Ursula Hegi The Burgdorf Cycle Boxed Set: Floating in My Mother's Palm, Stones from the River, The Vision of Emma Blau. Children and Fire (141 page)

Yvonne frowned. “How do I know they are not pee stains?”

“They probably were,” Robert said when he heard about it, and they laughed together. He adored her quick wit, her straight way of delivering outrageous lines. With her, you didn’t always know if she intended to be funny because she could say things like that with the most serious expression.

One morning, she got him to dance the tango with her while still in his socks by telling him it was part of New Hampshire marriage law. “Really. If one of us wants to dance, the other one has to.”

“You’re so good at making things up.”

“In other countries it’s not dancing but something else, like herding goats or making cheese.”

He spun her around, her face at the same height with his, and she drew him to the bed, pressed her forehead against his.

“Stay home with me,” she said.

Soon, she longed for clear soups.

For paper-thin slices of meat without gravy.

For salads and raw vegetables.

For white bread instead of the solid
Graubrot
that her mother-in-law baked.

Most of all she longed for small portions. For herself. Even more so for her husband. But his mother kept urging seconds on everyone, and he eagerly accepted, while Yvonne could barely swallow as she watched him distend his body even more. As soon as she’d get him back to their own apartment, she’d throw out the leftovers that his mother invariably wrapped for his lunch.

One evening, when she slammed the lid back on the trash can, words finally burst from her: “She’ll stuff you with that German food until you’re too heavy to move, until no one else wants you.” His eyes were so frightened that she stopped herself. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

But his mother’s food made her think of everything she’d heard and read about Germans. Weighty. Humorless. Orderly. And not just the food. But also that German way of getting things done right away. And in only one certain way. As her mother-in-law did. Suddenly she felt ashamed thinking about her mother-in-law that way. Hadn’t she always formed her opinions based on what people did as individuals?

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

“We can eat here, at home,” Robert said. “You and I.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you. Do you know that?”

He felt hungry. So hungry that his entire belly was aching. “Let’s not talk about it right now.”

She nodded. “Maybe it would be nice to be alone more … together, I mean, you and I.”

When Greta made her next trip to Boston, Yvonne asked her to buy cookbooks and a set of pots with copper bottoms. For five weeks she retreated from the pattern of family dinners and labored over meals that refused to turn out the way they looked in the pictures. Though Robert pretended to enjoy the meager rations that were usually dry and bland, he felt ravenous. After Yvonne presented him with his breakfast of oat flakes and sliced fruit, he’d stop at the bakery, get a dozen uglies, devour five or six of them on the way to work, and finish the rest with the salad she’d packed for his lunch. He began to stash food at his clinic, and before returning home for dinner, he’d fix himself a couple of cheese sandwiches.

He thought about food almost constantly. Sometimes, to keep from eating, he’d escape into the tub. After filling it halfway, he’d lower himself into the warm water as it rose to the top of the high rim. In the tub he felt weightless, agile even. He’d add some hot water. Swish it across his body with his hands. Add more. He’d postpone getting out of the tub till the steam had cleared from the hexagonal tiles and the water had turned lukewarm. When he’d climb across the enameled rim, he’d hate the way his flesh moved, the way his stomach got in the way as he bent to dry his legs. Straightening himself with a sigh, he’d reach for the ointment on the shelf and spread a thin coating on the insides of his thighs where they were usually chafed from rubbing against each other. He’d rinse the sulphur smell of the medication from his hands and take his bathrobe from the hook by the door.

But the hunger would be waiting for him. Stalled. But not subdued.

Worried about being hungry after his next meal, Robert would eat far more than he used to, and he’d get so afraid of food that the only thing to stop that fear was to eat even more, leaving him disgusted with
Fatboy who presses himself against his insides, keeps him imprisoned, demands more as he pushes his flesh, his skin outward. Fatboy who has him on his knees in front of the toilet, one finger down his throat.
He had discovered vomiting one evening in college when he’d eaten so much that he had to throw up. Instantly, he’d felt
better. That instant release. A lightness, even.
After that
he’d started doing it on purpose, figuring he could eat all he wanted now without gaining weight. Without consequences. Oh, but there were consequences. He knew that now. Knew it with each drop of water that splashed from the bowl into his face.

