The Wonder of Us

by Kim Culbertson

  Moira plucks her napkin between two French-manicured fingertips and deposits it in her lap. “So,” she says more to me than Riya. “Aren’t you two cute with your grand tour? Neel’s been telling me all about it, haven’t you, darling?” She beams at Neel, who is already buried in his menu.

  Riya rolls her eyes in a way we grew out of in late middle school. “Well, so long as it’s cute, my mission’s accomplished. One must be cute at all costs—ow!” The table is not so big it doesn’t keep Neel from kicking her under it. Riya narrows her eyes at the back of his menu.

  Moira arches an eyebrow at their exchange, but then turns her attention to Riya’s parents. “How are you, Anju? Dean? Enjoying Berlin?”

  Anju leans in. “It’s been a lovely year.”

  Moira picks up her menu. “Well, better you than me. It’s such a gloomy city. I’m sure you’re looking forward to your exit. All the graffiti. I know it’s supposed to be artistic and evolving, but—” She runs her pool-water eyes across the restaurant’s offerings, her tongue tsking. “Ugh, Turkish food. So much of it tastes alike.” I exchange a look with Riya, and her look back says, I warned you. A waitress comes to our table and Riya and I order some dumplings to share and a pide, which is a type of Turkish pizza.

  Moira doesn’t look at the waitress when she asks, “What can I order that isn’t choked with spice?”

  “She has a sensitive palate,” Neel adds, his eyes flicking to me and then back to the waitress.

  The waitress starts to point out a few options with the tip of her pen, but Moira waves her off. “I’ll just have the çoban salatasi salad. And a glass of white wine.” She snaps her menu shut like a gunshot. Dean hurries to order his meal, ramping up the charm, even winking at the waitress as he hands her the menu. Dean is not a winker. There are beads of sweat at his temple.

  Moira eyes him across the table. “Neel took me to see your show today, Dean. It reminded me of one we saw last year at the Whitechapel Gallery.” She slips a hand onto Neel’s forearm. “Who was that artist?”

  Neel searches for a name. “I can’t quite remember—”

  “Of course you remember. You loved the show.” He shakes his head apologetically, and she sighs. “No matter. It reminded me of that. Really vibrant, Dean.”

  “Well, thank you.”

  “Do you get inspiration from other artists?” she asks.

  Dean shifts uncomfortably in his chair. “I try to keep the work original rather than derivative, but of course I have sources of inspiration.”

  She nods coolly but doesn’t ask anything else. Riya has gone silent, staring at her lap. Moira and Neel sip their wine. The evening might have teetered into an inescapable crevasse of awkward silence except that Anju, in her graceful way, steps in. “I heard it was raining in London when you left. Must be nice to see some sun.” Anju continues to carry us through the rest of the meal, asking Moira about her chemistry studies at university, her family, and finally about her internship this summer at a pharmaceutical lab. “Neel told us the lab is quite prestigious.”

  Moira casts him a haughty look, like a lioness staring affectionately at a fallen gazelle. “Oh, how sweet of him to say that.” She picks over the cucumbers and tomatoes dressed in lemon juice and olive oil on her plate. “It’s quite dreadful, really. I’ll be thrilled when the summer’s up.”

  Neel hurries to say, “Impressive, though. To be selected.”

  She allows him a thin-lipped smile. “I suppose.” She proceeds to describe her work as if she’s been toiling away in a war-torn country full of hostile revolutionaries instead of working in a sterile lab outside of London. Everyone at Grimes Pharmaceuticals, it seems, has a personality flaw Moira finds “distressing” or “abysmal,” or they are simply “imbeciles.”

  “There’s a reason you call it the Grime Farm, right, love?” Neel chimes in, smiling at her over the last of his kofta.

  She squeezes his arm. “Quite right!”

  “Why do you continue with it?” Dean asks. “If it’s so terrible.”

  She looks confused. “It’s a wonderful opportunity. Even if the director is a lazy cow.”

  Dean almost chokes on his wine. “What?”

  Moira sighs. “She’s always rushing off on the dot of six, even in the middle of a meeting.”

  “I think she has young children to fetch—” Neel tries, but she interrupts him.

