Retrograde Read online

  “That’s all very well and good for getting her an assignment now, but what then? How do we get her work, or give her a new project?”

  So it’s just a matter of practicalities. In a way, all this is easier than you’d think. People ask you questions and you answer and keep answering until they have nothing left to ask. He’ll have to tell Helena about this later, all he’s learning about people now. Maybe they’ll laugh at his pathetic tricks together, or just marvel at the strangeness of it all.

  “I was planning to bring the drive back once she’s finished.”

  “Mr.—”

  “Schmidt,” he reminds her, wondering what suddenly made the situation so formal.

  “Mr. Schmidt, Helena usually has at least two or three major projects a week. Are you really planning to come here that often, for weeks?”

  “Yes.” And then, because this isn’t enough, he adds, “It’s on the way to my office.” Actually, it’s quite a detour to stop by Pankow on his way to Kreuzberg, but she doesn’t need to know that. It wouldn’t make sense to her. You have to say things that people understand.

  “Well, that’s a relief. Helena’s a big hit with one of our most important clients—I don’t know if she mentioned the FuTur36 account to you?—and things have been piling up since she’s been away. No one else has the same design competencies here.”

  He smiles vaguely. After all, he’s just her cousin’s husband. No need to know the finer details.

  “I suppose you’re in a hurry.” She leads him out of her small glass room and around a corner into an open-plan office, where she shows him Helena’s empty desk between a pale palm tree and a woman with a round, childish face but gray streaks in her brown hair, who watches him closely through thick-lensed glasses. Joachim feels not only her eyes, but all the eyes in the room on him. The feeling is similar to that of starting a new job, being led around the office to meet everyone, not quite managing to note any of the names or job descriptions, and giving out one clammy handshake after another. But his reason for being here is even more tenuous.

  “Doro, this is Helena’s cousin Mr. Schmidt.” Suddenly in a hurry—maybe she hasn’t had her lunch break yet—the woman tells Doro to download everything Helena will need for her next project onto the flash drive, and heads back to her office.

  “We were worried,” Doro says when the woman from HR is out of sight. “Helena hasn’t been answering her phone or any of the emails we sent. How is she?”

  He gives a brisk summary of her condition, trying to play it down enough for her colleagues not to worry and up enough for them to understand why she’s fallen out of touch. To round things out, he explains about the Internet connection and that her cell phone got smashed up in the accident. “The drivers here are crazy,” he concludes.

  “Well, I’m relieved to hear that she’s out of the hospital,” Doro says. But there’s a certain disconnect between the quizzical look in her eyes and her calm, conversational tone of voice. He feels nervous and wishes he could leave, but the progress bar shows that only 64% of Helena’s work has been transferred to the drive. “Oh,” Doro adds, with an I-just-remembered tone that doesn’t quite ring true, “give her this, would you?”

  She hands him a greeting card. On the cover is a picture of a puppy with a bandaged paw; on the inside “Get well soon” and the signatures of all her coworkers. He reaches for it but Doro takes it back at the last second.

  “I almost forgot to sign it myself.”

  HELENA

  Having the work is a relief, and Helena’s grateful to Joachim for that. More grateful than she is when he helps her dress and makes her breakfast. Those things only matter for half an hour or so, but this is something to occupy her all day, to keep her time from going to waste and keep her from going crazy in this apartment. And keep away the strange, morbid thoughts running through her head all night.

  What seemed certain in the darkness is now equally possible and impossible. What could he be hiding from her? After all, he came right out and told her they’d decided to separate. It couldn’t be much worse than that. Could it? Maybe he really is just handling her with kid gloves because she’s injured, because he almost lost her and got scared. Or even because they had such a bad fight, and he’s trying to make it up to her. Not that she can remember what it was about.

  But isn’t that just it? What could they have fought about that was serious enough for them to separate over, but not serious enough for him to mention? Maybe it was nothing; maybe it was all the little fights over all the years that wore them down. But maybe it was something. She’ll ask him when he gets home tonight. He may think he’s clever, but she’ll know whether he’s telling the truth.

