Enough About Love

KARL AND LEA

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KARL AND LEA HAVE PUT lots of gifts on the kitchen table.

Forty of them because this morning Anna is forty years old. Gifts in every shape, every color, wrapped in crepe paper, in velvet, in tissue paper. A real surprise. Anna plays the part accordingly.

“Open them, mommy, open them,” Karl and Lea cry while Stan cuts the little cake. She has already blown out the candles.

Anna opens them, alternating between large ones and tiny ones. In one, a stone painted bright red with a letter A in gold. In another, one of Lea’s drawings, which Anna unfolds carefully. A ginger cookie that she eats immediately. A salmon pink hair band. A red rose that she quickly puts in a glass. A queen of hearts, drawn by Karl … Anna wants to open a small one with a star design, but Karl and Lea protest, insisting she save it for the very end. A small glass for drinking tea. A plastic knight, “to defend her,” Lea explains …

One gift is different from all the others, smaller, more regular, more expensively wrapped too. She has seen it, she wants to put off the moment, but Stan nudges it toward her with one finger.

“Open it,” he says. “Happy birthday, my darling.”

Anna knows it is a piece of jewelry, probably a ring, probably gorgeous, probably priceless. She looks at her husband, shakes her head, her eyes shining.

“Thank you,” Anna breathes. “You shouldn’t have, Stan, you know very well why you shouldn’t have. I can’t accept it, you’re setting a trap for me. You shouldn’t do that.”

“Shush. It’s a ring, not a chain, not a padlock. I’m not buying you. You know that.”

“I’ll open your daddy’s present later, kids.”

Anna continues. So as not to disappoint Karl and Lea, she takes her time, but her high spirits have evaporated, every second suddenly weighs so heavily on her. Is this the last time they will celebrate her birthday as a family like this? In two months’ time, Karl will be eight. Can she ask him to celebrate that birthday without his father, then without her? Anna’s hands are shaking.

“The last present’s the most important,” the children cry. A scarlet envelope, inside, a sheet of white paper.

Lea has drawn a frieze around the margins, Karl has written on it in colored felt-tip pen.

The letter begins with “Lovely little mommy.” It is the most banal children’s letter, but every word cuts right through Anna. She reads it slowly, out loud at first, then quietly, ending in silence. When she has finished, she squeezes her children in her arms. There is a question in the letter. She replies with tears in her eyes: “Of course, my darlings, of course I’ll never leave you. You’re the loves of my life. The loves of my life.”