Good Things I Wish You by Manette Ansay Page A

speak.
    I made it home by seven that night, just minutes ahead of Cal. After that, I was busy with Heidi, who ran through the house touching everything—toys, furniture, even my face—as if to reassure herself that nothing had been lost during the time she’d been away. It took several hours before she was finally able to sleep. Before I could hurry down the hall toward my study, pinning back my hair. Eager as a woman going to her lover. That single sentence singing, still, its song inside my head.
    What I wrote: My first date in nineteen years is nearly an hour late.

26.
    W HAT MAKES YOU PASSIONATE about flying?
    Character come before person is born.
    What if something happened so you couldn’t fly anymore?
    I am careful. Nothing happens. You will see!
    What do you think makes some people want to do what you’re doing and other people, like me, afraid to do it?
    Do not eat uncook vegetable. Begin each day with hot boiled egg.

Düsseldorf, 2006

 
    27.
    I T’S THE FIRST TRIP they’ve taken together, aside from short jaunts to visit friends. Over five days’ time, they’ll hike over one hundred miles along the Rhine. They’ll climb the Lorelei. They’ll picnic in the shadow of crumbling castles, explore the little villages scattered through the hills. Sweet stone churches. Half-timbered houses. Johannes talking and talking and talking, bubbling on like a fresh, clear stream. Clara listens to his voice the way she listens to music, breathing hard from the climb.
    Passing the shared canteen.
    Something about the distant clearings of steeply sloped vineyards and gable-chinned roofs, woods and more woods of linden and oak, makes her feel as if anything is possible. It’s been sixteen months since Robert entered the asylum, but she doesn’t think of this. She doesn’t think of the children. She doesn’t consider what people might say. For once, she can taste the dark scent of the Rhine, far below, without weighing the question of whether or not it might have been better had Robert—
    Now and again they stumble upon an ancient orchard, an overrun garden, a half-concealed well greenly tangledwith ivy. Once she turns to find he has vanished. But no, he’s scrambled up into a mulberry tree. Laughing, he pelts her with fruit. They walk on. Touch each other swiftly, in places that do not matter. Here he is combing bits of fern from her hair; there she straightens his rucksack, kicks pebbles at his shoes. When they stop to rest, she eats the crushed mulberries he offers, still warm, from his pockets.
    The news about Robert isn’t good.
    At some point, she must consider propriety. What will be the consequences of such a trip? It is one thing, while she’s on tour, having Johannes constantly in her home, busying himself with the children, keeping an eye on the servants, documenting household income and expenses in his quick, vigorous hand. Especially since his devotion to her husband is so well known. Still, it would be better, upon their return, if Johannes would agree not to nap on the couch, lazy and warm as a loose-limbed cat, where visitors can see him plainly. If he wouldn’t write so admiringly of her to mutual friends. If he’d stop fussing over her like a husband each time she left on tour, urging her to pace herself, to take care of herself, to come home soon. If he didn’t insist they address one another not as Sie but Du . Not only in letters, but in company, trumpeting an intimacy that would strike anyone as peculiar. Not that there’s anything between them that isn’t open and good.
    They are friends. Best friends. What else can they be?
    In this light, after much discussion, she has finally agreed to return his warm and affectionate Du .
    There are, of course, his dark moods. Understandable,considering his childhood, his past. Easily forgotten—or, at least, explained away—as soon as they have vanished, which they do. And then, how easy, how effortless everything is! The meals they share, the