The Recent East

by Thomas Grattan

  “It just wasn’t funny,” Udo answered.

  Tobias was suddenly in front of them, and Michael’s throat clotted with hope. Tobias hooked a hand under Michael’s arm, mumbling, “Not so fast,” as if Michael had wanted to run away from him.

  “Udo Behm! Just the two people I wanted to see. I wanted to tell you,” Tobias said. “Or ask, rather. When I was young, you and I were best friends.”

  “When we were faggots together,” Udo said.

  “My sister hates that word,” Michael answered.

  “Bundle of sticks,” Udo added.

  Tobias chuckled, everything a delight.

  “I used to be close with your mother, too,” Tobias said.

  “Loud Liesl?” Michael answered.

  “You have nicknames for everyone,” Tobias said. “But I wanted to ask. Yes, ask is the right word. I’d like to come. To the wedding.”

  “Like my date?” Michael asked.

  “Like Michael’s date?” Udo added.

  “Flöhchen!” Tobias said.

  In the hall behind them, the young man moved closer.

  “That’s Emil?” Michael asked.

  He wanted to be mad, but Tobias had been right. The pills from Oma were magic.

  “The more, the merrier,” Udo said.

  Tobias allowed himself to be pulled back into the crowd.

  “There are other parties, you know,” Udo said, and a new party felt like the best thing, along with Tobias at the wedding in his version of dressed up.

  Michael and Udo walked to another party, splitting a cigarette and a can of beer. They passed the former Soviet barracks, which were fenced off, a crane towering above them. Michael looked to see if he could spot any kidney graffiti on its walls.

  “They’re knocking them down,” Udo said.

  “For what?” Michael asked.

  “A hotel.”

  “Ha,” Michael answered.

  They walked toward the beach. At some distant edge, a pinprick from a bonfire.

  “It’s true,” Udo said. “Heinz just got the contract to do all the electricity.”

  * * *

  The last university boy had treated Tobias like a full, waiting refrigerator. He’d gorge on him for hours, telling Tobias to go down on him in bathroom stalls and empty classrooms. They’d had sex in the woods during a rainstorm. “The whole time he’d made me hold the umbrella,” Tobias had said. Michael wanted to tell him to stand up for himself, but knew that—had the situation morphed into him with Tobias—Michael would have happily held the umbrella, made it part of a story to share. When that last boy dispensed with him, Tobias found Michael and told him he couldn’t stay alone that night. They’d grabbed blankets and slept on the beach, shoulders touching. Michael moved to his stomach to hide his erection. He woke up in the middle of the night and realized Tobias was jerking off. When Tobias understood that Michael was awake, he said, “Please don’t look,” with a prudishness Michael found endearing until the truth of it became clear. After Tobias was asleep, Michael jerked off, too. He finished and fell asleep and woke up the next morning alone. And as he found Tobias’s splotch on the blanket and shoved it into his mouth, Michael told himself that soon he’d look older, soon more layers would fall away and Tobias would see him and realize that Michael was what he wanted. Now Tobias was coming to the wedding. In rooms full of candles and flowers, Tobias might see Michael the way he hoped to be seen. Maybe all that love would inspire something, even temporarily.

  * * *

  The caterer forced Adela to make her sandwiches in the dining room. Mutti came in with an armload of flowers, saw Adela, said, “Ah,” and kept walking. Michael showed up next, holding a cup of coffee. Sleep creased his face. He sipped and stared.

  “What?” Adela asked.

  “Just waking up,” he answered.

  “So many places in this house to wake up.”

  “Indeed,” he said, and found one of them.

  Adela went to the camp with only half the sandwiches she’d intended to make, so preoccupied with Udo that she hardly smiled at Miri’s greeting. Miri turned concerned. She squeezed Adela’s forearm to ask if she was okay. Adela nodded. Miri’s expression lifted, and Adela wanted this to be enough. She got them coffees. They sat on the curb as they always did.

  “Good,” Miri said, and Adela wondered if that was her only English word, Miri saying it about her as well as the coffee, also the sun coming out after a string of cloudy days.