  Once she’s made this decision, she feels a weight lifted from her, almost as if she were suddenly able to walk without crutches. Almost, but not quite. She hobbles over to the table where he set up his laptop with the flash drive. Even taking a deep breath hurts. There’s a get-well card from her coworkers next to the laptop, but since she doesn’t remember any of them, she simply glances at the picture of the puppy and sets it aside. Thoughtful of them, anyway.

  There are a lot of old ad campaigns from some urban planning company called FuTur36 on the drive as reference material. All the file names have “Bachlein” in them, so these must be her ideas, her work. She examines the print ads and layouts one after the other until she begins to feel like she remembers them, but maybe she’s only fooling herself. As it is, no matter how hard she tries, she still only remembers them as if she’d passed them on the street, not as if she’d spent hours designing and perfecting them.

  But she did this work before, and she’s the same person she was then, plus or minus a few experiences. At least she’s still working in the same field. What if she’d become an engineer or a surgeon in the past few years, and could only remember working in advertising? Would she still have the skills she’d learned, even if she couldn’t remember acquiring them? Or would all of that be gone, too? She doesn’t know enough, has no way of finding out more about this condition. And Joachim hardly seems concerned. Fine, he’s careful of her broken bones, but what about her brain damage? Shouldn’t they be more worried about that? Shouldn’t she see a specialist? But there’s no one there to answer her questions and no way for her to call anyone and ask, so she gets to work illustrating the advantages of an innovative new cloud solution for architects in a series of two-page spreads. After all, you have to make it through the day.

  JOACHIM

  Helena’s working on his laptop when Joachim comes in, her crutches propped against the wall. She gives him a weary, distracted smile that’s both a greeting and a warning—she’s welcoming him back, but forbidding him to distract her. He nods as if she’d spoken aloud and goes into the kitchen to make dinner. That won’t bother her. It’s never noise that bothers her, only people speaking to her, demanding her attention. If you leave her alone, she’s perfectly content. Helena never needs to leave a room to be alone; she carries her solitude around with her.

  But that’s fine; he’s not a child and he doesn’t need her constant attention. He begins looking around the kitchen and finds that the refrigerator’s almost empty. Not much in the cabinets, either. For a moment, an absurd resentment fills him: Why does he have to do everything? Then he looks across the room at Helena typing, her long adroit fingers extending past the end of her cast like the fur in that picture of the puppy, and doesn’t know whether he wants most to laugh or cry. Of course she couldn’t go grocery shopping; of course she couldn’t do anything, not without someone to carry her down the stairs. It’s his own fault for not thinking to pick up some groceries on his way back from work.

  What upsets him is the realization that it’s always been like this, that maybe he can’t help being like this, and she can’t either. The pettiness, the irrational resentment, the fights so stupid you’d be ashamed to tell anyone about them. They’re not fighting. Yet. But there’s still that anger within him, that animosit
y toward her coiled and ready to spring. What is it about the two of them?

  He never fought this way with Leila. Making another tour of the kitchen, he comes across a forgotten jar of pasta sauce and half a box of spaghetti. So it’ll be okay for tonight; he doesn’t have to go out again. Tomorrow he’ll buy some nice things. With her trapped here all day, it’s the least he can do to make something nice for dinner. But the thought is insincere, like words you say aloud while thinking something else. He fills a pot with water, shakes in some salt and puts it on the stove. It’s strange to think of Leila now, strange to think how important she seemed—how important she was—just a few weeks before. He covers the pot and rummages in the cabinet for a saucepan, feeling a strange guilt, as if it were Leila he betrayed Helena with. Not that he betrayed her, not on purpose. But more and more he finds himself falling into Helena’s reality, seeing things the way she does. Or the way she used to.