  “She should have thought of that before accepting the director of analytical chemistry position, for which she is grossly underqualified.” She takes quick sips of her wine, two pink spots appearing on her pale cheeks.

  Neel puts a hand over hers. “Quite.”

  Riya widens her eyes at me over her glass of sparkling water as Anju flags down our waitress and orders coffee and dessert. The waitress clears our plates. When she’s done, Anju folds her hands under her chin, her face thoughtful. “I think finding balance in family and work is a challenge. It changes priorities.”

  “And there’s a double standard,” Dean adds. “If a man left work to get his children, we’d commend him for being a good father, but we don’t always do that with women. And he’d never be criticized for not leaving, that’s for sure.”

  Moira groans. “Oh, feminism. How Californian of you to mention it.”

  I can’t help it. I start giggling.

  Neel frowns. “Abby?”

  Oh no. This happens sometimes when I’ve grown too uncomfortable in a situation, inappropriate giggles start slipping out and I can’t control them. Sometimes, I can pass them off as hiccups. The look on Neel’s face assures me this is not one of those times. “Sorry! Just thinking about, um, something we saw earlier at the museum.” I shoot Riya a desperate look. Help!

  Dean clears his throat. “Oh, well, I hadn’t realized Museum Island had started including humorous exhibits, but good to hear they’re branching out.”

  Riya snaps out of the social coma she’s been in the entire meal. “Oh, it was this weird man we saw on our way out of the Pergamon. You’re thinking about that guy, right? In the toga?”

  I follow her lead, nodding. “Right! The guy. In the neon-yellow toga. And clogs! I mean, clogs and a neon toga?! Togas are just naturally hilarious.”

  “Yes, I’m sure the Romans wore them for their comedic value,” Moira remarks, arching an eyebrow at Neel. At the sight of that eyebrow, I take Riya down with me and we both succumb to giggles. Under Anju’s hot gaze, we excuse ourselves to pull it together in the restroom. Once there, we lock eyes in the bathroom mirror and completely dissolve.

  Riya wipes a tear from her eye. “Was I right or was I right?”

  “She’s the worst.”

  “The currywurst!” Riya chokes out, sliding down the bathroom’s tiled wall, hysterical, because now we’re in that place where anything is funny. Including terrible currywurst puns.

  I wave my hand, adopting a fake British accent. “Order anything—it all tastes the same. They’re all imbeciles anyway.”

  Riya’s still curled against the wall. “Yes, funny how people around her all just happen to be idiots. So convenient!”

  “Quite!” But I freeze when I see Moira standing in the bathroom doorway, watching us.

  Even as she tries to keep her composure, I’m sure I spot a gloss of tears in her pale eyes. “Dessert’s arrived.” She lets the bathroom door fall shut behind her.

  Our laughter dies in our throats.

  We slink back to the table.

  “She had it coming,” I mumble from the backseat of the silver Mercedes my parents leased for our year in Berlin.

  “The goal, I think,” Mom says as she turns onto a darkening main street leading away from the Tiergarten, “is not to stoop to her level.”

  “I’m a teenager; I’m still learning these things.”

  “That old excuse,” Mom replies dryly, but I see the smile at the corner of her mouth.

  “Use it if you got it.” Outside, the lights of Berlin blink on around us. It’s my favorite time
of day in the city; everything starts glowing, and it blurs some of the city’s harsh edges. Abby reaches across the seat and sets her hand on top of mine. Her squeeze means thanks for saving me back there, even if we both screwed it up in the bathroom.

  “Moira doesn’t make it easy.” Dad leans his arm on the edge of the open window, the night air coming through, still warm. “It’s like she gets more annoyed with humanity each time we see her, like the world is a constant affront to her existence.”

  I reach forward and slap his shoulder gratefully. “Well said, Daddy-o!”

  “Where is this place?” Mom slows, turning onto a side street shadowed by tall cement apartment buildings. “Is it someone’s apartment?”

  “Where are we going?” Abby sits up, trying to hide a yawn.

  “I have a surprise for you.” I motion to Mom. “Over there, by that green awning.” She pulls the Mercedes into a parking spot across the street.

