As far as I’m concerned, women notice that kind of thing more quickly than men. Or at least they are crazy enough to bring it up, and when that happens everything goes downhill. “Do you still love me?” “Uhhhh.” It takes a second too long to answer. Busted. What a terrible actor Georg is. Just say this, for God’s sake: “Of course I love you! What kind of a question is that?” Then we’d have had a little more time to figure things out. The way it happened, it was already over between them before there was any chance to save it.
That’s what he was going to do at first. He had pangs of Christian guilt, felt it in his genes, I guess. He wanted to save his family. “We can’t see each other anymore. I just had a child with her, and I have to give her—and our relationship—another chance. For the child.”
I had to wait. All through the painful waiting period, I was sure they would work it out. That’s the way you are when you are in love. You’re not sure of yourself and you just keep telling yourself, Sure, no problem, he’ll be back. I didn’t even tell my then husband. Either he didn’t want to notice or he actually didn’t notice anything. There wasn’t much to notice anyway.
We hadn’t even had sex one time before we left our partners. That’s why it’s always amazed me how well that aspect of our relationship functions. In fact, it’s always getting better. I’ve never experienced what it’s like to have sex with the same person for such a long time. Thanks, Mother!
I’m convinced that people come together only because of sex—even if it’s just because they think you will be a good fit in bed. Because of genetics—you can smell it. And then it does turn out to be a fit as good as a couple of trapeze artists. If you have a good sense of smell and don’t ruin it by smoking, you’ll find the best genetic match—someone with whom you can perform sexual acrobatics. I’m totally convinced of that. I must have smelled it. Everything. His sexuality. His ability as a provider. We never talked about money or sex. Our love was just there, and everything made sense in retrospect. Though nothing did at the start. I read a quote somewhere—I think it was from Goethe, though it could just as easily have been from Yoda—that went something like this: Love is just a romantic philosophical superstructure that permits us to avoid admitting to ourselves that we just want to get into someone’s pants. He put it somewhat more eloquently, but I can’t find the exact quote. Maybe I just dreamed that I read it. But I believe the sentiment nonetheless. It’s the key to all the craziness that happens between fully grown adults.
My husband isn’t physically attractive at all. Obviously love has nothing to do with looks. Fuck all of you with your my-dream-man-should-look-like-this-or-that bullshit, your star signs and height and hair color requirements. That’s not the way love works. The first thing I noticed about him—and that stood out in a negative, though interesting, way—was his fucked-up elbow. The first time I met him he was wearing short sleeves. Strong white arms with hair on them, and then a strange crippled elbow—there was some sort of cyst or tumor sticking out, covered with scars. The Phantom of the Opera, except only at the elbow!
I asked very directly what it was. I always do that in the heat of the moment because I’m worried the person has already noticed I’m staring. It turned out to be an affliction from childhood. He broke his arm once, and all winter long he had to take the bus alone to the clinic where he was doing his physical therapy. And one time after an ice storm he got off the bus and slipped and fell on the newly healed elbow. It had to be operated on several times after that because he’d shattered all the bones. They never managed to reconstruct it properly, and that’s why there’s a piece of bone that sticks out like a shark fin. That made an impression on me straightaway.
After the arm business, I noticed a big scar across his cheekbone. The second thing I asked him was where he got that scar. And that one was from cancer. Shortly before we met he’d had skin cancer. Nothing serious. It was discovered early enough that they were able to remove the entire melanoma before it spread, and that was that. Well, except for the fact that in the back of his head he would always remember how death had come knocking. After my very first conversation with him I knew that we belonged together and also that I would end up burying him. I’m going to be a grieving cancer widow. He told me that he comes from a family with a history of cancer. Members of his family either died of cancer or managed to beat various forms of it to earn a brief reprieve. I knew what the story was and what this great love of mine was bringing with him—even if perhaps I understood only subconsciously.
At the front of my consciousness I thought to myself that we would end up working together. What a great gallery owner! What a great guy! But what an odd set of icebreakers. First, childhood injuries. Second, cancer in the family. It pretty much says everything about our relationship. He also asked me about the car accident in which my three brothers died. Death was intertwined with our love right from the start. One of the first things we did as a couple was to fill out organ donor cards and write and sign living wills and actual wills. For us, that was the height of romance.
Georg sits down at his laptop in the kitchen and scans Spiegel Online to see if anything has changed in the world in the last few minutes. Liza wanders around grumbling. She’s bored.
“What should I do now, Mama? I’m bored.”
“See if anything is missing. Drinks, perhaps?”
“Oh yeah, what do you want to drink?”
The same answer we give every day comes from Georg and me in perfect harmony: “Tap water.”
We never drink alcohol in front of the kids—for the sake of setting a good example. And sugary drinks are strictly forbidden at our place—both for the usual anti-American reasons and because of the fact that they are totally unhealthy. Why would you drink something that amounts to candy when you’re thirsty? Sweets exacerbate your thirst. It’s like a form of torture. How can anyone pay good money for drinks that actually make you more thirsty? It’s like giving Jesus vinegar and gall to drink when he was thirsty on the cross. Torture upon torture.
She climbs up onto the counter again to get glasses out of the cabinet. She jumps back down, fills the glasses too full, and carries them to the table while trying to keep them from spilling. I have to stop myself from saying something. Bad, bad to be a mother and want to comment on everything a kid does. You feel it coming on and then the impulse hits you. Terrible, terrible, terrible.
“Can you please put a trivet on the table, too, my child?”
Now that my husband is fully awake, I leave my daughter in his care. I say good-bye. They know the drill. They’re free to do what they wish until I’m back. I’ll be there and back quickly; it’s not far. I turn off the burner under the pan as I walk out—don’t want the two of them to go up in flames in the apartment while I’m unable to keep an eye on them. Gas stoves are dangerous. I won’t let fire take any more of my relatives.
“See you soon, you nut jobs.”
Neither of them answers. That’s the way it is when the routine is so well rehearsed.
I drive to my therapist’s office in another section of town. I go three times a week for an hour-long session—though an hour to a therapist is fifty minutes in normal human time, no more, no less. I go there to work out my everyday life, and I think I’d have died many times over without my therapist. She has often saved my life—psychologically speaking. In my daughter Liza’s mind, it’s just Mama going to see her weird doctor. She’s not interested in what I do there. I hope she waits a long time to ask, too, because the older she is the better I’ll be able to explain to her what it is. “Mama goes there so she doesn’t get on your nerves, my child, and so she doesn’t weigh you down with her own issues. That way you can live more freely.”
The drive is usually a pain. But my therapist, Frau Drescher, says that’s part of