  * * *

  Back at the house, Michael balanced on Udo’s shoulders. They hung a garland around the front door and passed a cigarette back and forth.

  “A lot of flowers,” Adela said.

  “A wedding,” Michael answered.

  Udo stared at the flowers in his hands. Adela excused herself to take a shower.

  She washed her hair, worrying that Miri calling her “the good” didn’t mean anything, embarrassed that she’d needed to matter to this girl who lived in a tent Adela had never seen. The hot water ran out. Shampoo slithered into Adela’s eyes. “Fucking ass fuck,” she hissed, as she blindly grabbed a towel, wondering why she hadn’t invited Miri over to use her shower or take a nap. Adela needed to be better. She would get up the next morning and bring wedding leftovers to the camp. She’d go through her clothes and take anything she could spare. Adela flung the bathroom door open, stumbling onto Udo in the hall. Seeing her in a towel, he stopped. Adela’s legs were goose-pimpled.

  “Hi,” he said, and looked at her knees.

  “Hi,” Adela answered. Water dripped onto her shoulders. Blushing blotched Udo’s neck.

  “Excuse me,” he said, slipping past her and into his room.

  Adela thought of a few nights before when they’d been going over the Romans—Udo tapping her knee when he needed a hint, the warmth coming off him as he slept next to her. Also his expression when he woke up to her pressed against him, shock or disgust or surprise that sex was something she thought about, that it might be something he’d want to give her.

  11

  Sixty people moved in and out of her house. They brought presents and took drinks and wore perfume. Beate greeted them all. She listened as people spoke of knowing her as a child, as strangers said she looked like a great-aunt she’d never heard of. When any conversation lasted too long, Josef was at her side, inventing a crisis in the kitchen. She kissed his cheek, his hand rested on her back, the doorbell kept ringing. When she and her children had gotten to this house two years before, Beate could no more have imagined this party than she could have pictured a boyfriend or a promotion, Paul remarrying and her life continuing rather than slipping off a cliff.

  After the backyard ceremony, Josef signaled to the caterer that the show was about to begin. Josef had been there since six that morning. He’d secured the backyard tent and placed tables and chairs. When he’d gone to her room to shower and change, Beate had wrapped herself around him, his bald head blotched from the shower’s heat, and allowed certainty to settle in. He moved his mouth down her throat and she told him that there wasn’t time. She pressed her hands against his chest until they left marks.

  Josef directed people to food and bathrooms. Michael and Udo moved through the crowd with drinks in hand and cigarettes behind their ears. Adela hovered on the staircase.

  “Adela, come down,” Beate said.

  Her daughter wore the dress they’d gotten the week before. Her hair was up, showing off her long neck. The ring in her nose glinted, and she had on the cheap digital watch she’d owned since fifth grade.

  “How long have you been hiding up there?”

  Adela shrugged. A trio of women who worked at the Pflegeheim hugged Beate as if they hadn’t seen her two days before. They exchanged pleasantries about weddings and Liesl, who looked lovely, her dress giving special weight to her pregnant cleavage.

  “I know them from work,” Beate said to Adela, as the women continued on. “I always thought one of them hated me.”

  “Whic
h one?” Adela asked, taking two steps down.

  “I was going to say the one with the terrible lipstick. But that’s mean.”

  “Their lipstick is terrible,” Adela said.

  “Child, why are you hiding up there?”

  The band started to play, and the crowd inside moved toward the door with a herd’s stolid impatience. Adela’s watchband was held together with electrical tape.

  “I wasn’t hiding,” she said. “I just needed to use the bathroom.”

  Adela allowed Beate to hook an arm into hers as they walked into the backyard, where the band lurched into a song that might have been disco.

  “Liesl did insist on a band,” Beate said.

  “And Liesl got one,” Adela answered.

  “Mother and daughter together,” Josef said. “Don’t move.” He went to find his camera.

  A woman Beate didn’t recognize grabbed her hand. “It’s Andrea Holst!” she said.

  “Andrea!” Beate answered. She’d learned to feign recognition in the city, where each week more people claimed to remember a class they’d shared, a neighborhood game they’d once played.

