Just Call Me Superhero (22 page)

“Why? You have a chance with that girl.”

“Nice of you, but not a chance in hell, Tammy. I think I’m going crazy. People are trying to tell me weird things. Look for example at that girl in the wheelchair again. Do we look similar?”

“Maybe.”

“But she has black hair.”

“It’s dyed, you idiot.”

“No,” I said. Even though I immediately believed her.

She reached out her hand and tussled my hair. “I think you and your friends all look a little alike.”

“You did not just say that!”

“You’re so sweet, and the princess must have understood immediately that you two would make a very effective couple.”

“What are you talking about?”

She suddenly shrunk back and pushed me toward the house. “Go talk to her,” she said.

The feeling of loss I felt when she slid out of my arms was insufferable. And I wasn’t planning to suffer it. I pulled her back to me.

“I love her but I’m afraid of her,” I said. “She’s a much worse monster than I am. And even though I know that, it still pulls at me when I look at her. I want to take her in my arms and carry her through the world so she doesn’t have to cry anymore. So nobody has to cry anymore.”

“You’re a true superhero,” said Tammy, and as hard I tried I couldn’t hear any sarcasm in her voice this time.

I have no idea how much longer we stood there in the garden before I hit on the idea to put my hand under her dress and realized when I did that her ass was ice-cold.

“Let’s go inside,” I said and we walked around the house. We didn’t want to go in by the patio because there were too many people standing there, and the front door was also no good, it was completely blocked. Tammy took me around another corner, on the side of the house, to a spiral staircase. The steps wobbled and creaked feebly beneath our feet, but then we were standing in my attic room, though my joy was premature. Marlon was lying in the double bed. Next to him was Ferdi.

“Ferdi!” screamed Tammy shrilly. I’d bet anything that she’d completely forgotten him. She’d forgotten that she even had a son. Ferdi didn’t wake up, but Marlon could no longer pretend he was asleep.

“He wanted to come with me,” he said. And the helplessness in his voice was as ill-suited to him as the look on his face, the same look he’d had on his face at the train station when we left Berlin for Marenitz. “Then he fell asleep here.”

Tammy rocked back and forth and stared at Marlon with her eyes wide open. He smiled pitifully past her.

“It’s fine,” I said and lifted Ferdi up. He was sweaty again and smelled like rye bread. I nuzzled his hair then nodded at Marlon as if he could see, wished him goodnight, and carried Ferdi down to his room.

“I want to have one of my own someday,” I said after Tammy had tucked in her son and pulled the door to his room closed from outside.

“Take this one,” said Tammy.

I
wasn’t planning to sleep at all. How would it even be possible with the noise downstairs coming through the floor of Tammy’s bedroom, it was so loud that I was afraid it might lift up the floor. I didn’t think anyone could hear anything. I was woozy, the walls were spinning, we were all over one another, everywhere all at the same time, I couldn’t tell up from down. It felt like gravity had dissipated and I was stuck to the ceiling like a fly, and I kept reaching my hand out to Tammy until she pulled away and squeezed a pillow between us.

“That’s enough,” she said brusquely. “I can’t take anymore.”

I found it sweet that she thought a pillow could stop me. I pulled it away and threw it toward where I assumed the floor was. I pressed her forehead to my shoulder the way the guys with graying temples dressed in black had done downstairs in the living room. She was wet and salty from head to toe. I wondered why she was still trembling. Then I realized she was crying, and I couldn’t do anything but hold her in my arms and wait until it stopped. I did it with every ounce of patience I had in me, and didn’t think once about how much would finally be enough.

I
woke up when Claudia knocked on the door and asked if Tammy knew where I was. Tammy lay with her face in the pillow, all I could see were bushels and bushels of tangled hair. I gently shook her shoulder, nothing happened. For a second I thought about how Claudia would react if I answered.

I waited until Claudia’s footsteps retreated, then kissed Tammy on her left shoulder blade, right where a lizard was tattooed. She mumbled something and tried to hit me and caught my nose with her elbow. Then she sat abruptly up in bed. With her smeared face she looked a bit like a clown.

She looked at me and her eyes cleared. Then she jumped out of bed.

