Retrograde

  He can tell Helena he needs a few minutes alone. He’ll say it’s been a long day or that he’s not feeling well. She might not believe him but she won’t say anything. So much of marriage is like that. After a certain point, you don’t even need to have the arguments anymore; each of you knows what the other is thinking but not saying, and what you would say if she said what she was thinking, and what she would say to that, and so on forever. After a certain point, you’re too tired. You don’t believe the polite social lies your spouse tells you, don’t believe or like them, but you don’t want to fight, so you pretend you do. And she doesn’t want to fight, either, so she pretends to believe in your pretense.

  Is that the worst thing in the world? The train lurches to a halt in a dark tunnel between two stations, and the baby carriage rams Joachim in the gut. He did want someone to come home to. He was happy about that, at first. Maybe it isn’t Helena or him either; maybe it’s just too much, her being there all the time.

  And then the guilt comes like clockwork: She can’t help it. He’s the one who set things up to make her totally dependent on him. It’s not my fault she’s injured, he reminds himself. I didn’t tell her to jump in front of a truck. On a certain level, though, he feels that it is his fault, and he begins to reproach himself for not taking her to an orthopedist or even a general practitioner since she’s been out of the hospital. He wanted this pet so badly and now he isn’t taking care of it.

  Once, when he was very young, he won a goldfish as a prize at the town fair. His parents wanted to trade it in for a stuffed animal, but he was adamant, absolutely determined to have the bright, glistening creature that watched him with such dark and curious eyes from its plastic bag of water. For once, his parents gave in but made him promise he’d take good care of it. Of course he promised, and of course he did for the first few days, but then he forgot, or couldn’t be bothered. Whatever the reason, he didn’t feed his goldfish for a couple days, and his mother slapped him in the face when she saw it floating on top of the water.

  My parents were too hard on me, he reflects as the train wearily drags itself down the tunnel. I was too young to look after anything on my own. They should’ve helped me. They’ve always expected too much from me, and at the same time they expect me not to live up to their expectations. His mother didn’t slap him when she heard that he and Helena had separated, but she was just as convinced that it was completely his fault, his failure as a person, as she’d been all those years before, flushing the foul water and limp orange body down the toilet.

  Helena’s more forgiving, he tells himself. I wouldn’t have married a woman like my mother. But forgiving his failings didn’t mean she hadn’t expected them all along, always known he was going to fuck things up. Wasn’t it that way with Ester? Helena didn’t let him explain. First she asked a few vague questions about what he’d been doing during the break in their relationship, then she interrupted his equally vague answers.

  “I knew you’d lie about it. You’re so full of shit.” And she thrust that stupid letter in his face, stood there watching him read it. Never, never a moment alone.

  “Let me explain,” he said.

  “I don’t want you to. I never want to talk about this again.”

  He was so surprised in that moment, so relieved. He’d been sure she was going to leave him, that there was nothing he could say to stop her. It was like God had reached a hand in through the ceiling, caught her before she could reach the door, and turned her around.

  For the first few weeks, he was like a man who’d died and been brought back to life. He wanted everything to be perfect, better than perfect; he wanted her never to have a reason to look at him that way again. He agreed with everything she said, took her on expensive, well-thought-out dates and bought her small, tasteful presents. He didn’t want to overdo it because it might seem like he was trying to buy her back if he brought home diamonds or something. Mostly, he picked up books by her favorite authors—he could still remember them back then—or nice things for their home. Pots of nasturtiums and amaryllises for the windowsills that were already crowded with plants. He pretended to believe the excuses she made to avoid sleeping with him and talked a lot about their plans for the future, to remind her that they had one.

  At Alexanderplatz, the train empties out and he moves into a corner where he can lean against the Plexiglas wall separating him from the seats. It was exhausting then and it’s exhausting now, but it was different then because of that elephant in the room, the fight she refused to have with him because she knew it would kill them, the fight that was there behind all the petty little arguments they started to have again once his initial relief subsided, and he was too tired to keep up his constant vigilance over her happiness. Up until the day he came home to find her gone, he was sure they could be happy again if they could just survive an honest conversation. But maybe there’s no such thing.

  He remembers the way she used to look at him in the last few months of their marriage, that wide-eyed, blank expression. At the time, he took it for anger, but now he believes it was simply shock; that, just like him, she could never quite believe how badly things had gone. She’s not like his parents, after all. She may have asked too much of him, but she didn’t marry him expecting the worst. And that was the most exhausting part, in the end: her endless disappointment.

  • • •

  He takes the stairs two at a time to get the grand entrance over with, but stumbles over something just as he reaches his floor. He bends down and picks up one of Helena’s crutches. The other is propped against the wall, and in the dim corner by the door, eyes closed, is Helena.

  Dead! he thinks, and in his horror there’s also acceptance, as if this fact made perfect sense. Then she opens her eyes and looks up at him before he has time to compose his expression.

  “Is everything all right? What are you doing here?”

  “Good question,” she says, and his stomach his halfway up his throat before she gives a hollow laugh and adds, “I guess I got myself locked out again. I wanted to see if I could get around on my own yet, and I forgot I still don’t have the keys.”