  It shouldn’t be hard to keep track. He remembers all the years without her, remembers the way Leila’s hair curled in the night from the damp heat of their bodies, and before that, how it was to look at women on the street with polite but open interest, suddenly allowed. He can’t remember exactly what it was like after Helena left, because he’s had the apartment to himself so much since then. Just a few vague details, the way the quiet rang in his ears when he lay in bed, not hearing her breathing, not even hearing his own. When he tries to picture himself mourning her absence, he recalls the days after Leila left, when he felt dull and bluntly bewildered, looking at the phone without intending to call her, sometimes doing it, but then mostly and finally always not.

  Leila’s face is mixed up with Ester’s, and he feels a creeping pressure down his neck and shoulders, as if Helena were standing just behind him, not only watching him closely, but looking right into his thoughts. But he hears her shutting his laptop, and when he looks over, she’s getting up, no accusation in her eyes, only the satisfaction of having finished her work. It’s strange how ordinary it is to have her here—no great transition, no awkward collisions between his bachelor life and her constant presence, only a few minor details to explain away. He remembers the painting, her laptop, all the things he claimed were being cleaned or repaired. The thought of going to her apartment to get them exhausts him, not because of the physical journey there, but because of the confrontation he’ll face. The glaring fact of her life without him, their separation writ large.

  “Na? How are you?” She moves awkwardly, her crutches scraping against the tiles of the kitchenette, and he takes her left arm to steady her.

  “I’m beat,” he says. Because he is and because that’s what you say when you can’t think what else to tell someone, when you need a catchall explanation for wandering thoughts and silence.

  “Me, too. But it was good to get back to work. I feel almost like I’m part of society again.”

  He notes the “almost” and presses his hands to the small of her back, but holds himself a little away from her stomach, afraid of shifting her broken ribs out of place just by brushing against them. He feels a certain melting softness between them, her breathing slowing as her heart rate picks up. She presses her face to his chest, and for a moment, he’s terrified of her vulnerability. If everything were different, this would be the moment to make love, to take her in his arms and carry her to the bed or the sofa, not hearing the water boiling over, not knowing anything but each other.

  This is her feeling as much as it is his; he can feel it moving through her skin into his. But he’s afraid of breaking her. It isn’t just her injuries. It would be wrong. What he’s doing now is wrong, but this would be a whole new level of wrong. At least he’s taking care of her now, feeding her and helping her dress. Who would do that, if not him? Some friend from the office? Some new fling? Hardly. But that would be using her sickness, taking advantage of her helplessness and ignorance. And yet it’s what she wants. In spite of himself, he counts in his head how long it will be until her ribs are healed.

  Still a couple of weeks to go. He’ll have told her by then. Once he’s told her, everything will be fair and honest, no more tricks between them. Just this softness and safety. The desire he feels for her is so different from attraction to a stranger; right now, if they could, they’d make love with their souls.

  He feels her look up and bends down to kiss her on the mouth, then the beauty mark beside her right eye and the top of her head. Leila was tall and he’d forgotten how small Helena feels in his arms. “Dinner’s almost ready,” he says, and they shuffle to the stove together so he can turn down the heat, save the noodles from sticking to the bottom of the pot. He wants to tell her everything now, give it to her like an offering, the worst or at least strangest sides of himself. And the compliment of letting her know he still wants her after all this time, wants her like there never was and never could be anyone else. But he waits a few seconds too long, and her words come out faster.

  “Joachim, I’m worried.”

  “What about?”

  He feels her tense, holding something in, probably anger.

  “How long did the doctor say it would take me to remember things?”

  He thinks for a moment. “She didn’t exactly.” This is close to the truth, but it isn’t enough; it isn’t an answer.

  “Joachim,” she says again, and then inhales, and he realizes it’s tears that she’s holding back. The words tumble over the catch in her throat like a bump in an ill-paved road. “I want to see a specialist. Not some general practitioner rushing around the hospital—someone who really knows about this kind of thing. I’m worried,” she says again, and this time there’s a slight accusation to it, the emphasis on “I’m,” asking him why he isn’t.