“You have to get out of here!”

I sighed. She peered into the hallway and then shoved me out of the room.

I ran up to the attic. The clothes that I’d grabbed off the floor and thrown on stuck to my skin. The fact that Marlon would be waiting for me under the roof didn’t bother me. I wanted to tell him everything. Since he couldn’t even see me, it would make it easier. Then he’d say something and I could go on with my life.

Marlon wasn’t there. His travel bag wasn’t there. The bed was made. On the nightstand was one of my socks.

I stumbled down the stairs.

“Claudia! What the hell?”

The kitchen was empty.

I ran through the rooms. Where the tables had stood, the tiles were gleaming again. The dishwasher was on. I scratched the back of my neck. Then I went upstairs again and looked in all the rooms except Tammy’s. Nobody was there. No Friedrich, no Richard. No sign of Janne. Not even Claudia or Evgenija. And no Ferdi.

This must have been what it felt like to go crazy.

I heard a scraping noise out in the garden. I opened the patio door and immediately wished I could close it again. But he had already turned around.

“Hello, Dirk,” I said, jammed in the half-open door.

He was holding a huge blue plastic bag in his hands. He leaned down and picked something up and tossed it into the bag. I had the feeling that I’d already been part of a similar scene a few days before.

“I didn’t know that you were here.” I shielded my face from the sun with my hand. Only now did I realize I’d forgotten my sunglasses. I apologized.

“No problem.” He looked at me in a way meant to telegraph how cool he was with it. “We actually spoke yesterday.”

“Really?” Out of surprise I took my hand away from my face.

“Of course. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to come earlier to help out. I had to be in court, there was no way around it.”

“No problem,” I said repeating his words. “And you were here the whole time yesterday?”

He let the bag drop to the ground and came up the steps onto the patio. He put out his arms and hugged me so tightly I had to fight for air.

“Let me say this again in peace and quiet. I’m very sorry. Your father must have been a wonderful man. I feel for you guys.”

I nodded, then freed myself and gratefully created a bit of space between us. He went back to the garbage bag.

“Wait!” I called, worried that he too might disappear into thin air. I wanted to ask him about the others but I didn’t know how.

At that moment I heard the familiar sound of tires on the gravel driveway, car doors closing, the click of heels on the flagstones.

“Breakfast!” called Evgenija and Claudia simultaneously.

F
erdi had asked whether we could eat on the patio. I hadn’t heard him ask for anything during all the time I’d been here. Together with Dirk I carried a round table out. Claudia filled a bamboo bowl with rolls and croissants from a paper bag as big as a child.

“Uh,” I said. “Where are my . . . ” She looked at me. I didn’t know how to ask her about them. If she realized how hysterical I was becoming she’d definitely start worrying.

“Your . . . ?”

“Yes.”

She smiled with her broad mouth. Her eyetooth was red with lipstick. “They had to catch an early train. We took them to the station in two cars. Where did you sleep? The only room we didn’t look for you in was the garage. Is that where you were?”

“Yeah.”

She jabbed me in the ribs. I held her hand.

“Claudia,” I said. “I don’t deserve you.”

“I know.” She put marmalade jars on a tray and handed it to me. The milk and coffee pot she gave to Dirk, who was waiting next to me.

“Now go,” she said to him because he didn’t budge and was standing there staring at her with his mouth open. “Have you never seen me before or what?”

I went out quickly. Ferdi was tipping back on his chair the same way I always used to. But he couldn’t yet do it very well. He looked as if he might tip over at any second and hit his head on the stone slabs. I tried to imagine what would happen then. I grabbed his chair at the exact point that it started to go over. Ferdi didn’t even realize he was going to fall. He was annoyed until I picked him up and put him on my shoulders.

“Stay,” said Ferdi from above. “All the others need to go, but you should stay.”

“I’ll stay,” I said. “Another whole day.”

I
n the end I stayed two days, a whole day longer than Claudia and Dirk, a half day longer than Tammy’s mother. Claudia and Dirk had to work. Dirk waited next to the open passenger door while Claudia hugged first Tammy and then her mother. Then she put her arms out toward me, reconsidered, and pinched my cheek.

