Just Call Me Superhero

by Alina Bronsky

  I took a similarly dim view of grief puppets and of painting nightmare images and of group arts and crafts projects. I was very conservative about such things. And I’d promised Ferdi a puppy even though I hated dogs.

  I drank my espresso, which was passable, and thought again about Janne. The feeling of having forgotten her was baffling. Now she was here again, all I had to do was close my eyes in order to see her on the inside of my eyelids in her long dress, with a look on her face that said she’d like to bite my ear, too, and giving off a subtle smell of lime that was so fresh and so good and so bad at the same time that it suited her.

  I knocked back the espresso, spat some coffee grounds that had strayed into my mouth into the sink, and went upstairs on tiptoes. Suddenly I just knew she had sent me a text message, maybe right at that moment, maybe during the night. Maybe she’d sat up the entire night, unable to sleep because she was so worried about me, waiting for an answer. I felt guilty and swore to myself never to let either Janne or my phone out of my sight again.

  I couldn’t find it at first, kept looking in various bags, under pillows and under the bed, until it fell out of a sock. I turned it on and waited for the list of missed calls and unread messages to appear, I waited for several minutes, it took a while to connect to the network. At some point it became clear that it wasn’t necessary to wait any longer, because nobody had called and nobody had sent a message.

  Marek, my bunny?” called Tamara as I went back downstairs with heavy steps to further my knowledge of the coffee machine. I wanted to drink three, maybe five cups, until my heart burst out of my ribs, nothing mattered to me now. I wanted to forget that I was the man of the house. I no longer consented to it. I hadn’t seen Ferdi for the first six years of his life, and there was no fundamental reason I had to see him now. I didn’t feel like answering Tamara, but she called out to me again.

  “Has Claudia already left?” she asked as I entered her bedroom through the open door. She had sounded as if she was still half asleep, and that’s just how it was. The bed was huge and the sheets striped; above the bed was a mirror and on the opposite wall a so-called erotic calendar. In another situation I might have risked a second glance at it. Next to Tamara was something big and poofy. It turned out to be a mangy man-sized teddy bear.

  “Your best friend?” I asked, leaning against the doorframe, looking at Tamara and choking back a sort of hoarseness in my throat. I couldn’t block out of my mind the question of whether she was naked under the covers. Both arms and both legs peeked out, a pile of clothes sat on the floor, the wardrobe door was open, and a Hello Kitty tank top dangled from a hanger hooked to the lamp.

  “I can’t fall asleep otherwise,” said Tamara dully. “Without him, you understand.”

  “I understand.” I couldn’t take my eyes off her, the way she was stretched out and lounging, tussled hair in her face. She didn’t look like a widow.

  She stretched out her arm. Maybe just for the hell of it, but maybe to motion me closer. I went closer and sat down on the edge of the bed. Now I could smell her, a little sweat and perfume and a lot of woman, and for a second I felt dizzy. Maybe that’s why I fell back onto the bed.

  She’d thrown her arms around me and pulled me tightly to her. I gasped for air, a sound escaped from me that startled even me. Tamara let go of me suddenly. I protested against the acute sense of loneliness that arose as a result. Her bare feet tromped past me and into the bathroom, the water ran, I heard her gargle and spit, something hissed, and when she came back she didn’t smell like a woman anymore but like a drugstore. No idea who kissed who first, but our mouths locked onto each other so fiercely, as if we could do something about each other’s pain. I heard the teddy bear snarl and thought for a second it might be a real animal. I only became aware of myself again when Tamara held my mouth shut.

  “Not so loud. The kid.”

  I lay next to her on my back and gasped for air, pressing the flat of my hand against my throat because I suddenly could no longer breathe. I tried to sit up, panicking. Tamara helped me to sit up and braced me from behind.

  “Just keep breathing,” she said, and it sounded a lot less friendly than anything else I’d heard from her in the last few days. “You’re not dying, you’re just . . . ”

  “Be quiet,” I interrupted with my first lungful of air. The last thing I had in mind was discussing it with her. I lay back down and closed my eyes. Tamara smelled different again now, simultaneously like woman and man. She smelled of me.

  Since I didn’t know whether I should thank her or apologize, I just lay there. I stayed until I heard her get up and go into the bathroom. When I heard the water running I felt like getting up and running, too.

  When I woke up the house was as silent as during the night. The clock radio next to the bed said it was four in the afternoon. I jumped out of bed, looked down at myself, and remembered everything. I grabbed a puke-yellow towel from the doorknob and wrapped it around myself. Then I called for Tamara and Ferdi but nobody answered.

  I went down the stairs and slumped onto the couch in the living room. I’d really outdone myself: Claudia had barely left and I’d already molested my father’s widow and slept away the rest of the day. If something awful happened to them now, like if they were run over by a truck because Tamara was even more distracted than before as a result of our adventure, then it would all be my fault. I may have been deformed, but for the first time I suddenly thought that perhaps I wasn’t deformed enough. For the pile of shit that I felt like, I was still inordinately handsome. I turned around and punched the wall behind the couch. The lacerations on the skin of my knuckles provided a little relief.

