The Center of the World

by Andreas Steinhöfel

“As you like. I’ll pass her the message. I don’t promise anything.”

  I step out of the phone booth into the high street, where the evening traffic is moving at a crawl. People are hurrying along the pavement, doing last-minute shopping, carrying plastic shopping bags, pushing baby carriages. Every single one of them ought to be stopping to look at me inquisitively, as my heart is spraying sparks in all directions. It’s crazy that I should feel overcome with embarrassment now of all times. I am so used to regarding the residents of the town with disdain, so utterly convinced that Visible turns Glass, Dianne, and me into something special, that up to now I have simply denied emotions such as love or affection to those out there, the Little People, those on the other side. I should have known better long ago, from the stories Glass has been told by so many women.

  Then I catch sight of Dianne across the road. She’s standing at the central bus terminal, which has existed only since the small town train station (where Glass arrived seventeen years ago) closed down a few years ago for lack of customers wanting to take the train. A girl I don’t know with short blond hair stands next to Dianne. It must be the girlfriend Kat saw her with at school. For the briefest of seconds I am numbed by the thought that Dianne has a lover—her own Pascal—and I wonder whether it’s this blond girl that Dianne goes to meet when she leaves Visible at night.

  “Maybe it’s in our genes,’’ I mutter to myself.

  The two are talking. It doesn’t look as if the conversation is at all relaxed; the blond girl is going on and on at Dianne, waving her hands angrily, her head darting back and forth like a bird of prey, while my sister is biting her lip and shaking her head stoically from time to time.

  The bus comes. I see Dianne get on, and the blond girl slowly ambles off in my direction. Hurriedly I slip round the next corner. I wonder whether Dianne is on her way to Tereza, and whether I should call Pascal again to ask whether my sister has said she’s coming. Then I abandon the thought. If that had been the case, Pascal would surely have told me while we were speaking. I shrug. There are more important things to think about. My right hand is on fire where the Runner touched it. I can’t think how I’m going to survive till the day after tomorrow.

  I take to Michael right from the start. The first thing that strikes me, to my surprise, is his age. I imagine he’s in his early fifties, making him almost twenty years older than Glass. Well, maybe fifteen. His hair is already beginning to thin and is graying at the temples. Faded jeans are topped by a brilliant white shirt, and he wears an old-fashioned watch on his left wrist. He seems cool, elegant, and—despite his somewhat sloppy outward appearance—as serious as an expensive leather briefcase. When I ask him about his profession, he grins, slightly embarrassed.

  “Didn’t Glass tell you?”

  “No.”

  “No one asked me,” Glass breaks in.

  The slightly reproachful remark is aimed both at me and Dianne, who has joined us.

  The fact that Glass has asked her to be here as well surprises me almost as much as that Dianne has agreed.

  “I’m a lawyer,” Michael explains. His voice is so deep and resonant that I imagine I can feel my wineglass singing between my hands. He has a slender, striking face, like one of these guys on TV commercials, pointing their chins at the camera to advertise twin-blade razors.

  I have to grin. “A lawyer in need of a lawyer?”

  “What?” Dianne asks puzzled.

  “That’s how we met,” Michael explains. “I was taken for a ride by a client last spring, and suddenly I found myself in deep … well, in a very unpleasant mess. The details are boring. Anyway, that’s how I came across Tereza. And your mother.”

  With a smile directed at everyone and no one in particular, he pushes his wristwatch up and down on his wrist. He looks at Glass. He may not know it yet, but he is helplessly lost.

  I’m amused to observe that Glass isn’t doing much better. She darts around the kitchen like a headless chicken, moving plates and cutlery into place, pouring wine into brilliantly polished glasses, blabbering on without a stop, and smoking like a chimney. It’s quite touching to see how hard she’s trying to please Michael, but this is making me hellishly nervous—if I’m as panicky as this when I turn up to meet Nicholas, he may regret he ever spoke to me. Finally Michael calms Glass down by suddenly grabbing her after she’s put the deep-frozen cannelloni in the oven, sitting her down on his lap, and starting to massage her neck.