  She turns to look at me over her shoulder. “You sure you don’t want us to come see it?”

  I shake my head. “It’s pretty much the same workshop you guys saw last month. Another theater group is letting us borrow their space for the night.”

  We wave as the car pulls away. I tug Abby through an entryway into a musty lobby and past the door for an elevator. We take a sharp right down some stairs. “What exactly are we doing?” Abby follows me down the tight staircase, our way vaguely lit with a wall sconce that looks like something from a medieval torture chamber.

  “I’m in a show tonight.”

  “A show?”

  “It’s called Gerechtigkeit.”

  “Which means what?”

  “A good translation is equality. Or maybe justice?” The staircase opens into a basement room where six rows of battered folding chairs face a single black curtain and an open area that serves as our stage. I love this room.

  “So, not sure this counts as a history tidbit, more history rumor, but supposedly in World War II, American and British spies held secret meetings here basically right under Hilter’s nose.”

  Her eyes gleam as she scans the room. “No way; how cool.” I can practically see her imagining the years falling away, the room suddenly quiet with spies sitting at tables, their shoulders hunched over maps or secret documents, murmuring, strategizing.

  I wave to a small knot of actors standing near the stage. “There’s Kiara and Jonas. Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

  But Kiara beats me to it. She hurries over. “Rye!” She embraces me, kissing both cheeks. “You made it!” She turns to Abby. “I’m Kiara.”

  “Hi.” Abby nods, her voice guarded, and she scans Kiara top to bottom: the scuffed Doc Martens, the red velvet short-overalls over the black bra. “Nice to meet you,” she manages a beat or two late.

  Kiara doesn’t seem to notice. She’s beaming at Jonas across the room. “We’re so glad you’re here. This show will be wild! As Riya knows, Jonas is a visionary.”

  Okay, visionary might be a tad much, but I’m not surprised. Kiara thinks Jonas invented the sun. Don’t get me wrong, he’s talented, but he kind of knows it and that gets annoying. The majority of the girls and half the boys in the Collective are in love with him, but I’m not big on the beard. Or the narcissism. The first time he told me he was a sociology student at Humboldt, he caught me off guard since we have a Humboldt State back in Northern California. His Humboldt, though, is the oldest university in Berlin, where people like Albert Einstein and Karl Marx once walked the halls. Jonas often reminds us that when he’s there, he can actually feel their ghosts prodding him along in his studies. When Jonas talks, many of his words come with audible italicization. He feels us watching him now and gives us a crisp wave. As usual, he’s dressed in tight black clothing and pushes obsessively at the heavy lime-green frames that keep slipping down his nose. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t need glasses. Just wears them because, well, sociologist playwrights wear heavy-framed glasses in ironic colors, right?

  People start wandering in, filling up the twenty or so seats. Tavin, one of my favorite friends from school this year, emerges from the stairs and lumbers over, his linebacker build disguising his sweet nature. “Hi, hi!” He throws an arm around me. “Shouldn’t you be dressed in black clothing and waving a puppet around?”

  “Um, spoiler alert!” I hug him, breathing in his familiar rain-and-spice smell. “This is my friend Abby. From California.”

  “Hello, Abby from California.”

  Tavin has the kind of smile that often gets reflected back at him, and Abby’s reaction is no exception. “Hi.”

  I knew Abby would like him. “Tavin helps run our student government,” I hurry to tell her. “He’s an expat. His parents are both from the States, but now they live here. How cool is that?”

  “Cool,” she echoes unconvincingly, and I want to shake her. Tavin is cute and totally Abby’s type. History geek. Funny. She needs to try harder. I’m hoping the look I’m shooting her right now drills some of this telepathically into her brain before he gets bored and leaves.

  But Tavin just grins and replies, “I’m not sure how cool it is. It’s just geography.”

  “Tavin was the first person to show me Museum Island,” I tell her pointedly. “He loves museums. He’s planning to study history in college.”

  Abby brightens. “Me too.”

  “Let’s find some seats and talk about old stuff.” He grabs her hand and leads her toward the rows of chairs. That was almost too easy.

