In the River Darkness (7 page)

I met Mia on the way home. As always, she was wearing black clothes and had her arms crossed over her chest as if she were freezing. But it was already the end of May.

“Hi,” I said casually, catching up with her. “Haven’t seen you in a while.” And it was true: since our train wreck of a conversation two weeks ago, we hadn’t exchanged a single word.

“Hi, Alex.” Her voice sounded hesitant. Cautious. No wonder, after I practically threw her out the last time we talked.

But that was before Grandma had collapsed on the way to the bakery. “Overexertion,” the doctor had said, prescribing her some pills. “Quack,” Grandma said, and didn’t take them.

I sighed inwardly. It was probably best to get it over with. “You were right about what you said recently,” I said without any introduction, “that my grandmother shouldn’t go shopping by herself anymore.”

“Yeah,” Mia nodded, and just kept walking. Did she expect me to get on my knees and beg for forgiveness? Okay, I made a mistake. I’d just admitted it, hadn’t I?

“It’s just that I don’t have so much time to take care of her,” I explained as I tried to keep pace with her. “Next week our swimming pool opens again for the summer. I always work there part-time, save little kids from drowning and stuff like that.”

She didn’t seem the least bit impressed. “And why does that concern me, superhero?” she asked.

Ouch, that hit home. “Well, that’s why I’m looking for someone who can help look out for Grandma. Just a couple of hours a week, you know, go shopping with her, help in the garden, keep her company.”
Convince her to take her pills after all.
“And you got along with her so well.” I tried to flatter Mia’s vanity.

“You mean that kind of stuff is women’s work, right?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. Apparently, Mia had misunderstood my compliment, because she stepped up her pace, forcing me to practically jog along next to her.

“Yeah . . . no . . . ” I didn’t know what to say, and that almost never happens. “I only meant that she likes you. And my grandmother doesn’t like a lot of people, believe me.” I stood still. The whole thing was too dumb. Did I really need to run after this bitch and beg her to take the job? No, absolutely not!

My father was right, problems should stay in the family; we shouldn’t involve any outsiders who didn’t have any idea what was going on in the first place. The only trouble was that I didn’t have the slightest idea how we could get everything under control by ourselves. Didn’t matter.

“Just forget it!” I sniffed, and headed off in the opposite direction.

“Hey, wait a minute!”

I turned around. Mia stood a little way off and tugged on her hair. She suddenly seemed self-conscious. “I didn’t say I didn’t want to do it, did I?”

Can anyone understand women?

“So you do want the job?” I asked skeptically. “I can’t pay you all that much.” She studied me with that unfathomable expression. I had no idea what she wanted all of a sudden, but she certainly wasn’t doing it for the money.

“I don’t want any money,” she said. “When should I start?”

The scent of suntan lotion on bare skin blended with the slightly stagnant smell of river water. You might almost think you were somewhere in Florida, where alligators sunned themselves in the canals of the Everglade swamps.

The frying oil sizzled. The detested smell of freshly cooked French fries rose to my nose and settled over the white beaches and everything else. I stood behind the deep fryer of the snack bar, sweating like a beast in the fields. Outside, the May sunshine beat down from the sky. It was the first truly hot day of the year, and the pool was correspondingly full.

Our swimming pool was old-fashioned in every way. The pool itself had been built in the 1920s and was filled by an inlet of the river. Even the changing rooms were from a different era. They were made of wood and had quite a few holes—most of them eagerly made with pocketknives so boys could watch girls as they changed. I could still remember my own excitement as I pressed my face against the warm, bleached wood, the feeling of doing something wonderfully forbidden as I peered through the narrow gap. Back then, girls seemed like creatures from another planet, mysterious and untouchable. Actually, not much has changed in that respect.

The day dragged on. Kids shrieked. Occasionally, they were reprimanded by their mothers, who lay on beach towels sunning themselves and chatting with their girlfriends. The shade of the trees moved across the trampled grass; soon it would be a complete wasteland.

From my spot at the snack bar, I had a good view of the diving boards. I watched the twelve-year-old boys endlessly doing pikes and flips from the high dive, or at least trying to. I could vaguely remember what it felt like when the days still stretched out before us, free and endless, and we had nothing better to do than to practice diving with our friends.

“Hey, Alex. Do you still have chocolate ice cream?” My buddy Wolf sauntered up to the counter with a wide grin on his face. “What’s up, man? Enjoying the beautiful day?”