Many times he had tried to exorcize Fatboy as though he were an evil spirit; but, just like an evil spirit, the image of his fat self kept haunting him, threatening to reclaim him. To ward Fatboy off, he’d gone on fasts and long walks. Anything to keep Fatboy away. Yet, he was constantly aware of Fatboy, waiting for him to fail so he could take his place. Whenever he became self-conscious, he felt Fatboy behind him. He didn’t have to turn around to know what Fatboy looked like—he knew: his features, his body, only bigger as in the fat mirror at the fair.
The crowd files past Fatboy who sits on a ridiculously small stool, wearing a sequined shirt and tight-tight trousers. His rolls of flesh quiver with each laborious breath. Laid out in front of him is a display of cakes, fifteen different kinds, baked especially for him every day. Steadily, he eats one after the other, wiping powdered sugar from his lips and chins.

Always an audience.

Incredulous eyes fasten on Fatboy’s bulk with fascination and horror. That’s what they’re here for: not to see the bearded girl or the beagle with two heads, but to watch Fatboy expand in front of their eyes.

When Yvonne burned hard-boiled eggs and lost two kettles to charred bottoms, Robert tried to laugh with her about the mishaps; but he was relieved when she decided that cooking was tedious and let him talk her into resuming their dinners with his mother and father.

Though he worshiped his wife, even worshiped the sound of saying “my wife” when he introduced her, he tried to prolong those evenings with his parents. To be alone with Yvonne was confusing. Complicated. Sometimes he was afraid to comply with her request to play the piano for her at night—“Just for me, Robert”—but when he did, he became so immersed in the music that he felt surprised, invaded even, when he glanced up and discovered the desire
in Yvonne’s eyes. But he had already learned to keep himself at the piano, resisting his longing to take her into his arms because he knew her desire would vanish as soon as he held her.

Yvonne felt exhilarated, awed, when he removed himself into regions where she couldn’t follow him and—by that act alone—almost made them accessible to her. However, if he raised his hands from the keys to touch her, the reality of his massive body repelled her, and she felt herself go rigid. Ashamed. Because it made her feel like a tease, a bitch. She didn’t want to be like that, and when he’d release her, instantly, eyes distant with hurt, she’d feel compelled to cling to him with excessive caresses that would lead to contrite lovemaking, which left both of them bewildered. Their first child, Caleb—long limbed and exquisite like his mother—would be conceived during one of those nights of troubled copulation just three months after their wedding day.

After her initial shock, Yvonne began to sew elegant maternity clothes. Pregnancy was a reason for an entire new wardrobe—flowing materials that concealed her swelling body and lent a slow harmony to her movements. Every night when she oiled her breasts and belly to prevent stretch marks, Robert watched her, paralyzed by the old fear—
babies kill mothers.
How had his father ever dared to marry again after burying his first wife? His second? In this fear, Robert felt more linked to his father than ever before. Again and again, he apologized to Yvonne for endangering her life, for settling her with stretch marks and with varicose veins that began to branch out on her left leg. It made Yvonne feel generous to reassure him.

Caleb was born with his eyes wide open—tranquil and intuitive, his grandmother thought as she guided his head in her palms. Dr. Miles was letting her help, and her grandson was gazing at her as if he knew her and wanted her to bring him toward her and away from his mother whose body still confined his shoulders.

From the beginning of his life, Caleb would absorb all that happened around him—pictures and sounds and smells and touch and taste—take them all in long before words would define them for him, and spin them further, transform them. He would see his surroundings the way a painter would, understanding instinctively how everything picked up light and color from everything else.
Like the lake where his mother would take him that first summer of his life, prop him up on the dock in a basket with blankets so that his head would be supported, and swim back and forth in front of him so that he could watch her splash and wave. The reflections in the lake would be a mingling of many colors: his mother’s skin and hair; the mountains and dock; sky and the houses along the shore. And then there was the color of the water itself. Ever-changing. While the dock and houses and his mother would absorb the light that bounced off the water.

From the instant her son was born, Yvonne was fascinated by him. No one had told her it would be like this. How it moved her—the softness of his downy head in the hollow between her neck and shoulder, that feather of breath against her skin. With astonishment she watched Caleb’s face as he sucked pale strands of milk from her breasts. She was the only one who could do that for him—Helene might bathe him or change his diaper, but she was the one who connected her son to life with an intensity that shut out all else, even those God awful lonely-attacks. Her hair took on a new shimmer, and she smiled when people commented on the softness in her features.