Three minutes later I was sneaking down the residents' hall on the second floor, scanning nameplates outside each door. Mostly Icelandic, a few Ukrainian and Anglo. Through partly open doors I glimpsed white-haired heads on pillows. A pair of bare, blue-veined feet sticking out from under a sheet. A children's cartoon show on a television in an empty room. A cart stuffed with dirty linens standing outside a washroom door, unattended.
I found Sigga's room at the far end of the hall and knocked on the door, lightly. Again. Then loudly. Then gave up and opened it. The room, like everything else at the new Betel, was new. New dresser, new visitors' chairs, new bookcase. Fresh paint. And there on the bed was the one thing notnew, an old woman thin and wrinkled as a wet sheet frozen on the line to dry. Could that be Sigga?
"Amma?" I whispered. "Amma?" Then, Amma!" But there was no answer, and after a moment I understood there never would be. Sigga's body was completely still. Eyes closed, mouth set, arms folded neatly on her chest, which did not rise or fall. Dead and obviously so.
My first response was to laugh, a choked, harsh snort of disdain for the universe. Tricked! I bit my lower lip at the stupidity of it, hard enough to taste blood. All this way for nothing! And for Sigga to choose this, the morning of her hundredth birthday, to make her exit. I had no doubt that death is a choice. Birdie was my first lesson in that, and though my own mother's death was no suicide, I was certain it was just another means of giving up. And now here was Sigga, a no-show at her own party, leaving the long-lost Freya only a corpse's greeting: Sorry, elskan, you waited too long.
And what was I supposed to do now? Call for help? I found a red emergency buzzer hanging from a cord tied to the rail of Sigga's hospital bed and almost rang it. But what was the rush? The dead have plenty of time. I'd take a moment alone with her first, then let some efficient nurse come wheel Sigga away to wherever dead people went.
I lit a cigarette and stood at the edge of the bed smoking, no doubt breaking yet another one of Betel's rules. I imagined Dr. G glaring down at me from heaven, in which as a devout Lutheran he surely believed. I myself am a devout nothing. The only thing I am certain of is that death in no way prevents the dead from interfering with the living. They're haunters, my dead, hangers-on. And now Sigga would be joining the pack, before I'd even had a chance to make some kind of peace with her.
I pulled an orange plastic chair to the edge of Sigga's bed. Except it wasn't Sigga. Sigga was tall and commanding, a master librarian, roundfaced and spectacled, queen of the vinarterta. Not this stark assemblage of spindly limbs and sparse wiry hair, a frozen sheet of a human being, the discarded wrapping of a life. I lit a new cigarette from the tip of the last, leaned back in the chair, closed my eyes -I couldn't bear to look at Sigga's body for more than a second at a time and let the tears fly. Head in hands I wept and wept, raw gulps of sadness and chest-shaking hiccups of grief, years of pent up stuff, humiliating streams of tears and snot. Soon I was sobbing, sobs rasping and hollow as the yelping of an abandoned mutt-
-and Sigga was finally woken from her midmorning nap. She peered at me through watery gray eyes, mere slits among the folds of skin.
"Elskan!" she cried out, her voice surprisingly clear. I'd wondered if Sigga would recognize me, but she showed not even a flicker of doubt about my identity. Only a tremulous, grandmotherly concern. "Whatever is the matter?"
I stared, brain reeling to accommodate the hard, physical evidence: Sigga was alive. "I thought, I thought, I thought you were-"
"Now, now, child. You'll have to wait a minute. Can't hear a thing." Sigga reached for two putty-colored hearing aids on her bedside table, then fumbled them into her ears with swole-knuckled fingers. Tricked again! Sigga was never dead, just dead asleep. Dead to the world. The coma-like respite of the near-deaf at the end of a century of life. I laughed -I couldn't help myself-and this time, Sigga heard me. She tilted her head in bewilderment.
"What's so funny?"
I hesitated only a moment before blurting out the truth. "I didn't know you were sleeping. I thought you were dead. That's why I was crying."
"Oh my," Sigga said, her wrinkled brow wrinkling even deeper. She handed me a box of tissues from the bedside table. "I gave you a fright. Is that what you're riled up about?"
I nodded, then wiped my salt-streaked cheeks, blew my nose. "I'm so sorry," I began.
