Retrograde

  Life isn’t like that. The future, even the present, is brimming with possibilities, hundreds, thousands of decisions to make every hour. But there is only one possible past, and no one can change it. Is that what Joachim’s trying to do? Go back and overwrite what really happened, insert a new history? Even if she hadn’t gotten her memory back, it never would’ve worked. She would’ve sensed that something wasn’t right. Even right after her accident she sensed something. And sooner or later, someone would’ve told her. It’s not like the whole world lost its memory.

  “You were saying you were hit by a truck?” Ester prompts her.

  “Yes, I lost my memory and a lot of things got very mixed up for me. I remember almost everything now, but I’m still trying to make sense of things.”

  “I can’t imagine,” Ester says. “All that seems like a lifetime ago to me. But I’m glad you’re here, actually.” She sounds more weary than glad. She probably has a lot to get done today, things to take care of in her normal life. “There was something I meant to say to you once, but I never got around to it.”

  Helena sips her bland fennel tea and nods.

  “It wasn’t as bad as I made out. I mean, for me, it was that bad—I was a mess. But it wasn’t all Joachim’s fault. I’d dropped out of college a couple weeks before, after a really bad breakup, and I was sort of at loose ends. ‘Sort of’ is an understatement. I was a mess,” she says again. “Anyway, he seemed so stable and dependable. I didn’t tell him how young I was. I mean it’s not like I lied about my age but I didn’t mention it. I laid off the drugs and got a job as a waitress. In my head it was like all this stability was coming from him, you know? I didn’t believe I had it in me to get myself together.”

  Helena nods again. These are not things she needs to know, not anymore, but they may still be things Ester needs to say.

  “He told me the first time we met that he was married but it sounded like… I don’t know. I guess the only thing I really blame him for is making it sound like he wasn’t sure. When what it came down to was, he wasn’t sure whether you’d want him back, but he was gonna come running the minute you did.

  “He’d already stopped seeing me by the time I realized I was pregnant. When I came to tell him, he didn’t want anything to do with me. I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like you were just a placeholder for somebody better? It’s a shitty feeling. Really shitty. And I didn’t really have anybody I could go to at that point.”

  “You must’ve been…” Helena starts to say but trails off.

  “And then he offered me money,” Ester says, switching arms underneath the baby and adjusting her blouse before she removes the blanket. “I would’ve given anything to have somebody help me, tell me what to do, you know? And here he was, saying he’d pay for the baby, for the abortion, whatever. I knew what he was really saying was he’d pay to never see me again.”

  Helena nods and wonders whether she should tell Ester about Joachim trying to set back time.

  “Anyway, I’m sorry for what I did,” Ester says. She drapes the now drowsy baby over one shoulder and burps it. “I mean, he should’ve told you himself, but it wasn’t right what I did. I guess I wanted to hurt him, and maybe I wanted to hurt you for being the one he wanted instead of me. What do I know. Maybe I hoped you’d take off and he’d come back to me, make it a real relationship with a future. I was just a dumb kid. I don’t even know if I would’ve wanted that.”

  “You’re seeing someone now?” Helena asks.

  “Or did I just get myself knocked up again?” Ester’s laugh sounds uncomfortable, as if she finds her own joke tasteless. “No, I’m married now. In fact, it’s lucky you came when you did. We’re moving to a bigger place now that we got the kid.”

  “How nice.” Helena can’t bring herself to ask any of the normal questions like where they’re moving to or how old the baby is. There’s a long silence as they finish their tea.

  “Did you stay together?” Ester asks.

  “No,” Helena says. Because they didn’t. Even if they do now, it won’t change the fact that they didn’t then. Nothing ever will.

  “I’m sorry,” Ester says. She sounds sincere but not too upset about it, maybe because the girl who sent that letter to Helena is such a stranger to the woman she is now.

  “If it hadn’t been that, it would’ve been something else,” Helena says.

  “Did you remarry?”

