The Family Clause

by Jonas Hassen Khemiri

  Eventually, the four-year-old falls asleep. She is lying with her head on the grandfather’s chest. She takes short breaths. The grandfather looks down at her. She is so like his son. So like his daughter. He is himself, thirty years ago. He lies perfectly still. If he doesn’t move, maybe there is a chance he can start over from the beginning. He closes his eyes. For the first time in several years, he manages to sleep through the night without the TV.

  * * *

  When a girlfriend wakes up, it’s seven thirty in the morning. She can hardly believe it. She checks her phone. She shakes her head. She has a feeling that it was all just a strange dream. That feeling is strengthened by how bright it is outside. She gets up from the sofa and looks out. The treetops are white. The branches are white. The footpaths are white. The tree trunks are white on one side, as though someone without much patience wanted to decorate them with white powder.

  She hears voices from the kitchen. For a few wonderful seconds, she knows that her boyfriend is home. He had a moment of madness, spent a few hours driving around, forgot to charge his phone, and now he’s back in the kitchen with the kids. She goes out into the kitchen. Hello, Mummy, the four-year-old shouts. Grandpa is here! The one-year-old is sitting in his plastic high chair, eating cornflakes with his hand. How long have you been awake? the mother asks. Where’s Daddy? asks the four-year-old.

  * * *

  A grandfather and a grandchild have hands that smell like sugary popcorn when they wake at dawn. They tiptoe out into the kitchen to avoid waking the mother. When the one-year-old starts whimpering, the grandfather tiptoes back to get him. The four-year-old shows him where the nappies and wet wipes are. What are wet wipes? the grandfather asks. You don’t know what wet wipes are? It’s like paper, but wet paper, the four-year-old explains. The grandfather changes the one-year-old’s full-to-bursting nappy and sits him down in the high chair in the kitchen. He opens the door to the living room to ask what the children usually have for breakfast, but there is something about the dark circles beneath the girlfriend’s eyes and the way she is clutching her mobile phone that stops him from waking her. Instead, he goes back to the kitchen and takes out everything from the fridge. He takes out ketchup and butter and cheese, he takes out tomatoes and cucumber and bread and what the four-year-old says is milk, but which says oat drink on the carton. Wow, what a lot of breakfasts, says the four-year-old. Tell me what you want and I’ll make it for you, says the grandfather. Where’s Daddy? the four-year-old asks. Do you want bread with cheese or butter? asks the grandfather.

  A grandfather who is a father should really go home and change his clothes, but when the children’s mother wakes he realises that she needs him there. She’s a nervous wreck. She wanders around in a dressing gown and an incredibly thin nightdress, not giving a single thought to the fact that he is sitting on the sofa and can see her body whenever she bends down to wipe up food from the floor. No matter what she is doing, she has her phone in her hand. The grandfather reassures her. He explains that there is no reason to be worried. My son would never do anything stupid, he says. What do you mean, stupid? says the girlfriend. I mean, says the grandfather. He’s a good man. A decent man. An honest man. Maybe you think he’s with a prostitute? Or that he spent the night with a lover? I don’t. I’m sure he’ll be home any minute now. The girlfriend stares at him. She seems calmer. Thanks for your support, she says. No problem, says the grandfather. Is there any coffee? Make your own coffee, she says. Did he hear her right? He chooses to forgive her. She isn’t herself. She is full of aggression that she can’t control. Poor thing. She can’t have been through much in life if her boyfriend deciding to have a bit of fun and forgetting to get in touch has this much of an impact on her.

  * * *

  A girlfriend who is a mother stays home from work to look after the kids, and tells the playschool that the four-year-old is ill. She doesn’t have the energy to go out today, but it’s also impossible to stay put, because everything just reminds her that he isn’t here. Let’s go sledging, she says to the four-year-old, in a chirpy voice that grates worse than an untuned piano. Her hope is that the grandfather will get the hint and leave them in peace. She doesn’t have the energy to take care of two children and a big baby. But the grandfather isn’t the kind of man who understands hints. He wouldn’t know a hint if it jumped up and bit him on the nose. When she says that she and the children are going to the park, the grandfather starts putting on his coat, too. Are you coming with us, Grandpa? the four-year-old asks. No, I’m sure Grandpa wants to go home, says the girlfriend. It’s no trouble, says the grandfather. I’m happy to come along. I’ve got nothing better to do.

  She hears herself sigh. But, if truth be told, leaving the flat is actually easier with two adult pairs of hands. The grandfather grabs the children’s gloves that have fallen behind the yellow cabinet in the hallway, he helps the four-year-old to pull her overalls over her winter boots. Is this coming, too? he asks, picking up a helmet from the floor. Yes please, she says, putting the helmet onto the four-year-old. That’s my bike helmet, the four-year-old says. My real sledging helmet is at playschool. Do you have two helmets? the grandfather asks. Mmm. But the other one is black. And round. The grandfather and the four-year-old go out into the stairwell, they share the load, the grandfather carries the snowracer, the four-year-old the accompanying straps. Are you hurt? the four-year-old asks. No, says the grandfather. My feet are just a bit sore. It’s nothing serious.

