“Bitte, Gerda,” he continued, throwing his hand up in the air at the same time. He looked at me and smiled.
“Ella, this is Gerda.”
“Gerda, meet Ella from Seattle.”
I waved at her and stammered a small hi.
“Hello. Wie geths?” She looked at me with her piercing blue eyes like she knew exactly who I was, and it didn’t make me feel a bit more acquainted. On the contrary. She leaned over and put the brake on the wheelchair and that’s when I noticed what I hadn’t been able to see before. Was she pregnant?
“Gerda is is…” Hans got up and stood face to face with her and placed his hand on her shoulder, and when she turned her side to me, it was even clearer. She was pregnant.
“I’m his wife,” I think she said. I wasn’t sure, I was just staring at her protruding belly. The throbbing in my ears was so loud I was sure I was going to pass out right there on the bench, right next to quiet Eleanor Rigby. When I was finally able to force myself to speak, she was already unlocking the wheelchair.
“Ni-nice to meet you, too,” I stuttered.
She looked briefly at Hans before her ice-cold blue eyes settled on me. “Hans said you were very, very beautiful.” Her gaze raked up and down my body. “He was right, I see.” She placed a hand on top of Hans’s grandmother, which almost made her jump. “I need to go find some water for Grandmother. I think she said she’s thirsty. She’s nearly blind and her hearing is not so gut.” She bent down and yelled into the old woman’s ear, “Ich erhalte Sie Wasser jetzt,” which either meant: “I’ll get you some water, dear,” or more likely, “let’s get the hell away from this shitshow.” She looked down at Hans and added something else.
“Yes, I’ll meet you over there,” Hans said, but she was already hurrying down the street, away from the crowd, pushing the wheelchair with incredible speed.
“So, you have a wife—a pregnant wife.” I ran my hand up my neck and wiped off the small pearls of sweat. There was no way I could tell him now, with a wife and baby on the way. How could I?
He nodded, still watching her push the stroller down the street. “We met a few months after I returned. From Seattle,” he clarified, trying to, I guess, tell me that she was a “post” and not “pre”-Seattle girlfriend. It was very sweet of him, but it didn’t change the fact that she was his wife and carrying his first child. On this continent.
“At the Berlin Art Museum,” he continued when I didn’t say anything. “She was working there. And then, well, fast forward and here we are.” He rubbed a hand over his face and smiled. “That’s my life in a, how do you say it, a nut shelves?”
“Nutshell.” I couldn’t help but smile. It was a nervous smile but a smile nonetheless.
“You were about to tell me something when, um, the whole family showed up.”
“Yeah, about that…” I thought about Alfred and Ava all cuddled up in the yellow submarine that Mom, thank God, had taken for a spin, trying to persuade them to take a morning nap. I envisioned Alfred’s big blue eyes looking at me through the little peek hole and his sticky little fingers waving at me, and my heart sank straight into my stomach. I just couldn’t tell him, not now. Sorry, Alfred.
“Bitte, what was that?” Hans’s voice snapped me back to the present, to the bench, and I was suddenly unsure if I had said that last part about Alfred out loud. As if on cue, I saw Mom pushing the yellow submarine stroller around the corner where Hans’s infamous grandma and very real wife had just disappeared minutes ago. When she saw me sitting on the bench with Hans, she quickly grabbed Mrs. Rockefeller’s guidebook to Liverpool and hid her face behind it. However, if you looked closely, you would see that the book was upside down. Great job, Sherlock.
“How far along is she?” I began, clearly trying to change the subject.
“Oh, let’s see.” Hans fished his phone out of his pocket and the screen lit up.
For a moment, Mom looked up from behind the upside down guidebook and looked straight at me. “Did you tell him?” I’m pretty sure she mouthed.
“No,” I mouthed back, looking sideways at Hans, still occupied with his phone.
“Why not?” She nodded down at the yellow submarine as if to say, ‘You’re doing this for Alfred, too.’”
I nodded. She was right, of course. But she hadn’t been introduced to his wife just a few minutes ago. She hadn’t seen the little bump that made all the difference in the world.
