The Therapist

by Helene Flood

  Thomas smiles.

  “And now you can,” he says.

  “Yes.”

  For a brief while we’re silent again, but it’s a more comfortable silence this time, and I think that this is quite nice, actually, the fact that he’s come here to see me. Until now, none of Sigurd’s friends have come to visit – not Jan Erik, nor Mammod or Flemming. Nor his brother. Only Margrethe, furious because I’m selling her childhood home; also furious at everything that’s happened. I think she holds me morally responsible for Sigurd’s infidelity. “If only you had been a better wife,” she said to me. But she’d had quite a bit to drink. Annika had warned me that this might happen, and asked me to stay calm, say as little as possible. And I did. I’m done with Margrethe, too.

  “And what about you?” I ask Thomas.

  “Oh, you know,” he says. “Same old, same old. Or, well – Julie’s pregnant.”

  “How lovely,” I say. “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.”

  He smiles, as if to himself. He’ll be a good father, I think. He’ll do whatever it takes. Take parental leave, get up in the middle of the night. Be the referee for the football team and take on the role of volunteer coordinator at school. Get involved.

  “I’m sorry about what happened with Julie,” I say.

  “Oh God, don’t even think about it,” he says. “It’s she who should apologise. She meant well, but . . . Let’s just say she can be a bit much sometimes.”

  I smile. It’s good to hear him say it. It paints me in a generous light.

  “Do tell her I said hello,” I say. “And say congratulations from me.”

  “I will.”

  “Thomas, I . . . I’m grateful you came.”

  “It’s the least I could do,” he says. And then he hugs me, loosely, so that he hardly touches me. “Take care of yourself.”

  And that’s advice I’m going to take.

  At the dinner table, while Pappa and Annika bicker about something in the newspaper, and Henning hushes the boys, who are quarrelling over the salt and pepper pots, I think that I’m grateful for what Thomas told me, too. About the fact that Sigurd had chosen me. At the end of the day, it’s a good thing to know.

  Annika and Pappa clear the table. I offer to help, but Annika says it’s fine, they can do it, I can go and sit down.

  “Why don’t you go into the study and I’ll put the kettle on,” Pappa says.

  Henning and the boys are in the living room, watching children’s T.V. – from Pappa’s office I can hear it in the background: merry songs, adult voices adopting a child-friendly pitch, speaking in the way that actors speak when performing the voices of cats and dogs and elephants. The boys are quiet as mice, bewitched by the T.V., and Henning is just as silent, all his attention probably focused on his mobile. From the kitchen I can hear the clattering of pots and containers, the sounds of Pappa and Annika clearing up. Their voices don’t reach me in here, although I expect they’re still going on about some disagreement or other they were discussing at the table. In here it’s calm. Pappa’s oasis.

  I put some logs on the fire in the way that Pappa taught me, on top of each other in squares, as if I’m building a notched timber cabin. Place paper and smaller bits inside. Consider whether or not I should light it. It’s still warm, not yet fully dark, but the cold will soon arrive. I think Pappa should have the honour. I straighten up, my gaze grazing the books of newspaper cuttings, and I remember the Thursday in March when I read them, Pappa’s hard words. How afraid I had been. But today is a good day, and I’m not going to think about it.

  Instead, I cross the room to the window behind Pappa’s desk. I set the palms of my hands against the wide frame and look out, at the neglected garden with last year’s leaves still strewn across the fresh grass. Out at the neighbouring houses. The new one that was built when Pappa divided up the plot, and the old one to the right, where the Winge family lived. The house from which Herman Winge – whom I was in love with, even though we hardly spoke – would emerge each morning to stand on the front porch and zip up his down jacket before setting off for school.

  Some nights I would stand here, in Pappa’s study, and look out towards Herman’s house in an attempt to catch a glimpse of him. I would turn off all the lights in the room so that nobody in the Winge house would see me standing there in the dark, spying on them. I would see Herman, too, sometimes. On occasion I’d borrow Pappa’s binoculars – I almost blush to think of it.

  I wonder who lives in the house now. There’s a blue trampoline in the garden. Maybe it’s Herman himself, who now has a family and has taken over the house. But in all likelihood it’s been sold. Pappa hasn’t mentioned it, but on the other hand it would never occur to him that I might be interested to know.

  On a whim, I turn off the lights, as I would do back then, clicking off the reading lamp on the desk. In the dark I set the palms of my hands on the windowsill as I lean against it; look out towards Herman Winge’s old house.

  Stand here where nobody can see me.

  As I stand this way, I think I catch sight of something. Is there something moving out there, or is it just my own reflection? I focus my gaze, staring at the Winge house. Change focus, see only myself and the empty study behind me, just a glimpse of it in the mirror image in the glass. And it’s as I shift my focus again that it occurs to me, and it’s as if all the air has been sucked out of the room. For a cold second or two I stand there, holding my gaze between the two points of focus, and see both sides simultaneously – the garden outside, and me here in the study. Realise that I know. And that nobody but me would ever think of it.