  * * *

  A grandfather who was once a father hasn’t stood at the top of a sledging hill for at least thirty years. As they leave the stairwell, he has to squint to stop his newly operated-on eyes from being blinded by all of the white. They step out into a new world. No snowploughs have been through yet. There are large, ungritted snowdrifts on the footpath. The one-year-old sits in his little sledge, and the four-year-old climbs onto the snowracer. They pull the children towards the hill, and all they can hear is the crunch of their footsteps and the silence that settles over the city when the first snow takes it by surprise, when the white padding insulates the world and makes it feel like you are wandering around in a soundproof booth. It’s so beautiful, he says. It is, she says. They come to a halt in the clump of trees. They spot the female deer first. Then two males and a baby in the distance. Both the four-year-old and the one-year-old are spellbound by the spindly brown animals standing in the midst of all the white. Do you see them? the mother whispers. Are they a moose family? the four-year-old whispers. It’s a deer family, the mother whispers. When one of them moves, they all move, bounding up the slope. Just a few seconds later, they’re gone. I once saw twenty-seven snails, the grandchild tells her grandfather. Twenty-seven? Wow. Where was this? Over there on the steps, the four-year-old says, pointing to the stone staircase. I was with Daddy. It had been raining. Snails really like the rain. Where is Daddy? He’ll be here soon, says the grandfather. Tell me about the other animals you’ve seen. I’ve seen all the animals on earth, says the four-year-old. I’ve seen rabbits and cats and dogs and dinosaurs and once when I was on the way home from Noa’s with Daddy we saw a squirrel that was completely dead. Completely dead? says the grandfather. She nods. Completely completely dead.

  The sledging hill is on the other side of the trees. The first run is slow, because the snow needs to be compacted, but it quickly speeds up. The four-year-old goes down alone, first on the snowracer and then on the sledge, then on the green bum board. The one-year-old sits happily in his sledge, watching. The snot on his upper lip is glistening. Without pausing to think, the grandfather reaches down and wipes it away with a finger, shaking it off into the snow. It’s a movement from the past, something he did automatically in another life, but it now feels both alien and familiar. When he looks up, he sees that the mother is watching him with something that almost resembles warmth.

  Grandpa? the four-year-old shouts. Aren’t you going to sledge? I don’t have a helmet, he says. Do you want
to borrow mine? I think it’s a bit small, he says. Do you know what he’s up to? the mother asks. Who? Your son, she says. Did you ever do anything like this to your children? He thinks. Did you know that I had two daughters? She nods. He clears his throat. I lost contact with my first daughter. What happened? she says. Life happened, he says. First life. Then death.

  He stands quietly. He wants to say that it was all the mother’s fault. His first wife didn’t set any boundaries. She gave the daughter whatever she wanted. She didn’t place any demands on her. And then what happened happened. He, on the other hand, did everything for his daughter. He went over to see her fairly regularly, at least once every other year. To begin with, anyway. He often took presents with him. On three occasions, he even invited her over here. She stayed with his new family. He paid for her flights. He provided all of her food. The first time went well. The second time was fine. Even if she did turn into a stroppy teenager when he forbade her from going to the park in a ridiculously short black-and-white skirt. By the third time, they hadn’t seen one another in several years, and when she stepped into the arrivals hall, her eyes were dead. She spoke too quickly. She clutched her handbag. She caught a cold on the second day. Her nose was running at the breakfast table. By lunch, she had vanished. He went into town and found her down by Sergels torg. What are you doing here? he asked. Nothing, she said. We’re going home, he said, taking hold of her arm. They ate dinner. His ex-wife tried to fill the silence around the table with questions about the architecture in Marseille. The daughter answered monosyllabically. Her hands shook as she lifted her glass of water. She said she had flu. She went to lie down on the mattress they had made up for her in the son’s bedroom. She lay awake for several hours. The father looked in on her through the window of the glazed balcony. She was shaking. Her body was flailing around in bed. She looked like a jumping jack. At first, he thought it was a shivering fit, but then he noticed that she was scratching. Her arms, her scalp, her thighs. She clawed and tore at herself, and the son woke up. He sat up in bed and stared at her, amused at first, as though he thought she was joking, like she was playing charades or air guitar. Then he looked scared. The father who wasn’t yet a grandfather understood. He had seen similar things down by the Tunnel of Sighs. He went in and held her tight. He called her mother and explained. Her mother denied it. She said that the daughter had had a few problems, but she was clean now, she hadn’t touched a needle in over six months. She’s coming down right now, in my son’s bedroom, he said. The mother hung up. She didn’t think he had any right to be criticising either her or her daughter. During this time, the daughter had started to scream, she was writhing in agony, she threw up bile and had diarrhoea, and when they got her onto her feet a dark shadow of her body was left behind on the mattress. They took her to A&E, they wanted to check her into rehab, but she wanted to get home as quickly as possible, she said she was following a detox programme there, she had a sponsor and a coach and she didn’t want to miss the next meeting. He accompanied her to the airport. He made her promise never, ever, ever to take anything again. She promised. He said that drugs destroy bodies and if you keep going like this you’ll die prematurely. She promised. He said that if she did drugs again, she was no longer his daughter. What difference would that make? she said. They said goodbye. It was the last time he ever saw her. Or the last time he saw her and thought of her as his daughter, at least. Over the years that followed, they had no contact whatsoever. An acquaintance saw the daughter coming out of a methadone clinic. Another saw her, or a girl who looked just like her, jump into a red car that was waiting on Boulevard Michelet, near the stadium. He tried to make her stop by not getting in touch. Then he travelled down there to confront her. He stood outside her door and waited. When she stepped out into the sunshine, he couldn’t believe his eyes. She had aged thirty years since he last saw her. Her legs were covered in red spider’s webs and hollows that looked like scars from cigarette burns. He spent an entire day following her. She met a younger girl with short hair who handed her a tote bag that looked like it contained drugs. She went into a cinema so that she could inject in peace and quiet. She had coffee with a bearded man who may well have been her pimp. When she was finally alone, he revealed himself. He forced her into a taxi and drove her home to her mother. She didn’t put up a fight. She knew the game was up. He followed her upstairs. He told her mother everything. He said where she had been, who she had done business with, he told the mother to look in the tote bag if she wanted proof she was still doing drugs. I’ve been completely clean for five years, said the daughter. Have you been stalking my daughter? said the mother. Our daughter, he said, turning the tote bag upside down. Books and DVDs scattered across the floor. The drugs were gone. She had thrown the needles away. How dare you disappear from our lives and then show up like this to stalk my daughter? said the mother. You’re ten years too late, said the daughter. It’s never too late, said the father. I’m ill, said the daughter. She said the name of the syndrome. The father said words he will never be able to take back. He left the apartment without saying goodbye to the woman who was no longer his daughter.

