November Sky

by Marleen Reichenberg

  I helped Hanna clean up, and then we chatted for a bit before I headed upstairs to bed. When I entered our room, it was dark. Was Nick already in bed? Then I saw a narrow slit of light under the closed bathroom door.

  “Nick? Can I come in?”

  I opened the door and slipped inside. Nick was at the sink with his back to me, looking as though he’d just come out of a deep sleep. He looked frightened when saw me in the mirror. Fine pearls of sweat dotted his forehead.

  My eyes dropped lower. He had rolled up his sleeve and in his right hand was a long knife with a black handle. I recognized the knife as from a set we’d been given for a wedding present. It was a bit of a joke at the time, but when we started cooking together, we quickly found out that the tools in that block of wood were much sharper than our other set. However, knives were for dicing vegetables and not for self-mutilation. I would never consider using one of the knives on my own body. But my husband, in one of his exceptional states, did.

  As if hypnotized, I stared at the shining silver blade reflecting the light from the mirrored cabinet. The knifepoint pressed into Nick’s wrist, and a trail of blood dripped from the wound into the sink and ran toward the drain. I began to shake all over.

  I didn’t move toward him, but I whispered, “Nick, what are you doing? Please, drop the knife.”

  I didn’t think for a second he’d hurt me. But I was afraid he’d hurt himself worse with any uncontrolled movements with that sharpened blade.

  He looked at me for a few seconds in desperation and shock. Then his eyes widened and his face turned chalk-white. The knife rattled into the sink and he gave an agonizing groan, lowered his head, and braced himself against the edge of the sink.

  He didn’t look at me as he choked out the words, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what got into me. I was going through my lines for tomorrow and I got hungry. I went to look for a bowl and suddenly saw the knives. Then that horrible sadness and hopelessness came over me again. There was nothing I could do.”

  He abruptly turned around and pulled me into his arms. I was too shocked to react and was immobilized as he pressed me to himself. What would have happened if I’d chatted with Hanna a little while longer?

  “Laura, please, don’t go away. I don’t want to lose you. I’m so happy I’ve found you, and I’m so sorry to keep disappointing you. Something inside me compels me at times to . . . I can’t think about anything else . . .”

  The cut was shallow, thank God, and as I bandaged it, we both cried. I cried over my despair at reliving this nightmare over and over, and he, because of his shame and regret at breaking his promise again. And this time it had happened for no apparent reason. We hadn’t argued, he hadn’t had any liquor, and just a few minutes earlier we were all comfortably teasing each other at the dining room table.

  My mind was in a whirl. I would have to lock up, hide, or throw away all the knives and scissors in the house. Anything capable of dispatching a person into the next world would have to go. But there were so many things—even electrical appliances were in the same category . . . I thought of my hair dryer . . . And away from the house, Nick could do something stupid at any time, but I couldn’t lock him up, could I? While he was sobbing on my shoulder, I thought of something else. I realized I was taking the wrong approach. I couldn’t constantly protect him from himself. He had to accept a third party’s help.

  Three weeks later, exactly a year after our first meeting, with a heavy heart I took Nick to the psychiatric ward of a hospital on the Munich city limits. The hospital was in a converted castle in a large, seemingly well-maintained park. After the knife incident, I’d bluntly told Nick that I couldn’t live with him like this any longer.

  “Nick, I can’t stand my anxiety for you, this continual up and down. If you don’t see a doctor, I’m moving out. And then there’s nobody around to rescue you.”

  I immediately regretted how hard I was on him. Nick was completely shocked by my threat and fell into a deep melancholy. At first he withdrew totally from the world, answering me only in monosyllables. He slept a lot, and when he was awake, he lounged around in the apartment, listless and staring vacantly ahead. I didn’t dare leave him alone even for a second, and left all the office work to Chris. We phoned each other daily. I only did what I could deal with from home.

