His fingers rolled paper, the phone pinched between his cheek and shoulder. International calls were expensive, so August was using Skype; voice only, though, because he had no need for his grandmother to see the blunt taking form beneath his fingers, nimble from years of training with instruments. When she picked up the phone, August exhaled, starting on a second blunt.

"Oma," he greeted, the traditional nickname for grandmother rolling off his mouth easily, "Oma, guten morgen, I miss you," he said, politely, and fell silent as he worked, the second blunt settling on his knees beside the first.

“Mausi, hallo, guten nacht, how are you?" His grandmother's German was soft and melodic against his ear, a voice worn down by years of speaking gently for him. He switched sides his call was on so he could fish the lighter out from beside him as she spoke. "You are not due to call for another three days. Is everything okay?"  

"Ah... yes. I am fine." He said, hesitantly. "I have news for you, I guess. Something good." August pinched a blunt between his lips and lit the end of it, pinching it between two fingers to take a gentle inhale before he pulled it away and blew the smoke out.

"Good news could have waited three days." Suza said, into his ear, tinny and stern. She knew when he was  bullshitting her, and she saw right through it this time as well as she had for years before it.

"Do you want to hear it or not?" August grouched, "because I will make you wait three days if you wish it, or I will speak now and you can hear my good news stories and be happy for me three days in advance."

"Always the dramatic. Speak, boy. Tell me your good news story, warm this old woman's old bones. — oh, wait, let me find your grandfather. The useless old man will wish to hear it too."

"Nein." August said, hastily, before he cleared his throat and slowed down. "I mean, this... is not something Opa would like to hear right now. Trust me, Oma, break the news to him later."

"Ah. It's about a boy then." A weathered, understanding silence passed between them. August took another hit off the blunt; he sat on the front steps of the frat house, his ass on a step, his feet on the concrete path beneath him, bare, his ankles peeking out beneath athletic pants, which peeked out beneath an old, worn tank top. He smelled the gym on himself, and the blunt on the air.  

"Yes. It is a boy." August admitted. "I've a boy,  I guess. I don't know." He trailed off. He hadn't wanted this conversation to be the opening act of his bi-weekly phonecall home, but it seemed it would. Both grandparents were vaguely disappointed in his preference, and were both loud advocates for the 30-or-so-percent of his sexuality that might win him a wife.

August was musing so seriously about what wife he would be cursed with should he decide to have one; they'd have to be shorter than him, he decided, and a good cook. He could fall in love with a cook. The idea seemed distant, behind smoke of some sort, less important than it might have a week ago.

His grandmother spoke again. "You sound like your mother." August's eyes closed and he took another deep inhale off of the blunt, stretching his heels out in front of him and laying back against the steps, staring up at the night sky.

"You've told me nothing about her." August said, cooly, the blunt between his first two fingers like a cigarette now. He hadn ever wanted to try cigarettes, but anything could take him away from this moment and he would pledge his life to it.

"No, that's not true, Mausi. You know her name. You know you look like her." His grandmother scolded.

"Marie." He said, softly. "Her name is Marie. You told me you named her Marie and that she had my eyes, that is it. I'm twenty one. Haven't I the right to hear my mother's name more often?  I, — I could unseal the adoption record, Oma. I could do it."

"Ay, no, you will not." Her voice was as hard as iron. "You will not spend money on a lawyer to open a case when I will tell you now that you have asked."

"Oh." August said, quietly, an exhale, the smoke rising above his head. He pulled his knees back up, the hand with the blunt curling around them as he sat back up, his chin balanced atop a kneecap.

"Marie was... somewhat of a firey woman. You know she was nearing her thirties when she had you? — but she was just a child. She didn't want the husband she had, she was more in love with the idea of him than the actual man. You know, once, she told me she hated almost everything he did. I said to her, Marie, why do you stay with Henri if you do not love him? And she replied to me, I love who he is when he is not clipping his toenails off the side of our bed. Ha."

August listened, every word new. He had never heard stories of his mother. It pained his grandfather to speak of her, and it pained his grandmother to think she might not be enough to raise August. Even as a young boy he understood that paining his grandmother was not a price he could pay to find out about his mother.

"Why do you say I am like her?" He asked, puzzled. "I am not like that. I don't complain like that."

