Joachim leaves work early in an effort to convince himself that he really wants to go home. In a way, he does. But even without daring to think about it, he knows that what he wants most is to go home to an empty apartment, to close the door behind him and collapse in some dark corner. Not to have to keep a smile on his face or ask the right questions; just, for a few minutes, not to be seen.
A train is pulling in when he gets to the U-Bahn station and he could make it, but instead walks slowly down the stairs, letting everyone else rush past. He pictures one of them bumping into him, knocking him down, his head bursting against the stairs like a water balloon. He’s so vividly aware of his thin red blood running down the litter-ridden steps that he’s surprised to arrive on the platform intact.
He remembers this sense of dread from various living situations, apartments shared with roommates or girlfriends that soon developed into the grounds of an elaborate cold war. There’s no hostility between him and Helena now, but the feeling is the same: the desperate hope that he’ll get home and find the door bolted, the lights out, so he can slip into his room before anyone else gets in.
But there’s no chance of Helena being out. Not today or any day. That’s what’s stressing him out. When’s the last time he was alone? He hasn’t had the place to himself in over a month. The next train pulls into the station, and he waits for the passengers to flow out, then wedges himself in among the sullen construction workers and teenagers eating döner kebabs full of raw onions. A woman with an oversized baby carriage makes a snide remark to no one in particular when he doesn’t get out of her way fast enough. At the last minute, a group of tourists jumps into the car, and he no longer has anything to hold onto. He struggles to stay on his feet between stops, borne up only by the density of passengers surrounding him. As if it weren’t enough that they have to stand so close together, everyone within eyeshot is staring aggressively, blaming him for taking up space, judging him based on his clothing, hair, age, face, and inability to meet their eyes.
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 probably 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.