Life After Forty

J
ust as Hugh Grant was jumping into the car to rush to the airport and intercept the love of his life at the very last moment, the telephone rang. My sister and I both sighed.

“Oh, but it’s only ten minutes from the end.”

Ines pressed the pause button, stood up, and picked up the phone. I looked at Hugh Grant, desperately in love and caught on freeze frame.

“It’s for you. Your husband must be missing you.”

“Oh nonsense, I only left this morning.”

We lived in the countryside, about 150 kilometers from Hamburg. On the North Sea coast, right by the sea and at the end of the world, or that’s how it felt anyway. It was beautiful there. Bernd had grown up in the village, but it admittedly wasn’t a great base for my job. I frequently visited clients in Hamburg and Niedersachsen and often had to stay overnight. Whenever I had appointments in Hamburg, I stayed with my sister. This was my first evening at her place, and we had planned a lazy girls’ night in, complete with
Notting Hill
and chilled white wine.

My husband wasn’t the type for pining, even though I often hoped that could change. I took the phone from Ines.

“So, Bernd, what did I forget? Can I call you back in bit? Our film’s only ten minutes from the end.”

“I have to talk to you.”

Something in his voice made me leave where I was sitting next to my sister and take the phone into her office.

“What about?”

Bernd cleared his throat and fell silent. So did I.

We had been married for almost ten years. In the last four, something had changed between us. For the most part I just suppressed my thoughts and hoped things would improve. Bernd wasn’t the kind of man who found it easy to speak about his feelings, and he would bring any conversation I started about us to an abrupt end. So I’d just reconciled myself to being part of a good team. After all, you can’t really expect to still have the same emotional intensity and passionate sex after ten years together.

The silence was broken by Bernd clearing his throat again. I couldn’t bear it anymore.

“Has something happened?”

“Yes…no, I mean, I’ve been thinking.”

It seemed like he was drunk.

“What about?”

“I…um, well, Christine, I want a divorce.”

It hit me like a thunderbolt. I suddenly felt sick and could feel my heart racing. I started to shake. I had the feeling I didn’t have much time.

“Have you been drinking? What’s happened? Is something wrong? I mean…everything was fine this morning. What does all this mean? Bernd, say something, will you!”

My voice had become shrill. Bernd cleared his throat again, but said nothing.

I couldn’t understand what was happening. Over the weekend everything had been as normal. On Saturday we’d been to a party at our neighbors’ place; it was a nice evening, and everyone had been in a good mood. Bernd had gone home relatively early and told me to stay on. He said he’d just drunk a little too much wine and was feeling tired.

When I got back later, he was already in bed, asleep.

Sunday was just like countless Sundays that had gone before it. We had breakfast, and then I worked at my desk while Bernd repaired something or other in the garage. We went to his parents’ for lunch and spent the afternoon reading, drinking coffee, watching TV, and ironing. In the evening I packed my bag for the week ahead. Everything was as normal.

And now, just twenty-four hours later, this.

“Bernd, please, you can’t just ring me up at Ines’s and spring something like this on me.”

“It’s just that everything’s gotten to be too much for me—the house, my job, our marriage. Life’s too short.”

I didn’t understand.

“What’s wrong with the house? Why don’t we see if we can change something then? We’ll figure something out together.”

“It’s not about that. I just don’t want to live with you anymore.”

I felt sick to my stomach.

“But we have to talk properly. I mean, we can’t just discuss this on the phone.”

“When will you be back?”

My travel schedule, with all my appointments on it, had been hanging in the kitchen for years. But despite that Bernd never knew where I was or when.

“I’ll rearrange my appointments somehow. I’ll be back tomorrow evening.”

“Okay, we’ll talk then. But it won’t change my decision.”

At that moment I suddenly realized what he meant and what was happening. My entire body felt alien to me, as if it belonged to someone else.

“Till tomorrow then.”

He’d already hung up.

I pressed the red button and laid the phone carefully down on the desk. Then I went slowly back into the living room.

“About time, too. Surely that could’ve waited until we finished the film?”

Ines put her book down and reached for the remote. Then she looked at me.

“For God’s sake, Christine, what’s happened?”

I looked at Hugh Grant, still desperately in love, then at Ines’s worried face.

“Bernd wants a divorce. Life’s too short, apparently.”

And then came the tears. And the brutal pain.

T
hree hours later I’d calmed down enough to be able to string coherent sentences together.

Ines was a trained children’s nurse and used to dealing with hysterical little children. The experience came in handy for older sisters too. To be on the safe side, she fixed me a cup of tea with rum. I told her about the last few years of my marriage. Bernd’s indifference, his increasing unreliability, my unhappiness, his refusal to talk things over, his eternal moaning about the stress of his job. Everything was in a rut. We never had arguments; we were always nice to one another. I just wasn’t allowed to complain about anything.

