Wunderland Read online

  So she simply shrugged. “Germany recovered well enough.”

  “It seems the Amis put more effort into Germany,” said Ilse tartly.

  For a moment they fell back into hot, sticky silence. Then her mother seemed to brighten again. “I ran into Doktor Bergen last week.”

  Ava felt her stomach contract hollowly. “Oh?”

  “Ja.” Her mother nodded. “Ulrich’s widow came to Bremen last month. With the children.”

  That’s nice. Or, How did she seem? Or, How old are the children now? These were the things people normally said in such cases. But the wound of Ulrich’s death felt as fresh as it had when Ava first received the telegram over a year earlier: Ulrich confirmed killed Golan Heights sniper funeral Tel Aviv June 28.

  Ava shifted her gaze out the window, struggling desperately to think of a way to change the subject. Before she had, however, she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  “It gets better,” Ilse said, quietly.

  And before Ava could ask what it was, they’d reached her apartment.

  * * *

  Two days later, Ava found herself humming Eine kleine Nachtmusik as she stirred semolina on the stove. The heat still hadn’t broken, and Sophie was crankier than ever thanks to a diaper rash and two emerging new teeth. After her third attempt to put her daughter down for her nap, Ava had finally resorted to the Snugli again, though this was normally something she avoided doing at home. Now, though, it seemed the only way to keep the baby from screeching while Ava bustled around the kitchen.

  The project at hand was her first-ever formal German meal, with recipes drawn from her formerly untouched Joys of German Cuisine and ingredients paid for by pawning Mark’s guitar. It was an ambitious plan, given the fact that these days her culinary aspirations rarely extended beyond Jiffy Pop and Swanson’s TV dinners. But it had struck her as the most apt way to express her feelings to Ilse. Her (and could she really be thinking this?) gratitude.

  For there it was: she was actually happy her mother was here. Very happy. Improbably, preposterously happy. And she knew Sophie felt the same way: after two days of listening intently to Ilse chattering in German, her new favorite word had become Oma. Oma Oma Oma, she’d sung sleepily last night, as Ilse rocked her in her bedroom while Ava indulged in the tepid luxury of a bath. And Ilse, whom Ava had only rarely heard sing, had sung it right back to her, following it up with a mournful ditty Ava vaguely felt she should know but did not:

  Holla-hidi hollala,

  Holla-hidi ho.

  * * *

  Putting Sophie to sleep was no mean feat in itself, but it was only one of the many miracles Ilse had wrought. Barely an hour after landing in Ava’s stuffy little flat she had proceeded to apply the legendary German Hausfrau energy to it, scrubbing the kitchen and its bathtub free of splattered baby food and grime. She’d returned the fungal garden that had been Ava’s bathroom to something like its original state, and she’d clambered onto the unit’s two fire escapes to Windex all the windows. When she was done, the apartment was so noticeably brighter that she might have whisked a stubborn storm cloud from over the building.

  Yesterday, however, had been the motherly coup de grace. When Ilse showed up late in the morning, she’d had in tow a lanky youth in a Macy’s apron. The latter stood huffing and panting behind her, having just hauled two large boxes up the four flights of stairs. Inside each was a shining Friedrich air-conditioning unit. “One for the kitchen, one for the bedroom,” said Ilse, as Ava gaped at the appliances, speechless.

  Then: “Was ist los? Did I buy the wrong kind?”

  But Ava could only shake her head, overwhelmed not just by the gift but by the stark realization that for all her self-declared independence and self-sufficiency, for all her written protestations to her friends that she’d been “managing just fine” alone, she hadn’t been. Not at all.

  Ilse had the deliveryman install the units then and there, supervising with the same brisk pragmatism with which she’d supervised homework and camping trips in years past. She’d refused the reimbursement that Ava offered (purely reflexively, as she actually had no money). “I’m spending time with my granddaughter,” her mother said, bouncing Sophie on her knee. “That’s payment in and of itself.”

  And then, as if to finalize her new role as flawed-mother-turned-fairy-godmother, she took the baby out for a walk, leaving Ava to nap in the blissful, rumbling chill.

