November Sky

by Marleen Reichenberg

  “But I was really frantic. I had an awful fear that Nick would jump or I could fall. I’d overexerted myself on the climb and was so exhausted that I had to throw up afterward. And the gynecologist told me that I was to avoid excitement, stress, and physical strain in the first weeks to reduce the danger of a miscarriage.”

  Mama smiled slightly. “You know, if you look at it that way, mankind would probably have died out long ago. Just think of all those babies who were born in wartime or the children whose mothers were refugees. Food and water were often scarce, or they were bombed. Those women suffered enormous stress and physical strain, and many of them bore children nevertheless.”

  She stopped for a moment while I processed her words. Then she continued. “You know Lisa?”

  I nodded. Lisa and her husband had raised nine kids on the neighboring farm.

  “The last time she was pregnant, she was forty-five and in total despair because she didn’t want another child. This is between you and me, but she tried everything to get rid of the baby by natural means. She ran through the woods, jumped down slopes, and took hot baths. It didn’t work. Now her youngest, Michael, is as old as you and a pillar of strength for his parents. They couldn’t manage the farm without him, as sick as they both are. I think that if a fetus is healthy, it can withstand almost anything in the womb.”

  I’d never seen it from that perspective. “You mean I’d have lost the baby in any case?”

  Her blue eyes looked at me from her weather-beaten face in all sincerity. “No one knows, dearest Laura. But I don’t think you should blame Nick. The burden he’s carrying is bad enough. After all you’ve told me, there must be a reason he wants to kill himself and at the same time wants you to save him. And as you say, it’s not intentional. He’s as confused by his irrational urge as you are. I wouldn’t like to be in his skin right now. He’s probably being extremely hard on himself and blaming himself.”

  She didn’t agree with me when I said I couldn’t keep going on with the marriage.

  Nick began bombarding me with texts and calls the very next day. I ignored or deleted them all. I lay in bed at night without sleeping and yearned for his tenderness and warmth. My conversation with Mama had rocked my stance that he was guilty of our baby’s death, and I knew that I still loved him in spite of everything. But I could only live a life free of anxiety without him. It felt like I had a drug addiction. I felt a huge desire for the drug, but I knew it would destroy me in the long run. And maybe I would save him with my decision. If he knew I was no longer nearby, he might not have the self-destructive attacks anymore. No matter which way I looked at it, a separation was unavoidable.

  Nick, of course, saw it completely differently. The next day a small package arrived for me by express, and with no return address. All that was in it was a single CD. No letter, just the silver disc in a blank cover. I hesitated for a long time before inserting it in my laptop. I’d gone to my room and was glad I did when I heard the first strains of “You.” Tears ran freely down my face. Nick had put together a CD to show me his feelings for me. On the CD were the songs “Still Loving You,” “Far Away,” “Incomplete,” and “You,” repeated at the end. If he’d been standing in front of me at that moment, I’d have tossed all my doubts and fears overboard and thrown myself straight into his arms.

  But he wasn’t there, and so I was able to calm down slowly after the last notes had died away and suppress my painful longing for him. Logic told me that the pain would be much greater if I went back to him and arrived too late the next time he tried to kill himself. I fished my cell out of my pants and stared at the display for several seconds before sending him a short text.

  Thanks for the music. I got it, but if you really love me, then give me time and leave me in peace.

  L.

  I intentionally left out any salutation that would only look phony, given my confused emotional state. I didn’t want to raise any false hopes.

  I immediately tried Chris’s number. She picked up after the first few rings.

  “Laura, how are you? I’m so sorry that you lost your baby. I’ve been very worried about you.”

  I’d asked Mama to call her and explain about my miscarriage and that I needed time to grieve and so wouldn’t be in to the office for the next several days.

  “I don’t feel particularly well, psychologically, and I brood a lot. Chris, I urgently need some distraction, so I’m coming back to work starting tomorrow. But I’m going to look for a place to stay, because I want to divorce Nick.”

  Chris gasped before I went on:

  “Please don’t ask me why. I can’t bring myself to talk about it. It’s incredibly painful, but there’s nothing else I can do. I’ll probably look for a rental room in a house until I find something permanent.”

  “Listen,” said Chris, “you can stay at my place as long as you need to. I promise to leave you to yourself. That is, I won’t ask any questions.”

  Maybe her plan to keep that large apartment wasn’t so kooky after all. I dreaded sitting around ruminating by myself in some impersonal hotel or a room in a shared house after work each day. Since at the moment my business partner was practicing abstinence as far as men were concerned, it wouldn’t disrupt her if I actually did live at her place for a short time.

  The next day Mama drove me to Grünwald and dropped me off at the house. I was relieved that neither Nick nor his parents were home. My car was the only one in the garage. I felt fortunate to be spared the stressful conversations and emotionally loaded scenes I’d steeled myself for. But I’d counted my chickens too soon. Hanna was sweeping the entryway and ran to me with joy.

  “You just missed Nick and his parents. They’ve gone into town. Laura, so nice you’re finally back ag—”

  She broke off when she saw my sorrowful expression and her smiling face turned serious. “You aren’t coming to stay. You’re getting the rest of your things, am I right?”

