“Close call,” he answered.
Moths moved close to the candles; flames hissed against their wings. Beate wanted Liesl to stay, wanted to offer her and Udo their spare bedrooms. Her cousin’s annoyance, her chuckling criticism preferable to her and Udo leaving in an hour.
Udo and Adela stood. When Liesl asked if they were getting dessert, Udo answered, “Didn’t make dessert.”
“Where are you going?” Liesl asked, and took a sip of wine.
“Party,” Udo answered. “With people from Gymnasium.”
“Michael should go, too.”
“Realschule,” Adela answered.
“The two of you are being snobs,” Liesl said.
After placement tests, Adela had been assigned to the competitive Gymnasium, Michael the lesser Realschule. He wore a tie that night she’d never seen. He’d been wearing ties for days.
“Michael, go with them,” Liesl said. “If you stay, you’ll be stuck cleaning up.”
“It’s the Gymnasium,” Adela repeated.
“Udo, I did not bring you up to be a snob,” Liesl said. “To say you have to be this way or that.” Liesl moved a knödel to one side of her plate, broccoli to the other. She shoved her knife between, as if it were a wall.
“Of course you should come,” Udo said. “I wasn’t trying to be…” and looked as if he were gnawing on a difficult piece of meat. Adela shifted from one foot to the other.
“Let me grab a sweater,” Michael said.
Adela sulked, though until their move she’d savored Michael’s role as her shadow. The children climbed onto their bikes and Beate worried they wouldn’t come back, that Liesl would leave her alone in this place she barely remembered.
“Don’t be out late,” Beate said.
Liesl handed Beate a cigarette. “It’s unbelievable, you being back,” she said.
“I know what you must think of me,” Beate answered. Light stayed bright, though nine had come and gone. She forgot how northern they were, how as a child the sun teased her from sleep. A nearby dog barked in slow succession.
“Because your son finds furniture?” Liesl asked.
“When Gregor left me,” she went on, “I watched television from when it came on until it signed off. While I was staring at the screen, Udo taught himself to cook. Well, to hard-boil eggs. For weeks we ate nothing but.” Liesl mimicked swallowing one egg, then the next. “So, no, I don’t give a shit about the furniture.”
Liesl used to babysit Beate when her parents went to concerts and lectures and, it turned out, meetings to secure their fake passports. The last time Beate had seen her, Liesl had come by to drop something off. A boy waited for her in a car, its engine complaining.
“But—” Liesl went on.
“I knew there was a but.”
“You knew there was a but,” Liesl repeated. “The but is that he might get in trouble.”
“I know.”
“So do something.”
“Teach him how to boil eggs?”
Paul had said to Beate once, “You wouldn’t need to smoke if you figured the rest of it out,” though when she asked what “the rest of it” meant, he shook his head. Paul was a person of surprising gestures: Proposing a day after she told him she was pregnant. Lying in bed next to her and whispering so quietly it took Beate a minute to realize he was leaving her.
“Michael doesn’t know how to hard-boil eggs?” Liesl said, and went inside, where she broke out a second bottle of wine. She talked about the one boyfriend she’d had who was surely Stasi, another whose handsomeness felt unbelievable until she realized he was awful in bed. One never talked. Another talked only about his mother. As Liesl poured more wine, Beate toggled between the fear of Liesl leaving and the relief when she did. Liesl moved on to her dad’s move to Dresden.
“I mean, who moves to Dresden?” Liesl said.
“What’s wrong with Dresden?” Beate asked.
Liesl cackled and filled her glass again, finally saying, “Cousin, you’ve gotten me drunk.” She kissed Beate’s cheek and left.
In three minutes Beate left herself. She turned right as she always did, walking until she met the river.
There were eight men in the bar that night, including one she’d never seen before. From the wildness of his hair, she knew what he wanted before he could say so.