  “Not yet.” The laugh they share is almost sisterly, but doesn’t last. If there’s something Helena meant to say to this stranger, she can’t remember what it was.

  “I guess I’d better be going.”

  She accepts Ester’s offer to call her a cab. Neither of them refers to the fact that they’ll never see each other again; it would somehow be impolite.

  JOACHIM

  Waiting to pick up a rental car, Joachim finds himself sweating, breathless, constantly checking the time as the customer at the head of the line gives an interminable explanation of which car he wants and what for. Joachim reminds himself over and over again that there’s no hurry, that he and Helena didn’t settle on a specific time, but he can’t convince himself to relax.

  When he finally reaches the counter, he tells the harried teenager with sweat stains under the arms of his pale blue uniform that he wants a car to drive to Brandenburg for the weekend; he doesn’t care about the rate and he doesn’t want any deals. “Whatever’s quickest.”

  The young man’s eyes dart once over Joachim’s face, maybe so he can describe it to a forensic artist later.

  “I want to surprise my wife by picking her up from work,” Joachim says, and the clerk nods, grateful for the explanation.

  Fifteen minutes, a half-dozen signatures, and a swipe of his bank card later, Joachim is in a small Opel, speeding when traffic permits, and cursing when it doesn’t. He has his phone in his pocket and his nerves strain for the slightest vibration, Helena calling to ask where he is.

  Only when he’s parked a few blocks from his apartment and gotten out does he realize how sure he’s been, all along, that if he isn’t fast enough, she’ll be gone by the time he gets back.

  He takes the stairs two at a time, but as he opens the door to the apartment, he feels a strange calm: either she’ll be there, or she won’t. For this one moment, everything is out of his hands.

  She’s on the sofa, her right leg propped up on the arm. She’s wearing a sweater and dress pants and looks poised, somehow too poised for someone lying down to read a book. And there’s too much color in her face. Her hairline is damp, either from sweat or from washing it off. He can distinctly smell her deodorant and the warm, sweet scent of her perfume, the heat of her body dissipating it throughout the room.

  But he’s covered in sweat himself. Maybe she’s excited about their weekend away together, or dreading the therapeutic talks they can’t keep putting off forever.

  “How was work?” she asks, slipping a bookmark in to hold her place, and setting the book on the table. There’s a backpack at her feet and he realizes he hasn’t packed.

  “Oh, nothing special.” He’s unable to recall a single moment of his day before now, as if his wife’s condition were catching.

  His wife. Well, the weekend will decide that. Funny how casually they come, the moments that decide your whole future. A couple hundred kilometers on the road, a hundred words or so, and that’s it: all you have, and all you’ll ever have.

  He wants to cancel this trip now, abandon the rental car, unpack her things. “How about you?” he asks. “Did you get a lot done?”

  “Not really. I went to the office for half a day, but of course I had to spend half of that time telling everybody what it’s like to get hit by a truck.”

  He can’t speak. All his organs are crawling up his throat, eager to abandon this sinking ship like so many rats. There’s probably something he should say but they’re choking him.

  “Oh, I saw you hadn’t packed,” she adds. “So I threw a couple things in
to the backpack for you. You don’t need your razor just for the weekend, do you?”

  He shakes his head and, with great effort, manages to swallow his heart and lungs again. “Thanks. I’ll just change my shirt and we can head out.” His throat feels raw, like he accidentally inhaled underwater and came up spluttering.

  He changes into a clean t-shirt and sweater, and tosses his damp shirt, stinking of anxiety, into the washing machine. In the bathroom, he splashes cold water on his face and drinks it out of his cupped hands. There’s no need to panic. She went to the office but she can’t have found anything out or she would’ve said something. Or not come back here in the first place. Maybe she just spent the whole day listening to people she didn’t recognize tell her to get well soon and that they’d missed her. With any luck, she didn’t even mention him, didn’t say my husband and hear them all ask, What husband? She must’ve managed to slip away from all that concern in her own wary, retiring way, and simply work for a few hours.