  I embraced her, nodded in silence, and let her hold me tight. She looked at me directly. “Nick is profoundly saddened. He misses you terribly, but he’s putting a brave face on it. When he’s not in the studio, he tends to Angela and Jürgen. His father hasn’t been well for some time. He caught a viral flu in Spain and has lost a lot of weight and is always tired. They came back so he could be thoroughly checked out and treated.”

  I immediately felt the rise of a guilty conscience. Nick didn’t only have to deal with my absence and the loss of our child, but he also had to worry about his father. How would he react when he came home to find my car and most of my personal belongings gone?

  I swallowed the lump in my throat and looked at Hanna pleadingly. “I’ve got no choice. Hanna, if I came back there’d eventually be a catastrophe.”

  That could also happen now if he went crazy because of my leaving, but I had to accept it.

  “Please keep an eye on him, OK? He’s better off without me.”

  With those words I turned and ran upstairs. My throat tightened when I saw the familiar objects in the room where we’d spent so many happy hours. I let my gaze wander through our living room. The ultrasound picture was still hanging in the middle of the other pictures on the wall. I took it down to keep for myself. It had been my child and this was the only picture I had of it. The fact that it was hanging with those of Nick and me in such happy times seemed a mockery. I threw everything together in haste like a thief, found my car keys, and raced downstairs with my bag.

  Hanna stood on the same spot, broom in hand, silently crying and wiping away her tears with the back of her hand. I felt mean, rotten, and sleazy because I was alienating people I loved, Nick above all. The mere thought of how shocked he’d be when he got home—and what he’d feel upon seeing the partly emptied closets—took my breath away. I cringed. What sort of opinion would they have of me and my behavior? Everyone who didn’t know our real problems would assume I was throwing
away Nick’s love just because I couldn’t emotionally deal with the loss of our child.

  Chapter 20

  Living at Chris’s actually did distract me a little from my messy situation. She kept her word not to push me about why I didn’t want to live with Nick anymore. Instead, we talked about work, we cooked together, we watched movies, and she dragged me to the gym, where I discovered, thanks to my murderously aching muscles the next day, that I was completely out of shape. Fitness training was very good for my figure. Combined with my normalized eating habits, it produced a nice twelve-pound weight loss.

  Ostrich-like, I stuck my head in the sand, and lived from day to day, intentionally deferring any thoughts about my future. My nightly brooding was countered with mild sleeping pills. I still refused to accept calls or messages from my husband and got a new number, just to be safe.

  For a while I worried he might simply pop up in our office, and yet I longed for him at the same time. But week after week went by without a word from him. That was odd. I was annoyed at myself. I couldn’t disentangle myself from Nick. Not in my thoughts, not in my feelings. I wondered how he felt, whether he was finally getting professional help, and I opened the paper every day with a queasy feeling. I knew that it would be in the paper if something ever happened to him.

  I’d called Mira right after moving in with Chris. She had been so supportive of us that it would have been indecent not to reach out to her.

  Her secretary put me through to her right away, but Mira didn’t make it easy for me.

  “Laura, so nice to hear from you,” she said sarcastically. “In case you’re interested, Nick is still alive and has accepted a new role in a prime-time film. In spite of his grief at your losing the baby and leaving him, he’s pulled himself together and is soldiering on.”

  I’d squandered her initial good impression of me. She pitied Nick and blamed me for his misery. Her aggressive undertones allowed me to respond just as bluntly.

  “Mira, did he tell you what happened the night before I lost my child? Why I left him?”

  Her brief silence showed me he had not, but she quickly put two and two together. “Oh, God, Laura. I’m so sorry. What did he do this time?”

  I shook my head until I realized she couldn’t see me. “The details aren’t important. Suffice it to say, I lost the baby after the last rescue operation. I’d like you to understand why I left him. Nick is the love of my life, and I can’t imagine being with another man. But I can’t and won’t save him from himself for the rest of his life.”

  “Will you divorce him?”

  I didn’t know. That decision would force me to contact him again. I didn’t want that under any circumstances. And just the idea of informing him about the end of our marriage in a lawyer’s impersonal letter made me shudder. Never in a million years!

  “Mira, right now I don’t know what to do. But something inside me says that as long as I stay away from him he won’t do anything stupid.”

  We both knew exactly what that meant. When I hung up, I felt glad I’d found another person with some understanding for my “heartless” behavior. Mira wished me all the best.

  I threw myself into my work.

  A new client who’d attended one of my seminars called me up to make an appointment. “I’ve suddenly inherited a rather large amount of cash from a distant relative and have to decide how best to invest it. I don’t trust what my local bank is offering, so I’d like to get some independent advice.”

  Tamara Selhoven brought a gust of fresh, moist air into the office with her as she shook out her umbrella. She accepted my offer of a coffee and sat down, fully relaxed, in a leather chair in our conference room. She ran both hands through her reddish-blonde curls and flashed an unself-conscious smile when I brought the coffee. She was one of those people who made you feel at ease in their company right off the bat because they were so obviously comfortable in their own skin.

