Cohen nodded. ‘Yeah.’
Rushi nodded. ‘Still Jewish, though?’
Cohen shrugged. ‘You talk about it like it’s actually a choice.’
Rushi shrugged right back. ‘Why not? You made it one, by your own account.’ She sighed. ‘I’d like to see Israel again, one of these days. After he had his hand blown off in Korea, everyone said he’d cracked, your mother included.’ Abruptly, Rushi grinned. ‘But I like cracked people. Cracks mean you can see all the interesting things people normally keep hidden underneath.’ She glanced out the window, taking in the heavy sleet falling to the ground. ‘You should stay for a while. Drink your black coffee and warm up a little. Your mother will never forgive me if I let her boy go out into all that cold without a hot drink in his belly.’
Suddenly, Cohen was determined to have Rushi think well of him. Even if only a little.
‘I’ll call again,’ he suggested. ‘I have a day free next Tuesday. I’ll call in and we can catch up.’
He tried not to think of River, of yellow gingham and rainbow ribbons. He cleared his mind of apple-like cheeks and a warm smile.
But Rushi shook her head. ‘Don’t. I told you already, she’s not for you. And there’s no point in your coming all this way to see me. It’s just as you said, you aren’t a child any more. I’m your mother’s friend, not yours.’
‘Oh.’
Abruptly, Rushi’s face softened. ‘Besides, I’m not even here on Tuesdays. That’s the day I teach at the Hanyu Institute over in the city.’
Cohen nodded.
‘Stay and have that coffee,’ Rushi told him. ‘And give your mother a hug from me when you next see her.’ Suddenly she stopped, spinning on her heel with a deftness that surprised him. ‘No, wait. On second thoughts, don’t do that. Just give her a hug, but don’t tell her it’s from me. She needs more hugs, that mother of yours. And I think one from you might make her year.’
He watched as she walked away. That’s it then, he thought bitterly. Just another miserable meeting in the miserable life of Cohen Ford.
He shouldn’t be surprised.
He shouldn’t feel bitter.
But he did.
He was still mulling silently, scowling at the table, when a cup of black coffee, dark and steaming, was pushed towards him. He looked up and straight into the meadow-like eyes of River. Green flecks seemed to move in a field of brown, and Cohen felt his breath catch in his throat.
She nudged the coffee towards him again, but more than that, she also pushed a pastel-pink cup, brimming with strawberry ice cream, into his hand.
He stared at it for a moment, a lump in his throat, before opening his mouth to protest, to tell River that he was too old for ice cream, too old for pastel-pink and too jaded for even the smallest of small pleasures. But he closed it just as suddenly, reminding himself that she couldn’t hear. That his protests were useless. That he couldn’t ever hope to explain to her why he would turn down her small gift.
And so, he simply looked once more into her lovely eyes and smiled.
She smiled back.
He left the coffee.
He ate the strawberry ice cream.
And he knew that next Tuesday, whatever Rushi might have told him, he was coming back here again.
Chapter Two
Apple
A few weeks after his father died, and just a few months after Christine left him for another man – one who was more ‘her type’, more of a ‘go-getter’ and just ‘better’ than Cohen, apparently – Cohen did something he’d been thinking about for years.
He hired a therapist.
Marilyn Berg came highly recommended, and her office was a heady mix of earthenware jugs and Moroccan-inspired lamps and pillows. When Cohen walked in, nervously shucking his shoes at her request, before settling his long legs awkwardly into the sitting lotus position, he cleared his throat once, and then again.
‘Your office is very ... eclectic,’ he told her.
She smiled vaguely, tossing her red hair, palms outstretched.
‘Don’t think of this as an office, Cohen,’ she chided, in a Southern accent that reminded him strongly of mint juleps, fried chicken and peach pie. ‘I really want you to believe that this is a safe space for your thoughts and feelings.’
‘You have a desk.’
She smiled at him again. ‘To some people, it might be a desk. But to others … it’s merely a storage chest for thoughts and feelings.’
Cohen stared at her. ‘You also have a printer. And a filing cabinet.’
‘Well now, it might look like a printer, but actually, I look on it as a thought distributor. And the filing cabinet? You could call that a thought collector. You need to open your mind a little here, Cohen honey.’
‘Alright,’ he agreed blandly. ‘I suppose your stapler is a thought puncher?’
Marilyn’s smile faded slightly. ‘I think we’re getting caught in semantics here, Cohen,’ she said, with the raise of one perfectly shaped eyebrow. ‘I feel as though you’re putting up a wall. I feel that you’re using misdirection and aggression to deal with what you find to be a deeply uncomfortable situation.’
Marilyn, as it turned out, had lots of thoughts and feelings.
She felt like Cohen didn’t want to be there.
She felt like Cohen didn’t appreciate her therapy.
She felt like Cohen had little respect for her as a psychologically trained ‘thought processor’.
She felt like Cohen had issues with strong women.
And, of course, she felt like Cohen had issues with his mother.
Ah yes, Esther. It always came down to Esther, didn’t it?
After two sessions of painful and protracted therapy – which just seemed to Cohen like stilted conversation at an over-inflated price – Marilyn got desperate. She tightly suggested that one morning Esther be brought in for a one-on-one mother and son bonding session. An open-door opportunity into each other’s minds. A chance to heal the hurt, to balm the wound. A quiet moment, just the two of them.
But Marilyn would need to be present as a ‘thought doctor’, naturally.
‘Let’s reconnect that umbilical cord, Cohen.’ Marilyn ran some gloss over her lips, moving into the pigeon pose on her Arabian Nights inspired floor. ‘And let’s make it beautiful.’
Even now, he wasn’t sure how it happened.
An hour into his therapy session with Esther and he was side-lined, pushed away while the two women exchanged longing looks and subtle laughs. Marilyn ran a hand through her auburn locks, while Esther reached out to stroke her hand. At some point Cohen left to get coffee, leaving his mother and therapist on the floor in matching child pose while they discussed their mutual disappointment with the men in their lives.
Six months later, Cohen was asked to be ring-bearer at their wedding.
‘But I didn’t even know you were—’
‘—what?’ His mother’s voice was sharp, and Cohen saw in the dark depths of her eyes a whole argument ready about women’s rights, love being love and relationships taking all shapes and forms.
‘—looking for remarriage,’ he finished, somewhat lamely, and he saw her shoulders relax.