Over the Fence (10 page)

Eva nodded. Aunt Inge was right. Her mother spoiled her father way too much. Ever since his retirement, she seemed to think her father was unable to even make himself coffee, let alone a sausage sandwich. These sore points were likely to lead to differences of opinion with her father. He wasn’t a little kid. He was a grown man. The idea that a man should never step foot in the kitchen had lost its validity several decades ago. It was just a lousy excuse to not fully participate in the care of the household. How many professional male chefs were there? Significantly more than women. That was a fact.

“When it gets to be too much for you, give me a call, OK?” Inge said. She could obviously read Eva’s mind. “I can handle my brother, even though he’s capable of spewing bile every now and then. But that doesn’t bother me.”

“I can handle my father.”

On the way back from the hospital, Eva kept her thoughts to herself. Neither Aunt Inge nor Eva mentioned to her father that he had rejected Inge’s offer of help. But Eva had watched him. He’d been attentive and nice to his sister. Almost courteous. Almost as if he feared a bomb would explode and Eva would find out everything. He was moving quite agilely on his crutches. The lighter walking cast didn’t seem to hinder him at all. He opened doors by himself and even managed to scoot a chair to his wife’s bedside. At first, Eva had wanted to intervene, but she let him do it.

Inge stopped in front of the house and looked at Eva. “If something happens, call me. You have a job to do plus the household to take care of. Even though you’re young, it’s still a lot, so if I can help you, let me know.” Aunt Inge kissed her on the cheek and nodded. “I need to get out of my house anyway.”

“Thanks. Have a safe ride home,” Eva said. As she climbed out of the car, she had to suppress a laugh. Aunt Inge drove herself around on vacation three times a year and was constantly on the road with her girlfriends. She didn’t need reasons to get out of the house. She just needed to feel useful.

While the roast simmered for three hours on low, Eva got busy on her work again. But she wasn’t satisfied with the end result of her packaging design. When she glued the lightweight boxes together, the result resembled a trash bin for recycled paper instead of something that buyers would find in a supermarket. Unnerved, she shoved the packaging designs to the far end of the table, left the dining room, and turned off the light. At least now she wouldn’t be able see the monstrosity she’d been messing around with. But her boss was expecting a first draft on Tuesday and Eva was further away from a good design than ever.

The roast was done and she was, too. Holding a glass of red wine, she sat down on the living room sofa and turned on the TV. She would change the linens on her father’s bed the next morning, because right now she just didn’t have the energy to do it.

Felix snuggled up next to her and begged to be petted. As she did so, she fell asleep.

David walked his dog on the dirt path and thought about Eva. He hadn’t seen her since she had buried herself in the house after cursing up a storm on the street Saturday morning. He’d been spending too much time standing at the window in hopes of catching a glimpse of her.

He had also noticed the tractor’s speed as it raced along. It wasn’t the first time the farmer had driven like a maniac, and David had tried to talk to him about it several times before. David couldn’t understand why the tractor driver was so pigheaded. After all, there were a lot of kids who played along the dirt road. He would talk with the farmer’s wife again when she brought their son to soccer practice.

Unfortunately, Eva had already disappeared when he came rushing out to the street. He had heard her cursing through the open window and thought maybe he could put her mind at ease, but he hadn’t even had the opportunity to speak with her. Since dinner on Friday, she had seemed to be going out of her way to avoid him. To keep the incident from frustrating her further, he swept not only the street in front of his house, but Eva’s as well.

Jonas discovered him sweeping and had smiled. Later, he said, “You like our new neighbor, don’t you?”

“What makes you think that?” he asked.

“Because you look at her so funny. It occurred to me at dinner. Now you’ve even swept the road for her.”

Well, if that was a sign of love, then the world would be a much better place,
David thought. “You know her parents are in the hospital. I wanted to help her after Farmer Schleinzer covered the road with mud again.”

Jonas laughed. “Of course. And I live on the moon and am completely clueless.”

David swatted Jonas on his shoulder.

