Wunderland(14)

“It gets better,” Ilse said, quietly.

And before Ava could ask what it was, they’d reached her apartment.



* * *





Two days later, Ava found herself humming Eine kleine Nachtmusik as she stirred semolina on the stove. The heat still hadn’t broken, and Sophie was crankier than ever thanks to a diaper rash and two emerging new teeth. After her third attempt to put her daughter down for her nap, Ava had finally resorted to the Snugli again, though this was normally something she avoided doing at home. Now, though, it seemed the only way to keep the baby from screeching while Ava bustled around the kitchen.

The project at hand was her first-ever formal German meal, with recipes drawn from her formerly untouched Joys of German Cuisine and ingredients paid for by pawning Mark’s guitar. It was an ambitious plan, given the fact that these days her culinary aspirations rarely extended beyond Jiffy Pop and Swanson’s TV dinners. But it had struck her as the most apt way to express her feelings to Ilse. Her (and could she really be thinking this?) gratitude.

For there it was: she was actually happy her mother was here. Very happy. Improbably, preposterously happy. And she knew Sophie felt the same way: after two days of listening intently to Ilse chattering in German, her new favorite word had become Oma. Oma Oma Oma, she’d sung sleepily last night, as Ilse rocked her in her bedroom while Ava indulged in the tepid luxury of a bath. And Ilse, whom Ava had only rarely heard sing, had sung it right back to her, following it up with a mournful ditty Ava vaguely felt she should know but did not:

Holla-hidi hollala,

Holla-hidi ho.



* * *





Putting Sophie to sleep was no mean feat in itself, but it was only one of the many miracles Ilse had wrought. Barely an hour after landing in Ava’s stuffy little flat she had proceeded to apply the legendary German Hausfrau energy to it, scrubbing the kitchen and its bathtub free of splattered baby food and grime. She’d returned the fungal garden that had been Ava’s bathroom to something like its original state, and she’d clambered onto the unit’s two fire escapes to Windex all the windows. When she was done, the apartment was so noticeably brighter that she might have whisked a stubborn storm cloud from over the building.

Yesterday, however, had been the motherly coup de grace. When Ilse showed up late in the morning, she’d had in tow a lanky youth in a Macy’s apron. The latter stood huffing and panting behind her, having just hauled two large boxes up the four flights of stairs. Inside each was a shining Friedrich air-conditioning unit. “One for the kitchen, one for the bedroom,” said Ilse, as Ava gaped at the appliances, speechless.

Then: “Was ist los? Did I buy the wrong kind?”

But Ava could only shake her head, overwhelmed not just by the gift but by the stark realization that for all her self-declared independence and self-sufficiency, for all her written protestations to her friends that she’d been “managing just fine” alone, she hadn’t been. Not at all.

Ilse had the deliveryman install the units then and there, supervising with the same brisk pragmatism with which she’d supervised homework and camping trips in years past. She’d refused the reimbursement that Ava offered (purely reflexively, as she actually had no money). “I’m spending time with my granddaughter,” her mother said, bouncing Sophie on her knee. “That’s payment in and of itself.”

And then, as if to finalize her new role as flawed-mother-turned-fairy-godmother, she took the baby out for a walk, leaving Ava to nap in the blissful, rumbling chill.



* * *





Bending carefully now at the waist, Ava set down the cooking spoon with its shiny coating of pudding batter, and opened the oven door. The Schweinebraten, in its crackling coat of paprika, mustard, and caraway seeds, appeared to be browning nicely, and the smell was nothing short of heavenly. Above it, a cake of Camembert bubbled merrily on a cookie sheet, its red currant sauce at the ready next to the pudding. Feeling more creatively satisfied than she’d felt in over a year, Ava shut the oven again, then leaned against the counter to wipe the heat-fog from her glasses. Sophie, who had been damply drowsing against her stomach, woke enough to take a sleepy swipe, knocking them to the floor.

“Scheisse! Sophie!” Holding the kitchen counter for balance, Ava performed an awkward plié as the baby kicked her heels into her groin, then tried for the glasses again. Ava gave her the pudding spoon to gnaw on instead. Opening the refrigerator, she pulled out the white Zinfandel she’d been steadily working her way through, realizing only after she’d poured her third (or fifth) pinkish splash that over half of the bottle was gone.

“Ba-ba-ba-ba,” Sophie sang.

“It’s all right,” Ava told her. “We have another one for when Oma comes.”

“Oma Oma,” Sophie warbled.

“Yes. Oma. Do you think she’ll be happy with all this k?stlich food?”

Her daughter shook the spoon tambourine-style, barely missing Ava’s nose. “Nein,” she said, her face and tone both so grimly Ilse’s that Ava had to burst out laughing.



* * *





At eight forty-five the kitchen table was set with silverware, bodega daisies of salmon pink, and the two unchipped plates Ava still possessed. Sophie was at last in her crib, curled stomach down on freshly laundered bedsheets with the cooking spoon clutched in her plump, determined fist. To try to distract herself from her annoyance, Ava was sketching her now-congealing pork roast on an overdue phone bill. Because Ilse—pragmatic, proprietary, Teutonically punctual Ilse—was over an hour late.