This Will Kill You

There are two chairs in the back room; they are close together, with their backs against the wall. She sits down on one of them; I pull the other one out into the room so that we are sitting at an angle to each other. Not directly across from each other, not alongside each other either, but somewhere in between, with an appropriate space between us. She looks at me with a waiting expression.

“This is not the first time he has stopped eating,” I say. She nods but does not say anything. “Mother always had to keep an eye on him,” I say. Still no questions. I shrug my shoulders and continue, “I don’t know why. He says that he is happy and that there is nothing wrong, he just doesn’t feel like eating anything.” Lilly nods again.

“Would you make sure he eats, at least a little?” I say.

Lilly nods and nods, then she suddenly stops. She leans forward and lays a hand on my knee. “Is it difficult for you to see your father together with another woman?” she says. I shake my head. “No, it’s not that at all,” I say, “I’m really happy he met you.” Lilly tilts her head and looks at me for a long time, still with her hand on my knee. She sighs. “I want you to know that I in no way intend to act as if your mother did not mean a great deal to you and your father. I’m not out to steal her place.” She lets go of my knee and looks directly at me, narrowing her eyes a little. I look at my watch. “I’m really happy you’re together,” I say, “it’s wonderful to see him so happy.” I extend my hand, and she takes hold of it with both of her hands. “I like your father very much—he makes me happy, too,” she says.

“I have to go now,” I say, gently retracting my hand, but I’m really happy that we could talk.” “I certainly am, too,” says Lilly and lays her hand on my shoulder, “I’m so happy.” She laughs and shakes my shoulder a little. “I’m sure we’re going to get along well—I can tell,” she says. I laugh, too, and look at my watch again. “Now I really have to go,” I say.

Every time we visit him, he eats a little, or pretends to. He tells stories, and Lilly laughs; they play with Lukas, and it really seems as though they are enjoying themselves. Karl holds my hand. I say nothing, but I scrutinize their faces, study them. Father’s cheekbones and jawbone are prominent; his eyes are sunken; his hair is almost completely white; it is only around his ears that there is still a little gray hair. Lilly. She was surely pretty once, even very pretty, I think. She still carries herself like someone who is pretty. She cooks well; that’s not the problem.

I visit him often. In the morning on the way to work, in the afternoon on the way home. I ring the doorbell; I don’t just let myself in. Father sits down at the table and fingers the sandwiches I fix him. He takes tiny little bites; a mouse might as well be eating those sandwiches. I scold him; he looks out the window.

I talk to Lilly again. She wants to think about it, she thinks for a long time. I ask again. She has decided that it has to be his decision whether he eats or not. We argue. Karl and I argue. He says that she is right. “He is an adult,” he says. They are right, and they are not right. It’s all wrong.

I say to Karl that I am meeting a friend, but I drive to Father’s house. Not every evening but often. I don’t go inside, I just sit in the car and watch them through the living room window. They don’t close the blinds because they have nothing to hide. They watch television, they play cards, or Father reads and Lilly knits—I guess that the radio is on while this is going on. That was how he and Mother sat, too.

But one evening they are listening to music so loud that I can hear it all the way out in the car, even before I switch the engine off. They are dancing. Lilly is holding up her skirt, dancing a heavy, breathless can-can while Father pirouettes with his arms held high over his head. The expressions on their faces are wrong—they are serious and their eyes are closed. I sit there for a long time, but nothing else happens. Lilly jumps and Father spins around and around—I don’t understand how he can last that long.

The following evenings I sit in the car outside the house, and I realize that I am waiting for them to do it again. Every time one of them gets up, I start, but then it is just to get more coffee or go to the toilet. Or they turn off all the lights in the living room and go to bed. The days pass, and Father gets thinner. Nothing else happens.

Karl has picked up Lukas from daycare early, and they are standing outside the office building when I get off work. Lukas is jumping up and down, having a hard time keeping the secret. Long before we arrive he has told me that we are going to look at a new apartment. I look at Karl, who is concentrating on driving in the heavy afternoon traffic. Then he can’t help looking at me after all. He smiles nervously—this is important. I smile back and lay my hand on his thigh.

It is a building site. There is a large poster with drawings giving an overview of the project, and Karl has gotten brochures. He explains and points; Lukas hangs on my arm and jumps up and down in time with the banging sounds from a crane-like machine that is in the process of hammering enormous steel rods into the earth. Rhythmic bangs, one for every time the top of the rod is struck. Slowly it bores further and further down. The ground shakes under us, a huge animal that someone is torturing. I feel like crying, but I laugh, jumping up and down together with Lukas. Bang, bang, bang. Further and further down.

“Wow, that’s an impressive machine,” I say while Karl talks, and I ask the right questions when he pauses. Light apartments, a green courtyard.

In the evening, when we go to bed. I think I have gotten away with it, but of course he can feel it, and he wants to talk. Now we have to talk about it. We cannot leave it any longer.

We lie in the bed next to each other. I look at the ceiling. There are no knots; it is made of concrete. This house is built the same way as the one at the building site today. I close my eyes and remember another building site, an empty building site. In the middle of the site, there was a burning wheel loader. I stood outside the fence, on the sidewalk; I held a man’s hand. It was quiet; it was nighttime. It was only him and me, our hands, the fire crackling, the black sky over us.

Karl says that he is worried about me. Karl says that I am either absent or irritable and that it is not good for Lukas. He says that it has gone on too long now. He says that of course it is horrible that Father is not eating and that he understands that it is difficult for me to watch, but what are we to do? He says that Father is an adult and that no one can force him to eat. He says that I am an adult now. He says that I have to let go. He says that I must not destroy my own life, our lives. He says that I must focus on myself, concentrate on getting my own daily life back on track. He says that he hates seeing me this way.

I say that he is right. I am glad that he says it, I say.

He rolls onto his side and strokes my hair. He says he is glad that we talked about it. I lie close to him; I close my eyes.

When Karl has fallen asleep, I get up and drive to Father’s house. It is dark; they are sleeping. Everyone is sleeping. I drive to the building site and get out of the car. I stand outside the fence and look at the machines in there. Big sleeping animals. Over me the usual black sky with the little pinpoint stars. Barely shining.

The time I saw the burning wheel loader.

I knew it while I stood there: I will never forget this. I feel like calling the man I was together with then. Asking him if he remembers it too. But what if he does? It was so many years ago. If it had not been for the burning wheel loader, I would have forgotten him long ago.

I wish I had experienced that with Karl; I wish that we had that in common. I wish that he were standing here now, next to me, and that he could see how wrong everything is.

I drive home and lie down next to him. First I get under his comforter; I lift his arm so that I can lie in the crook of his arm, I lay my leg over his legs. I listen to his breathing, I sniff, know his scent, my skin knows his skin. Then I get too warm and move over to my side, get under my own comforter.

When I wake, I cannot remember falling asleep.