by Nick Arvin
The waiter arrives with two plates of chicken and little side dishes of mashed potatoes, coleslaw, cottage cheese, and sauerkraut. When he leaves, Katherine’s mother asks, “Do you think real Germans wear those funny leather pants?”
“I doubt it. Maybe for holidays or bowling leagues or something.”
“You think they wear them for bowling?”
“No. You know what I mean.”
After a second, her mother nods. “Your Dad wore those awful nylon shirts to the bowling league.”
“Dad wore those all the time,” Katherine says. “He slept in them.”
“He only slept in them when he’d been drinking.”
“He was always drinking.”
“Well, anyway,” her mother says, “the poor man was a terrible bowler.”
“Because drinking came before bowling.”
Her mother studies her plate. “He could fish though.”
“He could think like a fish. It became a permanent state of mind for him.”
Katherine’s mother looks up and shakes her head. “Don’t be unkind, dear,” she says, “it doesn’t suit you.”
“Mom, don’t you understand? I viewed the man as a kind of really big fish.” Her mother seems to be listening, more or less, so Katherine goes on. “When he died, and at the funeral, the only thing I felt bad about was you. I used an eyedropper to fake tears at the wake, because I thought you would feel even worse if I wasn’t crying.” She hesitates, but she can’t help herself: she wants to make her mother react. “Then at the graveside service, it was raining so hard, and I thought, oh, how appropriate. Water.”
Her mother’s attention, however, is elsewhere—she stares full-faced at something over Katherine’s shoulder. Katherine glances around but sees nothing unusual. She wonders, in frustration, what her father really meant to her mother. Clearly he meant something to her, because she lost her equilibrium after his death and never recovered. Facing sobs that burst out unpredictably, Katherine took on the responsibilities of the household. When the sobs became less frequent, her mother fell into her vapid television fog, losing contact with the things outside of their little house, then with her daughter, and everything, except what came in through the TV. “Mom,” she says, “you’re not listening to me.”
“What language are those people behind you talking?”
Katherine glances around once more. “It’s German. They must be here for Hans Kraus.”
“German?” her mother says. “Oh, yes, German.”
The waiter brings ice cream adorned with plastic red and green dancing German figures. Katherine pushes her ice cream around in the dish while her mother eats hers and licks clean the little plastic man. Leaving, they hear more German in the hallways, bursting from clusters of people who seem happy and pleased with themselves, even though they speak what sounds like guttural gibberish. Katherine’s mother is leaning on her cane by the time they reach the car, and she looks tired and worried. “Think, Mom,” Katherine says, wanting suddenly to cheer her, “we’re going to be on TV!”
During the drive to the park, Katherine glances at her mother and starts to speak, but stops. Her mother’s attention is on the scenery: half-timbered houses, a covered wooden bridge, a horse-drawn carriage, potted flowers hanging from the streetlamps. She and her mother used to go out together, when she was a child, leaving her father alone in his slobbering stupors. Standing on the banks of the river they tossed bread crumbs to the ducks; they danced to the polka bands at Oktoberfest; more than once they had driven all the way to Lake Huron and skipped stones out across the measureless expanse of water. “Don’t tell your father,” her mother would say as they returned to the house. “It’s a secret between us.” Not that her father would have asked, or cared, but still it was nice, the idea of a secret between her and her mother—secrets were bonds. Now she wonders, is this the reason she feels entrapped here, because once she and her mother fed ducks together?
Several long flatbed trailers have been pulled onto the grass near the amphitheater. TV cameras are mounted on tall structures of aluminum scaffolding. Technicians unreel wires and tape them down. The stage has been done up to resemble a living room, with a couch and armchairs gathered around a coffee table. Stacks of stereo speakers rise at either end. High above are three huge TV screens. The words Guten Tag hover on all three.