  “I’m so sorry. I was meaning to make another copy. I didn’t realize…” Didn’t realize what? That she wouldn’t want to be caged in his apartment indefinitely? He switches on the overhead lighting, although there’s still enough light coming through the window for him to find his keys. With the lights on, he can see that her face is terribly pale, with a sickly bluish tinge. His mouth is dry and sticky and he wishes there were anyone else here, a neighbor, a stranger, to help him figure out what to do.

  She puts out her left hand and he looks at it blankly before helping her to her feet.

  “We need to make an appointment with an orthopedist,” she says. “I want to know when my casts can come off. I wish you’d get the Internet fixed so I could find the number myself.”

  “You’re right, of course. I’ll call both of them tomorrow.” He’s so relieved to hear her say something ordinary that tears well up in his eyes. He turns to unlock the door to keep her from seeing. What was he so afraid of? It’s true that she looks sick, that he was startled to find her outside of the apartment. But why is his heart still pounding so painfully? If she wants to go out, he’ll make another set of keys. If she needs to see a doctor…

  He recalls that she is seeing a doctor soon, one of the specialists in head trauma and amnesia Dr. Hofstaedter recommended to him. So here it is, so long in coming and yet so sudden he forgot to expect it, the time to tell her the truth.

  She leaves one crutch by the door and uses the other to limp to the bathroom. He listens to the water running in the sink, searching the sound for some thought that’s just slipped his mind. Then he goes into the bedroom and closes the door, leaving the lights out. That’s right; he wanted to be alone.

  Well here he is, alone. Now what? Is he going to tell her when she comes out of the bathroom? And then what? Maybe he should take her out to dinner. She prob
ably hasn’t eaten all day. She’s lost at least five kilograms since coming out of the hospital and she was never fat. He thinks of the goldfish. He feels sure now that he didn’t even feel guilty for killing the little creature, only terrified of the punishment he would face, and more than that, of his own failure. And he’s failing now: Helena looks miserable and unwell, and what he’s about to tell her won’t help.

  HELENA

  In the bathroom Helena washes her face over and over again until the soapsuds stop coming off blue, then puts on moisturizer, makeup, and perfume, combs out her hair. Does it matter what she looks like now? Once she’s confronted him, they’ll have bigger problems. Or he will. No matter how she wracks her brains, she can’t come up with an explanation that would make his behavior acceptable, unless he actually has lost his mind. Which still doesn’t seem likely.

  She planned to confront him right away, was settled in and waiting for him when he came up the stairs, but something stopped her. Maybe it was how tired he looked, how helpless. He’d had a long day and it didn’t seem fair to say it right away. Besides, she didn’t want to make a scene where all the neighbors could hear. Of course, she could’ve started as soon as they got into the apartment, instead of coming in here. Maybe she just wants him to remember her pretty.

  She thinks of his deception and her credulity, of the first time she saw him coming through the door of her hospital room, and that dinner on the lake. Of making love like it was the first time. No wonder it felt that way, since they hadn’t touched each other in years. She’s angrier at herself than him. Why didn’t she notice? Sure, she couldn’t remember leaving him, but there were so many signs, now that she starts to look for them. More than just her possessions, her very presence was missing from the apartment. She let herself be fooled by the familiar location and overlooked how strange it felt to be there. Somehow, she should’ve known.

  She looks into the mirror a last time, trying to make her expression neutral. She wants to catch him off-guard, not give him time to prepare any lies or excuses. For once, she wants to hear the truth.

  When she comes into the living room, he’s gone, but he comes out of the bedroom before she has time to wonder where he is.

  “Let’s go out to dinner,” he says.

  “Sounds good.” Because, after all, it doesn’t matter where they talk. And because there’s a guilty little voice in her head saying, you’ve gone along with it this long; what difference can an hour or two make?

  JOACHIM

  Joachim wants to call a cab but Helena insists she can make it without. She looks healthier now, even with a certain glow to her face, and he hates to think how she’ll look a couple hours from now.

  “You look nice,” he says, then winces, waiting for the blow. He should’ve said it when he came in. But she didn’t look nice before.

  As if reading his thoughts, she says, “I got some ink on my face from a leaky pen. That’s why I looked so odd when you got home.”

  “Oh.” It’s good to have an explanation; he should be grateful for such a simple, harmless explanation. But, somehow, it’s not enough. It wasn’t just her complexion that was strange when he came up the stairs, but the look in her eyes. And what was she doing slumped over in the stairwell like that? Fine, she was locked out. That didn’t mean she had to sit there in the dark the whole time. Why didn’t she call him? He would’ve come home faster if he’d known. How was he supposed to know she’d try to go down the staircase on a pair of crutches with no keys to the apartment? But it’s not like she’s blaming him. At least for now.

  “I only need the one if you take my arm,” she says, propping her second crutch against the wall beside the door. He notices she has a sweater on, although it’s warm in the apartment. It is a bit cool outside, but he didn’t think to remind her. She must’ve seen the weather on TV.