  * * *

  Bending carefully now at the waist, Ava set down the cooking spoon with its shiny coating of pudding batter, and opened the oven door. The Schweinebraten, in its crackling coat of paprika, mustard, and caraway seeds, appeared to be browning nicely, and the smell was nothing short of heavenly. Above it, a cake of Camembert bubbled merrily on a cookie sheet, its red currant sauce at the ready next to the pudding. Feeling more creatively satisfied than she’d felt in over a year, Ava shut the oven again, then leaned against the counter to wipe the heat-fog from her glasses. Sophie, who had been damply drowsing against her stomach, woke enough to take a sleepy swipe, knocking them to the floor.

  “Scheisse! Sophie!” Holding the kitchen counter for balance, Ava performed an awkward plié as the baby kicked her heels into her groin, then tried for the glasses again. Ava gave her the pudding spoon to gnaw on instead. Opening the refrigerator, she pulled out the white Zinfandel she’d been steadily working her way through, realizing only after she’d poured her third (or fifth) pinkish splash that over half of the bottle was gone.

  “Ba-ba-ba-ba,” Sophie sang.

  “It’s all right,” Ava told her. “We have another one for when Oma comes.”

  “Oma Oma,” Sophie warbled.

  “Yes. Oma. Do you think she’ll be happy with all this köstlich food?”

  Her daughter shook the spoon tambourine-style, barely missing Ava’s nose. “Nein,” she said, her face and tone both so grimly Ilse’s that Ava had to burst out laughing.

  * * *

  At eight forty-five the kitchen table was set with silverware, bodega daisies of salmon pink, and the two unchipped plates Ava still possessed. Sophie was at last in her crib, curled stomach down on freshly laundered bedsheets with the cooking spoon clutched in her plump, determined fist. To try to distract herself from her annoyance, Ava was sketching her now-congealing pork roast on an overdue phone bill. Because Ilse—pragmatic, proprietary, Teutonically punctual Ilse—was over an hour late.

  Ava had called the Jane twice, to no avail; “Madame” was not answering her line. She’d manned her fire escape for a full half hour after putting Sophie down, finishing off the last of the Paul Masson and two Parliaments from her emergency pack. She’d even called the Chock full o’Nuts across the street, though given Ilse’s critique of its coffee (“They should call it ‘Chock Full of Nothing’ ”) it seemed an unlikely destination. Sure enough, the manager reported that no, she hadn’t seen the “nice older lady” to whom Ava had introduced her yesterday at breakfast.

  Propping the window open, Ava combed her memory for hints her mother might have dropped about her intended destination. But in retrospect, Ilse had been almost pointedly vague about her plans, simply saying she’d be “doing some exploring in the city.” When Ava offered to accompany her, she’d snapped, “I’ll be fine,” with a familiar crispness that meant This is not up for discussion. As usual, Ava had not pushed her for detail.

  Now she stared down at the darkening sidewalk with its desultory lovers, its blowsy pilings of garbage and Jackson Pollock splashes of spilled liquids, food, and canine waste. What if Ilse had taken it upon herself to “explore” the Bronx or Harlem on her own? As omnipotent she’d always seemed to Ava, she was still a middle-aged German woman, used to German order and courtesy, German efficiency and punctiliousness. She was about as prepared for nighttime New York as she would have been for a solo safari in the Serengeti.

  Her thoughts were inter
rupted by a low, lingering croak from the bedroom, a cross between a cough and a squeaky door hinge. Ava held a lungful of smoke, praying it was just one of Sophie’s sleep sounds. But it grew steadily into a wail that was weak, but most definitely awake.

  Exhaling in annoyance, she stubbed the cigarette out in her wilting spider plant and set her glass down on the counter. So it had now officially closed: that brief window within which she and her mother might have enjoyed the dinner she’d worked so hard on all day.

  God damn her.

  By the time she’d reached the crib Sophie had pulled herself to her feet and was shaking the railing like a tiny asylum inmate. This in and of itself wasn’t unusual. As Ava drew close, though, she immediately sensed something was wrong. The infant’s scream was weak and husky, more a plea than a protest. Her face was pale, her eyes red and swollen. Picking her up, Ava pressed her lips against her daughter’s forehead and her fingertips to her delicate ear. Both were burning.

