by Gaby Koppel
Maybe Mutti’s right. Maybe she’s been right all along, and I’m just too stubborn to admit it. How many more bad nights do I have to endure before I throw in the cards with Dave? We’re engaged to be married, for Christ’s sake. It’s not a game any more. Sure, I know the predictable crap about why I chose him. The goyishe boyfriend so perfectly calculated to wind up my folks, as described in a thousand self-help books. My parents are above that knee-jerk response, I think they do want the best for me, but I can’t just give him up because that’s the sensible thing to do. As if I knew what that was, anyway. We aren’t in the realms of the rational here. Question: How do you know when a relationship is worth pursuing?
Chapter 9
When I next phone home, my mother gives me the usual catalogue of unremarkable recent domestic purchases and tedious social events. It sounds über dull, suspiciously so.
“Is everything OK?” I ask.
“Ja, fine, fine,” she replies. I can hear her teeth clacking down as she bites onto her cigarette holder.
“Are you sure?”
“Mmm, well Daddy is being not very nice really.”
“What do you mean?”
“He won’t talk to me.” Well I never.
“At all? Or just about – certain topics?”
“Weeell, ich weiss nicht, Lisbet. He is being Ekelhaft. Wirklich wahr.” Surely not.
“Do you want me to talk to him?”
“Nein, nein. You don’t have to.” She sighs. I can see her sitting in the usual place by the kitchen table, with her pile of cigarette filters, crosswords and well-thumbed address book. And no doubt the “COMPENSATION CLAIM” file isn’t far away, getting fatter by the day. He’s in the next room, watching Panorama. I put the phone down and go to the gym.
As the week winds on, the tension is building. She’s getting more and more excited about Hungary and he’s getting more fed up with it. They take turns to call me – him from the office, her from the kitchen. The frequency is building. It’s clear that though both of them are speaking to me, they aren’t speaking to each other. So there’s only one thing for it.
I join thousands of other people sitting in a tailback on the Chiswick flyover. I’m thinking about Dave and that awful night. All week my default mode has been a hopeless attempt to evaluate our relationship, as though there’s some kind of magic formula for balancing the nights of passion against the clangers. I relive the Sussex summer when we made love in the sea at dusk, and by the time I hit the M4 proper, I’m flying along the overtaking lane, feeling the sensual excitement of the waves and his body besides mine. Easing off the accelerator, I find myself once again trying to work out whether I want Dave, or need him or – is it love?
But thinking doesn’t work, and feelings are unreliable. They don’t account for the way we’ve grown together, helping each other over life’s all too frequent disappointments, sharing aspirations, battling with the outside world and making a bid far too late in life to finally grow up, together. But when you grow up you move on. And what about the crap nights when we can’t connect – do they matter? Maybe they are a sign that it’s just not working any more. Risking a major road accident, I fumble around in my bag one-handedly for some gum and instead pull out Valentina’s now rather crumpled appointment card. The whole idea of a dating agency seems outrageously simplistic, reducing the thousand facets of any personality to GSOH and taste in music.
I’ve been trying not to notice that Dave’s been texting me and phoning me all week. But I don’t trust myself enough to return his calls. And now I’m driving away from him at 90 mph. Outside it’s dark and Any Questions has finished long before I hit the Severn Bridge. It always feels downhill to Cardiff from here, I’m freewheeling home past Newport, powered by a spike of adrenalin as I peel off the motorway and weave my way through the country lanes that stretch into the back of Rhiwbina. At the house Mutti greets me rather formally. From her air of unsteadiness, and my father’s defeated demeanour, I understand the situation. It’s my adolescence all over again. She’s going to wobble around with overcooked food and stinking of alcohol while we sit there looking sheepish. Well, it’s time to break the habit of a lifetime.
“I’m fed up.” I say. “Not just because I’ve spent three hours on the motorway to get up here. But because when I finally do, you are pissed.”
“Ach Lisbet, it’s OK,” protests my father. “You don’t have to.”
“No it’s not bloody OK.” I hiss. “It’s been going on for too long and nobody ever says anything.”
“You really – don’t know what you are talking about,” says Mutti, with a steely expression.
“Yes I do. I’ve grown up with it, remember. People rolling their eyes sympathetically at me. What about that ghastly mess at Bernie’s party? Are we supposed to pretend it didn’t happen?” There’s a shocked silence at this. I’ve stepped over an invisible line. And now there’s no stopping me.
Between the dining room and the kitchen there’s a wall of cupboards that opens on both sides. Clean plates can be put in on one side, and taken out from the other. I march up to it, slide open the centre right drawer, and take out a bottle of scotch, and a bottle of vodka. Both are half full.
“How do you think I knew these would be here? Do you think I’m deaf or something?” For as long as I can remember, Mutti has had a habit of sidling out of a room half way through a sentence. A subdued clink of bottles, and a glugging sound. Then she re-emerges, to complete her sentence. And she thinks I haven’t even noticed. Me, the ever-so-clever A grade pupil/graduate/television researcher. Am I really so daft that I don’t notice she’s walked out of a room in mid-flow, and come back stinking of spirits. “The really stupid thing is the fact we’ve all put up with it for so long.”