  Smiling, I slip behind the curtain.

  After a whirlwind show (yes, both black costumes and puppets made an appearance), I meet Tavin and Abby where they wait for me in the audience. Abby’s face is hard to read, but she smiles when she sees me. “Not sure I got most of that, but it had some serious energy.”

  “Thank you!” I’m still pulsing with adrenaline from the show, from the feel of throwing myself into someone else’s world for seventy charged minutes. And it was especially challenging for me because it was in German. “What’d you think, Tav?”

  He nods his shaggy head. “Weird, but I liked it. I’ve always felt the themes of aggression and poverty find their true connection through puppets made out of milk cartons.” I punch his arm in mock protest. “It’s true,” he insists. “And it added a much needed environmental angle.”

  Kiara bounces up to us, still flushed from the performance. “We’re heading over to Jonas’s flat—hi, Tavin!—want to join?”

  Tavin checks his phone. “I’m in.”

  Abby yawns down at the program in her hand, each one created on a piece of paper that had already been used for something else—a pharmacy receipt, a napkin, the tagboard backing of a checkbook. Abby holds what looks like an old flyer from a furniture store sale.

  Leaning into her, I whisper, “Are you too exhausted? We don’t have to go.”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” she assures me, sneaking a look at Tavin. “It’ll be fun.” Her phone rings. “Sorry—it’s my mom.” She picks up with a “Hey, Mom” and wanders over to a corner of the room. “No, I can hear you—”

  When she’s out of earshot, I grab Tavin by his arm. “She doesn’t know about London yet, so don’t say anything.”

  “Wow, vise grip.” He looks down at his arm, frowning, and when I ease off the pressure, he asks, “She doesn’t know?”

  “No, so don’t tell her.”

  He holds up his hands in defense. “What’s the problem? It’s good news, right?” He follows my gaze, to where Abby listens to something her mom says over the phone, her brow furrowed, her free hand over her ear to block out the buzzing postshow audience.

  I shake my head. “Just don’t mention it.”

  “No problem.”

  Jonas lives with three other guys in a tiny flat near the university. It looks like many flats I’ve hung out in over the last year: mattresses on the floor, stacks of books, student art on the walls, folding chairs around a card table, empty bottles posing as paperweights for various scripts.
Only one of Jonas’s roommates, Arik, is home when we come spilling in. Arik reads mostly thick, dark Russian novels and rarely feels the need to talk. He makes a mean pot of coffee on the single-burner stove and sneers if you add milk. He nods a vague hello to us and disappears into the room he shares with Oskar, who I’ve never met, closing the door behind him.

  Kiara, Abby, and I settle onto a mattress, our backs against a wall, while Tavin studies the various stacks of books. In the tiny kitchen, Jonas makes herbal tea in a clear glass kettle. Jonas is one of the only guys I’ve met in Berlin who doesn’t drink. And unlike Arik, who seems to live on nothing else but his thick coffee, Jonas is caffeine free. He’s also vegan, which isn’t always easy in a city that seems to subsist on beer and meat.

  Kicking his shoes off into a corner, he brings out a tray with ceramic cups, the steaming kettle, and a bowl of raw cashews. Setting the tray on the floor, he fills five cups with tea. As I take one, I hide a smile. Jonas doesn’t have an actual couch, but he has a serving tray for tea. Which seems about right. He settles, cross-legged, on the hardwood floor in front of us, his eyes expectant. “So? What did you think of the show?” he asks Abby as Tavin continues to examine the book selection behind him.

  Abby stares into the still surface of her cinnamon-hued tea. “Really interesting.”

  Jonas nods for her to go on. “Which part caught you?”

  Abby’s gaze flicks to me. “Um, the red half masks?”

  Oh, great. Jonas and his red masks. “Yes!” He looks at me triumphantly. “See how powerful they are?” To Abby, he adds, “They represent muzzles.”

  I try not to roll my eyes. “I didn’t have a problem with the symbolism, Jonas. They’re just really hard to speak through and you kept getting mad that you couldn’t hear me.” I sip my scalding tea.

  “Not mad,” he stresses. “Notes. Directors give notes. And I couldn’t hear you.”