His son sensed more than David would have liked. But he had dropped the issue quickly because he wanted to know what was for dinner—currently, it seemed like Jonas devoured more food in a day than a family of five would in a week. Jonas must have noticed how harmonious and fun it was to share a meal with their neighbor and her niece. How long had it been since they’d had such a relaxed family meal? David couldn’t remember. Stefanie carped continually about David or Jonas, and if she couldn’t find anything wrong, they ate in silence. Or she relayed the neighborhood gossip, which bored David to death. Even Jonas ate faster than normal and excused himself quickly so that he could escape back to his room. Stefanie and David only had fun with their son when they were apart. The times when all three did something together had become less frequent over the years.

Ruchti jumped up on David, demanding that he throw him a stick. When he did, Ruchti chased after it, then picked it up, and, wagging his tail, brought it back and dropped it at David’s feet. “Good boy,” he said. “Now stand back. With a little luck, I’ll see Eva in her yard. That would be nice. And do me a favor, OK? Keep away from the cat. Even if it isn’t fair that he picks on you in your own yard.”

Ruchti looked at him as though he understood, then snorted loudly, as if he was promising to comply with his master’s request.

Nine

Eva said good-bye to her mother. “I’m coming again tomorrow. Do you need anything?”

“No, dear. You don’t have to come every day. I know you have a lot of work to do at the house and a ton of work for your client, too.” Eva’s mother smiled at her. “I’m doing well. Don’t worry about me so much.”

Eva kissed her mother on the cheek. “But I like seeing you. And that’s why I’m here. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Eva went to the other wing. In the hallway, she ran into the doctor. “Good morning. Is my father ready to go today?”

“Good morning, Ms. Berger. Yes, I’ve had him discharged. He still has to go to the front desk to sign out and pay for the day’s fees. He’s much more mobile than he’ll admit, so let him do things by himself. Moving around will be beneficial to him after being cooped up for so long.”

Eva smiled. “I’ll make sure he moves around more.”

“He doesn’t have to walk long distances. But if he just sits around, his leg muscles will start to atrophy, and we definitely don’t want that, especially at his age.” He reached out to shake her hand. “Patients are waiting.” He said good-bye and headed down the corridor.

The doctors and nurses had noticed that her father was lazy. That would have to change. After Aunt Inge’s revelation, Eva had resolved to have him do as much as possible for himself. When she entered the hospital room, her father was sitting in the visitor’s chair. “Glad you’re here. The suitcase still needs to be packed.”

“Papa, you’re not sick or bedridden.” She turned to her father’s roommate. “Good morning, Mr. Kramer.” Then she turned back to her father. “You can pack your bags yourself. After all, your arms aren’t broken, right?”

“Very funny,” her father grumbled as he rose slowly.

“You pack what’s in the closet,” Eva said, while she moved the travel bag closer to the closet and opened it. “I’ll get the things out of the bathroom. The doctor said you need to move more.”

“How do they know what I need?” he growled.

“If you’re going to make a fuss, then I think it would be better to talk to the doctor and tell them you’re still not fit enough to be discharged,” Eva said and went into the bathroom, hiding her grin.

“Did you hear that?” she heard her father ask Mr. Kramer. “My daughter doesn’t want me to go home.”

“She wants you to come home if you can do something besides complain,” Eva called out from the bathroom. A hearty laugh came from the next room. “See,” she said, “even Mr. Kramer is laughing at you.”

“Nonsense,” her father said as she left the bathroom. He was cramming his things into his bag.

Eva waited until her father had finished packing, then tucked the travel kit and other toiletries into the side pockets of the duffel bag. Finally, she closed the bag and put the strap over her shoulder. “Shall we?”

Her father nodded. “Good-bye, Heinz. Good luck.”

“You, too,” Mr. Kramer said. The old man waved. “And don’t make things so hard on your daughter. She seems to be a very clever girl.”

A little fatherly pride shone in her father’s eyes, and he waved to Heinz Kramer with his crutch. “That’s right. And on top of that, she’s very successful.”

Eva smiled. Her father was a curmudgeon, but he had a sensitive side, especially when it came to pride in his family. While his behavior sometimes bothered her, it often made her laugh, too.

Checking out of the hospital ate up over an hour. Eva was glad that she’d already changed the linens and that the roast was ready to eat. As they drove home, her father admired the rural landscape for the first time since the accident, as if he’d had to live without it for at least a year.