  It took an hour and a half to make an inventory of her assets; I asked about her situation in life and financial goals so I could show her the different possibilities. Her casual statement that she was self-employed and worked as a psychologist stuck with me, and when our discussion was over I bit the bullet and said, “You know, your profession fascinates me. I work all day with numbers, exchange rates, and dividends—things that can be easily calculated. I imagine it’s not very easy to get involved with new people and their problems all the time.”

  Her green eyes sparkled in amusement.

  “That’s pretty much the gambit everybody uses who wants some professional advice from me. Let’s hear it. What do you want to know? But I warn you, if it’s something complicated, you’ll need to make an appointment.”

  The long-burning problem in my mind probably came under that last category. But I went ahead anyway with a super-short version.

  “One of my friends loves her husband very much but left him because he repeatedly tried to kill himself, each time very suddenly and for no apparent reason. He always managed to arrange it so she arrived just in time to save him but is violently opposed to seeing a therapist. She hasn’t the strength now to keep sitting on a powder keg, so she left him. And now she’s constantly wondering if she made the right decision.”

  Tamara Selhoven’s pretty face grew serious as I talked. “Strong stuff, what your friend has gone through. It sounds to me like he wanted to keep putting her love to the test. He presumably has no confidence that the people he loves will stay with him. But speculating is no use without knowing the precise background. Your friend should stay away from him until he confronts his problem himself and grapples with it through therapy.”

  I accompanied her to the door, where she picked up her umbrella, stepped out into the corridor, and offered me her hand. “Good-bye, Frau Vanderstätt, and many thanks for your knowledgeable advice.”

  Before she departed into the pouring rain, she gave me a penetrating look. “Stop beating up on yourself. You did the right thing. At a certain point you’ve got to protect yourself first.”

  My halfhearted attempts to look for an apartment were quickly torpedoed by Chris.

  “Why do you want to move out of here? We’ve got enough room, get along very well, and you’re helping me pay off what I owe you without using cash.”

  I had insisted that she charge me one half of her rent, and so the situation was mutually beneficial. So I stayed on. Time seemed to pass faster than usual, as it always did at the end of the year. The beginning of December was frigidly cold. The temperature dropped past freezing and heavy snowfalls followed, temporarily bringing city traffic to a standstill.

  Christmas Eve was spent at my parents’ farm with my brother and sister and their families. Until then I’d managed to avoid the whole Christmas hullaballoo completely. I stayed away from the Inner City and its lavish Christmas lighting, the holiday decorations on the department stores, and the smell of cinnamon, bratwurst, and gingerbread that wafted along the alleyways in the Christmas market. Chris and I didn’t decorate the apartment, because neither of us would be there over the holidays. Chris was going skiing in Austria with friends. She’d encouraged me to go along, and I was close to taking her up on it but my big sister laid a guilt trip on me when I asked her advice.

  Anna argued over the phone that I could go skiing whenever I wanted, but it was unthinkable not to spend Christmas Eve in the bosom of the family. “Lars, Sissi, and I are going to his folks’ in Hamburg on Christmas Day. And Peter’s coming with Helen. Mama has already caught Christmas fever and is decorating, cooking, and baking like mad.” She lowered her voice. “Laura, I know it will be difficult, but give your heart a bit of a kick. We haven’t seen you for a long time. You won’t recognize Sissi—she’s grown so much.”

  Though sympathetic, my sister hadn’t a clue what it would take for me, as a single person, to spend this emotional evening with three happily married couples—my parents
for more than thirty years—and Anna’s enchanting little girl without going crazy completely. I would be wrestling all evening with the overpowering memory of last year’s wonderful Christmas Eve when Nick and I went to midnight Mass. With the solemn atmosphere, and his full-voiced rendering of “Silent Night” at the end of the Mass, I’d burst into tears from my feeling of happiness. On the way home Nick asked jokingly if he really had bellowed way too loud. This year I let the rest of the family go to church while I babysat Sissi.

  Before leaving for my parents’, I’d received an oversized Christmas card from Nick that played “Last Christmas” when I gingerly opened it. Fortunately, the note simply wished me happy holidays. It was signed by his parents and Hanna, too. I hastily rummaged around in my desk drawer for a nondescript card showing a photograph of a fir branch with a Christmas ornament and a burning red candle. I scribbled with ballpoint some equally neutral wishes to Nick and his family. I felt rather stupid when I mailed it. What a farce! These polite gestures and meaningless clichés hurt more than screaming at each other.

  I was relieved when the holidays were finally over, Chris returned, and the daily routine set in again.

  Chapter 21

  I scurried through the supermarket aisles one Saturday morning in the middle of January, shopping for a dinner party Chris and I were hosting that night. As I stood in line at the cash register, I glanced at the colorful magazine covers on a shelf in front of me. A sharp pain stabbed me in the heart. Nick was on the front of a glossy magazine, laughing beside a stunning girl in the snow. A radiant blue sky, snow-covered firs, and mountains formed the backdrop. They weren’t touching, but as was usual in gossip mags, just standing together with his current costar, Naila Danner, was enough to imply an affair. “A Movie Love Now for Real” it screamed in bold type. The next line read, “Dominick Vanderstätt finds new bliss after separating from his wife.”