Alina Bronsky - Just Call Me Superhero

She bit her lip.

“I know that things aren’t so easy for you either,” I said diplomatically.

She turned her face toward the window. Given that she was going 120 miles per hour it was a bit worrisome.

“Keep your eyes on the road, I don’t want have an accident.”

“It’s not like you could get much worse,” she said.

“Go ahead and speak your mind, I don’t care.”

She turned her face back toward me. There were tears in her eyes and I couldn’t understand what the source of the tears could be. Her mother was arriving, was that a reason to cry?

“I’m sorry,” I said even though she was really the one who should have been saying that. “Why hasn’t your mother ever been here?”

Tamara didn’t say anything.

“Not even for the wedding?”

“It was a small wedding,” she mumbled.

“Why?”

“Because.”

I sighed. This conversation was nothing but a minefield. For the first time it dawned on me that Tammy’s faraway relatives might not have been as happy as I’d always assumed about her sudden pregnancy by the father of her host family. My father and Tammy had married immediately so she wouldn’t have to go back the Ukraine. Maybe my father wasn’t so thrilled about the whole thing either. Maybe he hadn’t fallen madly in love, maybe he was just doing what he saw as his duty. Maybe everything had been totally different than I had always pictured.

“I went to see my family in the Ukraine twice with Ferdi,” said Tammy.

“Does your mother know, by the way?”

“Know what? That he’s dead? Of course, that’s why she’s coming.”

“Know this.” I drew a circle around my face with my hands.

“Oh,” said Tammy. “Don’t worry about it. The world doesn’t revolve around your pimples. She’s definitely seen worse.”

We waited in front of the arrivals board at Frankfurt airport. My head hurt from leaning back the whole time. Tammy had snuggled up to me and laid her head on my shoulder.

“I wouldn’t do that,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Out of respect and whatnot.”

“Respect for who?” She kissed me on the cheek and then again on the neck.

“You’re a widow, Tammy.”

“Exactly.”

“So stop kissing me.”

“You’re like a brother to me.” She kissed me on the ear, and it sounded loud. “Like a cousin,” she corrected. “Without you I’d have completely lost it by now.”

She was talking like she was drunk. It even seemed as if she couldn’t stand up straight. I was propping her up. Her waist was very thin, I could get one arm all the way around it. For a second I noticed that she smelled like peonies behind her ears. Then she shoved me away with both hands and tried to steady herself on her own. She stepped on my foot with her heel but I didn’t make a sound.

“Mama,” she cried shrilly and stumbled off.

I had expected Tammy’s mother to be like her, long legs, long hair, just twice her age. Or, perhaps less likely, a little round woman with a long coat and a headscarf like I’d seen a long time ago in an article on Kiev in National Geographic . The last thing I had expected was that Tammy’s mother would look like a copy of Claudia, tall, disheveled hair that wasn’t blonde but red — Claudia had dyed hers the same shade a few years back. Tammy’s mother was wearing flashy glasses and had a large mouth. And she spoke English better than me.

“My mother is a professor, you idiot,” hissed Tammy in my ear as I pulled her suspiciously heavy suitcase along. I’d tried to compliment the newly arrived mother on her English.

“You could have told me,” I hissed back at her. “You don’t look anything like her!”

“Thank god.”

Somehow I now understood why Tammy and Claudia couldn’t stand each other anymore. I liked her mother. She introduced herself as Evgenija, the Russian version of Eugenia, and said her foreign colleagues called her Jenny.

I liked the firm handshake that accompanied the English words I took for her expression of condolences. I liked her accent, which I would have liked to have myself. I liked the limited level of interest she showed as she looked fleetingly at my face before turning to her daughter. And I liked the way Tammy suddenly changed in her company. The tension melted from her body, she slumped comfortably at the steering wheel, her back curved, her shoulders drooped, and she talked quietly with her mother and the gurgle of their conversation sounded to me like wind chimes or the distant whoosh of the ocean. I relaxed in the backseat and kept dozing off. Now and then I opened an eye and caught Tammy’s gaze in the rearview mirror.

“By the day after tomorrow we’ll have gotten through everything,” said Claudia. She wasn’t able to get up to say hello because Ferdi was asleep in her lap and Tammy’s mother had vehemently insisted that the child’s well-being came first. She ran her hand across Ferdi’s sweaty head. The dispassion of this Ukrainian granny surprised me. Of course we were the same way, but I had expected far more emotion from her. I had the feeling that there was a question in the look she gave Tammy after looking at Ferdi: Is he really yours?

Now Tammy and her mother had disappeared upstairs to requisition another room, and Claudia was still sitting there while my little brother made rasping noises in his sleep. Claudia’s eyes kept closing, too, but she kept jerking awake.

“She’s nice, isn’t she?” she mumbled as her eyelids fluttered.

“Mama Evgenija? Absolutely delightful,” I said.

“The day after tomorrow,” whispered Claudia. “Everything will be over the day after tomorrow.”

At eight in the morning my phone rang. I sat up, reached out and accidentally knocked it off the nightstand, and then slid to the floor to try to pick it up. It blinked and jumped around, vibrating. I chased after it like a stork after a toad. Maybe I had gone completely nuts, which would mean I was adapting to my environment. But then I caught it and it was still ringing and I pressed it to my ear. I didn’t recognize the number in the display but I knew who it was.

I was wrong. It wasn’t Janne, it wasn’t anyone from the cripple troop. It was Lucy.

I recognized her even before she said her name. I’d deleted her number along with all the others, but the sound of her voice took me back for a second to a time that no longer existed to me. I felt the corners of my mouth forming a smile. But it withered away just as soon as Lucy haltingly offered her condolences. She sounded throaty, as if she had spent hours crying out of a false sense of solidarity.

“Thanks,” I said. “It’s very nice of you to think of me.”

“I’m happy that I finally managed to reach you,” she said. I waited. I was less inclined than ever to discuss my conduct over the past year. She wasn’t stupid and understood that on her own.

“How are you, Marek?” she asked, her voice clear again, light and clear, and I could tell that one false word or a false tone would cause her to break down in tears again. I sniffed the tipping point of a nervous breakdown. Not that she was the type to fall apart, but she had her limits, and apparently I still knew her well enough to know where they were.

“How did you find out… ” I asked.

It was simple. She had called our house to try to catch up with me. She had spoken on the answering machine and a very nice man named Dirk had heard the message. He called her back, told her everything, and encouraged her to reach out to me, because in a situation like this I could surely use words of support from a dear old friend.

“Idiot,” I said.

She laughed. “No,” she said. “He just doesn’t know you very well yet.”