4. Berlin
BERLIN
Otto—who wore pressed gingham shirts to work, who listened to Beethoven in the bathtub, who read widely and ate narrowly, who loved soccer with its yellow cards and red cards—was, like many Germans, a stickler for rules.
And yet he’d broken one of the most important marital ones. Greta was gobsmacked.
She met him at the door when he got home. “How could you agree to something like this without discussing it with me first?” she said.
“I apologize. You are correct,” Otto said as he stood on the doormat, rain dripping off his umbrella.
A brightness in his eyes showed he wasn’t all that sorry.
“But it happened so fast. And I thought we did talk about it, zuf?llig . When I was leaving for dinner last night, you said I should be part of a lab that has more friendlier people.”
Greta crossed her arms as Otto came into the entry, taking off his wet coat and shoes. As he was closing the door, she could hear Adam’s laughter in the stairwell below them.
“The playboy,” said Otto, “is entertaining a group of people who look like… Diebe .”
“They’re not thieves,” said Greta. “They’re more likely rock musicians from his studio.”
“Well, I don’t like him,” Otto said. “I have never liked that man.” He slipped his feet into his slippers.
“Please, Otto,” she said impatiently, “explain yourself.”
“Can I eat something first? It’s been a long day.”
They went to the dining room. Greta was meeting her sister for dinner later, so she had kaltes Abendbrot arranged on the table for Otto.
There was a basket of bread and a board with cheeses, ham, tomatoes, and olives.
She’d gone shopping that morning, thinking they were staying in Berlin and she might as well fill the fridge back up again.
She’d also unpacked her clothes and taken her empty suitcases back down to the Keller .
And then Otto had called to tell her his big news.
Her outrage was causing her entire body to stiffen and her head to ache.
“I thought you’d be happy,” Otto said, sitting in his usual seat at the dining table and placing his linen napkin across his lap. “You wanted to leave Berlin, to have an adventure, ja ?”
She poured herself a glass of wine and handed him the bottle. “Yes, but not just any adventure.”
“Please, Greta,” he said. “My institute was wishing to… spool me into the sewer—”
“That’s not really—”
“But I found a solution. I am crawling myself back out of the toilet. I am being welcomed, most kindly, by this Texan doctor who saved me from looking foolish to my colleagues. Oh, the Arschloch ’s face when I told him about the offer! It was after the symposium was vorbei , and—”
“I’m sure that was very satisfying, Otto. But this is all too fast. You’re giving me whiplash.”
“Whiplash?” he said, reaching for the breadbasket. “What is whiplash?”
She was so annoyed with him then, she could feel her face turning red. In her desperation, she played the death card. “I’m already dealing with the loss of my father and my mother’s decision to sell my childhood home. And now you’re throwing a completely unexpected change at me. It’s too much.”
“Lillian is doing the right thing,” Otto said, patting her hand before selecting a roll that he began to slice open. “Why would she need such a large house anymore?”
Greta couldn’t argue with that. “Why Texas?” she said.
“Dr. Judson is offering everything I need to do my research.”
He pronounced Judson Yudson . Greta did not correct him.
“There’s only ein kleines Problem ,” he said.
There was a gust of wind outside, and rain spattered against the windows.
Greta got up to close the transom above the balcony door, seeing a lot more than one little problem.
She was struggling to reconceive the next twelve months of their life, starting with the fact that she wouldn’t be with Emmi this summer.
She’d never been to Texas, and it was not on any bucket list she’d ever made.
And she doubted Vanessa Schultz would have the same enthusiasm to work with her from Dallas.
She sat back down and held her hands together on the table. “And the one little problem, as you see it, is what?”
“This hospital in Dallas can only pay part of my salary,” he said. “ Ein Stipendium .”
Greta closed her eyes and tried to breathe steadily. “Otto,” she said, “I don’t have a job anymore. How much is the stipend?”
“I don’t know yet, but probably not much.” He took his fork and stabbed a piece of prosciutto. “But maybe we could be… How do you say sparsam ?”
“Frugal,” said Greta, her voice flat. She took a big sip of wine.
“Yes, like my grandmother after the war. We have saved some money,” said Otto. “And Dr. Judson had a wonderful suggestion— sehr interessant . He said it is win-win if we make a ‘house swap,’ because then we are not paying to live there. A good idea, oder ?”
“A house swap?” Aghast, Greta sat back in her chair, looking around the room, her eyes settling on the expressionist still life painting she’d hung beside the curtains. “And have strangers living in our apartment? Absolutely not.”
