Page 74 of Analysing Her Assets

“She really wants me to?”

“Yes, she said you were great.”

He turned onto freeway 12. The road left the gulf of the Red Sea and rose steeply, running along the border. The red and yellow Egyptian border stations passed by on their left, colorful Lego pieces mounted at equal distance across the beige desert.

“Didn’t you want to be a writer yourself?” she asked.

“I used to believe I could be. I was always a voracious reader, and even though I never wrote, I thought that was because my mother’s stories were filling my head so much there was room for nothing else.”

“That makes sense.” She was a kind soul, trying to console him.

“It’s nonsense. My parents pulled connections and got me a job in the army newspaper, Bamahane. For the first time in my life, I had to write almost every day. I discovered I didn’t have it in me. I grew up working in Berdiplast. After studying industrial engineering, I did my MBA and liked that much better.”

Once they left Eilat and climbed, temperatures dropped. Tamar shuddered, and Gideon turned the heat on.

“Did you like working in Berdiplast?”

“Yes, very much. I also loved being my mother’s first reader. Things change.”

He tried to sound matter of fact, to mask the acidic burn in his gut at how much he had walked away from.

“I liked working with my mother too,” Tamar said. “That was our thing.”

“Tell me about your mother,” he prompted. Her cheeks were puffed and rosy from the combination of the mimosas and the coziness of the car heater. “About your childhood. Were you always the prettiest child around?”

He received a flirtatious glance beneath her long eyelashes.

“I know you don’t like Tally, but you have to admit, she’s better looking than me.”

“I disagree,” he said it with such conviction that she burst laughing.

“Well, tell that to my mother’s best friend.”

“I’ll say it from the podium in Peaks’ meeting hall. What about your mother’s best friend?”

“I’m warning you, we’ll need sad music like they put in reality shows for sob stories.” He reached for the hand that was laid on her lap, squeezed it, and didn’t let go. As if they were still underwater and she needed him.

“Tell me.”

“My mother didn’t like shopping, so to make life easier for herself, she would buy me and Tally the same clothes, like for twins.” Tamar’s voice was low, dreamy. “At this Friday dinner once, I was six or seven, Tally was five, something like that, we wore identical dresses. We had guests for dinner, my mother’s friend and her family. That woman patted my head and told my mother, ‘Stop dressing them the same. Tally can pull it off and this one can’t.’”

She stopped, and he caressed her hand with his thumb.

“She was a jerk,” he stated the obvious.

“Ever since then, my mother stopped buying us the same clothes. And she bought dresses only for Tally. And she never asked this friend to dinner again.”

“I love you in dresses,” he assured her, thinking of her red dress and finally understanding the full meaning of her wearing it for him.

“I like pants better.” Tamar laughed softly, and he squeezed her soft palm, encouraging her to go on. “Anyway, I’m good with numbers. I leaned into my forte. It was such a perfect way to connect with my mother. She was always the top earner at our house. My parents never tried to hide it. And it’s one of her rules: ‘Always make enough money to support yourself.’ It’s like I somehow knew I’d take over from her, taking care of my sisters.”

“What did you do with numbers at such a young age?”

“My mother would always bring work home. My father would do all the household chores and she would analyze reports. Do you remember a company called Militex?” Gideon shook his head.

“Well, it was a big company back then. The CEO was a charismatic man, and the market believed his predictions. I analyzed their cash flow statements and arrived at a market value that was exactly half of what they traded at. My mother checked and re-checked. She said, ‘Kiddo,’ I was eleven then, ‘I’m going to trust your valuation.’ She told the brokerage not to push this name to their clients. That they would lose money. She got tons of flack for doing it, but a few weeks later, when the financial statements came out, the stock lost sixty percent and it never recovered. My mother was promoted. She told everyone at the office it was her eleven-year-old daughter who did it.”

“You are very good. I was always good, too. Following Doron around, that’s our chief of operations, I had a great sense of the factory floor, and I could also read ahead trends in commodities. I always thought I would take over, too.”

---