MY FEELINGS
They are announcing flights over the speakers. We are not listening. They do not matter to us, because we are not going anywhere. I miss you already, Oskar. I missed you even when I was with you. That's been my problem. I miss what I already have, and I surround myself with things that are missing.
Every time I put in a new page, I look at your grandfather. I am so relieved to see his face. It makes me feel safe. His shoulders are pinched. His spine is curved. In Dresden he was a giant. I'm glad that his hands are still rough. The sculptures never left them. I didn't notice until now that he is still wearing his wedding ring. I wonder if he put it on when he came back or if he wore it all those years. Before I came here I locked up the apartment. I turned off the lights and made sure none of the faucets leaked. It's hard to say goodbye to the place you've lived. It can be as hard as saying goodbye to a person. We moved in after we were married. It had more room than his apartment. We needed it. We needed room for all of the animals, and we needed room between us. Your grandfather bought the most expensive insurance policy. A man from the company came over to take pictures. If anything happened, they would be able to rebuild the apartment again exactly as it was. He took a roll of film. He took a picture of the floor, a picture of the fireplace, a picture of the bathtub. I never confused what I had with what I was. When the man left, your grandfather took out his own camera and started taking more pictures. What are you doing? I asked him.
Better safe than sorry, he wrote. At the time I thought he was right, but I am not sure anymore.
He took pictures of everything. Of the undersides of the shelves in the closet. Of the backs of the mirrors. Even the broken things. The things you would not want to remember. He could have rebuilt the apartment by taping together the pictures.
And the doorknobs. He took a picture of every doorknob in the apartment. Every one. As if the world and its future depended on each doorknob. As if we would be thinking about doorknobs should we ever actually need to use the pictures of them. I don't know why that hurt me so much. I told him, They are not even nice doorknobs. He wrote, But they are our doorknobs. I was his too.
He never took pictures of me, and we didn't buy life insurance. He kept one set of the pictures in his dresser. He taped another set into his daybooks, so they'd always be with him, in case something happened at home.
Our marriage was not unhappy, Oskar. He knew how to make me laugh. And sometimes I made him laugh. We had to make rules, but who doesn't. There is nothing wrong with compromising. Even if you compromise almost everything.
He got a job at a jewelry store, because he knew the machines. He worked so hard that they made him assistant manager, and then manager. He did not care about jewelry. He hated it. He used to say jewelry is the opposite of sculpture. But it was a living, and he promised me that was OK. We got our own store in a neighborhood that was next to a bad neighborhood. It was open from eleven in the morning until six at night. But there was always work to be done. We spent our lives making livings.
Sometimes he would go to the airport after work. I asked him to get me papers and magazines. At first this was because I wanted to learn American expressions. But I gave up on that. I still asked him to go. I knew that he needed my permission to go. It was not out of kindness that I sent him. We tried so hard. We were always trying to help each other. But not because we were helpless. He needed to get things for me, just as I needed to get things for him. It gave us purpose. Sometimes I would ask him for something that I did not even want, just to let him get it for me. We spent our days trying to help each other help each other. I would get his slippers. He would make my tea. I would turn up the heat so he could turn up the air conditioner so I could turn up the heat. His hands didn't lose their roughness.
It was Halloween. Our first in the apartment. The doorbell rang.
Your grandfather was at the airport. I opened the door and a child was standing there in a white sheet with holes cut out for her eyes. Trick or treat! she said. I took a step back.
Who is that?
I'm a ghost!
What are you wearing that for?
It's Halloween!
I don't know what that means.
Kids dress up and knock on doors, and you give them candy.
I don't have any candy.
It's Hal-lo-ween!
I told her to wait. I went to the bedroom. I took an envelope from underneath the mattress. Our savings. Our living. I took out two one-hundred-dollar bills and put them in a different envelope, which I gave to the ghost.
I was paying her to go away.
I closed the door and turned off the lights so no more children would ring our bell.
The animals must have understood, because they surrounded me and pressed into me. I did not say anything when your grandfather came home that night. I thanked him for the papers and magazines. I went to the guest room and pretended to write. I hit the space bar again and again and again. My life story was spaces.
The days passed one at a time. And sometimes less than one at a time.
We looked at each other and drew maps in our heads. I told him my eyes were crummy, because I wanted him to pay attention to me. We made safe places in the apartment where you could go and not exist.
I would have done anything for him. Maybe that was my sickness. We made love in nothing places and turned the lights off. It felt like crying. We could not look at each other. It always had to be from behind. Like that first time. And I knew that he wasn't thinking of me.
He squeezed my sides so hard, and pushed so hard. Like he was trying to push through me to somewhere else. Why does anyone ever make love?
A year passed. Another year. Another year. Another. We made livings. I never forgot about the ghost. I needed a child.
What does it mean to need a child?
One morning I awoke and understood the hole in the middle of me. I realized that I could compromise my life, but not life after me. I couldn't explain it. The need came before explanations. It was not out of weakness that I made it happen, but it was not out of strength either. It was out of need. I needed a child. I tried to hide it from him. I tried to wait to tell him until it was too late to do anything about it. It was the ultimate secret. Life. I kept it safe inside me. I took it around. Like the apartment was inside his books. I wore loose shirts. I sat with pillows on my lap. I was naked only in nothing places. But I could not keep it a secret forever.