  “Tense?” he asks.

  “Yes, but lower down.”

  It’s the only point when I’m startled. Michael’s laughter, together with a genuinely puzzled glance from Glass, saves the situation. Dianne, who’s already put down her wineglass, her face showing every sign of imminent flight, relaxes again and decides on a grin. As Michael dutifully slides his hands down from Glass’s neck to her shoulder blades, I wonder whether he’s aware of the existence of his predecessors, and if so, how he copes with this knowledge.

  “Did you want salad?” asks Glass, her eyes closed. “What I mean is, there isn’t any, because I wouldn’t have known how to make dressing or that stuff.”

  “You start with one tablespoon of vinegar to three of oil,” says Michael.

  “Really? Just a bit further left, where you were just—right there, wonderful … So, vinegar, what? I don’t know, but don’t you think it always smells a bit of public toilets?” Michael is every bit as nervous as Glass, but he’s better at concealing it. Unlike her, he just cuts the speed. He speaks more thoughtfully and slowly and makes fewer gestures than she does. But even so, this can’t hide the rays beaming out from him like a reliable small heater. If not before, by the time Glass brings the fairly bland cannelloni to the table, she must surely notice that Michael worships her. She could serve him horse manure and he would eat it with the same devotion and admiration. Perhaps it’s down to the very fact that she doesn’t notice—or doesn’t want to notice—that she hasn’t sent Michael packing long ago. A sentence of Pascal’s springs to mind, when she once disrespectfully stated that even the Virgin Mary might have had some objections to devotion if she had screwed half as many men as my mother.

  “What d’you think of him?” asks Glass after Michael has excused himself to go to the bathroom.

  I look over at Dianne for help. “He’s nice, isn’t he?”

  “Nice?” snorts Glass across the table. “Let me tell you what nice is, darling. Panpipe music is nice. Pink flowered loo paper is nice.”

  “All I meant was—”

  “You could have come up with a slightly less qualified appraisal.”

  “You’re acting as if you want to marry him.”

  “And if I did?”

  Dianne raises an eyebrow—perhaps she’s wondering why for the first time in her life our mother is setting store by our opinion. I sense how in the sudden silence that follows, Glass is squirming like an eel between the two of us. She might be blushing, except the unaccustomed alcohol has long since sent the blood rushing to her face.

  “And do you?”

  “Oh … what do I know.” Glass gets up quickly and takes another bottle of wine from the fridge. “Well?”

  “Well”—I raise both my hands—“I think he’s great.”

  “Dianne?”

  “He’s all right.”

  “Good.” Glass struggles awkwardly with the corkscrew. “Does anyone know how this thing works?”

  One or two more hours go by. We chat, candles burn, and the cheap wine gives the glasses a golden shimmer. Michael is quick and humorous. He behaves as obligingly as if he were the host, and he doesn’t bore Dianne and me with questions about school or our future, just chats away happily about God and the world. Apart from Kyle, none of the men that Glass has brought to Visible over the years has impressed me so much in such a short space of time. I look over at Dianne. She’s thawed out, laughs at Michael’s jokes, and is really relaxed—I haven’t seen her like this for ages. Even Rosella, who had to give up her allotted place
on the kitchen table and has landed precariously on her side out of the way on a shelf, seems to be smiling more happily than usual. It’s like family. Or at least like I’ve always imagined a family to be. But for that very reason it appears unconvincing to me, a poor copy of an even poorer TV commercial. No doubt Handel would be deeply affected at the sight of this cozy scene, even sufficiently overcome to make him cover his face. I’m preoccupied by my meeting with Nicholas and also by the fact that Tereza hasn’t called.

  I’m surprised when Michael looks at his watch and announces that he’s going. I was fully expecting him to spend the night with Glass.

  “Will you see Michael out?” she asks me. “I’ll clear up and make a start on the dishes. Dianne, give me a hand, will you?”

  Dianne throws me a searching look, then without a word begins stacking some plates.