Getting home that night, Beate put the money she’d made into an envelope and wrote Michael’s name on it. Next to his name, she drew a heart. Inside it she wrote, I know you’ve been fourteen for a while, and slid it under his door.
* * *
When she got up in the morning, the envelope’s corner still showed under Michael’s door. Beate walked into his room. A collage of images culled from magazines sat centered on a wall he’d painted a deep green. The carpet in the middle was subtly patterned. The room had three lamps, each different, though equally ornate. On top of his bed, a headboard of colorful pillows. The room smelled of incense and nicotine. Beate stretched onto his bed, saw the room as he must each morning when he woke up. She turned the lamps on. The cool color on the walls switched to warm.
Next to his bed was an ashtray filled with butts. Beate took it, cleaned it, and put it back. She dropped the envelope onto his bed, which hadn’t been slept in the night before. Downstairs, she sat on their new sofa, and watched Das Erbe der Guldenburgs as she waited for him to return.
Michael walked in with wet hair, his lashes so dark they looked mascaraed. The T-shirt he had on—celebrating a festival from the recent East—was flatteringly tight. He sat next to her, leaned his head against her shoulder. She wanted to tell him that his room was a wonder, that she’d remembered his birthday, but the cool musk of his hair left her teetering between happy and sad. She could’ve asked where he’d been, but he might ask her the same thing. And even if he answered, he wouldn’t have really told her, just as she couldn’t keep him from going into houses and taking things.
“I like to begin the day with a swim,” he said, though his day was likely ending.
Beate wanted to thank him for the things he’d found, even more for his bedroom that made it clear he had no intention of leaving this place. There were times when Beate imagined it as temporary. She’d skim the phone book for a real estate office, remembering she wouldn’t get much for this house, if anything. But with each chair Michael found, with the walls he decorated just so, he tied himself to this place, brought Beate back to it, too. He lifted his head from her shoulder, told her he had to shower, though when she passed his room five minutes later, Michael was asleep.
* * *
They were eating dinner when Adela told Beate that she’d called on her behalf about an opening for a department store clerk. August was winding down and her children had started school. Adela had a geometry textbook open on her knees. “I told them you speak English,” she said. “They sounded impressed.”
Adela had started to cut out job listings and tape them to the fridge. After one had been there a few days, she’d re-tape it in a higher location.
“You told them you were calling for your mother?” Beate asked.
Michael had cooked. The potatoes he’d overboiled crumbled when Beate’s fork pressed against them. One of the children had bought new light bulbs, their dining room as garishly lit as a parking garage. Beate took a bite. Michael chugged his water. Adela pressed her napkin to her mouth before she spoke, a gesture Beate’s mother once employed.
“I pretended I was you,” Adela answered. “You have an interview in two days.”
Michael made a noise. Adela glared at him.
“The faggot can’t speak?” he asked.
“That’s a terrible word,” Adela answered.
Michael listed other terrible words. A fly landed on the potatoes and he shooed it away. “Terrible,” Adela muttered.
“You know all about terrible,” Michael answered. The fly landed again. Michael smacked it, killed it, reduced it to a smear.
“You, too,” she said.
�
�A sissy and a faggot,” he answered. “Though they sort of mean the same thing.”
“Those words,” Beate said.
“Tell him,” Adela answered.
Her daughter stared at her. Beate looked down at the dead fly, at a living one that landed in its stead.
“I’ll go,” Beate said. “To the interview.”
Adela nodded. Michael crossed his arms. Whatever had soured between her children grew more pungent each day.
* * *
Beate put on her nicest dress. She tucked combs in her hair, slipped the department store’s address into her purse. As she walked, Beate felt the world of the living return to her. A woman leaned down to talk to another woman in her car. A man in painter’s overalls sat in a café’s window with a coffee cup pinched between his fingers. A mother told her child to stop it, though when the child mimicked her she tried and failed to hold in her amusement. Beate grew relieved at the interview Adela had gotten her, that it was in the afternoon. But as she got closer to the store, she imagined its lights as bright as those in their dining room, the chemical smells of new clothes and furniture. The cliques of coworkers, mornings she’d have to get up early to open the place.
