22. Berlin
BERLIN
Grocery shopping in Germany wasn’t for sissies.
The first time Lucy went to buy enough food to feed her family of four, she went by herself, having forgotten she was expected to bag her own groceries at a speed that was completely unrealistic given the breakneck pace at which the checkout clerk flung the milk, plums, and bread down the conveyor belt.
Lucy couldn’t keep up. Another shopper, standing way too close behind her, made an exasperated grunt because it took Lucy too long to pull out her debit card.
And then, when she was all done, she had to walk half a mile home and up five flights of stairs carrying the heavy bags.
She took Motrin the next day for her aching shoulders.
She knew better now and brought the kids along to help.
The three of them stood at the ready that day, bags in hand, taking turns grabbing ice cream containers and onions and boxes of pasta as the items barreled toward them.
Zoe got overly excited and missed her bag completely, tossing a glass jar of applesauce on the floor.
It shattered, of course, Zoe cried, and they left the store in complete disgrace.
But for once it wasn’t raining when they headed out to the street, and Zoe pulled herself together more quickly than usual after Alice offered her a fistful of gummy bears. When they stopped to wait for the light to change at busy Ku’Damm, Lucy put her bags down and unzipped her sweatshirt.
“Bleibtreu,” said Lucy. The light turned green, and she picked up her bags again. “Isn’t that the loveliest name for a street?”
“Not really,” said Jack.
“But do you know what it means?” Lucy said. “Stay true. Or stay faithful. I think it’s pretty.”
And the street itself was very pretty indeed.
This neighborhood was nothing like the area where Lucy had lived in college.
The housing complex in Kreuzberg had been gritty and loud, surrounded by dive bars and nightclubs, perfect for college students.
But this area, Charlottenburg, suited Lucy better now.
It was clean and quiet, and there were flower shops and cafés, boutiques and wine bars.
It was perfect, and she wished Mason were there to enjoy it with her.
As they passed a playground, Zoe asked whether they could stop for a few minutes.
Lucy’s arms were already aching, so she was happy to take a break. They went through the gate, set their bags down, and the girls ran off to play. She and Jack sat together on a bench. And just at that moment, the sun came out.
“No way,” said Jack, and he looked up at the bit of blue sky.
“Shocker,” said Lucy. She too tilted her face upward.
Jack’s mood had shifted a bit in the last few days, and there was something about him—the tiniest uptick in, was it cheer ?—that made her hope he might be healing.
“You know that girl Emmi?” he said. “She connected me to a friend of hers here. We’re going to meet at a café.”
“ Ausgezeichnet ,” Lucy said. “Your grandmother says Emmi’s really nice.”
Lucy was not imagining things; Jack was a little more cheerful. And Lucy was grateful to Emmi—and maybe even to Greta—for having had anything to do with that.
“I guess there are worse places we could have ended up this summer,” she said.
“Kierkegaard fled Copenhagen in 1841,” Jack said, “and guess where he went?”
The words “Kierkegaard” and “Copenhagen” made Lucy look over at him in surprise. “I don’t have any idea,” she said. “Where?”
“Here. Berlin,” he said. “Isn’t that crazy?”
“Damn,” Lucy said. “And I thought we were being original.”
“Nope, Berlin is the place to go if you’re running from scandal.”
Lucy smiled; she could not have felt more gratified to see this touch of humor.
“I knew we did the right thing,” she said.
“It was weird,” he said. “I was walking around the other day and happened to pass the building where Kierkegaard lived when he was here. It has this quotation on a sign about subjectivity being truth and untruth.”
Why, she wondered, was he still talking about Kierkegaard? “What does that mean?” Lucy said.
“I think it means there can be more than one version of the same story,” he said, “but it’s probably way more complicated than that. I’m no philosopher, but there’s probably some deeper meaning.”
Philosopher? Lucy did not like where this conversation was going. “Is something on your mind, Jack?” she said.
He picked a chestnut up off the ground and tossed it in his hand. “Actually, yeah,” he said. “I wrote a letter to Bj?rn.”
Lucy felt the blood drain from her face. “You…? When?”
“Today,” he said. “I already mailed it this morning.”
“Wait…” She tried to swallow and found she couldn’t. “You didn’t want to talk about it first?”
He shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”
But it was. Jack had no way of knowing that, but this was a very big deal, a huge problem, in fact. Lucy’s head was spinning as she tried to come up with some way to control the damage.
“I looked up his institute,” he said, “and I thought, why not just send a letter to introduce myself?”
“But…,” Lucy said. Her heart was pounding. “I mean, why now?”
“I want to meet him,” he said. “I never did before, but it just seems like the right time now.” He turned to look at her. “What is that word you say? Aus-get-psyched-ed?”
“ Ausgezeichnet ,” she said flatly.
“Excellent, right? Wait, you’re not mad, are you? You always said I could contact him, that he’d be happy to hear from me.”
“Mad? Why would I be mad?” And she wasn’t mad. She was panicked. “But you know what?” she said. “I just realized we have to go.” She called the girls, with no small degree of urgency, and they came running.
“What’s wrong?” Jack said, getting to his feet as well. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Yeah, great,” Lucy said. “I feel great.”
“Why are we leaving?” Alice said.
“I just… I forgot we bought ice cream,” Lucy said.
They picked up all the bags and went through the playground gate.
All the optimism Lucy had felt had vanished, and she wondered how she was going to handle yet another catastrophe while her husband was, for all intents and purposes, on Mars.
It wasn’t Jack’s fault, of course. It wasn’t entirely hers either.
But Bj?rn had absolutely no idea he had a son.