by Jenny J
Hi Jonas!
Really REALLY nice to meet last time! Hope you weren’t too tired next morning. I had a headache for two days afterwards, but it was worth it ;)
I’m having a little party tomorrow. Nothing big, just a few friends coming over, some wine, nibbles. Ola’s coming. Check out the event! I know it’s short notice but I thought I’d send you an invite anyway – come if you can! Party starts at 8. And of course you know where I live… . . .
It is your free weekend, isn’t it? (talking about that I just want to say how impressed I am with you. Being on your own with a teenage girl can’t be easy! There are so many men who don’t bother with their kids but you seem to take wholehearted responsibility, and that’s commendable. I understand, just like you said, that it must be tough sometimes, but I think it’s an inspiration to others. So, all praise to you!)
And: really hope to see you tomorrow …
Hug, Denise
I almost spontaneously threw up into my own mouth.
Oh my God.
I squeezed my eyes closed. I squeezed them so hard that small dots of light appeared and exploded over my retina.
Oh. My. God.
“Inspiration to others?” What a joke! What crap! Is it commendable behaviour to look after a child that you’ve brought into the world yourself by shagging? A child who, please note, didn’t ask to be brought anywhere. Giving Dad “praise” because he took “wholehearted responsibility” for me was like giving him praise because he went to the toilet and had a dump once a day. It’s what you did. It’s something every parent ought to be able to manage.
For crying out loud!
Not that the others Dad had dated were gifted with more than mediocre intelligence, but this one! Shit. She won first prize. I slapped the palm of my hand down on the seat and took a few deep breaths in an attempt to calm myself down. I’d read in a self-help column somewhere that you should do that when you were worked up about something. But naturally it didn’t work. Has it ever worked for anyone?
And then that thought again, revolving round and round: Why didn’t she phone?
I picked up a free newspaper that someone had left on the seat next to mine and flicked through it aimlessly without reading anything. Right at the back was the long personal column: short, poorly spelled text messages, one after the other. The irritation made my skin itch, as if I’d been attacked by a swarm of angry gnats. My eyes ran over the rows: needy declarations of love, embarrassing one-sided obsessions and pathetic statements of broken hearts.
Don’t understand – is it friendship or something more? U wont let me kno. Can’t u get in touch I’ve told u wet I feel bout u. E.
I’m an older guy. Plan to go Puttgarden Germany @ w/e. Seeking older woman for company. Have Mercedes 300 and trailer. Get in touch!
1 mnth till we move 2 our new abode
Lunacy. Nothing but downright lunacy. How could such gravely retarded behaviour be revealed in so few words?
But then, suddenly:
The person who came home with me Friday took not only my virginity but also the key to the laundry room. Why? Unnecessary. This relationship lacks communication. R.
Carefully I tore it out and put it into my purse. I was breathing more calmly now. I smiled and looked out across the fields.
Hit on the Head with a Hammer
When I got off the train at Norrköping station Mum wasn’t there to meet me like she usually was. I scrutinised the platform systematically from right to left, saw people getting off and on, and others waiting and looking, just like I was. But she really wasn’t there.
It was odd: Mum wasn’t normally late.
I walked with the stream of people towards the white station building and carried on out to the car park to see if her dark blue Saab was parked there, but it wasn’t. A taxi driver chewing gum was leaning over his car door and he looked at me, raising his eyebrows, but I shook my head. Did I look like someone who went by taxi?
I walked back into the ticket hall. It was empty apart from a couple of lingering passengers. A grey-haired elderly woman was trundling her shiny red rollator across the polished floor, her head erect. Then it hit me like the blow of a silver hammer on my head.
Wrong weekend.
I had come on the wrong weekend.
I stopped, dropping my bag to the floor so I could think more clearly.
But no, it couldn’t be. I wasn’t here last weekend and the tickets had today’s date on them. I picked up my bag again, went out through the main entrance and leaned against the white wall, feeling its rough exterior against my shoulder blades through my jacket. I debated several alternatives in my head and rejected them immediately.
No, Mum couldn’t have forgotten that I was coming. She didn’t forget things like that.
No, she hadn’t said anything about going away.
No, she hadn’t told me to take the bus and make my own way to her house.
And no, she wasn’t usually late. But perhaps she really was. Late.
The haze had dissipated and the sun was low, shining orangey-red against the pale blue sky. I slumped down onto my bag. I had to screw up my eyes to make out the faces of the people passing by, but Mum wasn’t one of them. Finally I phoned her. I shut my eyes and wished she would answer, but I got the answering machine just like the day before.
‘Hi Jana, it’s Maja. I’m here at the station and … well, it’s nearly six and I wonder … well, I haven’t heard from you so I suppose I’ll get the bus to your house. So, see you at home in Smedby. You may have heard … I think Dad told you yesterday that I sawed off my thumb. Not deliberately, I mean. Um, well, bye. See you later.’
It ended up being a strange message. I hadn’t managed to make my voice as nonchalant as I’d hoped.
Something was scraping my chest.