  My empty stomach grumbled, and as I headed for the refrigerator the phone rang.

  It wasn’t my cell but rather the landline, and I hoarsely stated my last name without thinking.

  “Same name at this end,” Tamara’s voice answered angrily. “Have a nice sleep? How’d you do in German composition at school. Good? How good is good? Okay, then come help me.”

  “In a taxi?” I pulled the towel up helplessly, as if somebody was watching me.

  “On a bike,” said Tamara. “And bring a banana for Ferdi.”

  I dressed as quickly as a fireman, pulling the clean clothes over my unwashed body, repeating over and over the address Tamara had given me since I couldn’t find a pen and had to just remember. “Next to the town hall, everyone knows it,” she’d mumbled when I asked how to get there.

  Three of the bikes in the garage had flats. Only the last one, a rusty old girl’s bike, seemed to have any air in its tires. I hopped on and stepped into the pedals. I could pretty much picture where the town hall was. I would just have to ask if I had any trouble, and I sure was looking forward to that eventuality.

  I passed a grocery store along the way and went in quickly and bought a kilo of bananas that I then had to balance with one hand as I rode. Fortunately it was really as simple to get there as Tamara had said. The same moment I saw the town hall I also saw the name of the local paper on a building a few doors down. I parked the rusty monster at the bike stand and, armed with the bananas, ran inside. Based on the sound of Tamara’s voice, it was something of an emergency.

  She was sitting with two men at a round worn table and fighting with them about some pieces of paper over which they were all bent. Behind them stretched a large room full of people all talking on the phone. As I got closer I could see that lying in front of Tamara there were lots of designs in square black frames. Inside the thick frames were images of cut roses, lit candles, broken hearts, intertwined crosses, piles of stones. Photos of forests and lakes. And on each of these printouts I saw my last name, and then my eye fell on the first name of my father.

  “What do you think, Marek, a photo?” asked Tamara as if we were continuing a previous conversation.

  “Where’s Ferdi?” I asked because I was tired of hold
ing the bananas.

  Tamara pointed behind her. He was on the floor, also bent over a piece of paper. He was drawing. Great, I thought, almost like at a grief support group.

  “A photo?” she repeated impatiently.

  “For god’s sake, Tamara.”

  “What? There are so many images in the catalogue. I can’t decide.”

  “I’d do it with no image.”

  “It doesn’t cost any more to have one, Marek.”

  The two men in suits, one with glasses, one without, kept glancing back and forth between her and me.

  “You could also use a photo of him, from when he was younger . . . ”

  “Tamara!”

  “A cross is always good, but then again he wasn’t religious . . . ”

  “I’m begging you!”

  “A rose is really something more for a woman, don’t you think? And candles are for old people?”

  Come back, Claudia, I thought. Stop all the photos, crosses, and candles. Come up with some words for a death notice that nobody will have to be embarrassed about. Please!

  But she was off in a hearse bringing home the body of her dead ex-husband. She couldn’t help with the decision as to whether boughs of oak or maple would better suit my father. I had to get through it alone.

  “Tamara,” I said. “You’re a great woman. Can I ask you something?”

  She looked at me skeptically. The two men exchanged looks.

  “Could you please take a walk? I’ll take care of this.”

  She looked into my eyes. I didn’t look away. “Please,” I said.

  She made a “pfff” sound and then rushed out of the room like somebody was chasing her. On the faces of the two men you could see the realization that with all the trouble caused by death, the business it brought was sometimes just not worth it.

  “Just a second, please,” I said.

  I went over to Ferdi and handed him a banana. He took it without looking up and started to peel it. He held his pen in his teeth and then spat it out to take a bite. He had a lot of hidden talents, one of which was being able to eat a banana at warp speed. At least he was getting some vitamins and magnesium, I thought. Mourning over cream of wheat alone wasn’t enough.

  I was a little reluctant to give him the third one.

  “First you have to help me, Ferdi,” I said. “I can see that you draw really well. Can you make a picture of your papa? And my papa. Then you can have all of the bananas that are left.”

  For dinner, Tamara had bought sausages and was roasting potatoes. She had me cut cucumber for the salad. I cut the slices too thick for her liking. So I had to try to saw my way through the slices to make thinner slices. She wore an apron and acted very businesslike. Ferdi sat on a child’s seat with his head resting on his arm.

  “Ne spi, Ferdi, chas budem kushat,” said Tamara to Ferdi.

  He didn’t react.

  “Maybe he doesn’t speak Ukrainian,” I said.

  “I can’t really speak it right either,” said Tamara.

  “Why do you speak it then?”

  “It’s Russian, genius. There are a lot of Russians in the Ukraine. The child should learn my native language.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.” She put down the wooden spoon she’d been using to turn the pieces of potato and sat down on a stool. “I can’t take it anymore,” she said, and big teardrops started rolling down her cheeks.

  I looked at her. This wet face, the tears hanging from her eyelashes. She was a little girl, no matter how old she really was. Some women stayed little girls their entire lives, others were born old. She was younger than me, even younger than Janne. And my father had left her all alone in the dark forest.

