Wrecked (31 page)

The other magical thinking that dogs me has to do with the silver acorn. Although the acorn—the “something old” from my wedding—caused the accident as far as I’m concerned, I have kept it. It’s hidden in the basement in a trunk where I keep all the things from our canceled wedding. I keep hoping it wasn’t a mistake to keep it. I’m deathly afraid of that evil object. But I always thought that if I got rid of it, it would exact revenge. Like my best friend. I’m afraid of their aggression. So the acorn remains down there in the cellar. It’s probably responsible for all the strange things that happen in our apartment.

For instance, we have all kinds of electrical problems. Something’s wrong with the circuitry in the apartment. Either it’s the acorn or it’s my dead brothers themselves. Whatever it is causes constant outages that wreak havoc on our lamps and lightbulbs. We go through bulbs and lamps incredibly fast. Yep, entire lamps stop working, not just bulbs. Many different electricians have failed to figure out what the problem is. I feel as if my brothers are following me. I once read that when human flesh is burned, it smells like bacon.

I hate to be alone with thoughts like this. Horrible thoughts. Death and anal sex. Isn’t there anything else in my head?

I firmly believe that they were burned alive. I don’t try to make it easier for myself or fool myself by clinging to comforting beliefs. No. I assume the worst so I’m not as stupid as all the believers. Don’t console yourself; be tough. Don’t run away; look the facts in the eye.
God works in mysterious ways; he has his reasons
. Fuck off. Things happen that we simply have to live with, deal with, go crazy over, whatever. Just not turn religious over, that’s for damn sure.

Turning religious is just too easy. Too easy on yourself.
Things happen for a reason, even if we aren’t privy to God’s plan
. Yeah, right. You wish! That’s not how it is. I’ll never see them again. At what stage of evolution from ape to Neanderthal was a soul suddenly breathed into us? At no stage. We are animals who will never see one another after death, just as all the force-fed Frankenchickens we breed will never see one another in chicken heaven.

I have an overwhelming desire to save someone, because I was unable to save my brothers. I would love to save someone’s life. I might feel better then. I keep a note in my wallet listing locations in our neighborhood where there are defibrillators, and I know just how to use one. I wouldn’t have to read the instruction manual. I don’t care who I save—it could even be some old Nazi for all I care. Though of course I’d like it to be a child. Even if it were a bad child. I’ve learned how to do mouth-to-mouth and how to make an incision in the windpipe and insert a breathing tube.

All because she never turned around to look at the backseat.

Georg’s cell phone rings. “Hi, Michael,” I hear him say. A work colleague. Michael! The only other thing I ever wish for is to be with another man. Have I mentioned that? I won’t be able to stand being with just one for much longer. I’ve tried to talk to him about it many times, to tell him he has to let me do it—sleep with other men—or I’m going to explode. What my husband doesn’t know is that I constantly get infatuated with other men. It’s been happening for about a year, though nobody has realized. We get to know new people, usually couples, and I instantly become infatuated with the man. It lasts only a few days. When my fantasies—which are so vivid they almost drive me crazy—don’t take shape in reality, my infatuation wears off in a few days or weeks or months. And knowing myself, I’m pretty sure what I call an infatuation is what others experience as lust. Horniness. That would explain why earlier when the same supposed feelings of infatuation would pop up, I would quickly have that person as my new partner.

Up to now my infatuations have always worn off. But I can’t guarantee that will always be the case. I feel as if I’m stuck in some fucked-up experiment about lust. I want to stay with him. We are good together. We have a patchwork family that doesn’t need to be shaken up any further. But I need to be allowed to have sex with somebody else. In my head I’m constantly cheating. I fantasize about having sex with almost all of our friends. I want to have sex with someone—pretty much anyone at this point—without that person destroying my family.

Georg is still on the phone. This is my chance. I grab my bag, pull out the documents, and slip downstairs to hide them in the sacred death cabinet. I feel like my mother. She was constantly doing things behind her husband’s back.

“Elizabeth?”

Fuck. He’s off the phone and looking for me. I don’t answer. Don’t move, like a bunny caught in a car’s headlights.