  It’s so quiet, all sound absorbed by the vacuum. The only thing that can be heard is the low, rhythmic sound of my own breath against the window.

  From Pappa’s writing flat it’s possible to see the pavement outside Sigurd’s office. Sigurd must have thought of this when he asked Vera to meet him at the office. He must have taken precautions, been careful.

  But Pappa always works outside normal office hours – works weekends, evenings and nights. I can just imagine him wandering around in the unfurnished flat at night-time, turning off all the lights, the street lamps outside providing just enough light for him to see by as he pours whisky into a tumbler in the dark, then sits on the windowsill. Looks down at the street from his apartment, considering the lit scene below him, the few people walking around Bislett on a Wednesday evening at eleven-thirty. And then Sigurd and Vera appear, on their way into Sigurd’s office. Together.

  My hands are shaking so much that I can no longer lean my weight on them. What would Pappa have done if he had found out that Sigurd was having an affair? I sink down onto the chair by his desk. Pappa, who sees the family as the only thing that is sacred. Who believes that infidelity should be punishable. Who believes in vigilantism and the neighbourhood watch and the right to take the law into one’s own hands to defend the herd. In the twilight of the room my gaze flits across the scrapbooks. Pappa, who believes in extreme measures. The way of the dogs.

  Beside the cold fireplace are the armchairs, like big, sleeping animals. Where we sat on the day I came to Smestad, but then left without telling my father that Sigurd was dead. We had talked about books. Pappa told me that what he’d been reading was dark, but he’d learned a lot from it regardless – “I think there’s a lot one can learn from sitting in the dark and watching the world.” I might not have the same faith in my memory as I once did, but I know that I remember this word for word. “I think it’s an essential activity,” he’d said. And now, as I’m quite literally sitting here in the dark, my gaze flits from the archival scrapbooks across to the bookshelves and back to the armchairs; from the Foucault’s pendulum to the Winge house and the world beyond the window, to finally land on the mantelpiece with this knowledge: in that moment, he was telling me what he had done.

  Pappa knew about Sigurd and
Vera. An echo of the humiliation from Gundersen’s office burns in my stomach – everyone other than me knew, even my father. But Pappa didn’t just shrug and look the other way. Pappa observed them. On March 6, he sat in his apartment early in the morning while Sigurd parked his car at the curb with the hazards on. Pappa had looked down. Seen the garnkule on the dashboard. And understood.

  Pappa, who hasn’t kept a single drawing I made as a child. Who has thrown out chopping boards made in woodwork classes and ornaments from ceramics classes as soon as he received them as Christmas gifts. Who never remembers the names of my friends, never calls on my birthday, who visited me in Bergen just once in six years. But who would still do anything for me – should he deem it necessary.

  Perhaps he waited for an opportunity. Sat there in the dark, watching Sigurd live his double life. Took his time. And then, on that Friday in March, seized the opportunity. Sigurd parking his car early in the morning. The garnkule resting on the dashboard, clearly visible through the front windscreen. Pappa got up, went down to his car and drove out of the city. To Krokskogen? Perhaps, but it could just as easily have been another place. To Sørkedalen. He keeps his skis and best ski boots in his car, regardless. If anyone were to wonder, he was simply going skiing in the middle of the day, as he often does. But who would question his movements? His colleagues don’t know how he spends his days, nor do his students. When we sat in the armchairs before the fire that day, he told me that he’d been out skiing every day for a week, because if he drove up to Sørkedalen there was enough snow. I had thought nothing of it at the time – I had enough on my mind. But why would he go there, when his favourite place to ski is Østmarka? And it was unlike him to be so specific – he never usually tells me where he goes.

  Yes, he went to Sørkedalen. Strapped on his skis, and crossed the fields to Krokskogen. So that he wouldn’t be recorded by the toll station cameras. So nobody would see his car parked along the road that leads up towards Kleivstua. How long does it take to cross the fields on skis? For a man in good physical shape who skis regularly? Three hours, three and a half?

  I count on my fingers, get to ten, ten-thirty. Remember Gundersen’s timeline. Vera tried to call Sigurd a little after ten-thirty. That was the first call he didn’t answer.

  I imagine it. Pappa skidding up to the cabin on his skis. Sigurd coming out onto the front step upon hearing that someone was there, thinking that Vera must have made it all the way up to the cabin by herself. Pappa adopting an easy-going tone, “Oh Sigurd, I didn’t expect to see you up here, in the middle of the day on a Friday.” It must have been the easiest thing in the world to persuade Sigurd to leave the cabin. Getting his father-in-law away before Vera turned up must have been the only thing on his mind. Of course he left his mobile in the cabin – because what if Vera called him while my dad was there?

