SIDEWAYS IN LOVE

WHEN I GROW UP I WILL BE…

The next day, Sam finishes the prep work on the garden house. Next, he wants to buy paint. I can still hear him phoning my father and saying, “Okay, if it doesn’t matter…” then Nina, with whom I have an appointment, is standing in the garden. She’s past the toilet bowl worshipping phase, so we’re going on a baby clothes shopping trip through Erfurt.

I kiss Sam goodbye on the cheek.

On the way to the parking lot, Nina gasped next to me as if she were also in the ninth month.

“Sam and you,” she snorts, “you don’t seem like just friends at all.”

I give her a sideways glance. “Why not?”

“That afternoon when the police were in the garden…”

She tries to put her thoughts into the right words. “He was so caring. Like the man by your side. And just as we were saying goodbye… he looked at you like…” Again she doesn’t know what to say.

I wait, but nothing comes. “How?”

“It’s the way you look at someone you like more than a little. Are you sure he’s gay?”

“He’s not gay. I’ve told you that before. At most bisexual.”

The sound coming out of Nina’s mouth is appraising. “Funny though. By the way, Lena told me about his performance the other day. And she said he seemed a hundred per cent gay… until the moment he got mad and almost got into a fight with Jan.”

“It was just for show. He wanted to tease Jan. He borrowed the clothes from my parents.”

On the drive to Erfurt, Nina continues to ponder. I look out of the window most of the time: at times snazzy, sometimes half dilapidated houses on the main village streets, at abandoned gas stations, grain silos, grilled sausage stands and vast fields shrouded in clouds of dust from combine harvesters.

Since Nina is thinking intensely about Sam, she doesn’t even get upset that we’ve been driving behind a car for some time that’s following a tractor and doesn’t dare to overtake at all. Only when we drive onto the initially two-lane bypass road near Bad Langensalza does she become aware of this and curse as she pulls past them.

In Erfurt, we park at the cathedral and trundle from the cathedral through Marktstraße to the fish market. As always, there’s a butcher by the bridge over the Gera, grilling sausages over charcoal. Anyone who goes there without feeling faint is certainly not from this world, and so we succumb to the delicious scent and strengthen ourselves before we plunge into the fun and storm all the shops that sell baby clothes.

Five hours later and after a ton of ice cream at Café San Remo, famous for its giant ice cream and fruit cups, we drag ourselves and our loot to Nina’s car. It’s packed with about ten bags, I’m only carrying three. I didn’t need much more, because a few days ago Luisa bought all the things that Leopold had outgrown, dumped at my mother’s. Since then, she has been complaining that I should pick up the stuff because she keeps falling over the boxes.

Arriving at my garden, Nina says goodbye to me and I walk through the garden, which is filled with the smell of charcoal and grilled food. Although I’ve already eaten a bratwurst, my appetite promptly returns. This must be due to both the pregnancy and the Thuringian genes - we probably never get enough of it. Arriving in the garden, I’m shocked. Not because of the grill, which is steaming under the apple tree, but because of the garden house. Sam almost finished painting it. A few beams on the east side are still to do.

“For heaven’s sake!” I drop the shopping bags, fumble my cell phone out of my pocket and dial my parents’ number. “You have to come here right away,” I say into my cell phone when my mother picks up.

“Why?” Her alarmed tone reveals that she imagines an emergency for me. “Is it time?”

“No. It’s about the garden house.”

“Oh, yes!” She breathes a sigh of relief. “Is that a reason to frighten me so much! We’re on our way anyway. We’ll be there in ten minutes.” She hangs up.

Sam says, “I was faster. I Invited your parents to the celebration of the day.”

I approach the cabin like it’s a bomb about to explode.

Standing in front of the terrace, I can no longer contain myself and start laughing. I’m laughing so hard I’m doubled over, writhing, and tears are streaming down my cheeks.

Sam comes over to me and looks at his work with his hands on his hips. “I’m glad you like it so much,” he jokes.

“It’s piggy pink,” I gasp, cringing again. “Piggy pink!”

I chuckle and take his hand, which is covered in lots of piggy pink dots. “My parents are going to kill you.”

Sam is unimpressed. “The neighbour liked it. He said I should paint his place too. In aquamarine. He wants to pay 50 euros.”

I’m about to burst out laughing again. “It’s not a lot of money for so much work…”

Sam takes his eyes off his day’s work and looks down at me. “Small animals poop too.”

I can’t take it anymore! If I keep laughing, I’m sure the contractions will start.

“Sam…” I gasp, struggle onto the seat, and wipe the tears from my cheeks. “They say: Small animals also produce dung.” (Every little helps)

Sam doesn’t have time to reply because my parents enter the garden and start laughing too.

“We should have known,” my father booms. “He’s an American. All their houses are pastel-coloured!”

“I think there’s something,” my mother says, giggling, clutching the salad bowl in both hands to keep it from falling. “Not everyone has this.”

“Nobody has this!” my father agrees.

My mother and I sit down at the table on the terrace. My dad joins Sam at the grill to give him tips on how to cook properly. Sam takes it easy, turning the sausages over and splashing beer over them when advised. I’m soon distracted because my mother is telling me about an annoying change at the pharmacy.

When Sam and my father come to the table with the grill, they are strangely quiet. Not for long. As soon as they sit down, my father asks me about the Danaë letters.