“What are you doing in the cabinet down there?”

There’s no getting out of this.

“Yes, yes, just made a tiny change. Thanks for asking. Now leave me alone.”

It’s terrible the way nothing goes unnoticed when you live with someone. Especially when you get caught doing something. He’s asked me a thousand times not to constantly deal with things related to death—with my own death or death in general.

I’ll have to go upstairs now and tell him the truth.

I take the folder and the papers from the notary. I might as well rearrange the papers upstairs at this point. On the way to Georg and the couch, I grab the hole punch in the kitchen.

“Yes, okay, I stopped by the notary because of a small detail. I had to take Cathrin out of the will, you know? So you and Stefan and Liza and Max get more. If something happened to me and the will hadn’t yet been changed, she’d get quite a lot. I couldn’t let that happen.”

I look at him. He looks back at me very upset. He doesn’t say anything. Fuck. I know, I know, I always have some reason. Some reason to continue to screw around with it. I go to the notary about ten times a year to make the tiniest little changes. The will must always be perfect, in case … And this has been going on for eight years. My husband won’t be able to stand it
much longer. He learned through our couples therapy that he needs to try to keep me from doing it. And he’s trying to do that now, insofar as he is giving me the evil eye. Yeah, man, I get on
my own
nerves. I know that I shouldn’t do it, but I can’t stop. I don’t want someone I love to get less and someone I no longer love to benefit because of an error I didn’t correct. I find the thought of that unbearable.

I’m his problem child. Will it ever stop? Anything he could do now is just absurd because we’ve been through this so many times before. Everything. All the possibilities have been exhausted and nothing has helped. Nothing can break my notary addiction. Because it is an addiction to death. I’ve promised him time and time again and never kept my word. Nothing works. Not even Agnetha in this case.

“Rip up your will—for me,” says Georg calmly, quietly, in a steady voice.

What? He must be crazy! My beloved will? Never. I’d rather cut off all my limbs. No.

“No.”

“Yes, and you’re going to do it now. Trust that whoever is left behind will handle it in a way that reflects your wishes. Trust in that.”

“No, I can’t count on anyone else. I have to take care of it myself.”

“That is your problem. Which makes it my problem, too. You don’t think you can depend on me, on anyone, on anything. You want to control everything, even things that can’t be controlled. Do you really think the worst part about you dying would be some shortcoming in the will? Do you really believe that? No. The worst part for me and Liza would be
that you were gone. The will wouldn’t matter. You can’t control the fact that we would be sad. Inconsolably sad. For a long time. There is nothing you can do while you’re alive that would make your death any easier for us. And you know what? The more you mess around with your will, the more I think you want to check out. To kill yourself. You always keep that option open, don’t you?”

Why does he have to be so smart? The love of my life. Yes, I’m sorry. Often I can barely stand to be alive. I want to have the possibility to end it if I want to.

“I think it’s terrible that I have you and Liza. You keep me here even though I often don’t want to be here anymore. And if I didn’t have you two, I would have killed myself a long time ago. Which is why I always have to alter my will. In case the time has come, you know—in case I manage to pry myself away from you. In my will it says you and Stefan have to move in together and raise Liza together. Would you do that? Since it’s in there?”

“I know what’s in there. I know it all. All the amendments. It makes me so sad, Elizabeth, that you spend so much time preparing for your departure. It means that you’re not really here with me, with Liza. That you’re not really here in life.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry. That’s possibly true. I can’t rule out the possibility that I might go someday, you know. And I don’t want to rule out the possibility. I’ve already gotten enough bad news in my life. I don’t want to hear one bit more. Ever again. And there’s no guarantee of that. Nobody can guarantee that. No more bad news. I’m done if I hear even one more breath of bad news, done. No more will fit in my head.”

“There’s not going to be any more bad news. It really is possible that that was it. Really. But of course I can’t guarantee it. Of course not. Elizabeth, please tear up your will. For me.”

“No, Georg, I can’t do that. Don’t ask me to. Stop it.”