"Sorry about what?"
"That I haven't been to visit."
"Now, elskan, I'll have no more of that. With your life the way it is. You're here now, that's what matters." She reached out and took my hand in hers. Her skin was papery and dry against my tear-sticky palm. I wondered what exactly Sigga knew about my life. What had Stefan told her? But it didn't matter. When Sigga took my hand, a helium lightness swelled inside me. So this is it. This is what it's like to feel forgiven! It's what I'd come for, I realized, that moment of blessed absolution, one that seemed to free me not only of the sin of not visiting but of everything wretched I had ever done, or not done. The light blue walls of the room seemed to glow like the inside of one of those old Icelandic churches.
"Happy birthday." The words floated like balloons from my newly lightened being.
"Oh yes," Sigga said matter-of-factly. "I suppose it is."
"I came for the party," I reminded her.
"Oh, that. Stefan's behind it, isn't he? Silly, really, a party for an old woman like me." She paused. "When is this party?"
"It's tonight."
"Of course it is. You'll have to excuse me, I've gotten a bit forgetful. It's terrible, really. No one should be allowed to get this old."
"I brought some vinarterta for you." I put the bag on the bedside table.
"You always made lovely vinarterta," Sigga said. "But I'm not hungry just now. We'll have some later."
I was certain I'd never made my own vinarterta, but I easily pardoned Sigga's lapse. If she wanted to believe I made a lovely vinarterta, it was fine with me. We sat in silence for a moment, still holding hands, and then Sigga asked a strange question.
"Where is the baby now?"
"Baby?"
"Oh, I suppose she's not a baby anymore, is she? I lose track of time. But the little one-are you bringing her to the party? Everybody will want to see her."
Sigga was looking directly at me, seeing someone else. "I don't know-" I answered, dropping Sigga's hand. "I don't think you know who-"
"Just for a short time then." Sigga sighed, exasperated, as if we'd had this conversation many times before. "You ask too little of that child. She's perfectly capable of behaving at a family occasion. It's your sister I'm worried about."
"My sister?"
"Just keep an eye on her, that's all I ask! Make sure she doesn't drink too much. Will you do that?"
"I don't think-"
"Please!" Sigga's voice became agitated, high and fluttery. "You know how wild Birdie gets when she starts drinking."
A chill came over me. The hairs on my arms actually stood on end. Sigga hadn't forgiven me. She wasn't even talking to me. She was talking to my mother. Tricked again!
"But, Amma," I began. "I think maybe you're a bit confused, I think-"
"I think Sigga needs her rest, that's what I think."
Standing in the doorway was tiny Halldora, leaning on her cane. "How did you get in here, anyway? I left strict orders that Sigga was not to have visitors today." She sniffed the air with her beaked nose. "Have you been smoking in here? Against the rules, against common sense!" In a brisk moment she'd opened the window, and the scent of harbor wafted in.
What could I say? That I'd only smoked because I believed Sigga to be dead? I said nothing, just watched Halldora as she leaned over Sigga, who had a startled expression on her face. Halldora clicked a button, and the top half of the bed began to rise. "It'll be time for your bath soon. You rest until then."
She motioned for me to follow her out into the hall, then shut the door behind us, staring at me with her wobbling eyes, waiting for an apology, or at
least an explanation.
"Sigga's senile," I snapped, too angry to feign polite. "Why didn't you tell me? When we met outside?"
"She's nothing of the sort," Halldora answered, leaning calmly on her cane. "You just got her riled is all. Exactly what I've been trying to avoid."
"She thinks I'm my mother!"
"Well, she gets confused now and then," Halldora admitted. Her voice had softened. "I'll set her straight on that point later. But she needs to rest. I think you should go now."
Oh, I'd go all right! I pounded down the back stairs of Betel and out a side exit propelled by a rage that would have done Birdie proud. Half an hour later I'd checked out of my gritty motel room and was heading out of town in the black van, speeding through the quiet side streets of Gimli, past the quaint little cottages and neatly trimmed lawns. I was done with all of it, this depressing little remnant of Icelandica, the grandmother who didn't know me from a skunk, my crazy aunt, my long-suffering mother. I would brook no more interference from the dead. It was time to close this chapter of my life, shut the door on the past, any metaphor would do, the point was that I was on the verge of something truly new: that great black hole called my future. Bring it on!
