Absolute Zero_Misadventures From A Broad

by Margaret Lashley

  I logged in and checked for emails. I sat up straight. There was one from Friedrich. I clicked on it.

  Dear Val,

  I hope you had a pleasant trip. Let me know you arrived well. I miss you, and so does Otto.

  With heartfelt greetings,

  Friedrich.

  Attached to the email was a photo of the cappuccino machine. Friedrich had stuck a picture of a sad face on it. The frown made my lips smile and my heart ache.

  I WOKE UP ON THE COUCH. Jet lag had gotten the better of me. Before I’d passed out, I’d emailed Friedrich with a simple note letting him know I was okay. Then I’d eaten a piece of fried chicken. That was a lie. Then I’d eaten the entire box of fried chicken.

  I looked at the clock. It was 4:33. Clarice would be home in less than an hour. I grabbed the cardboard coffin of chicken bones and headed for the car. I made it to Publix in less than ten minutes. I stuffed the skeletal remains in a garbage bin outside the store and ran inside. I bought another box of chicken and a packet of antacid, and scurried back to Clarice’s house. I was mashing the potatoes when Clarice walked in the door.

  “Mmmm! Smells like Southern cookin’ in here!” she called from the front door. “Either that or something died up in the attic.”

  “It’s collard greens. Get washed up. I’m putting dinner on the table!”

  I heaped Clarice’s plate high with collard greens, lumpy mashed potatoes and a fried chicken breast and wing, her favorite pieces. My own plate got a modest portion of potatoes and lots of greens. As I poured the Riesling, Clarice came in and took a seat at the table. She took a bite of collard greens.

  “How can something that smells like a dead skunk taste so good?”

  “It’s one of those mysteries of the cosmos, I guess.”

  Clarice laughed, then looked at my plate. “What? You’re not having any chicken?”

  “I’m trying to watch my weight.”

  “You look fine. Don’t go turning into a skinny, whiny twerp on me!”

  “Okay. I’ll have a leg.”

  I went into the kitchen and took the smallest leg from the box. I wondered why one leg actually was smaller than the other. Was this some kind of mutant, fiddler-crab chicken?

  “What should we toast to?” Clarice called from the dining room.

  I walked back to the table. “To friendship.”

  Clarice picked up her glass and started to take a sip.

  “Wait! You have to look me in the eye!”

  “What? Why? I already took a sip while you were in the kitchen.”

  “Oh.”

  “What’s the big deal?”

  “Nothing, really. Friedrich says if you don’t look each other in the eye when you toast, it’s seven years of bad sex.”

  Clarice stared at me for a moment. “Well that explains it. Now I know the real reason why American men are such lousy lovers!”

  I laughed and turned scarlet. My embarrassment didn’t go unnoticed by Clarice.

  “What? Shut my mouth. I’ll be darned! He’s good, isn’t he?”

  I looked down at my half-eaten chicken leg and smirked.

  “Dang it! He’s really good. That does it! I want details!”

  “I can’t give you details!”

  “I know. I was just fooling. But tell me this. You really like him, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I do. It’s funny, Clarice. I’ve lived here nearly all my life, but today was totally weird. Maybe it’s because I don’t have my own place, but I feel...lost. Like I don’t belong here anymore.”

  “Maybe because your heart belongs somewhere else?”

  “I don’t know. I only know that things seem... pointless here. Empty.”

  “Girl, why is it so hard for you to just admit you’re in love?”

  I was in love. I must have been. I could see it in Clarice’s eyes.

  I shrugged. “You’re right.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Girl, you’re on my last nerve! Write that boy and tell him! Then get your butt on the next plane out of here!”

  “That’s easy for you to say, Clarice. Your butt still fits in a coach-class seat.”

  THAT EVENING, I WROTE Friedrich asking when I could come back. He wrote a one-word reply. “Yesterday.” I booked my ticket to return in two days. I passed the time playing with Melvin, gossiping with Clarice, and writing my very first love poem.

