Munich Airport

by Greg Baxter

  The counselor worked from her home, in a little white room with wooden flooring and a rug and coffee table. My wife and I sat on a white couch. The counselor sat on a sleek chrome chair that had legs like a spider’s. The door between the room and the hallway that was part of the rest of her house was very thin, and the sounds of domesticity—two children, a dog, a nanny, a television, and toys, and laughter—loudly rattled through it, as I suspect the sounds of our conversations, and the conversations with other clients, quietly gargled back. The counselor was very tanned, good-looking, South American, with very thick dark hair, and she wore high heels and white pants. She was quite made up. She wore a tan, loose top that nearly fell off her shoulder, and a thin gold necklace. I don’t know what made her think it was okay to dress like that as a marriage counselor. It wasn’t that she looked attractive. She had every right to look attractive. The problem was that she looked like she was going somewhere more important, that our problems made us a nuisance to her, and it made her interest in us seem entirely false.

  We never went back to the counselor. We returned to our house, did not speak, did not touch. She went into the bedroom and closed the door. I walked around the place. We had high ceilings. Big bay windows. My ex came from a wealthy family. Her father was a banker. Her mother was a doctor. I went out to the shared garden behind our apartment. It was late spring, and cloudless, and in late spring our shared garden got the sunlight all afternoon. It was obvious to me that my wife and I, finally, could not go on. I tried to think of ways to keep all this from my father, to go on pretending everything was fine until he died. I sat out there for an hour, wondering if it were possible. It felt absolutely necessary to conceal the separation from him. Up in the apartment, behind one of the windows, my wife was sitting, or pacing around the bedroom. I went upstairs eventually and started getting some things together to go out. I knocked on the bedroom door and entered after she said, What? She was sitting on the bed. I got a new shirt and a light tan jacket. She asked, indignantly, You’re going out? I said, I think it’s probably best right now to be apart. She said, So it’s over. I said, Yes, I think so. She climbed off the bed and went to the kitchen and got some vodka out of the freezer and poured herself a shot. I followed her. Do you want one? she asked. Sure, I said. We sat down across from each other and had a couple of shots each, without talking. Finally she said she might go stay with a friend for the night. I said, Okay. She said, I think I should. I said, If you think you should, I’m sure you’re right. I got up and left her there. I went out and sat at a bar and smiled for a few hours. I talked to nobody. I didn’t really drink all that much. At eleven, when the pub closed, I went home and found her asleep on the couch, with the television on. She’d had a lot of vodka. I sat and looked at her in the light of the television. I took the bottle and finished, slowly, the little bit left at the bottom.

  A year passed, more than a year, and I hadn’t told my father. It was obvious that something had happened. I was sure he knew. He telephoned the apartment a few times and was icily told by my wife that I wasn’t there, and he never telephoned again. He asked me how she was doing for about two months and instead of catching him up on her life, I said, Good. So he stopped asking about her. I guessed that he was waiting for me to confess. But I wasn’t going to. I had just decided never to mention it. If he died, I wouldn’t have to tell him. If he didn’t, maybe I would one day bring a new wife and some kids home and when he picked me up from the airport and gave me an astonished gasp, I’d say, Oh, we broke up years and years ago. After more than a year, my plan began to seem achievable. I had hardly spoken to my father that year. I figured we were falling out of contact. It was a shame, but it was better, somehow, than admitting that my marriage hadn’t lasted. Then one day I telephoned him and he said he was going to book a flight to Scotland and get us rooms at the lodge. It seemed he would wait no longer. I agreed to meet him, because my bigger fear was that he would come to London, and I booked my flight to Glasgow. I almost missed the flight. I sat at the gate while everyone else boarded. All I could think about was my father sitting on his own at dinner, at the same table where he had honeymooned with my mother, and the same table where he had met me and my wife a few years before. And I couldn’t decide whether I pitied him or wanted him to suffer. The airline woman kept looking at me when she spoke into the microphone, Final call, this is the absolute final call, the gate is closing. I got up. If she had given me the slightest amount of grief, I would have turned around and gone home, but she welcomed me and wished me a pleasant journey. When I arrived at the hotel, I checked in and left a message for my father. I unpacked and showered. I was getting dressed when my father knocked on the door. I was going to wear a suit for drinks in the lounge. I had my pants and shirt on. I put my jacket on. I wore no shoes or socks, though. I answered the door and my father was standing in a suit as well. He looked a bit tipsy and he immediately took my arms, studied me up and down, and embraced me. He came inside and saw that I was alone. He sat on a chair near the bed. I said, Guess what, I’ve started my own business. Good for you, he said, is it going well? I started it up about six months ago, I’m optimistic. We went down together to the lounge and he ordered a scotch with water and I ordered a beer. We had about two hours before dinner. It was late autumn so the sun was already down. It was already night at five p.m. I said, I suspect you had your suspicions about my marriage for a long time. He said nothing. I said, It just got very bad, it ended, it wasn’t too painful.

