Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything Read Online Free PDF Page A

All she says is, “Oh,” and after a long pause, “We’llhave to send off some applications then. The new academic year starts in September—that’s just around the corner.”
    I don’t know what to say. I was expecting her to hit the roof and force me to go back to school. In fact that’s probably what I wanted her to do. She’s the mother, after all. And I’m the child.
    But she falls silent, and I say faintly, “Have you heard from Dad?”
    “Ye-es,” she says, her voice rising as she draws out the word to a second syllable. “He’s getting married again.”
    “What? When?” I ask in horror, but I’m happy that the subject has changed to something that diverts the attention from me.
    “Her name’s Nastja and she’s from Leningrad. But they’re going to live near here. And I think she’s already pregnant.” I feel myself tingling all over. “She’s nineteen, by the way,” my mother adds, pursing her lips.
    “Maybe we’ll be friends, then,” I say as dispassionately as I can. But she appears not to have heard me. She’s had her hair cut, and she looks tired. The factory where she had an office job for almost ten years closed last week. But I don’t understand why she had to have her hair cut. It was so beautiful, thick and slightly wavy, much more beautiful than my own.
    “We need to have a proper talk sometime, Maria,” she now says sternly, even though her reedy voice suggests otherwise. “You know I lost my job, and I don’t have any prospects of finding another one. I don’t know what the future holds. Somehow, of course, life goes on, but I haven’t a clue what we’re going to live off.” She picks at her fingernails. “Ah, well,” she says, “I’ve still got a little money put aside—from the sale of the house. But your father doesn’t pay any maintenance for you and, to be honest, I’d rather you learned a profession. Staying put with the Brendels is crazy, don’t you think?”
    We’re facing each other, but she’s not looking at me. Her feet are bare and I feel sorry for her. I’d like to give her an answer, give her a solution, I even feel obliged to have a plan; it was my decision tomove out, after all—at sixteen! You don’t just leave home at sixteen without any idea what you’re going to do. But I have no idea. I feel utterly empty.
    Now she looks at me, with that particular expression which asks: Maybe you can help me out, too. What should I do? Tell me, Maria!
    But I don’t even know myself, Mom. Can’t you understand that?
    This is the way it always is: there will be no decision unless I make it myself.
    Such emptiness—
    I go into the house, climb the stairs to my attic room, this ancient room with its nineteenth-century cupboards and bed, its saggy mattress in three sections. Above the bed hangs a Symbolist picture called Nymphs and Saturn , and I’ve often dreamed I was in it. The nymph in the middle wears a blue headband, and her face is most clearly visible. She’s supposed to look like my mother did when she was a girl. The picture came from her father, and it’s right for her.
    You can’t see my desk beneath the gable window because it’s buried under mountains of books and notes. I hurriedly gather a few things together—pens, a pad, a few old passport photos, a book—grab some clothes from my wardrobe, and chuck everything into a suitcase. I’m going to have to find work, I think; I don’t have any money.
    Then I put the case down, it’s too heavy to carry back all that way. I run down the stairs, past my mother’s two small rooms and the tiny room where my great-grandmother Milda sleeps. She spends her days packing leftover food into small plastic bags and stashing it in cupboards, where it can rot away in peace. I pass my grandparents’ apartment in the basement and go through the back door into the garden. My mother is still standing like a statue beneath the apple tree. I give her a fleeting but firm embrace and promise to come