“Why are you so quick to say no? A stranger is not always a bad person. What about the last stranger you met? Herr Schultz’s granddaughter? That was also win-win.”
He was right about that; a year ago, Greta had stopped for a cup of coffee at the Gendarmenmarkt and sat next to a woman who asked for the sugar packets from her table.
Greta had noticed, under the young woman’s left elbow, the catalog from the Museum Barberini in Potsdam that featured the Impressionist collection of the billionaire philanthropist Hasso Plattner.
After passing the sugar, Greta mentioned a Morisot painting she’d seen there, and they began a conversation that had changed everything.
Vanessa Schultz had simply appeared in her life that day, and it felt like she’d cast a spell over her, one that made people warm to her and trust her.
But that did not mean Greta wanted some random stranger living in her house, using her Fissler pots and pans, sleeping in her bed. Soaking in her bathtub! She took a sip from her Lobmeyr glass, imagining someone else drinking out of it. She hated the idea.
“You aren’t eating,” Otto said, his fork in hand.
“I’m going out with Bettina. And anyway, I’m not hungry,” she said, sorry for how sulky she sounded.
“I wish you could keep your mind open. If we could make this work,” said Otto, “I am being so happy. Dr. Judson is brilliant. And his work on soft-tissue masses is the top-notch. This hospital, Southwestern, has six Nobel Prize winners. Six!” He held up five fingers on one hand and his thumb on the other.
“When we come back in a year, my colleagues here will respect me.”
Greta didn’t answer. She knew nothing about Dallas, good or bad. Otto might have a purpose there, but what was she going to do?
“We have already our tickets to Newark,” he said, “and I discovered an airline called Spirit that has very cheap prices to Dallas.”
“And where do you propose we stay when we get there?”
“There’s a Holiday Inn one and a half kilometers from the hospital; we can stay there until we make our house swapping.”
The room darkened, and there was a low rumble of thunder. Greta could not help but glower at him.
“We’re leaving our beautiful home,” she said, refilling her glass, “to stay in a Holiday Inn by a hospital?”
But Otto looked at her then with pitiful hope in his eyes.
“ Bitte , Greta, please, I need this,” he said.
“I’m so tired of the people here, my colleagues who are always penetrating me in the backside, and the rain, rain, rain.
All the time, the rain.” He reached over and took her hand.
“I know you’re disappointed about New York and Emmi.
Ich auch . But I think we could have a nice time in Texas.
” He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles.
“Maybe enjoy the Wild West together. Ja ?”
“The Wild West ?” Bettina said. “Did he actually call it that?”
“He’s romanticizing a horrible situation,” said Greta.
She and her sister were drinking martinis at Hildegard, sitting at a high table across from the crowded bar.
At their feet, Til, Bettina’s enormous Bernese mountain dog, named after the film star and heartthrob Til Schweiger, was sleeping soundly despite the noise.
“Well, I think it’s kind of adorable,” Bettina said, tossing her long hair over her shoulder.
“He’s got the wrong idea, though; Dallas is very sophisticated.
” Bettina was turning heads in her skinny jeans and sheer, low-cut top.
She looked thirty but was fast approaching forty, a fact she vehemently denied.
Greta stabbed her vodka-soaked olive with a toothpick. “I thought we were going out for dinner,” she said. “I need to eat something other than nuts.”
Bettina studied Greta over the rim of her almost empty glass. “Years ago,” she said, “I secretly thought Otto was too old for you.”
“Secretly? You said he was too old for me, multiple times,” Greta said, “even on our wedding day.”
“But maybe I was wrong. He’s the one acting young at heart. So spontaneous!—and in the face of a major letdown. I’m kind of impressed with him. Maybe you need to loosen up. It’s only a year.” She reached over then and tried to undo the top button on Greta’s tailored van Laack shirt.
“Stop,” said Greta, brushing her hand away.
“Why are you dressed like Mom on her way to a luncheon in Wannsee? No guys are going to try to pick us up—”
“I don’t want guys to—”
“ I do,” said Bettina. “And you’re sending the wrong message. Where did you get that heinous shirt anyway?”
“From Mom,” said Greta, “in Wannsee. I went to say goodbye to her, and I salvaged it from a pile of clothes she was giving away. She seems almost too happy.”
“What are you, the grief police?” Bettina said, resting her chin on her hand. “Is she not mourning sadly enough for you?”