"Because she loved easily like you do, mausi." She tutted, and he chewed his lip. "She was married to your father for a year, and knew him only two months before they were married. They stayed together for you, you know. They claimed they were just friends raising a baby."

"My parents hated each other?"

"...  hate and love are two horns on the same goat, August. You were too young, you don't remember what it was like. They would throw things and he would leave for weeks with no note, and they would make up and send you to me so they could make up, and then she would fight and throw things and leave for weeks with no word."

"Who left first?" He asked, hoarsely, his head swimming. "Who left me first, Oma?"

"August..."

"Tell me." August's voice was firm, almost angry, slipping the blunt between his lips to pinch the bridge of his nose before he could get emotional and embarrass himself.

"Your father." His grandmother was silent for a long time. He had started on the second blunt by the time she spoke again, and his limbs felt heavy and separated from his mind by a thin layer of dust. "He married a new woman and went to another country in the EU. Your mother left a month after that. She said she was going clubbing with some friends to meet a new man and she... never came home."

"What was her voice like?" He asked, softly, closing his eyes. "I've never heard her voice. Or... I have, I just... I don't remember. I don't remember my mother's voice."

"She sung, you know. You got your music from her. She sung like an angel. She loved the church choir and American music. Her voice was deeper, I think. Velvety.  She loved to murmur as she read books. She spoke French, you know. Henri was French, but she said she could feel Deutschland in his bones, and it was why she loved him."

August swallowed hard. "What did she read?" 

"Murder mysteries. Love stories. A mix of both. All she wanted was a good romantic mystery. She loved those... trashy harlequins. The American ones that write God knows what filth in them."

"It's sex, Oma. You and I have both had plenty of it, we can stop pretending it's a scary subject now," he berated, to keep himself from spilling the wetness in his eyes. 

"Whatever." His Oma huffed. "Mausi, does it hurt you to hear about her? I... do not wish to hurt you. She did love you. She did. I know she loved you because she would light up when she held you, and  she insisted on changing you because Henri never lined your diaper up right, you know. She put you in soft onesies and called me to check on you almost fifteen times a night."

August choked out a laugh, inclining his head to balance his forehead against his knees, and dropping the joint against the concrete, beside his foot. "I'm sorry, Oma. I know you lost a daughter. I... I just want to know who I came from. Tell me again what she looked like, please."

"August, mausi, I..." she sighed. "She was... small. Short for having two tall parents; I told her it was the coffee flavored gelato but she refused to quit. She had blonde hair, straight and so thick it was always dirty-looking even when we made her brush it out and wash it in sections, you know. She had your eyes, but you've your father's jaw, Henri's nose."

When his grandmother trailed off, August took in a deep inhale through his nose. He felt a deep ache in his chest when he thought about his mother and father. "Tell me of my father." He asked, even quieter. He had never asked this before. In his mind's eye, his father was nothing but a faceless figure, lacking in real color.

"He was... stocky. Not strikingly handsome, but... he had kind eyes. Callouses from horseback riding on his palms and he worked hard, you know. Blonde hair, blue eyes,  and the summer you were born he had a hideous eyeglass tan from sleeping in the back lawn. He loved you too."

"—— but he has another family somewhere." August said, defeated. "And I bet my mother does, too. They didn't love me, please stop saying that. Loving — when you love people you don't leave them or replace them and... I would never leave the people I love like that, I couldn't, and she did."

"Does that mean you don't love me and your grandfather?" His grandmother goaded.

"Oma, that's... that's different. I didn't walk away from you, I just went to college. I'd come home if you needed me. I call you. I send you postcards." August said, defensively. It was true, though. He had left like his mother. He was like his mother.

"I suppose." She said, softly. There was an uncomfortable silence. A car drove by, and he heard someone's music from inside the house. "We should speak more another time. It hurts an old woman's heart to speak of lost children. You will call me in three days and you will tell me about this new boy of yours, this —"

"— Grant." He supplied, helpfully. "And yes, grandmother. I will."

"Mm. Yes, we will be speaking about this Grant," she said, in the voice she used to weasel gossip out of her stitch & bitch club. "You are not to drink tonight, you are to return to your room and go to sleep. If I hear from anyone that you decided the appropriate response to me telling you about your parents is to drink yourself to a stupor, I will fly down there and I will rip off your ears and make myself a pretty necklace."

"Yes grandmother." He was smiling now, ducking his head, wiping at his eyes.