We walked to the cemetery. It was nine in the morning and the church bells were ringing. The morning was autumnally cold and our feet waded through fog. Ferdi walked between Tammy and Evgenija. He kept lifting his legs and hanging from their hands. I watched them from behind, how heavy he was, how the arms of the two women tensed and their backs stiffened in order to keep him in the air. But they didn’t say anything to him or to each other. Everyone looked straight ahead.
I’d been startled when I looked into Tammy’s face early that morning. I was one of the first awake because it drove me crazy lying in bed next to a panting man. Claudia, who’d made coffee in industrial volume, sent me back upstairs to wake Tammy. I hadn’t even knocked on Tammy’s door before she suddenly opened it. I looked at the woman standing in the room, in a black dress and black tights, on skyscraper heels, who seemed to show no age at all but did have a certain facial expression. I wanted to have one just like it: serious and solemn and all-knowing. I felt like a kitchen knave who had just disturbed the queen. The wires crossed in my head and I choked back a “congratulations” before it very nearly escaped my lips. Then, just to be sure, I put my hand over my mouth.
She arched her eyebrows royally. A tiny hint of a smile hid on the right side of her mouth and I would really have liked to kiss it.
“Breakfast,” I said hoarsely. “May I?” I offered an elbow and we went down the stairs side by side, and suddenly I thought: My father is a lucky son of a bitch. Living or dead—what difference did that make.
I looked at Tammy’s straight back and the steady steps she took with her never-ending legs. I pushed Janne’s wheelchair and knew she was looking at Tammy’s legs, too. Her perspective allowed her to really scrutinize legs. Janne’s black Snow White hair was up, held together by a hairclip made of dark horn with matte cut stones. I had no doubt that she hated Tammy. And I admired her for not showing it. The view of Janne’s delicate, white, frail neck was unobstructed, and suddenly, for the first time in my life, I thought that people were more than their shells.
The thought was so striking that I turned to Friedrich, who was bringing up the rear. I’d already forgotten how his voice sounded. As soon as he arrived he’d gone up and built castles with Ferdi. I had hardly even noticed that he was there. I looked at him intently and realized that something about him had changed. I’d never experienced him silent. And he’d never worn a black leather jacket before. Had he gone shopping before the funeral? Or had he had that hidden in his suitcase the whole time?
He noticed that I was staring at him, and returned my gaze, serious and calm. I nodded to him—I hadn’t really greeted him since his arrival—and kept walking.
“You see, good thing,” said Claudia when we reached the cemetery walls.
“What’s a good thing?”
“That we came on foot.” She pointed at the cars lined up along the street. Countless limousines crawled down the street one after the next, and the long herky-jerky column went on and on without end. Our troop had already wound its way onto the pedestrian pathway to make way for the cars, only Janne and I were still blocking traffic.
“Excuse me,” I said and shoved her onto the sidewalk as well.
She briefly rubbed her cheek against my hand on the grip.
The parking lot in front of the chapel had long since filled up and cars were parked two deep along the street. People were walking from every direction toward the entrance, in black dresses and long coats, and with their heads hanging. Some carried small bunches of flowers, others were lugging giant arrangements. I realized with a scalding hot flash that I didn’t have a single flower with me. I wanted to ask Claudia why we were all assembled here—for a moment I actually forgot—and to remind her that we’d shown up empty-handed, all of us. But she had already reached the entrance to the chapel with Tammy and I could no longer make her out in the crowd of black dresses.
Obviously I’d been wrong. Obviously flowers had been prepared. On our chairs in the front row were little arrangements, three white roses bound together with a black ribbon, all the way across the entire row. In order to sit down you had to first pick up the flowers. One of my roses still had a thorn and I immediately cut myself on it. I stuck my finger in my mouth and licked the drops of blood as I heard Lucy’s warnings echo in my ear about how all roses these days were treated with highly toxic pesticides. Lucy was interested in that sort of thing, genetically modified food and animal testing and poor farmers in South America. I had always pretended that I too was interested in that stuff. In reality I’d only been interested in myself, even back then. My vision started to blur so I shut my eyes and concentrated on the salty taste in my mouth.
The party was in full swing. Not quite as many people had come as had been expected, it had been the invitation to the home, people inclined to maintain a comfortable distance were put off by the intimacy, that’s what Evgenija yelled disappointedly in my ear in the kitchen. But actually it was good because nearly everyone had a place to sit.
“Awesome!!!” I shouted back in her ear. I’d thrown my arm around her neck and pulled her tightly to me because there was an incredible din that was either in the house or maybe just in my head. The little pearl earrings in her earlobes brushed the tip of my nose; I nearly bit them but I just missed them. Evgenija laughed and removed my arm. I choked on the cloud of perfume she left behind. I didn’t know exactly how many of the tiny glasses I’d downed, two or five, I’d done it just like Tammy had taught me: don’t think, don’t clink glasses, down the hatch, and a little something afterwards. My throat was burning. I hadn’t felt so light for a long time.
