Yannick Grannec - The Goddess of Small Victories

I readjusted my gloves, strangling my fingers, which itched to leap out at her. Kurt was certainly worth a little added humiliation.

“Kurt is driven by an unbounded urge to ask questions. When he was a child, we called him Herr Warum . In daily life, you must take on the role ‘Mrs. How.’ His ‘whys’ concern realms too vast for you.”

“But not for you?”

She raised her head, higher, it seemed, than the laws of anatomy would allow.

“The point is that you must smooth all the trivial obstacles out of his path so that he can devote himself to his calling. His focus is a double-edged sword. If a subject interests him, he loses himself in it entirely. Never let him drive a car. Absorbed in his inner world, he is distracted and dangerous.”

I modeled my pose on hers: back straight and hands crossed over my privates, the shoulder bag acting as a shield.

“Reassure him, tolerate his oddities, but pay attention to the signs. Make sure he gets medical attention in time. And don’t forget to flatter him, even if you don’t have a clue as to how it’s done. Some men have such an insatiable ego that the compliments of a half-wit send them into raptures.”

“Nothing about his favorite recipe and remembering his muffler in the winter?”

Her nostrils tightened.

“I believed for a long time that you would destroy his career. You won’t advance it, but you have allowed him to survive. I have to recognize one quality in you: you are unsinkable.”

“It’s never too late to admit it.”

“You are not without blame in Kurt’s … weakness. He needs peace. From what I have heard, you are a boisterous person. Concentrate on feeding him, protecting him, and not giving him dubious diseases.”

She was a lifetime ahead of me in self-control. I shook my shoulder bag at her.

“Don’t insult me! I could say a lot of things about where your little prodigy falls short!”

“Kurt will always be a child. His intelligence will make him unhappy, lonely, and poor. It is my task as his mother to provide for his future.”

“By finding a replacement for yourself? You’re forgetting one thing, Marianne.” I brought my face close to hers. “I’m the one who warms his bed at night!”

I don’t know what shocked her more: that I called her by her first name, that I had the presumption to put myself on her level, or that I said those words. But in point of fact I do know. We lived in a time when it was our duty to coordinate our shoes with our handbag and never leave the house without gloves and a hat. I had the right to vote, but in her eyes I barely had the right to live.

“Your vulgarity hardly surprises me, coming from a divorcee and a juke-joint dancer. Outside his work, Kurt has always had rather appalling taste.”

“Not forgetting his taste for older women, Frau Gödel. You must have played some part in that!”

She studied me impassively. I saw the she-wolf under the loden coat, ready to rip me to pieces.

“There will be no children, will there? He never could stand for it. For you, it’s too late anyway.”

I teetered on my too-high heels.

“Will you come to the wedding?”

“You have a run in your stocking. Kurt is very sensitive to that sort of thing.”

She passed in front of me without even allowing herself a smile of victory. Not once had she called me by my name. There was an element of cliché to it. A woman and her mother-in-law are like two scientists arguing over the rights to a discovery. Every scientific advance issues from a womb, which is itself the fruit of another womb. We were the two sides of a coin: she had brought him into the world, I would likely see him out of it.

I had wanted to bring her to the Himmelstrasse, our aptly named Heaven Street, to open the door of our home to her, but she marched off as soon as the “business” was done. Maybe I should have bowed my head and declared my allegiance to her too. My life with Kurt deserved more than a pact made on the sly in a cemetery. I was tired of all the unspoken and partial truths. I’ve always been bad at this game for which she’d received a perfect education.

For consolation I went to visit the angel on my favorite grave. The statue had a man’s waist. Kurt and I had had an absurd discussion in front of this sculpture. Do angels have waists? Seated in prayer and surrounded by ivy, this one guarded the repose of an unknown family. We always greeted this figure on our Sunday walks. Kurt, too, liked angels.

Mrs. Gödel was putting her photographs back in their box, quietly watching the young woman, who could not bring herself to leave. The day had a feeling of finality that Anna was unwilling to accept.

“Why don’t we get a cup of tea, Adele?”

“It’s too late, they won’t serve you. They’re all too busy with their annual masquerade party.”

“You don’t like Halloween?”

“I hate false gaiety.”

“Yet you like liquor.”

Anna disciplined a strand of hair that was drooping at her temple. She needed a good shampoo. After this afternoon’s rain, her clothes gave off whiffs of old Labrador. She was within an ace of lying down on the floor and going to sleep. She tightened her ponytail. The sharp pain to her scalp gave her courage. She would have to steer Adele away from another fit of resentment. Truth seemed like the best option.

“I won’t be celebrating Thanksgiving with you, Adele.”

“I don’t wait at the window for your return, my dear.”

Mrs. Gödel tortured one of the buttons on her loosely knit sweater jacket. Anna allowed her time to make a few small inner readjustments. Her heart swelled. Where was the smart young woman in the photograph? Anna’s compassion encompassed the old woman before her and the one she might herself become one day, with a little bad luck. She still had claim to the luxury of childish illusions: better to die than grow old.

“I am a little rough at the edges sometimes.”

“Thank you for showing me the photographs. That was very thoughtful of you.”

“I was certain that you would like them. It doesn’t take much to amuse you, young lady.”

“I don’t like those gatherings either. Too much food, too much family.”

“I remember our first Thanksgiving in Princeton. The dean invited us to his superb house for dinner. The conversation was a complete blank to me. At the time, I barely spoke a word of English. I was fascinated by the abundance of food on the table. I hadn’t seen that since … Do you know, we had never seen anything of the kind. Will you take Thanksgiving dinner with your family?”

“I’ve been invited by the director of the IAS.”

“You stand in high favor with him!”

“It was more like a summons to appear.”

Anna poked a gap between the slats in the window blind. The puddles left by the afternoon rains shone with a warm light under the streetlamps. A group of shadows made their way in zigzags across the parking lot. The fateful dinner was approaching and she had not yet found a reasonable excuse to duck the confrontation with Leonard. There was a strong likelihood that he would appear for Thanksgiving — he had never missed a chance to poison a social occasion at Olden Manor.

“Pine Run has made me hate all these so-called family holidays. You have only two options: either receive the visits of badly brought up children whose parents have somehow found the address of your retirement home, or go off and sulk in your corner expecting no one.”

Anna didn’t ask if she was hoping for visitors. The guest book at the front desk had given her insight into Adele’s solitude. She abandoned her observation post.