Dad is looking uncomfortable. Mutti re-loads her cigarette holder. “Maybe there are reasons we don’t talk about these things always,” he says. He puts a hand on Mutti’s.
“But it’s been going on for so long. What’s the big secret? Surely, it’s healthier to talk about it. To get it out into the open.”
“Lisbet, we will talk about these things. When the time is right.” I look from him to her, and back again. They think if we don’t talk about it, it’ll just go away. That never worked before. Mutti speaks.
“You want to talk now? OK, we talk. About the past. We’ve done our best. You wanted something – you got it. Clothes, holidays, parties. We gave you everything we knew how. So we’re not perfect. No, but who is perfect?”
“I’m not asking for perfection. All I’m saying is why didn’t you just throw away the fucking booze?” There’s a kind of air pocket. My parents don’t swear and I don’t do it in front of them. We’ve broken through the sound barrier.
“You show me another parent who tried harder to get it right,” screams Mutti. “You were my precious baby. My chance to start again, after all the shit I went through. I wanted everything the best for you. I wanted to start again, to make things new, to make them right. We done our best, maybe that’s not good enough. We spoilt you.”
“That’s great, just have a go at me. I’m the spoilt brat only child.”
“It’s true. You took everything and turned on us. Now we have no more to give. Ungrateful bloodsucker.”
“It’s so much easier to make me the problem.”
“I think we made your life too easy.”
“That’s right. You gave me everything and it wasn’t enough. Nothing’s good enough for me, and that includes you, my goddamn parents. You try to pretend the past hasn’t happened. And the booze is just another way of obliterating it. But it’s just trauma in a different guise.” It looks as though she’s about to yell back at me when a baffled look comes over her face, as though I’ve just said something in Swahili. “Why won’t you talk about the drink?” I yell at the top of my voice. She suddenly looks crumpled and forlorn.
“I go to find my lighter,” Mutti mutters as she ambles out of the room. We can hear her rummagi
ng around in the kitchen.
“She had a phone call,” says Dad.
“Yes?” Mutti lives on the phone, so this is unsurprising.
“From America.”
“Yes?”
“You remember Mutti’s cousin Vonni?”
“Sure, how could I forget?”
“He died.”
“Right. And now I’m the insensitive bastard. You could have mentioned it.”
“You didn’t give me a chance.”
So even though it’s barely nine o’clock I go to bed, and just sit there with anxiety knotted in my stomach. I can’t concentrate on my book, and the sound of the newspapers crumpling drives me mad, so I throw them on the floor and rearrange the covers. Lying down with my eyes shut doesn’t work because it’s way too early to sleep, even with yoga breathing and relaxation exercises. So I get out and stretch. My phone’s lying on the dressing table. I pick it up and start scrolling through all the Dave’s texts and his missed calls that I’ve ignored. There were quite a few on Sunday, and a spasmodic pattern during the week. Surely he must know something’s wrong by now, even if he didn’t appear to grasp it on Saturday night.
The need to call him is now physical in its intensity. Because that’s what I do. And every time it happens, he manages to make me laugh about my parents instead of wanting to scream, which means I can face them again in the morning.
I’d have to apologise first and have some kind of unnecessary discussion about our relationship, which I really can’t face.
I hear the stairs creaking, which can’t possibly mean my night owl parents are going to bed. Instead there’s a horrible possibility that one of them is coming up to build bridges. I click on Dave’s number, press call and blast out “Hi it’s me,” while the phone on the other end is still ringing. So when he does pick up the phone all he hears is silence and heavy breathing.
“Yes?” He says. “Who’s there? Elizabeth?”
“Yes, I’m at my parents’.”
“Are you OK?”
“As I said, I’m at my parents.”
“Why are you shouting?”
“I’ve just had an argument with them,” I say, trying to find a normal speaking register.
“I can’t remember a time when you went to your parents and didn’t have one.” The fact that he’s right doesn’t make it any less annoying. There’s a sound of dripping in the background. He must be in the darkroom.
“Not that good on Saturday, was it?” It’s more a statement than a question.
“I wondered if you’d noticed,” I reply, trying to sound dry but ending up more like pathetic.
“I think it’s insensitive of you to suggest I’m so insensitive.”
“Is that a joke?”
“Hardly.” Drip, drip, drip.
“What are you processing?” It’s a simple enough question, but the answer is one long pause. Eventually he says, “Faces.”
“After a ten-year obsession with still life, you’ve suddenly gone into portraits? You’ll be doing weddings and barmitzvahs next.”
He doesn’t laugh, doesn’t even really react to what was admittedly an extremely weak joke. That’s the thing about Dave, he’s steady. He carries on calmly talking about his work.
“You’ll like these. I think you’ll like them quite a lot.”