I stood up and looked around me. I picked up the bag, took a few hesitant steps forwards, leapt out of the way of a tram and crossed Norra Promenad. I wandered slowly through Carl Johan Park, which was very neat, and crossed Saltängs Bridge, looking down at the grey and glistening surface of the water. I held my mobile in my hand. I should have told her to ring me, of course. I hoped she would realise that, but you couldn’t count on it. She didn’t always understand things too well.
I carried on along Drottninggatan towards the shopping centre. The streets were deserted but that was nothing unusual. It’s just that today it seemed like they were especially deserted.
At the town hall the number three tram pulled up alongside me and I took it to Söder where I had to stand for a while outside the futuristic glass and concrete library, waiting for the bus to Smedby. I looked across at the museum of art and that great rotating spiral which always made me think of a contraceptive.
I really tried not to think too much but it was incredibly hard not to. I always thought too much.
I was rummaging about in my bag for the key when I realised her car wasn’t in the drive. The key turned easily in the lock as if it was newly oiled. Not like at home in Örnsberg where you had to throw yourself against the door to unlock it. I opened the door and walked in.
‘Hello? Jana?’
No answer. Only silence.
I heard the fridge rumble in the kitchen and then fall silent. When I closed the front door it was like stepping into a vacuum.
I realised I’d known it all the time.
Mum wasn’t there.
How About Using the Crisis as an Opportunity to Grow?
I tried to think coldly and act logically. There had to be a reasonable explanation for Mum not being there. I crept through the hall, past the sitting room and into the kitchen. It was quiet. Numbingly quiet.
I looked around the room, over at the table and its chairs that didn’t match, the draining board, the rarely-used cooker. The heap of newspapers by the larder was almost as tall as me. I didn’t quite get it. Clearly something wasn’t right. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first. But then I noticed.
The sink. It
was overflowing with dirty plates, sticky saucepans, and coffee-stained mugs.
That wasn’t like Mum.
Not at all.
She always rinsed the tiniest little glass immediately after she had used it. I felt the pulse in my thumb start to thud.
The saw. The grating, piercing sound.
The metal teeth, hacking into me.
The flesh. Exposed.
The blood. Spiralling, pulsating, spurting.
The explosions. The pain.
I heard my breathing amplified in my ears.
I backed out of the kitchen and into the sitting room, and looked at all the familiar things: the misshapen seventies sofa in green and black, the dilapidated coffee table with its piles of journals, the overloaded book shelves with books crammed into every available space. I spun round and ran up to the first floor. The stairs creaked under my weight.
Her office looked like it always did with the chair neatly tucked under the desk, books stacked one on top of the other, piles of papers, masses of journals: Psychology Today, The Psychologist, The American Journal of Psychology.
I walked slowly towards my room, my heart thumping against my ribcage. Then I caught sight of something moving in there, something that sort of swept past. Something white. A dress, perhaps? I stood still.
‘Jana,’ I said.
My voice fragile. Scared?
No one answered. I pressed my hand hard against the door. It flew open the way they do in gangster films, banged violently against the end of the bed and swung back again.
But I had time to see.
There was no one there.
I pushed open the door, slower this time. Yes, the room was empty. The unmade bed was empty, the chair beside the desk was empty, and the armchair at the far end of the bed was also empty, all except for my forgotten pair of black jeans.
The window was open and in front of it, flapping in the draft, was my white curtain.
I went downstairs again and sat apathetically on the sofa. My thumb was aching so badly. I closed my eyes and leaned back against the lumpy cushions.
I realised what it was I had vainly hoped to find, what I had been looking for: a note. A note that would explain everything. A note that said she had tried to contact me but hadn’t been able to get through. One that said she was sorry but she was forced to work late, that she would be home soon, soon, soon. And maybe the note would end with a “Hug, Mum.”
I laughed at myself, drily. Who was I trying to kid? Mum would never write “Hug, Mum.” She never wrote “Mum.” She was “Jana”, to me and to everyone else. That’s the way it had always been. It was only in my own head that I called her Mum. And also if I had to mention her to someone I didn’t know, just to avoid their astonished reaction to me calling my own mother by her first name.
As for “hug” – that was a completely foreign concept to her, both in words and action. Up until a few years ago she had hugged me only sporadically. When one Sunday morning I gave a cough and said I would really like to have a hug from time to time, she had looked up from her newspaper in surprise. She questioned me in detail about my request, as if she was taking an order for something. When did I want them and where, she wondered. And how many had I been thinking of? I mumbled awkwardly that it might be nice when I arrived and when I left, what did she think about that? At the train station, perhaps? Wasn’t that fairly normal when you hadn’t seen each other or weren’t going to see each other for a while? Mum nodded thoughtfully, her grey-green eyes fixed on mine. Then she said that it sounded like a “reasonable request” and went back to her newspaper.
After that I received the hugs I had ordered. It never felt really comfortable. Her arms went wrong, somehow, and were too tense, and her face too close or too far away. Mostly too far away.
It was as if she didn’t know how to end the hug, either. She would suddenly let go, without looking at me, making a half turn with her arms hanging limply and her gaze somewhere in the distance.