I would love to, but I can’t. I should choose him, choose life, choose my child. But I can’t. Not yet, anyway. I start to cry. It’s exhausting after a while—keeping one foot in life and one in the grave, always straddling the divide, unable to decide for one or the other. I don’t want to love so deeply that it rips my heart out when someone has to go. I don’t want to invest so much that I’m shattered when someone or other is gone. Always a foot on the brake, always vigilant. I’m watching you, Death. Who will you take next? I must do everything in my power to protect my husband and child from you. I won’t commit any stupid fatal errors.

Georg takes me in his arms.

Oh, man, how often have we had this talk?

“Stick with me, Elizabeth. Stick with life.”

He hugs me so tightly that he squeezes the air out of my lungs. I make a noise as though I’m being deflated.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m not going right away. No time soon.”

“Shall I tear it up for you, then?”

“Come on! Please. Don’t. I know what you mean. I’m working on it. But don’t rip it up, okay?”

“Then you do it. Rip it yourself.”

“No, I’m not going to do that, either. I’ll leave it alone, but I won’t rip it up. Please. Please, please, please.”

I snuggle up to him. I put my hand in the arm of his undershirt so I can feel the soft skin on the inside of his upper arm.

I feel totally spent. Life is so difficult. I can’t do anything I want to do because it’s bad—either for me or for others.

In desperation, I say, “Let’s change the subject.”

He knows this move. It means I need to be distracted because my head is buzzing and I’m afraid I’m going to lose my mind.

Georg holds me more tightly. We stay that way a long time.

I get myself together again and ask, “What’s the story with the Swiss artists you mentioned? What is it they do better than other people?”

“They just spliced a bunch of movies together. It’s one sex scene after another, with a sound track. No bullshit, no humiliating dialogue. And all from the era when porn stars looked like real men and women.”

Good, distracted already.

My husband learned all the tricks he uses on my vagina—and there are a lot—from porn films. They are verifiably responsible for my sexual happiness, for every time I’ve come in the last seven years, every flushed splotch on my skin after an orgasm. The leaders of the German feminist movement would certainly approve of the movies in our collection. No rape, no debasement of women. Just loads of clitorises getting diddly-diddly-doed.

A little bit of my sexual satisfaction originates with me, from within. It’s not 100 percent my husband and his porn film socialization. For instance, my old gym teacher taught us in high school how to tense the Kegel muscles and strengthen the muscles in the pelvic floor. I think I have her to thank for the fact that I come so preternaturally hard every time. And that I can decide when my husband comes once I’ve had enough of the rubbing. At some point everything is just rubbed raw.

Georg gets a plastic case out of the drawer beneath the TV and puts it in my hand. I look at the cover. It reads
Glory Hazel
. Cool name. I see a pixilated black-and-white image of a woman kneeling down in garters. A man’s head is squeezed between her legs. Her arms are spread wide and she’s clawing the velvet bed covers.

“Looks great,” I say to my husband.

I open the plastic case and pull out a paper pamphlet inside. I unfold it and out jumps a beautiful vagina, with the hair only slightly trimmed, as was the style back then.

We both laugh. I look at it for a long time. Then I take out the disk and put it in the DVD player. I run to the refrigerator and grab two beers, open them with the bottle opener we have fastened to the wall—everything is set up well at our place—and sit back down with my husband on the couch. We wrap ourselves in an oversize wool blanket.

Even the intro trailer is good. Porn without all the embarrassing shit.

Under the blanket, I put my hand on his cock and balls and hold these two oddly shaped structures firmly. I’m finally free of myself. Watching other people having sex is a great substitute for drugs. It gives you a real rush.

We’ve been immersed in this art-house sex world for a few minutes when the doorbell rings. I yank my hand out of his pants and, feeling like a teenager busted while heavy petting in her room, jump up.

Georg laughs. He knows how I am. Always on the spot, immediately covering things up instead of just lying there and
not opening the door. He looks at me amusedly. Then he looks at his crotch and says, “I can’t get the door just now.”

I wrap myself in the blanket. Not because I’m naked but to protect myself from whatever is about to hit me. I push the
PAUSE
button on the remote and walk to the door.