  It’s the only real possibility, the only explanation for her peaceable silence. And she packed his things. Packed them into a bag with her things, mixed together, difficult to separate. She wants to go on this trip. If he tries hard enough, he can, too.

  He dries his face, sprays on some aftershave and stretches his mouth into something like a smile. When he comes out, she’s wearing a light jacket and a scarf, and is lacing up her sneakers.

  “By the way,” she says. “They finally switched the Internet back on, so I looked up the best way to the Autobahn from here.”

  “The Internet?” That sucker-punch feeling again, and he was already winded.

  “Yeah, you know, that magical thing you can use to look up information on a little box?” She laughs. “You must’ve unplugged the modem while the service was cut off and never plugged it back in. I plugged it in and voila! We can take Bornholmer up through Wedding and we’re practically at the exit.”

  “Thanks,” he says, maybe a little later than appropriate. “I guess we can head out then. I can always use the GPS on my phone once we get going.”

  She laughs again, but this time it sounds harsh, almost violent, against the dull, dizzying shudder of his heartbeat. “What do we need a GPS for? You can’t find out how to get somewhere unless you know where you’re going.”

  His forced laugh burns his throat but also clears it out, like a shot of something strong. “Sure,” he says. “Good point.”

  He picks up the backpack and follows her out. Before he locks the door, he pokes his head in for a moment, feeling like he’s looking at something for the last time.

  HELENA

  On the Autobahn, a sudden freedom fills the car. They roll down the windows and turn the radio up loud, the latest pop songs neither of them knows. Helena puts down her sunshade to dim the intense light of the sinking sun. They’re heading south because that exit came first. It doesn’t matter anyway. At this time of year, nowhere within an hour or two of Berlin will be particularly warm.

  They joke about the unappealing names of the places they pass and the dull-sounding roadside attractions: a historical sawmill, a mining exhibit, a museum of woven handicrafts. But after a while, the joke gets a little old, and Helena begins to wonder where they are going to stop.

  “And ideas yet?” she asks.

  “What?”

  She turns down the music and asks again, louder, because the windows are still open, the air screeching in to drown them out. She begins to feel cold and puts hers up.

  “To be honest, I don’t really know Brandenburg,” he says. “It’s so close but I guess I haven’t seen much of it.”

  “I guess we never went away for the weekend,” she says. It’s the kind of thing you’re not supposed to say in a fight: always this, never that. But it doesn’t matter now. After all this effort to hold onto her, is he really going to dump her because she criticized his vacation plans? And then a sinking feeling of guilt: It isn’t fair to keep leading him on, making him think it’s all going according to plan, winning her over, when really… But that’s what he gets for lying to me in the first place, she reminds herself. Why should I be honest when he isn’t?

  “We never used to,” he corrects her.

  After an hour or so, they stop at a gas station so she can use the bathroom. Dusk is eating away at the edges of the sky like age at the corners of an old photograph. She’s ravenously hungry but he doesn’t want to stop for dinner until they’ve arrived. Wherever that’s going to be. The only reason it doesn’t turn into a fight is because she can’t be bothered. Instead, she demonstratively buys a pack of stale trail mix and eats it in the parked car while he does some belated research on his smartphone.

  “Why don’t you ask the guy in the shop if he knows somewhere?” she asks. “He probably lives around here.”

  “No, I think I’ve found something. The 3G’s just so slow.”

  It would be like this. They never went out anywhere unless she planned it. Even if he wanted to take her out to dinner, even if it was a special occasion, he never gave any thought to where they should eat. And the few trips they did go on were spoiled for her because of his complete unwillingness to get involved in the planning. Well, except for that vacation in Mauritius, but that had been at the beginning, a misleading exception. He always left everything to the last minute and figured things would work themselves out, when really all that ever happened was that she worked everything out.

