Broken Glass Park (17 page)

“Maria, I’m downloading something.”

“What?”

“Green button! You can do it! You’re annoying, Maria.”

“No, you,” she says, genuinely upset. I jump up from my chair, stumble over a cord, ripping it out of the socket, and reach for the phone in Maria’s hand.

There’s only one person who would let the phone ring that long.

“Hello there, speedy,” says Felix. “Explain math to me. I don’t understand it at all.”

“Email me your homework,” I say. “I’ll have a look.”

“By the way, I wrote a poem for you,” Felix says, as if the homework is my problem, not his. “Because you’re so cultured. Listen.” He clears his throat theatrically and reads with gravitas:

Let’s sit together in the kitchen

Where sweet is the smell of kerosene white

Let’s open the bento box of sushi

And an entire flask of gin

And then we’ll pack the big suitcases

So full they’ll almost burst

Strap on our wings and lift off

Heading for distant southern atolls.

“Is it better than the last one? You shouldn’t laugh when I’m reading a poem to you. That’s not fair. I’m still learning. You’re going to put me off writing. I’ll be poetically impotent . . . Alexandra!”

I’m bending over because I’m laughing so hard my stomach hurts. I wipe tears from my eyes.

“Where did you find that?” I ask.

“I wrote it for you. Just now. No, actually, last night.”

“Stop talking shit. It’s a parody of Osip Mandelstam.”

“What-stam?”

“Where did you find it?”

“Online,” says Felix, defeated. “Some poetry site. You jerk.”

“Hang on,” I say, “I’ll grab the book.”

“Unbelievable,” Felix grumbles while I squat in front of the bookshelf where my mother’s books of poetry are shelved. “I mean, I probably should have figured you would have read that Shakespeare sonnet. But this? Something totally obscure? How could I expect you to know that?”

“Pure coincidence, my hero,” I say flipping through a thin book. “But that is a pretty well-known poem. I guess I must have been listening when she read it to me all those times. Ah, here it is:

Let’s sit together in the kitchen

Where sweet is the smell of kerosene white.

“Obviously from here on it’s different—instead of sushi there’s a sharp knife, a loaf of bread, ropes and baskets . . . ”

“How exciting,” says Felix.

“And about getting away. They want to go to the train station. They’re probably scared of getting arrested—this was written in 1931.”

“Hey, speaking of getting away,” says Felix quickly, as soon as he’s listened to my full explanation, “you know why I’m calling? Volker wants to know if you’ll go to Tenerife with us during summer vacation.”

“What did you say?” I ask, because I’m still reading the book. “Tenerife?”

“Yeah, Tenerife. It’s an island. In the Canaries. Surrounded by the ocean. We’re going there. Come with us.”

“Who suggested it?” I say suspiciously. “Did Volker really say I should go along?”

“Of course.”

“Did he tell you to ask me?”

“Well, okay, it was my idea. But he liked the idea. He said he’d like to have somebody there to keep me out of his hair. So he wouldn’t have to deal with my permanent bad mood. He said he’d pay somebody a good hourly wage to do it, just to save his vacation.”

“Is that how he put it?” I ask. “Really?”

“What’s with all the stupid questions? Of course he wants you to come. He likes you a lot. It would be two weeks. If you came along it would make it almost bearable.”

“Wow, what a charming way to put it,” I say absentmindedly.

I picture myself lying on the beach between Felix and Volker. How I casually put my foot near Volker’s and stick the bottle of sun-cream in the sand as a protective barrier against Felix. I can hear the crash of the waves and the cry of the seagulls. And I hear the tune from the Bacardi ad.

“Why are you laughing?” asks Felix.

“It’s nothing,” I say. “I’ll think it over, okay?”

“Just don’t think about it for too long or else Volker will be gone.”

“And so will you.”

“No. If you don’t go, I’m not going either.”

«Don’t start, Felix,» I say, looking at the clock. I still have to fill out the applications for my advanced placement courses.

“By the way,” says Felix. “We haven’t practiced in a while.”

“What do you mean practice?” I say. “I’m sure by now you are a regular Pieter Brueghel.”

“Who?” says Felix. “Why are you always trying to piss me off?”

“I’m not trying to piss you off,” I say. “I just meant that by now you are a master. Let’s talk tomorrow, okay?”

“Tomorrow?” he says. The disappointment in his voice barely registers. “You always say that. And then you never have time.”

“Jesus, I do have things to do,” I say.

Felix is silent. Hurt.

“Hey,” I say, “no crying, my dear. A little tan will do you good.”

“I just burn,” Felix says.

“Then I’ll put cream on you.”

“I’d rather be the one creaming on you.”

“You’re annoying, Felix. Listen, I have a job. I can’t go away.”

“A job?” says Felix. “Why didn’t you say that right away? Can’t you just ditch it for a while?”

“I should have told you right off the bat. I just forgot.”

“How stupid do you think I am?”

“What happens if you have breathing problems on Tenerife?”

“Why don’t you . . . ”

“Why don’t you just tell me what happens.”

Felix suddenly loses interest in the conversation.

“Okay, I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” he says.

“Felix, I hate it when you don’t answer me.”

“Why do you ask anyway? Are you worried about me?”

“What a question,” I say. “What do you want to hear? Yes! Yes! Yes! I am so worried about you.”

“The deal is,” he says with annoyance in his voice, “we always have to stay near a hospital. I have no idea if there are cities on Tenerife, but there must be hospitals, because otherwise Volker would never suggest going there. It’s that simple. He’ll bring medicine and a copy of my medical records and instructions from our hospital on what to do in the case of an emergency. Normally any old hospital can handle it. And we can always reach my doctor by phone in case they can’t figure out what to do. What else do you want to know?”

