November Sky (24 page)

He whispered in my ear, “Just tell me what you need, and I’ll get it for you.”

The exciting suggestion in his throaty, whispered words, the warmth and hardness of his body, and his lips against my ear brought my self-control to an instantaneous collapse. All food preparation was forgotten as we stood in a tight embrace and kissed passionately in the middle of the kitchen. We didn’t even make it to the bedroom that first time but got right down to business on the kitchen table. Nick simply swept all the vegetables onto the floor, and seconds later he was inside me. I completely blocked out everything but my intense sexual desire, his warm lips, and his gentle hands. I looked at Nick. His eyes were closed and his mouth was tense. He softly moaned my name. I arched my lower body up toward him; he opened his eyes, and the moment our eyes met I dropped my back and screamed my climactic release. His face reflected the same boundless desire and love I felt at that moment. Afterward we laughed that it might be best to shift further activities to the bedroom; the table was awfully hard and not particularly friendly on the back.

We didn’t sleep much that night. We made love again and again, interspersing our passion with whispered chats and snacks of cheese and olives that Nick served me in bed. Then we snuggled next to each other in silence, relishing our closeness.

The next morning, we had to face the day. Nick had his morning appointment with the therapist, and I told him I needed to go straight to the office.

“Can’t you stay until I tell you what the visit was like?” he asked with a mournful look. That was another change in him: Before, he would simply take it for granted that after the previous night, I would change my mind and come back to him with banners flying. Now he understood that one night filled with passion was insufficient for the continuity of our marriage.

I nodded and said, “Yes, I’ll wait for you.”

I didn’t let him know that I’d decided early that morning to go back to Neuperlach without him. Something told me not to give up quite yet.

Chapter 23

Two hours later, a taxi dropped me off near the apartment building where Nick had once lived. I’d waited until he left before putting on an old pair of my jeans that were still at the house, a T-shirt, and one of Nick’s faded hoodies. I set out with my cell phone, wallet, and palpitations.

Luckily, the oddballs we saw the day before were nowhere to be seen. It was probably too early for them to be hanging around in the cold. The only person I met on the way to the building was an old man walking his dachshund. He coughed wretchedly and spat on the sidewalk. I tried to hide my disgust as I passed him. To my surprise, the man greeted me with “A very good morning to you.” The waddling dog sniffed eagerly at my pant legs before his master pulled him along.

I entered the lobby with its penetrating stink of urine—a tenant probably hadn’t made it to his bathroom—and climbed up to the fifth-floor corridor, sticking close to the wall.

Standing again at number 46A, I couldn’t decide whether to ring the bell or not. I tried to think up something to say so the door wouldn’t be slammed in my face. I instinctively cringed when the apartment door two numbers down suddenly opened and I heard a child crying loudly. Baby sounds still got me right in the heart.

A young woman with a baby on her shoulder came out into the corridor and tried to calm her offspring with rocking movements.

“It’s all right, darling, you can go back to sleep in the stroller,” she cooed, pulling the stroller by the railing toward her with one hand. When she’d settled the baby down, and then briskly buckled it into the stroller and covered it with a blanket, she stood up and noticed me.

“Oh, good morning,” she said, looking at me inquiringly. “Are you looking for Magda? Nobody will open the door. You can’t get her this early in the morning. Got to sleep off the booze,” she added by way of explanation.

The baby had calmed down, sucking its thumb with dedication, and looked at me with big eyes. I went off my plan momentarily and walked over to the chatty tenant. She looked as though she was in her late twenties, and although I knew she was far too young to give me any useful information, something drove me to explain that my husband had lived at 46A with his grandmother as a baby, before he was adopted. She understood at once. Her round, freckled face revealed her empathy.

“And now you want to find out more about it? I guarantee you’ll get no help from Magda, the old lush. Besides, she’s only been here for three years. Got the apartment through the welfare agency.”

I gave a shrug of resignation and prepared to leave. But before I could say good-bye, she said, “Wait! When did your husband live here?”

Just a few minutes later, I was running down the stairs with revived hopes. The young woman had given me the address of a nursing home where her mother lived.