What follows is a veritable storm of words. Sam, who I’m not really angry with for telling my father, tries to calm the waves of concern and indignation. He’s here. He’s taking care of me. Nothing will happen to me. My mother is begging me to move to the city, where I’ll be even safer behind several doors than just in Sam’s company. The scariest stories come to her and only my dad can stop them. Until Sam and I find an apartment in town, he wants to install a surveillance system.

Since both have to go to work early the next morning, they don’t stay long after dinner. Sam and I put the leftovers in the fridge and do the dishes. Then he continues to scurry around, tidying up the patio and cleaning the grill. I stop arguing when he wants to relieve me of what he thinks is physically difficult work. A mere thought of the vacuum cleaner or the mop seems to be enough to give Sam an idea of what I’m up to. He does everything quickly and mostly secretly as if it was his idea. Even the garden hose is a burden to me now, and as I sneak to the hose and turn on the water to feed the thirsty oleander, he calls out that he’ll take care of it once the sun goes down. I silence him by splashing him.

“I can do it,” I soothe him, turning back to the oleander.

When the plants are taken care of, I curl up in the hammock stretched between the apple and pear trees and look at the garden. The golden light of the evening sun conjures up a calming mood. Everything seems still, both around me and inside me.

Sam pulls up a chair. He puts his foot in a mesh and keeps the hammock moving.

“Today is my last day of vacation,” he says thoughtfully.

I tilt my head to look at him. “When do you have to go back to New York?”

“I don’t have to. I just have to make a decision in the next two to three weeks.”

That’s a vague way of putting it. Is he asking me to help him with this decision? I can hardly ask him to quit his job and put his American life on hold indefinitely to be here with me…

Well, to do what with me here exactly?

“The garden was my favourite place as a kid,” I murmur. “The idea of my own child exploring it is both beautiful and disconcerting.”

Sam smiles. “I’m curious about Paul.”

“And so am I. Sometimes his entire childhood and youth play out in my mind’s eye: Paul sleeping in the bassinet. Paul pulling the girls’ pigtails in kindergarten. Paul, who flicks paper balls in class and scrawls silly slogans on the face-down side of the blackboard. Paul, who goes to college and turns the heads of one fellow student after the other.”

“It’s possible that the head-turning starts in kindergarten,” Sam points out. “I hear girls are pretty precocious these days.”

A grumble rises in my throat. “You will be careful. My Paul is still much too small in kindergarten and only loves his mom. And if in 15 years a precocious brat dares to dial our number, I’ll get a new phone line.”

“Ah-ha!” Sam gives the hammock a harder push. “Hannah, the monster-in-law.”

Before I can argue with him, he throws in a new thought.

“When I was little, I had the craziest career aspirations.”

“With so much craziness, how did you end up in marketing?” I tease before giving in. “I felt the same way.”

“Really?” Sam, who has raised his eyes to the top of the apple tree, seems to spot an apple that he wants. “What did you want to be?”

“First…” I ponder, “… figure skater like Katharina Witt. My mother used to cry with joy when she skated, and that impressed me.”

Sam stands up, reaches for the apple and jumps because he can’t reach it. “I wanted to be a marble maker.”

Finally, he manages to pick the apple. He cleans it on a sleeve, bites into it and sits down again.

“Another great career aspiration,” I agree. “As a marble maker, I would have made far more imaginative marbles than just the plain coloured glass balls I had as a kid.”

“I’ve had some great ones.”

“After all, you grew up in the land of opportunity, while mine was the land of impossibility.”

Another earlier career aspiration comes to mind. “When I started school, I really wanted to be a kindergarten teacher because I didn’t like school and I saw it as a way of being able to stay in kindergarten forever.”

Sam grins, takes a last bite of the apple and throws it in a high arc towards compost. He even scores.

“I bet you wanted to be a basketball player, too,” I comment on his accuracy.

“No, that was too ordinary. Dito dangerous animal vet and bartender,” he leans back in his chair and nudges the hammock back into place. “What do you think Paul will be when he grows up?”

“Hmmm... pudding testers?”

Sam laughs and plays along. “Water slide builder.”

“Hot wheel driver.”

“Stuffed animal trainer.”

A thought occurs to me. “Perhaps his actual profession has long since been decided. It’s possible we just think we’re in control of our destiny, when in fact every step we take is just completing a to-do list made at the time of conception.”

Sam arches an eyebrow. “It could be that what we become is decided at the very moment we are born and is influenced by things like music that is playing.”

“Aha! That’s why you can take music into the birthing room.”

“Is that so? What would that be for you?”

Sam doesn’t give me a chance to answer, instead, he starts to sing an Elvis tune: “On a cold and grey Chicago morning a poor little baby child is born... in the ghetto…”

Ignoring my laughter, he continues to sing, full of tragedy, “And his mama cries…”

I interrupt him: “This song will definitely make Paul a Samaritan.”

Now Sam tries to imitate Janis Joplin’s voice: “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz. My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends…”

“Okay…” I turn on my side to get a better look at him. “This would make him a stockbroker.”

“Or a good-for-nothing who can’t buy his own car,” Sam says. “Not good then. Better another song. What about the Marilyn Manson Depeche Mode covers?” Sam spreads his pinky finger and index finger from his raised fist, gives the headbanger, and yells, “Your own personal Jesus. Someone to hear your prayers, someone who cares…”

“The midwife will have fun! And I really didn’t want to raise a little Jesus either.”

Sam sings for a while and we agree that the birth is best without music. Anyway, it’s possible that my screams will be so loud that they drown out everything else.