Inseparable

by Heldt,Dora

  “I’m not hungry at all…”

  “Then leave it.” Christine kept on eating and wondered whether Gabi was waiting to be questioned or whether she would just come out with it.

  “Thomas left me.”

  Christine looked at Gabi, shocked. “When?”

  “Three weeks ago.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “You can say that again.” Gabi could feel that her eyes were starting to well up, and blew her nose angrily. She didn’t want to cry, not now.

  Christine pushed her plate aside. “But why? I mean, was it just out of the blue?”

  Gabi rubbed her eyes and cleared her throat. “Well, define out of the blue…Thomas was out of work for a year in Hamburg and then got a job in Frankfurt last summer. He’s a business management expert and was able to get a position with an insurance company. We agreed that I would stay in Hamburg in the apartment for the duration of his probation period, then take it from there. In January he got a permanent contract. And after that everything changed.”

  “Him or everything?”

  Gabi looked confused. “What do you mean? Oh, I mean him, he’s changed. He was working over the weekends, too, and came home every two weeks at the most. But whenever he was here, he always had somewhere else to be: at his parents’, the hairdresser, taking the car to the garage, he was always out and about. We hardly saw each other. And when we did, we just argued.”

  “Didn’t you ever go to Frankfurt?”

  “Yes, at the beginning, a few times. But I didn’t know anyone there. Thomas didn’t have much time for me, and he seemed different there. And I don’t like Frankfurt much anyway; it’s enough having to go there for the book fair.”

  “But you would have moved there anyway?”

  “No, why?”

  “You said you were going to think about it after the probation period.”

  “Well, yes,” Gabi answered indignantly, “but maybe Thomas would have found something in Hamburg again. I don’t want to move away from here…but it doesn’t matter anyway, because he just got stranger and stranger. And then, three weeks ago, he came home unannounced and told me he wanted to separate. He said he found it too hard, the long distance and traveling, and all just to end up arguing with me. He said we didn’t have anything in common anymore, and that everyday life wasn’t enough.”

  Gabi’s eyes were dry, and she didn’t seem that distraught. Christine was slowly starting to suspect she wasn’t here to comfort a distraught friend.

  “Do you miss him?”

  Gabi rubbed her forehead. “Miss him…well, of course, I have to organize everything by myself now. We’ve got a one-hundred-square-meter apartment that I can’t afford by myself, the car is in his name, and so are all our insurance policies. I’m just not in the mood to figure out all this crap. We lived together for twelve years, so everything is all tied up in each other’s names. And now he just takes off leaves me with all the chaos.”

  “And how are you coping?”

  “I don’t know. I’m bewildered, mad, annoyed. I can’t be bothered to starting living life as a single again, and I don’t have the energy to explain it all to my family and friends. I’m forty-three now, and I have to start all over. It’s so messed up.”

  Me, me, me, thought Christine, amazed at how differently women dealt with break-ups. She thought back to Luise’s tears, to all the nights she herself had spent crying, and wasn’t sure how to take Gabi’s reaction.

  “Is there something I can do to help?”

  Gabi raised her shoulders. “Not really. First of all I have to figure out what to do about the apartment. At the moment Thomas feels guilty and is still helping with the rent. But long-term I’m probably going to have to find something else. If you hear of anything, please let me know. Apart from that, can I please just ask you to keep this to yourself? I don’t want all the tongues at work wagging about my private life.”

  “Gabi, a separation like this is nothing to be ashamed of. Heavens, almost all of us have been through it. What did Ruth say?”

  “She doesn’t know yet. She’s much too stressed about things on her own life.”

  Christine was confused. She had thought the two of them were close, and last week Ruth had mentioned in the office that they met up every week.

  “Why haven’t you told her? You see each other all the time.”

