Roadblocks

Chapter 4: Alex

Chapter 4: Alex“Come on in, Spatzi, the door is open.”

Frowning, Alex untied her boots outside the door, exchanging them for the house slippers awaiting her just inside. Although she was certainly used to it after thirty-six years, she still detested her mom’s use of her pet name, little sparrow. Granted, as an avowed Greenpeace member and animal and nature lover par excellence, Regine was understandably prone to calling people after living creatures. But making Alex a sparrow, of all things? Nondescript and brown and even worse, common, the little bird could be called cute at best, which Alex wasn’t. If anything she would have chosen Raven. But nobody asked her, certainly not her mother. To Regine she would always remain Spatzi.

“In here. Just lighting the candle.”

Wearing her slippers, Alex padded into the kitchen where the French press filled with coffee, probably lukewarm by now, was already on the table. Lumpy brown sugar—organic—and milk from happy cows sat next to two obviously homemade mugs that, while roughly of the same size, narrowly missed being of the same shape.

“New?” Alex guessed, taking the closer one and inspecting it.

“Yeah, I just got them at the Schwabinger Christmas market. The woman that made them is from Kuala Lumpur and she still supports her family there. You would never believe what kind of monthly income they have to get by and there is this woman here…”

Blah, blah, blah. Leave it to her mother to chat up any vendor. Tuning Regine out as she expounded on the potter-woman’s virtues, Alex sat down on a chair her mom had ‘rescued’ from a neighbor’s trash collection, never mind that it didn’t match the table. Already her feet were itching from the hand spun wool the slippers were made of and she pulled her feet out, resting them on the wooden slat of the table instead. The Christmas-y centerpiece was pretty this year. Whoever had put it together had managed to combine organic and artsy well enough. While a wholehearted believer in making things yourself, Regine was terrible at crafts and therefore supported a vast array of others who were not. Unfortunately, this did not extend to cooking and baking, and it was with trepidation that Alex reached for the tray of cookies and selected one. Whole wheat, no doubt. Regine, who had poured them both coffee, generously splashed milk into hers and less generously added sugar.

“Try these.” She pointed toward the cinnamon stars that looked cute enough but, as Alex knew from previous Christmases, were hard as rocks. “I made a double batch this year, but I used more honey this time and they came out better than ever. Didn’t Silke really like them, too?”

Caught unawares, Alex stiffened as the memory came flooding back. She and Silke had been at the Christmas market, and it had been freezing. They had laughed as they stomped off the snow before coming in and Silke’s cheeks had glowed red in the warmth of Regine’s kitchen. And she had indeed praised the cinnamon stars in front of Regine, even if she had made fun of them later.

“Oh, she ate them, all right,” Alex snickered, as she had snickered then in the tram on their way back to the apartment, when Silke had clutched the Tupperware container filled with cinnamon stars to her heart despondently, making one silly face after the other. “But she really hates all that whole wheat flour cr—um, stuff you bake. She claims that, as a rule, Christmas goodies shouldn’t be healthy.”

“Oh, I know that,” Regine replied loftily as she crunched down on a whole wheat cinnamon star herself. “But I also know that people’s tastes aren’t changed overnight. Convenience has corrupted us so much that we don’t recognize true flavor. At least Silke was trying. When’s she coming anyway?”

Alex felt her face clouding over. “No idea. Between her job and my work and the time difference and all, we’re hardly talking.”

“Really?” Something in Regine’s tone made Alex sit up straighter.

“Yes, Mom, really. I have a life, you know, and so does Silke.”

“Aha.” She made that clucking sound that Alex detested. “What about the life you have together?”

“What about it? It was her choice to go to Texas after she lost her job, not mine.”

“I realize that. But you didn’t do anything to stop her, either, now did you?”

“And what exactly should that have been, in your opinion? It’s not like I could have tied her to a tree or something.”

“I don’t know. Ask her to stay?”

“Mom! It’s not my fault she didn’t want to go on unemployment.”

“Of course not. It’s just…From what I have seen, that girl would have done anything for you.”

Anything but give up that stupid bourgeoisie dream of hers. They were lesbians, for heaven’s sake. They didn’t need marriage and babies.

“I’m listening.”

“You didn’t want kids either.”

“I see.” Regine’s face became thoughtful. “Silke’s right at that age, too. If she waits too much longer, she will be too old to have them.”

“So? She has her niece. And from what I heard there’s soon supposed to be a nephew. Well, they’re trying for one anyway.”

“Are you saying that you’re going to give up on the perfect woman for you, just because she longs to be a mother?”

“Gosh-dang-it, Mom. Don’t you see that, if that’s her life’s dream, we’re not perfect for one another?”

“I’ve never heard you complain before. And Silke adores you.”

“Yeah, well, a fat lot of good that is doing me now, isn’t it?”

“Nonsense. I know I’ve always told you life is about taking a stand, but, hey, sometimes we have to compromise just a little, too. And, honestly, I can’t say that I would mind being a grandma. Just think of all I could teach a little one.”

“How to singlehandedly stop pollution and wastefulness, not to mention saving each and every endangered species?”

“Why do you always have to mock? Every difference ever made started with one individual making an effort. And with our combined efforts we can…”

Having effectively steered Regine away from the sore subject and towards her favorite one, Alex relaxed as she listened to her mother’s story about her and her fellow world-savers’ latest project. But the barb her mom had planted remained and it still smarted when, an hour later, she once again stepped outside into the cold.

So what if Silke did indeed adore her. Alex still didn’t want a screaming baby in the house. Or a snotty-nosed toddler. But neither did she want Susi there. While in theory it had been a good idea to share the space Silke had vacated with her employee in exchange for cutting Susi’s pay, in reality it had gotten old very fast. Reasonably hardworking at the office, Susi was a slob at home and an annoying one to boot. She never cooked, which meant that Alex’s pots and pans stayed clean, but she left fast food wrappers everywhere and if Alex had to fish strands of Susi’s hair out of the shower one more time, she would…What? It wasn’t like throwing Susi out was an option, exactly. Business had been slow recently and even the measly sum she didn’t have to pay Susi helped.

“Why don’t you lay her off, then?” Simone had asked when Alex complained of her budget woes over a glass of wine at the little place close to the gallery where Simone had her exhibition. “You can always re-hire her when you get more work.”

“True,” Alex had conceded, but in the end, hadn’t done it. Because there was something about Susi and the way she looked up to Alex that stopped Alex from firing her. Rather, she had cut back on her own spending and, when that wasn’t enough, had called everybody at the office together. Nobody had been happy about it, but in the end they all had agreed to forgo a week of pay each in exchange for Alex closing the business down for two weeks over the holidays that wouldn’t count against their overall days off for the new year. Susi would go and stay with her parents, which had been the plan all along anyway, because they always went skiing right after Christmas. So the coast was more than clear for Silke to come home. And once she was here and they were having fun together, certainly then she would see reason and give up on that stupid baby idea of hers.