She took a right instead of a left, ending up at the bar. No one but Willy was there, and as Beate moved down its stairs, as its basement coolness hit her bare legs, she realized it wasn’t open.
“It’s okay that I’m here?” she asked.
Willy’s frown softened with recognition. He pulled a chair off a table.
“You basically work here,” he answered.
She helped him with the rest of the chairs, checked the bathroom’s supply of soap and toilet paper.
* * *
At home, Adela asked how the interview went.
“I don’t think it’s for me,” Beate said.
“Confidence,” her daughter added, then looked embarrassed. Adela probably said the same thing to herself, standing in the mirror, mouthing that word. Thinking it over and over as she’d walked to her first day at the Gymnasium, though perhaps she’d taken her bike. Beate had set an alarm to see them off to school, but it hadn’t sounded, or had but she’d been so asleep that she turned it off with no thought other than the sleep she needed to get back to.
In the kitchen’s far corner, Michael talked on the phone.
“Confidence,” Beate repeated. Embarrassment colonized Adela’s face.
“It’s important,” Beate added, but sounded insincere. She ended with a noncommittal, “We’ll see,” and climbed up to her bedroom. Her sleeping bag was replaced with sheets and a comforter, a small wall of pillows. Michael must have been here, making her bed partly out of kindness, partly because he’d grown nervous that she’d use that sleeping bag forever.
* * *
Beate came downstairs the next afternoon to find Liesl on the sofa. Liesl had made herself a coffee and had, according to the ashtray, smoked three cigarettes since she’d arrived.
“Cousin,” Liesl said.
Beate sat next to her. She took a sip of the coffee. Liesl handed her a slip of paper, a name and number on it.
“A doctor,” Liesl said.
Beate took another sip.
“It’s a lady doctor,” Liesl added. “As in a woman. Not a doctor for lady things. I talked to her after Gregor left. Did me some good.”
Liesl’s handwriting was the same as it had always been. She wore scrubs from her job, several gold necklaces. She noticed Beate looking and touched them.
“I didn’t ask to talk to anyone,” Beate answered.
A few days before, she’d imagined Liesl moving in. Now Liesl kept a finger on the paper. Beate wanted to be upstairs on her mattress, which had started to smell like the bar.
“Just so you have it,” Liesl said. Her eyes stayed on the paper to see what Beate might do with it.
“Well, thank you for stopping by,” Beate said. She kissed Liesl’s forehead. Felt the crispness from whatever her cousin put in her hair. Liesl showed up every few days. She brought groceries or towels that her job was getting rid of. On the fridge, new job listings Adela had cut out. For one, she’d added an exclamation point. A series of arrows circled another. And the job Adela had set up an interview for, the one Beate had pretended to go to, sat there still. It was circled in marker. Next to its heading, a star. As if Adela knew that her mother hadn’t gone to the interview at all.
* * *
After a night when she gave six haircuts, Beate came home to find the front and back doors locked. She stood in their yard and felt a sudden urge to pee. She stepped into the tallest patch of grass, lifted her skirt, and relieved herself, her face flushed from the drinks she’d had and the walk home and the things she’d let slide.
The walk to the bar each night was her one good thing. The looks the men gave her as she came in—happy, also trying to hide that feeling—felt like an answer to the question Adela often asked: Why are we here?
But as she jiggled the locked door, Beate understood that her children wanted to hurt her or show her how she’d hurt them, or remind her that the money she left for them each morning, the house she’d brought them to, were barely a beginning.
Beate tiptoed around their house’s perimeter until she found an unlocked window. She hoisted herself onto its frame and ripped her dress on an errant nail, thinking about the letter to Paul she’d written, thrown away, and started again. My only friends are old men, the new draft had begun.
