Hausfrau: A Novel

by Jill Alexander Essbaum

  The air made everything seem lonelier than it already was. Anna reached for her Handy, which she’d put in her pocket before leaving the house. She opened the phone on its hinge and pressed a single button twice.

  ONCE, FOLLOWING AN ALMOST painfully tender morning of lovemaking and as the sun passed through the shutter slats and fell upon their bodies, Anna turned to Stephen. “Tell me about spontaneous human combustion.”

  Stephen laughed, kissed her on the forehead, and rose. “It doesn’t happen. People don’t just catch fire.”

  “I’ve seen pictures.”

  Stephen shook his head. “Nothing spontaneous about it. There’s always a catalyst. Smoking in bed, faulty wiring, stray sparks, lightning. Something. It’s not magic, Anna. It’s chemistry. Nothing ever just explodes.”

  Anna knew this wasn’t entirely true. Her heart had exploded in her chest when they met. Or it felt like it. She would do anything for him. She’d set herself on fire if he asked her to. Or told herself she would at least.

  Anna got dressed and went home.

  EARLIER IN THE MONTH, Anna received a card in the mail. It was from Mary. On the outside of the card, a close shot of a ladybug. Inside, Mary had written a short note: I’m sending this card for no reason except to tell you that you are loveable and dear and I delight in our friendship. Have a great day, Anna!!!

  THE PHONE RANG ONCE, twice, a third time. On the fourth ring Archie picked up. “Yeah?”

  The “yeah” blew her back. “It’s me.” Anna paused, then added with sheepish specificity, “It’s Anna.”

  The connection crackled on Archie’s end. He said something Anna couldn’t fully understand and she asked him to repeat it. It was still unintelligible. He was in a room with other people. A bar, maybe. Anna couldn’t distinguish the competing voices. She barreled forward. Talk to me, Archie. I am drunk and cold and alone and horny and in the dark and drunk and lonely and Bruno’s asleep and talk to me, talk to me please, please. She knew he didn’t owe her this. But she could ask, couldn’t she? Talk to me. Please. Please?

  There was a pause during which Anna heard Archie turn away and ask the people around him to be a little quieter. Anna couldn’t differentiate between individual responses but she did make out a woman’s laugh, rowdy and high-pitched. “Sorry,” Archie said. “It’s loud here.” Anna nodded as if he could see her nodding through the phone. “Hey,” he cleared his throat. “Can I call you later?”

  “Are you on a date?” The note in Anna’s voice accused. She had intended it to.

  Archie pretended not to hear her. “Can I call you tomorrow? I can’t talk right now.”

  “No,” Anna said, and reminded him she’d be at home with Bruno and her kids and if he didn’t talk to her just then, he wouldn’t be able to until Monday.

  “Then I’ll talk to you on Monday, all right?”

  “Okay,” Anna responded. But she didn’t mean it. It wasn’t okay. She ended the phone call quickly, before Archie could end it himself. An immediate, unfair jealousy possessed her. Hot tears welled in her eyes, then boiled over, then slid down her face. Dammit, Anna. In her heart she heard the unbidden, disembodied voice of Doktor Messerli: Your histrionics cripple you.

  Yes, yes, Anna said aloud to the inner voice. He’s trifling. A nothing. A no one. But her heart hurt anyway.

  She opened her telephone again and in a darkness illuminated only by the bright gray screen she scrolled through her address book until she found Karl’s entry. The SMS was easy. Wo bist? She received an almost immediate answer. Basel. Tomorrow in Kloten. Hotel? Karl’s father lived in a convalescent home there. That’s what brought him to Kloten so often. And he always stayed at the same hotel. Isn’t it expensive? Anna had asked. It was, Karl said, but the sister of one of the men he cut trees with was a manager and always found him a room in the off-season and gave him a deal. Most often the deal was Don’t worry about it. Anna assumed he paid her in other ways. Maybe he fucked her too.

  Yes, yes, Anna replied. Text me. I’ll meet you anytime.

  “ARSON AND PYROMANIA AREN’T the same,” Stephen said. “Arson’s a crime. Committed, usually, for insurance fraud.” Stephen often testified in criminal court as an expert witness. He would take the stand and attorneys would question him about the behavior of fire. What it did under stress. How it reacted. What things set it off. “Pyromania, on the other hand, is a disease. I’m not a shrink so I can’t say much more than a pyromaniac sets fires on impulse. It goes beyond his common sense. Also, it’s rare. It’s not something he can easily help.”

  “Pyromaniacs are always men?”

  “Overwhelmingly, yes. Most all fire setters—arsonists included—are male.”

  “And what about pyrologists?”

  Stephen grinned. “Ah. The overwhelming majority of pyrologists are men who know how to channel their impulsivity into avenues of potential orgasm.” And with that he put his head beneath the blanket under which they lay and began sucking Anna’s nipple even as he ran his hand between her thighs. Anna purred. It was a good afternoon.

  ANNA WOKE WITH A hangover. Her head throbbed, her eyes pulsed, her stomach was sour and brackish. It was seven A.M. The children were at Ursula’s and Bruno was still asleep. Anna took some aspirin, drank a liter of water, and had two cups of coffee. By the end of the first cup of coffee her equilibrium returned. The morning came into slow focus.

  She’d left her cell phone in the pocket of her coat when she returned from her walk. When she retrieved it that morning the message light was blinking. It was a text from Karl. She squinted. The memory of the night before rolled slowly into focus. The sex. The bench. Archie. Karl. She blushed against the recollection of her frantic scrambling to keep from being alone.

  Bruno’s mood was coltish when he awoke—without a hangover—forty-five minutes later. He brushed by Anna on the way to the bathroom and gave her bottom a smack. Minutes later he was in the kitchen cooking breakfast, whistling as he fried eggs and bacon for the pair of them. Anna marveled at this man. Where’d he come from? How long is he staying? She pushed those questions from her mind. It was better not to know. As in the case of a magic trick, once the ruse is learned, the spell dissolves.

  They flirted over the meal like newlyweds. Bruno ran his hands up and down the outside of her thighs. She sucked butter from his thumbs. Anna blushed when, leaning in to kiss him, she smelled herself on Bruno’s face. That was enough. She was done with the food. She was ready to fuck again. She was ready for Bruno to fuck her again. She mentally drafted an SMS to Karl: Change of plans. That would be all she needed to say. Bruno bit her lower lip then drew little circles on the tip of her tongue with the tip of his own tongue.

  Anna was manic with desire. Bruno’s smile was natural but perplexed. “What are you thinking?” he asked in his usual, accented English.

  Sinking? Anna thought. I’m not sinking—I’m swimming! Bruno wore flannel pajama bottoms and a ratty white undershirt. Anna had on nothing but a robe. She’d stripped to nakedness and resignation after her walk the night before. She stood, took hold of Bruno’s shoulders, then swung her right leg over his lap and eased herself onto him, pressing her chest into his body. She kissed him once, then again. She undulated. Her robe fell open. It was the act of her body beckoning its finger. She felt his cock begin to stir.

  Bruno kissed her back, but it was a pat and friendly kiss. He shook his head. “Not now. We do that later, jo?” Anna frowned. “Don’t pout,” Bruno said as he winked and tap-tap-tapped her outer thigh in a way that meant You get up now, okay? and with that, Anna rose. Bruno stood and stretched and yawned and then he reached out and ruffled her hair as if she were one of their sons. He slugged back the last swallow of his coffee. “Maybe you can clean up since I did the cooking?” Then he went into his office and shut the door behind him. Anna sank back into the chair. At the sound of Bruno’s office door clicking into place, something in Anna slammed shut too. A closed door reminded her of everything about her life she
hated. And she hated it twice as much as she had the day before. The brief vacation from heartbreak made the desolation that remained all the more acute.

  Anna washed the dishes then dressed and walked over to get the children. “Did you have a nice time?” Ursula asked. Anna told her nicely that the party was nice and it was also nice to get out of the house for a nice evening out. If she said “nice” enough times she was sure she’d decide that it had been wholly wonderful.

  “You’re out of the house every day.”

  Anna caught the indictment. She stood in the doorframe, Polly Jean on her hip. The boys barreled past her. They ran down the street to the house. “Ursula, is there something you want to say to me?”

  Ursula backed down. “No. Most days you do leave the house. This is true. That’s all.”

  Later that afternoon, she informed Bruno that she was going for a long bike ride. “Two hours. Maybe more.” Bruno was clicking through computer files and sorting papers in his office. She asked him to listen for the children. Bruno grunted. “Polly’s upstairs napping,” Anna said as she tied her shoes. Bruno grunted again.

  Anna returned home more than three hours later. “I had a good ride,” she announced in the direction of Bruno’s office. He grunted once more.

  THERE WAS LITTLE WAY around Anna feeling awkward and adolescent in Monday’s German class. She hadn’t messaged Archie since she’d hung up on him, and he hadn’t tried to reach her either. It was petty, this fuming, Anna knew. But a minor bruise still hurts when you poke it with your finger. For the first full hour Anna didn’t even look in his direction and instead watched Roland lecture on German particles, those sly idiomatic words that serve as a sentence’s emotional barometer. Yeah? So? Of course! Really? Duh! Just. Whatever. Archie watched Anna not watching him. Mary sat between them, unaware of the tension. At break, Archie pulled Anna to the side in the Kantine before either of them went through the line.

  “You didn’t need to get mad at me.”

  “I wasn’t mad. I was drunk.” That wasn’t a lie.

  “I was with Glenn and his wife and their friends.”

  “I didn’t know your brother was married.” There was so much of Archie she didn’t know.

  Archie cleared his throat. “Glenn doesn’t know. About you.” Anna stared him down in a way she had no right to. Archie gave in. “It was a fix up. It ended with a hug. She might have wanted more.” He hadn’t needed to tell her that.

  “Really. And what did you want?” Anna wearied of herself. She had no claim on jealousy.

  Archie gave a moderate sigh. “I’d have liked to not have been there at all. If I can’t be out with you, I’d rather be home alone. Really.”

  It shouldn’t have, but this satisfied her. In any case, Anna couldn’t admit to what she couldn’t explain. “Let’s just get coffee.”

  ANNA HAD LOVED STEPHEN, or thought she had. Anna thought she still loved Stephen, though she wasn’t sure. But Anna did love Polly Jean, and in a way that was like loving Stephen.

  AFTER THE BREAK, THE group returned to class and Roland moved from particles to a review of the four German cases, beginning with the accusative case. What a word, Anna thought. Accusative. It pointed a bony finger in her direction (as everything and everyone seemed to be doing of late). She copied out the chart that Roland drew on the board and tried to summon even a little self-empathy.

  I’m nothing but a series of poor choices executed poorly. It was an indictment to which she could not object.

  But after class and as was now the general custom, she traveled with Archie back to his Niederdorf apartment. They small-talked their way through every tram stop. Inside, they didn’t even bother kissing. They made banal, quotidian love. It was the sexual equivalent of a shrugged shoulder.

  I owe this man nothing of myself, Anna thought.

  13

  IT IS POSSIBLE TO LEAD SEVERAL LIVES AT ONCE.

  In fact, it is impossible not to.

  Sometimes these lives overlap and interact. It is busy work living them and it requires stamina a singular life doesn’t need.

  Sometimes these lives live peaceably in the house of the body.

  Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they grouse and bicker and storm upstairs and shout from windows and don’t take out the trash.

  Some other times, these lives, these several lives, each indulge several lives of their own. And those lives, like rabbits or rodents, multiply, make children of themselves. And those child lives birth others.

  This is when a woman ceases leading her own life. This is when the lives start leading her.

  THE DAY BEFORE HER birthday, Anna woke to the Sunday morning surprise of two little boys standing over her. Charles held out a vase of semi-wilted flowers that must have been purchased the day before. Victor offered her a tray of toast and jam and coffee. Bruno stood behind them holding Polly Jean. “What’s this?” Anna sat up in bed. Charles spoke first. “It’s for your birthday, Mami.”

  “Oh!”

  Victor piped in, sure of himself. “Your birthday isn’t until tomorrow.”

  Anna suppressed a scowl. Victor was always the room’s first pessimist. He held out the tray and Anna took it from him. “Thank you!” She waved her sons over for a kiss. “This is so thoughtful!” Charles grinned and kissed his mother before setting the flowers on the nightstand. Victor received his kiss passively and shuffled from foot to foot. Anna looked up to Bruno. He told her it was all their own idea and then he reached into the pocket of his pants and pulled out a little box.

  “Here, Anna.” Anna took the box. It was a small square jeweler’s box, unwrapped. The tiny hinge creaked when Anna opened it. Inside, pressed into a padded slot, was a gold ring set with three stones—a garnet, a diamond, and a yellow topaz. They were her children’s birthstones. It was a mother’s ring. Anna slipped it onto the ring finger of her right hand. It was a snug, even fit. She looked up at Bruno and Polly and down to the faces of her sons and told them the truth in a metered, earnest voice.

  “It is the nicest gift I’ve ever received.”

  “You like it?” Bruno’s voice was flat, but not unkind.

  “I love it.”

  “Very good. Happy birthday. Enjoy your breakfast.” Bruno leaned down and gave his wife a modest kiss on the lips. Anna didn’t fight the tears that came.

  ANNA HAD WRITTEN LETTERS to Stephen she’d never sent, all but one of which she composed during the immediate weeks after his departure. She hid them in her high school scrapbook (melancholy’s most appropriate storehouse), itself at the bottom of a box, which in turn rested underneath a stack of a half dozen other boxes in a deep corner of the attic where Bruno would never find them. Anna sometimes pulled the letters out and sat on the attic floor and spent moody hours rereading them. They were maudlin and overcomposed, and she remembered where she wrote every one. In Platzspitz: They used to call this Needle Park. Where the addicts got their drugs. I am addicted to you and I shake on the floor in your absence. And another, written from a bench facing the river Sihl, the muddy river that feeds into the Limmat: Brown like your eyes, brown like the hurt in my heart. Murky and silty and sad oh sad. The day was drizzly. A man in a green hat staggered past Anna to a tree fifty yards away and took a piss. Another letter opened like this: I write to you from the Lindenhof, the very place you searched out the day we met. And yet another letter began at Wipkingen station: Your station, Stephen. Do you remember? That letter took her weeks to write. She finished it on the bank of the Zürichsee at Seefeld, in the Riesbach harbor, by the large, abstract sculptures. Anna remembered each incident, each place, most every pen stroke, the clothes she wore, the weathers, how they turned, how they stalled, how they felt against her skin.

  It had been at least five months since she’d read the letters. Maybe six. The last time she read them was the first time they embarrassed her.

  ONE MORNING THE PREVIOUS week, Anna arrived at German class with a stomachache. She felt as if she’d eaten pebbles or sw
allowed hourglass sand. She took her notes silently and without flourish. Roland spoke of indefinite pronouns. Something. Someone. No one. Everybody. Whoever. All. Enough. And: Nothing.

  Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  Mary knew that Anna’s birthday was approaching. During a class break, she volunteered to have a party at her house and to bake Anna a cake and what was her favorite kind, anyway?

  “No, Mary. You’ll do nothing. Please. I beg you.” Mary seemed baffled, but she capitulated. She let the matter drop.

  They spent the rest of the German class in pairs, pretending to telephone each other.

  “DO YOU KNOW WHAT it’s like?” Anna spoke quickly, breathlessly. “It’s like having so much feeling in your body that you become the feeling. And when you become the feeling, it’s not in you anymore. It is you. And the feeling is despair. I almost can’t remember a time I didn’t live here. But even my walk gives me away as an American. I’ve forgotten how to think in dollars and yet I barely understand how to count in francs—my husband’s a goddamn banker!” Every thought Anna had, she had at once. “Am I in Hell? I must be in Hell. I don’t know what else you want me to say. I can cook and shop and read and do simple math and I can cry and I can fuck. And I can fuck up. Can I love? What does that mean? What does that matter? What do I matter? All I ever do is make mistakes.”