Sea Air (2 page)

“Yes, of course,” I nearly shouted into the phone. “No problem. I’m on my way. Thank you, Vera!” I hung up and threw my hands in the air. “I’m sorry, Herbert. That was our secretary. They need me back at the office right away. It sounds urgent. See you later!”

Herbert gave me a wet kiss on the cheek and whispered in my ear, “What a shame. See you soon!”
As I rushed away, my phone rang again.

“Nele, have you gone nuts?” Sandra asked. “Why are you calling me Vera?”

“I’m sorry. I ran into Herbert. You know, that weird guy who thinks he’s irresistible. He wanted to drag me off to coffee. Your timing was perfect. Sorry!” I fumbled in my handbag for a tissue so I could wipe Herbert’s saliva from my cheek.

Sandra laughed. “Poor Nele! Why not just tell him to get lost?”

“I don’t dare. Anyway, he doesn’t mean any harm.”

“There’s no helping you if you aren’t going to tell him you’re not interested. But that’s not why I called. We’re going to the pool later today, and Anneke wants to bring Paula along. Is that okay?”

“Sure. I’ll drop off her bathing suit. Are you home?”

“Almost.”

I called Vera and told her I’d be out of the office for the rest of the day.

As I packed up Paula’s bathing suit at home, I wondered whether I should go to the pool, too—a little exercise wouldn’t kill me. But I quickly rejected the idea. An afternoon all to myself was an opportunity too good to resist.

At Sandra’s house, I found my friend sitting on her terrace, staring into the distance.

“Hello? Where are you?” I put the bag with the bathing suit on a chair.

“Are we doing everything right?” asked Sandra.

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, what exactly are we doing?”

Was Sandra waxing philosophic? “What do you mean?”

“Just . . . we live here and work here and we raise our families, and the whole time the days are going by. Is that how it works? One day everything’s going along fine and the next day, we’re dead?”

I had known Sandra for quite some time, but her questioning her sheltered life was something new. She was happy—or at least I’d always thought of her that way. She had a lovely child, a dreamy husband, and—like Christoph said—a beautiful cottage on the edge of the city, with a yard and delightful neighbors, including Paula and me. Now, if she’d been talking about me—a single mother living in a rental apartment with no yard, dealing with a failed day care center project, and badly in need of a vacation—then I could see the need for questioning. But she wasn’t.

“Sandra, what’s going on?” I patted her knee. “Did something happen?”

“Nothing’s happened. That’s just it! You have no problem with the way things are?”

“Me? What about the way things are?”

“I mean, what would you do right now if you were suddenly free? What if you had the money and the chance to do whatever you liked and be whoever you wanted?” She tilted her head at me.

The question was a bit abrupt. Of course, I’d thought many times before about the countless things I’d rather be doing than sitting around here. But I had never allowed myself to truly dream. I was afraid of how much it would hurt when I woke up and the dream slipped away.

“I’d probably travel and check out the world.”

She nodded. “Exactly! You definitely wouldn’t stick around here, right?”

“Here? No way.” This, at least, was something I felt clear about.

“You see!”

“What do you mean, you see? In my case, leaving would be totally understandable. But you? You’ve got it all! You’ve—”

“I know what I’ve got.” She struck the table with one hand.
Oh Jesus!
I thought.
She’s actually serious.
“But maybe I want something else, too. Can’t I want something new every once in a while?”

“Uh . . . of course.” What else could I say?

It wasn’t that I didn’t get it. No one understood the urge to break free and start over better than I did. But hearing those words from Sandra’s mouth surprised me. It struck me that I didn’t know her as well as I thought.

“I want to go back up north. I miss the sea so much!” Her voice was soft, and she spoke as much to herself as to me.

Sandra had grown up on the North Sea coast, a real Nordic girl. Her studies brought her here, just as mine did. We met as students. Then Christoph came along, and then Sandra’s child . . . That’s how it goes. In a flash: trapped!

“What does Christoph say about all this?”

“He doesn’t know I feel this way, actually. At least, I haven’t told him in so many words. I don’t want to pressure him. His job’s here, his friends. It wouldn’t be fair to tell him I want something else.”

“But you’re so unhappy! Doesn’t that count just as much?”

She shrugged. “Maybe when Anneke grows up . . .”

“Anneke is seven! She won’t be out of the house for another twelve years. By then, you’ll have died of homesickness.”

“This is the life I chose.”