  How long ago?

  Oh, about a year and a half ago.

  Christ, you didn’t tell me for a year and a half?

  I had a pretty crazy year after it ended. I’m not sure it was the right time to tell you.

  What happened with the apartment?

  What do you mean?

  The one you bought together?

  I moved out. She stayed.

  But you used your mother’s inheritance, didn’t you?

  I said, I got bought out, I made all that money back.

  That satisfied him, and I’ve never told him any differently.

  We put on our coats and walked outside to get some air. The place was crowded. It was, as it always is, I think, full of retired people. We walked along the lakefront in the darkness. A little light from the restaurant spilled outward on the grass behind us, but the lake itself was darkness, and above were dark-gray, swiftly moving clouds. He said, Miriam was too busy again, said it was too short notice for her. Have you spoken with her?

  I haven’t, I said.

  You should go to Berlin.

  To visit her?

  Come up with some excuse, go there for a weekend and check in on her, make sure she’s okay.

  I barely had the time to come here, Dad.

  I know, I know, he said. I appreciate it. It’s good to see you.

  The lake seemed to be pulling us into it, urging us into its oblivion, but by then it was seven and our table was ready. We got the booth? I asked. You bet we did, he said.

  When my father and I entered the airport this morning, we wandered around for a while, went up and down a couple of escalators, flipped through some magazines at a newsstand. We went to the information center—who can say why—but it wasn’t open yet. Eventually we called Trish and told her we were going to head through security, find a seat, and wait for her. We had a strange energy before we got to security, the kind of energy you have at the beginning of a very long car journey, when you find yourself singing along to the radio, loving the road, loving the sensation of driving. About halfway through security, however, the sense of purpose and avidity dissipated. Suddenly my father became very worried that Miriam’s body would not be properly looked after. It was clear—though he didn’t say it—that he feared she would be left behind somehow, mishandled and lost, and we would leave without her, which would make our time here totally meaningless. He started to panic and talk to himself, and look all around for somebody who might be able to help. There were two or three
hundred people in front of us and two or three hundred behind us, and when my father started to panic about the fact that Miriam was in some vague trouble and he could not help her, I also started to panic, because I realized that no amount of worry or panic would move time any faster, or make Miriam any safer. She would never be safe or unsafe again, in fact. What an absurd trip we had made after all, what had we been thinking, why were we bringing a body home? By the time we got through security—I can’t say how long it took—we were on the verge of anxiety attacks. But then we saw how curiously peaceful the terminal was, and we walked into the great bazaar like weary travelers who had at last arrived in the free city.

  We decided to take an elevator up to the Skywalk—a long, wide, glass corridor on the roof of the terminal. It was a hundred and fifty feet high, or something like that. It doesn’t sound very high, but it feels very high when you are up there, I’d bet. From it, on a clear day, we could have looked out in all directions, to the city, to the mountains, we probably could have killed a lot of time. But there was nothing to see. We stood close to the glass and examined the fog. I enjoyed feeling closely encapsulated by the grayness, it seemed vaguely like being in deep outer space—the outer space you might imagine near the boundaries of the universe. Everyone who was up there stood very close to the window, waiting, presumably, for signs of dissipation, or simply to observe the strange properties of this unusually thick fog. I had never seen anything like it. It seemed to move like a heavy gas, gas you could spoon out of a bowl, gas that would suffocate you if you stepped outside, or freeze you. My flat in London—the one in Spitalfields, though it is actually Hackney—is on the fourth floor. It overlooks Columbia Road and a small park. These were originally social housing, but by the time I moved there it was all architects, like the one I sublet from. I drink coffee by the window and look out over Columbia Road, or eat a sandwich, or have a drink if it is evening. Lots of bicycles go by. I play music quite loud and, on warm evenings, open the windows so that the sound will carry over to Columbia Road, so that people might vaguely hear something as they come closer, and enjoy an unexpected moment of romance in the city. I sometimes even go down myself—I leave the music playing, lock my door, go down the steps, open the outer doors, and walk until I can not hear the music anymore, then turn around and go back.

  There is no more evidence of the fog. The mountains to the south, though far away, are clear and sublime. They are completely white. The sun is above them. The city is between us and the mountains, but you can’t really see it. There are just the runways, then some grayness, then, miles and miles away, the mountains. It must be very cold, despite how bright it is. I walk to the window and look out. I don’t have the energy to go back up to the Skywalk, and I presume it is busy now, I assume there are children running all over, people having picnics on the floor. But I wonder if, if I were to go back up, I could see the city. The tarmac is busy. Food trucks. Baggage transporters. Fuel and deicing trucks. Bundled-up airport personnel, with puffs of smoke for breath—the bald ones with steaming heads. A plane departs every sixty seconds. The queue of jets taxiing for takeoff is long, and it moves slowly. I imagine it must be a bit dispiriting to find yourself on an airplane after five or six hours of waiting, only to wait two hours on the tarmac, squashed in a seat you can’t leave.