  And now, for once, she let him have his way and be “spontaneous” about things. Which is why she’s spending her Friday night choking down mealy peanuts in a dark parking lot in the middle of nowhere. You forget the old fights when you’re not together anymore, and you wonder afterward what used to bother you so much. But the fights are still there, waiting to be resumed the moment you get involved again. Which is why you don’t. Or shouldn’t. She feels a heavy, indigestible certainty in the pit of her stomach that she made the wrong decision. What if she’d stayed in Berlin and seen Tobias again? But even seeing him would’ve been about Joachim.

  “How about Rosenteich?”

  Startled, she spills an assortment of raisins, nuts, and unidentifiable shriveled objects onto her lap. She gathers them together, opens the door and throws them on the ground.

  “Maybe they’ll still have some roses in season, right?” he says in a put-on, cajoling tone that embarrasses her.

  “Where’s that?”

  “South of Cottbus.”

  “Cottbus?” Her only association with the place is as a grim region of empty concrete socialist buildings and emptier streets she once passed through after Reunification. But countryside’s countryside, and they’ll have to sleep somewhere tonight.

  “Sure,” she says. “Sounds great.” It’s not always possible to keep all the sarcasm out of your voice, or to be sorry about it.

  JOACHIM

  It takes them another forty-five minutes to find Rosenteich, but it feels three times as long. Helena’s snippy and unpleasant, and it’s impossible to talk about anything without her disdain for the whole enterprise showing through. She’s always cranky when she’s hungry, he recalls, and tries to make that an excuse for everything. But the specter of a weekend spent fawning and dodging her criticism in some East German ghost town rises up and haunts him for the rest of the drive.

  When they finally arrive in Rosenteich, which supposedly borders several swimming lakes and a forest with extensive hiking trails, it’s even smaller than he imagined: a main street with a gas station, a combined butcher and bakery, a discount grocer, an eerie-looking hotel—some of the letters in its neon sign brighter than the others—a bank with cracked glass where someone must’ve thrown rocks, and then private farm lots, increasing in size as the road deteriorates into a thin dirt path and he turns the car around. No streetlights, no sidewalks. But at least there’s a hotel.

  She hasn’t spoken since they arrived, but then what should she say? It’s too dark to make out much and what they can see is hardly wort
h the mention.

  “Maybe we can get dinner here, too,” he says, pulling into the nearly empty parking lot of the massive concrete hotel. A few lights closer to the entrance reveal that it’s painted a sickly shade of yellow.

  “I’m sure they have a restaurant,” she says. “There’s nothing else around.”

  “Is this okay?” he asks, opening the rear door to get the backpack.

  “It’s perfect. Right in the heart of things.”

  But at least they’re laughing together now.

  JOACHIM

  The restaurant manages to seem at once makeshift and institutional: a few plastic tables and chairs in a large room, reminiscent of a hospital cafeteria, with no menus and no other customers. But then, it’s a little late. None of the colors in the room matches: the teal, neon yellow, and red geometric pattern on the threadbare carpet, the dingy cream-colored tablecloths, the heavy maroon drapes over the window through which they could otherwise see the parking lot, and the optimistic sky blue walls speckled with out-of-date ads for activities in the region. They take a table close to the windows and are just on the point of leaving when a sturdily built young blonde in what must be traditional local dress stomps over to their table and hands them two greasy laminated menus.

  “Good evening!” She sounds like a child imitating some particularly foolish phrase used by adults.

  Helena orders a beer without looking at the menu, and Joachim says he’ll have one, too. In the girl’s relatively long absence, they look over the menu—adorned with grotesquely pigmented photos that look like they were taken in the 1970s—with its uninspired fare of schnitzel, pork knuckles, and baked pasta.

  “Well, we made it,” he says, reaching across the table to touch her hand. It’s strange to think there would’ve been a cast in the way not long before. That’s how quickly things happen—getting hit by a car, getting left by your wife, getting a cast removed—any of those things can happen in just a day. It seems to him now that he didn’t do enough with the time allotted to him, that he could’ve lived out the last weeks with Helena differently, better, in a way that would make him sure of himself now. Sure of them. Life is full of missed opportunities, but what a chance to have wasted.