  In the stairwell, he gives her his arm, but she barely puts any weight on it. Why is it that his heart sinks with each step she takes on her own? Surely they’ll both be happier when she’s more independent. He tries to think of all the things that will be better: meeting up outside of the apartment, making love without worrying about hurting her, having time to himself when she’s out, her happiness at not being cooped up anymore. But there’s a dishonesty to his thoughts, like when he was a child and used to pray that God would make him pious and good, when all he really wanted was for God to protect him from the long dark claws he dreamt of reaching in through his window at night, or coming out from under his bed. He always slipped that part in at the end, like an afterthought. He prayed as if he could hide his true thoughts from God, and now he thinks as hard as he can of wanting Helena to be well again, hoping against hope that he can convince himself.

  Why wouldn’t I want her to be well? he asks himself as he holds the door so she can hobble out onto the sidewalk. The sky has the pale glow that proceeds dusk, and the air is filled with that silence particular to evenings in late summer, when no cars ever pass by, and all the insects hold their breath. The only honest thought he has is: I’m going to miss her.

  HELENA

  The Italian restaurant is only a few blocks away, but Helena is sweating all over by the time they arrive. She no longer feels nervous; things will take their course without much effort on her part. All she has to do is remain calm and try to withstand them, like a boulder in the midst of a turbulent sea. This won’t destroy her.

  Joachim pulls out a chair for her at a table by the window, and a waiter rushes over to give them menus and prop her crutch against the wall. The other patrons glance over with expressions of pity for her, or admiration for his considerateness, then lose interest again.

  “How was work?” she asks, though nothing could be further from her mind.

  “Fine,” he answers, as if nothing were further from his. What’s he thinking about? Probably the best way to keep deceiving her. He always was a clumsy liar. She remembers catching him out before, the way his mouth opened and closed without words, like the gills of a landed fish. The walls are down now and she could remember what she caught him at if she tried, but she doesn’t want to make the effort. Sometimes, fragments of memory move through her mind like traces of a dream: smudged fingerprints on the seal of an envelope and frantic, childish handwriting, nausea that struck her like a blow to the stomach, and his openmouthed helplessness. “How about you?” he asks. “It must be a pain to work from the apartment.”

  “It is,” she says. “But luckily that’ll be over soon.”

  The waiter comes back and she orders a bottle of red wine. Joachim hasn’t even opened his menu.

  “You don’t look very well yourself,” she says after the waiter leaves. “When I’m better, we should go on vacation.” The words came out without her thinking, just habit. For a moment, she forgot that there is no future tense for the two of them. The fact that confronting him will mean ending this relationship has never been so clear to her. But he’s already nodding and she can’t take it back now.

  “Where do you want to go?” he asks, and then that conversation starts, all the places in the world they want to see, but there’s something hollow about it, and not just on her end. She has the feeling that neither of them is really present in this conversation. They’re both just putting up a front, and now the two fronts are having a pleasant chat about travel plans, while their real thoughts lurk in the separate depths of their distant inner lives. She just has to say the word and another conversation will start, just as automatically, gaining a different kind of momentum.

  “Helena,” he says abruptly, reaching across the table to take her hand. But then the wine is there, and the waiter to take their orders, and it’s hard to be in the same place again after. It’s hard to be anywhere at all. She can’t keep the situation in her mind for more than a few minutes at a time. She knows there’s something on their minds, something unpleasant they have to talk about, but it feels like any old fight that needs to be made up.

  “What did you want to say?”
she asks.

  “Just how much I love you.”

  Her throat is dry and she almost knocks over the bottle with her cast in her haste to take a sip of wine. He’s still holding her other hand on the table, and she feels ashamed. Which of them is being more dishonest right now? Maybe he really does love her. His brown eyes have that sheen on them that could dissolve into tears at any moment, and there’s a splash of pink on his cheekbones, though he hasn’t touched his wine. But you can fake anything.

  “I love you, too,” she says, and though the response is automatic, saying it aloud isn’t. She left too much space between his words and hers, time enough to wonder whether she’s lying. She still can’t get her head around it: almost three years. Did they talk to each other at all in that time, even about tax returns or picking up her things? She can’t remember hearing from him, and now that things are starting to make sense again, not remembering means something. Not remembering means it probably never happened. She remembers buying herself a new SIM card around the corner from Magdalena’s apartment, and maybe that was enough. If you really want to reach someone who lives in the same city as you and has dozens of acquaintances in common, you don’t need a phone number. That one little obstacle was enough to keep him away. He never made much effort, not after they settled into their routines and he started to take her for granted. But he’s sure as hell making an effort now.

  The waiter returns with a plate of bruschetta and Joachim has to release her hand. She pulls it away as if from a hot stove. And then comes the small talk: The bruschetta is good. The wine, too. Are you supposed to pronounce the s-c-h in bruschetta like sh or like sk? They keep that up until the waiter brings their entrees and after he’s cleared away their plates. There’s plenty to talk about: the upcoming visit to the doctor, visits to other doctors after that, the progress of her recovery.