  Together, they make their way to the clearing in the forest, Pappa on his skis, Sigurd walking along the path where the snow had melted. Does my father ask Sigurd to point something out to him, then shoot him while his back is turned? Or does he tell him what he intends to do before demanding that he turn to face the forest?

  Did Sigurd beg for his life? Was he afraid when he was shot, or was he unaware that death was coming for him, until it came?

  What would Pappa have done if Vera had been at the cabin? If she’d been there with Sigurd when he skidded into the yard? That I’m unable to think of – that’s the limit, the point beyond which I’m unable to go.

  Then Pappa makes his way back across the fields. Maybe he throws the gun in a lake where the ice has melted, or perhaps he takes it home with him. I have no doubt that he has a weapon, believing as he does in taking the law into one’s own hands, and since he’s not a member of any club I know of it’s probably not registered in his name. Maybe it’s lying hidden in the cellar of this very house, or perhaps it’s in a drawer of the desk at which I’m sitting. This is a house full of secrets, with hidden rooms and deep closets and loose panels. He would be able to hide the revolver here for as long as he wished. Should he get cold feet, he’d be able to borrow a boat one summer evening and drop the gun into Bunnefjorden. But he doesn’t get cold feet.

  He returns through the forest, gets back to the car, straps his skis to the roof and drives home. Feeling so uplifted. I’m sure he must have been unafraid – because what did he have to be scared of? There are few people on the trails on a Friday morning in March, and even if he were to pass other skiers it’s unlikely they would notice him, let alone know and recognise him – and even more unlikely that they would remember him several days later. The only thing he might have feared was that suspicion could be cast on me, but he would have assumed I’d be with patients all day, one after the other. Because I don’t think I ever admitted to him the state my practice was in. I’d wanted to appear successful, a clever girl, for my Pappa.

  I hear the clanking of pots and pans out there, and then I hear footsteps, and Annika’s voice, along with those of Henning and the boys. Soon Pappa will come in, with a cup of tea for each of us. It’s a little chilly in here now – it would be good to have the fire lit, to be able to warm myself before it. But I don’t move. I can’t explain this away. I might have been able to write it off as only my imagination, were it not for what he said that afternoon before the fire. We sat here, in the armchairs, and he talked about looking at the world from the darkness, effectively telling me how he had found out what Sigurd was up to. Was careful to mention that he had been skiing in Sørkedalen on the day Sigurd disappeared, in order to reveal how he had done it. Told me that it was important not to get stuck there, in the darkness. You had to do what you had to do, and then move on, he’d said. That’s how easy it was for him to dispose of a person.

  I had laughed it off. “Yes, well, if you’re stuck in the darkness that’s where we therapists come in,” I’d said.

  I hear steps out in the kitchen. There’s so little time, just a few seconds before he’ll be here, then what will I do?

  What if I just ask him? I so want to hear him deny it, so want to be reassured – I’m wrong, Pappa was away that day, he can prove it. There was nothing to the things he said. I want to be able to put this all behind me and never think of it again.

  But my father believes in uncompromising honesty. Suddenly it’s as if I never grew up – as if I’m still that little girl in her nightgown sitting at the top of the stairs. Who sees Pappa come home in the middle of the night, but doesn’t dare ask where he’s been. The girl who knows the weight of that question – how asking is to risk a dangerous answer, something you’ll have to know and live with for the rest of your life. All my memories of my father are tainted by this feeling: that it’s best not to ask too much, best not to know.

  Because if I ask him where he was on that Friday and he answers, I will lose him.

  Light falls across the floor as he opens the door.

  Even in the twilight I can see his smile. It’s too dark to see the details, but I know all too well how his face creases, his green eyes small forest lakes in the folds of leathery, weathered skin.

  “Oh, Sara,” he says, in his rasping voice. “Are you sitting here in the dark?”

  HELENE FLOOD is a psychologist specializing in violence, revictimization, and trauma-related shame and guilt. She lives in Oslo with her husband and two children. The Therapist is her first adult novel.

  ALISON McCULLOUGH is a freelance translator based in Stavanger, Norway. She has translated books by Tore Kvæven and Kenneth Moe, among others.

  Contents

  Friday, March 6: The message

  Saturday, March 7: Missing

  Sunday, March 8: White noise

  Monday, March 9: Husk

  Early morning, March 10: O.K., O.K.

  Tuesday, March 10: Breathe and start again

  Wednesday, March 11: Empty surfaces

  Thursday, March 12: The fortress

>   Friday, March 13: Krokskogen

  Saturday, March 14: Waiting, spinning

  Saturday, March 14 – Monday, March 16: Nordstrand

  Tuesday, March 17: Confirmation bias

  One Sunday in May: Sitting in the dark

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  Landmarks

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Start of Content

  Backmatter