  Good Conditions

  “I need a holiday,”

  I said. To erase the fragments of a life no longer wanted.

  Off to Italy to volunteer.

  Teaching English – without baggage.

  I just had to laugh.

  “Your luggage will be here tomorrow,”

  the hotel manager said, for four days in a row.

  “Mi dispiache.

  Let me buy you lunch.”

  I graciously accepted.

  “I will take her to lunch,”

  the stranger said, looking dumbstruck by his own words.

  Thus began a conversation

  that took us both by surprise.

  I climbed into his convertible.

  “Let me show you Alberobello,”

  he said. Then drove through postcards of Italy,

  swapping war stories with me

  like two strangers on a plane.

  I forgot about lunch.

  “I must take you to Matera,”

  he said, ignoring the sweat pouring from my palms.

  We made plans to meet again

  the following afternoon.

  I could hardly wait.

  “I feel like Sophia Loren,”

  I said, waving at the other volunteers

  from the passenger seat of his silver Peugeot.

  Sure beat the tour bus they were in.

  I couldn’t believe my luck.

  “Your feet are in goot conditions,”

  he said, peering at me from under a Gilligan hat.

  His compliment delivered poolside, in a red Speedo.

  He tried to dive into my eyes.

  I would not let him in.

  “Let me make you dinner,”

  he said. He cooked! He cleaned! Cappuccino and foot rubs!

  He told me he liked me

  just the way I was. I think he meant it.

  I got more than I bargained for.

  “You are the best what ever happened to me,”

  he said. I tried to believe I was worthy of his praise.

  I felt my soul quicken.

  Liquid hope filled my eyes.

  I let him in.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  When I landed in Frankfurt on Saturday morning, Friedrich greeted me with a hug, a kiss, and a surprise. He was working for a new company.

  “An opportunity came up at a nearby power plant,” he said. “I had to take it.”

  “That’s great! When do you start?”

  “In a few weeks. I am finished at my old job. I am in between now two weeks. We have some time together.”

  He put his arms around me again and hugged me tight. The way my body reacted, I knew I was ready to spend some time with him, too. He took me back to his apartment. It felt like home. It took me back to his bed. It felt like home, too.

  We spent the next ten days in that soft, twilight place only new lovers can dwell. His apartment became our love nest. We lay in bed half the day, talking, cuddling, napping and making love. We had food delivered and drank wine and dined by candlelight. We meshed into each other. We bonded. We fell in love.

  Only when we thought we might succumb to scurvy and scoliosis did we finally venture out of bed. One fall day we went to a wine fest being hosted by a tiny village nearby. We joined the crowd milling about along the barricaded main street. Closed to traffic, the road had been transformed into a marketplace. Stands selling trinkets and wine and snacks lined the sidewalks. Pedestrian clogged the street.

  We stopped at a
vinegar stand and sampled the goods on offer. The stand was in front of a house nestled in the middle of the festivities. Friedrich took a shot of strawberry vinegar, then looked up and stared. I followed his eyes upward. Behind a six-foot tall, wooden gate stood an old winemaker’s house. Carved into the plaster above the door was the date 1786. The house was in disrepair, but it had the bones of a real beauty.

  “That is the kind of house I want,” Friedrich said, then folded his arms across his chest and stared at it.

  I tasted a sample of the walnut vinegar. Yuck! Leave it to a German to make an aperitif out of vinegar. I had to catch my breath and clear my throat before I could speak.

  “That house? Really? It needs a lot of work.”

  “I’m an engineer. I like a project,” he said. “That’s why I like you.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I laughed. But Friedrich’s remark got me wondering. “Tell me the truth. Why do you really like me?”

  Friedrich turned his head in my direction, but kept his arms folded. “Because you are an elegant woman. You are not just looking to get off the street.”

