She Stayed.
It was a clear afternoon with a soft golden light where the shadows seemed to stretch lazily as if they, too, had nowhere else to be. The restaurant was half-empty, with a quietness that didn’t disturb, the kind that lets you get lost in your own thoughts. There, between dessert and tea, I said, “Four marriages.”
She looked at me and I waited. I waited for a slight tremble in her hands, a furrowed brow, or maybe that uncomfortable smile people give when they don’t know what to say. But nothing. She just sat there, her eyes fixed, almost amused, like she was listening to a story and waiting for the punchline. Time seemed to slow down. For a moment, I wondered if the whole world had paused just to see what she would do. But she didn’t do anything. She just stayed.
I’ve always been bad with people. I’m one of those who prefers the muffled sound of rain on the roof to the sound of human voices but here in Israel it doesn’t rain much. Conversations exhaust me, especially the ones full of empty pleasantries where no one is really saying what they mean but that afternoon, for some reason, I talked. I opened the dusty box of my past and started pulling things out like someone cleaning a house without knowing where to begin and the strangest part? She didn’t move.
Sometimes she looks at me and laughs a little, saying she still doesn’t know why she fell in love with me and I always smile back because I understand perfectly. I, who always hid from people, who made silence my home, found someone who stayed. I keep thinking, maybe love doesn’t need to be explained, maybe what matters is precisely what we can’t understand. What did she see in me? Perhaps she liked my weariness, my impatience with things that don’t make sense or maybe it’s something else, something I’ll never know.
But if she doesn’t know why she loves me, I know why I love her. I love her because life has shaken her many times and she still smiles, because if someone can smile after raising five kids and carrying a divorce on her back, there’s a strength there that defies explanation. I love her because she stayed even after hearing who I am. She looked at me with all my scars and wasn’t afraid and in the end, that’s all I ever needed.