Mama, are we going to stay in Germany forever?”
The question had been simmering in my mind ever since I returned from England. For three whole weeks I had resisted the temptation to ask my parents about it, but finally the desire to know the answer had overcome my anxiety about somehow getting into trouble with Aunt Liz. I was sitting at the table with a plate of spaghetti Bolognese cooling in front of me when the question just tumbled out. To my surprise my mother didn’t react at all. I gathered my courage and asked again, a little more loudly.
“Mama, are we going to stay in Germany forever?”
This time my father’s head came up, and he shot my mother a glance that was heavy with meaning. My mother didn’t see it, or chose not to; she was looking at Sebastian, and busying herself wiping his chin, which was liberally smeared with sauce. When she had cleaned him up so thoroughly that not one atom of the sauce was perceptible, she put down the napkin she had been using and picked up her glass of water. I was just about to ask the question a third time when she forestalled me.
“That’s an odd question, Pia.”
She sipped the water, then put the glass slowly down. Then she said, “Why do you ask?”
“Well… I just wondered,” I said in the end. “I mean, you were born in England, and then you came here.”
“Yes, I did, didn’t I,” said my mother. She sounded as though she were talking to herself, not to me. Then she looked at me and this time she gave me a broad smile. “You never know,” she said. “People do move. One day you might live in England.”
“You mean, when I’m grown up?” I asked.
“Yes,” cut in my father. He was looking at my mother again, with a significant expression on his face. She shrugged.
“Well,” she said. She picked up her fork and made a tentative stab at the spaghetti.
“We have been through this before,” said my father in an ominous tone.
“I didn’t say anything,” said my mother. She sketched a quick bright smile on her face. “Eat up, Sebastian.”
“You didn’t need to say anything,” pursued my father. “I can see it in your face.”
“Oh, so now I have to watch how I look?” The smile dropped from my mother’s features. “What are you, the bloody Thought Police?” she said in English.
“We are not moving,” said my father; he had been holding a glass of beer and now he put it down on the table a little too hard.
“So you say,” said my mother. She rotated the fork, gathering swirls of spaghetti. “But people do move.” She looked at him evenly. “The Petersons are moving. I saw Sandra in the supermarket. They’re going after Christmas. Tom’s got a new job in London.”
My father looked shocked. “But they are happy here.”
“Seems not,” said my mother.
“They said they would never go back to England.” My father sounded as though they had personally let him down. “And they have children in the school here.”
“Ah, that’s just it,” said my mother. “Children in the school here.” She took a mouthful of spaghetti and chewed it, her eyes still on him.
My father sat back in his chair, as though he had just received a shocking piece of news. Then suddenly he sat forward again.
“Of course, Tom is British.”
“So?”
“So it is quite natural for him to take a new job in England.”
“Sandra works too,” my mother pointed out. “And she’ll have to give up her job when they move.”
“Well…” said my father dismissively.
My mother pounced like a hawk. “Well what?”
“Well, she has the children.”
There was a clatter as my mother’s fork dropped to the edge of her plate. “I don’t believe I’m hearing this.” She put the palms of her hands on the tabletop in front of her, as though she were going to push away the table and all of us with it. “Look,” she said, “apart from the unbelievable chauvinism of what you just said, you’ve totally missed the point.”
“Which was?” My father was now sounding as angry as she did.
“That it isn’t an easy decision for them to leave.” My mother brushed a strand of dark hair out of her eyes with an impatient flick of her hand. “They both loved it here. But Tom was offered this job and, well, with everything that’s been going on, they thought maybe this was the time to leave.”
“Well, I think you have missed my point,” responded my father stiffly. “Tom is British. He trained in England and he works for a British company. He can move back to England at any time he likes. It’s different for us.”
“Why?” demanded my mother. “Your English is good enough, we could manage.”
“I would have to retrain.”
“So, retrain.”
This time my father’s hand hit the table so hard that we all jumped. “It’s not as easy as that, and you know it.” My father saw Sebastian’s face crumpling as though he was about to burst into tears, and with an effort he lowered his voice. “Be realistic, Kate. We have to live on something.”
“I could go back to work.”
“No.”
“Don’t be so-”
He cut over her. “And we couldn’t afford to buy a house in England. Not like this one.”
My mother shot a poisonous glance around the room as though to say, what’s so great about this one, but she didn’t say anything. She picked up her fork again and turned it idly in the mess of spaghetti on her plate. There was a long silence. Then she got to her feet with a great scraping of the chair legs against the floor.
“Ah, fuck it,” said my mother, and stalked out of the room.
Sebastian and I looked at each other round-eyed.
“Children,” said my father portentously, “your mother is upset. But I never wish to hear that sort of language in the house again.”
“Yes, Papa,” I said.