And exactly at that moment, exactly when she let go, when her arms loosened and she kind of like disappeared, that’s when I always felt so chillingly alone. As if a wind was blowing right through me. It was so hard to get on the train then. My feet sort of stuck to the platform.
No, those hugs never came naturally to her and sometimes I regretted that I had ever asked. But she never forgot them.
I stood up, called Mum’s mobile once more and heard the ringing tone as I wandered through the sitting room and out towards the hall. The wooden flooring creaked at the threshold between the rooms, as it had always done. I stopped in front of the dusty hall mirror and saw something like desperation in my expression and decided it suited me. Didn’t it make my eyes so very glittery and mournful? Didn’t it make my face fascinatingly pale but my cheeks attractively pink? Perhaps I should be desperate more often.
What was I doing?
I slapped myself. Two quick slaps, right in the middle of those pink cheeks. It stung and it was as if I suddenly had a revelation. I looked around blearily. My thumb started to thud again.
What was I doing?
What if something had happened to Mum? If something had really happened to her. And here I was, acting flirtatiously with my own desperation.
I called her number again. I heard the ringing and watched in surprise as my finger drew a penis in the dust on the mirror.
Then I thought I heard a sound from the other side of the house, a kind of squeaking, getting louder. I stiffened, standing motionless. Perhaps she was in the house after all? Was she lying somewhere, paralysed from a fall, unable to get up?
I walked through the hall, past the sitting room, and then stopped. I looked towards the stairs, towards the bedroom door. Mum’s bedroom. I hadn’t looked in there. That’s where the sound was coming from.
Obviously.
There.
Why hadn’t I looked in there?
What if she …
The door stood ajar and I peered cautiously in, my heart in my throat.
… what if she … if she was …
But she wasn’t there.
Her bed was unmade. If I hadn’t known better I would have thought: Aha, she left in a hurry. But no. Mum’s bed was always unmade, so that was not going to get me anywhere. There on her bedside table, beside a pile of seven or eight books, a mouth guard and a glass half full of water, lay Mum’s mobile. The ringing tone sounded like the dramatic intro to a news bulletin. I picked up the phone and saw the missed call: Maja mobile.
The phone gave a few more muffled, apocalyptic rings before it abruptly stopped. It felt as if someone had placed a soundproof hat over my head. The entire house was echoingly, worryingly silent.
It was not like Mum to go out without her mobile.
I lay down on the bed, pulling the lilac, patterned duvet over my head. I closed my eyes and breathed in the smell of the fabric. It smelled as if she hadn’t changed her bedding for a while: it didn’t smell bad, exactly, just a bit stale and something else, something sweet. Floral.
I didn’t have the energy to think so I squeezed my thumb hard and very obligingly it began to thud with pain. I closed my eyes tight. It was hard to breathe, so I gave the duvet a right hook and freed my face from the heavy material.
‘She’ll be here soon,’ I said out loud to myself.
My voice was calm; it actually reassured me. I allowed my face to form the rest-assured expression of confidence: smooth forehead, eyes wide open, mouth in a relaxed smile. A minute passed. Two. My face muscles were tense.
Rest assured. Rest assured.
I took a picture of myself with the camera on my mobile.
I didn’t look as if I was in a state of confidence.
I looked as if I was in a state of total lobotomisation.
Fuck it.
I shook my head violently, shouted, and stuck out my tongue. I clasped my mobile and shut my eyes, letting the smooth, cool display caress my cheek, and wondered so intensely where she could be tha
t it hurt.
As I lay there under the duvet I suddenly realised that I ought to call Dad. I considered it for a second or two, but what would he be able to do about the situation? I would have to go home again, of course, and I didn’t feel like doing that. I didn’t want to get on the train again and I didn’t want him to have to cancel his unsound plans that reeked of alcohol, which he would do because he wouldn’t want me to know about the unsuitable life he was leading. Which I already got. But most of all, I did not want him to be even more irritated with Mum than he was already.
I stared at the display on Mum’s mobile. There were several missed calls that I assumed was a cause for concern. The first one dated back to Wednesday. I recognised my home number from yesterday and my mobile number from today. She had several voicemails too. Did this mean she hadn’t checked her voicemail since last Wednesday? So didn’t she know about my thumb?
I scrolled through her contacts. There were about fifteen numbers but I only recognised one or two names apart from mine, my dad’s, and Gran and Granddad’s in Germany. Mum didn’t have many friends but she didn’t seem worried about it. She didn’t seem to care, not like I did. It was as if she didn’t really need other people.
I had a prickling, unpleasant thought: Not even me?
I shivered and pulled the duvet tighter around my body.
The number for the university switchboard was listed in her mobile, so I phoned it. I talked myself into believing she was there, that she was working late and the note she had written had simply blown off the table in a gust of wind when she had shut the door that morning.
Hug, Mum.
I spoke to a woman whose Östergötland dialect was so strong it made me smile. She put me through and immediately the answer machine kicked in.
“You have reached Jana Müller at the Institute of Psychology. Leave a message with your name and telephone number. Speak slowly and clearly, and I’ll phone you back as soon as possible.”
I hung up. Ever so clearly and slowly I said to the empty room: