Part 6 (1/2)
PROBABLY KNOWS), AND TO FEEL SORRY.
FOR ME (BECAUSE SHE SHOULD REALIZE.
HOW HARD THINGS ARE FOR ME), AND TO.
FEEL TERRIBLE (BECAUSE AT LEAST SOME.
OF IT IS HER FAULT), AND TO PROMISE ME.
THAT SHE WON'T DIE AND LEAVE ME.
ALONE. BUT SHE DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING.
I COULDN'T EVEN SEE THE LOOK IN HER.
EYES WHEN SHE SAW THE BRUISES,.
BECAUSE MY s.h.i.+RT WAS OVER MY HEAD,.
COVERING MY FACE LIKE A POCKET, OR A.
SKULL.
MY FEELINGS.
They are announcing flights over the speakers. We are not listening. They do not matter to us, because we are not going anywhere.
I miss you already, Oskar. I missed you even when I was with you. That's been my problem. I miss what I already have, and I surround myself with things that are missing.
Every time I put in a new page, I look at your grandfather. I am so relieved to see his face. It makes me feel safe. His shoulders are pinched. His spine is curved. In Dresden he was a giant. I'm glad that his hands are still rough. The sculptures never left them.
I didn't notice until now that he is still wearing his wedding ring. I wonder if he put it on when he came back or if he wore it all those years. Before I came here I locked up the apartment. I turned off the lights and made sure none of the faucets leaked. It's hard to say goodbye to the place you've lived. It can be as hard as saying goodbye to a person. We moved in after we were married. It had more room than his apartment. We needed it. We needed room for all of the animals, and we needed room between us. Your grandfather bought the most expensive insurance policy. A man from the company came over to take pictures. If anything happened, they would be able to rebuild the apartment again exactly as it was. He took a roll of film. He took a picture of the floor, a picture of the fireplace, a picture of the bathtub. I never confused what I had with what I was. When the man left, your grandfather took out his own camera and started taking more pictures. What are you doing? I asked him.
Better safe than sorry, he wrote. At the time I thought he was right, but I am not sure anymore.
He took pictures of everything. Of the undersides of the shelves in the closet. Of the backs of the mirrors. Even the broken things. The things you would not want to remember. He could have rebuilt the apartment by taping together the pictures.
And the doork.n.o.bs. He took a picture of every doork.n.o.b in the apartment. Every one. As if the world and its future depended on each doork.n.o.b. As if we would be thinking about doork.n.o.bs should we ever actually need to use the pictures of them.
I don't know why that hurt me so much.
I told him, They are not even nice doork.n.o.bs.
He wrote, But they are our doork.n.o.bs.
I was his too.
He never took pictures of me, and we didn't buy life insurance.
He kept one set of the pictures in his dresser. He taped another set into his daybooks, so they'd always be with him, in case something happened at home.
Our marriage was not unhappy, Oskar. He knew how to make me laugh. And sometimes I made him laugh. We had to make rules, but who doesn't. There is nothing wrong with compromising. Even if you compromise almost everything.
He got a job at a jewelry store, because he knew the machines. He worked so hard that they made him a.s.sistant manager, and then manager. He did not care about jewelry. He hated it. He used to say jewelry is the opposite of sculpture.
But it was a living, and he promised me that was OK.
We got our own store in a neighborhood that was next to a bad neighborhood. It was open from eleven in the morning until six at night.
But there was always work to be done.
We spent our lives making livings.
Sometimes he would go to the airport after work. I asked him to get me papers and magazines. At first this was because I wanted to learn American expressions. But I gave up on that. I still asked him to go. I knew that he needed my permission to go. It was not out of kindness that I sent him.
We tried so hard. We were always trying to help each other. But not because we were helpless. He needed to get things for me, just as I needed to get things for him. It gave us purpose. Sometimes I would ask him for something that I did not even want, just to let him get it for me. We spent our days trying to help each other help each other. I would get his slippers. He would make my tea. I would turn up the heat so he could turn up the air conditioner so I could turn up the heat. His hands didn't lose their roughness.
It was Halloween. Our first in the apartment. The doorbell rang. Your grandfather was at the airport. I opened the door and a child was standing there in a white sheet with holes cut out for her eyes. Trick or treat! she said. I took a step back.
Who is that?
I'm a ghost!
What are you wearing that for?
It's Halloween!
I don't know what that means.
Kids dress up and knock on doors, and you give them candy.
I don't have any candy.
It's Hal-lo-ween!
I told her to wait. I went to the bedroom. I took an envelope from underneath the mattress. Our savings. Our living. I took out two one-hundred-dollar bills and put them in a different envelope, which I gave to the ghost.
I was paying her to go away.
I closed the door and turned off the lights so no more children would ring our bell.
The animals must have understood, because they surrounded me and pressed into me. I did not say anything when your grandfather came home that night. I thanked him for the papers and magazines. I went to the guest room and pretended to write. I hit the s.p.a.ce bar again and again and again. My life story was s.p.a.ces.
The days pa.s.sed one at a time. And sometimes less than one at a time. We looked at each other and drew maps in our heads. I told him my eyes were crummy, because I wanted him to pay attention to me. We made safe places in the apartment where you could go and not exist.
I would have done anything for him. Maybe that was my sickness.
We made love in nothing places and turned the lights off. It felt like crying. We could not look at each other. It always had to be from behind. Like that first time. And I knew that he wasn't thinking of me.