Good Things I Wish You (7 page)

Here it is then: the moment it happens. One small thing is said or done—not the first thing, not the worst—but it cuts, at last, the weathered string that’s bound him to your
heart. After this, everything happens in third person. All you can do is watch your own life unfold as if it is happening to a stranger. Even if he hadn’t thrown himself into the Rhine, Clara would have left him that day. She’d have stayed with the neighbor lady until arrangements could be made. She’d have wept and wept and wept and, still, she’d have somehow found it in herself to weep more.

Weeks later, at the mention of a visit to Endenich, she dissolves into such hysteria that it’s finally suggested, by the doctors, that she send Herr Brahms instead.

Your treasured husband has not changed at all,
Brahms writes to her immediately after the visit.
He only became a little stronger. His appearance is happy and bright, his movements are just the same as in the past, one hand held to his mouth. He smoked in short puffs as usual. His gait and his greeting were more free, firmer, which is only natural since no big ideas, no Faust keep him occupied. The doctor addressed him; unfortunately I was unable to hear him speak, but his smile and, so it seemed, his speech was completely as in the past. Herr Sch. then looked at the flowers and walked deeper into the garden, toward the beautiful vista. I saw him disappear as the evening sun surrounded him beautifully.
^*

Does he ask about me?
Clara asks in return, though she’s already guessed the answer.

He loves her enough to release her.

He will not so much as utter her name.

What joyful news…that Brahms, to whom you will give my kind and admiring greetings, has come to live in Düsseldorf; what friendship!

—Robert (in Endenich), in a letter to Clara, 1854
^*

For the beautiful word in your last letter, for the love-felt “Du,” I have yet to thank you most cordially; now your very kindhearted wife has also given me joy by using the beautiful, trustful word…I will always strive more to deserve it.

—Brahms, in a letter to Robert (in Endenich), 1854
^†

I have you, beloved Johannes, to thank for the kind generosity you have shown my Clara. She is always writing me about it.

—Robert (in Endenich), in a letter to Brahms, 1854
^†

16.

H
ART CALLED AT THE
end of May, on the Friday night before Memorial Day weekend. As soon as I heard his voice, I understood I’d been waiting for this call, expecting it like news: good or bad, it was impossible to say. Over a month had passed since our dinner at the Wine Cellar. My academic semester had ended. For the next six weeks, I could write from eight until two, the hours Heidi went to Montessori school. It seemed like a lot of time. It wasn’t. Especially since I was still stumbling, fumbling, searching for whatever was missing from the story I wanted to tell. On the twelfth of July, Heidi’s summer session would end. On the thirteenth, Cal would pick her up for a two-week vacation—the two weeks I’d be in Leipzig. Maybe he’d take her to a reenactment somewhere. Maybe they’d just stay home. Or maybe he’d take her only one week, not two, in which case, as he well knew, I didn’t know what I’d do.

The manuscript was due on August eleventh, two weeks after I came back from Germany.

“May I call you back?” I said, glancing at Heidi, who was busy unrolling a strip of butcher paper over the craft table. This weekend belonged to Cal as well. He was late, so I’d been distracting us both with stamps, stickers, finger paint. Last year, he’d taken a job at a private school in Lakeland, two hours to the north. Perhaps there’d been an accident and he was caught in a jam on I-95. Perhaps he’d gotten a late start. Perhaps he was about to pull into the driveway. “We’re waiting for my daughter’s dad to pick her up.”

“Sure, sure,” Hart said. “I suppose after that you have plans?”

His accent was more pronounced than I remembered. It sounded like disappointment.

“I’m meeting a friend for dinner,” I said. “I haven’t really thought beyond that.”

“He gets his weekends with her, I suppose,” Hart said, and it took me a moment to realize he was talking about Cal.

“Alternating. Same with holidays.”

“My daughter lives in Paris. I saw her in London last week.”

“Your ten-year-old,” I said, pleased to display one of America’s scant facts. “What was she doing in London?”

“Friederike is sixteen,” Hart said. “Did those stupid people tell you ten? How hard can it be to get these things right?”

“I’m ready to paint,” Heidi announced.

“Oh well,” he said, relenting, “ten years, twenty, what does it matter? Perhaps she comes to the U.S. to study. In New York City. Have you been to New York City?”

“Mommy?”

What I said to Heidi: “Mommy is on the phone.”

What I said to Hart: “I used to live there. I wish I still did.”

“You could move back.”

“No, it’s too expensive, and besides, Cal’s here, in Lakeland, and I have this tenured job—” Heidi had managed to open the green; she plunged in both thumbs. I trapped the phone between my jaw and collarbone, reached for a paper towel. “Look, I really can’t talk right now. Sweetie, let me help with that, okay?”

“Your ex-husband is always late, I suppose. To bug you. It’s the way these things go. Do you want to come flying with me tomorrow?”

