Wunderland(19)

Swallowing, Ava bounced Sophie against her chest and fed her small bits of bagel while surveying the room. She finally spotted Ilse on a bench by the far wall, seated between an enormous blue-black man in a pink rainbow tank and a teenage boy who seemed asleep with his mouth open.

“Mutti,” Ava called, pushing her way through the crowd.

“Oma,” crowed Sophie, twisting in her Snugli and spitting gluey dough onto the wooden floor.

Ilse was slouched where she sat, with her wire-rimmed glasses on, reading something in her lap. As she looked up Ava suppressed a gasp. Her mother looked terrible: disheveled, worn. As Ava approached she refolded her paper with shaking hands and tucked it hurriedly into her worn crocodile purse.

“Da bist du ja,” she said tersely.

“Jesus,” gasped Ava. “What happened?”

Her mother snapped her handbag shut. “Two hooligans tried to take my purse.”

“But why were you even in the Bowery at five a.m.?”

Her mother shrugged. “I was taking a walk.”

“A walk?”

“Oma!” Pushing off against Ava’s chest, Sophie was trying to torque her body around to see her grandmother, who greeted the greeting with a tepid smile.

“And why did you try to fight off muggers?” asked Ava, still flabbergasted. “In the Bowery, of all places?”

“I told you. They were after my purse.” Ilse scowled, looking fleetingly the way Sophie looked when Ava scolded her or denied her something she wanted.

“But you don’t even have anything valuable in it! You left your ticket and passport at the flat!”

“Don’t tell me what I have in it,” her mother snapped, slinging the bag over her shoulder. “Can I finally leave? These horrid men wouldn’t let me before.” Without waiting for an answer she turned on her heel and started marching toward the door.



* * *





Two release forms and sixty-five minutes later they were back in Ava’s apartment, where Ava had just managed to put a squalling, overtired Sophie down for an early nap. Carefully closing the bedroom door, she returned to the kitchen and set about making coffee in the stovetop Moka. Ilse sat at the kitchen table, staring blankly at the ruined feast that had been in her honor, a sight that made Ava furious all over again. The Schweinebraten, so brown and inviting just a few hours earlier, had taken on a sickly, grayish-pink color, though this did nothing to discourage the handful of fat houseflies gleefully skating over its larded surface. The second candle had burned out after bleeding an opaque streak of white wax that ended just before the tallow-toned streak of melted cheese and butter from her Camembert dish. Ava was half tempted to wrap it all up in the tablecloth and haul the whole thing to the trash.

Instead, while the Moka percolated and popped she curtly cleared the remnants of the wasted meal, throwing the food unceremoniously in the garbage, the plates and forks and knives and wineglasses in the sink. Throughout it all Ilse sat like a statue in her chair, her purse in her lap. The first thing she’d done when they reached the apartment was to retrieve her Lufthansa ticket and passport from the television console drawer. Now she had them in front of her and stared down at them without expression. As Ava set a cup of coffee in front of her she looked up and nodded distractedly, as though acknowledging a distant acquaintance.

Pouring a cup for herself, Ava sank into the chair across the table from her mother and tried to calm her churning thoughts. Above all, don’t get into a fight, Livi had said.

“You really have to learn to let go of things,” she said carefully. “Physically, I mean. One of these days you’ll really get hurt.”

“Hurt,” Ilse repeated. Her face bore a look of bone-tired desolation, as though she’d traveled a thousand miles through a desert on foot. Then again (Ava reflected), traveling the Bowery during the early hours of a summer blackout probably hadn’t been much easier.

“Are you hurt?” she asked, more gently.

“A few scrapes.” Her mother seemed annoyed by the question. “From where I fell. Nothing serious.”

“The police didn’t seem so sure.”

“The police here are idiots. Did you see what was happening out there? That would never have happened in Berlin.”

“It would happen anywhere, given the right circumstances.”

“Not in Germany.”

Ava didn’t have the strength to challenge her. “The bigger question is where the hell you were all night.”

“Out,” said Ilse stonily. “I told you. I couldn’t sleep.”

“I mean before that. You were supposed to be here at seven thirty. For dinner. I cooked all day.”

“I had something to do.” Her mother hugged the bag to her chest, as if she still feared having it ripped away. “I lost track of time,” she added vaguely.

“For an entire night? How?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Ilse frowned as Ava lit her cigarette. “Didn’t you quit?”

“I still smoke when I’m anxious,” Ava said dryly.

To her surprise, her mother held her hand out for the pack, extracting a cigarette and lighting it. Her movements struck Ava as strangely mechanical. It was as though Ilse were operating herself remotely, the way people navigated radio-controlled cars in Central Park.