Evgenija had tied a red apron over her black outfit. Claudia’s striped skirt was barely a centimeter longer. It took effort to distinguish them from each other through the haze of cigarette smoke. They stood at the stove, stirred the pots, pulled baking sheets out of the oven, and ordered Tammy around. Tammy didn’t listen to them. She moved through the babble of conversation like a fish in an aquarium, a smile on her face that made me worry. She kept stopping and sitting down next to one of the handpicked guests. Maybe she was confusing a funeral for a champagne reception.
Some of the men she talked with seemed familiar, one I recognized as the mayor who had held the office since I was a child, another I’d seen in a TV interview, he’d defended a twisted murderer. They kissed Tammy’s hands, put their knotty old man hands on the back of her head, held her girlish forehead against their black-clad shoulders, paused for a while, let her go again, and looked with mournful eyes down at her cleavage. A few of them blew their noses loudly into bath-towel-size monogrammed handkerchiefs. Why were they all bawling, I wondered. Until I remembered again.
It was difficult to move through the room. There were tables and chairs and benches all over the place, same thing outside in the garden, but I couldn’t stay in one place, I just followed Tammy around. I was afraid that something awful might happen, and wanted to try to head anything off before it went too far. I tripped over handbags and outstretched legs, once I fell into Kevin’s lap and he hugged me and wiped my cheeks with the back of his hand.
“What an amazing foster dad you had!” he said, and his smeared eyelashes hung heavy with mascara teardrops.
“Excuse me?” I made a halfhearted effort to straighten myself back up, but my legs didn’t want to hold me. “What are you talking about?”
“He must have been unbelievable.”
“You’re drunk. You didn’t even know him.”
“If he wasn’t so amazing then all these people wouldn’t have come.”
“He was a lawyer, Kevin. These are clients and colleagues. They know how to be respectful.”
“No.” He shook his head and strange particles of ash scattered onto my black jacket from his hair.
I finally managed to stand up, leaving my hand on his shoulder.
“I’m really touched that you all came,” I slurred
. “Really.”
“I know,” Kevin answered with glazed eyes. “We’d never leave you in the lurch.”
That scared me so much that I excused myself and moved on, following Tammy. I had to pass Janne and practically climbed over her wheelchair—she was deep in conversation with the mayor, who looked up at me and with a furrowed brow squinted at my face as if he was asking himself whether he was dreaming.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” I said, leaning down to Janne and planting a kiss on her lips. The expected slap didn’t materialize, she was probably too surprised. I let Janne go and righted myself again so I could focus on her face better.
“She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” I explained to the mayor.
He smiled politely. Janne took my hand and squeezed it. I was a half-orphan now and she was a good friend, there was nothing illicit in the gesture and the mayor looked on benevolently.
“Do you think a girl like this could love a monster like me?” I asked a touch too loudly.
He smiled even more politely. Janne let go of my hand and pushed me away with both arms, though it didn’t come across as angry, more like playfully intimate. I kissed her head, found my balance with effort, and headed off.
I found Richard and Friedrich in the garden. Claudia had lit the torches and put a huge ashtray out. I joined them, took a cigarette out of Richard’s chest pocket, and peered into Friedrich’s face.
“How are you?” he asked. It wasn’t so much that I heard it as I read it on his lips.
“Very well. I have to ask you guys something.” I put my arm around Friedrich’s shoulders and pulled him near. This was no longer one of my moves; before, more than a year ago, I used to do it regularly, with boys and girls, and they always liked it when I grabbed them, my touch was quick and coveted. Friedrich didn’t want to be pulled closer now. He stood steadily on his legs and his lips pursed. Then he twisted his arms so he could give me a friendly pat on the shoulder and free himself from my embrace.
“What did you guys do with him?” I asked Richard and pointed to Friedrich. “You can’t even recognize him. He was a fat chatterbox and now, just a few days later . . . Friedrich, has your hair gotten gray?”
He smiled. “It’s just the light. The guru revealed something to us,” he said.
“Do tell.”
He hesitated.
“Is it about you?”
“About you, too.”
“Oh.” For a moment I was almost sober again. Suddenly I wanted to call Claudia and ask her to put me to bed. Instead I said as calmly as possible, “So? Can you summarize it for me?”
“We’re not the people we always thought we were.”
I looked back and forth between him and Richard. They continued to look at me impassively.
“And that’s why you are different now than before,” I managed to grind out.
“I always was,” said Friedrich. “I just didn’t know it.”
“And what’s the story with me? Can you tell me?”
And then he told me.
I reached behind me for a wall to brace my suddenly wobbly spine against. Unfortunately I didn’t find one.
“Thanks for the talk,” I said and staggered away.
