Fixing the Fates by Diane Dewey

Author:Diane Dewey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2019-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

For our first real date, Bert and I went to a little restaurant called Butterfield 81 on the Upper East Side. Butterfield was tiny, and I chose it for Bert because it had a bar where the five customers it held could smoke.

“So, you know Erika. You must be Swiss!” Bert unraveled a cigar.

I thought about it in a flash: my American upbringing by a German descendant, my Swiss birth father, my American father, and how Helena Bachmeier was from the former DDR. “I’m Swiss on my natural father’s side, but I’ve only known this information for a couple of months.” I answered his shocked look with widened eyes of my own. It was crazy even to describe to him how my life had been turned upside down since I’d received Otto’s letter.

Bert listened receptively to the twists and turns of my life, having had more than his share of his own. He told me over dinner in Butterfield’s adjacent dining room that in 1997, his beloved wife of twenty-two years, Ava, had died of an aneurysm. She was only forty-eight when she left him and their two daughters, Carla and Monique, ages twelve and sixteen, behind.

“That was heartbreaking,” I said, my eyes getting moist. Bert nodded and ordered us some more wine, a cabernet that made talking that much easier.

Bert described how he drove to Washington, DC, nearly every weekend to visit his younger daughter, Carla, who lived with her aunt Simone. As Bert was required to travel for his new job with Utopia, Simone provided familial nurture, and at thirty-eight, she offered a young mother’s perspective. Simone’s husband, Jason, a Texan she’d met at Cornell University, brought his “bonds of steel” to bear in Carla’s healing process. Together, they formed a tight-knit makeshift family.

Then, when Bert went quiet, I asked him what he did when he wasn’t working. His voice picked up as he told me of trips he’d taken all over the world: twice a year to the Dominican Republic on business; several trips annually to Switzerland to see his family, a brother and a sister; South America; Africa; and the Caribbean, for cigar industry conventions. It was entrancing to hear of places I’d always wanted to go. And it was even more fun hearing about them from a man who had movie-star looks, maybe the character-actor vintage, and a gentle, genuine way about him.

“I’ve actually been to Europe a few times myself,” I ventured.

“Really? You mean, after your birth?”

“Yes. My grandmother took me back to Germany when I was seventeen to meet her family. Then I went to the South of France once, for pleasure, and I’ve traveled a lot for the Guggenheim.”

“Hmm,” Bert said, “that’s great. Tell me about the time your grandmother took you back to Germany. That must have been interesting.”

After spending time with people who didn’t notice important details, I was revitalized to be with Bert. Then I told him the story. And those conversations, intertwined with his remembrances, made me feel more heard and understood than I had in years.

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