“Almost five months. It’s a girl. We are going to name her after my grandmother, Regitze. It was Gerda’s suggestion. You know how women are with names.”
“I do.” I had to swallow hard. Hans was one of the reasons I had finally picked out the name Alfred. Initially, I had wanted to name him Thomas after Grandpa, but after meeting Thomas—in real flesh and blood—I just knew there was no way I could do that. So, I went with Alfred. I wanted him to have, at least, some connection to his dad and when I stumbled over an article about this famous German architect, Alfred and a last name I couldn’t pronounce, I decided that was it. He was an Alfred Jensen—half German architect, half Jensen.
“Oh, Ella, I’m so sorry,” Hans suddenly exclaimed, reaching for my hand. “I’m so sorry about all of this. Right now, it all seems so absurd. You and me here, next to Eleanor Rigby, my wife, a baby, my old deaf grandmother. I mean, could it get any more Jerry Springer?” He smiled. If he only knew.
I looked down at our hands and offered him a small smile. “We tried humor once. It didn’t work, remember?” I managed to say.
“I surely do.” His smile faded as he continued, “I really, really liked you Ella. Like really really really. I had never been in love before I met you and then, boom, I had to go, and you were gone. When I got back home … I cannot tell you how many times I kicked my butt for agreeing not to call you.” He let go of my hand and leaned against the bench. “Actually, I did write down your number from Miss Niki’s phone.”
“Miss Niki’s phone?”
“The cell phone I had borrowed from Alex, my roomie.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh. I wrote it down on the back of one of my text books but, somehow, it never made it all the way to Berlin. I lost a lot of stuff, mostly books and essays but, most sadly, I lost you.”
For a long moment, we just sat there, our eyes settling on the busy street as painful silence stretched between us.
“I really, really, really liked you, too,” I finally told him, suddenly realizing how true it was. I did really like him. I had even fallen in love with him back then even though we only got to spent one single night together. It had just felt so right, and everything I had ever read about falling in love and all the signs of falling in love—sweaty hands, dry mouth, heavy breathing—were all there. It had felt both wonderful and weird. Sitting right next to him now, some of those feelings were slowly surfacing. This was the man who had made me fall in love for the very first time in my life. He had not only turned me into a woman; he had turned me into a mom. And it made us emotionally connected in a way I hadn’t felt until sitting here next to him, Alfred’s dad.
“I had so much to tell you. So much happened since I got back,” he continued, looking up and down the street. “You remember my dream—my dream of becoming an artist and not spend the rest of my life creating office spaces?”
I nodded. I remembered. It was one of the things I had really liked about him. He didn’t try to play it cool. He was not afraid to show his insecurities. Maybe it was because he was the youngest of four kids, all girls. That night in his apartment, we had talked about anything and nothing—our dreams, hopes, fears. When he asked me what I wanted out of life, I told him that all I really wanted was a decent job and four kids—one for each season, as Mom had always wanted.
He had smiled. “Not now, I hope,” he said, laughing.
“God no,” I had said, laughing too. Of course, at the time I didn’t know that sometimes dreams come true on a different time schedule than expected.
“
Well, I got back and guess what?” he asked, looking at me now. “I got accepted into art school, the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg. No more architect school for me. I started art school after the summer holiday, right when I got back.”
“That makes so much sense,” I blurted out, not planning to.
“What makes sense?” He looked at me, his eyebrows knitted together.
“Um, it just makes sense that-that it happened,”
I began, not really making much sense at all. I could’ve just said, “Well, it makes perfect sense now that we weren’t able to track you down in Berlin. We’ve been searching in all the wrong places,” but I didn’t. It would imply too much. I had already said too much when I told him I had come to Berlin, “hoping to run into you.” Thankfully, he had heard it as something else, probably thinking that this was just another polite thing an American person would say (I still remembered how he had joked about how overly polite American people are compared to Germans, with their, “ma’am,” “sir,” and “How are you?”).
“I guess.” Hans raked his hand over his stubbled face and shrugged. “But it all seems like a lifetime ago now. Fast forward and I’m a married man with a baby on the way.” He clicked his tongue and smiled. “A baby, can you imagine?” He whispered in a way that said he still couldn’t believe it himself.