We were lying in bed in the darkness. I did not know how to say it. I knew, but I could not say it. I took one of his daybooks from the bedside table.
The apartment had never been darker. I turned on the lamp. It became bright around us. The apartment became darker. I wrote, I am pregnant. I handed it to him. He read it.
He took the pen and wrote, How could that have happened? I wrote, I made it happen. He wrote, But we had a rule.
The next page was a doorknob.
I turned the page and wrote, I broke the rule.
He sat up in bed. I don't know how much time passed.
He wrote, Everything will be OK.
I told him OK wasn't enough.
Everything will be
OK
perfect.
I told him there was nothing left for a lie to protect.
Everything will be
OK perfect
.
I started to cry.
It was the first time I had ever cried in front of him. It felt like making love.
I asked him something I had needed to know since we made that first nothing place years before. What are we? Something or nothing? He covered my face with his hands and lifted them off. I did not know what that meant. The next morning I woke up with a terrible cold. I did not know if the baby was making me sick or if your grandfather was.
When I said goodbye to him, before he left for the airport, I lifted his suitcase and it felt heavy. That was how I knew he was leaving me.
I wondered if I should stop him. If I should wrestle him to the ground and force him to love me. I wanted to hold his shoulders down and shout into his face. I followed him there.
I watched him all morning. I did not know how to talk to him. I watched him write in his book. I watched him ask people what time it was, although each person just pointed at the big yellow clock on the wall.
It was so strange to see him from a distance. So small. I cared for him in the world as I could not care for him in the apartment. I wanted to protect him from all of the terrible things that no one deserves.
I got very close to him. Just behind him. I watched him write, It's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life. I stepped back. I could not be that close. Not even then.
From behind a column I watched him write more, and ask for the time, and rub his rough hands against his knees. Yes and No.
I watched him get in the line to buy tickets.
I wondered, When am I going to stop him from leaving?
I didn't know how to ask him or tell him or beg him.
When he got to the front of the line I went up to him.
I touched his shoulder.
I can see, I said. What a stupid thing to say. My eyes are crummy, but I can see.
What are you doing here? he wrote with his hands.
I felt suddenly shy. I was not used to shy. I was used to shame.
Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want.
Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want.
I know you are leaving, I said.
You have to go home, he wrote. You should be in bed.
OK, I said. I did not know how to say what I needed to say.
Let me take you home.
No. I do not want to go home.
He wrote, You're being crazy. You're going to catch a cold.
I already have a cold.
You are going to catch a colder.
I could not believe he was making a joke. And I could not believe I laughed.
The laughter sent my thoughts to our kitchen table, where we would laugh and laugh. That table was where we were close to each other.
It was instead of our bed. Everything in our apartment got confused.
We would eat on the coffee table in the living room instead of at the dining room table. We wanted to be near the window. We filled the body of the grandfather clock with his empty daybooks, as if they were time itself. We put his filled daybooks in the bathtub of the second bathroom, because we never used it. I sleepwalk when I sleep at all.
Once I turned on the shower. Some of the books floated, and some stayed where they were. When I awoke the next morning I saw what I had done. The water was gray with all of his days. I am not being crazy, I told him. You have to go home.
I got tired, I told him. Not worn out, but worn through. Like one of those wives who wakes up one morning and says I can't bake any more bread.
You never baked bread, he wrote, and we were still joking. Then it's like I woke up and baked bread, I said, and we were joking even then. I wondered will there come a time when we won't be joking? And what would that look like? And how would that feel? When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table. I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less.
Is that growing old? Or is it something worse? You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.
He hid his face in the covers of his daybook, as if the covers were his hands. He cried. For whom was he crying? For Anna? For his parents? For me? For himself?
I pulled the book from him. It was wet with tears running down the pages, as if the book itself were crying. He hid his face in his hands. Let me see you cry, I told him.
I do not want to hurt you, he said by shaking his head left to right. It hurts me when you do not want to hurt me, I told him. Let me see you cry. He lowered his hands. On one cheek it said YES backward. On one cheek it said NO backward. He was still looking down. Now the tears did not run down his cheeks, but fell from his eyes to the ground. Let me see you cry, I said. I did not feel that he owed it to me. And I did not feel that I owed it to him. We owed it to each other, which is something different. He raised his head and looked at me. I am not angry with you, I told him. You must be.
I am the one who broke the rule.
But I am the one who made the rule you couldn't live with. My thoughts are wandering, Oskar. They are going to Dresden, to my mother's pearls, damp with the sweat of her neck. My thoughts are going up the sleeve of my father's overcoat. His arm was so thick and strong. I was sure it would protect me for as long as I lived. And it did. Even after I lost him. The memory of his arm wraps around me as his arm used to. Each day has been chained to the previous one. But the weeks have had wings. Anyone who believes that a second is faster than a decade did not live my life. Why are you leaving me? He wrote, I do not know how to live. I do not know either, but I am trying. I do not know how to try.