“You’re making it sound very mysterious.”
“There’s no mystery. I’ll show you soon enough. And Elizabeth…”
“Yes?”
“Don’t worry about it. Don’t angst. You over-think. Make up with your parents. They aren’t as bad as you make out. Especially your mum, give her a break.”
“That’s what I try to do, all the time. The arguments just seem to come out of nowhere. She ambushes me.”
“Just keep trying. And one more thing…”
“Mmmm?”
“Remember this. One bad night doesn’t mean the end of a relationship.” After I put the phone down, I sit there trying to work out my own feelings. Of course he’s right, one bad night doesn’t mean the end of a relationship, I can’t argue with that. But it sounds so pat, like something you find in the agony columns of the clever newspapers. I’m caught between my parents and Dave, and it’s going to be some kind of eternal stand-off. I can’t keep using him as a comfort blanket and human shield, and however much I think I love him, there’s only one way of finding out what life would be like without him. I’ve got to make myself walk away, to find out if I can live without him.
I’ve been carrying Valentina’s card around in my bag for days. I take it out and have another look at it. It is heavy and unyielding in my hand. Feeling treacherous, I dial the number. The answering machine clicks in. Of course it’s night-time and weekend, what was I thinking? I leave a message.
The following morning I wake early. The divan gives way under my weight. It must be twenty years old, so the springs have given up. A comfortable sitting position doesn’t work. When I lean back, the whole thing rolls away, so I slide down in the gap between the bed and the wall.
I open the fitted wardrobe, looking for something to wedge behind the castors. Half the wardrobe is taken up with some old dresses from the 1950s. Mutti’s. I flick through them – nice fabrics, fine cottons mainly. At a time when lots of women made their own clothes, she did too. When I was a kid her old treadle sewing machine was parked in the spare room, abandoned, but these frocks testify to its heyday. I lay out the dresses on the bed, look at the hems, the seams. She was good in those days. Before things started getting to her. At the bottom of the cupboard is a pile of old handbags, some of which would fetch a fair price in a vintage clothing store. While I am wondering if Mutti would mind me having them, I find some other stuff, pushed to the back of the closet. A bag of my old baby clothes, and then a large plastic bag containing something lumpy. I open it to find a pile of dusty photograph albums.
I spread them out on the carpet, and open one, taking care lest the worn binding comes apart in my hands. It has a red velvet cover adorned with gold embroidery and a jewel-encrusted clasp, broken. On the first page, there’s one rather magnificent sepia print, a family group, very formal. It’s fixed on the page by cardboard corners. The mother is wearing a dark dress with a high-necked white lace collar. A sombre young man at the far right is wearing an army uniform for – what? Probably the Great War. His left hand is resting on the crook of what looks like a long walking stick propped between his legs, but may be a sword. The younger children wear sailor suits, and two older girls are in identical silk blouses and tall lace-up boots that would still look good today. The rest of the book has smaller snaps of groups and individuals taken around the same time, and some shots of a 1920s wedding. The bride and groom are dressed like silent movie stars but the expression on their faces is exceptionally grim. And then, over the page are some pictures of an elegant but ugly woman, and a sharp young man with oiled black hair.
Most striking of all is a series of pictures of a beautiful girl. There are several of her in ballet costumes, posing on her toes. In one she is arched over backwards so far that she is touching the floor by her feet. Here she is skating, one leg held up high behind her, way above her head. Big, shiny smile, like a model. There she is a bit older, playing the violin in a ruby silk dress. This is the record of the life of a family. I recognise some of the faces. But most of all I know the ballet girl is my mother.
The door opens, and she is standing there, looking at me looking at the albums. The smile is drifting from her face, a waft of cigarette smoke dissolving in the air between us.
“Put them away,” she says in a flat voice. She stands there wearing an impassive expression until the cupboard is shut. Then she turns and walks away.
After I’ve dressed, things are still chilly. This is no moment to raise something as contentious as the compensation claim, so instead I wave the white flag by suggesting a visit to the supermarket. And this time I maintain a diplomatic silence over the disabled parking.
&nb
sp; We are delighted to find some red plums marked down. We put a large number of punnets in our trolley to make a cake for the afternoon, and amble the aisles discussing the relative merits of different recipes. Should it be a buttery gleichgewichtskuchen – a rich sponge slab, studded with soft fruit? Or maybe we’ll stew the plums first, and layer it between a good almond pastry, like the one my grandmother used to make.
As we debating the relative merits of whipping cream and crème fraîche, Mutti says, “Ach, the plum season was marvellous.”
“The plum season?”
“You didn’t have deep freezes or any of this,” she waves her arm around the store, its shelves heaving with tins and jars.
“At the plum harvest, we used to make preserves, jams, schnapps. The smell was fantastic. Everybody got involved in picking the fruit into huge baskets, the maids, the cook. My cousin István and I were allowed to help too. Cleaning, cutting, stewing. For days there were piles and baskets of fruit all round the kitchen.