Katherine gives her tickets to the man who stands at the gate. He hands the stubs back to Katherine and says a few words in German. Katherine smiles. Her mother stares, and Katherine tugs her sleeve to get her walking again. Their seats turn out to be just a few rows from the stage. They sit, and Katherine realizes that the amphitheater is empty. Where are the Germans? She looks at her watch. It reads half an hour to show time.
What has to be admitted is that her father had loved her mother. In his drunkenness he sometimes fell on his knees before her and begged forgiveness for his faults. In surprising, sober moments he brought her mother clumsy, ugly things—all those knickknacks. Occasionally her mother touched her father, on the arm or the thigh, and an extraordinary current filled the air. There was something between them that excluded Katherine entirely, and it had evidently been stronger than what was between Katherine and her mother, because when her father died her mother had drawn into herself and looked from there for comfort not toward Katherine but toward the insubstantial stuff of television.
Still, it is years later now and Katherine has never left her mother’s side. Why? What does she want exactly? What is she waiting for? Katherine is not certain. Sometimes she would settle merely for some acknowledgment.
“What are those, up there?” her mother asks, pointing above the stage.
“Those? TV screens.”
“That’s just what I thought,” her mother says. “They’re huge, aren’t they?” She looks over at Katherine’s watch. “Well then,” she says, “where is everyone?”
“Germans are very punctual,” Katherine says, but she twists to look around.
“I hope that they will show us, you and me, on those big TVs. That would be exciting, wouldn’t it?” Their plastic seats are small and uncomfortable, and the sunshine begins to feel hot. Her mother has fixed her attention on one of the TV screens, apparently studying those words, Guten Tag.
“What is it between you and the TV?” Katherine asks.
“I don’t know what those words mean. Do you?”
“It’s German,” Katherine says, to which her mother does not respond. Katherine taps the arms of her seat. She feels it isn’t asking too much: a simple acknowledgment. She has given up a lot to tend to her mother, and her mother might at least turn from the television for a few seconds to say thank you.
Diesel engines rumble. A convoy of touring buses lines up outside the amphitheater, and Germans climb out. The men wear flat-front slacks and dress shoes and tiny eyeglasses. Many of the women also wear small angular eyeglasses, and their hair is cut in short, severe styles. Many of them carry backpacks in strange styles and colors. They laugh and talk a loud, throaty talk, and the entire crowd files into the amphitheater in about five minutes.
A family with two boys come down the aisle, and as they squeeze past one of the boys jabbers at Katherine. The boy moves on, but his father pauses to say a few words and gesture apologetically. Katherine fixes a helpless smile on the man until he turns away. More people slide by, talking and talking in German. Her mother is fascinated; her gaze shifts about like a bird’s. Katherine knows she hasn’t got a chance at her mother’s attention, but she starts talking anyway. “When I think of the opportunities sacrificed in all these years,” she says, and she shakes her head. “I’m thirty-seven years old now, Mom.”
People in blue jackets climb to the cameras on the aluminum towers, and others prowl the aisles with cameras on their shoulders. A man makes some announcements to the crowd, and the crowd groans twice, cheers once. Whatever it is that’s going on, it’s going on in German. Different words flash on the huge screens over the stage
. There is a montage of Frankenmuth streets and buildings, then a long glide through a Bavarian Inn dining room. Scattered applause begins, gains strength. A camera pans around the sunlit bowl of the amphitheater. A woman comes out and says something, and the crowd roars its approval. A man steps onto the stage and grins, and suddenly all the Germans are cheering crazily—whistles, screams, people standing, jumping, waving. The man raises his hands.
He has a halo remnant of frizzing hair and wears a dark suit that looks tight, as if it were a size too small. His shirt is also dark, so that his tie—red, white, and blue—stands out like fireworks. He picks up a microphone and begins talking. After that the main thing is laughter. He keeps the crowd in a continuous uproar, eliciting laugh after laugh with hardly a pause between.
