And then it stops feeling good to me anymore.
His kisses are too fast and aggressive. I don’t like it that his watch scratches my skin through my sweater and that his other hand is pulling my hair. I get the feeling he is thinking of somebody else.
It’s been a long time since I was in such a ridiculous situation.
He grunts in my ear. The booze on his breath makes it hard for me to get air. I try to squirm away, but he follows determinedly, relentlessly. I roll away again and again and each time he comes after me and wraps me in his arms.
He probably thinks it’s just a game, and that he’s supposed to chase me.
I’m not sure how to tell him I don’t want to play anymore.
It’s not that I don’t still like him. But I want him to let me go.
But I don’t have the heart to shove him away or to ram my knee between his legs. I still like him too much for that, even if his magic is quickly fading.
I roll around the entire bed until I’m sideways against the wooden headboard. I can’t go anywhere else. I turn away from Volker and press my face and hands against the cool wood.
Then he lets go of me.
As I look with surprise over my shoulders, he is sitting there rubbing his face. “I’m sorry,” he says in a gravelly voice. “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. Did I scare you?”
I pull myself away from the headboard and sit up warily.
“Why would that scare me?” I say. “I’m not that easily scared.”
“Please forgive me,” he says. “I shouldn’t have done that. What a night.”
He sounds horrified. He won’t stop rubbing his face and holding his head in his hands.
“Nothing happened,” I say. “Everything’s all right.”
Please forgive me,” he repeats. I’m beginning to get tired of his apologies.
“My god,” I say, “it’s fine. I started it, after all.”
“I nearly could have . . . ,” he says, shuddering.
“No, you couldn’t have,” I say calmly. “I know how to defend myself.”
“You do?” he asks, turning his ashen face toward me. “Where’d you learn that?”
“Volker,” I say wearily, “you really don’t want to know all that, do you?”
He doesn’t answer.
I pull the covers out from under me and get under them. Grab the nearest pillow and shove it under my head. It’s a joy just to lie like this in a nice, soft bed. The corners of my mouth turn upward into—I can’t suppress it—an inappropriately sunny smile.
“What are you planning?” Volker asks hoarsely.
“I want to sleep,” I say.
“Here?” He sounds totally spent now.
“Yes,” I say. “You can be sure I’ll never sleep alone in this house. Always something going on here. It’s almost like at home.”
“And me?” asks Volker. “Where am I supposed to go?”
“There’s enough room,” I say. “I’ll keep my clothes on just so there are no misunderstandings.”
“You must be crazy,” he says.
I smile in the darkness.
“I bet you’ll leave now,” I say. “I bet you don’t trust yourself—because you’re afraid of me.”
“You’ve just lost that bet,” Volker says. “Give me back my pillow. I won’t sleep well otherwise. Take the other one.”
“You know what, Volker,” I say just before I fall asleep.
“What,” he murmurs from a yard away.
“I thought I was already old,” I say and yawn, causing the sentence to come out wrong. I start over: “I thought there was no difference between me and adults. Between me and you, for instance.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But now I get it. When you’re old, you do things differently. At a different tempo. I’m not old yet. For me, it has to go very differently.”
“What?” Volker mumbles. “What are you talking about?”
“Sex,” I say.
“Those are tough thoughts,” says Volker. “What a fucked up night. Quiet now. Let’s get some sleep.”
I’m soon awake again.
Volker has a clock in his room. It’s seven in the morning when I sit up. I’m wired but wrecked at the same time. It’s light outside. The chirps of birds waft in through the partly open window. The sun shines on Volker’s sleeping face. He looks tired and gray.
He’s lying on his back, his mouth half-open, his face slack, a hand tucked behind his head. He’s no longer a young man. I can see that clearly this morning.
Something starts to well up and gnaw at me. A feeling I recognize and hate like the plague. A feeling called pity. I don’t like the image of Volker racing down the autobahn in the middle of the night with Felix, waiting in the hallway of the hospital, and driving home alone.
Who could possibly leave someone like that, I think. Someone with graying hair, someone good-looking and sophisticated and funny. How can you just abandon your child, especially when he’s so sick? A red-haired kid with freckles and a white scar beneath his T-shirt.
Easy.
Then I think of something and jump up, kick myself for my inconsiderateness as Volker stirs, and then tiptoe out of the room. The wood floor is warm and smooth underfoot. And with no shoes on there’s no squeaking noise as I walk on it. I run into the guest room, remembering how just a few hours earlier I had been crying and stumbling around screaming for Volker. It all seems like a distant nightmare, something I dreamed years ago.
But Felix is lying in the hospital right now. Or sitting up, staring out the window, upset, shoving aside his breakfast tray.
My mobile is under my pillow. I hold it up in front of my face and see exactly what I feared I would. Eleven missed calls since last night. I didn’t have it with me at the cinema, and I was distracted afterwards.
I know something else has happened. As if the terrible night is not yet over.
All the calls are from home.
I dial the number. My hand is shaking. It rings once. Then Maria answers.
“Hello?” she says in a scared tone. Wide awake.
“Maria,” I whisper loudly, as if Felix is sleeping next to me and I’m afraid I’ll wake him. “Maria, has something happened?”
“Sascha,” she says, and starts to cry.
I start to shiver. “Maria,” I say woodenly, remaining oddly calm. “What’s going on?”
She sobs and gulps.
“Maria,” I scream, “what is it? Something with Anton? Alissa? What happened to them? An accident? Appendicitis? Is one of them in the hospital? Was Vadim released? Maria, say something, or . . . or I’ll come home.”