  The wine has made me so tipsy that I can barely prevent myself from bursting out laughing. Does Glass really think it’s time for a man-to-man talk? Michael kisses her on the cheek, which she accepts as if he was no longer present. Then the lawyer who needs a lawyer lets me see him out.

  “Imposing stonework,” he says as we stand on the porch. He points up at the façade of the building, disappearing up into the night sky. Somewhere a cricket chirps at the autumnal chill. “When you were small this must have seemed like a dream.” I let this remark pass. How could he know how frightened Dianne and I once used to be at Visible? “It was all right,” I reply.

  “Have you got a boyfriend?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A boyfriend. Glass told me that you’re gay. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “That I’m gay or that Glass can’t keep her trap shut?”

  “Both, I think.”

  “No, I don’t mind.” It’s probably only on account of his velvety, dark voice that I manage to produce an answer at all. It instantly inspires confidence—the perfect tool for a lawyer. “And no, I don’t have a boyfriend. Didn’t Glass tell you that as well?”

  “She didn’t know.”

  I nod and fumble about for something to say to break the sudden silence.

  “Hey, I’m sorry, Phil.” Michael stretches out a hand, which I automatically grasp and shake. He gives an embarrassed smile, like a small boy. He wears a spicy aftershave, some expensive brand that suits him perfectly, like everything he wears.

  “I didn’t mean to be indiscreet.”

  “It’s OK.”

  In actual fact I actually feel somehow relieved. When Kat had predicted that I would encounter problems about being gay once I turned up with a boyfriend, if not before, I had disagreed. That Michael casually accepts it encourages me. I watch him as he goes to his car, his white shirt gleaming, a splash of brightness in the dark. He’s left his jacket behind in the hall.

  After he’s driven off, someone glides out of the door and comes to stand beside me by the veranda rail. I was expecting Glass, but it’s Dianne, who emerges from the shadows in her typically noiseless way.

  “D’you think,” she asks, looking straight ahead, “this time it’s going to last?”

  “Perhaps. At any rate, it’d be the first time that Glass sent a man home of her own accord. … He was all right, don’t you think?”

  “Well, yes.” Dianne gives a quick laugh. “He was nice.”

  “You know, for one moment as we were all sitting there together …”

  “I felt the same.” Her voice grows soft. “But it’s much too late for any of that, isn’t it?”

  “Could be,” I reply in the same quiet tone. “All the same, it’d be great to give it a go. Although I felt damned uncomfortable imagining that we were a family at dinner.”

  Whispering like this takes us back to when we were small children lying in bed in the same room, talking softly to each other in the darkness.

  “Sometimes I think I didn’t really want a father,” says Dianne, “Or I did, but only when I was small.”

  “You liked Kyle, didn’t you?”

  “I thought he would stay with us. But he left, and after that. . Her face gives nothing away. Only her hands Hit and dart along the porch railing, as if possessed with an independent life.

  “And after that?”

  “I stopped believing in a father. I just wanted a different mother.”

  I breathe in sharply.

  “You think I hate Glass, but I don’t,” says Dianne with a rush. “It’s just our life that I hate, Phil. I’ve had it up to here with our mother being treated like a leper. For that alone, I hope it’ll work out with Michael so that at last we’ll be treated like normal people in the town.”

  “You don’t really believe that, do you? I mean, take Stella. She wasn’t like Glass. All the same, she complained that no one wanted to have anything to do with her.”

  Dianne shrugs. “She could have left. Who would have stopped her?”

  “She loved Visible too much. Perhaps in spite of everything she felt at home here.”

  “I do too,” Dianne replies. “I like Visible and I like the town.”

  “But the town doesn’t like us,” I insist.

  “They don’t like Glass,” Dianne retorts just as stubbornly. “There’s a difference.”

  The conversation has taken an awkward turn. The mood during supper was so relaxed that I’ve already been wondering whether to ask Dianne about the blond girl I saw her with at the bus stop or about where she was this afternoon. I can forget that so long as we’re talking about Glass.

