Alina Bronsky - Just Call Me Superhero

“Take care of yourself,” I said.

“Take care of her,” she said. “And of the little one.”

“Let’s not go overboard,” I said. “She stole your husband.”

“What’s she got for it now?” She pulled on my undamaged earlobe.

I stood and watched the long dark car pull up to the door. She waved before she climbed in.

I could have gone back to sleep for a few more hours, but instead I went to the coffee-spaceship and pushed on a couple of buttons. The indicator lights came on and once again it started to steam, but this time it didn’t stop me. I pulled out the round filter like I’d seen Tamara do the day before and emptied it out over the trashcan. I found the bag of beans and poured some into the coffee mill. I hadn’t expected the mill to be quite so loud. A noise like that would have made any normal person jump out of bed, but everything remained silent upstairs.

I no longer wondered why Claudia seemed in such a hurry to get down here once she’d heard the news of the death. Without her nothing happened in Swinehausen. Now, with her traveling for an entire day, I could see in my mind the way everything was immediately falling apart. How Ferdi would cry, hungry, unkempt, and totally neglected, how Tamara wouldn’t even think she had to get out of bed, how the folder of important documents would end up in the wastepaper basket and the house would collapse and bury us all beneath marble slabs. I was the man of the house, that’s what Claudia said to me, and that didn’t sound like fun.

I sat down on a kitchen chair after I’d gotten rid of some more brochures about grief support groups. Somehow I didn’t think Ferdi needed that sort of thing. I myself had rejected all kinds of offers for therapy in my time. Claudia had tried to bribe me with a home video system and a trip to America if only I’d been willing to dump my psychological junk onto a specialist, but I remained as steadfast as a stake. Until I’d landed in the arms of the guru, taken in by the most idiotic of lies: that I would see my life with completely different eyes in a week’s time.

I took a similarly dim view of grief puppets and of painting nightmare images and of group arts and crafts projects. I was very conservative about such things. And I’d promised Ferdi a puppy even though I hated dogs.

I drank my espresso, which was passable, and thought again about Janne. The feeling of having forgotten her was baffling. Now she was here again, all I had to do was close my eyes in order to see her on the inside of my eyelids in her long dress, with a look on her face that said she’d like to bite my ear, too, and giving off a subtle smell of lime that was so fresh and so good and so bad at the same time that it suited her.

I knocked back the espresso, spat some coffee grounds that had strayed into my mouth into the sink, and went upstairs on tiptoes. Suddenly I just knew she had sent me a text message, maybe right at that moment, maybe during the night. Maybe she’d sat up the entire night, unable to sleep because she was so worried about me, waiting for an answer. I felt guilty and swore to myself never to let either Janne or my phone out of my sight again.

I couldn’t find it at first, kept looking in various bags, under pillows and under the bed, until it fell out of a sock. I turned it on and waited for the list of missed calls and unread messages to appear, I waited for several minutes, it took a while to connect to the network. At some point it became clear that it wasn’t necessary to wait any longer, because nobody had called and nobody had sent a message.

Marek, my bunny?” called Tamara as I went back downstairs with heavy steps to further my knowledge of the coffee machine. I wanted to drink three, maybe five cups, until my heart burst out of my ribs, nothing mattered to me now. I wanted to forget that I was the man of the house. I no longer consented to it. I hadn’t seen Ferdi for the first six years of his life, and there was no fundamental reason I had to see him now. I didn’t feel like answering Tamara, but she called out to me again.

“Has Claudia already left?” she asked as I entered her bedroom through the open door. She had sounded as if she was still half asleep, and that’s just how it was. The bed was huge and the sheets striped; above the bed was a mirror and on the opposite wall a so-called erotic calendar. In another situation I might have risked a second glance at it. Next to Tamara was something big and poofy. It turned out to be a mangy man-sized teddy bear.

“Your best friend?” I asked, leaning against the doorframe, looking at Tamara and choking back a sort of hoarseness in my throat. I couldn’t block out of my mind the question of whether she was naked under the covers. Both arms and both legs peeked out, a pile of clothes sat on the floor, the wardrobe door was open, and a Hello Kitty tank top dangled from a hanger hooked to the lamp.

“I can’t fall asleep otherwise,” said Tamara dully. “Without him, you understand.”

“I understand.” I couldn’t take my eyes off her, the way she was stretched out and lounging, tussled hair in her face. She didn’t look like a widow.

She stretched out her arm. Maybe just for the hell of it, but maybe to motion me closer. I went closer and sat down on the edge of the bed. Now I could smell her, a little sweat and perfume and a lot of woman, and for a second I felt dizzy. Maybe that’s why I fell back onto the bed.

She’d thrown her arms around me and pulled me tightly to her. I gasped for air, a sound escaped from me that startled even me. Tamara let go of me suddenly. I protested against the acute sense of loneliness that arose as a result. Her bare feet tromped past me and into the bathroom, the water ran, I heard her gargle and spit, something hissed, and when she came back she didn’t smell like a woman anymore but like a drugstore. No idea who kissed who first, but our mouths locked onto each other so fiercely, as if we could do something about each other’s pain. I heard the teddy bear snarl and thought for a second it might be a real animal. I only became aware of myself again when Tamara held my mouth shut.

“Not so loud. The kid.”

I lay next to her on my back and gasped for air, pressing the flat of my hand against my throat because I suddenly could no longer breathe. I tried to sit up, panicking. Tamara helped me to sit up and braced me from behind.

“Just keep breathing,” she said, and it sounded a lot less friendly than anything else I’d heard from her in the last few days. “You’re not dying, you’re just… ”

“Be quiet,” I interrupted with my first lungful of air. The last thing I had in mind was discussing it with her. I lay back down and closed my eyes. Tamara smelled different again now, simultaneously like woman and man. She smelled of me.

Since I didn’t know whether I should thank her or apologize, I just lay there. I stayed until I heard her get up and go into the bathroom. When I heard the water running I felt like getting up and running, too.

When I woke up the house was as silent as during the night. The clock radio next to the bed said it was four in the afternoon. I jumped out of bed, looked down at myself, and remembered everything. I grabbed a puke-yellow towel from the doorknob and wrapped it around myself. Then I called for Tamara and Ferdi but nobody answered.

I went down the stairs and slumped onto the couch in the living room. I’d really outdone myself: Claudia had barely left and I’d already molested my father’s widow and slept away the rest of the day. If something awful happened to them now, like if they were run over by a truck because Tamara was even more distracted than before as a result of our adventure, then it would all be my fault. I may have been deformed, but for the first time I suddenly thought that perhaps I wasn’t deformed enough. For the pile of shit that I felt like, I was still inordinately handsome. I turned around and punched the wall behind the couch. The lacerations on the skin of my knuckles provided a little relief.