“I—can I call you back? I need to think about it.”

“You know the Starbucks off PGA? I can pick you up at eight.”

“In the morning?”

“I will bring good muffins. From the Whole Foods. And fruit.”

“I don’t know.”

“You are not liking fruit?”

“I’m not liking flying. I mean, I just don’t know, I’ve never—”

“A lit-tle before eight, perhaps?” he said.

“Eight,” I said firmly. “Let’s have coffee together. Then we’ll see.”

“Okay, okay. Ciao.”

I hung up, attempted to concentrate on the task at hand: red stars, a fat yellow moon.

“What color do you want the sky?” I asked Heidi, who was hard at work making fat blades of grass.

“Not blue,” she said, “and not green.”

I dumped out a little puddle of green, added a dollop of shining blue. She wiped her hands on a paper towel, hesitated.

“Can you do it?” she said.

I made small circles with my index finger, working the color over the page. The surface of the craft table was the same yellow as the moon, so when I finished, the moon looked like an absence, an overlooked space. I wanted to color it red, to match the stars, but Heidi disliked this idea.

“I want it to be lonely,” she said.

Lonely:
the word she still uses to mean
different.

It was after eight by the time Cal arrived. While I packed up a juice box and crackers, he opened the refrigerator, the way he would have done when we were married. He took the jar of peanut butter, scooped, swallowed thickly. He considered the open bottle of Chardonnay in the door. There were leftover meatballs on a plate; he popped one into his mouth. Everything about the way he stood was daring me to tell him not to do this.

“I don’t want to go with Daddy,” Heidi said, though she did. And didn’t. I knew exactly how she felt.

“I’ll be right here when you get back,” I said, pulling her into my arms for a kiss.

Her bags were packed. She was dressed. She wore shoes. Still, Cal was standing before the open fridge as if caught in the light of a shrine. Another meatball. A paper-thin slice of lox. A handful of blueberries. How could I ever have filled such emptiness?

“Calvin?” I said. “We’re ready, okay? Take her, okay? Please.”

17.

A
T SCHOOL
, H
EIDI SPENT
an entire day working on a drawing of her family. Her teacher labeled each stick figure according to Heidi’s directions: Grandma Joan, Granny Hobbins, cousin Kayla, cousin Ray. Fourteen stick figures in all, each of them smiling, even the one named Heidi. All except one, the largest of the figures, positioned at the center of the page.

This figure is frowning. Her frown is colored brown.

“How do you spell ‘Mom’?” Heidi had asked.

Then she’d labeled me in her own unsteady hand.

“Why is your mommy frowning?” the teacher had wanted to know.

(She’d tell me about this later, in a parent-teacher conference.)

“Because she is lonely,” Heidi said. “My mommy likes to be lonely.”

I am learning to understand Johannes’s rare and beautiful character better every day. There is something so fresh and so soothing about him; he is often so childlike and then again so full of the finest feelings…And as a musician he is still more wonderful. He gives me as much pleasure as he possibly can…and he does this with a perseverance that is really touching…

—Clara, in a letter to Joachim, 1854
^*

He told me much about himself, which half fills me with admiration for him, half troubles me…Will not those who understand him be few in number?

—Clara, in her journal, 1854
^†

18.

E
LLEN IS OLDER THAN
I am, dark-eyed and reckless, with a grin that suggests all kinds of good mischief. After her last marriage ended, she moved to Florida to be closer to her sister; now she manages investments for high-end clients at a private bank. As I hopped up onto the high stool beside her at the bar, it occurred to me, not for the first time, that we might be poster children for the maxim
opposites attract.
She sparkled in a white silk blouse, pink lipstick; I wore my usual jeans. At the bottom of my purse was the Chap Stick with sunscreen—sandy from my last trip to the beach—I’d remembered to swipe across my lips before getting out of the car.

“Got any plans for the weekend?” she said, leaning over for a kiss.

She’d already ordered wine for us both, gotten our names on the waiting list. The buzzer rested between us, red eye blinking, an old man’s wink.

“Actually,” I said, “remember the German entrepreneur?”

Ellen raised one shapely brow. “The one who says men and women can’t be friends?”

“He just called me.”

“So where’s he been all this time?”

I shrugged. “He asked me to go flying with him tomorrow.”

To my surprise, Ellen laughed. “Of course he did. Every other guy I’ve been out with lately either has his pilot’s license or wants his pilot’s license.”

“I thought he was being original.”

“
Men and women can’t be friends.
That’s original, all right.”

The waiter brought our wine; I took a sip, leaned back. The bar was under a pavilion overlooking the intracoastal, which looked pretty the way an artificial Christmas tree can look pretty sometimes, despite the garish tinsel, the overreflected light. It was a pleasant place to sit and talk, to admire passing boats. On the opposite side of the seawall, ibis roosted in the trees, readying themselves for the night.