“Sascha,” she says, choke up, “please come back, my dear.”
“Tell me what’s going on. Have you forgotten how to talk?”
“Please come home.”
“Maria, you are driving me nuts.” I try to think of all the words I’ve seen written on derelict walls in Moscow or scrawled in the halls of the Emerald. Words that would have me thrown out of the Alfred Delp School for uttering. “Listen, you aborted fetus,” I begin, “you need to tell me what the hell happened!”
The longer Maria listens to me, the calmer she gets.
“Alexandra,” she finally says severely, sniffling one last time, “you need to tell me when you are coming home.”
“Where are Anton and Alissa?” I scream. I jump up and want to run somewhere and do something.
“In their beds,” Maria says grandly. “Where else would they be?”
“What are they doing?” I ask like an idiot.
“Sleeping,” she says. “What did you think?”
“Are they sick?”
“What?” she says. “No, they are healthy to the core. Anton did all his homework by himself. He got a hundred percent on his math homework. I couldn’t understand the others. Alissa wrote her name with only one ‘S.’”
“She’s got it tough with that name,” I say.
“Grigorij doesn’t come over anymore,” Maria says softly.
“Oh,” I say. “Why not?”
“When will you be home?” asks Maria. “I tried to reach you all night—I was so worried.”
My worries instantly melt away.
“You only called,” I say out of the blue, “because Anton brought a letter home from school and wouldn’t translate it and you want to know what it says.”
Maria sighs. “That, too.”
“I’ll come home,” I say. “Maybe even today.”
Then she starts to cry again—this time from happiness. It’s very quiet, but I hear it and hang up quickly.
“Families are so difficult,” I say later to Volker as he’s packing up Felix’s notebook computer and a few DVDs.
“Yes,” Volker says. “Families are walking natural disasters. In my next life I want to come back as a Buddhist monk. No attachments, no possessions, no hair. What about you?”
“President of the United States. I thought Felix was coming home today?”
“My experience tells me otherwise,” Volker says. “They probably didn’t want to tell him the truth yesterday for fear that he’d get upset and smash their expensive equipment. From your bed straight to the hospital—that’s a tough transition. He’ll have settled down by this morning, I hope. Do you really want to go home already?”
“What I’d really like to do,” I say, “is go someplace far away. An island, surrounded by nothing but ocean. Palm trees stretching up to the sky. Seagulls crying, white sand, mosquitoes, sunburn.”
“And Bacardi,” Volker says.
“Why Bacardi?” I ask.
“Because they have a commercial just like the scene you’re describing. Dancing girls in grass skirts. You’d look good in one.”
“I can’t dance,” I say.
“Even so,” says Volker. He turns the “Cider House Rules” DVD around in his hands. “Felix used to love this movie,” he says. “He had a crush on the blonde in it—Charlize Theron. Do you know if he still likes it?”
“He’s fallen for the other girl in it—the brunette,” I say. “But I can’t answer the question. Things change so fast, and people’s tastes even faster.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Volker says, sighing like an old man.
“Felix is going to be disappointed you’re gone,” he says without looking at me. “At least, I assume.”
“Say hello from me,” I suggest.
“I will,” Volker says. “And I’ll tell him you cried when you left and kissed his photo. That you stole one of his sweaty T-shirts out of the laundry as a memento. No, better yet, that I sold you the T-shirt for a bunch of money. That you’ll be sitting at home by the phone. He’s going to hate me for letting you leave.”
“Volker,” I say, “you’re just buttering me up.”
He stretches out his hand and runs it through my hair.
“I see a lot of your mother in you,” he says.
I open the apartment door and put down my backpack. The place smells like home fries and onions. I love potatoes and onions. The water is running in the bathroom. I can hear Anton and Alissa arguing in their room. “That was my card, you buttfucker,” says Alissa. “Scum,” retorts Anton.
I can’t stop grinning.
Suddenly they quiet down.
“I heard something,” says Anton. “Did you hear anything?”
“Yeah,” Alissa says. “Maybe.”
I don’t move. I can’t see them but I can picture the look they have on their faces right now. How they are now standing on their tiptoes, holding each other’s hands, and creeping toward the hallway with big eyes.
The door opens.
And then I hear it—deafening. Like a drum roll and a standing ovation at a major premiere. Like the roar of the crowd at a soccer match after a particularly spectacular goal.
“Sascha!” they scream and throw themselves at me.
I have the best grade point average in my entire class. “What odd grades,” says Maria. “This funny point system. Always fifteen points. It’s hard to keep them straight on the page. Why can’t it be as easy as it is back home: one through five. You’d have all fives. People would call you a well-rounded five-star student.”
“You’re well-rounded,” I say.
Alissa jumps on my back and hangs from my shoulders.
“When I grow up I want to have three babies,” she says loudly in my ear.
“Don’t shout,” I say. “Three—that’s a lot.”
“I want a lot,” Alissa says. “Do I have to couple three times?”
“Oh boy,” says Maria, suddenly getting very uncomfortable.
“No, you don’t have to,” I say in a strong tone. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“I can have babies without a partner?”
“Yes, of course,” I say. “What does the one thing have to do with the other?”
“I knew it!” says Alissa. “See Maria, I knew you didn’t need a partner. Do I have to kiss someone?”
“Well, you don’t have to,” I say, “but it doesn’t hurt.”
“We’ll see,” she says. “I’ll kiss you, okay? Or Anton.”
“Fine,” I say.
The phone rings that night.
“Sascha,” Maria calls. “Phone!”
“Answer it,” I say. “Push the green button.”
“It’s better if you do, dear.”