  * * *

  A girlfriend who is a mother stands at the top of a sledging hill and watches a four-year-old lifting both feet into the air to make the bum board gain speed. Look how super-fast I am, she shouts, travelling five metres at a time before falling, laughing, into the snow. The children’s grandfather is standing next to her. He suddenly mentions his first daughter. What really happened between you? she asks. Life happened, he says. First life. Then death.

  He stands quietly. She waits for him to continue, but no more comes out. He opens his mouth several times, but stops short. The wind whistles. Did you have a good relationship with your father? the girlfriend asks in an attempt to change the topic. No reply. I did all I could, says the grandfather. I regret nothing. Then he says no more. She turns to face him. His lips are trembling. He looks so infinitely old. The four-year-old notices that something is wrong. Are you cold, Grandpa? Yes, Grandpa is cold, she says. We’ll head home soon. Go down one last time. Three more times because I’ve been three years old, says the four-year-old. Okay, three more. No, four, because I’m four. No, three more and then we’ll go home, the mother shouts.

  She checks her phone. No missed calls. No messages. She closes her eyes. She takes a deep breath and prays to God, Allah, Buddha, Zeus, Thor, Oden and Tupac that the car will be in the parking space when they get back.

  * * *

  A grandfather has just helped his grandchild hang up her damp clothes on the towel rail in the big bathroom. Her overalls, socks, sweater and long johns, they’re all hanging there. Everything but my knickers and t-shirt! the four-year-old shouts happily. The mother has made lunch, fried macaroni and Thai vegetables in coconut sauce. The grandfather likes sweet things, but not sweet pasta sauces; pasta sauces should contain mince or chicken, chopped tomatoes and bay leaves. Still, he does his best to eat. Afterwards, he sits down in front of the TV with the four-year-old. They watch an animated film about dinosaurs. Littlefoot goes on a long walk with his dinosaur friends to rescue a father who is trapped beneath a log near to a fire-breathing volcano. The four-year-old gravely explains that the sharp-toothed dinosaurs eat the other dinosaurs. The mother goes into the bedroom to put the one-year-old down for his nap. He had almost dozed off into his bowl at the dining table, he rubbed his eyes and his head drooped like a sleepy horse. Now he seems ready to do anything but sleep. They hear him shrieking, laughing, jumping up and down, and, from time to time, after he has been quiet for a while, mooing like a cow. Eventually, the bedroom falls silent. The mother tiptoes out. She closes the door, a few millimetres at a time.

  I’m going shopping, she whispers. He should sleep for at least an hour. Probably an hour and a half. The grandfather nods and gives her a thumbs-up. It is only once she has kissed the four-year-old goodbye and disappeared into the stairwell that the grandfather wonders why she needs t
o go shopping now. Their kitchen is jam-packed with food. And didn’t his son go shopping yesterday? Why can’t she just use what they already have? Littlefoot is covering himself in stinkweed so that the sharptooths won’t be able to smell him, says the four-year-old, pointing to the screen. Smart, says the grandfather.