The Therapist

by Helene Flood

  So we get into Annika’s Honda. But before we leave, Annika calls the patient I’m supposed to see this afternoon, as well as those with whom I have appointments booked for tomorrow and Wednesday. I am grateful not to have to do it myself.

  We park outside Margarethe’s house in Røa. I wait beside the car as Annika bends in the wing mirrors; I feel nervous, don’t want to walk up to the house alone. In the end Annika goes first, taking the narrow path through the front garden. She walks up the stone steps to the front door and rings the doorbell. I stand behind her, fighting the impulse to duck down and hide. A few moments pass, and then the door is opened by a woman I’ve never seen before, wearing a green blouse and black trousers in a glossy, expensive-looking fabric that hangs so elegantly they must be tailor-made.

  “Yes?” she says.

  “I’m Annika Lathus,” Annika says. “This is Sara, Sigurd’s wife.”

  She gestures towards me. I stand there, feeling small and crumpled. The woman at the door doesn’t give us her name, but opens the door so we can enter.

  “She’s in the living room,” she says as she closes the door behind us.

  I’m not surprised to see a stranger in Margrethe’s house. She’s always surrounded by people. Her husband, Sigurd’s father, died when Sigurd and his brother were very young. I know little about him, because whenever the family speak of him they do so using stock phrases and lists of values: “He was fearless, he was so honourable, he was a man of principle.” Every now and again these lists of values will be accompanied by anecdotes intended to prove them: the story of how he sailed to England alone; the story of how he could have earned vast sums of money on the stock exchange after he received a speculative tip-off, but chose not to act on the information, and so on. There is never anything that humanises him, nothing of any use if you want to understand the kind of person he was, what he was like to live with. In photographs he smiles, appears mild-mannered and friendly, and I’ve often wondered whether his unknowability stems from the fact that he was a gentle, lovable soul who ended up overshadowed by Margrethe’s loud and colourful iron will. She never married again, but she doesn’t seem in the slightest bit lonely. She has so many acquaintances, goes to so many parties – it’s exotic and disconcerting at the same time. Sometimes she visits the homes of celebrities, has friends who associate with the royal family, but her circle is forever changing. I once asked Sigurd whether he thought it was a bad sign that among all the people in Margrethe’s circle only a few ever chose to stick around. He had not enjoyed being asked that.

  She is standing next to the living room window when we come in, looking out into the garden. She turns to face us, lifts a hand and waves. She looks devastated. Sigurd was her favourite.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hi,” she says.

  We stand there, looking at each other. There’s something familiar, I think, in the shattered eyes; the quivering line I’ve never seen before that now tugs at either side of her mouth. As I look at her now, I feel a connection to her I have never felt before. I have always wanted to get to know Margrethe – get close to her – and now that I feel I’m finally doing so, it’s too late.

  I lift a hand, place it on her arm, feel that she’s nothing but skin and bones and that the arm inside her blouse is shaking. We stand this way for a while, as Annika and Margrethe’s companion watch us, awkward and helpless.

  “Thank you for coming,” Margrethe says.

  “I asked them to tell you,” I say.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  I withdraw my arm. Margrethe hugs herself.

  “I don’t know what he was doing at Krokskogen,” I say. “He was supposed to go to Norefjell. He was supposed to leave early. I don’t understand it.”

  Margrethe shakes her head, holding herself and trembling. She does not want to hear any of this.

  “Harald’s on his way,” she says. “He and his girlfriend are flying out of San Diego this evening.”

  “That’s good,” I say.

  I’ve only met Harald a couple of times, during a summer when he was in Norway for a few weeks. He’s like Sigurd, only taller, a little louder. And he has reddish hair, whereas Sigurd’s is chestnut brown; he looks like a copy of Sigurd where the printer ran out of ink halfway through. He has a girlfriend now, Lana Mei. She’s Chinese American, and somewhat of a genius according to Margarethe – she has a doctoral degree in physics and a research position at a private energy company that pays her huge sums of money. Margrethe told Sigurd and me about her this summer at Hankø – I remember where we were sitting on the veranda, how I had picked at the edge of the chequered red tablecloth as she spoke, feeling grey and boring compared with the incredible Lana Mei.