I talked and cried and talked.

And last but not least, the painful fact that Bernd would only sleep with me nowadays if he was drunk.

Ines listened to me with a concentrated look on her face, passed me tissues, lit cigarettes, poured me more tea and rum, and just let me talk. Finally, completely exhausted and a little drunk, I had to pause for breath, and she spoke.

“It sounds to me as though there’s another woman involved.”

I flinched, but shook my head. Bernd had become so idle and passionless of late that I didn’t think he was even capable of making the effort.

“I would have noticed something.”

“If you’d wanted to. I just can’t bring myself to believe that your lethargic and unorganized husband, who’s still predominantly living off of your income, would prefer to live without you than with you. After all, he was always able to do whatever he wanted, and he’s never shown consideration for anyone but himself. It’s not like you’ve ever complained about anything, so what would the advantages be? I certainly can’t think of any. Quite the reverse in fact.”

I felt the need to defend him. But I couldn’t think of anything to say.

Ines took her hand from my shoulder and sat down. She was one of those people who are deeply convinced that all crises and problems are best solved with the help of lists and tables. By putting down thoughts, plans, and ideas on paper and working through them one by one.

“Try to think clearly now. What’s going to happen when you talk tomorrow evening?”

She already had a pen in her hand.

“Do you want to fight for your marriage?”

The notepad was now on the table.

“What can I say to someone who doesn’t want to live with me anymore? Try to convince him that I’m not that awful after all? After ten years?”

Ines crossed through the words “Keep going” on the notepad.

“Okay. So you’ll make a fresh start.”

She underlined the words. Then started writing numbers.

“Where do you want to go?”

“I’ll move to Hamburg.”

“Are you sure?”

Ines wrote “Relocation to Hamburg” next to point one.

“I can’t live in that house out in the sticks by myself. I only did it for Bernd’s sake. What would I do there all by myself? Everything’s gone downhill since we bought the damn place.”

My tears started to flow again.

“Then we’ll look for an apartment for you here. A really chic one. You know the area, you’ve got colleagues and friends here, and you can finally get out of that backwater.”

Names were appearing next to point two: Dorothea, Georg, Leonie, Jörg, Nina, Franziska.

I blew my nose and tried to calm down. Just seeing the names helped. It would be nice to be able to spontaneously arrange to see them, to not have to plan to stay overnight every time. They had very rarely come to visit us out in the country. Bernd wasn’t exactly an expert at hiding his dislike of visits from people who weren’t really
his
friends. Leonie had visited us once; she’d gone for a walk on the beach with her husband and then come by the house afterwards. Bernd had just stared fixedly at their sandy shoes and hadn’t said a single word to them. As soon as they were out of the door, he started vacuuming. Unfortunately, they turned back before getting to the car because Leonie had forgotten her shawl. Bernd had opened the door with the vacuum in his hand. It was their first and last visit.

Suddenly another name came to mind, and the tears started to flow again.

“What about Antje?”

Ines was already writing point three.

“Antje. Listen, you’ve been friends for twenty-five years now, fifteen of which you’ve spent living in different towns. You’ve always managed before.”

Antje was my oldest and best friend. After her divorce a few years ago, I had convinced her to move from Hamburg nearer to me. She and her two children, my goddaughters. We now lived just five kilometers apart. I would be leaving her in the lurch.

A wave of sorrow rushed through my body.

I would have to leave my cats behind too. I didn’t know a dentist in Hamburg, or a mechanic, or a baker. All my familiar routes would be gone. I’d never spend Christmas with Bernd again, would never again have breakfast together on Sundays or birthdays. And what would my parents say?

Ines watched me and tried to make sense of my tear-constricted stammers. She managed to decipher the word “parents,” and under point three she wrote “Sylt.”

“You’ll be able to get back home much quicker from Hamburg than from your old place. At least two hours quicker.”

Bernd hated Sylt. My parents still lived there, and we could have visited them much more often, but he always said the journey was too long. So I didn’t go very often and was often homesick as a result.

I gradually started to calm down again. Realizing it was already half past three in the morning, I started to feel guilty. Ines had to be in the clinic in four hours time. She looked very tired and was yawning. I pulled myself together.

“Come on, let’s go to bed. I didn’t realize how late it was.”

“It doesn’t matter. Okay then, try to sleep and wake me up if you need me.”

She stroked my cheek, making my eyes fill with tears again, and went to bed.

The last few hours of the night were filled with the same pictures running through my mind, over and over. Bernd, suntanned, when I first met him, the two of us on the beach, at parties, in the yard, in Portugal on vacation, his face in the morning, at lunchtime, in the evening. As the tears fell relentlessly down my face, I felt utterly convinced that I had just lost the love of my life.