“You don’t always have to hurt me, Mother,” I said.

She peered into my eyes and shook her head as if I’d done something wrong again. As if I’d done everything in my life wrong. Everyone watched closely. This wasn’t the moment to ask her questions.

“Drive carefully,” I said and then they were gone.

Mama Jenny kept practicing a Russian poem with Ferdi right up to her departure. I didn’t ask whether I should go with her to the airport. Ferdi didn’t go, either. I held him in my arms as if he was three instead of six so his Ukrainian grandmother could kiss him goodbye without bending down. I couldn’t shake the feeling that she still looked at him skeptically, like there was something that bothered her about him. In essence she looked at him the same way Claudia looked at me.

She kissed me three times on the cheek then, with an impish smile, she ripped off my sunglasses.

It took my breath away.

She tossed the glasses to her feet and stepped on first one lens and then the other with her heels. The glass shattered. Evgenija swept the shards aside with her foot and got into the car as Tammy honked impatiently. Tammy didn’t see a thing. I put Ferdi down. He avoided looking at me.

“That grandma, huh?” I said. I was happy to be alone for a moment at last. Nearly alone. Ferdi leaned against my legs and oddly enough it didn’t bother me one bit.

We were both asleep on the couch when Tammy got home. I sensed her shadow on my face even through my new glasses, and woke up.

“Your mother isn’t too thrilled about your career as a gold digger, eh?” I whispered because Ferdi was still asleep. “She no doubt had great hopes for you, a distinguished academic track, and now you’re just sitting around in this crap town going gaga. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“It’s none of your business. Is this yours?”

“Did you try to trick him? Did you want to stay in Germany? But the era when a girl like you would be willing to get pregnant so easily is long gone. When I saw your mother I knew immediately that you didn’t need to do that.”

“
He
tricked
me
,” said Tammy wearily. “He was apparently sure he was sterile. I thought maybe he’d had a vasectomy after you. A child was the last thing I wanted. And now he’s gone forever and I’m left to dole out the soup. So tell me, is this yours?”

Now I noticed that Tammy was holding a medium-sized blue bag in her hands.

“No.”

“Did Claudia forget it maybe?”

“Maybe.” Then I sat up and carefully pushed Ferdi’s feet off my groin and took the bag. I knew immediately who it belonged to. My heart was in my mouth.

“I’ll call her,” I mumbled, pushing past Tammy and running upstairs.

I locked the door and put a chair in front of it. I sat down on the bed, but it didn’t seem secure enough so I sat on the chair blocking the door. I closed my eyes, felt around for the zipper, and opened the bag. Then I pulled out the camera, turned it on, and pushed play.

H
ello, people,” said the guru into the lens, smiling feebly. The camera seemed to wobble in his hands, the picture was awful, and his facial expression was strained. He pulled his hat frantically off his head. The camera shook even worse. Instead of turning it off I stared with wide eyes at the display.

“Hello, children,” said the guru and something happened to his eyes. They glazed over strangely. I felt a sense of embarrassment well up in me. I didn’t think men should cry.

“Hello, dear children,” said the guru. “You know by now that you aren’t my only ones. You’re just my . . . the most interesting. I love you all. You don’t have to believe me. You have no reason to trust me. But I can sleep a little easier knowing that you at least have each other.”

The camera slipped out of my hands and I grabbed it back. There wasn’t much to see. The guru looked at me from the display and cried. I shifted impatiently in my seat.

“Don’t think too poorly of me,” he finally managed to say.

At that moment my thumb pushed the fast-forward button. I didn’t want to hear him anymore.

The guru’s face grimaced in fast-motion. It was impossible to tell whether he was talking or just silently stewing over his thoughts. His hand flew up to his forehead, the hat landed back on his head at some point and then was taken off again.

I had no patience. I slowed the playback to normal speed again when Janne’s face appeared. Janne in the garden next to Marlon, who was running his finger along the wheel of her wheelchair, a gesture that made me turn red. One of the first recordings we did together. They looked good, both of them. But it didn’t help them. If the guru had his way they would be each other’s half-siblings.

And mine as well.