Homework actually begins to be fun-time at home. After dinner, Bert opens a beer and Wills spreads his work over the kitchen table. Bert leaves Wills alone till he’s stuck, then comes charging in. It’s like Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence. Wills will end up begging to do the next part and Bert will keep pushing him off till Wills starts to be mad, then takes over and finishes with joy.
Bert likes to smoke cigars, the most vile cigars I’ve ever smelled. When he moved in, I told him he couldn’t smoke those things in the house. Then I told him he couldn’t smoke in the car either, even when I’m not with him. When he can’t stand it any longer, he’ll go outside and take a walk to have his ‘stogie.’ Invariably, Wills wants to join him. So now I’ve made a new rule: ‘no stogie walk’ until Wills is in bed. I don’t know why Bert puts up with all this.
With each new rule, and there are many, Bert just tilts his head, looks at me to see how serious I am, then shrugs his massive shoulders. I hate bringing up any of these rules. I see how he suffers. I also don’t want to lose him. How often does a woman get a chance at a man like this one?
Bert plays in a basketball league of local Germans and Americans. This is the kind of thing he really likes. Wills loves to watch him. Bert plays like a bull in a china shop, none of the usual slinking around of basketball players. He’ll just dribble, watching for someone to whom he can pass, and if nothing comes up, he’ll find the smallest hole and charge right through it. He has several impressive shots besides a right-and left-hand lay up – especially a stop-and-jump shot with one hand.
I learn the names of these things from watching and having them explained to me after each game. Before, I didn’t know a thing about basketball. Sports, especially team sports, were not exactly favored in our family.
Afterward, Bert likes ‘goin’ out with the boys.’ They go to one of the local Stüben and have a few beers, smoke cigars, and participate in some good old-fashioned male camaraderie crap.
He’ll come home a bit silly, usually bearing some goofy thing he’s picked up, as a love gift, like a beer coaster on which he’s written ‘Bert loves Kate.’ Then he’ll climb in bed and fall right to sleep. I can’t bring myself to ask him to stop.
At Christmas, I talk Bert into coming to the mill and having Christmas with the family. I know he’ll like it: the stuff about the mill that I hated will be just his thing. I tell him that we’ll chop down and steal our Christmas tree as we do every year. Dad will write about it later, in a book called Tidings. I’m Maggie in that book.
Bert fits right in with the family. The morning after we arrive, he’s padding around the main room in a sweatsuit and bare feet. Nobody, not even Dad, walks around at the mill in bare feet. The floor is freezing. Bert’s feet just don’t seem to feel the cold. Bert’s enthusiastic about everything – the pond, the hills, the dark mystical quality of the Morvan, the whole family.
He says it’s the closest thing to Oregon he’s found in Europe, and, in some ways, it might even be better. He connives with the tree-napping, helps mount a ten-footer in the corner next to the fireplace, puts on the highest balls and wraps the lights and garlands around it. He works right in with the family, as if he’s always been there.
Late one evening, after Christmas, when everyone has gone to bed, I have a few moments alone with Dad.
‘What do you think of Bert, Dad?’
‘Well, to be honest, I’m not sure he isn’t a member of the family who’s been hiding out on us. I can look at Robert, Matt, and Bert and see them as brothers. I think he’s terrific. What do you think of him?’
‘You remember what you said when I was considering divorcing Danny and I asked you, long distance, what love was?’
‘I’ll never forget it. I was very upset. I didn’t want you to divorce. Now it seems to have worked out, but I still feel sorry for Danny.’
‘Don’t worry about Danny. He’s living a yuppie life in Venice, California. But that isn’t what I want to talk about.
‘You said love was admiration, respect, and passion. I thought you weren’t being helpful, but you were. Do you remember what you said about having all three?’
‘Yup.’
‘Well, now I know I don’t have to die to go to heaven.’
But I did.
3
By now, Bert’s moved into my place with most of his junk, and we need more privacy. We need a bedroom to ourselves.
One of the teachers tells us about an apartment up on the hill overlooking town. We go see it. Although it isn’t perfect, it’s the right price and gives us just about what we want. It’s second floor again with an outside metal spiral staircase. We can also enter through the front door, up a real marble staircase on the inside, but then we need to pass through Frau Zeidelman’s part; she’s the owner of the place. We decide to use the outside staircase, unless we’re desperate – ice, or snow, or something like that.
The apartment’s basically a corridor, with rooms on each side. The rooms on one side open onto a terrace looking out over the town to the lake. It’s a beautiful view. On that side we decide to put the living-room, our bedroom and Wills’ bedroom. On the other side is the toilet-room with one of those crazy German toilets where the shit sits on a platform so you can inspect it while it smells up the entire room before you flush.
But it’s clean, everything is ungodly clean, and well-built in the German style, with double windows that swing open in all kinds of weird ways with levers and locks. The doors are so big and heavy, fitted so tightly, you could cut your fingers off without trying.
Because we’re the school romance, everybody on the faculty pitches in with furniture, even some of the parents, so that in no time, we have the place nicely furnished. I haven’t felt so part of a place since we lived in Idylwild.
Bert hates to sleep in a bed. There’s more than a little hippy in him. He wants a mattress on the floor. He usually gives in to me but not on this one.
I’ve got to admit it’s comfortable, and it helps my back, but getting up and out of this ‘floor bed’ in the morning is almost more than I can manage. Unless he gives me a push or a pull, I have to spin around on my knees and crawl out backwards. Also, it’s hard to make. I honestly don’t think Bert ever made a bed in his life. I need to show him how to make hospital-type corners that won’t come out, and then how to fold the top sheet over the covers. He thinks it’s all very amusing.
Because he stretches out in the evenings on the bed to read – says he can’t read or think in a chair – it’s usually a mess again before I climb in anyway. His idea of a great evening is slipping into his gray sweatsuit, then flopping on the bed with a copy of Stars and Stripes or the Herald Tribune and nibbling on some of those big, fat German pretzels while slugging down a beer or two.
Lots of times, Wills snuggles in beside him, and I have the house to myself. I’ll sit in the living-room and read something and pretend I’m Mom. Later, after Wills has fallen asleep, I’ll take him down the hall to the toilet, then to his own bedroom.
After I’ve tucked him in, most times I go back to our bed. Bert half wakes and softly explores all over me, mumbling and singing in his half-sleep. If I want to, I only need to show some interest and we’re off. If I’m tired or just not interested, it doesn’t take much, and his consciousness, or whatever it is, will slowly recede, and he’ll roll on his back and snore quietly.
When summer comes, Bert’s crazy about going to Greece. Danny and I’ve made a deal: I can take Wills with me to Europe, provided he stays with Danny through the summer. Actually, by the terms of the divorce, Danny could have stopped me from taking Wills out of the country at all.
Danny has a new job, a good one, selling stainless steel, and has