“It’s great to be home again. But I feel sorry for Mama. She has to stay in the hospital all alone,” her father said.

“We’ll visit her every day so she has a little diversion. She mentioned yesterday, though, that too many visits were exhausting. Sometimes she has five visitors a day and sometimes only one. A pity that visitors don’t call me first, then we could plan. But if we didn’t come, she might be waiting all day for us.”

Eva parked the car in the driveway and let her father out before she drove into the garage. The doctor was right. Her father was fitter than he wanted to admit. Now, because he wanted to get inside, he could walk the short distance very quickly. Eva made a mental note to remember this moment. Her father stood in front of the door and waited for Eva until she had taken the bag out of the trunk and closed the garage door.

Once inside, her father looked around the house, went into the living room, and settled down on the sofa. Felix, who had been sleeping there peacefully, looked for another place. “Finally back home again! Can you get me something to drink?”

“Of course.” Eva brought him a glass and two-liter bottle of water. “Here you go. You’re welcome.”

He looked up at her. Then he took the bottle and poured the water. He’d obviously been expecting her to pour the water for him.

“You’re welcome,” she said again.

“What?” her father asked irritably.

“You’re welcome,” Eva repeated.

“Oh, thank you very much,” her father said and rolled his eyes.

“You have everything you need?” she asked, looking at her watch. He just growled and leaned back again. Eva nodded, then added, “Lunch is at one. I have to work until then.”

“What’s for lunch?” her father asked.

“Pork roast.”

Her father beamed. “Then coming home just got twice as wonderful!”

Eva went into the dining room, picked up her boxes, and put them on the terrace. Time flew by as she tried to glue the packaging together in a more appealing way.

“I’m hungry.” Her father stood on the terrace.

Eva was startled, but she turned around. “OK, go turn on the stove. The platter is near the pot. Put the flame on low. OK?”

“OK,” her father said and disappeared into the house.

Eva glued the last strips of cardboard and pressed on them with all her might. It wasn’t going to get any better than this. She laid the new design near the older ones and looked them over. This design looked better than the last one, but it still reminded her of a train wreck.

Before she went in for lunch, she checked her e-mails again. The next videoconference would be tomorrow at noon. Her boss was expecting at least a rough design.

She groaned.

Even if she wasn’t satisfied with the results, she had no other choice but to present the sketch of the train wreck. Presenting the cardboard model would be professional suicide. There was so much at stake now.

In the hallway, she noticed a strange burning smell. She hurried to the kitchen, where the contents of the pot smoldered. The stove’s burner was on high.

“Papa! I told you to put it on the lowest level!” she yelled and pulled the pot off the stove. There was no doubt the sauce and bottom side of the roast were burned to a crisp.

“I don’t know very much about stoves,” her father yelled back.

With a loud clank, she put the pot in the sink. “Still, you should have been able to smell that something was burning!”

“It smelled funny, but I didn’t know how your pork roast smells.”

“Very funny.” Eva pulled a different pot out of the cabinet and carefully loosened the burned roast from the bottom of the pan. “Men can invent all sorts of crap, but they can’t operate the simplest little thing,” Eva grumbled. “Especially when they really don’t want to.”

She opened the windows and front door to get rid of the smell, then returned to the kitchen to cut away the burned parts of the roast and slice up the remaining meat.

Her mother must have a sieve somewhere. She might be able to rescue the sauce by straining out the burned parts. She found her mother’s sieve in the cupboard next to the stove.

After straining it, Eva was relieved to find that the remaining sauce was still edible and only a little bit burned. She put the pot back on the stove and poured water and a shot of red wine into it. If she diluted the sauce and stirred in a little more of the packaged powder, it might even taste halfway decent.

She scraped out the rest of the pot before soaking it in hot water. It would be a relief to get the pot clean again. A thick layer of burned onions stuck to the entire bottom.

As she stirred the sauce at a low temperature, she cooked up noodles in another pan. She had already prepared the salad and dressing in the morning. All she had to do now was toss it.

She put the pot, pan, and salad bowl on the table. “You can come in now. But please turn off the TV first.”

Eva set out plates and cutlery before serving her father a healthy portion.

The TV was still on, but at least her father had turned down the volume.