  Gabi laughed bitterly. “That’s ridiculous. Look, this stays between us: Ruth has a lover who’s in Hamburg for a while. At first he was just staying three weeks, but he’s still here. I provide Ruth with an alibi so she can see him without Karsten finding out. If I had known she was going to do it so often, I wouldn’t have agreed. She’s so preoccupied with her own raging hormones she hasn’t even noticed what’s going on with me.”

  Christine wondered what planet she’d been living on recently. She had always regarded herself as being sensitive, but she had no idea what was going on right in front of her nose. She shook her head. Gabi took it the wrong way.

  “You disagree with what she’s doing, too, am I right? And Karsten is such a great guy. I’ve always envied Ruth for having him. He’s a senior physician now, have you met him?”

  “Once, just briefly.”

  Christine didn’t want to hear anymore. She’d had enough and looked pointedly at her watch. “Gabi, I don’t want to bring our conversation to an abrupt end, but I have to go to the post office. Let’s get the check.”

  Gabi’s thoughtful expression was replaced by a disappointed one. “It is that late already? What a shame. Come on, let me pay; I’ll stay here for a bit. After all—I do have the day off. Thank you for listening. It really helps to talk.”

  Christine took her purse and put her hand on Gabi’s shoulder briefly.

  “Thank you for treating me. I’ll see you later in the office then, or tomorrow if not. I hope the rest of your day goes OK.”

  She smiled and left the café. Outside, she stopped for a moment, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.

  That’s women for you, she thought. So much for the weaker sex.

  “Catfight”

  I recently spent a day at the sauna with my friend Karola. We go regularly. It’s relaxing, makes my skin feel soft, and helps me sleep better. The sauna is very modern and is called S P A, which summons images of beauty and well-being, and also means a day pass can cost ten Euros more than in a normal sauna.

  By the time we get to the changing room, we’re already feeling relaxed and laid back, and are full of compassion for the other women there. As we get changed and envelop ourselves in the fluffy bathrobes, we know, or at the very latest when we feel the straps of our colorful flip-flops slip between our toes, we know that we are looking out for our bodies and our souls, and that makes us sisters.

  That’s why there was no question that we would explain to the four women who were there for the first time, in a friendly, almost loving way, how to tackle the lockers and the sprawling layout of the sauna. Thanking us, they introduced themselves and explained that they had been friends for ten years, through thick and thin. Tomorrow the last of the four would celebrate her fortieth birthday, and they were doing the spa day in honor of the occasion. After all, you had to treat yourself now and then.

  My friend Karola is always very friendly, particularly at moments like these, and the four sauna beginners assumed from this that they could tag along with us, the old sauna aficionados.

  We always start off in the eighty-degree sauna. Karola and I lay down on the higher bench and our new friends followed us, which led to a minor kerfuffle. This was partly due to the fact that Anja only wanted to sit right next to the door, that Uschi couldn’t see the sand timer from where she was, that Katja didn’t mind either way, and that Dagmar didn’t want to stay in there too long anyway because it was too hot.

  After five minutes I whispered in a friendly way that you’re supposed to keep the noise down in the sauna. After that it was a little quieter, until Dagmar got up, making kind of a
show of it, and left the sauna. She slammed the door so loudly that Karola jumped and almost fell off her bench. Katja, Uschi, and Anja stared at the closed door, and Uschi commented softly, but loudly enough for us all to hear, that Dagmar had put on a lot of weight. This was affirmed by the rigorous nodding of three heads.

  In between treatments, we usually rest on the wonderful teakwood loungers on the roof terrace. My friend Karola and I hurried ahead but were discovered ten minutes later amid whoops of joy. Katja had treated her friends to a round of apple juices, and each was holding a glass. When Katja saw us, she immediately insisted that we join them for a drink, as her treat. Karola politely refused, but Katja had already gone to get more juice. Anja commented to Dagmar that that was typical for Katja; she always had to pay for everything. After all, she didn’t have any children or a husband, so no wonder she just worked and piled up her money. But at some point she would be lonely, and then what good would it be to her?

  After ten minutes Karola and I felt the urgent need to make our next trip to the sauna. Katja stayed up on the terrace to keep an eye on the six apple juices; the other three followed us.

