imagination housed marginal characters from the past, who were suddenly illuminated from a new angle, such as, for example, the Singer technician with whom she had been in love at the end of the seventies, something which so far as Mandy knew had never actually happened. Sometimes she would ask Mandy when she had returned from Detroit, because a textile conference had once taken place there years ago and Mandy had attended it on behalf of the factory to pick up ideas for fabrics which they would then commission from the textile factory they worked with without fear of impurities or fear of anything else.
When Mandy was supposed to fly home, a big strike broke out and her return was delayed, and Audrey was very worried about her. Lirit was then twelve years old, Gruber was wrapped up in himself, and the grandmother was afraid that Mandy would never return and the burden of caring for the two children would fall to her.
This wasn’t completely irrational, because for a few days there was no telephone connection with Mandy, and it was only with the help of the Israeli consulate in Detroit that they succeeded in locating her.
It was a very big strike, although there have been bigger ones since. In any case, when it came to an end, the economy was no longer the same as it was before.
ON THE LAST NIGHT of her life, after she had sentenced Mandy to not being the third generation of female loneliness, and even threatened her that she would haunt her from heaven if she introduced radical changes in Nighty-Night, she murmured the names of outstanding members of the ultra-Orthodox clientele of the pajama factory in the sixties and seventies.
After she died, Mandy sank into a permanent state of depression. It seemed that she did everything with an apathetic shrug of her shoulders, without a real smile. Suddenly she understood that nature was cruel and it didn’t give anybody a discount, not even her. To her increasing annoyance and resentment she discovered that the contours of the bottom of her face, too, were disappearing into a new chin, which had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, with no justification, after all her efforts not to put on weight. And she also discovered that a layer of fat of more than a centimeter thick had grown on her back, making her beautiful spine hollow and disappointing. Her vision too was deteriorating. When she looked at the notices she had published in the papers announcing her mother’s death, the small letters and even some of the big ones were blurred.
At the optician’s office next to her house, they told her that she was plus two in her right eye and plus one and three-quarters in her left eye, and she needed bifocals for driving and reading.
In order to compensate herself, Mandy bought gorgeous glasses for $675.
ABOUT A YEAR after her mother’s death Mandy went back to cherishing the vain hope that while the march toward extinction was self-evident, and it was clear that she would grow old and die like everybody else, perhaps she would be given special consideration “over there,” wherever that might be, and the process would be softened in her case. “Over there” they must know how important external appearances, aesthetics, were to her, and therefore they would meet her halfway. Perhaps because of her CV: after all, she had been second to the queen of the class in primary school, and quite popular in high school too.
At the same time she began to change her diet to a strict regime: no milk, meat, fish, eggs, bread, or coffee—only fruit, vegetables, and some seaweed or other. In the morning she drank wheat grass that she pulverized and made into juice herself, and during the day she made sure to swallow all the most up-to-date vitamins and omegas on the market.
Before she embarked on the series of plastic surgeries, she gave the cosmetics companies a chance, and spent a fortune on their promising products, especially one which was made of caviar (Creme Caviar), which she ordered
When Mandy was supposed to fly home, a big strike broke out and her return was delayed, and Audrey was very worried about her. Lirit was then twelve years old, Gruber was wrapped up in himself, and the grandmother was afraid that Mandy would never return and the burden of caring for the two children would fall to her.
This wasn’t completely irrational, because for a few days there was no telephone connection with Mandy, and it was only with the help of the Israeli consulate in Detroit that they succeeded in locating her.
It was a very big strike, although there have been bigger ones since. In any case, when it came to an end, the economy was no longer the same as it was before.
ON THE LAST NIGHT of her life, after she had sentenced Mandy to not being the third generation of female loneliness, and even threatened her that she would haunt her from heaven if she introduced radical changes in Nighty-Night, she murmured the names of outstanding members of the ultra-Orthodox clientele of the pajama factory in the sixties and seventies.
After she died, Mandy sank into a permanent state of depression. It seemed that she did everything with an apathetic shrug of her shoulders, without a real smile. Suddenly she understood that nature was cruel and it didn’t give anybody a discount, not even her. To her increasing annoyance and resentment she discovered that the contours of the bottom of her face, too, were disappearing into a new chin, which had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, with no justification, after all her efforts not to put on weight. And she also discovered that a layer of fat of more than a centimeter thick had grown on her back, making her beautiful spine hollow and disappointing. Her vision too was deteriorating. When she looked at the notices she had published in the papers announcing her mother’s death, the small letters and even some of the big ones were blurred.
At the optician’s office next to her house, they told her that she was plus two in her right eye and plus one and three-quarters in her left eye, and she needed bifocals for driving and reading.
In order to compensate herself, Mandy bought gorgeous glasses for $675.
ABOUT A YEAR after her mother’s death Mandy went back to cherishing the vain hope that while the march toward extinction was self-evident, and it was clear that she would grow old and die like everybody else, perhaps she would be given special consideration “over there,” wherever that might be, and the process would be softened in her case. “Over there” they must know how important external appearances, aesthetics, were to her, and therefore they would meet her halfway. Perhaps because of her CV: after all, she had been second to the queen of the class in primary school, and quite popular in high school too.
At the same time she began to change her diet to a strict regime: no milk, meat, fish, eggs, bread, or coffee—only fruit, vegetables, and some seaweed or other. In the morning she drank wheat grass that she pulverized and made into juice herself, and during the day she made sure to swallow all the most up-to-date vitamins and omegas on the market.
Before she embarked on the series of plastic surgeries, she gave the cosmetics companies a chance, and spent a fortune on their promising products, especially one which was made of caviar (Creme Caviar), which she ordered
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