‘Hello, darling.’
‘Hi.’
‘And? How was your day?’
No answer. A bad-mood cloud hangs over her; I have exactly the daughter I deserve, exactly the girl she is: tongue-tied with a hungry heart.
And what do I have to offer? Empty hands? The only thing I can think of is to put her misery in words.
‘It doesn’t bother her to talk about these things in public. She can barely distinguish between personal and public interest, which is a further indication of a borderline disorder. She lacks all shame, which would prevent a normal person from exposing herself and others.’
Ingmar has invited everyone to dinner; I’m no longer part of the group, but I can imagine what they’re saying, because I know how they talk.
Vera: ‘I don’t think it’s fair to caricature us to that extent, as if we’re narrow-minded.’
Friederike: ‘It was supposed to be funny. But it wasn’t.’
Ingmar: ‘I don’t think she can help it. It’s how she expresses herself.’
Christian: ‘As a writer.’
Friederike: ‘If she were really a writer, she’d have a bit of imagination. Then she wouldn’t need to expose other people’s lives.’
Ulf sits there and ponders where to begin. He’d like to defend me — perhaps by saying that the writer is dead and the reader is now the real writer, a text is a text, and a perspective is always tied to the point of view — but he realises that they have no patience for such finer details. It will only take one word for him to end up on my side instead of theirs.
So, Ulf says: ‘She went too far, that’s for sure.’ And he stares at his hands, crumbling the baguette that is served with the soup.
A delicious Asian fish soup, one of Ingmar’s specialities — he really knows how to cook.
Ingmar’s fish soup, Frank’s quiche Lorraine, Vera’s raspberry dessert with homemade caramel brittle, Ulf’s lovingly made sandwiches with mustard and cress, Carolina’s vinaigrette with garlic and sour cream, Friederike’s yeast waffles from her grandmother’s family recipe — I’ve cast all this to the wind, and now I crave it.
Kieran really has been to Lidl: a twelve-pack of milk rolls, a real alternative to haute cuisine. They taste of preservatives, but when you bite into them, they’re lovely and soft. I could scoff the whole packet, but Kieran only gives me half.
‘So unhealthy,’ I say in revenge. ‘Where have you had these before?’
‘Anselm always brings them to school.’
Ah, must be a white-trash kid. Wouldn’t have thought so with a name like that. And in this neighbourhood too. Perhaps he won’t be here for much longer, because his parents will have to move to the sticks as well, and he could help Kieran make a new start at the rough school we’ll have to send him to.
‘I’m going to pick up Lynn,’ I say. ‘And when I come back, I want your screens to be off. Half an hour, like we agreed.’
‘Okay,’ says Kieran.
‘Jack?’
He’s not listening to me.
At the entrance to the childcare centre, I hold the door open for a mother with an empty double stroller and a baby strapped around her waist. It’s been a long time since I was so hampered and weighed down! The only child of mine I ever took out of her pram and carried in a sling was Bea, when she cried on our way somewhere; the others just had to lie there and accept their fate. This mother does it differently, and wants to give her second kid the pleasure of changing its fate. Perhaps she’s trying to be fair in all ways or hasn’t got used to the screaming yet. I’d say that Jack didn’t cry, not like Bea. But even if he had, it wasn’t fair, of course. He was only quiet because he sensed there was no point in complaining. Because, as a baby, he already spared me.
‘There’s no such thing as fair,’ Sven says regularly, and doesn’t get his message through — to any of us.
In the coat area, a grandparent couple is in full action: he’s watching her trying to get their grandson to put his shoes on; she’s singing a song that I remember from my nursery days and haven’t heard since then: ‘One two, buckle my shoe / Three, four, knock at the door / Five, six, pick up sticks / Seven, eight, lay them straight / Nine, ten, big fat hen / Eleven, twelve, dig and delve.’
I look at the grandfather’s expression and try to fathom what he’s thinking, but I only see myself and what I’m thinking.
Lynn comes around the corner scuffing her feet: the sound of slippers on sandy linoleum.
‘Say goodbye,’ I tell her, like always, and Lynn swerves sharply left to shake hands with her teacher, who is busy with some kind of file.
‘Bye bye, big girl,’ she says, and even to me, Lynn seems really big today, and I wonder whether I should have put her in school already. What exactly is it that we’re letting her enjoy a bit longer?
She dillydallies. She’s overtaken three times, by three kids whose parents arrived after me.
I have taken off my coat and am sitting down. I look at the collages made of autumn leaves pinned on the wall above the coat hooks. Due to privacy concerns, the kids’ names are no longer written on them. I found that out at the parents’ evening. The kids are protected from the parents’ compulsion to compare: the most creative children can no longer be determined at a glance. Unlike who is the slowest at putting on their shoes.
I receive pitying looks.
I want to say, ‘Don’t worry! I think my kids are the best anyway!’ The trick is not to focus on what is expected of them, but to focus on the kids themselves. In no time at all, they become heroes shining with individuality. Just look at Lynn’s