I puttered around the garden for a long time. It got cooler and the guests retreated to the house, jamming the place up to the last hallway until there was no place else left to stand. I could see them through the fogged up window. The black clothes melted into a single mass, the faces slowly lost their mournfulness. Here and there I could make out familiar facial features. At one stage I jumped because I thought I saw Lucy. The sound of the voices condensed into a single ill-defined cloud that sent out occasional thunderclaps of laughter. Suddenly I heard guitar chords accompanied by other tones that I couldn’t immediately place. I pressed my nose to the glass and saw an accordion.
Evgenija was sitting on the table; the musical instrument that I had at first taken for some kind of animal whined ruefully in her lap. Her left foot hung in the air; the high-heeled shoe had slipped down. A massive knee in black pants, whose owner I couldn’t make out, pushed under Evgenija’s toes to brace them as they felt around in the air.
She couldn’t start singing along now too, I thought, but right at that moment she showed that indeed she could. I couldn’t see who was playing guitar. I just hoped it wasn’t Claudia.
I stepped back from the window. If someone inside saw me like that, his or her hair would immediately turn white. I needed to show some regard for the guests. A maniacal grin wafted across my face. I went farther into the garden, cut my shoe on a piece of broken glass in the grass, and then I saw that someone was standing next to me.
“Tammy,” I said. “You’re dressed too lightly again.”
At the funeral she’d worn a jacket over her short black dress even though it was fairly warm. Now she no longer had the jacket on, and didn’t have shoes on her feet. Maybe it was a Ukrainian custom to go barefoot at some stage during a funeral.
She took a step toward me and I searched for her face, first with my fingers and then with my lips. Her skin tasted bitter then sweet then both at the same time. I pulled away from her because my stomach started to growl.
“Can’t you wash that off?”
“You’re drunk,” she said.
“Never,” I said. I pulled a crumpled tissue out of my pocket, spat on it, and tried to wipe Tammy’s mouth with it. She pushed my hand aside.
I held her so she didn’t run away from me and get lost in her own garden. She nuzzled up to me. Maybe she was just cold.
“It’s a killer funeral,” I said. “You guys really did a great job putting it together. The food, incredible.”
“Did you try it?”
“No,” I said. “But I really need to tell you that you picked super music for the ceremony. I nearly cried.”
“That was Claudia’s music,” said Tammy into my shirt. “I can burn you a CD.”
“No, thanks,” I said quickly. “I don’t listen to music.”
I stroked her hair. My finger got caught in a curl, my finger-tips were raw and cracked like those of a laborer. I stroked her head with the flat of my hand, the way you pat a child or a dog. Then I kissed her head and her temples, which smelled like smoke and her unbearable perfume. She wrapped both arms around me and we stood there like that, as if nothing on earth could part us.
“Tammy,” I said. “I have to confess something to you.”
She lifted her face inquisitively.
“You see that girl in there?”
“The snow queen in the wheelchair?”
“Exactly.”
“What about her?”
“I love her,” I said.
Tammy nodded. I’d been a little worried that it would hurt her feelings that I was kissing her here in the garden and confessing my love of another woman at the same time. If I’d been just a touch more sober I would have kept my mouth shut.
“You all have a crush on that girl.” Tammy sounded totally indifferent. “The guests are all smitten. I thought they’d all try to start something with me, but as soon as she showed up . . . I wonder how she does it. I don’t think she’s really paralyzed.”
“No idea,” I said. “It actually doesn’t even matter.”
I stroked her head again as she leaned against my shoulder.
“I’d like to start something with you,” I said.
“Why? You have a chance with that girl.”
“Nice of you, but not a chance in hell, Tammy. I think I’m going crazy. People are trying to tell me weird things. Look for example at that girl in the wheelchair again. Do we look similar?”
“Maybe.”
“But she has black hair.”
“It’s dyed, you idiot.”
“No,” I said. Even though I immediately believed
her.
She reached out her hand and tussled my hair. “I think you and your friends all look a little alike.”
“You did not just say that!”
“You’re so sweet, and the princess must have understood immediately that you two would make a very effective couple.”
“What are you talking about?”
She suddenly shrunk back and pushed me toward the house. “Go talk to her,” she said.
The feeling of loss I felt when she slid out of my arms was insufferable. And I wasn’t planning to suffer it. I pulled her back to me.
“I love her but I’m afraid of her,” I said. “She’s a much worse monster than I am. And even though I know that, it still pulls at me when I look at her. I want to take her in my arms and carry her through the world so she doesn’t have to cry anymore. So nobody has to cry anymore.”
“You’re a true superhero,” said Tammy, and as hard I tried I couldn’t hear any sarcasm in her voice this time.
I have no idea how much longer we stood there in the garden before I hit on the idea to put my hand under her dress and realized when I did that her ass was ice-cold.
“Let’s go inside,” I said and we walked around the house. We didn’t want to go in by the patio because there were too many people standing there, and the front door was also no good, it was completely blocked. Tammy took me around another corner, on the side of the house, to a spiral staircase. The steps wobbled and creaked feebly beneath our feet, but then we were standing in my attic room, though my joy was premature. Marlon was lying in the double bed. Next to him was Ferdi.
Just Call Me Superhero Page 17