It was my sole and fierce intention to speed directly out of town. Luckily, we are not ruled by our intentions, not conscious ones anyway. Instead, I just happened to drive down the old block, and I couldn't exactly pass by Oddi without stopping to look, could I? I had to see it, the old white farmhouse with the song-yellow trim on the corner of Second Street and Second Avenue. Stefan had mentioned in his last Christmas card that Sigga was thinking of putting the house up for sale, but whether it had sold or not I wasn't sure. It looked shabbier than I remembered, not neglected exactly, but in need of what Sigga would have called sprucing up. It had a sleepy, musty look. The rosebushes had grown huge and rangy, the grass shaggy. All the shades were drawn. If anyone new owned it, they weren't here at the moment, though I knocked just in case. Not surprisingly, no answer. And then, because we must always try doors we know to be locked, I turned the handle. The door opened.
What I saw inside that house alarmed me. Not how much it had changed but the simple fact that it hadn't. Even in the dim light of the parlor I could make out the familiar moss-green velvet couch curved like a crescent moon, the china cabinet against the wall, the brass-plated clock on the mantel. Beyond the parlor the white gleam of the kitchen. I stepped inside-
-and the lights flashed on and everyone jumped out from behind the couch yelling Surprise! The two dead sisters, Birdie and Anna, arm in arm, raising tiny glasses of cognac to celebrate my return. Sigga in her pearls and gold-rimmed glasses clasping her hands in delight, and even the long-gone Olafur, Skald Nyja Islands, lighting his fragrant pipe and chuckling at the great joke of it. In a merry dance we reunited, living and dead alike, all wrongs forgotten, chattering in a rush of Icelandic that fell over my ears clear and sensible as water.
No, of course no merry ghosts came to greet me. I sat on the couch listening to the sound of dust falling. Then I wound the clock on the mantel with its large brass key and the room filled with its gentle ticking. I ran my finger along the gilded frame of the painting that hung over the mantel, a nearly abstract landscape of Iceland, swirls of black lava and green hillsides. Birdie's purchase, appreciated by no one but herself.
Over the arm of Sigga's rocking chair lay a gray-and-white striped shawl my mother had knitted the summer I was ten. I remembered one evening Birdie expounding on the special properties of Icelandic wool, how it naturally repels water, insulates the sheep against snow. Burly sheep with curling horns, nibbling moss from the lava-crusted hillsides. Without those sheep, Birdie claimed, the Icelanders would never have survived to see the twentieth century, we'd have perished like the Greenland colony, vanished without a trace. Did we know that to this day there are more sheep than people in Iceland? We owe our lives to those sheep! Bless the sheep! Baaaaaaaaah! Birdie trilled in perfect imitation. Baaaaaaaaah!
I screamed. I was not expecting a man's footstep on the stairs to startle me from my sheepish reverie. But this time, I recognized his voice instantly.
"Terribly sorry, Freya. Terribly. To frighten you like that!"
It was Uncle Stefan, more slender even than I remembered, a lanky giant who ducked his head as he came down the stairs. He looked as professorial as ever in his cream-colored cardigan with knobby buttons, his camel brown corduroy slacks, his black-framed glasses and well-trimmed white beard. A square, Birdie had called him, behind his back. But he, at least, knew who I was, and I found myself relieved to see him. He switched on the standing lamp with its fringed shade, another one of Birdie's acquisitions. "Lovely to see you, Freya!"
I was still too spooked for words. He motioned for me to take a seat on the couch. He was packing things up, he explained. Sigga was finally ready to sell.
"I just saw Sigga. At Betel."
"I figured she sent you over here, to see if there's anything you want. You can have any of it, of course. Except Olafur's things. Those are all being donated, the books to the University of Manitoba, and his personal effects, his writing desk, his pen and inkstand all of that I'm reconstructing for the museum.
"Museum?"
"The New Iceland Heritage Museum. It's opening next summer. A whole room is to be dedicated to Olafur, his life and work. It takes up most of my time, now that I'm retired. In any case, we'd be honored to have you back for that momentous occasion."
I started to laugh, then realized it was momentous, at least to Stefan. He'd devoted his life to this little niche of history.