  Margrethe rocks back and forth where she stands. The woman in the green blouse goes across to her and places her hands on her shoulders, whispers something to her, but Margrethe shakes her away. She straightens her neck and looks out of the window, and for a while we simply stand and look at her, all three of us. Then she turns to face us, appearing to have recollected herself.

  “Can I offer you something to drink?” she says. “We have coffee, tea, water and whisky. And I have an open bottle of white wine somewhere, I believe.”

  So there we sit, each with our glass of water, Annika and I. Margrethe, unsurprisingly, has opted for whisky. She probably had one before we arrived, too, but she’s not drunk – it isn’t that. There’s just something old-fashioned about the entire scene, Margrethe a tragic actress from the ’40s; Greta Garbo, Veronica Lake. The whisky seems fitting.

  “We’ll have to figure out what to do about the house,” she says. “I don’t want to live there, but Harald may, in the long term. He could buy you out.”

  “I’m sure we’ll figure it out,” I say.

  “But you’re welcome to that Gundersen fellow,” Margarethe says. “With his cigarettes and dirty running shoes.”

  I say nothing. I make eyes at Annika, trying to signal that she should interrupt, us, but unable to say anything myself.

  “And at Krokskogen,” Margrethe says, looking down into her glass. “Would you believe it, at Krokskogen?”

  “So Lana Mei is coming, too?” I say.

  “Yes.”

  “Will this be the first time you’ve met her?”

  Margrethe examines her glass, turning it in her hand. Then she looks up at me, suddenly irritated.

  “You know it will be, Sara.”

  I look down.

  “Maybe we should head home, Sara,” Annika says. “Let Margrethe get some rest.”

  Before I leave, I hug her. She’s stiff and wiry as steel rods in my arms. The woman in the green blouse sees us out. She still hasn’t told us her name.

  In the car on the way home, Annika says:

  “You know, she doesn’t have any right to the house.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re married to Sigurd. You’re entitled to stay in the house pending distribution of his estate. And anyway, you’ll inherit half of whatever is his.”

  “I don’t intend to deny Margrethe anything to do with the house.”

  “No, I know,” Annika says as she pulls away from a junction, “but just so you know, you’re entitled to do whatever you want, from a legal point of view.”

  I look out of the window, fiddling with the tiny diamond Sigurd gave me. It meant so much to me at the time, and I’m trying to feel something for it now, but can’t seem to summon any emotion. Is it still important? I have no idea.

  “Sara,” Annika says. “I’ve been thinking about your patients.”

  “Yes,” I say, but I’m distracted. I consider the landscape beyond the car, the rows of terraced houses and gardens and melting snow.

  “If they provide consent, you can give their names to the police.”

  “Gundersen can’t make me do that,” I say. I feel like a truculent child, clinging to what’s mine, what I’m entitled to.

  “I know,” Annika say
s. “But it wouldn’t hurt to ask for their consent, would it? To show the police that you’re co-operating.”

  She drives down towards the ring road, and we soon pass the turn-off to the area where we grew up. I don’t want to think about it; can’t imagine calling Vera, Christoffer and Trygve and asking for permission to pass their names to the police. I have no idea what I’d say should they ask why I need to do such a thing. And anyway, I don’t want to do it. Gundersen has no right to make that kind of request.

  “I could do it for you, if you like,” Annika says. “Call your patients. Ask them whether it’s O.K.”

  I lean my head against the cold car window; the cool pane is soothing against my temple. I’m so tired.

  “Fine,” I say. “As you wish.”

  We say very little for the rest of the journey.

