remy rides up in the tiny elevator with the luggage, Tamar steels herself for the encounter that is about to take place. But when her mother unlocks the door and the kids tumble in with the suitcases, there is no one else there. Tamar inhales the familiar smell of home and childhood. And only after the first, strong notes of her mother’s cooking, the old building, and Israeli laundry detergent fade away does she discover underneath it all the musky odor of men’s cologne.

Where is he? she asks, still sniffing.