Through this, Katherine is saying, “Don’t you see, Mother, the sacrifices I’ve been making? Tying myself to this small town? Staying with that dead-end hotel receptionist job?”
Her mother leans toward her and asks, “What is that man saying?”
“God, Mother. I don’t know. It’s German.”
“They should have someone who speaks English. A translator person.”
Katherine glares at her. “I told you all this would be in German. It’s a couple thousand Germans here, and you and me.”
“It just seems like a translator would have been a nice gesture.”
The man on stage is engaged in some sort of antics, kicking his legs out. Katherine says, “Tell me, Mom, why did you love Dad?”
Her mother is watching the three big TV screens, where the man is kicking in triplicate. She says, “You did get good seats for us, I must say. We can see the stage very well. I’d been a little worried about that, but we can really see the stage very well, and we have those big TVs up there too.”
“Have you even noticed, Mom, that I haven’t married yet? I’m thirty-seven and still haven’t married.”
Her mother blinks. “You’ll do fine, dear.” She looks over her shoulder. “Better than most seats by far. Look at all these people. Who’d have thought there could be so many Germans.”
“Mom, all these days of watching you watch television. It’s too much, the TV. Endless talk shows, nature shows, news shows. The infomercials. It’s so frustrating, to watch you do that.”
The man with the American flag tie moves down into the audience. He passes the microphone to people, talking and joking with them.
“What is it between you and the TV?” Katherine asks, her voice rising. “What is it?” But her mother is watching one of the huge screens.
Katherine feels as if hands are closing around her throat. She stands. Her vision is blurry. Pulling the collar of her blouse, she flees past a row of knees to the aisle, then hurries up the stairs. Seized with laughter, the Germans seem not to notice her.
Nearing the top of the stairs the choking sensation begins to diminish. She wipes her eyes dry. She can breathe again. When she reaches the back fence of the amphitheater she pauses, but then decides she will not allow herself to turn and look for her mother. Instead, she walks out the gate. She’s not certain where she’s going, but she’s intent on the car, sure that that is the first step. No more, she resolves, no more of this futile, unappreciated sacrifice to her mother. Her mother can learn again to cook, to clean, to take care of herself. And she, Katherine, is only thirty-seven, with decades still ahead of her, not at all too late to build a life, to start getting out, meeting people, go back to school, buy new clothes, stop slouching, dance, buy a tennis racket—
An American voice booms from the amphitheater. It says resonantly: “Hello?” Midstep, Katherine stops. The voice is her mother’s. “Hello? Yes?”
Kraus has greeted her in German, causing some confusion, but he now makes a joke which rocks the crowd with laughter, then he shifts into an accent-free, smarmy English.
“Where is the lady from?”
“Right here, Frankenmuth, Michigan,” her mother says proudly, and the crowd applauds.
“And you are enjoying the show?”
“Oh yes, yours is so much more urbane than the talk shows on American TV, even if I don’t really speak the language.” Katherine cannot seem to move. Her mother sounds younger than Katherine has heard her sound in years. Also, Katherine cannot imagine where on earth her mother found the word urbane. Certainly Katherine never heard her utter it before. And the conversation continues: her mother talks eagerly, brightly, about America, Americans, and American TV. The crowd laughs at each little joke, as if every one of the Germans understands English perfectly. The host makes fun of American television; he waves his star-spangled tie; her mother’s laughter shoots off in sparkles.
“Is there anyone you would like to say hello to in Germany?”
“Well, I think my great-grandmother was German, but I don’t know anyone in Germany now. Hello to all the Germans, I guess. And, if I may, to my daughter, wherever she’s gone. And my departed husband, I’m sure he’s listening. I love the both of them so much.” Then, as if suddenly realizing where she is, Katherine’s mother adds, almost apologetically, “My husband, he could drink beer like a Bavarian.”
The Germans love this.
