Free Deja Vu by Michal Hartstein Page B

I smiled. “Sometimes it’s easier to talk to strangers.”
    “Yes,” she laughed, “but you’re not really a stranger.”
    We continued to talk and laugh. The conversation flowed, mainly because we began to talk about our professors and classmates. It was hard to say goodbye, and we decided to meet again for a breezy brunch at the weekend.
     
    “I saw you were sitting with Aya Steinfeld the entire time.” Daria called me the next day and proved for the umpteenth time that she never missed anything.
    “She’s very nice.”
    “They’re a ridiculously successful pair,” Daria hurried to update me.
    “Who?”
    “She and her husband.”
    “Yes… she told me they’re lawyers.”
    “Right. What did you talk about for so long?”
    “We were at school together.”
    “Why would you have been studying together? She studied Law.”
    “They studied both law and accounting.”
    “Really? You can learn it together?”
    “Yes, the two subjects really overlap.”
    “Her husband’s a partner in a firm that specializes in tax law, to the best of my knowledge, so it makes sense.”
    “He’s a partner?” I asked in amazement. “How old is he?”
    “He’s thirty-five and, to my knowledge, she’s thirty-three.” Now I understood why she was so stressed about parenthood - they were a little older than Amir and me.
    “He’s still very young to be a partner.”
    “Extremely young! I told you they were a successful pair. I don’t know exactly who she works for, but I heard that she’s working for one of the most prestigious firms in the country. She goes off to meetings in the Knesset in Jerusalem.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know… she represents very big companies who probably deal with the Knesset members and give them a hard time.”
    “Wow!”
    “Yeah, they’re a very impressive couple. I keep trying to have Roy and their son play together, but their son’s too laid back for my son,” she giggled.
    “We’ll be seeing them this weekend,” I put in. “We'll see how Nofar gets along with the Crown Prince.”
    “They have a fabulous house. You’re sure to be impressed.”
    “Good for them.”
    “It really is good for them. Most people here in our neighborhood inherited their money, but they really earned theirs. She’s originally from Kiryat Gat, and I think he’s from Netanya.”
    I didn’t know if she told me all this to make me jealous, but I was flooded with negative emotions again. My background was much more privileged than those who grew up in a remote, developing town, but I didn’t see how we could possibly buy an apartment in an upscale neighborhood in northern Tel Aviv in the coming years. Aya, Lior and I had started at the same point, educationally. The three of us studied at the same school, I was even an outstanding student, none of us had any connections or a rich daddy and yet they’d been able to steer themselves higher than me. Maybe I’d made a mistake by choosing to be a CPA. Maybe I should have gone to law school. I didn’t feel I was missing anything material in my life. Amir and I made a good living, and we lived in a cute apartment (with a choking mortgage). We lived the Israeli dream. But for me, this dream was too trite and didn’t aim high enough. I felt that I should be achieving more. My mother told me that I’d always been like that, even before the accident. She and my father tried occasionally to moderate my need to be constantly in first place, to no avail. In my childhood and youth, the disappointments were smaller and the successes were easier to reach, but as time passed, it was harder for me to reach that summit, and I had to feel the bitter taste of disappointment again and again. The sense of 'what if’ paralyzed me once again, as it had when I found out I was pregnant with Nofar.
    I nearly cried off our invite to Aya and Lior’s house; I didn’t want to see their incredible home and their perfect life. Aya texted me the day before