  Just before we got to the ninety-degree sauna, Uschi ran into a guy she knew and started chatting, so only Dagmar and Anja followed us in. Dagmar started to get dizzy right away. After all, ninety degrees was even hotter, and our chill-out break hadn’t been that long. In an effort to distract Dagmar, Anja told her that the man they’d bumped into was Uschi’s lover. In an instant, Dagmar forgot about being too hot. She claimed there was no way the chance meeting in the sauna had been a coincidence, and asked about Uschi’s husband. Anja said that Uschi’s husband was stupid and would never realize, and that Uschi had only married him for his money anyway. After all, he was so ugly, what else could it have been?

  My friend Karola had a funny expression on her face and got really hot all of a sudden. So we decided eight minutes were enough for this trip.

  After the cold shower, she was feeling better. In the chill-out room—which we had conveniently neglected to introduce our new best friends to—we managed to get an hour’s nap.

  Later, as we sat in the small bistro drinking lattes, Uschi and Katja came over and asked if we’d seen the others. We shook our heads regretfully, but they sat down with us anyway. Katja tried to make us guess which of them was the oldest. Uschi said right away that, of course, it was obvious that Anja was the oldest, but that we should guess how old.

  Karola said, carefully, perhaps forty-six or so (which also happens to be her own age).

  Uschi turned to Dagmar and said: “You see, I told you, Anja looks really old. She’s forty-one but has so many wrinkles, from smoking and the pill, that she looks at least five years older than she is.”

  She looked at us both triumphantly.

  On that day, Karola and I didn’t stay as long in the sauna as we normally do. Before we left, we politely said good-bye to our four sauna buddies. They smiled at us and each other and said it was a shame we wanted to leave already, but that maybe we would see each other here again.

  We hoped not.

  That evening, as I lay on the sofa, relaxed and rejoicing in my delightfully soft skin, my friend Karola called. She asked whether I thought she was fatter than she used to be. Then she pointed out that she didn’t have a lover and told me she had married her husband Paul when he was still a poor student. And then she made me promise not to look at her butt when we were next in the sauna.

  I believed her, and promised. After all, we’re friends.

  Sylt

  Christine was cleaning beer glasses. She waited for her mother to comment, as she always did at moments like this. And today was no exception: carrying a tray of dirty glasses, Charlotte walked into the kitchen and said the very words Christine had been expecting.

  “Oh no, you haven’t put my good glasses in the dishwasher, have you?”

  Christine turned to the side so that her mother could see the dishwasher. “I’m washing them by hand, Mom. Just like I always do.”

  Reassured, Charlotte cleared the tray. “It’s just that they were expensive and I wouldn’t be able to replace them.”

  Christine rolled her eyes. For the last twenty years, these glasses had been washed by hand. For the last twenty years, they had only been used for special occasions, which meant only for guests. Christine’s parents loved entertaining lots of guests, who in turn loved to both drink a lot and use lots of glasses. So Christine always ended up with wrinkled fingers after birthday parties.

  Outside in the garden, Christine’s father was celebrating. Looking every inch the guest of honor, he sat among ten men of the same age who—spurred on by beer—were giving their penny’s worth on Bundesliga regulations and the failings of community policy. A few meters away, in the shade, the wives were sitting around a table, talking loudly about Agnes’s new grandchild, about fertilizer for the hydrangeas, about Gundula’s daughter’s impossible new husband, and about the fact that Helma always brought store-bought cakes to the Red Cross bazaar.

  As Christine walked over to them with the clean glasses on the tray, she had to simultaneously field questions about her apartment, her ex-husband, and the shade of her lipstick.

  “Sit down with us, Christine, won’t you? Charlotte, if your daughter does any more washing up, she’ll end with hands like prunes.”

  “Come on, you know Charlotte only had children in the first place so she’d have enough staff for her parties.”

  Agnes and Renate slapped their thighs in merriment. The mood was already so lively that Christine had difficulty figuring out what they were laughing about. Presumably even they weren’t sure anymore and were just in hysterics.

  After ten minutes Christine felt exhausted by all the noisy femininity. She longed to slink away and have a cigarette in peace, drink a glass of red wine, and just look out at the sea. She discreetly looked at her watch. It was five thirty; Ines would be here in half an hour. It was her little sister’s turn to wash a round of glasses.

  Christine stood up and leaned over toward her mother: “I’m just going for a wander down to the marina; is that OK? There’s nothing more to do in the kitchen and the oven’s on. The meat needs another two hours, and I’ll be back by then.”

  Charlotte patted Christine’s hip. “Sure, you go off for a bit. If you’re sure you don’t want to wait for Ines? She’ll be here in a minute.”

  “No, that’ll take at least another half an hour; then she’ll have to join in the celebrations, drink some champagne, say hello to everyone, and I don’t want to hang on that long. I’ll be at the Gosch bar; she can join me in a bit.”

  Charlotte was already laughing about what Agnes had started to say as Christine went back to the house with her best “I’m just getting glasses quickly” expression. No one noticed her climb over the fence.

  Relieved, Christine walked toward the summer dike, lighting a cigarette as she went. She didn’t usually smoke out on the street, but Sylt was the exception. She thought back to all the times she and her cousin Sanne had said they were going for a walk, when they were actually going down to the dike to smoke. Afterwards, they would always chew gum to make sure they didn’t get busted. That is, until the day when Uncle Paul was up on the roof fixing the aerial and saw the two thirteen-year-old girls smoking down there. He never had been convinced that girls of that age would just go for walks. The trouble they got into afterwards was immense; neither Sanne nor she had smoked much at all in the few years that followed.

  Christine smiled to herself at the thought that even now, at over forty years of age, they would still absent themselves from the family Christmas meal with a cheery “we’re just going for a walk.” Their fathers would shake their heads sadly, while their mothers raised their eyebrows. Afterwards, Sanne and she would still chew gum before coming back.

  Christine stubbed her cigarette out in the sand and wrapped it up in a tissue. Before, they had done that to hide the evidence; now it was to help look after the
island. So perhaps they had grown up after all, at least in some ways.

  The parking lot down by the harbor wasn’t as packed now, at the end of August, as it was in high season. The ferry from Denmark had just docked, and there was a cheerful holiday atmosphere, one of the things Christine really loved about Sylt. She ordered a glass of red wine from one of the bars and took it over to a bench with a good view of the sea.

  Finally relaxing, Christine exhaled deeply and raised her glass to the sea. The evening sun was glistening over the water, and it felt like a perfect moment. She hadn’t been here since her vacation in June. Since her weekend with Richard, to be precise. The official reason was that she had to write the columns on the weekend and found it easier to work at home. But in truth she was scared of the memories of Richard and the feelings they unleashed in her. She had only seen him twice since that weekend. At the beginning of July, she had visited him in Bremen, and after that he had flown out to the US for three weeks for work. They had written each other text messages, full of longing for each other, and spoken briefly on the phone. When he came back, he came over to Christine’s for the evening. He seemed dejected but hadn’t said why. That evening he had seventeen calls from his wife, Sabine. Richard had explained briefly that she was having problems at work in Berlin and that it was a difficult time for her. Christine hadn’t asked questions; they had agreed not to talk about his marriage. Since that night they had only spoken on the phone. And his messages had seemed a little mechanical to her ever since, as if they were lacking real sentiment. He sounded sad, but waved any questions away. Christine suspected that Sabine had discovered her husband’s double life and that Richard was panicking. He’d started to go back to Berlin again on the weekends, telling Christine that he had appointments with the bank or that he had to take his car to the garage. She felt full of doubts. She knew he found their situation hard to handle; so did she. But she couldn’t bring herself to take the decision out of his hands and end it, and sometimes she loathed herself for that.