Alina Bronsky - Just Call Me Superhero

She pulled back the covers and I laid Ferdi on the bed and kneeled down next to him. I had probably taken fifteen minutes to get up the stairs. Tamara pulled off Ferdi’s pants until he was lying there with long skinny bare legs and his dinosaur underpants, then she unrolled his slipper-socks from his feet and he murmured something and opened his eyes. He looked right at me and I wished he hadn’t because I figured the boy would get the shock of his life and would still be sleeping with a night-light at forty; he would never be able to take his kids to a haunted house, and… but it was too late for me to step away into the darkness. I wasn’t even standing, I was kneeling.

Ferdi looked at me with his eyes wide open and smiled.

He wasn’t really awake,” said Tamara. “He often talks in his sleep and even walks around sometimes, he’s, what’s the word, moonstruck.”

It occurred to me that I used to do the same. “I used to sleepwalk when I was little, too,” I said. “Claudia used to lock the front door and hide the knives and scissors from me.”

Tamara looked sideways at me with concern on her face.

We’d gone back down to the kitchen, finished making the food, and sat down opposite each other. The silence was palpable. I tried to avoid glancing at her so as not to have to think about what had happened that morning. Now, with Ferdi not there with us, the image kept reappearing in my smoldering brain.

Tamara got up for the fifth time to get something else out of the cabinet. This time it was a bottle of vodka and two glasses which she put down between us on the table.

“We haven’t raised a glass to him,” she said.

“Hmm?” I turned the bottle toward myself and studied the label as if I might recognize something from it.

“Are you even allowed?” she asked worriedly. “You’re already sixteen, right?”

“If I’m allowed to fuck you, I’m allowed to drink vodka with you,” I said, and she put her hand over my mouth.

“I never want to hear that again.”

She poured vodka, a small glass for herself and a tiny bit for me, and then stood up. I followed her lead. She lifted her glass and closed her eyes. Her lips moved, then she put the glass to her mouth. I sipped at mine as she opened her eyes and put her glass back down.

“Claudia,” she said.

I heard it now, too. The engine, which got louder as it pulled away, the footsteps on the front steps, the key turning in the lock. Claudia stood in the doorway and waved. At first I thought she was hurt but then I realized she was just horribly tired. I went over to her in order to brace her, but she pulled her arm away from me.

“And?” Tamara turned up next to her on the other side. “It’s not him, right?”

“Yes it is,” said Claudia with her eyes closed.

It was an endless night. Claudia sat at the kitchen table, and a long snaking line of coffee cups began to form in front of her. She took a sip and put the cup aside; after a few minutes it was cold so I made her a new cup. I was afraid she might fall off her chair. I kept thinking I was looking at a strange woman in a Claudia costume sitting there, and I wanted to shake her and scream at her to give me back my mother.

She didn’t tell us anything. Tamara sat opposite Claudia, fiddled with the handles of the coffee cups, and asked questions that turned my stomach. I didn’t want to think about how they must have made Claudia feel. She wanted to know what he looked like, whether he looked peaceful, whether he was naked, whether he had a tag on his big toe the way they do on TV, and whether his injuries were visible. Claudia just kept shaking her head like she was trying to fend off a fly, but Tamara wouldn’t stop until I finally hit the table with my fist and yelled, “SHUT UP!”

Tamara blinked at me with shock out of her tear-filled eyes and Claudia put her hand on my forearm, but she was so weak her hand slumped back to the table. “Don’t yell at her.”

I kept looking back and forth between the two of them.

“Take her to bed,” said Claudia blankly.

I stood up obediently and offered Tamara my arm. I had expected her to protest, but she let me help her up and, sniffling like an old woman, went up the stairs by my side. I accompanied her to the door of the bedroom and stood there indecisively. Tamara put her arm around my neck and kissed my nose. I tried to return the kiss and my lips slipped across her salty cheek, then she let go and disappeared behind the door.

I stood there for a while and listened to the noises that she made, the rushing water in the shower, the shuffling steps across the room; only after I heard the mattress squeak beneath her did I go back downstairs to Claudia.

She was sitting in the same position that I’d left her in, and was rolling a cigarette in her fingers. I grabbed a pack of matches from the kitchen and struck one. She took a deep drag on the cigarette, then coughed and put it out in one of the coffee cups. It sizzled. Claudia’s face was reddened and there were tears in her eyes, but maybe it was from coughing.

I put my hands on her shoulders and was alarmed at how small and fragile she felt. From above I looked at the top of her head, the gray hair that was coming in beneath the honey blonde.

“Mama,” I said. “Please go to bed.”

She shook her head and pointed at the chair next to her. I let myself drop onto the chair. She took my hand, her fingers were cold and shaking.

“Did you at least sleep in the car?”

She shook her head again.

“Everyone was very nice,” she said. “The funeral director called the police from the road to let them know we would be there soon and they had everything prepared. I just had to go in for a second and say, yes that’s him. I recognized him immediately. He looked like he was sleeping. He had a scrape on his forehead and was very cold.”

I squeezed her hand.

“I’m happy that I saw him,” she said. “I’m happy that he’s here now. I’m happy that he looks good. I feel better as a result.”

I nodded as if I believed her.

“You have to tell Tammy,” said Claudia. “She’s the widow, she has a right to know what it was like. But I just can’t talk about it with her.” I squeezed her hand again, which was supposed to signal my consent. “I know that it’s hard for you, but I beg you.”

I shook my head to make clear that it wasn’t hard for me. I couldn’t get out any words. And I was also incredibly tired, and outside it was getting light again.

Then Claudia laid her head on her crossed arms and began to sob.

I was dreaming of Marlon when someone shook me. I opened my eyes and saw Claudia, not the Claudia from yesterday but the one I was used to. She’d gone outside the natural contours of her lips with her lipstick again.

“Get up, it’s already ten,” she said. I swallowed the remark I wanted to make about having spent the whole night awake. Something told me that Claudia wouldn’t be moved by it.

“Tammy and Ferdi are awake already, too.”

“And?”

“Your father is dead.”

I didn’t say that he still would be two hours from now. Since I’d felt her shoulders yesterday and seen the gray roots of her hair, I’d had no desire to play the smartass anymore. I was more likely to offer her a comfy chair and a warm blanket for her legs.

“Where is Dirk, by the way?” I asked.

“Dirk has to work. He’s coming to the funeral,” she said in an even tone.

“Great,” I said.

“I think so, too,” she said.

When I went downstairs they were all sitting at the breakfast table. Tammy was wearing jeans and a tight T-shirt and had her still-wet hair pulled back in a ponytail. She looked somehow recharged. Claudia reported that Tammy had gotten up very early and gone shopping for breakfast, bread and butter, cheese and milk, honey and jam, and most important of all, a copy of the local paper. She listed every detail as if Tammy was a crippled kid who had ridden the bus alone for the first time.