"And your grandmother-she must have been so happy to see you!" He said this warmly, with not a twinge of the you're- a- dis grace- ofa-granddaughter treatment I'd received from Halldora. Though I hadn't forgotten that Stefan's emotions tend to be tucked well below the surface. I wanted to answer him in kind, but my tone came out sulky as a six-year-old's.
"She was happy to see me, all right. But that's only because she doesn't know who I am. She thought I was my mother."
Stefan seemed genuinely surprised. "A natural enough mistake, I suppose, at first glance."
"It wasn't first glance. It was the whole visit. She's lost her mind. She even thought that ... Birdie is still alive." This last piece of information was difficult to speak, hard too, I saw, for Stefan to hear.
"Sigga's been more forgetful lately, Freya, but I wouldn't say she's lost her mind." He rubbed his beard thoughtfully. "Though I can see why you might find such an incident disturbing. However, I'm fairly certain she'll snap out of it. Perhaps the stress of tonight's event. It's not every day a person turns one hundred. And speaking of" he pulled an old-fashioned watch chain from his pocket "there are preparations still. I'll leave you here to poke around. The party starts at six."
That was the moment to tell him I was heading out. I owed him that much at least. "Actually, I'm not sure I'm-"
"Everyone will be glad to see you, Freya. Including Sigga. I'll make sure she knows who you are this time." He smiled wryly. "Did you know that one of your Icelandic relatives will be there?"
I shook my head
"Thorunn Bjornsdottir, Sigga's niece. She's the daughter of Sigga's sister, Stefania. I don't think you've ever met her."
I cringed: the silver-haired woman from the bakery! That must have been Thorunn. I had met her before, and I don't mean at the bakery in Gimli that afternoon. She was one of Sigga's People who had visited me at the hospital in Akureyri after Birdie and I had been rescued from Askja. Not a memory I cared to revisit. Wasn't Gimli enough?
"Thorunn," I repeated. "She came all the way from Iceland for Sigga's birthday?"
"Marvelous, isn't it? You'll like her. She's been here a week already, visiting with Sigga every afternoon, catching her up on all the relatives. No wonder Sigga got confused when you showed up today!"
I smiled gamely at Stefan's attempt to reassure me, but inside I felt defeated. My mad dash from Gimli, foiled. Thorunn
had come all the way from Iceland. Stefan was packing up my grandmother's house, a duty more clearly mine than his. There could be no slinking away now, even for a skunk like me.
After Stefan left I ventured upstairs, sliding my hand along the dark wood of the banister as the stairs creaked underfoot. My palm came up covered in a film of dust that made me sneeze. At the top of the stairs were our two bedrooms, mine and Birdie's. I entered mine first. It was tinier even than I remembered it, a closet practically. The lace curtains that had shimmered in the summer breezes hung gray and still. I sneezed again, and my eyes started to burn from the dust. I began yawning, repeatedly, each yawn triggering a deeper one. The mere thought of picking through Sigga's possessions depleted me. I stretched out on the little bed, still covered with its puckered white spread, but my legs hung off at the knees. In the years since my last visit I'd grown, changed, but into what I couldn't say. How could I blame Sigga for not recognizing me? Most days I hardly knew myself. I rolled onto my side in a fetal curl and slept.
25
Are you ready for Sigga's one hundredth birthday party?
I wasn't. I overslept, back in my little room at Oddi, and the party was in full swing by the time I arrived. I stood a moment in the doorway of the reception room, the pride of the new Betel with its floor-to-ceiling arched windows and gleaming piano, matching tables and chairs set off against the spiffy shine of the floor. Nothing grand, as my mother would have said, but very very pleasant. And lively. Maybe fifty guests. I'd expected a circle of old ladies singing "Happy Birthday," like at the parties my mother and I had attended during our Betel days. But that was the old Betel, and this was Sigga. It was a swanky event, by Gimli standards. Buffet and drinks, even live music-various old folks taking turns at the piano. And people of all ages milling about. Strangers, or simply older versions of people I once knew? Oldsters and youngsters, women with babies, a couple of teenagers lurking by a back table. They reminded me of Vera's boys, from that long ago coffee party. I could have gone to the beach with them; instead I'd stayed behind and turned the fateful cartwheel.
The Tricking of Freya Page 24