“Just because you chose Christoph and decided to have a child doesn’t mean you have to stay here forever. I’d throw in the towel myself if I had the chance.”

“Really? So what are
you
doing to get yourself out of here?”

She had a point. Who was I to be giving her advice?

Sandra glanced at the clock. “I’d better go get the girls, or it’ll be too late for swimming.”

“Actually, I think I’ll join you. Hang on, I’ll get my stuff.”

I was back in five minutes.

“All right, let’s go.” Sandra gave me a rueful look. “At least there’s water at the pool.”

Poor Sandra!
I thought.

There weren’t a lot of people at the pool, so the girls had the wading area almost to themselves. They flew down the slide and played in the water with their swim noodles, looking quite pleased with themselves and with the world. Sandra and I wandered over to the snack bar and chose a table with a clear view of the pool.

Sandra took a sip of her latte. “When are you taking your vacation?” she asked after a while.

I remembered my awkward conversation with Marco earlier that morning.

“Oh, I think we’ll probably leave at the beginning of school vacation.”

“Where will you go?”

“I don’t know yet. Somewhere quiet. Maybe the sea.” My hand flew to my mouth. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk about the sea in front of you.”

Sandra laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m okay. Anyway, we’re going to the sea, too. The Baltic Sea, near Rügen. We’re staying in a beautiful vacation house with a thatched roof, right on the water. Heavenly! One of Christoph’s colleagues was going to go, but his wife fractured a bone pretty badly and can’t get away. We took the place as soon as we heard.”

“When are you going?” I asked.

“We’ll be gone the two weeks right after school lets out, just like you. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Christoph has a lot of vacation hours to use up.” She slapped the table. “Wait, why don’t you just come with us? We have two extra beds.”

I considered it for a moment, but I didn’t like the idea of being a third wheel. Christoph and Sandra needed time together, and if I went along, I’d just be in the way. If I had a boyfriend, then it might be a different story, but . . .
No guys in the house ever again!
I reminded myself. My decision was firm. But there was no denying that there were times when it would have been handy to have a boyfriend.

“I don’t think so. Go by yourselves. You and Christoph need some quality time.”

“Well, if you change your mind, the offer stands.”

“Thanks. That’s really sweet.”

For a while, we sat and watched our little water bugs play. When they dove under water, all we could see were their cute little butts. Pretty soon, they got tired of the water. Armed with their swimming noodles, they climbed out of the pool and ran toward us with short little steps, bodies trembling and teeth chattering. Sandra and I reached out and wrapped them in big, fluffy towels.

“I’m thirsty,” whined Paula.

“Me, too,” said Anneke. “And I want fries!”

“I want Coke and fries and ice cream and candy!” Paula started to ramp up, and her voice was getting louder. I threw Sandra a look.

She took up the challenge, folding her arms in front of her body and pulling down her lower lip. “I want chocolate, too! A whole bar to myself!”

Their mouths hanging open, our daughters gave each other a look that said,
Have the old people gone totally nuts?
Then a look of comprehension dawned on Anneke. She nudged Paula. “They want us to say please!”

Smart kid!
I thought. Sandra and I waited them out, maintaining our air of displeasure.

“May we
please
have fries and something to drink, Momma?” asked Paula.

“Oh, you want something to eat and drink? Why didn’t you say so?” I headed toward the snack bar in my flip-flops and motioned for the children to follow. Relieved, they tiptoed behind me and even offered to help carry the food back to the table. Paula and Anneke pushed ketchup-soaked fries into their mouths and drank their apple juice without even pausing to chatter. When the food was all gone, Paula wiped a yellow towel across her mouth.

“Am I going with Anneke to Rügen?” Paula asked suddenly. She spoke as casually as if she were asking for another order of french fries, alternately looking at me and then Sandra.

“To Rügen?” I tried to decide how to phrase my answer.

“Anneke’s going to an island in the middle of the sea for summer vacation, and she wants me to go with her. She says she’ll be totally bored without me. And that’s why I should be able to go with her, because it’s much more fun like that. Oh, please, Momma, can I? Please!”

Now I was the one left open-mouthed. My little girl wanted to go on vacation without me. I had always been proud of her independence. I was gradually starting to feel a little freer myself. But this wasn’t a gradual step. She had just passed a major milestone without any warning.

Sandra tried to help. “I already suggested that you two go to Rügen with us, but your mom would like to go somewhere else.”

“That’s okay. But I’d rather go with you guys.”