Katherine overcomes the paralysis in her joints and turns. There, above the amphitheater, is her mother’s face, smiling brilliantly, the face of a lively, engaging woman. Hans Kraus says something, and her mother’s face finds room to smile even more widely. She puts a hand into the air and she waves, waves with the enthusiasm of a nine-year-old. Three of them on three screens, three mothers in a life where one is hard enough, and these are as big as the sky, floating and glowing like moons. Katherine no longer hears what her mother says, but she cannot escape the familiarity of that thunderous, stereophonic voice. The three images move in unison, like a mirror of a massive mirror of a towering mother, waving and glittering. Her instinct still is to flee, yet she dares not turn: more mothers are likely to be there, carved into the clouds and hills, or projected onto every wall. Flight is impossible—Katherine feels small as a thing just born, knows only: here is her mother. She holds her breath and waits, hand at her chest while the show goes on. Two thousand Germans are cheering.
Take Your Child to Work
I check my watch: 7:38 a.m. I am arriving at work nearly an hour later than usual.
Accompanying me today is my daughter—Angie. At the double-wide glass doors I press my ID badge to a sensor and the bolts clunk open. Angie inquires as to how that happened and I briefly explain that the badge is magnetically encoded. The hallway ahead is large enough for two diesel tractor-trailer trucks to pass through side-by-side. Scattered along the walls are pieces of dusty experimental equipment. Only a couple of individuals are visible. Most people will already be at their desks or in meetings.
I would like to get through this entire day without encountering Angie’s mother—Laura. But from a statistical perspective that is unlikely to happen.
We walk quickly and our footsteps create along the hall a rapid syncopation of tap and echo. Angie keeps up despite the shortness of her legs and I am proud of her. She has been growing. Today she wears a pair of khaki trousers and a button-down shirt that I have given her so she will be dressed like myself and the other engineers. Her hair is pulled straight back and she looks very businesslike.
We pass through another badge-accessed doorway and enter a space filled with portable five-foot-high foam-core walls demarcating hundreds of individual office cubicles. The room is nearly as large as a football field. (This calculation can be quickly made by measuring the floor area of one’s own cubicle and multiplying that area by the total number of cubicles and adding an estimate for the aisles.) I am able to see across the entire cubicle grid to the wall of windows on the far side. Angie unfortunately cannot see over the short gray walls. She stands significantly less than five feet tall. She is only nine.
My own cubicle lies three-fifths of the way across the room and we set out for it. Angie does not take my hand. I suppose she has
outgrown the clinging instinct. She looks around with an expression of interest. In the cubicles engineers are working at computer workstations glowing with documents and graphs and component designs in 3-D wire frame. Most of the cubicles are cluttered with poster-size reference charts and shelves of three-ring binders. Yellowing plants. Photos of spouses and children. Taped-up Dilbert cartoons. Whiteboards. Pieces of experimental hardware and competitors’ products. Graphite-colored twelve-way adjustable rolling office chairs—these are new. I received my own twelve-way adjustable chair just last week.
While we proceed Angie remains very composed. I think it is impressive for one so young to remain so composed in a new and strange environment.
We see no other children.
Angie is here through a corporate initiative named: “Take Your Child to Work Day.” It is new and not well promoted. The only advertisement was a paper flyer that arrived among all the other office mail we receive daily notifying us of such corporate trivia as minor revisions to the 401(k) plan or the cancellation of an underattended weekly yoga class. Those less scrupulous than myself about examining incoming mail might have easily overlooked the flyer.
The idea of taking Angie to work seemed to me a good one. Angie has always known that my work is important to me. Even when she was very little she would run up when I came home from work and shout: “Daddy! Look! I’ve been working too.” She would show me crayon sketches she had done like engineering prints. They included dimensions and material specifications. Iron. Steel. Diamond. Chocolate. She drew cars. Boats. Airplanes. A cow. I explained: “People don’t design and manufacture cows.”
She frowned. “Who does then?”
I explained about DNA.