  “I haven’t seen you in forever,” Andrea went on. “Was it when Liesl was babysitting and I stopped by to visit?”

  “Possibly!” Beate answered.

  Josef scurried over.

  “There might be dancing,” he said, and the feeling of wanting him returned. She touched his tie. Tables in the backyard had been moved out of the way, and the band turned up its amps. Liesl and Heinz stepped onto the makeshift dance floor. As the crowd circled them, as Michael and Udo smoked behind a tree too small to hide what they were doing, Adela stayed next to Beate. Josef lifted his camera, told them to smile. A fast song ended, a slow one taking its place. Liesl and Heinz were in the center of it, dancing belly to belly.

  * * *

  Adela watched as the middle-aged tried to twist. Liesl’s dress slid across her nascent baby belly. Josef held Mutti’s hands, his forehead folded with effort. He seemed kind. The few times he’d been over for dinner, Adela walked a fine line between polite and dismissive. Now he couldn’t stop smiling at the good fortune he saw in her mother. The singer reached for a high note and made it. Someone handed Adela a glass of champagne.

  “I don’t want this,” Adela said, though the person had already moved on.

  The music stopped. People filled tables. Heinz’s brother began a toast.

  “My brother,” he said. “My brother, Heinz.” On the yard’s far side, Michael and Udo bit the insides of their cheeks. Adela hadn’t studied with Udo in days. The brother, Karl, told a tedious story about the two of them swimming as boys, meanness masked as remembrance. As Karl waxed predictably about brothers, Michael whispered to Udo. “The little thing shrieked like a ninny as he got into the water,” Karl said, and shifted into a drunken ramble about the women who hadn’t wanted to marry Heinz. “There was the one who—Helga, Heidrun. Now, what was her name again, Heinz?” When Karl paused to ask to have his drink refreshed, Michael’s head fell forward. Udo held his shoulder, as if keeping her brother from lifting off the ground. Karl wrapped up. Despite the lively applause, he looked ashamed. Adela was about to walk over and tell her brother and cousin they’d been rude when Karl moved back to the microphone.

  “And now,” he said, “we’ll have a few words from the son. From Udo.”

  Udo moved his jaw as if chewing, which he did when angry or bored. Our Barbarian Cousin, Michael used to call him. Glasses clanged. In the windows, the sun’s reflection was a melting lozenge. Udo moved to the microphone. Leaning down, he said hello. “Hello,” he repeated. Some in the audience answered. “Liesl,” he said. “Mother. You look beautiful.” Liesl smiled. “And happy.” His cheeks burned.

  Udo’s gentleness from their evenings studying together returned. Adela wanted to rescue him, though that would only acknowledge his faltering. And in the last days he’d barely talked to her. Michael sipped, he and Udo in some contest for greater drunkenness. Udo closed his eyes and Adela wondered if he’d even known he was meant to speak. The drummer’s cymbal shushed in the wind. When Udo had stumbled on Adela in only a towel, he’d looked at it as if it were a blunt instrument she meant to hit him with.

  “Congrats,” Udo said, and walked back to Michael.

  For a moment no one moved. Then someone laughed. Others clapped to drown that laughter out. As Michael and Udo slid behind the trees, the music started again. Liesl spun on the dance floor, a cloud of cleavage and lace. Mutti and Josef danced, too. Josef held her close and Adela realized he was shorter than Mutti. The same was true with her father. Adela picked up the champagne she hadn’t wanted.

  * * *

  As Adela moved toward them, she thought of jokes she and Udo had about Michael as Tobias’s shadow, calling him goldfish shit and Tonto.

  “Udo Behm!” Tobias cooed.

  He followed close behind Adela, in a tie infected with dots. Next to him was a young man Michael quickly seemed to recognize.

  “Thank you,” Tobias said to Adela, “for helping me find Michael.”

  When she turned to leave, Tobias insisted that she stay.

  “This is Emil,” Tobias said.

  Udo grabbed a branch and swung from it.

  “Champagne?” the waiter interrupted. Udo nabbed two.

  Michael settled on, “You’re here,” adding something about architecture.