  Hanna, who was also distressed by Nick’s condition, did our shopping and stayed close by. I was relieved at not having to be responsible for him all by myself. At Nick’s express request, I hadn’t told her about his earlier suicide attempts or the knife incident. I didn’t want her to be even more upset. He hid the bandage on his wrist under long-sleeved shirts and sweaters. Hanna thought he was overworked and had suffered a kind of nervous breakdown on the night in question. I let her think that.

  A day after the knife incident, my desperation drove me to persuade a general practitioner in the neighborhood to make a house call. In private, I told him about Nick’s condition and his mental breaks. The man made a sensible impression but explained that as a GP he couldn’t be of much help. Nick urgently needed inpatient psychotherapy and proper medication. I assured him I’d watch him day and night until we found a place for his therapy, and the doctor, after some hesitation, decided against compulsory hospitalization. Otherwise, Nick would have been sent immediately to a psychiatric ward.

  At this point, I realized that Nick wouldn’t be able to work in the coming weeks. Further dubbing assignments for him would have to be postponed. I called Mira, who then showed up at the house—unannounced, of course—to check on Nick’s condition for herself. Apparently, she didn’t believe what I’d told her over the phone. Hanna tried to fend her off at the door, but Mira rushed past her and promptly barged into the living room, where Nick lay apathetically on the couch.

  Without looking directly at her, he said to me, “She ought to leave. I don’t want to see her.”

  Mira looked appalled at how gray and sunken he appeared, and I rapidly escorted her out to the next room. I secretly expected she’d blame me for his condition, but she surprised me. She gave me the same searching look she had when we first met, but this time there was sympathy in her eyes.

  “Laura, how long have you been playing along like this? You look pretty much as if you’ve had it, too.”

  When I waived her off, she raised her hand. “Stop kidding me. My mother had recurring depressions. When it got really bad, she sat around looking exactly as listless as Nick does now, and I was absolutely pushed beyond my limits and helpless. How long has he been like this? We’ve got to do something about it.”

  I wasn’t ready to see her as my ally quite that quickly, even if she was revealing her human side at that moment.

  “We don’t have to do anything,” I said. “Your job is to not let a word of this get out. Think up a plausible statement. I’ll do the worrying about him.”

  Mira slowly nodded and was unexpectedly sympathetic. “You’re strong, Laura. I’m sorry I wasn’t particularly obliging with you.”

  That might have been the understatement of the year, but I didn’t respond. I just looked at her, struggling to keep my composure. I hadn’t figured on her being so friendly.

  “I was wrong about you,” Mira continued. “You’re not a gold digger out for the money and wanting to bask in his fame. You hate publicity like the plague, and he raves about you every time he’s with me or on the phone. It was going swimmingly with him. What happened? Did something trigger the state he’s in now?”

  Suddenly, I bubbled over. “Nick wants to kill himself. It’s happened time and again and completely out of the blue—with no warning. I’ve managed to keep him from doing it three times. But I have this awful fear that the next time I’ll come too late. I caught him in the bathroom four days ago with a carving knife. He was about to cut an artery. Since then, I haven’t been able to sleep a wink. I know nothing about psychology, but it seems that althoug
h he wants to live, he also has an urge to kill himself. Otherwise, he wouldn’t always time it so I can rescue him. We’ve talked about it, but he can’t recall anything that could have touched it off. I think his condition now comes from the fear produced by these mental collapses. And I think he’s also depressed because he realizes it causes me so much worry. Though I really make an effort to hide that from him. He doesn’t do it intentionally—that much I know.”

  After I divulged everything to Mira, she made a point of calling me up regularly. Contrary to my expectations, these conversations didn’t annoy me—they helped me clear my head. She listened with angelic patience to my worries, self-accusations, and fears. Mentally, it helped me immeasurably. She said again and again that I was doing the right thing.