  “I can’t take it anymore,” she said again. “I want him to come back.”

  “I’d get him back for you if I could.”

  “Oh no.” She covered her face with her hands. “I’m such an idiot. I keep thinking that Claudia will come home and say they messed up in Switzerland, that it was someone else, and maybe it wasn’t so bad for this other guy, maybe at least he didn’t have such a young child . . . ”

  “ . . . or such a sweet wife,” I said awkwardly. I wiped the cucumber slices from the knife blade into the salad bowl, dried my fingers on my T-shirt, and put my hand on Tamara’s trembling shoulder.

  “Just tell me what I can do for you, I’ll do anything I can.”

  “You’re so nice.” She sniffled and ran the back of her hand across her smudged face. “You’re nice just like him. Can you carry Ferdi upstairs?”

  Ferdi was heavy and smelled like bananas and milk. He hung in my arms like a sack, with his mouth open and his head lolling back. My heart raced. I was terribly afraid of dropping him. I wondered whether children were more unwieldy when they were asleep. I didn’t know how I could get him up the stairs without stumbling and falling.

  “Should I take him?” asked Tamara.

  “No,” I said, pressing the word out between my teeth. “Just turn the lights on in the staircase.”

  Step by step I climbed, with Ferdi’s breath on my neck, the smell of his moist sweaty hair in my nose, a scent that reminded me of rye bread, the moist skin under his T-shirt that made me afraid he might slip out of my hands. I thought of my father: I’d never been hiking in the mountains. Maybe this was what it was like to scale the top of a mountain, and when you fell it was all over.

  We made it, and Tamara had opened Ferdi’s door for me and switched on the night-light that bathed the room in red light.

  She pulled back the covers and I laid Ferdi on the bed and kneeled down next to him. I had probably taken fifteen minutes to get up the stairs. Tamara pulled off Ferdi’s pants until he was lying there with long skinny bare legs and his dinosaur underpants, then she unrolled his slipper-socks from his feet and he murmured something and opened his eyes. He looked right at me and I wished he hadn’t because I figured the boy would get the shock of his life and would still be sleeping with a night-light at forty; he would never be able to take his kids to a haunted house, and . . . but it was too late for me to step away into the darkness. I wasn’t even standing, I was kneeling.

  Ferdi looked at me with his eyes wide open and smiled.

  He wasn’t really awake,” said Tamara. “He often talks in his sleep and even walks around sometimes, he’s, what’s the word, moonstruck.”

  It occurred to me that I used to do the same. “I used to sleepwalk when I was little, too,” I said. “Claudia used to lock the front door and hide the knives and scissors from me.”

  Tamara looked sideways at me with concern on her face.

  We’d gone back down to the kitchen, finished making the food, and sat down opposite each other. The silence was palpable. I tried to avoid glancing at her so as not to have to think about what had happened that morning. Now, with Ferdi not there with us, the image kept reappearing in my smoldering brain.

  Tamara got up for the fifth time to get something else out of the cabinet. This time it was a bottle of vodka and two glasses which she put down between us on the table.

  “We haven’t raised a glass to him,” she said.

  “Hmm?” I turned the bottle toward myself and studied the label as if I might recognize something from it.

  “Are you even allowed?” she asked worriedly. “You’re already sixteen, right?”

  “If I’m allowed to fuck you, I’m allowed to drink vodka with you,” I said, and she put her hand over my mouth.

  “I never want to hear that again.”

  She poured vodka, a small glass for herself and a tiny bit for me, and then stood up. I followed her lead. She lifted her glass and closed her eyes. Her lips moved, then she put the glass to her mouth. I sipped at mine as she opened her eyes and put her glass back down.

  “Claudia,” she said.

 
; I heard it now, too. The engine, which got louder as it pulled away, the footsteps on the front steps, the key turning in the lock. Claudia stood in the doorway and waved. At first I thought she was hurt but then I realized she was just horribly tired. I went over to her in order to brace her, but she pulled her arm away from me.

  “And?” Tamara turned up next to her on the other side. “It’s not him, right?”

  “Yes it is,” said Claudia with her eyes closed.

  It was an endless night. Claudia sat at the kitchen table, and a long snaking line of coffee cups began to form in front of her. She took a sip and put the cup aside; after a few minutes it was cold so I made her a new cup. I was afraid she might fall off her chair. I kept thinking I was looking at a strange woman in a Claudia costume sitting there, and I wanted to shake her and scream at her to give me back my mother.

  She didn’t tell us anything. Tamara sat opposite Claudia, fiddled with the handles of the coffee cups, and asked questions that turned my stomach. I didn’t want to think about how they must have made Claudia feel. She wanted to know what he looked like, whether he looked peaceful, whether he was naked, whether he had a tag on his big toe the way they do on TV, and whether his injuries were visible. Claudia just kept shaking her head like she was trying to fend off a fly, but Tamara wouldn’t stop until I finally hit the table with my fist and yelled, “SHUT UP!”

  Tamara blinked at me with shock out of her tear-filled eyes and Claudia put her hand on my forearm, but she was so weak her hand slumped back to the table. “Don’t yell at her.”