I cringed.
Don’t take it personally
, I told myself. Of course Paula was right. It would be much more fun for her to go on vacation with a friend than to take a boring trip with just her mother. Still . . .

“Listen, Nele.” Sandra hesitated. “You know, Paula’s suggestion really isn’t a bad idea.”

What? Were they all plotting against me now? I pictured it all clearly: me, alone in my mid-thirties, having been abandoned by child and friends, sitting slumped on a park bench grumpily feeding the ducks, people laughing happily as they passed without a glance, each day exactly like the one before.

“You would have time for yourself,” Sandra was saying. “You could sleep in, take long walks, read books.”

I perked up instantly. What had Sandra just suggested? Sleep in, read novels, walk for pleasure? It felt like a hundred years since I’d done any of those things. Sandra was the smartest of all my friends, and she knew what I needed probably better than anyone. But did it have to be for two whole weeks? Maybe we could try a couple of days and see if I could get used to the idea.

“But what if Paula gets homesick?”

“Are you kidding?” my daughter cut in. “Momma, I’m not a baby! Homesick? I’m not a little kid anymore, you know. Come on, Anneke, let’s go back in the water.” The decision was already made, as far as she was concerned. I wondered if it was really fair to ask my friend to take my child on her family vacation.

But Sandra was grinning broadly. “Looks like we’ve solved one more of the world’s problems!” She looked quite satisfied with herself.

T
he time before vacation passed quickly, at least for me. But Paula got jumpier every day. Each night, she marked off one more square on the calendar. “How many more sleeps till vacation?” she kept asking. By six a.m. the day of her departure, she’d already packed most of her favorite toys in her little backpack: her tiny teddy, Paul; her stuffed dog, Plim; and her Hildegard-Sophie doll. She placed Knut the Moose in my hand. “So you won’t be sad without me,” she said with a critical eye, as if expecting me to break into tears at any moment. That, of course, would have been deeply embarrassing to her. But I thought I was pretty brave.

At about nine, Anneke rang the doorbell. Everyone was in a good mood, and I didn’t want to kill the mood by making a big deal out of their departure, so I hugged Paula quickly and gave her cheek a kiss that she promptly wiped off with the back of her hand. As Paula and Anneke climbed into their seats, Sandra patted my back. “I’ll take good care of her, I promise. Have fun and take good care of yourself. I’ll call when we get there!” Christoph gave a few short beeps of the horn as they drove away, two beaming children waving wildly at the windows, and then I was alone.

What now?
I walked back into the house, clutching Knut to my chest. I wandered from room to room, wondering where to start. I would have liked to climb on my bed, kick my feet in the air, and yell, “I want my daughter back!” But a lack of audience made that kind of drama pointless. The kicking might be good exercise for my legs, but it wouldn’t help my gloomy heart one bit. I decided instead to cook up a batch of rice pudding: a cure that helped with all kinds of ills.

After I’d finished two bowls of pudding, I felt good enough to pack my bags and was even eager to start my solo vacation. I had booked a small apartment on the North Sea, well to the west of where my daughter would be staying on the Baltic Sea, directly on the man-made dike built to protect inhabitants from storm surges. Although I’d visited the coast as a child, I could hardly remember it now. All I knew was that I’d been greatly impressed by the apparent endlessness of the sea. For the first time in my life, I became consciously aware of the horizon. When I asked my father what was beyond it, he’d answered, “The big, wide world.” I decided then and there that I would return one day and find out exactly how the big, wide world looked.

My small car’s luggage compartment was completely loaded. I had indiscriminately stuffed everything from tiny tank tops to heavy wool sweaters into my bags. And of course there was the mandatory waterproof jacket. “You have to prepare for everything on the coast,” Sandra had advised me. “The sun can shine and then the sky can pour buckets, and vice versa. Where I’m from, the weather changes very quickly.” ‘Where I’m from,’ she said
.
I’d always envied this about her—she had a home. When she spoke of her sea, her eyes lit up and she slipped automatically into using north German slang. I liked listening to her stories, and I loved the feelings they conjured up, of warmth and comfort . . . and home.

