“Thanks,” I said. “It’s very nice of you to think of me.”
“I’m happy that I finally managed to reach you,” she said. I waited. I was less inclined than ever to discuss my conduct over the past year. She wasn’t stupid and understood that on her own.
“How are you, Marek?” she asked, her voice clear again, light and clear, and I could tell that one false word or a false tone would cause her to break down in tears again. I sniffed the tipping point of a nervous breakdown. Not that she was the type to fall apart, but she had her limits, and apparently I still knew her well enough to know where they were.
“How did you find out… ” I asked.
It was simple. She had called our house to try to catch up with me. She had spoken on the answering machine and a very nice man named Dirk had heard the message. He called her back, told her everything, and encouraged her to reach out to me, because in a situation like this I could surely use words of support from a dear old friend.
“Idiot,” I said.
She laughed. “No,” she said. “He just doesn’t know you very well yet.”
“You can drop the ‘yet.’” I said.
She said nothing and I was happy she didn’t try to engage in banter. She asked about my father, held her breath as I told her about him falling off the mountain and breaking his neck, and I heard her gulp loudly several times as I told her about viewing the open coffin. I was happy to be able to tell someone about it.
“I had no idea you had a little brother,” she said after a pause.
“I didn’t really.”
“But now you do.”
“Now I do,” I agreed halfheartedly.
“Can I come to the funeral?”
“No,” I said quickly. “Definitely not. You didn’t even know him, my father I mean.” I kept talking quickly since she wasn’t saying anything. “It’s a hole, this town where I grew up. Everything is weird here. My stepmother is a ridiculously young Ukrainian girl, and Claudia is slowly going crazy, and so am I… ”
“I’d love to help,” said Lucy. “At the very least I could babysit or something. Is your little brother a sweetheart?”
“A total sweetheart.” Suddenly I got angry at her. I couldn’t believe she was using the circumstances to slime her way back into my life. She’d found a moment of weakness, a moment when I had the feeling that things could perhaps be like they used to be. I thought it was insidious, and if anyone had said she meant well it would have just made me angrier.
“He’s very sweet, but you’re never going to babysit him, Lucy.” I heard the way she was taken aback by my change in tone — she hadn’t reckoned with such a rejection after I’d sounded so promisingly open, almost like it used to be. I could sense how her breathing changed at the other end of the line. I didn’t think she deserved any better.
“Don’t you understand that I feel guilty,” came blurting out of her. “Can’t you get it through your head that I was there, too? That nothing will ever be the same for me either?”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” I said wearily. She’d already made this case in countless tiresome letters. I didn’t need her feelings of guilt. I didn’t have any choice then and couldn’t do anything differently now. “I didn’t step between you and the animal because I’m so unbelievably chivalrous,” I said. “You can call me a superhero for all I care, but just bear in mind that I never was one. You’re confusing me with somebody else. It was first and foremost a reflex, and secondly an accident. I was shitting myself and often wished afterwards that I hadn’t done it, in which case it would have been you instead of me. That’s why I don’t want to talk to you, Lucy. I don’t want to have to keep thinking over and over again about deciding between my face and my honor.”
I didn’t hear her crying, but I knew she was, and it pissed me off.
“I’ve told you once and for all that I don’t want to see you anymore,” I said. “Never again. It’s nothing to do with you, I just don’t want to see anyone. I don’t exist anymore, get used to it. My other friends already have. Don’t call me anymore and have a nice life.”
She hung up without answering and I threw the phone against the wall. It popped apart into two pieces, the battery fell out. I shoved all the pieces under the bed and lay back down under the covers. Then I thought of Janne again. I would have talked to Janne because she was different from Lucy. She didn’t come from the world of the undamaged. She was marked like me. You didn’t have to explain things to her. I wanted to talk to her, see her, kiss her. But she didn’t call. Maybe she was trying at this very moment and couldn’t reach me. I got up again, put my phone back together, and turned it on. But it didn’t ring.
There’s going to be a Ukrainian funeral reception,” said Claudia to me when, a little later, I came downstairs staggering slightly as if I were drunk. I sat down on the couch, put my feet up on the ugly two-level glass side table, and listened to the menu. Chicken soup, pierogis with fish, some slimy oatmeal kind of thing, and a never-ending supply of vodka.
“Very nice,” I said.
“It’s heartwarming,” said Claudia. “They have written a shopping list and are off to buy everything in a few minutes. I thought perhaps you would like to accompany them and help them carry everything.”
“Nothing I would rather do,” I said, taking my feet off the table. Then I exploded. “Why would you say that, perhaps you would like to accompany them? I don’t have the slightest desire to, and you know that. If you want to ask me, if you expect it of me and insist on it, then put it that way. I’m sick of all the sugarcoating.”
“It’s the downside of functioning in polite society,” said Claudia unmoved. “To give you another example, I’d love to smack you right now but I’m not going to do so out of the same considerations.”
“Me? Smack me? Why?”
“Because your self-absorption and that look on your face that says I’m-so-superior-and-sick-of-it-all gets on my nerves,” said Claudia flatly.
“That’s not the look on my face, it’s just the way it was sewn together.”
“Don’t talk to me about your face,” said Claudia. “I know it a lot better than you at this point.”
We had to break off the conversation because Evgenija popped in with the shopping list, the length of which made me woozy. She sat down with Claudia and they both went over the list and conferred about a few items. I listened to them in amazement. They really looked like sisters. And what exasperated Claudia about Tammy’s plan yesterday was no longer an issue today. The reception didn’t seem to bother her at all even though yesterday she’d said that normal people in Swinehausen hired a caterer, a specific caterer, one who had specialized in such things for generations. The town was aging, lots of people died regularly, and if you wanted to belong you didn’t break ranks when it came to the funeral arrangements. Now Claudia voiced nothing but enthusiasm for putting together the food, and she seemed to be sincere — I recognized the tone of her voice.
Must be a generational thing, I thought as I saw Tammy coming down the stairs with Ferdi on her back.
“You’re coming shopping with us?” she asked instead of a greeting.
“Good morning to you, too, dear stepmother,” I said. An inopportune thought occurred to me at that moment, about how insistent my father was about sticking to certain rules when I was young, including the importance of greetings and goodbyes and all sorts of common courtesies, and also of washing your hands.
She frowned at me. At least her mother looked like a woman with a good sense of humor, I thought, and suddenly I realized I would never have to worry about Claudia. A funny woman would never be alone. No matter what happened, you never had to worry about a funny woman. Someone would always want a woman like that. And as time passed the way she looked was less and less important.