Hanna drove her VW Beetle with consummate ease. She had possessed the car for so long that she could not imagine being without it. The paintwork still gleamed and her training, as a nurse, ensured that the interior was always kept clean and tidy. That caring career had been forsaken when she was on the cusp of turning fifty, but her concern for another's welfare had not been left behind and was deployed whenever it was needed and in the case of a cherished nephew only a few weeks ago. The decision had also allowed her to pursue other interests that included pottery and making some of her clothes, copying an idea seen in some fashion magazine, and buying a pattern that would set her on the way to making something that was distinctly her own.
'I won't be too long, sister!' she had called out, her hands-free link on her iPhone allowing her to speak safely. The drive from her home near Hamburg was an easy one, and she would be at her sister Carla's house in Oyten, near Bremen, in a little more than an hour.
She and her sister Carla had been wooed by the Schröder brothers, but whereas Carla had started a family of two boys and a girl, she and Lothar had remained childless, a matter brought down on them more by accident than intention. She had thrown herself into work, as a children's nurse, and drawn some comfort from that until the emotional toll over the years had persuaded her to take early retirement and pursue other interests.
But it was to be Carla's call that had aroused her nursing instincts all over again. Along with Carla's request that she came to be with her, and Jonas, her call had re-ignited her memories of the young man she had been with only a few weeks ago at an expanded Schröder family reunion weekend.
She had lost herself with him, with the artistic young man who was so strong in body, skilled in his art as many with autism were often found to be; a young man who was besotted with his aunt; a young man who had broken into her ordered world and ways as no one else had ever done before Was these how menopausal women could behave?
And now, as she took the turn that she needed off the main highway, Carla's words again came to mind.
'Jonas is withdrawn, has pulled into his shell, and has been sent home to do his work. You've helped me before, so...so do you mind doing that again?'
♥
She drove past the neatly tended properties, along tree-lined roads with houses on each side, small shops under red pantile roofs, lakes, and trees until she found the turning and saw a sprawling bungalow in a choice location that Carla and Klaus had improved over the years. It offered secluded quarters for Jonas to lead an independent life and where he worked at his craft, signwriting, which was still in demand despite computer-aided design and modern processes. Some that he was asked to work for still wanted a 'hand-made' product, a personal touch. These he produced and he also held down a job, his employers making allowances for his autism and sometimes unpredictable behavior. Work would be brought to him when he went into relapse, and to be completed in the studio that Carla and Klaus had created within a large outbuilding that also served as a garage. Jonas was often to be found asleep on the bed that was set behind a screen wall that had been covered with images of his work. His small quarters also included a shower room and worktop with kitchen cupboards underneath. He came and went as she pleased, but Carla always insisted that she was told what his plans were, or he left a note.
Hanna gave a light toot on the horn, but it still sounded too loud for the quiet surroundings she now found herself in, more modest than the home she and Lothar had made, near Hamburg, but homely and welcoming all the same.
Carla was seen taking a few steps down from the front terrace of the house before she rushed out to greet her. Jonas was not to be seen.
'I'm so glad you're here!'
'And I want to help...to help you both if I can,' Hanna smiled in reply but her mind was possessed by where Jonas was. After what she had discovered and shared with him she longed to see the young man again.
She slung her ethnic patterned shawl coat around her shoulders, over a black and free-hanging blouse. It accompanied black cropped denim slacks and fashionable ankle boots, a heavy pendant necklace, with its thick chain, hanging down over the unmistakable curve of her breasts. Jonas had an eye for what she wore; something she remembered the last time they had been together and that he had made something of, a sketch of her face that he had scrawled onto a napkin as the family had been seated around a table at a lakeside restaurant.
It was how Hanna had expressed her concerns for Jonas, and how he was behaving, that had alerted her to what may have been the cause of his withdrawal into himself and his work. What she had done and shared with him, the suddenness of its discovery and then the almost brutal ending of her times in his arms, and on his bed, when he had stayed with her and Lothar, were the cause of his mental fragility now.
He missed her or he had stopped doing what she had seen.
♥
Carla chattered, they both did, but the purpose of her being there did not keep Hanna silent for long.
'What's happened that is different from other times?'
'It may sound crazy to you, but spend some time with him, find a way to draw him out. He was happy for a few days after we were all together, then he went into his shell. Jonas seems to be besotted with you and the days we all spent walking...being together as a family. I caught him looking at the screen of his iPhone, when I was cleaning his studio and wondered why he took so long...as if it was one special picture that he was looking at.'
'It is special, to him, It's a picture of me, taken on one of the walks....' She had been photographed wearing a pair of flattering black hiking shorts and a pale orange tank top, the ribbed cotton fabric shaping her breasts. It had not been too tight but her nipples were just to be seen pressing against it.
'I remember...yes!'
Hanna chose to confess to what the picture had provoked Jonas to do. She reached across the space between them and gripped her sister's hand. 'I tried to settle him, in the time we had before I brought him over to you and you left the others. Yes, I chose to settle him...and his obsession with me and what I was wearing that day.'
The words hung in the air between them.
'How...how do you mean?'
Hanna clenched her lips and said nothing. Her answering look at Carla soon had the reality of that time drop into Carla's mind like a stone hitting the stilled surface of a pond.
'You mean...?' Carla couldn't utter the words.
'Forgive me, but I chose to help him with his obsession and in the way that he wanted. That was clear from how he behaved that morning, looking at a picture of me and touching himself. I caught him doing that when I brought him breakfast, in his room, that last morning.' Hanna paused and met her sister's continuing look upon her, bewilderment in her eyes. 'I wasn't a nurse helping a patient...I was a woman with a clever but damaged young man who needed my help.'
She kept from saying 'a handsome young man, well made and unlike anyone else she had been taken to.'
'I didn't dare to think what had brought the change in him,' Carla admitted, speaking softly, as she took in what her sister had openly confessed to. An attractive and caring woman had brought different experiences to her son. 'We can never speak of this to anyone else, no one!'
'No, and I know that sis, and as long as we can help to mend him or to help him through, then that is what we should think of doing.'
'But in this way?' Carla sighed, her look at Hanna unwavering. 'You care enough about him to be here again and with me?'
'Yes, and now I had better say hello and see just what will mend him again. He is not so lost in himself, or his condition so bad, that he needs me all of the time. He must find friends...girlfriends most of all.'
'He has one, but she is frightened to be with him in this mood.'
'Then I will talk to him and help Jonas on the way to changing him, to reassure him that it can be found with others and...and not to think of me in that way...to touch himself.' Hanna stood up and put her shawl coat over the back of the kitchen chair she had been sitting on. 'Let me go to him, now, okay?'
Clara sighed and she was seen to shiver as Carla's confession sank in. Her son had taken a life-changing step and it had been her sister who had shown him the way. Just how was she to deal with that?
'Yes, and I will go out for a while and do what I intended to do tomorrow. What you have told me has shaken me.'
'I understand,' Hanna said softly, considerately. 'Crazy or unusual treatments sometimes have a way of helping. I will see if that is so again.'
'Thank you' aren't the right words...are they?'
'No, but 'I understand' are.'
'I am trying to do that.'