Free Home Leave: A Novel by Brittani Sonnenberg Page B

girlfriend. If he calls at night, Becky is not to pick up the phone. Elise knows it’s a game of Russian roulette, that her dalliance is bound to be discovered. What a pitiful thrill, she occasionally thinks. I’m not even having an affair. But she loves the feeling of hurtling misbehavior, of irrational rebellion, even if she can’t quite pin down what or whom she’s rebelling against. And so, when Chris announces a business trip, Elise’s first response is a slow-spreading smile, imagining where she will wind up, picturing starched sand dunes in midmorning light.
    *  *  *
    For the past two days, and for an indulgent two more, Elise is staying in a small bed-and-breakfast in the Poconos. She wakes to a fresh pine breeze and saunters over to the main house for breakfast. The only other guests are a fidgety old couple celebrating their golden anniversary, according to Elise’s eavesdropping. Over French toast, Elise slowly reads the New York Times , thoughtfully left on each table by their perfectly invisible hosts.
    After all those months surrounded by German, Elise is still thrilled by the English language surrounding her, even though they’ve been back in the States for more than a year. Since repatriating, she has taken to reading in an entirely new fashion. Growing up in Mississippi, brains were the equivalent of crooked teeth, and about the time Elise got braces she also picked up a laugh that put people at ease, reassured them they never had to feel intimidated in her presence. There were smart girls in her class, but their fates at school dances were a clear enough warning, and the last time Elise was back in Vidalia, she’d run into Macy Lane Cargill, who’d won every spelling bee, working in the local library. So that was where intelligence got you below the Mason-Dixon Line: shelving cookbooks and shushing teenagers.
    But here in the Northeast it is different. The women read, have fierce opinions about politics, and cancel their husbands out at the polls. Elise has to admit she likes the lifestyle section of the paper better than the front page, but she has begun to feel an unprecedented hunger for the news. Part of it, perhaps, is simply being back in her country, reading about her president, feeling permission to feel invested again.
    It is a relief, too, to be away from the German criticism of everything American: the pettiness of Hollywood, the rampant consumerism, Reaganomics, the Iran-Contra affair—even the American habit of smiling, as Elise had learned over one particularly painful dinner with Chris’s boss and his wife, back in Hamburg.
    “Let me ask you something,” Frau Müller had said, as the men had begun talking business. “Why are Americans always smiling, when there’s nothing to smile about? Like right now. Why are you smiling? I’ve never seen you any other way. Are you honestly so happy, all the time?”
    Elise had grinned more widely and laughed her most nonchalant laugh, shrugged, and changed the subject, a reaction that only confirmed Frau Müller’s assumptions, she realized afterwards, with consternation. As dessert came, Elise considered the accusation. Did she really smile all the time? Of course she wasn’t always happy. What an insulting suggestion. But how did you go about mounting a rebuttal? She glanced at Chris. He was beaming at his boss, nodding his head at an unfolding anecdote, and his expression suddenly struck Elise as idiotic.
    Feigning a headache, Elise had left the dinner early and gone home. Lying in bed, a hand on her stomach—she was three months along with Leah at that point—Elise had sworn to herself that she wouldn’t force her child to be cheerful. What had Ada always said? “I want to see that frown turned upside down. Before I count to five. One. Two. That’s better.” After that dinner with the Müllers, Elise had tried to be cognizant of when she was smiling, and why. Ultimately, it was an exhausting, punishing exercise, and she was