  I’d been fishing for a compliment. I’d ended up with a flounder.

  “What do you mean, Friedrich?”

  “You have your own money. You are not trying to live off me like a parasite.”

  I had been hoping for something more romantic than not being a leech. My face fell so far he actually noticed.

  “I do not mean that I am trying to get your money,” he backpedaled. “When we are married I will sign a prenuptial contract. You keep what is yours.”

  “When we are married?”

  “Yes. That is why you came back to me, no?”

  “Are you...proposing to me?”

  “Well, I suppose so. Yes.”

  I stared into his serious, unflinching blue eyes. “I...I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say nothing. I give you a week to think about it.”

  I tried to speak. My mouth opened, but no words came out. Friedrich winked at me playfully, and I hit him on the arm.

  “I’m serious!” I said.

  “So am I. Let’s get married. Will you be mine, Val?”

  “I...I. I thought I had a week to decide.”

  Friedrich’s face registered concern and a tinge of hurt feelings.

  “Why don’t we go to a spa for a few days? We can relax and you will have time to think what you want for your life.”

  “Okay.”

  WE DROVE EAST TOWARD the Black Forest. As we drew nearer, the land turned hilly. Rocky outcrops began to peek through the verdant, grass-covered slopes. Soon, the foothills turned to small mountains, and we stopped for lunch at a roadside attraction called the Pioneer Village.

  Scattered over a couple of acres of land, a dozen or so old houses and other structures stood resolute, grey and weatherworn. According to a placard, each building had been carefully disassembled, moved to the site, and reassembled into a full-scale, working model of a sixteenth-century village. I kind of knew how they felt.

  We stretched our legs and toured the wonders of bygone German engineering. A watermill used the power of a small stream to turn a huge, round, grinding stone. A blacksmith shop displayed simple tools and strange, mechanical devices made of metal.

  Further down the path, sturdy wooden homesteads built half into the hillside featured ovens adorned with colorful tiles designed for cooking and heating. A man dressed in period clothes cranked a handle on a boxy contraption made of wood, demonstrating that the centuries-old device could still separate kernels of wheat from the shaft.

  But the real star of the show was at the attraction’s restaurant. Schwartzwalder Kirshtorte – Black Forest Cake. It was a calorie-worthy splurge of booze-soaked chocolate cake with cherry filling and whipped cream topping. I found it to be the perfect finish to a meal of schnitzel and pommes (pan-fried pork and French fries). Hmm. Maybe Germany really was starting to rub off on me....

  We arrived at the spa ready for a swim. We checked into our room and quickly changed into our bathing suits. I headed for a pool outside. Friedrich grabbed me by the arm.

  “We go this way,” he said, and tugged me toward a different door.

  “Why?”

  “The other is for naked only. You want it?”

  “Oh. No. I don’t want it.”

  We spooned and hugged in the “not-naked” pool like two otters in love. I giggled and laughed like a schoolgirl, but not everyone appreciated my good humor. An old woman wearing a rubber swimming cap from the 1940s shook her finger in my face and said, “Ruhig.”

  I turned to Friedrich, not for an interpretation, but for comfort. I’d just been scolded and told to keep quiet. I looked around at the other dour faces. Geeze! If you can’t be happy on vacation, when can you be?

  I decided if I couldn’t laugh, I could at least smile. I beamed my pearly whites at everyone. Out of thirty-odd bathers, I got one smile back.

  “Look, Friedrich! I cracked a German face!”

  Friedrich smiled and raised my score to two. The old man who’d played my game waded over and asked Friedrich something in German. Friedrich shook his head.

  “Nein. Americanerin. Mein Val.”

  My Val. I was his Val!

  MY WEEK WAS ALMOST up, and despite two divorce decrees bearing evidence to the contrary, I still didn’t know if I was the marrying kind. I was waiting for a feeling that would make me absolutely certain it was the right thing to do. When the feeling didn’t come, I began to question whether such a feeling really existed. Was stone-cold certainty about love just a fantasy perpetuated by fools in novels and silly romantic movies?

