Greg Baxter - Munich Airport

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.