  “What’s happened, Liebchen?” Cradling the baby against her chest, Ava hurried to the bathroom, praying the thermometer was where she’d last left it. She hadn’t had to use it very often, since Sophie was unusually hardy for a baby (another trait she’d inherited from her grandmother). Now Ava had to fumble for a few seconds—in the medicine cabinet, in the toothbrush jar—before locating the device under the sink, mixed into a broken set of Clairol curlers. She shook the mercury down and cleaned the bulb before wrestling Sophie onto her stomach back on the bed.

  By now the baby’s screams had faded into whimpers: rhythmic yelps that were actually harder to hear than full-on howls. As she inserted the thermometer, Ava resisted a violent urge to wail along with her daughter as she waited for the reading:

  103.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

  A moment of panicked paralysis: the highest Sophie had ever hit was 102, about a year ago. Luckily Livi had been there and was able to call a fellow psychology student who also happened to be a nurse. Ava tried to remember what the advice had been at that point: something about cold washcloths? Cold baths? Or had it been frozen peas? So much had happened since then, and on so little sleep. It was like trying to remember a different lifetime.

  Pulling Sophie into her lap, Ava reached for the bedside phone, punching in the number so familiar to her now it was essentially muscle memory.

  “Hello?”

  “She’s got a temperature.”

  Her best friend didn’t need to ask who. “How high?”

  “103.4.”

  “Shit.” An audible exhale (was Livi smoking? Ava wondered). “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’s your mom?”

  “I don’t know.” Ava felt her throat tighten. “She was supposed to be back by seven thirty.”

  “Christ. Okay. Don’t panic.” Livi’s voice shifted into a harder, quicker register; her let’s get this shit done tone. “I don’t know if Fran is even in town,” she said. “But let me try her. Okay? If she’s not, Daniel might know someone.” Daniel was Livi’s current boyfriend, a burly amateur boxer who was also an EMT. “Just sit tight. If I don’t call back in ten, you call me. All right?”

  Ava nodded, by now too anxious to even verbalize a response. Hanging up, she rested Sophie’s head against her shoulder and rocked gently, feeling the baby’s heart skittering against her skin as she tried to think through the heavy haze of heat and alcohol that seemed to have filled her head. What had happened? When she’d put her daughter down she’d seemed lethargic, yes. Maybe even a little clingy. But Ava had attributed both to Sophie’s napless state, to the heat. If her skin had felt warm, she’d assumed it was from being held against Ava’s own body in an oven-hot kitchen.

  A sudden, warm dampness on her bare thigh: she’d forgotten to rediaper. “Fuck,” she said.

  She wiped her leg off with a burp cloth and unfolded a fresh Pampers. A siren lowed into the distance. Ava stared at the phone, which didn’t ring. And didn’t ring. She started pacing: from the crib to the window. Then back. On her third round her bare foot landed on something hard and sticky; looking down, she saw the cooking spoon she’d given Sophie to chew on.

  Foot half lifted, Ava squinted down at the sticky utensil. Then, leaving it where it lay, she raced back to the phone and dialed again.

  “Eggs,” she said, the minute Livi picked up.

  “What?”

  “There were goddamn eggs in this pudding I was making. Raw eggs. I gave Sophie the spoon to chew on.”

  A measured pause. “You think it’s salmonella?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what else causes this kind of a fever. God. I’m such an idiot…”

  “Stop it, sweetie,” said Livi sternly. “You know that’s not helpful. Okay, listen. Daniel said you should take her to an emergency room.”

  “You mean call an ambulance?”

  “No. Just go. The heat is causing a crazy backlog on the phone lines. You’re better off with a cab. Or even just walking her over.”

  “To where?”

  “Wherever’s closest.”

  “I don’t know wherever’s closest.”

  “Are you serious?” Livi sighed, exasperated. “Av, you’ve lived there for two years!”

  “So I’m fucking stupid, okay?” Ava snapped. “I’m a complete Dummkopf. I’m the reason we have to go in the first place.”

