“Thinking about the house?” Peter asked.
“You scared me,” Oma answered. “About the accident.”
“They’ll both be fine,” Peter said.
The clock’s ticks were loud. The table they sat at was one Michael had gotten decades before. Stolen, according to Peter’s mother, who’d told him that when Michael had taken things from abandoned houses she’d been afraid for him.
“I wonder if it was easier,” Oma said. “How I left this place before.”
She’d been expecting a weekend, over as soon as it began.
Peter thought of other easier things. Apartments with fewer rooms to tend. Dying in your sleep. Oma looked older than he’d remembered, their time together a shallow breath. He sat in the kitchen with her where she’d fed him and taught him blackjack, a place that felt more his than either apartment in D.C. Oma had once lived in Cologne. In Minnesota. In some town called Glens Falls that his mom threatened to take him to from time to time. We’re still here, he thought as the sky began to lighten. The house echoed, as it must have when they’d lived here with only some sleeping bags.
“You were my biggest worry,” Oma said. “When I decided to sell this place. I tried to tell myself that you’re a teenager now, that it’s your job to be a teenager and not keep me company.”
The kettle whistled, and Peter turned it off. His stomach tightened.
“But I sold it anyway,” she said. “Maybe it was a test to see if it was true.”
“Oma, that’s stupid,” he said, though it wasn’t stupid, though it frightened him, also comforted him that she said things that were real, unlike his mother’s sunshine statements about hard work leading to purpose, though it just seemed to make her tired. Peter would keep coming back. When he was older he might stay longer, or live in Berlin and visit on weekends, his German so good that people would hear that he was born in Africa and think it was a joke. He’d return to the States and speak English with an accent, the way Michael did. I will think in German, Peter decided.
“I’ll keep coming back,” Peter said.
“You don’t need to say that,” Oma answered.
“I’m just saying what’s true.”
Oma put her hand on his. Her eyes watered. He wanted to say that he felt lucky to be here to watch the movers take this table, these chairs, to go through the room that had once been his mother’s, a box of books in it that Oma was shipping back to her in the States labeled: Library.
As the sun started to rise, Michael showed up.
“Been out all night?” Peter asked.
“Nice to see you, too,” Michael said. He brought rolls. They took jam and cheese from the fridge and began to eat.
Beate boiled water for coffee, glad that Michael had come early, that there was food and the sun was up when the rest of the world stayed sleeping. Michael said funny, ridiculous things, Peter answered in kind. The rolls were still warm. Beate was hungry in a way she hadn’t been in days. Michael mentioned that the accident had made the paper.
“But no one was hurt,” Peter said.
“Nothing happens in this place,” Michael answered, which felt untrue.
One of them spoke from time to time. Birds outside turned frantic at the day’s unfolding. The coffee was hot and sun warmed their faces.
“My boys,” Beate said. “Tell me something.”
Sun climbed the trunks of trees, the rolls disappeared; Michael’s hand tapped his knee. Beate thought of other moments she’d wanted to slow. When Adela had walked arm in arm with her at Liesl’s wedding; when she’d realized that she’d wanted Josef as her own. When Michael told her what she already knew about his interest in men. The two of them had walked down a street on an autumn evening. Beate told him that it didn’t matter. As he’d leaned his head on her shoulder, she’d tried to memorize its heat and weight and shape.
She thought of Paul in the motel outside Hadley, Beate forlorn when they had to check out. About getting to Lübeck and realizing she and her parents had gotten to the West, though she’d hardly had the chance to notice the East as they left it.
Michael yawned, and Peter—perhaps unconsciously—mimicked him. Everything perfect, also too fast. Beate closed her eyes.
“Your grandmother is tired,” Michael said.
“Your mother is just thinking,” Peter answered.
Perhaps she was remembering something about the house, or grew sad at the thought of her final meal here. Perhaps she was both happy and sad, which Peter often felt in Kritzhagen. This mix of feelings left him afraid, also ready, though for what, he couldn’t say. Oma opened her eyes. Thoughts of her gone were replaced with her here just now, happy and sad, too. Peter was sure he got that play of feelings from her. That he understood her in a way his mother did not, not Michael, either, who loved her but acted as if she were strange and amusing. Ready, Peter thought again. Oma touched his hand, Michael poured the three of them coffees, and the day she would leave this house began.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, I want to thank my friends who took the time to read and offer feedback on this book’s early, messy drafts and help me shape it into a coherent story. A huge thank-you to Amelia Kahaney, Anne Ray, David Ellis, Elizabeth Harris, Marie-Helene Bertino, and Melanie Martinez. This book would not have existed without you.
Thank you to the dear friends who supported and encouraged me as I wrote this book: Alexis Wheeler, Amy Fox, Colin Dickerman, Ellen Porter, Elliott Holt, Flannery Denny, Helen Phillips, Laura Swindler, Lesley Finn, Lois Gelernt, Maiya Jackson, Mia Barker, Nassim Zerriffi, Todd Seidman, and Ed and Nancy Lynch. I feel incredibly lucky to have you in my corner.
To Cathrin Wirtz: thank you for being such a champion of this book.
I want to thank my agent, Jody Kahn, and my editor, Jackson Howard, for taking a chance on me and this project. Their dedication, encouragement, and insight made this a far better book. For that, I will always be grateful. Thanks, too, to the entire team at MCD and FSG, especially Sean McDonald, Mitzi Angel, Jonathan Galassi, Debra Helfand, Abby Kagan, Nina Frieman, Brianna Panzica, Elizabeth Schraft, Justine Gardner, Dave Cole, Brian Gittis, Claire Tobin, and Sheila O’Shea. Thank you to Alex Merto for the beautiful cover. Thanks also to Matthias Lohre for completing such a thorough German fact-check of the book.
I’m lucky to have worked at an incredibly supportive and dynamic school for many years. Thanks to everyone at MCS, particularly my colleagues and my weird, wonderful students.
I’m indebted to the teachers who encouraged me, particularly Clorinda Valenti and Rachel Stein in my younger years. And to the extraordinary teachers at the Brooklyn College MFA program, especially Stacey D’Erasmo, Josh Henkin, Mary Morris, and Michael Cunningham: thank you.
A huge thanks to my family, particularly my mother, Christine Demmer Grattan, my sister, Anna, and my brother, Christian; also thanks to my brother-in-law and my amazing nieces and nephews. I also want to thank my relatives, both past and present, in Germany, who were a huge inspiration for writing this novel, particularly the memory of my grandmother, Käthe Demmer.
I lost several people over the course of writing this book. Their absence has left a huge imprint on me and changed me and the story I was telling. I want to thank and send love to my aunt Luzzi Ihling and my uncle Georg Demmer. Also—and especially—my father, William Grattan. I miss you every day.
Finally, thank you to my partner, David, for your patience, humor, and endless support during this process.
A Note About the Author
Thomas Grattan’s short fiction has appeared in several publications, including One Story, SLICE, and Colorado Review, and has been short-listed for the Pushcart Prize. He has an MFA in fiction writing from Brooklyn College and has taught middle school English for more than a decade. He lives in New York City. You can sign up for email updates here.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Part One
1. 1968
2. 1990
3
4
5
6
7
8
9. 1969
10. 1992
11
Part Two
12. 1971
13. 1994
14. 2009
15. 1974
16. 2009
17
18
2016
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author
Copyright
MCD
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
120 Broadway, New York 10271
Copyright © 2021 by Thomas Grattan
All rights reserved
First edition, 2021
E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-72223-4
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