Higher Ground by Anke Stelling (ap literature book list .txt) 📕

would be the correct thing to say or: ‘I’d like it to be enough, so please be quiet now.’

I know how difficult it is. How much we long to have ‘made it’, no longer be us, and therefore never have to talk about ourselves again; but to speak for and about everybody else instead, and to lead a black-and-white life in which everybody feels, wants, and sees things the same way.

When Vera and Frank were the last to move in with the others from the building group, we sat together in the back garden, staring into the flames in the fire pit that had been lit to mark the occasion, and Vera said: ‘All I need now are two cats and I’ll be perfectly happy..’

When asked why she wanted two, she replied: ‘So that they can play together.' Having two cats must be like having a minimum of two children; the second prevents the first from being lonely. I was reminded of the card that Friederike sent out when Sophie was born, which said: At last we’re a proper family. Which they evidently weren’t when there was just Silas.

So there is a recipe for completeness and properness after all, and for the happiness that results from it. Strange how we had always resisted those kinds of recipes until then.

‘Each to their own,’ we’d said. ‘I know my limits.’ ‘Children? Maybe’, and ‘Marriage? No way.’

For my fortieth, Vera gave me a card that said: Congratulations on a new decade! And underneath, At forty, you’re older and wiser than the rest, which means looking after number one, rather than number two or three. I’d always assumed that Vera meant that card as a joke, but sitting around the fire that night, I wasn’t sure anymore and asked, ‘Where are you going to get the cats?’

Vera said: ‘Why do you ask?’ and I told her about the farm cat I’d had when I was twelve. It came to live in our city flat where there were only bluebottles and silverfish to catch, and so it stared sadly out of the window down at the road, which it wasn’t allowed to explore in case it got run over, which would make me sad.

Vera frowned, and Ulf said cats couldn’t look sad and that I had read this into the cat’s expression.

‘That’s inadmissible anthropomorphism,’ Ulf commented, and I shut up, not wanting to ruin the atmosphere with my hair-splitting, which would be construed as envy anyway.

Because, of course, the flat was super, and the house was an ideal place to bring up kids, and everything had gone so smoothly to bring it to completion, and the move and party and friends—

Everything was just perfect.

And if something is perfect, it should, of course, make you happy. After all, if it’s perfect, it’s complete. No one can get in the way, and nothing like doubt or ambivalence can get in-between. Do you see, Bea?

And perhaps I was envious. I was definitely afraid that you might be, Bea, and that’s definitely a sign. Freud calls it ‘projection’.

While we were baking the cake for the moving party, I had been very vocal about our new flat — Vera and Frank’s old one — which we would soon move into. And how near the building group’s garden would be, and that you were always over at Ulf and Carolina’s anyway, and that their flat was the nicest in the whole building because they were the planners and architects.

I was trying to convert any possible envy you felt into a feeling of superiority: you might not live in the building, but you were friends with the architect. Not Corbusier in this case, but Ulf: your mum’s ex-boyfriend and your godfather.

And, in fact, as soon as we arrived, you did go up to Ulf and Carolina’s, so you probably missed the madness of the housewarming.

May 2013; Vera’s move and housewarming.

The move and housewarming were on the same day to make it feel like the old days, when we helped each other move, and would celebrate the new place or phase of life or just the good weather with pizza and beer once we’d finished — in the old days, when everything we owned could fit into a Golf or a small rental van.

But that time, a moving firm had to be hired, with two trucks, a furniture lift, furniture covers, and four strong men; and while that was going on, a crowd of guests arrived and exclaimed ‘Ah!’ and ‘Oh!’ as they did a tour of the finished rooms, deposited bowls of fruit salad on the polished surfaces, and simply had to chink glasses with the new homeowners.

I’d barely stepped through the door with my cake and my boys in tow when Leon jumped out and thumped Kieran in the stomach, but just then Frank appeared, thank God, and said: ‘Come into Leon’s room, I have something to show you.’ Distraction is still the best means to stop violence, and Frank is so good with rough ’n’ tumble boys.

He was supposed to be directing the removalists, but somebody else quickly took over. Vera was nowhere to be seen among the throng of guests admiring the flat. Where could she be? Really nice kitchen, by the way. The exposed concrete behind the cupboards set off the shiny doors a treat—

I was fiddling around with a drawer where I guessed I might find a knife to cut the melon and the cake. But the drawer had a child safety lock, of course.

‘What are you up to?’ asked Vera. At last, there she was, in rolled-up jeans and a colourful scarf around her head. She was out of breath, sweaty, with rings under her eyes and a cold sore on her lip. But she laughed, fell onto the unopened boxes and slipped the clogs off her feet. ‘First, a toast!’

There was chaos everywhere, but the cut-crystal glasses appeared as if by magic. ‘Cheers, my dears!’

Of course Vera was shattered. The past few weeks had been