Janne had stopped shaking. My cheek tightened and this entire procedure was nothing like kissing used to be. I got angry. I grabbed Janne’s shoulders and squeezed them. I had the feeling that if I didn’t restrain myself I might crush her delicate bones with the palms of my hands. She threw her arms around my neck and squeezed the air out of me. She bit my upper lip. The last thing to bite me had been the Rottweiler. I grabbed her hair, which felt heavy and cool in my hand, and I wondered about the strange gasping and snarling I heard. Then I realized that it was us making those noises.
Suddenly she let go of me and rolled herself back a few feet. My knees were weak. I tensed them so they wouldn’t buckle, suddenly consumed with the irrational fear that Janne had robbed me of the use of my legs and that from now on I was doubly cursed—no face, no legs. I braced myself against the wall and turned automatically toward the webcam. It seemed to be turned off, the red light wasn’t on, so I didn’t bother with a smile for the public. My legs were still there and they held me up. Janne watched me from a little distance with gleaming eyes and a very broad grin.
I pushed Janne’s wheelchair across the sidewalk. Her mother stood in the doorway and watched us go. I turned and waved. She waved back, awkward and stiff. When I said goodbye she had kissed me on both cheeks and I breathed in her sweet perfume and blinked at the little wrinkles beneath the layers of makeup around her eyes.
I could no longer see Janne’s face, only the part in her black hair. We didn’t talk to each other. From up above I could see a bit of her lap, the depression in the folds of her dress, her small hands, her fingers interlaced.
“Should I get you a lapdog?” I asked while we were waiting at a traffic light.
“What for?”
“It would suit you. A yapping little pooch with a hair clip sitting in your lap.”
“Great idea,” said Janne.
It took us barely an hour to get to the family services center and that was only because I was so slow. I didn’t go into the meditation room. This time we’d arranged to meet in the little garden behind the building. “So Janne doesn’t have to go up any stairs,” the guru had said. But there was a ramp at the main entrance or else Janne wouldn’t have been able to get in the other times—I began to notice such things for the first time.
Everyone else was there, spread out on two wooden benches on either side of an old table which had a giant bottle of apple juice and a stack of plastic cups on it. They all looked at us, all of them, even Marlon with his sunglasses looked as if he was glaring at us. Now that we’d left the pavement it was much tougher to push the wheelchair. I started to sweat. The guru quickly hoisted the camera and pointed it at us like a weapon.
“Janne?” asked Marlon in a voice as taut as a guitar string.
“ . . . and Marek,” added Friedrich, beaming.
“Is that really the way to do it?” asked Richard after the guru had greeted us all. “Are you the team leader and cameraman all in one?”
“I’m everything, all in one.” The guru walked around us with his device and I wanted to swat him away like a fly. “I always have been, my whole life. I’m the director, screenwriter, cameraman, speaker, cook, his girl Friday. A creator par excellence.”
“Maybe we should fire you and get somebody else,” said Janne. “Someone who understands what’s up with us.”
“Go right ahead,” said the guru. “Why did you two show up together by the way? You’re not starting something between you, are you? I’m warning you. Think of your children.”
I choked on my apple juice. Everyone looked at me. Especially Marlon. I was sure that he did. Janne gazed into the distance with her hands folded in her lap as if she had nothing to do with any of this and least of all with me.
“Relationships,” said the guru as if in a reverie, “are tough enough for us normal people. They could really drive you guys crazy. Does anyone here have a girlfriend? Does anyone want to tell us about it?”
Richard said nothing and without thinking began to fidget with the ring he wore on his pinkie. Marlon turned his face toward Janne and whistled a melody. Janne sat there like a bystander. And the poof named Kevin raised his hand and said, “I have a very sweet boyfriend.”
But nobody wanted to know any more about that, so silence descended over the group again.
“People, this isn’t going to work,” said the guru after a pause.
“Exactly,” said Janne. “We’re wasting our time. You need to do your work or there’s no point to all of this.”
The guru closed his eyes. Then he opened them again and exhaled slowly, like a boy who has just accidentally climbed up to the ten-meter diving platform. “There’s no way to avoid it,” said the guru. “We have to take a trip. All of us, together.”
What’s this?” asked Claudia when I put the note on the table.
“You have to sign it,” I said. “Right here.” I pointed with my finger.
She straightened her glasses and leaned over the piece of paper. “You’re going on a trip with your group?”
That sentence was like a punch to the gut. Total self-destruction. Yes, I’m going on a trip with my group.
“You?” asked Claudia skeptically. “You are going on a trip with your self-help group? Why am I just learning about this now?”
“Everything is explained there,” I said. “It’s a spur-of-the-moment group decision. You said yourself that I should socialize more.”
“I said that?” Claudia read the sheet of paper through for the fifth time. “I’m not signing this until I’ve spoken to him.”
“Please don’t. I’ve already been humiliated enough.”
Claudia shook her head. Then with a flourish she signed her name on the space that was separated from the informational letter by a dotted line and a tiny scissor symbol.