  At the same time as my relationship with Mira grew closer, my business partner grew ever more impatient as she held down the fort. I hadn’t fully told her what was going on, so she had zero understanding for my situation. It was no wonder that she finally reached the point of exasperation.

  “Listen, Laura, how long are you going to be on extended leave? You’ve got to come back regularly. I can’t do all the work alone,” she notified me over the phone.

  My objection that Nick needed me had no effect. But how could it? She had no idea that the carefree, funny Nick she knew had little in common with the man lying close to catatonic on the couch. She imagined I was spending lovely days at home with my husband at the expense of her labor.

  Even though she didn’t say it openly, I sensed she thought the term burnout was an elegant euphemism for laziness. I couldn’t blame her, and I knew that something had to give.

  I spoke delicately to Nick again and described my unspeakable fear of losing him. I pleaded for him to accept help. After the first few days, he came out of himself a little bit, but he was miles away from being the carefree, funny Nick I knew. When I broached the subject of inpatient treatment, to my surprise he agreed with little argument. I sensed his desperation. He’d reached the point where he finally admitted to having severe problems he couldn’t get a handle on by himself.

  He gave me an agonized look. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am to cause you all this trouble. I know you want to help me. But I dread going to a hospital and being at the mercy of total strangers.”

  I sat down right beside him and put a consoling hand on his shoulder. “You’re going of your own free will. Anything they do to you requires your consent.”

  He shook his head wearily. “An elderly colleague of mine was in a psychiatric ward once for depression. He told us later he was terrified they’d never let him out.”

  Nick took my hand and forced a wan smile. “I’ve never been seriously ill in my life. I hate not being in charge of myself. I think of doctor’s offices and hospitals as places for old folks. But I know you’ll stay with me, that you’re happy and will laugh again, and that’s why I’m going for treatment.”

  I was torn between pity and my determination that it wouldn’t—couldn’t—go on like this. The fear of arriving too late one day took my breath away. At night I lay beside Nick brooding, dozing off and then sitting up quickly, frightened by his slightest movement. I had nightmares about standing beside Nick’s open coffin and saying farewell forever. I was utterly exhausted and suffered from dizzy spells and headaches during the day. At the same time I struggled as best I could to hide my gloomy condition from him; he had enough to worry about.

  I placed all my hopes on the clinic helping him. When I packed his bag, I added all his Saint-Exupéry books and stashed a letter in the top one.

  Nick, I love you. Thank you for going into treatment for my sake. I know you’ll manage in the end to get your problems behind you, and I’m already looking forward to the day you return home and we’re together again.

  All my love,

  Your Laura

  I parked the Mini in front of the clinic. Nick had sat quietly beside me since we left the house, staring absentmindedly out the windshield into the cold, wet drizzle that perfectly matched the dreadful day. I missed the puckish spark in his eyes terribly—and even his usual teasing about my driving.

  He took out his bag from the trunk in slow motion, looking immeasurably depressed. The worried, brooding look on his clean-cut face made him look years older. I knew that all he really wanted to do was run away. He dreaded what was coming. He was doing it only out of love for me, and my guilty conscience at forcing him to do it was almost killing me. For one second, just before we went through the big glass doors into the foyer, an insane thought flashed through my head. I wanted to tell him to toss his bag back into the trunk and get in. We’d take off somewhere and leave all this behind us. But I knew a hospital stay and expert treatment offered a chance to get to the root of his problem at last. Going up on the elevator, we took mutual solace in the fact it would surely only be for a few weeks.

  Nick gave a feeble grin. “I’ll use the time here to study the setting in case I ever need to play a doctor, a nurse, or a patient sometime.”

  The well-kept building looked quite grand on the outside, with its yellow sandstone facade, red-shingled roof, and numerous windows. But as soon as we’d entered the sober lobby, it became clear that it was a hospital, with a typically oppressive atmosphere. The man at the reception desk was tucked safely behind a thick glass window, and he gruffly pointed the way to the fifth floor. The ward was guarded by an automatic sliding door that could only be opened by entering a code at the nursing station. No one could get in or out without being noticed.

