going to germany, part two
on the plane art opened a blank leather journal and looked out the window. he was going to record it all, it was going to be the story of his life. he smoothed out the white page with his muscular, squarish hand and poised his pen on the first line. he wrote
my father grew up an orphan. i blame this on one man, karl, who married my grandmother in 1950 and made her move with him to venezuela. i have been told who he is, and i have never believed it. my father was only 4, he was abandoned in georgia, adopted by his abusive grandparents. he wrote his mother letters, letters to which she never responded.
art loved words. he majored and english and had dreams of becoming a professor, not one that wears couderoy jackets with leather elbow patches but one that rides motorcycles and believes that a story can be told through building a staircase, or hammering a nail into a dense piece of wood. he filled out applications for graduate school last year, and took the GRE, but they still sat in a neat stack on his desk in the upstairs of his mother's house. he would get around to it one day, he promised himself silently so it would mean more, so it could resonate within him, getting louder and more deafening because it was never deflected to anyone else's ears. but for now, he had been offered a job working with a friend of his and another guy, as a carpenter. art had been good with his hands since he was a child; he had assembled a clock with his father one summer, a clock that never worked. once they had finally finished putting the hundreds of parts together they didnt even discuss the fact that it didnt tick. something about this, to the seven year old art, was manly.
the idea for the trip began with a conversation he had with oma, as she lay immobile in her nursing home bed, her hair still long and pulled back tightly in a french bun. she was talking about karl, as she often did, and said to art, "i belong over there, with his family." it was the first time he realized how transferable the idea of family was. it was the first time he realized that he was implicated in this family that he had never met before, this family that he secretly loathed.
"well maybe the next best thing would be for me to go there, and take pieces of you with me to give to them and get pieces of them to bring back here." she looked at him with watery blue eyes and nodded slowly.
"that would be nice." so she gave him a large enough sum of money to buy the plane ticket and rent a motorcycle, a sum of money so large he was afraid to deal with it at all, afraid he would make some mistake that would result in it being squandered away, in oma being furious with him, on her death bed. he was afraid it would result in what he secretly feared to be the truth- he just couldnt do anything right. but he swallowed those worries and tucked them under a pillow in his mind, and instead imagined himself weaving through lush green mountains, meeting karl's family and leaning forward on a wool couch to ask them questions, maybe recording it all, bringing home those answers to oma, but most importantly, finally knowing for himself about the family he never really knew he had.
she gave him addresses and phone numbers that looked like measurements. he had never left the country, except for one trip to mexico with his college girlfriend that ended up in a silent car trip back to her home in texas and them never speaking to each other again. he didnt count that. there were numbers for karl's elderly sister and her children, who art supposed would be his cousins. since he had none in his real family (both of his parents were only children), he never learned the proper names for these relationships.
the phone conversations had been strange and brief. he only spoke with the two cousins, both women still living in the small town of weimar, near dresden, and they acted as if it was expected, and usual, for a man 24 years old to stop by germany for the sole purpose of meeting them. "sure, sure" they said, and hung up the phone in the middle of his goodbye. it would be a challenge, he knew. and though it seemed the opposite, he had never felt more equipped.
he was to start off in munich, travel up to frankfurt, then go to dresden and weimar to meet the cousins, whose names he could never remember, ending the trip in berlin. he looked at his map with stars placed on the cities he intended to visit. he put the bulbous tip of his finger on weimar and pressed down enough to make his fingernail whiten.
"there," he said out loud, but the person next to him didnt flinch.
my father grew up an orphan. i blame this on one man, karl, who married my grandmother in 1950 and made her move with him to venezuela. i have been told who he is, and i have never believed it. my father was only 4, he was abandoned in georgia, adopted by his abusive grandparents. he wrote his mother letters, letters to which she never responded.
art loved words. he majored and english and had dreams of becoming a professor, not one that wears couderoy jackets with leather elbow patches but one that rides motorcycles and believes that a story can be told through building a staircase, or hammering a nail into a dense piece of wood. he filled out applications for graduate school last year, and took the GRE, but they still sat in a neat stack on his desk in the upstairs of his mother's house. he would get around to it one day, he promised himself silently so it would mean more, so it could resonate within him, getting louder and more deafening because it was never deflected to anyone else's ears. but for now, he had been offered a job working with a friend of his and another guy, as a carpenter. art had been good with his hands since he was a child; he had assembled a clock with his father one summer, a clock that never worked. once they had finally finished putting the hundreds of parts together they didnt even discuss the fact that it didnt tick. something about this, to the seven year old art, was manly.
the idea for the trip began with a conversation he had with oma, as she lay immobile in her nursing home bed, her hair still long and pulled back tightly in a french bun. she was talking about karl, as she often did, and said to art, "i belong over there, with his family." it was the first time he realized how transferable the idea of family was. it was the first time he realized that he was implicated in this family that he had never met before, this family that he secretly loathed.
"well maybe the next best thing would be for me to go there, and take pieces of you with me to give to them and get pieces of them to bring back here." she looked at him with watery blue eyes and nodded slowly.
"that would be nice." so she gave him a large enough sum of money to buy the plane ticket and rent a motorcycle, a sum of money so large he was afraid to deal with it at all, afraid he would make some mistake that would result in it being squandered away, in oma being furious with him, on her death bed. he was afraid it would result in what he secretly feared to be the truth- he just couldnt do anything right. but he swallowed those worries and tucked them under a pillow in his mind, and instead imagined himself weaving through lush green mountains, meeting karl's family and leaning forward on a wool couch to ask them questions, maybe recording it all, bringing home those answers to oma, but most importantly, finally knowing for himself about the family he never really knew he had.
she gave him addresses and phone numbers that looked like measurements. he had never left the country, except for one trip to mexico with his college girlfriend that ended up in a silent car trip back to her home in texas and them never speaking to each other again. he didnt count that. there were numbers for karl's elderly sister and her children, who art supposed would be his cousins. since he had none in his real family (both of his parents were only children), he never learned the proper names for these relationships.
the phone conversations had been strange and brief. he only spoke with the two cousins, both women still living in the small town of weimar, near dresden, and they acted as if it was expected, and usual, for a man 24 years old to stop by germany for the sole purpose of meeting them. "sure, sure" they said, and hung up the phone in the middle of his goodbye. it would be a challenge, he knew. and though it seemed the opposite, he had never felt more equipped.
he was to start off in munich, travel up to frankfurt, then go to dresden and weimar to meet the cousins, whose names he could never remember, ending the trip in berlin. he looked at his map with stars placed on the cities he intended to visit. he put the bulbous tip of his finger on weimar and pressed down enough to make his fingernail whiten.
"there," he said out loud, but the person next to him didnt flinch.
posted by Jessica Baxter | 2:37 PM
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