Sprachstudium (Language Studies)
The leaves fell late that autumn, and Sheila and Harold fought over who would have to rake.
Sheila drove straight to class after work. She parked under a streetlamp and sat in her car while she unwrapped her sandwich and ate dinner from a brown paper bag. By the time she got home, it was dark.
On windy days, the leaves on the front lawn drifted into the yard next door. Harold walked through wet leaves when he brought in the mail. They stuck to his shoes and ended up all over the house. Sheila didn’t make eye contact with the neighbors when she saw them in their driveway.
“Why learn German at your age?” her mother asked, calling from California.
Ich bin nicht alt.
“Why learn anything at any age?” Sheila answered.
* * *
Sheila baked pies—chocolate pecan and pumpkin—and brought one over to the next-door neighbors. In the end, the neighbors raked the leaves themselves.
Danke schön.
* * *
“How are the German lessons going?” Rosemary asked as she pulled the turkey out of the oven. She used to live in the house next door. When she and her husband divorced, they sold the house and left the neighborhood. Her new house was bigger, and the kitchen looked new.
Ich habe Hunger.
“Better than I expected,” Sheila said. Then she carried the breadbasket to the table.
Thanksgiving plans had been decided late. Sheila had promised her mother that they’d go to California, but Harold hadn’t accrued any vacation days at his new job. Then Rosemary invited them over. She wanted them to meet her new fiancé.
Paul carved the turkey while Harold poured the wine. Sheila helped herself to two different kinds of potato and nothing else. Harold looked pointedly at her plate, but she pretended not to notice.
“Do you have a gardener who rakes your leaves?” she asked Paul.
Over pie, Rosemary asked Harold about his new job. Sheila put her hand on his knee under the table.
“It’s fine,” he said. Then he removed Sheila’s hand from his leg and carried his plate into the kitchen.
The drive home was long, and Sheila fell asleep. She was stiff when she woke up and her neck hurt. Harold had to help her out of the car when they pulled into the garage.
* * *
After some discussion, they decided not to get a Christmas tree that year. The boxes of ornaments were in the basement, and everything had gotten jumbled down there when they replaced the hot water heater the previous winter.
“Too much of a hassle,” Harold said. “Who is it for anyway?”
“Why do you find the simplest things so hard?” Sheila’s mom called her to ask.
* * *
Harold left for work before Sheila woke up most mornings. Sometimes they left each other notes.
“Running low on coffee.”
“The light on the back porch is burned out. Lightbulbs? In the garage?”
He didn’t tell her about his company’s holiday party until two days before the event. The party was the same night as her German final. But it wasn’t as though the class counted for anything, he reminded her. She had a degree already, and passing a German course didn’t matter. She looked out at the bare trees in their front yard and told him that she’d have to miss the party.
“Why do you make everything about you?” he asked, pulling on his shoes.
Mein Leben ist sehr klein.
“I don’t do it on purpose,” she answered, but he was already gone. The door closed loudly behind him.
From the window she could see the family across the street putting out Christmas decorations. She pushed aside a small stack of bills on the kitchen table and set down her vocabulary flashcards.
Die Stadt.
Das Haus.
There was laughter across the street as a teenage girl pretended to ride a wooden lawn reindeer like a horse. A boy climbed into a wooden sleigh and shouted “ho, ho, ho” in his loud, but still childish, voice. There was shouting, then silence, as the decorations were pushed into place and abandoned on the grass.
Die Familie.
Sheila put down her flashcards and watched her neighbor climb a ladder and hang a pre-lit star over the front porch. A woman stood on the sidewalk and directed the placement of the star. “More to the left,” she called out.
Der Ehemann. (“der Mann”)
Die Ehefrau. (“die Frau”)
She pronounced each word out loud in the empty house. Grammar rules and vocabulary lists made everything seem easy.
“I never could understand what you were getting at,” her mother once said.
* * *
The light was just beginning to fade outside, and Sheila was starting to worry when the front door opened. Harold had brought home dinner. She met him at the door and took the steaming bags out of his hands. When she came back from the kitchen, she saw how tired he looked.
“Sometimes I think we’ve just run out of words,” she said while he bent down to take off his shoes.
They ate dinner mostly in silence. The wind was picking up and leafless branches tapped against the kitchen window. Harold read the takeout menu that had been slipped in with his order while Sheila packed up the leftovers. The German flashcards were pushed to the corner of the table.
Wie sagt man …
Harold got up from the table and stood to look out the front window in the living room. His footsteps, socked feet upon the carpeted floor, were noiseless. Sheila joined him, and together they watched the evening shadows grow longer and darker while the glow of twinkling lights from across the street spilled into their yard.
Elizabeth Erbeznik is an educator with a PhD in Comparative Literature. Her fiction has appeared in Best Small Fictions 2020, EcoTheo Review, and Fiction Southeast. She lives with her family in Austin, TX.