“I’m in the middle of cleaning up Mom’s apartment for the next tenant. We had to put her in a home two months ago because she couldn’t look after herself anymore. She couldn’t do the stairs with that arthritis of hers, and the elevator doesn’t work most of the time. But she was in this building for more than thirty-five years and might remember your husband’s grandmother. Mom is weak physically, but her mind’s all there.”

The frail, white-haired woman, Maria Keller, was delighted by my surprise visit. I’d quickly found the friendly-looking senior’s home, which was recently built and painted pink. It was only a few blocks away from her old address. I conveyed her daughter’s warm wishes as I sat in a room overflowing with all sorts of odds and ends. Countless trinkets, dolls, angel figurines, plastic miniatures of tourist sights, holy cards, and crocheted doilies covered every available surface above floor level. The old lady caught me stealing a glance around and a friendly smile creased her wrinkled face.

“You might laugh to yourself about all this stuff, but when you are old and frail and cannot do much anymore, you live off the good memories of your past life. And these things”—she gingerly picked up a colored picture of the Virgin Mary in an ugly rhinestone frame—“bring back wonderful times, at least to my mind. My husband gave me this as a present on our pilgrimage to Alttöting.” Her watery blue eyes
glazed over with a touch of melancholy
. “We never had much money, but we did have a lot of fun together. He knew my weakness for kitschy objects. That’s why he bought me this miniature.”

I visualized the two key-chain pendants Nick and I had bought each other in Paris, and I made a mental note to store mine in a place of honor forever.

Then her face grew serious as she regarded me alertly.

“But you surely have not come to hear my old stories. What do you wish to know?”

I explained it all to her, saying that I deliberately did not come with my husband, as he was very much shaken by the facts of his ancestry and adoption. Then I twisted the truth a little bit in my favor, saying, “It’s taken a lot out of him to learn that all his blood relatives are dead, because he’d dearly love to know anything about his early childhood and family. He’s at work today, so that’s why I trotted off on my own.”

I was afraid when I’d ended that the old lady had nodded off because her eyelids were closed.

“Frau Keller?” I asked tentatively.

She slowly shook her head and gazed at me with a strange look on her face. “No worry, I am not asleep. I was reflecting. You said your husband learned only recently about his adoption. Is he well otherwise?”

“How do you mean?”

Her gaze turned inward. “You know, I had never dared hope to hear about little Dominick again.”

Electrified, I leaned forward and grasped her delicate, bony, blue-veined hand.

“You remember? What was his grandmother like and how did his parents die?”

She heaved a sigh and began to tell me Nick’s story, including the sad course of his first few months. And then I understood everything at a stroke.

“Luise was much too strict with the girl. She rebelled, but her mother beat her time and again until she finally ran away when she was eighteen. Nora had the good fortune to meet a nice young man and fall in love with him. She married him at twenty. I met them once in town and had a long conversation with them. They were very happy. Nora quickly became pregnant and tried to see her mother shortly before the baby was due so they could make up. At that time I saw her in the corridor, crying because Luise had thrown her out of the apartment and shouted after her, ‘You ran away, so there’s no need to come crawling back here.’”

Frau Keller sighed. “Four weeks later Nora, her husband, and the second child were dead. They were killed in an automobile accident on the way to the maternity hospital. They had the right of way, but a truck ran right into them.”

I turned cold, picturing the awful accident. Only then did it hit me that she’d mentioned another, second child.

“Nick had a sibling?” I asked, agitated.

“Yes, Nora was expecting twins. Her husband was killed instantly and poor Nora was dying when they got her to the hospital. The doctors tried an emergency cesarean operation to save the babies. But they could save only Dominick. His brother died in the womb. His injuries were too serious.”

Nick’s description of his nightmare flashed through my mind:
“I watch myself dying.”