“I have to find out how long they have to stay in jail,” her father said as he sat down.

Eva squinted into the living room. Judge Barbara Salesch was on. “How sophisticated. How many times have you seen this episode?”

“What else am I supposed to do?”

“How about reading a book?” Eva said as she served herself. “Or watch the roast while I’m working.”

“You call all that tinkering work? That’s what it looked like anyway. Besides, you know I don’t know anything about the kitchen.”

“And now you have to live with the consequences. Bon appétit.”

Her father cut a piece of meat and chewed it pensively. “The sauce tastes funny.”

“It doesn’t taste funny—it’s burned. And that’s your fault. After I spent hours yesterday getting the meal ready.” He continued to eat silently, a guilty look on his face.

Eva put a forkful of noodles and sauce into her mouth. It didn’t taste so much burned as it did like instant sauce and wine that she’d used to try to salvage the meal. But she wasn’t going to tell her father that.

While eating, Eva noted that black clouds were moving in their direction. “I better get everything in from the terrace. One puff of wind and my designs will be scattered all over the yard.”
Not that losing the packaging would be that painful,
she thought darkly, but she had to have
something
to show her boss.

She picked up a woven basket from the kitchen, hurried out to the terrace and packed up her samples. Holding the basket in one hand and her Mac in another, she tried to close the door, but a fierce wind suddenly blew in and she struggled to close it. The gusts of wind swept across the yard. The trees bowed and the sound of leaves rustling joined the howling wind. Eva rushed back out to grab the outdoor seat cushion before it blew away, then threw the cushion into the hallway and braced herself against the door to close and lock it.

“Wow, a huge storm is blowing in.” She headed to the living room to unplug the TV.

“The summer storms are getting worse all the time,” her father said as he took another slice of pork roast out of the pot.

Eva shook her head. “Everything should calm down by tomorrow,” she said with a sigh.

“That hospital food wasn’t for me. They put me on a diet because I’m supposedly too fat.” Her father looked at her. “Can you imagine? Too fat!”

“Yes, Papa. I know you’re not too fat, you’re just under-tall.” Eva took her plate back into the kitchen and reheated it in the microwave.

“Exactly.” Her father laughed. “At least you understand me. And my shoes aren’t too tight because of my size either.”

Eva came back with a plate and sat down. “You should eat some salad,” she urged. “Besides, you’re not even wearing shoes.”

“Oh, the green stuff is for rabbits.” Without looking up, he pushed another piece of meat in his mouth.

Eva served herself more of her colorful salad. “It tastes good. You should at least try it.”

Her father sighed before he stabbed his fork into the bowl, apparently just to show his goodwill.

Eva studied his face to see what he thought about the salad. Since the doctors had put him on a diet, she decided her father would be seeing less meat on the table from now on.

The wind howled outside and Eva shivered. Thunderstorms had always fascinated her, but she’d forgotten how unprotected her parents’ house felt. The open fields offered an incredible view as the lightning flashed across the sky. The rumble of thunder was only a few seconds away.

Eva ate the last of her noodles and waited for the next flash. “Where’s Felix?”

“He’s probably hiding in one of the outbuildings,” her father said, then devoured the last bite of meat on his plate. A bright lightning bolt cut through the black sky, followed by an earsplitting thunderclap. “We haven’t had a storm like this in a long time. I hope the lightning doesn’t strike anywhere near us.” With these words, he rose from the table to return to lounging on the living room couch. He was fast asleep within five minutes. His snoring wasn’t even drowned out by the rain pelting against the windowpanes, the powerful cracks of lightning, or the booming thunderclaps.

Eva gazed out the window. It looked as if the end of the world were imminent. She squinted when she saw something flit across the lawn. Lightning lit up the yard. Felix. She rushed to the terrace door, tore it open, and called him. The little guy raced through the door, down the hall, and into the living room and hid behind the sofa, tracking water and dirt onto the beige carpet. Eva remembered instantly that she had forgotten to close the living room door. She turned, realizing she had a decision to make. Should she clean up the lunch dishes, mop the hall, or wipe the cat prints off the carpet first? After looking at the clock, she decided to put away lunch and take care of her designs. The rest could wait. Her boss definitely could not.