“Thanks for putting my mind at ease,” I say. “But now tell me the truth.”

“Did I mention that I can’t stand you?” says Felix. “Seriously cannot stand you?”

“Yep,” I say. “Lots of times.”

He slams down the phone. Probably on the table so I can hear it. Only afterwards does he hang up.

I go down to the third floor to pick up Alissa from her friend Katja’s place.

The walls are thin in the Emerald. By the time I get down to the fifth floor, I can hear Alissa’s voice. It’s high and piercing, loud and happy. A future soprano, as my mother always used to say back when Alissa was really little and would screech for her bottle. “Sounds more like something on an ultrasonic wavelength,” I would answer. “Like a dolphin. Bores into your head.”

I sound completely different. My voice is lower and scratchier. “Because I smoked when I was pregnant with you,” my mother used to say.

“I won’t smoke if I ever get pregnant.”

“I guess you’re smarter than me.”

“Which is exactly why I won’t get pregnant.”

“That’s what I used to say. Until I had you. Then I realized it was a joy worth repeating.”

“And you smoked your way through it.”

“I’m really sorry about that, sweetie. I would do it differently now. You could have gotten kidney damage from it.”

“And I’m stuck with a baritone because you smoked.”

“More like a tenor. Your father had a baritone. You should have heard him lecture. I went once. I understood only one word.”

“What word?”

“And.”

“You know what? This doesn’t interest me.”

“That’s what he used to say. About everything I told him.”

Anton’s voice isn’t particularly high or low. He has hardly any voice at all. Just a quiet rustling. Anton is practically invisible—thin and blond and weak and fearful.

Anton, I think. My Anton. I would give you my voice and my brains if I thought it would help you come to grips with everything. But I don’t think it would help you. I’m so scared for you. I know you’re not going to make it. If you’re lucky you’ll end up like Harry.

And if you end up like Vadim, I’ll kill you.

Back then, the time when your parents came home from that first parent-teacher meeting, you had such a fucked-up evening. Your father was so angry at you, and he kept yanking on his tie—the one your mother had put so much energy into tying—as if it were trying to strangle him.

The polka dot pattern of that tie is forever burned into my memory. Along with Vadim’s face above that pattern, full of rage, flushed, his eyes squinting.

And words, his words.

“How dare you—my son—awful in school—don’t talk—you dimwit, you failure, you pussy—what an embarrassment—little idiot—shut your mouth, you—nobody asked you to say a word—I’m warning you, I’m doing the talking here—tell that brat she better shut up or there will be consequences—you’ll never, never, never amount to anything—in the old days your type would have been . . . ”

Anton was cowering in the corner of the sofa, light eyebrows, lips drained of blood, his face colorless, his wide-open eyes trained on Vadim—who loomed hulking in the middle of the room, gesticulating, spitting out his words along with saliva.

And then his hand, with its short fingers, gripping his leather belt and opening it with a few quick motions, the hiss of the belt cutting through the air and my memory of his words: “Back in the old days, in the army, we would fill our buckles with lead and, man, did that crack your skull.” Chuckling as he did it.

I misunderstood, thinking he had lead in this belt buckle and was about to crack open Anton’s blond head.

Of course it was just a normal belt, a normal belt that whipped me across my face when I stepped between Anton and Vadim—not that it felt good. Everyone screamed except Anton, who I thought was dead by that point, keeled over in the corner of the sofa.

And I thought that was just normal, nothing shocking, the nature of a situation like this, just like the pain burning across my face. Until I realized my mother was screaming, too. That was something I couldn’t comprehend.

She never screamed. Never.

And now she was in Vadim’s face yelling, shouting that it was over, done, finished; that they were through, there would be no more agonizing over it; that he would never, ever hurt a child again; that he was leaving the apartment right this second; that she was filing for divorce—out! Out!

And Vadim dropped the hand with the belt to his side and listened with his mouth agape.

Out!

And I thought that he would whip her now, and that I needed to think of something fast to keep him from killing her. Where was the phone? Mother was so disorganized and never put the handset back on its cradle.

Out!

Then Vadim fell to his knees and started to cry, still clutching the belt in one hand while the other quivered in the air.

The scene made me sick.

I looked away, at my mother. But she didn’t look at me. She was still looking at Vadim, her eyes tightly squinting. And in her hand was the phone.

“Out,” she said, almost whispering. “I’ve already dialed the number. I don’t want to hear another word.”

Vadim had difficulty standing up, nearly falling over, fighting to regain his balance. You could tell he realized how absurd he looked at that moment.

“Now?” he said, just as quietly, trying to read her face. If he was able to read it, he didn’t like what he saw in it.

She nodded and put the phone to her ear. Vadim shook his head no, wiped his nose on his shirtsleeve and began to put his belt back through the loops of his pants, slowly, having difficulty, finally leaving it be, walking past her and out of the room with his belt dangling. I didn’t even realize that I had jumped to my feet again, ready for the possibility he would try to hit her.

At first I couldn’t believe he was gone. Until I heard the front door close, I thought he was waiting for us in the entryway.

When I finally came to my senses again, my mother was already sitting on the couch with Anton on her lap. His eyes were still wide open, and his face was smeared with brown from the chocolate she was stuffing in his mouth like a life-saving medicine.

I looked at them and blinked uncomprehendingly until my mother said, “He did it. He did it again. He hurt my child.”