“A baby,” I echoed, a pit opening in my stomach. Yes, I could imagine it, but not in the way he was suggesting.
“Well, we keep talking about me. How about you?”
“Well, I’m not a married man.” I offered a nervous laugh.
“Ha ha ha, always so funny, yeah.” He punched me lightly on the shoulder. “No, I mean, did you finish your, um, program?”
“Yup, I’m an online college student now. I want to be a teacher. Someone really special to me helped me realize that that is what I really want to do. But no, I’m not married and no, no more babies on the way.” Oh no, no, no. Fuck, did I just say that?
“No more?” He grinned. “So, you had a few already? What was it—one for each season?”
I sat back—my mind absolute blank—as I considered what to say. One thing was lying about, well, everything. Another was lying about Alfred when being asked directly. That would almost be saying that he didn’t exist. And on top of that, he was his son.
As I slowly looked up at Hans, I felt the tears pushing at my eyes. I had to tell him now. I had to. I cleared my throat and took a deep breath.
“Hans,” I began, my heart pounding in my ears again. “You re—”
“—Hey, is that your Mom?” Hans leaned forward and shielded his eyes with his hand.
My-my-my Mom?” I swallowed hard and looked across the street but she a.k.a Sherlock Holmes and the yellow submarine were gone. “My mom?” I asked again, confused.
“Yes, up there.” He gestured toward the opposite end of the street and there she was—chasing after Alfred and the yellow submarine. Alfred had a big grin on his face as he steered the stroller and a waving Ava in and out of the crowd.
“Looks like she’s got her hands full.” Hans looked at me and smiled. “Who are the cute little twins?”
“The-the-the girl’s name is Ava,” I began, my voice sounding muffled and strained. “And, um, his name is, um, Alfred.” Once again, I had to swallow hard. Fuck! Breathe, Ella.
“And what a cool stroller. The yellow submarine, huh! I’ve never seen a stroller like that, and believe me, I’ve looked at strollers a lot lately.” He chuckled. “This is so cool.”
We both watched the stroller as it bumped into another less fancy stroller and Mom finally got a hold on Alfred. She squatted down, and I could hear her asking Alfred to go sit in the stroller again, but he looked like he was not agreeing. “Please come sit with Ava,” I could hear her ask again, nice but firm, but as she was facing Alfred, Ava jumped out of the stroller and soon the two naughty toddlers took off together, hand in hand. For a moment, Mom looked over in my direction and our eyes locked. “I’m so sorry,” I think she mouthed to me before she started chasing after them.
“Oh boy, what a circus.” Hans was laughing out loud now. “We should go help her.” He made a move to get up, but I reached up and pulled him down again.
“She’s got it. She’s pretty good at multi-tasking. That’s what Moms do.”
“Moms?” Hans was staring at me now. “Are they… Is she the…”
“Mommy!” Alfred’s clear little voice cut through the air like machine gun fire, and I looked up. Alfred was standing right across the street waving enthusiastically, looking so much like Hans that it even Hans’s almost blind grandmother would be able to see it. “See, I’m looking left and right before I cross, like you told me to,” he yelled all proud, but all I could muster was a small nod. Nervously, I looked up at Hans. He was staring at Alfred now. What I hadn’t been able to tell him, Alfred had just told him in one word … Mommy.
We both watched Alfred cross the street in silence. When Alfred was only a few feet away, Hans turned and faced me.
“How old is, um, Alfred?” he asked but it wasn’t really a question. He was asking for confirmation and I gave it to him with a tiny nod.
“Why-why didn’t you tell me?” His voice was thick and laced with emotion.
“How? I didn’t have your number. I only had your first name. Not much to go on and I—” I paused. Alfred was standing right in front of us. He looked so cute with his hair all tussled and smeared chocolate on both his cheeks.
“You had chocolate?” I asked him, trying to sound like his normal mommy.