“But a thousand euros for one week,” she said, “that’s a heck of a lot, my dear. Weeklong camps run by the school cost a fifth of that. How do you like the guy who runs it anyway?”
I ignored her question. “It’s because the accommodations are handicapped accessible.”
We ate the three of us again that evening. Dirk had given up trying to engage me in conversation. He twisted his spaghetti onto his fork and chatted with Claudia about scuba diving. I liked him a lot better this way. I twisted my spaghetti on my fork and looked through a travel book on Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Until Claudia took it from me, shut it, and tossed it onto the chair next to her.
“Pull yourself together,” she said.
“I’m going away for a week with my self-help group,” I said to Dirk as if in confidence. He was wearing an unbelievably pink shirt. I’d heard that even men wore pink these days, but it bothered me on him.
“Really?” he asked politely. “Where are you going?”
“Marenitz,” I said.
“And where is that again?”
I didn’t know myself. The guru said something about a three-story villa. A room for him, a room for Janne, three double rooms for “you guys,” kitchen, and a common room with a woodstove. I knew it was going to be a disaster and I knew I would definitely go anyway.
“Will you look after Claudia and feed my fish during my absence?”
“Certainly.”
“That eases my mind,” I lied.
I was lying in bed and looking at the catfish in the aquarium when Claudia knocked at my door.
“Phone for you,” she said and was already in my room before I said “come in.” She handed me the phone. “You’re very much in demand lately. It’s almost like the old days.”
I took the warm phone out of her hand. An anxious, frail female voice vibrated in my ear canal. I quickly scratched my ear because it tickled. And that’s how long it took me to recognize the voice of Janne’s mother.
“I just really wanted to know if you were also
going on this trip, Marek,” she said. “It makes me nervous to agree to this scheme since I don’t know anyone. Except for . . . ” Her voice trailed off again.
I was so surprised that all I could do was cough. And then I said yes to everything. Yes, I will look out for Janne. Yes, I’ll hover around her. Yes, I realize she has limited mobility. Yes, I’m prepared to come by so she can tell me all of this in person and shake my hand one more time.
She hung up and I felt like a pantry moth on flypaper.
She was standing in the doorway again, waiting for me. She was very slender, that’s what I noticed first. In her slim-cut dark blue pants and white blouse with round collar, she could have passed for a girl, from the back at least, a girl from a previous era, maybe the thirties or the fifties, I couldn’t have told you the difference.
It seemed to me that her smile was a bit less tense than it was the first time. That was normal. People got used to me.
“Marek.” Again as a greeting she held my hand in her ice-cold fingers. “We’ve been expecting you.”
And I thought, why in the hell didn’t you bring flowers, you idiot? If not for corrosive Janne then at least for her mother.
As I went down the cool hallway I wondered whose voices I was hearing floating toward me from the slightly open door. One was clearly Janne’s, but the second one? Of course I recognized it instantly and just pretended I didn’t, because the knowledge of whose voice it was gave me a pain in my stomach that transformed into nausea. I knocked a little too loudly on the door. On Janne’s bed sat a smiling Marlon, and Janne was laughing so much that I was tempted to take her for a cheerful twin sister. When I’d been there recently she hadn’t laughed like that. Actually she hadn’t laughed at all.
They greeted me with a bland cheerfulness, like a married couple who patiently accept being interrupted by the mailman in the middle of the most fascinating conversation. I leaned against the door and tried to control my breathing. What I really wanted to do was run away, hurt and insulted. But I didn’t want Janne to laugh at me. I would like to have killed the last woman who laughed at me. But the only one who was killed, other than me, was the Rottweiler.
I noticed a red rattan chair in the corner and sat down in it. My behind sank deep into the seat cushion. Janne smiled. To what no-doubt-important rationale did I owe the honor of my invitation, I asked her loudly.
“Mama wanted it,” said Janne casually. “She’s all worried about the trip.”
I would have done exactly the same thing if I were her mother. I just didn’t know what her worries had to do with me. I asked Janne, in the hopes that she’d be embarrassed that her mother had dragged me into it despite the fact that she, Janne, was busily devoting her time to another guy.
“Mama just wanted to meet the other people going on the trip,” said Janne as if it went without saying. She certainly didn’t look embarrassed. “That way she’ll be a little more comfortable with it. I’ve never gone away on my own before. Without Mama.”
“And why are you now?”
“Because I want to.”
Then she forgot me for a while and began chattering away again about some meaningless claptrap. It had been a long time since I’d been so thoroughly ignored. I couldn’t remember if I ever had been. When she got around to talking about breeds of dogs, I got up and left the room without a word. That is, I wanted to leave the room but ran into Janne’s mother in the doorway. She invited us all to the dining room for tea.
We sat at an oval table. The tablecloth was hanging way down on one side. I was next to Janne’s mama, Janne next to Marlon. Behind us a piano, on it some open sheet music.
Her mother poured fruit tea and pushed the milk and sugar around the table like they were action figures. I had the impression that she was putting real effort into making sure she divided her attention evenly between me and Marlon. You couldn’t say the same about Janne. She just kept talking about dogs.