  The feeling never arrived, so I quit waiting and said yes. Friedrich had smiled, kissed me lightly on the lips, and made a phone call. A few days later, we went to a lawyer and drew up a bunch of papers in German. I’d signed them.

  Afterward, Friedrich announced we would get married at his sister’s house. That had sounded okay to me. I’d already had a big wedding. I didn’t need another. I certainly wasn’t going to drag any of my friends or relatives across an ocean for a five-minute ceremony. So, I sent them all an email instead.

  On a Sunday in late September, underneath the cherry tree in Hans and Olga’s backyard, they, along with Friedrich’s mother and Tamela from Tonga, witnessed Friedrich’s lawyer say the words that turned Friedrich and I into husband and wife.

  I thought I would feel different after the ceremony. More settled, perhaps. But I didn’t. To be honest, nothing had changed for me except my legal status.

  On Monday, Friedrich went off to his new job, and I was left to wander the streets of Landau alone, dependent entirely on the kindness of the rare, random stranger willing to throw me an English bone. After a few days of this, a gnawing, empty feeling made me face the facts. If I was going to live in Germany, it was time to get busy learning German.

  THE FIRST FEW MONTHS were all about vocabulary building. It felt akin to moving a mountain of dirt (Erde) with a bent teaspoon (Teelöffle). By the end of October, I’d beaten about two hundred words into my head. They rattled around up there, useless, until, like a bingo ball, someone actually chose one of those exact words when they spoke to me. Even then, by the time I recognized and translated the word, the person had already said a dozen more words by then and I was left holding a blank card.

  One day, I read on the Internet that I would have to have a vocabulary of at least five thousand words to even consider carrying on a conversation. That didn’t include grammar or verb conjugation. I got so frustrated I wanted to pitch the whole idea. Maybe it would be easier to teach all the Germans English....

  I’d started with the niceties. Please. Thank you. That was delicious. Nice to meet you. You’re welcome. These phrases had come in very handy for the first few seconds of meeting someone. After that, I’d said, ‘Hello, my name is Val.’ After that, I faded to the status of a useless dolt.

  Each time we visited Friedrich’s mother or his sister Olga,
I would listen intently to their conversation, trying to make out one word from another. It was like living a bad childhood dream – the one where I had to take an oral exam that I’d forgot to study for. It was exhausting. After an hour or so, I’d give up and go sit alone in silence.

  “You can’t just throw her in a corner,” I heard Hans tell Friedrich one day. “You need to help her out.”

  But even when Friedrich tried, I simply couldn’t learn German just by hearing it. My brain needed to see it written down, and to repeat it about ten million times. If I heard a word or phrase often, I’d ask Friedrich what it meant and how to spell it. I’d write it down and try to memorize it.

  By November, both the weather and I had turned grey and were prone to shed droplets sporadically throughout the day. I gave up on learning German. I spoke English with Friedrich at home. Given the crummy weather, I didn’t even want to leave the house. I lost myself in denial and Raymond Chandler novels.

  I wasn’t used to German attitudes or weather. In fact, I’d never experienced a real winter before. When ‘winter’ came to my hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida, I usually just stayed in that day. By the time I’d found my one and only sweater, the danger had passed. But here in Germany the cold and grey drug on for months at a time. I couldn’t get a job, either. It was against the law until I’d established residency. Besides, no one would hire me if I couldn’t speak German.

  Eventually, I ran out of novels and novel excuses. After taking in the Christmas markets, I perked up and decided to give German another try. It was then that I realized learning a new language was a lot like death. They both involved five stages of coping. I’d already been through denial and anger and bargaining. I’d just spent a good month in depression over it. That left the final phase – acceptance. I was teetering like a see-saw on the edge between the last two phases when something happened that shifted my whole focus.