The Greenhouse

Sixty-nine

I start off my rounds by hopping into the phone booth to call Dad. I let my daughter sit up in the stroller so that she can see me and jam my foot in the door of the phone booth. Dad is happy to hear me and starts by telling me that he’s more relaxed even when he doesn’t hear from me for several days now; he’s not was as worried about me as he was before.

— Sorry I haven’t called you for such a long time, I say.

— I can fully understand that you don’t have as much need for your old man as you did before, he says. Then he changes subject; he’s got some home news for me:

— Your twin Jósef has found a girlfriend at the community home.

— A nice girl, he adds, they live in the same home, he’s going to bring her for a visit next weekend. Her parents are coming, too, so I was wondering what I should cook? I’m not very good at that stuff; your mother was the one who dealt with the cooking.

— How about fish balls? And cocoa soup with whipped cream for dessert, just like you made for me on my last night?

— That’s a thought. Wasn’t it two tablespoons of potato flour in the fish balls?

— As far as I can remember.

— What do you think of Ravel?

— Why do you ask?

— I’ve just been listening to him.

— I’m not sure he’s the in-thing nowadays, Dad.

— You’re not short of money, Lobbi, now that there are more of you in your home?

— No, no need to worry about that.

There’s a mass going on in the church and it occurs to me that we could say hi to Father Thomas afterward, so I wait for him to come out of the church. He is happy to see me and wants to offer me an espresso and Amaretto at the café. We walk across the square together and I accept the coffee but turn down the liqueur. I take the child out of the stroller, hand her a biscuit, and sit opposite the priest, who is on nodding terms with everyone in the place. He looks at the child as we chat together, and I notice that he puts three lumps of sugar into his cup of coffee like my brother Jósef and eats the remains of the sugar with his teaspoon. Before I know it I’ve spilled out all my worries to Father Thomas, and tell him that I might have developed a crush on the woman I accidentally had a child with.

— I was so afraid that I would be rejected, that she would push me away from her, and when she didn’t do that I became even more scared.

He finishes his cup while I explain to him what it’s like to stand with one foot on a wobbling skiff and the other on a pier and to feel the pull of each foot going in opposite directions. I feel the need to fill him in on the background story and explain to him how a moment’s carelessness with a kind of a friend of a friend can accidentally lead to a child, how this little person who is now holding a semi-soggy biscuit in her hand came by pure chance and now lives a life of her own.

— Stuff happens, I say, feeding some biscuit crumbs to two doves prowling around the table.

— Coincidences have a meaning, he says, ordering another espresso.

Once more I watch him take three sugar cubes out of the bowl and put them into his cup.

— You did things in a slightly different order than usual, he continues, you first had a child and then got to know each other, he says, sipping his coffee.

— How long can a love relationship last? And a sexual relationship? And a mixture of the two? Can that last a whole lifetime, forever?

— Yes, yes, it most certainly can, says Father Thomas. There are so many facets to a relationship between a man and a woman and it isn’t for outsiders to understand what’s going on between them.

I feel I can hear Mom’s voice; that’s exactly how she might have put it.

— It’s so difficult to know where you have another person, to know what her feelings are, I say.

— Yes, that can happen, says Father Thomas, ordering another tumbler of Amaretto. As far as I can make out, you’ve already done all the things I would have advised you to give more thought to until you were sure.

My daughter has finished her biscuit and her face is totally smudged. I search my pockets and the stroller for something to wipe her with. My companion is quicker than I am and hands me a handkerchief.

— It’s clean, he says, I keep it especially for the parish children, in case the need arises, he adds, smiling at the child. I can see that he’s trying to work out what film to recommend. My daughter has developed an interest in the doves.

— I’m thinking of a movie, he then says, an old movie with, if I remember correctly, Yves Montana and Romy Schneider that I saw not so long ago and that might be instructive for you to watch. As you were saying, he continues, summarizing what I never said in just a few words, it isn’t the first night that’s the dangerous one, but the second night when the magic of the unknown has disappeared but not the magic of the unexpected. I think it was Romy who said it. You’re welcome to pop over tonight and watch it, if you have a babysitter.

I put the hood on the child, shake his hand, thank him for the coffee, and tell him that it’s unlikely that I’ll be free in the evening. The big question that looms over me all day is whether we’ll be getting into the same bed again tonight or whether that was just an isolated incident, an exception that had occurred under special circumstances last night, and the mother of my child might even have been trying to save me from an embarrassing situation. Up until now I’ve never slept with the same woman for two nights in a row because that would have meant that it had turned into a serious relationship and that commitments had been made. Although, mathematically speaking, last night was our second night together, it’s a matter of opinion when one should start counting, whether it really was the second time or whether tonight should be counted as the second time.