Not My Father's Daughter

Chapter 3: Kerstin

Chapter 3: Kerstin“She’s denied all further cancer treatments.” Still agitated from arguing with her mother and Doctor Burgart both, Kerstin rose from the chair she had just sat down on and started pacing. “So from now on all care she gets will be palliative. Hell, she has even talked to hospice already!”

“Your mother is fully in possession of her mental facilities. If those are her wishes you have to honor them.” Ralf took his glasses off and polished them with one of his lens-cleaner wipes.

Ohhh! “Don’t you understand? My mother is dying. “

“Which all of us must at some point. Such is life. Parents are destined to pass before their children.”

“Not at sixty-four years old! If she had continued chemo she might have…” Kerstin’s lips trembled. The chances of total recovery had been nil from the beginning. But Doctor Burgart had said that with aggressive chemo the rates of five-year survival were at about twenty-percent. With a little luck her mom could have made it to seventy. And now she would be hard pressed to see sixty-five!

Ralf unscrewed a jar of cream cheese-filled bell peppers, took a few out, and put them on his plate. Next he buttered a slice of bread, taking care to spread the butter evenly and thinly. A wedge of brie and some olives joined the bell peppers, but still he didn’t eat. Kerstin felt his eyes on her, knowing that no matter how hungry he might be, his innate sense of politeness forbade him to take a bite until she had joined him at the table.

“Just eat already!”

He eyed her warily instead.

That man and his goddamned chivalry he took such pride in! Kerstin snatched up an olive and chomped down on it. There.

“I wish you would join me at the table.”

Defying him and his disapproving stare, she grabbed a piece of cheese and shoved it into her mouth. “I’m going to move in with her. Until…” The cheese tasted rancid even though she’d only bought it yesterday, and it clung to her gums, threatening to choke her. Kerstin plopped down on the chair across from Ralf. “She’s going home tomorrow.”

“Of course you must move in with your mother.” Not ruffled in the slightest, he began eating.

Afterwards he would finish reading the paper if he hadn’t already done so during his lunch break, then he would take his laptop and sit in front of the TV with it. He would browse some history sites he followed and occasionally contributed to, while watching either an old movie or documentary. Promptly at ten, he would turn both devices off and head to the bathroom to get ready for bed—a routine he rarely deviated from, unless they had a social engagement planned or if he wanted s*x. Then the shower would be running, as he was a firm believer in good hygiene. Kerstin fidgeted in her chair while Ralf ate, and as soon as he retired to the living room, she fled not just the kitchen, but the house.

“I’m going for a walk.”

Kerstin could see her breath as she made her way down the steps and out the gate, but she had bundled up, and after sitting in the hospital most of the day, it felt good to be moving. Even though it had snowed recently, the sidewalks were clear. All along the way cars were starting to ice over. By morning, everybody would be scraping and defrosting, but there was no wind and the night was utterly still. Kerstin nodded a greeting to an acquaintance several houses from their own who was unloading groceries from her trunk. On the other side of the street, shutters were lowered, shielding the inhabitants from the cold and the dark, but Kerstin welcomed it as it matched her mood perfectly.

“I feel like I’m stuck in some kind of limbo,” she had complained to Emma earlier as they sat with their cappuccinos and pastries in the little café at the hospital.

“I’m sorry about your mother.” Emma opened a second package of sugar and slowly sprinkled it over the frothy foam on top of her coffee.

“Yeah.” Kerstin took a sip of her own cappuccino. It was hot and just sweet enough, and for a long moment she sat and savored the taste of it. “That’s not all of it, though. Don’t get me wrong, I dearly love my mother and I would do anything to make her better, but…”

Emma studied her quietly, not offering one of the multiple platitudes Kerstin had heard since her mom first got diagnosed, and Kerstin loved her for it. “It’s just that my life feels so empty!”

“What about your job? And don’t you have a son as well?”

“Oh, I like teaching all right, especially English. And Elias is great, but since he started his apprenticeship in Dinkelsbühl he is hardly home anymore. I mean, it made sense for him to move there and we got a great deal on the place he is staying at, but…”

“I wouldn’t have taken you for one of those moms with empty nest syndrome.”

“Me neither.” As there had been no malice in Emma’s words, Kerstin managed a chuckle.

“What happened to the girl who would passionately rouse whole groups of us students to support whatever cause she was fighting for at the moment?”

“Life happened. Or rather Ralf did.”

“Wasn’t he the guy with the glasses that always slid down from his nose? The goofy one?”

“No, that was Thomas. Ralf was the…” Kerstin blinked, trying to remember, but the Ralf from back then kept blending with the man he was today.

“Wasn’t he a bit older than us?”

“We just celebrated his fiftieth a couple of weeks ago.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Her stepdad had passed away shortly before she and Ralf got together for good and not for the first time Kerstin wondered if she hadn’t somehow used Ralf to compensate. “We just slipped into this routine, you know. Every week is pretty much the same.”

“Then break it!”

Kerstin furrowed her brows but Emma stayed unperturbed, as she crunched down on her pastry.

“Do something unexpected. Something crazy!”

Kerstin crossed the street. An elderly woman was just coming outside with her equally elderly dog. “Good evening, Mrs. Fasold. Rather chilly tonight, isn’t it?”

“Oh, it’s not too bad. Poldi and me, we’re doing only the small route tonight anyway.”

Kerstin bent down to pet the aging terrier which couldn’t have cared less. When Elias was smaller she’d repeatedly tried to talk Ralf into getting a dog for him but he had always refused on the grounds of dogs being too much trouble. Too much dirt in the house and all the hair, and what if they wanted to take a long vacation? Eventually she had given up and just taken Elias to her mom who, until recently, had always had a dog. She had just started talking about getting another one when she was diagnosed with cancer, which of course nixed that possibility. Kerstin had agreed with her at the time that it made little sense to bring a new animal into the house when the future was so uncertain, but now she almost wished she hadn’t. Surely Ralf couldn’t have refused her taking over her mom’s dog after…when…or could he? She sniffed and resolutely marched on, refusing to dwell on either topic.

By the time she got back home her feet were like ice and her hands red from the cold despite her gloves. As she peeled off her layers she heard the TV in the living room. Some old movie, judging from the tinned laughter filmmakers nowadays didn’t use. Preferring contemporary films herself, Kerstin hesitated. There was a mirror in the hallway and the woman that stared back at her from it looked so little like the rebellious student she had once been that Kerstin made a face at her. Maybe it was not just Ralf who had fallen into a rut. Maybe it was her, too. They had both gotten too comfortable, too complacent in their life together until they weren’t really living it any longer. She scowled at her almost forty-year-old self in the mirror. Boring! But she could do this. She could shake things up. Forty wasn’t too old yet.

Instead of grabbing a blanket and her book and curling up in her favorite chair as she usually did at night, she headed in to where Ralf was sitting on the couch, a brandy snifter in front of him, engrossed in something on his laptop. “What are you watching?” She slid on the couch next to him, sticking her hands underneath the throw that was covering his legs.

“Can you not do that, please? Your hands are ice cold.”

“Yes, I know. But you’re nice and warm and I was hoping we could snuggle a little.”

He made room for her, but the irritated look on his face as he did so, and the barely suppressed sigh as he closed his laptop, had spoiled it for her already. In silence, they watched the rest of his movie together. It was an old movie, made in the fifties or sixties, and highly predictable. Kerstin was bored after only a few minutes. When Ralf headed for the bathroom a few minutes before ten, Kerstin stayed put, watching the news, then flipping through channels until she found something she could fake interest in if he came back. Except Ralf didn’t.