  “D’you think,” I say, “that she’d have so many clients if everybody hated her?”

  Dianne makes a scornful noise. “Those stupid women! They’ll still be coming a hundred years from now, because they won’t accept that they’d be better off if they walked out on their husbands.”

  “That’s what Glass did.”

  “Yes, about ten or twenty times a year.” Dianne turns toward me. “All she ever wanted was sex, and that’s why everyone considers her a slag.”

  “And you?”

  “No. But that doesn’t mean that I have to approve of her behavior by a long chalk, does it?”

  “Why d’you have to approve of it?” Our voices are getting louder. “You act as if that makes Glass a bad mother.”

  “My God, I never said that. I’m not completely stupid!” Dianne’s voice is slowly taking on a sharp edge. “I know she bust her gut for us and always meant well. But she didn’t give a shit the way people gawped at us on account of her escapades. She’s made her own rules, and we have to pay for that. Glass was and is totally selfish.”

  “And? Who says a mother always has to sacrifice herself one hundred percent for her children?”

  “Oh, shit, Phil! Maybe someone should have.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Dianne turns on her heel and marches back into the house. I watch her helplessly. The crazy thing is that I probably wouldn’t have been able to answer her, because deep down I agree with her. That Glass doesn’t give a damn how she herself, Dianne, or I are perceived by the outside world may indeed be the product of egoistic motives. But it isn’t Glass who tells Those Out There how to classify and judge such motives. As for desiring acceptance by the townspeople, Dianne is fighting a solitary battle. She can’t count on me. I hardly even need to stop and think about myself as a boy having fallen in love with another boy to arrive at the conclusion that the opinion of the Little People means at least as little to me as it does to my egotistical mother.

  chapter 8

  how

  the moon

  got

  its spots

  Some changes happen overnight. You go to bed one night, sink into a deep, refreshing sleep, wake up next morning, and realize that everything is different.

  You can’t make out what it is that’s happened, because the sun has risen just like every other morning, and that same old picture you’ve been meaning to take down for ages is still hanging on the wall. The world still looks the same. It’s only when you take a closer lo
ok that you get the impression that things seem a bit lighter or darker than before—but that’s an illusion. It’s your own perception that’s changed, because from one day to the next you’ve turned into a different person. And that’s what makes you take that wretched picture down.

  You notices other changes. You sense them creeping up on you, slowly but surely, like the changing of the seasons. These changes are preceded by major and minor events that don’t seem in any way connected. But something in the deepest recesses of your psyche patiently fits these events and their consequences together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and in the same way a puzzle takes shape, a change occurs inside you, piece by piece, step by step—a kind of imperceptible rebirth.

  There was one year when a whole lot of such major and minor events came together for me.

  It was the year that began with my seeing Nicholas on the snow-covered steps of the town church, and then immediately afterwards realizing I’d lost my snow globe. Just a few weeks later Glass lost the baby she had set her mind on keeping. Dianne—who, much to my surprise, hadn’t displayed either anger or rejection at the announcement of a new addition, but reacted with indifference, almost boredom—became completely disturbed by the outcome. She withdrew totally and wasn’t approachable again until Glass was discharged from the hospital, where she’d had to stay for a few days because she’d lost so much blood.

  I was helpless. The miscarriage drove Glass into the welcoming arms of a numbing depression that seemed to rob everything and everyone in her immediate vicinity of all color, reducing them to nothing but gray. Glass seemed inaccessible. It took several months before she managed to shake off the depression, hesitantly, as if taking leave of a beloved friend. I lost a friend as well—Paleiko stopped talking to me. It was if the doll had been struck dumb by the fear that had entered Visible along with the miscarriage. Dianne’s and my fourteenth birthday also came during this colorless period and passed unnoticed, a lonely business, for no one was in the mood for celebrating. Tereza, who usually marked this occasion every year by recounting the story of our birth with pristine freshness and enthusiasm while Dianne and I wolfed down pastries plastered with colored icing, remained at home for the first time ever.