Shorter Days by Anna Katharina Hahn Page A

small river, the scattered cubes of a little village in Hohenlohe. Simon commented from the couch. His mother had been wild, got pregnant too early, longed for the big city. Her family had kicked her out of the house. Nonetheless she had later inherited a run-down single-family house in which she invested every penny, with help from Simon. A new roof, new plumbing, a first-rate kitchenette—all paid for by the two of them; she was planning to move in as soon as she retired.
    Despite the fact that Leonie’s father had a lucrative job as an accountant, money was never mentioned in her house. Simon’s forwardness in such matters astonished her. Furthermore, it became clear that his close relationship with his mother would pose an obstacle to their relationship. She could never make plans with him on Sunday afternoons because he always met his mother for coffee, and he seemed to see this not as a burdensome duty but a sacred ritual. On the subject of contraception, he was downright obsessive. He brought it up before they even left the parking lot of the observatory, where they often went late at night: “If you get pregnant now, you have to get an abortion. I can’t pay for a kid. I owe it to my mother not to fuck up.” Though Leonie felt like she belonged with Simon more than with any other man she’d been close to, it was speeches like this one that ultimately spurred her decision to apply for the foundation courses in France.
    Ingrid never got to cook so much as an egg in her new kitchenette, never got to enjoy the view of her childhood fields through the insulated glass windows that she’d picked out with her son. While Leonie was in Montpellier trying to get over Simon, his mother died of a cerebral hemorrhage. “She was already cold by the time I tried to wake her.”
    A few months after Ingrid’s funeral, Simon got in his car and drove to Leonie’s dorm in Montpellier. The two hadn’t exchanged even a postcard for three-quarters of a year. Yet when they saw each other, nothing seemed to have changed. She caught the train from Montpellier as soon as she had finished her last exam and moved right into his co-op on Ostendplatz.
    What would Ingrid have said about their new place? Leonie was convinced they would have gotten along. “I’m probably the only woman in the world that actually wants a mother-in-law. Someone to tell me what Simon was like as a baby. When he was potty-trained and how soon he slept through the night. Whether Lisa and Felicia look like him. She would certainly have liked the little house in Heumaden. It was so like hers.” She was sure her mother-in-law would have found Constantinstraße posh and elegant, but too expensive. Ingrid and Simon’s mutual life’s work, the result of steely frugality and shrewd schoolyard dealings, was easily rented. Simon went there no more than once a year to see that everything was in order. He talked little of his mother. “It’s a damn shame you never got to meet her. She was a good one.” Leonie uses Ingrid’s best china, a simple white and blue set, and constructs her image of Ingrid from Simon’s occasional tidbits.
    She swallows the last bites of the already-stale bread and pours herself more wine. There’s more activity on the street than usual. The last of the guests from the Wren House Halloween party are on their way home. Small groups of children and teenagers in costumes stand on the sidewalk and in doorways. Amid the turmoil, old Herr Posselt from across the street is taking his dog for a walk—an aged hound with short silver and brown hair and a liver-colored snout. He limps a little, but still pulls so hard on the leash that his owner can barely keep up. Posselt, a middle-sized man with excellent posture, must be nearly eighty, yet he still keeps himself presentable, his white mustache trimmed and his silk scarf fastidiously knotted. When the girls run into