“No,” he lied, his eyes on Eleanor Rigby. “Who’s she again? Is she that girl Penny Lane you all talked about?” He jumped up on the bench and squeezed himself in-between me and Hans, his mom and dad.
“Close enough. Her name is Eleanor Rigby, remember?”
“Oh yeah.” His eyes darted to Hans. “And who is he, Mom?” he whispered in the loud way kids whisper.
“I-i-it’s my friend, Hans.” I bent down and kissed him on top of his head, taking in a deep breath as I did so. “Now, be polite and say hi?”
A bit hesitantly, Alfred waved his little sticky hand at Hans. “Hi, sir.”
“Hi, um Alfred.” I watched a handful of emotions pass over Hans’s face before he continued, “I like your cool submarine stroller, dude.” His voice was shaky.
“It’s not really mine. It’s from the hotel.”
“I see. Would that be the Beatles hotel?”
Alfred looked up at me for help. “Is it, Mommy?”
By the mentioning of the word mommy again, I could tell how Hans’s spine stiffened. Poor guy.
“Yes, it is,” I confirmed with a smile.
“Will you be staying long?” Hans looked at me.
“Not really. We-we actually only came to see you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me then?” He ran a frustrated hand over his face.
“Hold on.” I grabbed my phone from my back pocket and offered it to Alfred. “Here, you can play your puzzle game for a little bit, okay?”
“I can? But you said only on the plane and on Sundays … Oh, what day is it today?” He scratched his head in a way that, for a moment, made him look a lot more like Dad than his actual dad, Hans, sitting right here.
“It’s okay. I made the rules,” I reminded him. “I can break the rules.”
He looked up at me, squinting. “Like when you say that you can swear if you get hurt without coins to the swearing pig?”
“Yes, like with the swearing pig.” Of course, I couldn’t help smiling despite all the craziness going on the bench, of all the benches in the world. “Now play, sweet pea.”
“Oki.” He scooted all the way back and swiped the screen and typed my password like he was a thirteen-year-old and not a three-year-old toddler.
I moved to the edge of the bench and looked at Hans, who was looking at Alfred as if examining him, a softness in his face. “It was my plan to tell you. I mean, we didn’t fly here
just to sit on this bench. But then… I didn’t tell you because as soon as I found out that you’re a married man with a pregnant wife, I figured it wasn’t exactly the best time to tell you.”
He looked up and closed his eyes, nodding. When he finally spoke, the irritation in his voice was not wasted on me. “Would you ever have, if he hadn’t crossed the street right now, calling you mo-mo.” He stopped, the word mommy clearly a hard one to get over his lips. I couldn’t blame him. I’d had a hard time thinking it let alone saying it out loud myself only a few years earlier. But that was before the nurse had placed Alfred in my arms for the very first time. Since then it had become my favorite noun in the entire world of words.
I looked down at the pavement and shrugged. “I’m not sure. I mean, it’s not really fair to finally tell you now, with all this happening in your life. I never meant to put this on you. We, I mean I, took the decision alone and knew I had to deal with this alone and I’ve done a pretty good job so far, if I say so.”
We both looked at Alfred, sticking his tongue out, concentrating on the puzzle.
“When you say we, what does that mean? Do you have a, um, is there another dad?”
“Well, I never actually moved out.” I feigned shock which made Alfred look up from his game momentarily. “No, seriously, I am still living at home so we’re kinda raising the kids together—me, Mom, Dad—one big weird but happy family.”
“I can imagine. I really liked your mom and dad. Speaking of … I guess you can tell your mom she can come over and say hi now.” He gestured toward the opposite side of the street and smiled.
Mom had returned to the same spot, but this time she wasn’t hidden behind Mrs. Rockefeller’s guidebook. She was playing with Ava on her lap. I guess all cards were on the table.
“Let’s wave.” I looked up at Hans and smiled.
“On three,” he instructed.
I nodded, and he counted to three and we waved together, which made us both laugh. Oh, it felt so good to laugh together.
“She’s coming over.” I gave him a sideways glance. “You asked for it,” I whispered when she was close enough to hear us.
Lost in Love (The Miss Apple Pants series Book 2) Page 22