  Annika stays with me until nine o’clock. When she’s gone, I sit on the sofa with my mobile. Maybe I should call my father? I wouldn’t even have to say anything – or at least, nothing about this. Just the sound of his voice might soothe me – just to hear that he’s there as usual, doing his thing, the same as always. But I don’t know. Perhaps it wouldn’t calm me at all. I scroll through the list of calls on my mobile, see the incoming call from Sigurd on Friday at 09:38. Ask myself, did he know that I was busy with a patient then?

  There are the many unanswered calls I made to him that weekend, which stop on Sunday evening. Since then, Margrethe and Annika and Vera have called, while I’ve only called patients to cancel. Five of the patients Annika has called for me. I haven’t heard anything from Julie, nor from Thomas or Jan Erik.

  Before I go to bed, I return Vera’s call.

  “Yes?” she says when she answers the phone, quickly, a little too efficient.

  “Hello,” I say, “it’s Sara Lathus. You left a message on my answering machine?”

  “Yes,” she says, “yeah, it wasn’t anything in particular.”

  “Are you sure?” I say. “You said it was something urgent.”

  “Yeah, well, it was just the same old stuff,” she says. “It’s no big deal. See you on Friday as usual?”

  For two long seconds I stay silent as her question hangs there between us. It occurs to me that there will be days after today, weeks after this week – so much time in which I’ll continue as a therapist, writing up notes, arranging appointments, intervening, attempting to heal young people’s anxiety and depression and discontent. I have thousands of ordinary days ahead of me. That’s what’s most terrifying – that there will be normal, grey days, in which I’ll be expected to work as if nothing has happened. Such an awful, vast number of them.

  “Yes,” I say. “See you on Friday.”

  When I’ve hung up, I think that I can always cancel. If, in four days’ time, it turns out I still can’t function.

  The train is swift, almost soundless. I watch the landscape that rushes past, wondering whether we’ll head into the mountains soon. It’s taking so long, this journey through village after village – if only it would go faster, hurry up. Perhaps it’s the coffee in the paper cup before me, but I’ve felt this same sense of impatience all week at work, thought that everything to do with my colleagues and patients and everything else I should have sorted out but haven’t managed to get done no longer matters – I’m going to Bergen. Ronja’s coming, too – the whole gang is getting back together, and that’s all that matters now. I’m finally on my way and I can’t believe how lucky I am – for four entire days, I’ll be free. The train shoots through the landscape like an arrow and still it isn’t fast enough for me. Five hours remain until I’ll be there; I check my watch every ten minutes.

  “I’ve made up the sofa bed and stocked the fridge with beer, so now all you have to do is get here!” Benedicte writes to me in a text. I check my watch again, still five hours, and I have to laugh at myself – what am I, fourteen years old? – I’m so excited that I just can’t wait. It’s almost two years since I moved to Oslo. Sigurd and I have a small apartment in Pilestredet. He’s studying, I’m working at an institution for young drug users. I’ve been spat on. I’ve been called a whore and a dictator and a Nazi pig. I try to take it for what it is: justified but misplaced anger from young people who have had more than their fair share of the crap doled out by life. I squeeze the chain Sigurd gave me between my fingers, relying on it – at least I have Sigurd, who loves me. I cry in the bathroom only when absolutely necessary, cover the tracks of my tears with make-up afterwards, and carry on. Am professional. I don’t know any of my colleagues, who know each other, who face off against each other in the trenches of their prof-essional battles. I don’t belong to any side, but that’s O.K. Every morning I sit by myself on a rickety local train for half an hour, and then it’s yet another half an hour on the way back, reading books, reading newspapers, until finally I’m home. Sigurd is almost never home. His thesis is due in a month, he practically lives at the university. The cold apartment in Pilestredet is always empty, but that’s where I spend my time. I don’t know anyone in Oslo. Why don’t you give Julie a call, Sigurd would suggest at first. He’s so keen on Julie, simply can’t understand why I won’t be her friend. Annika has had her second baby, it’s impossible to talk to her. I visit my father, sit in his living room, watch the students who have practically moved in as they work and write and discuss things in the dining room. Talk to my father about books I’ve read and the less controversial things in the newspaper. Think that we’re so alike. He’s just as socially awkward as I am, but he manages this congenital misfortune by maintaining an ever-changing fan base. They don’t stay long, but while they’re around they’re intensely loyal. It seems to be a thing in the fourth semester of their studies – to read my father’s works and become captivated by them. I’m not sure what purpose these students serve for him – whether they give him company, the human contact and care he needs, or a conceited joy when he sees himself reflected in their admiring eyes. Maybe it’s about sex, I think, but I don’t say this to anyone, not even to Sigurd. I try not to think the thought myself. He’s my father, after all. How am I supposed to sit opposite him when I visit if I’m thinking about that?