She stuttered through the pantry and into the dark kitchen, constructing that letter’s end. I am not ready to be the only parent. She got to the dining room, negotiating its table and chairs. I’ll use the first checks you sent me to buy the children tickets to California. I’ll stay here and become the woman in a large house children tell stories about. That felt fine, the tall tales of her monstrosity, Beate back in Cologne when frightening the other children was a star on otherwise dim days. She’d planned to finish the letter, but as she walked up the stairs, the need to sleep walloped her. With each step, Beate was sure she wouldn’t make it up the next. She relished the idea of falling asleep here, her children finding her in the same spot the next morning. There was a letter to your father I meant to finish, Beate would say, her shoulders shaken awake.
Yes, Adela would answer, reading her mind. We should stay with him for a while.
* * *
But on her next late-night walk, Beate traveled on a path following the river and spotted a crew of young people in a park. As she got closer, she saw Michael among them. A frightening-looking girl leaned on his shoulder, a scowl on her face even when she laughed. In their faltering movements, Beate understood they were drunk. More people joined. Young women hugged Michael. One tweaked his nipple and he performed outrage, to the delight of his growing audience. Even in his altered state, Beate saw a large joy in Michael and in those who saw him. A young woman hugged Michael hard, lifting him off the ground. And Beate knew she couldn’t send him to California. Michael moved into a shimmy. A few friends tried to copy him.
“Michael!” one of them shouted, the most important thing for that girl just then that he notice her.
* * *
Beate couldn’t stop laughing. Herr Baum—a towel bibbed across his neck—told a story of a presentation he’d done years before with his shirt poking out of his fly. “People wouldn’t look away,” he said. “I thought they were in love with me.”
The crew at the bar smiled without surprise.
The radio played a soccer match. This player had the ball. Cheers as midfielders moved it forward. The men listened with hands cupped behind their ears. Over a week had passed since the children had locked her out. Beate snipped around Herr Baum’s ear. One side of his head was trim, the other wild. As Beate brushed hair from his shoulder, he lifted a hand to stop her.
“She’s my mother,” a voice said.
Adela stood in the middle of the bar, tall, meatless, face full of angry confusion. Beate started on Herr Baum’s other side.
“You’re cutting hair?” Adela said.
“How’d you know I was here?” Beate asked.
“Aunt Liesl.”
“She’s not your aunt.”
The men watched Beate’s dark-haired mirror. Beate kept cutting.
“Michael was picked up by the police,” Adela said.
He and his friends had been drunk. They’d climbed the park’s jungle gym and shouted nasty, amusing things. Beate pressed her hands into Herr Baum’s shoulders.
“The houses?” she asked. Adela answered graffiti.
“He’s in jail?”
“In Liesl’s car.”
“Where is Liesl’s car?”
“Who do you think drove me here?”
Beate kept cutting until Herr Baum’s hands stopped the scissors.
“You should go with her,” he said.
“You’re lopsided,” Beate answered, and he looked embarrassed.
Beate moved to put the scissors on the bar, though at the last minute she held on to them. Herr Baum tried to give her ten marks, but she shook her head. Rudi shelled peanuts. Willy’s pompadour looked as majestic as ever. She wished she’d told him it was extraordinary.
Outside, she found Liesl in her car. Udo and Michael sat in its backseat. Michael’s shirt was missing.
“Where’s your shirt?” Beate asked as she climbed into the passenger seat.
Michael shrugged.
“Please tell me you can answer such a simple question.”
“I threw up on it,” Michael answered. “They had me take it off.”
“Who is they?”
“The police,” Michael said and crossed his arms. “I was in the back of their car when I puked on my shirt. They made me leave it on the street.”
“Graffiti,” Liesl said. “What’s happening to this family?”
“Nothing is happen—” Beate said.
“The boy almost arrested—” Liesl answered.
“He wasn’t arrested.”
The Recent East Page 10