I muttered something incomprehensible and slammed his ice cream onto the counter. “You’re much too aggressive, Alex. I think you urgently need a different job,” Wolf suggested. Unfortunately, he seemed to be in a very talkative mood today. “So tell me, what’re you going to do when you’re done with school?” he asked as he ate his ice cream with obvious pleasure.

“Don’t know exactly,” I mumbled, and started scrubbing the countertop. “Community college, maybe. Or find some job or training program.”

“I always thought you wanted to get out of here. Go on big trips. That’s what you used to talk about all the time.”

Yeah, I used to talk about wanting to go to sea practically every minute of every day. I was twelve years old. Everything seemed so simple to me back then.

“And I still want to!” I yelled at Wolf. “But it isn’t that easy, get it?” It would have been too much to explain to him about Jay and Grandma—that I
couldn’t
leave—because if I did, my family would fall apart.

“Man, are you on edge today!” Wolf threw a few coins on the counter. “Here. When you’ve got yourself under control again, come down to the bridge for a beer later.” Then he took off.

I hated the stench of oily French fries that clung to me after work. When my shift was finally over, I jumped from the high dive and hoped for the feeling it used to give me. But it wasn’t there, not a trace of it.

Then I swam a few laps freestyle. But even the water couldn’t wash away the smell of stale frying oil that had attached itself to my skin.

When I got home, I found Grandma and Mia in the garden. Mia came to our house often now, almost every day. Since then, the seasoning of our food had improved considerably. Grandma’s mood, too.

At the moment, they were planting green beans. That is, Mia was planting the beans while Grandma sat on her old kitchen chair and talked—she was probably giving orders. They both looked rather content.

I was about to call to them and say hello when this stupid thought occurred to me: I wondered what they talked about when they were by themselves. Quietly, I ducked behind a blackberry hedge—and shrank back in disgust. In the thorns hung a fish skeleton. The sun-bleached bones were still complete, and the half-rotted head stared at me with sunken eyes. The rancid, nauseating stench of dead fish filled my nose. My God, that was disgusting! I tried to breathe through my mouth so I could concentrate on Mia and Grandma again.

It was a little like peering into those changing cabins as a kid. I could feel the hairs on my arms lifting. Because what I heard was something I definitely didn’t want to hear. But it was too late.

“ . . . And then she met Eric,” Grandma was telling her. “He was good looking back then, with a big, wide smile. And broad shoulders to lean on. He radiated a calm that Katarina never had. It was like she was born without it, like some other children are born with a finger or a toe too few. But Eric never saw her restlessness as a fault. He told me once that he felt alive when he was with my daughter.” Deep in thought Grandma added, “It was as if they each had something the other was missing . . .”

“And what happened then?” Mia asked as she continued to dig energetically, her eyes trained on Grandma. The hole for the next plant was already so deep it looked like she wanted to dig her way to China.

“Things happened the way they had to. One morning, I found Katarina in the bathroom bent over the toilet getting sick. When she saw me she cried: ‘Mama, what should I do?’ I was flabbergasted. My sixteen-year-old daughter had gotten herself pregnant. ‘You’ll get married, of course,’ I told her when I could speak again and had pushed the damp hair off her face. ‘You’re lucky that your Eric is a respectable young man. He’ll marry you.’ But Katarina just looked at me. ‘And if don’t want a baby yet?’ she asked. ‘I want to see the world, I want . . .’ Katarina hammered her fists on the floor. Of course it didn’t help any.” Grandma sighed and stared at the poor bean plants, as if it was all their fault.

Even from behind my bush, I could see that Mia had the word “abortion” on the tip of her tongue. Fortunately for her, she closed her mouth again—in Grandma’s presence a very wise decision.

She, in the meantime, was reporting how she had managed the situation with her rebellious daughter: “‘Do you want to ruin your life, child?’ I asked her. ‘Shake the nonsense out of your head and thank the dear Lord for your Eric. You’ll be a good wife to him and a good mother to your child!’—‘But what about me? What about me?’ Katarina screamed. It was a scream and a sob all at once, and even today I get a chill up my spine when I think about it.”

Grandma really did shiver then. “I told her that she wasn’t the first and certainly wouldn’t be the last to have this happen to her. And that now she had to lie in the bed she’d made for herself, that she had to make the best of it, like all women do.”

I could hear the blood pounding in my ears. I wished I hadn’t heard anything, or that I could forget it all again. Because it was my fault: my mother had been pregnant with
me
and that had ruined all her plans. I had stolen from her the life she had always dreamed of. And one day, she had left us to get it back again.