  We hardly ever drop in to see Margrethe, almost never visit Old Torp. I barely even see Sigurd.

  But I understand. He has a lot to do. I try to show him that I understand, try not to complain, not to whine about being lonely, the fact that most of the social contact I have during the day is with these damaged young people who believe that the intelligence service is spying on them and just want to run off to give blow jobs behind the bushes at Sognsvann so they’ll have the money to shoot up. It’s all so sad I could cry, for the fates of these teenagers first and foremost, and then for my own life, because what reason do I have to be sad when these kids, ten to fifteen years my junior, have already experienced so much that’s so damn awful? Drugs, incest, prostitution, abuse and molestation, war and torture – there are no limits to it, and here I am, whining because my boyfriend works so much.

  I cry at home, sitting on the sofa and bawling without restraint. Sometimes it starts on the local train and I lift my book to cover my face, pretending I’m short-sighted and letting the tears I am powerless to stop run down my cheeks before I wipe them on the pages.

  And I call no-one. What would I say? It’s so shameful. If Sigurd had hit me, I would have been able to say that, I think; had he been unfaithful or drunk too much, I could have called my friends. Ronja now lives in Madrid, but she would have jumped onto a plane to be there for me if something like that had happened. If my father had died. If I had been ill. But because I’m lonely? I daren’t even say it. Who would jump onto a plane for someone who’s unable to connect with others? They might provide friendly reassurance and comfort over the telephone, but they’d be embarrassed on my behalf as I spoke. We always wondered about Sara, they would think as they hung up. Nobody wants to socialise with loneliness. If I reached out they’d withdraw, and I couldn’t stand that.


  So I handle it myself, at home in our sad living room. Cry, shower, cook a meal for myself. Eat alone in front of the T.V. Cry during the ad breaks at how sad I am – such a cliché, the girl on the sofa with a plate of pasta balanced on her knees, dissolving into tears over a shampoo commercial. I pretend I’m asleep when Sigurd comes home. Hear him come in, pottering around out there as he makes himself a sandwich, turns on the T.V., goes into the bathroom, brushes his teeth. And when at long last he comes to bed – I’ve been waiting for him and now, I think, now I’ll finally get it, the glimpse of love I’ve been longing for all day – I turn over with a sigh, opening my eyes and squinting as if I’ve only just woken, and say:

  “Sigurd? Are you home?”

  And he says:

  “Yes. Just go back to sleep.”

  He undresses and gets into bed, all the way over on his side. I wriggle across to him, lift my head, place it in the crook of his arm. Put my arm across his chest, close my eyes, breathe in his smell – the sweat, cold and chemicals. The way he’s smelled since I first met him, when he would come straight to our apartment after finishing his classes in Bergen. He kisses me on the head. He holds me, but he’s tired and sleeps best alone, and I know that he’s waiting, just counting down how long he has to hold me before he can let go. I can feel him waiting. Three, two, one. He gives me a hug, leans over me, pulls his arm from beneath my body.