“You have a home, too,” Sandra said whenever her stories stirred up melancholy in me. It’s true that I was born and grew up someplace, and that I had parents, brothers and sisters, and friends. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that those things would have happened in the same way in any other place. The cities I lived in as a child were all interchangeable for me. Not for Sandra. Nor did my home visits trigger the tingling sensation in my stomach that Sandra fell victim to whenever the flat land of the North Sea country, with its red brick houses, came into her view. The only time I felt that kind of excitement was when I was able to leave home and explore other parts of the country, or other countries altogether. For a while, I’d lived out this wanderlust, traveling a lot—mostly to distant lands. The more countries I saw and the more people I met, the more my love of travel grew. After Paula was born, I pushed all that into the background. But the older and more independent Paula became, and the more time I had for myself again, the more I’d begun to feel that wanderlust. I tried to ignore these feelings, but I failed miserably. I paced within the walls of our apartment like an animal that knows it will never escape.

Now, with Paula on her own vacation, I had at least two weeks to satisfy my squelched desires. I had always imagined that my return to solo travel would be marked by whoops of joy. But I wasn’t cheering. My life was different with Paula in it. And the fact was, I loved having her around, loved showing her things, loved sharing my interests with her.

I tried to shake off my sad thoughts. To distract myself, and to get in the mood for vacation and freedom, I put
The Hits of the ’70s
in my CD player and belted out the words while drumming on my steering wheel. A “High Traffic Congestion” warning broke the mood.
So much for freedom!
I thought.
Leave it to Germany’s highways to crush any dreams of breaking free.
The radio snapped and buzzed at me as I searched for a station that could give me a traffic update. Then it said, “. . . a thirty-mile traffic jam between Kassel and Hanover. Drive safely out there!”

“Thirty miles? And am I at the very beginning of it? ‘Drive safely out there’? Are they kidding?” I started to vent but then made the conscious effort to talk myself down.
Take it easy, and don’t stress. You’ve taken vacations all over the world. At least here, you have air-conditioning.
I turned my CD back on and drummed on my steering wheel, feeling a little better as I worked to shift my mood. I looked left and right, offering an encouraging smile to my fellow sufferers. Bad idea. My gaze met a sweaty, red face contorted with fury.
Who lets himself get so upset over a little traffic jam?
I thought, conveniently forgetting my earlier outburst. When they pulled up a little farther, I saw what was behind his bad mood: two sweat-bathed, screaming toddlers were furiously kicking the back of the car’s front seats.
See, Nele,
I reminded myself,
kid-free days are not a gift to be taken for granted
. I chuckled as my lane moved up half a car-length.

I arrived at the sea several hours later, as the sun was bathing the flat landscape in a warm evening light. I climbed out of the car into a silence that seemed more deafening to me than any noise. The only sound came from the few birds that chirped here and there. Even the wind had died down. I stretched my stiffened limbs and drew fresh sea air deep into lungs that felt weakened by city life.
Yes,
I thought,
this was the right place for me to come to relax.

In my little apartment, I made a strong East Frisian tea, a ritual that seemed necessary after hearing Sandra tell me that this tea, and not local coffee, is what the locals drank.

My cup of tea in hand, I started to explore my little rental. It was decorated in light-colored wood and, I noted with delight, there was even a fireplace. The walls were covered with framed photos that depicted the sea in the various seasons. In some pictures, the water glittered in the sun, and in others, it was raw and whipped into a frenzy. In winter, it was filled with drifting ice floes. The photos made me think about the people whose livelihoods depend directly on the sea, people who must submit daily to its whims. They learn to submit the routines of their life to the forces of nature. Only the constructed dikes successfully stood up against the whims of nature. This was nothing like life in the city, where nature is shut outside and the changes in the weather affect little beyond how the day looks. The weather has nothing to do with whether, or when, I go to the office.

I had to force myself to step onto the fourth-floor balcony. I’ve always suffered from severe acrophobia. As a child, I would panic even when my father lifted me onto his shoulders—while normal children cheered with excitement at being raised up, I would hyperventilate. But here at the sea, the balcony views were fantastic, and I was glad I’d made the effort to go outside and see them. I looked down at the dike and out across the quiet sea. People strolled along the beach in the evening sunlight; red, blue, and yellow beach chairs lay jumbled together in the sand. Ships of every size departed into the open ocean in a line, like pearls strung on a necklace. A large red ball on a string floated several yards in the air. I wondered what it meant.