  When I arrived at the upscale apartment to which my father had moved us from the cramped little hotel with the green bathroom, the receptionist gave me a key and told me to go all the way up to the penthouse. The rooms had names instead of numbers. I went in, felt completely shocked by the size of the place, and read a note my father had left on the kitchen bar instructing me to grab a drink from the fridge and come up to the rooftop. Between two large sitting rooms, and opposite a giant, open-plan kitchen, was a south-facing terrace that was just level with the rooftops of the buildings all around, with a large table on it, some chairs, and a couple of recliners for sunbathing. There was also a spiral staircase leading up. I thought, You gotta be kidding me. I opened the fridge. There were six bottles of wine and several bottles of beer. I got a beer, searched in the cabinets for a glass, and went up to the rooftop. The rooftop terrace was totally bare, except for the chair my father was sitting on, and an empty chair beside him. Apparently the embassy intern had brought the chairs up at my father’s request. The weather was funny. It was still a cool, almost cold day, but from time to time a brief puff of warmth enveloped us. The sky was gray and very close. These were the very first intimations of spring. You are filthy, said my father. I looked down at my pants. The spots of superblack gunk went all the way up to my thighs, and had also spotted the front of my windbreaker, and the cuffs of my pants were wet and gritty. I had a pretty good beard already—relative to the fact that I’d never had one in my life. Maybe it had gunk in it, too. My father was in a suit, a black suit, and he was drinking wine. He looked serene. He was up there, on his own, just drinking and looking at the city. It was a spectacular view. We were nearly at the highest point of Prenzlauer Berg, which made it nearly the highest point in Berlin. Berlin doesn’t look much like a German city from street level. But from the rooftop terrace, Berlin looked German again, because of all the red rooftops, and vast. We’ve got the Philharmonic in a few hours, don’t forget, said my father. I haven’t forgotten, I said.

  I drank that beer, got another, drank it, and when we heard thunder, we went downstairs. I said, I don’t get to hear thunder very much anymore. My father turned on the television and I went to shower and change. My room was enormous. It had its own flat-screen television. The bed was huge and square, as though I might like to sleep sideways, or bring multiple partners home with me each night. I also had an en suite, which was half the size of the bedroom—and as big as my sitting room in London. I felt a little bit silly sitting on the commode, looking around at all the empty space. I picked up my legs and kicked them, just because I could, and made funny faces in the full-length mirror across from the commode. I missed the old hotel.

  I showered for a long time, under a massive tropical showerhead, and I made the water as hot as I could bear. When I came out, I was bright red, and I sat naked on the end of my bed for ten minutes, sweating. Then I put on the only suit I had brought with me—black suit, white shirt, black tie—which I had chosen in case my father decided to bury Miriam in Germany. I came out to find my father and Trish drinking wine and watching downhill ski racing on television. They stood. Trish wore a gray dress. In certain light, it turned black. You look very nice, I said. Thanks, she said, so do you. Four hours later we were back in our neighborhood, at a bar right beside Trish’s apartment, and not too far from our apartment, which was dark, crowded, smoky, and which played Jewish folk music until three a.m. We drank a lot. I must have talked to a dozen people, and I think I spoke a lot of German, which is interesting, because my German is very elementary. We walked Trish home, then we got a bit lost trying to find our new apartment, which was pathetic because Trish’s apartment was less than five minutes from ours. I helped my father into his room. I put him into bed. I took his shoes off. Then I went up to the roof and sat in the rain—under a complimentary golf umbrella—and drank a final beer, and up there, drunk, in darkness, I looked upon the wet and sparkling vision of the city, and it put me in mind of something I’d have liked to do in my youth. My father slept late. I woke, opened the blackout curtains to a bright blue late morning, and realized that I was not, to my surprise, hungover. And with that realization came the sound of bells, church bells, exaltation. I went outside to go shopping. There was a little café nearby that contained a small organic supermarket. You could get fresh produce, meats, and bread. The change in the weather was extraordinary. It was warm, the rain must have brought it. In the light, it almost felt hot. I took my sweater off and tied it around my neck. I bought food for breakfast. I got a little bit of everything. I went back to the apartment, and my father and I had eggs, bacon, mushrooms, broccoli, hash browns, beans, sausages, bread, and some coffee—all serve
d on the rooftop.

  On our second morning in the new apartment, my father woke me to say he had a surprise. He had been up a few hours, but I hadn’t heard a thing. He said, I’ve got a surprise, get dressed, get some clothes for a couple of days, pack them in a bag. So I got dressed. I packed up everything I’d brought to Berlin. I ate some breakfast, then we went downstairs and walked around the corner, and my father pulled a key from his pocket, pressed a button, and the car we were standing beside—a big, black, sleek Toyota Camry—unlocked, and the lights flashed.