  Sophie stirred at the outburst. Reflexively stroking her hair, Ava noticed that it was wet before realizing that she’d been weeping into it. She hiccupped, took a shuddering breath. “Sorry. I think I’m—” She struggled to remember the English term. “Losing it. I’m losing it.” Then: “Oh God, what if I lose her?” It came out a shuddering half wail.

  “Just—listen,” said Livi sternly. “Can you just listen to me for a minute?”

  “Yes.” Ava swallowed. “I’m listening.”

  “Go outside. Hail a cab. Tell them to take you to Cabrini. If you can’t find a cab, walk. Fast. Just take Second uptown. Cabrini is on Nineteenth, between Second and Third. Did you ever buy that pepper spray stuff I told you about?”

  “No.”

  Another pause—this one inaudibly annoyed. “Okay. It’s not that late, so you should be fine. But it’s dark now. So walk fast. Be aware of your surroundings. I’ll meet you in the ER in, say, twenty minutes. Okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Repeat it back,” Livi prompted.

  “Cabrini. Nineteenth. Between Second and Third.”

  “Good. I’ll see you there.”

  * * *

  The heat had seemingly heightened taxi demand as well, since hailing one outside proved outright impossible. After the fourth had sped by in a checkered blur Ava started walking: past the prostitutes in their cropped halters and shortest of shorts, past the ragtag boys aiming basketballs at a broken air conditioner. A few looked in her direction, and the hooker in thigh-high boots asked Ava for a light that she didn’t have. Her skin tingled with an unspecified vulnerability as she pushed the stroller along. She’d dismissed Livi’s pepper spray suggestion as American overkill, but now she wished that she’d bought at least one can. As Ava quickened her pace, the pulsating beat she’d heard earlier—heavy and syncopated—was growing louder. In her exhaustion and the lingering remnants of her pink wine buzz she had the surreal impression that everything in the airless city, even her own quick-paced trot, was somehow set to its rhythm.

  She’d just crossed East Houston when the lights above her flickered: not just the lamp she was passing, but all of them. For a few seconds the effect was almost festive; like fairy lights twinkling against the urban grit.

  Then everything went black.

  It happened not all at once but rather in a slow, almost graceful progression; a broadening swath of blankness that started somewhere above her head and swept its way up Second Avenue. Poof, poof, poof:
as though each streetlight were being snuffed out by ghostly, synchronized lamplighters.

  Ava stopped in her tracks. So, it seemed, did everything in the clamorous, filthy city. It all fell eerily silent, as though sound itself were being swallowed by the sudden blackness: two million television shows shrinking into tiny light points before vanishing. Five million radios falling into static-framed silence. A million humming air conditioners freezing midrumble. Oddly enough, nonelectric sounds stopped too: shrieking sirens and honking car horns, the shouts and greetings of passersby. The wary, rhythmic barkings of dogs. Even the pigeons stopped cooing, as if the sudden shift in atmosphere had caught them off-guard. Rooted where she was, Ava looked up into a sky filled with newly numerous stars.

  For a moment she just stood there, transfixed by the sight: the revelation of such unfamiliar and unexpected beauty. Then someone somewhere near her—deep-voiced, male—let loose a three-note song: “Hoooooo! Blackout!”

  As if on signal, the urban street sound blasted back on, though its tone felt somehow different from before: the sirens amplified and more urgent. The shouts shriller and more heartfelt, as though roused by a sudden call to battle. Ava heard the word again—blackout—and distractedly searched her brain for the corresponding German, finally settling on Stromausfall. It was a term that—until tonight—she’d associated with aerial bombings: a verbal relic from the War No One Willingly Mentioned. As she squinted into the sudden gloom, though, it seemed particularly apt: but for the light of passing cars, she felt almost blinded by inky darkness.

  She resumed briskly walking, fear of the dark ceding to a New Yorker’s instinct to keep moving on streets where hesitation implied susceptibility. She kept her gaze fixed ahead, and so it was only after twenty or more minutes and a furtive glimpse up at a street sign that she realized she’d veered completely off course: she was heading not uptown but westward. Groaning in frustration, she wheeled the stroller around and set back again the way she had come.