I turned to Janne’s mother and asked her what she did. She was a translator from Swedish and French. I reported that I had a Slavic name; I completely forgot that we’d already talked about that during my first visit. I said I also had a Ukrainian stepmother who wasn’t much older than me. She’d been our au pair.
Not much older than me wasn’t entirely accurate. Tamara had been eighteen then, and that was already seven years ago.
Janne’s mother fell sheepishly silent. I’d always thought that the mothers of disabled children wouldn’t be easily shocked. But maybe her husband had run off with an au pair girl as well. In any event, she didn’t want to delve any deeper into the subject of my stepmother, so I asked as politely as possible what she was working on at the moment. She was translating a book on suicide, she said, and the writing was very intense. I praised the topic and revealed to her that my mother was a divorce attorney.
“Right,” she said distractedly, “I’ve heard about her.” I discovered time and time again that a lot of people had heard of Claudia. Clearly the institution of marriage wasn’t in great shape.
I finished my tea and got up. Janne and her mother both came to the door to say goodbye. Janne’s mother said she was happy that Janne would be accompanied on the trip by such wonderful young men, that it would be almost like family. She sounded suspiciously like the guru but I generously ignored that fact. I told her I’d like to read one of her translations, if the one about suicide wasn’t finished then another one about a comparable topic. Janne shook my hand and forced me to bend down so she could give me a kiss on each cheek. Little devils danced in her eyes. I suddenly understood why someone might want to strangle a girl he was in love with.
I desperately tried to convince Claudia not to drive me to the train station. I said my bag wasn’t heavy at all and that I could find the correct platform on my own. If any complications came up I could always ask somebody (at that point I pushed my sunglasses up on top of my head for a moment and Dirk flinched). Claudia said in an annoyed tone that she didn’t have to go all the way to the platform, but that she at least wanted to drive me to the station, she owed that to me, to herself, and to our, she paused briefly, group leader. He’s the last person she owed anything, I said. He’s an asshole and a liar, but on the plus side there’s a pretty girl going. Claudia started to cough and I rapped on her back.
Dirk piped up that he could do it, too. Take me to the station. I wondered what made him think he would be any more palatable to me as a chaperone than Claudia was. Then it became clear that he suspected I didn’t like feeling controlled by Claudia.
“Sure, you drive me to the station,” I generously permitted him. “My mother is always busy at the office at that time of day anyway.”
It was more complicated than I expected.
The night before, I’d already thrown everything into my suitcase, including six pairs of sunglasses in identical leather cases, when the phone rang. I figured it was Janne again or at least her mother wanting to reassure herself that I really would keep an eye out for Janne. But I was disappointed. It was Kevin on the phone, and he asked me in a friendly tone how I was planning to get to the station.
Like an idiot I told him the truth. He asked whether it would be too much trouble for us to pick him up. He lived practically around the corner and his boyfriend had to go to work. He gave me a street name I’d never heard of before. I didn’t really have any choice.
Claudia said goodbye with a kiss on the cheek and a slap on the back—like I had dust on my back. I promised to send her a text as soon as I arrived. Then she was off, and I stared at the spot where she had just been standing.
Dirk drove a two-seater convertible. There was a backseat, but it wouldn’t have held anyone bigger than a munchkin and our gang of cripples didn’t include one of those. I squeezed my suitcase into the tiny trunk. Kevin would have to tie his to the back, I thought, and it would roll along behind us.
“We have to accompany a
fellow traveler,” I said formally.
Dirk nodded, hemmed and hawed a bit, and finally asked what kind of disability the person had.
“I don’t know what you would call it,” I said. “He’s crazy. Apparently he went after somebody because he heard voices. And he’s also a poof; I don’t know how the two things are related.”
From that point on Dirk didn’t say anything more.
Kevin didn’t live anywhere near me but rather over at Gesundbrunnen, on the third floor of a yellow-painted concrete high-rise block. He waved out the window and something about his dark profile disturbed me. The door buzzed open even though I wasn’t planning to go upstairs. Dirk left the car in the middle of the street with the motor running and came up the stairs behind me. It obviously made him a little uncomfortable. He must have loved Claudia a whole lot given the things he did for her. An early version of approval germinated inside me.
My forebodings were confirmed as soon as I entered the apartment. Kevin had lined up several small bags in the hall, each decorated with a pearly luggage tag. Unfortunately he himself was completely naked.
“Are you not ready?” I yelled. “Do you think the train will wait for you?”
“I’m ready,” said Kevin.
I picked a T-shirt up from the floor and tossed it to him.
“Not that one,” he moaned, but then he glanced at me and back at the shirt and threw it on. Then, nearly unprompted, he set off searching for a pair of pants. I looked into the kitchen, which was small but spotless. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that Kevin supposedly lived here with a partner. At the end of the day I still felt like Claudia’s little mama’s boy—I’d only just learned how to run the washing machine. Yet I was only a little younger than Kevin.
Just Call Me Superhero Page 5