  “Like a prison,” Nick muttered after we’d said our names into the speaker and the door opened with a loud hiss. The walls inside were painted a dirty white and the doors were a yellowish white. The floors in the long, narrow corridors were covered with dreary gray linoleum. Food odors, mingled with the penetratingly sharp smell of disinfectants, wafted through the stale air, and the personnel seemed harried and overloaded. A few patients shuffled past with heads lowered. The first word to come to mind was depressing. I again had the urge to do an about-face and take my husband away. But instead I stood beside him, squeezing his hand encouragingly as he completed the admission formalities with the station nurse.

  Nick was delighted to get a single room, and we waited there for the doctor and the admission interview. Our farewell was excruciating. We kissed for dear life and clutched each other like two frightened children. Although it was clear that I couldn’t help him by myself and I knew that Nick went to the hospital voluntarily, I had the nagging feeling that I was shunting him out of the way, leaving him in the lurch. Nick made me promise to pick him up the minute his stay became unbearable.

  As I drove home alone, I cried the whole way. I already missed him terribly. I had second thoughts about whether I’d done the right thing. The doctor who’d spoken with Nick and me seemed very condescending, and in the corridor he’d privately told me to leave my husband “completely in peace and quiet” during the first weeks of his stay—not to visit or phone him at all. He needed distance from the past events so he could concentrate for now on his therapy.

  I followed these instructions with a heavy heart but quickly realized I was getting on Dr. Heberloh’s nerves by phoning him every day to see how Nick was and to ask him to pass on my best. According to the doctor, my husband was doing well, responding to the medication, and taking an active part in therapy sessions. I was relieved and over those weeks made up for lost sleep and concentrated on the work I’d left in the office. Nick was in good hands. I told Chris, Hanna, and all our friends that Nick had been overworked for a long time and was burned out, so he’d checked into rehab voluntarily. That was the version I’d cooked up with Mira.

  When I finally showed up at the office after taking Nick to the clinic, Chris was all over me with bitter complaints. My desk was plastered shut with files and sticky notes.

  “How could you desert me for weeks on end?” Chri
s fumed. “I’m way over my head here. You know very well that Richard and I want to get married this summer. I’ve got a pile of personal things to take care of. He wants to move to Munich, and we’re looking for a building lot. I’ve got to have some days off right now to finalize the wedding date and everything to do with it. As of tomorrow, you’re on your own.”

  My thoughts were completely focused on my husband, and I was still sleeping very little. My nerves were raw. I’d have loved to deal with her problems in lieu of mine. Nevertheless, I tried to stay cool.

  “Chris, I completely understand. But could you come in to work maybe every other day and possibly take over the seminar this Saturday? I promised to do it weeks ago, but I’ve got to see Nick, it’s very important. That’s the first day I’m allowed to see him.”

  She practically jumped in my face. “No, I most certainly will not. You know that Richard and I can only see each other on weekends. But you’ve been seeing your Nick every day for a year and you sleep in the same bed.”

  She banged a file on her desk. “Tell me, Laura, are you nuts? You haven’t been the same person since you married Nick. Nice for you not to have to work anymore. But if you want to pull out of our partnership, then don’t stall—just be clear about it so I can find your replacement.”

  Her unexpected attack left me stunned. “Hey, I don’t want to pull out. Nick really isn’t well, and I’m really worried about him. I know I haven’t been in for the last few weeks, but I did a lot from home. You can’t accuse me of neglecting my work since the wedding. That’s not fair, and it’s simply not true.”

  She remained bitter, and for the rest of the day she only said what was really necessary. She did not show up the next few days. Meanwhile, I was swamped with work, which fortunately didn’t leave me any time in the office for brooding. That came at nighttime, when I lay in our big empty bed, missing Nick terribly.