Maria Keller spoke in what seemed a faraway voice: “Luise was his only living relative. Nora’s husband was an orphan, so there was nobody on his side of the family who could take care of Dominick. The little tyke lay in the hospital for weeks before she took him in. To this day I don’t understand why she didn’t put him up for adoption right away. It certainly would have been a better solution. She kept him fed, of course, and dressed him decently, but he never received any love or affection from her. He was a quiet baby, and I always felt terribly sorry for him. His grandmother made no bones about the fact that he was a burden to her, even saying it when he was right there. She told me in the corridor once, with the baby over her shoulder, that he had no right to be the only one to outlive his family. It would have been better for him if he had died as well. I was shocked at her heartlessness. You know, I would have gladly taken care of him myself, but we had other things to worry about at the time. My husband was unemployed, I had three cleaning jobs, and my daughter, who was a few months younger than Dominick, had croup. I can honestly say I was relieved when Luise suddenly died of a heart attack a couple of months later, and the little one was taken away by Child Welfare.”

I said good-bye to Maria Keller in a daze, promising her I’d come to visit her with Nick sometime. I saw the little baby before me all the way home; in a single stroke he’d lost everyone who loved him and belonged to him, and then he had to live with a woman who claimed he should have died, too. As I sat in the commuter train, I wept and didn’t give one whit that some passengers gave me peculiar looks.

Fortunately, Nick wasn’t back when I arrived. I had to compose myself before I could tell him his story.

I stood at the window and watched as his car came down the street and he parked it in front of the house. It was hard for me to square the grown man who got out, waved at me, and walked to the front door, with the pathetic child I’d seen before my mind’s eye all day long. He kissed me passionately right in the doorway, and then we went upstairs.

“You’ll be glad to hear that this doctor and I are on the same wavelength,” he said. “His ideas are very reasonable. I told him the whole story.”

When I looked dubious, he explained further. “It’s everything, really, that you already had surmised. He suspects a childhood trauma. He explained that every experience unbearable for the psyche is stored in the unconscious even if you aren’t aware that you remember it. And that you unconsciously and repeatedly put yourself in similar situations to fight against the pain you felt back then. We’re going to use some techniques of hypnosis and behavior therapy to try to change or eliminate my self-destructive behavior, even though we don’t know what event triggered it. This will take some time. He told me quite frankly that he cannot guarantee success, but he’s helped many people who’ve experienced some awful things. You know, the man’s not the type who treats you haughtily or claims your problems can only be solved by talking about them long enough. And he doesn’t recommend medications in my case.”

“So you’ll be going back?” I asked, wanting to assure myself.

He took me in his arms. “We made more appointments, starting tomorrow.”

“Nick, would you please come downstairs with your parents and Hanna? I have something I must tell you.”

I’d spoken to his parents in advance and asked them and Hanna to be there when I recounted to Nick what I’d learned that day. I hadn’t the foggiest notion how Nick would respond and wanted everyone who was important to him to be there.

They had already gathered in the downstairs living room and looked at us in expectation. Nick jokingly asked if he was in trouble. When we were all seated, I explained that I couldn’t stop thinking about Nick’s story, so I’d gone to Neuperlach again that morning. I ignored his appalled objection that I was crazy to go to that disreputable area alone, and continued.

When I’d finished, Angela and Hanna had tears running down their faces and Jürgen looked shocked. I glanced anxiously over at Nick. He’d been listening attentively. When I told them about the accident and his dead twin, he spontaneously slumped back in his chair. He also clenched his fists when I mentioned his grandmother and her unloving behavior. Now he looked at me as if he’d awoken from a profound dream.

“You’ve found what’s been tormenting me! Maybe I can overcome it all the more quickly because of it.” Turning to his parents and Hanna he said, “Now I know at last why those twins in my class affected me so intensely. They didn’t really bully me; they were just a couple of rascals who played tricks on me and other pupils all the time. But seeing twins together triggered an inexplicably deep sadness in me. I simply could not tolerate their presence.”

We’d tacitly agreed, Nick and I,
not
to tell his adoptive parents and Hanna about his suicide attempts. Nick explained that his weird and dismissive behavior during our marriage made it impossible for me to stand him anymore. That was close enough to the truth and still a defused version that could spare them unnecessary pain.

At Nick’s session with his new doctor, Dr. Marquard explained that he thought Nick was having an unconscious, recurrent trauma of being the only one to survive the accident. He lived out his sense of guilt over it through his suicide attempts. But because he really wanted to live and not die, he needed somebody who loved him enough to rescue him, to give him “permission”—as my client Tamara had indicated—to keep on living. That was why my appearance on the scene escalated the problem.