  The band switched to a Supremes song. “Look at them!” Tobias oohed, watching the guests dance. For a moment, Adela understood his appeal, how he tinged everything with playful amusement.

  Someone congratulated Udo, who went back to swinging. “Thank you,” Michael answered.

  There was a stubbornness Udo used when he’d insisted on living with them. When his father had called after several absent years and Udo wouldn’t talk to him. More people congratulated him. Udo acted as if he were alone. He and Michael passed a bottle of whiskey back and forth. “Disgusting,” Michael said, after each sip.

  “I’m excited to be here,” Tobias said. “I used to be close with Liesl when Udo and I were friends.”

  Michael flipped from one uncertain expression to the next. He lifted his champagne but forgot to drink it. Liesl spotted Tobias and gave him a hug.

  “The bride in white!” Tobias said.

  “Shut up.” Liesl smiled, she and Heinz off again in a flurry of matrimonial activity.

  Tobias and Emil went to find something stronger to drink. Michael watched the path they left in the crowd.

  “Did you know he was bringing a date?” Adela asked. She tried to soften her voice, though it sounded like she was talking to a slow person.

  “It’s a wedding,” Michael said. She touched his shoulder, but he didn’t respond. Mutti and Josef danced close to each other.

  “Josef is a terrible dancer,” Michael said.

  “That’s mean,” Adela answered.

  “Sissy faggot,” he said, the two of them most similar in the slights they didn’t let go of.

  “You really aren’t going to Dad’s wedding?” Adela asked.

  Maria had called a few times that week to tell them that airfare was getting pricey. When she asked if Michael was home, Adela said no, even when it wasn’t true.

  “I always found Dad scary,” Michael answered.

  “Maybe he isn’t scary anymore,” Adela said.

  “You’ll have to let me know.”

  “I never found him scary,” Adela lied.

  Tobias and Emil moved past a window. “I’m an asshole,” Michael said. “Like how we used to use it to mean someone was dumb or late or wearing an awful sweater.”

  “We used it for everything,” Adela answered.

  She tried to catch his eye, to tell him with a look that Tobias was a fever that would pass. But he kept watching people as they tumbled out of the door, then a stray cat perched on their garden wall.

  “I wasn’t trying to be mean about Josef,” he said. “Though I guess I s
ounded mean. Maybe the German Lady likes him.”

  Michael went to see what Tobias and his date were up to. The band’s singer shook a tambourine. When Adela turned around, Udo was gone.

  * * *

  Michael kept close to Tobias and Emil. Whenever they whispered to each other for too long, he interrupted with some fact about the wedding. There are more than three hundred tulips in the house. Liesl and Heinz are honeymooning in Spain, though neither of them speaks a word of Spanish. Maybe taco. So one word.

  After an endless bout of whispering, Tobias came up for air. He tapped Michael’s sleeve.

  “You look fancy, Flöhchen,” Tobias said.

  “Flöhchen,” Emil echoed. “This is a nice house. Are you rich?”

  “My mother is an ass-wiper.”

  “Funny,” Emil said, in lieu of laughing.

  As if she knew she was being talked about, Mutti sidled up to them.

  “You aren’t drinking too much, now?” she asked.

  “Another sister?” Emil asked.

  “The mother, Emil!”

  Mutti blushed. Seeing her happy reminded Michael of the weeks when the closest thing to her being happy was a stretch of uninterrupted sleep.

  Adela appeared to tell Mutti that she was needed.

  “This is the sister,” Tobias said.

  “I let you in,” Adela said. “Who are you again?”

  “Emil,” Tobias answered.

  “Make sure Emil has a drink?” Mutti said as she left. Her dress gave her the illusion of floating. Udo stumbled toward them without taking in who they were.

  “Blotto,” Michael said.

  “Blotto,” Udo mumbled.

  “I think you need to lie down,” Adela added.

  Udo took a slug of beer. Tobias beamed, as if watching a farce on television.

  “I think you need to lie down,” Udo said. “You and you and you,” eyes on Michael, Tobias, and Emil. “Faggots together.”

  “That’s a terrible word,” Adela said.