  “Of course.” He knows he should be worried. But when he’s in the apartment with her, he barely notices her condition. Is she really missing anything of value? It isn’t fair for him to make that decision. But it also seems to him that her memory is like the rest of her, bruised and broken but slowly on the mend. He realizes he’s been thinking of the moment he tells her the truth as the moment that she’ll recover, as if her memory were in his keeping, his to give back. “I’ll ask Dr. Hofstaedter if she can recommend anyone.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Here, come back to the table. I’ll bring the food over.” He can tell by the fixed way she’s watching him that there’s something else she wants to say. But he can tell by the trouble she’s having saying it that it’s something he doesn’t want to hear.

  She moves back to the table, compliant or helpless. He drains the pasta, pours the sauce into the pot with it, and sets the whole thing on a trivet on the table. He’s relieved to get up again for plates and silverware, and then another time for napkins. He’s sure that the moment they start eating, she’ll come out with whatever she has to say.

  “Thank you for cooking,” is the first thing she says, but even this feels like a preface. He remembers to get each of them a glass of water.

  “I need to get to the store tomorrow,” he says. “We’re out of almost everything. Is there anything special you want?” The question sounds strange after he’s asked it—shouldn’t he know what she wants? Haven’t they ostensibly been living in the same household for years now, sharing the same kitchen, the same meals? It’s the sort of question he’d ask a guest, someone whose tastes he doesn’t know. But maybe she’ll just see this as thoughtlessness, a sign that she’s been doing most of the grocery shopping. He can’t remember whether that was the case; only the way it was toward the end, cooking separate meals in the same kitchen. The small, petty hatefulness of it.

  “Yeah, I can’t remember when I last got my period,” she says. “I didn’t see anything in the bathroom so I must be all out.”

  Stupid of him not to think of that. He brought her toothpaste and two kinds of face cream, but didn’t even check for a box of pads. Or does she use tampons? What else has he forgotten, what other stupid mistakes has he made?

  “Do
you want tampons or pads?” he asks. He’s just a man after all, so why should he notice that kind of thing? Even if it’s supposed to have been sitting in his bathroom for years.

  “I guess pads would be easier until my leg’s better.”

  So the question made sense; she didn’t think anything of it. He’s just being thoughtful, making sure he gets the right thing.

  “Anything else?”

  “Not that I can think of.”

  He feels her resignation now, her decision not to say whatever she was going to. He knows he should coax it out of her, ask concerned questions and listen thoughtfully to whatever it is, but he can’t bring himself to. Whatever it is won’t be nice, and the nasty things always end up getting said anyway.

  HELENA

  Sitting on the toilet lid as she brushes her teeth the next morning, Helena feels guilty, complicit in whatever Joachim’s keeping from her. Why didn’t she ask him what caused them to separate? It might be unpleasant to remember, but she’s got the advantage there—she won’t remember it any more vividly than whatever’s in today’s paper. Will it really be that bad? But why should it be? She knows the kind of things they fought about, the banal arguments, the stray remarks flung like lit matches into a pool of gasoline, erupting into fury. Why should this have been anything special?

  Separating was something they always talked about, usually after the fight rather than during it. While the wounds were still raw and they weren’t sure they’d ever heal. But a few days later, they were happy again, happy enough to pretend there had never been any problems between them, though not happy enough to forget. But it was just something they talked about. Something must’ve changed that.

  He helps her up to spit into the sink, turns on the tap for her to rinse. Whose decision was it? Did she want to leave or did he? It’s hard to interpret his kindness to her now. Of course he feels bad about her accident and all that. But beyond physically caring for her, there’s a gentleness in his speech and attitude toward her—careful not to offend, not to start a fight. Is he regretting having told her to get out, or trying to keep her from deciding to leave again? She’s missing some minor crucial detail, the key piece that would allow her to put the whole puzzle together.