Since I’d brought nothing to eat, I decided to go find a nice restaurant. But first, I wanted to walk along the water. Grabbing my backpack and camera, I took the short path to the beach. There, I took off my sandals, sat in the still-warm sand, and played in the waves with my toes. I closed my eyes, savoring the mood of the silent, almost-deserted beach. I took long breaths, filling my lungs with clean air. Finally feeling more relaxed, I fell back on the sand, my arms stretched out beside me. The words of a television commercial crossed my mind: “At last, time for me . . .” I pictured a smiling man in expensive clothes falling back against a sand dune and tried to remember which product his image had been used to sell. Coffee? Brand-name clothes? Sunscreen? I figured I’d find out and then propose to the company that instead of showing a stylish, rich young man in their commercials, they should show an overburdened single mom with frizzy hair finally collapsing into a moment of relaxation. A much wider target audience would identify, I was sure. The statistics were on my side. How many dreamy men dressed in Armani were walking around? And just who identified with them? On the other hand, how many harassed, middle-aged women just wanted to let go? Of course, all this would be beside the point if it was a men’s aftershave commercial.

A couple came toward me, their loving eyes on each other as they walked. They stopped and kissed like they would never stop. I wondered how that same couple would act in five years. They’d probably each be walking around with a different partner by then, I figured. I told myself not to be so hateful. I was jealous of their happiness, and I knew it. I missed the joys of love—how it felt to be lucky in love. A couple of times before, I thought I’d found the love of my life. But after a few years, I always found myself alone again. My biggest relationship disaster had brought me Paula, but her father had left us without financial support and, as far as I could tell, hadn’t even thought about us since he’d gone. He didn’t send us money, but we had something better—peace.

Like my private life, my career had experienced a number of twists and turns. For a long time, I worked one temp job after another; hoping one would turn into something permanent. My bosses always told me that I was their most committed worker, but a permanent position was never possible, due to the economy, the general employment situation, or the political environment. “Thanks for understanding,” they’d say, and “We wish you all the best for the future.”

Finally, four years ago, I teamed up with a former classmate, Marco, to start a design and development company with a focus on sustainable urban projects. We had some good contacts in local political circles, and our business started out so well that we were quickly able to hire an office assistant. We won a number of public and small private contracts and threw ourselves into our work. Like so many other businesses during those years, we were extremely successful. We could hardly believe our luck. The tax office couldn’t believe their luck, either, and they decided we could help bail out the treasury. Thanks to our efforts, the national debt shrank significantly. The money they didn’t take kept our three-person staff afloat, with just enough left over for us each to take a vacation every year.

It was enough for us. It would have been even nicer if more of the projects we coordinated actually got built. But we had learned that just because people paid us to design a project didn’t mean they would ever build it. It took months for a design to get approved by all the necessary parties. People praised our proposals as “extremely creative.” But then some decision-maker would decide that the process had been “insufficiently integrated” and conclude that, unfortunately, he couldn’t approve the project. A town’s competing interests sometimes got in the way. Or it might turn out that a similar project had been shot down in a different town, and someone would conclude that the idea had been the problem, that it couldn’t possibly be good, and that “nobody is going to be willing to go down that road here.” One project’s deadlines couldn’t be met because Müller had just gone on vacation and Meier, as usual, had “not been informed about the project,” and Schulze, the only person left who had any authority, unfortunately didn’t feel comfortable signing anything.

Even with all that, we could be content. True, much of our best work landed in the trash as soon as it saw the light of day, but at least we got enough business to keep our doors open. Many people envied the diverse nature of our work. But the more I found myself fighting for projects like the day care center, the more stuck and helpless I felt.

The rumbling of my stomach reminded me that I needed a good meal. I started walking again. It was almost dark by now, and I stopped on the dike to orient myself. I spied a restaurant named The Starfish which was still serving dinner on the patio. I took a place at one of the empty tables and ordered a large crab cake.

I had just started to eat when my cell phone rang.

“Hi, Momma. We were in a traffic jam for a long time, and we’re staying in a great house that’s much nicer than ours, and it’s got straw on the roof, and tomorrow we’re going to the beach, and we just ate, and I had tomato soup and fish sticks and Anneke did, too, and I’m still not tired! Bye-bye!”

“Paula?” I cut in, but she was already gone.

“Nope, it’s Sandra. Paula took off again; she wanted to help Christoph make the beds. How are you doing?”

“Good. You were right. The sea is wonderful.”

“Enjoy it. You’ve earned it. I promise we’ll call again soon. Good night!”

“Sleep well and give Paula a kiss from me. Bye.”

I turned my phone off and ate my crab cake with great enjoyment, smiling as I chewed. Let all those people I had to work with tear each other apart. I was in a different world now, and what they chose to do, or not to do, wasn’t my problem here.