by Jenny J
The bonfire shocked me.
It totally silenced me: silenced my head and the words and thoughts inside it.
It was enormous. Gigantic yellow and orange flames licked the cornflower-blue sky. I approached it as if hypnotised, walking directly towards it and far too close, like a moth drawn to a flame. Enzo had to grab my arm otherwise I might have walked straight into it and allowed myself to be swallowed up.
It crackled. The noise was extreme. Deafening. I had never thought of that before, how fires crackle so much, how the wood makes them do that. But that’s how it was.
People came and went. Some of our old classmates from secondary school called out ‘hello’ from a distance, and Enzo raised a hand and nodded at them. Not me. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. All I could do was stand and stare straight at the flames, deep into them. The yellow part of the flame was so pale at the very centre that it was actually white. I felt warm, at last I felt warm, and I don’t think I had felt that since the day I jumped into Vinterviken and barely came up to the surface again.
I thought to myself: Burn like fire in Cairo.
Enzo understood the need to keep quiet. It must have been an hour later when he stroked my arm and nodded in the direction of the bikes. I was startled to see anything apart from the fire, to see green budding trees and grey-green water. To see his kind eyes and soft cheeks.
We cycled slowly home. When we were about to go our separate ways I said ‘thanks’, but Enzo only gave me a perplexed look and shrugged his shoulders.
So, Walpurgis Night came and went. She phoned me a couple of times, Mum, but I didn’t answer. Obviously I knew she had been having a really difficult time, but I couldn’t do it. I simply couldn’t do it.
Most of May passed and I hadn’t been to Mum’s once, and neither was I able to miss her, now that I knew she was alive and more or less safe. Dad kept me regularly updated: she’s left hospital, just so you know. She’s started working again, just so you know. She asks about you, just so you know.
They seemed to be in touch more often. Sometimes they phoned each other but mainly they kept in touch by email. I checked his inbox occasionally – quite often in fact – and saw her name there, but I never read the emails. I don’t know why but I didn’t want to.
Dad, who stayed at home every weekend even though I hadn’t asked him to, started to look anxiously at the calendar after a while, clearly concerned about me, but also perhaps because his decadent weekends had abruptly gone up in smoke.
‘Have you stopped going there?’ he asked.
‘I think so,’ I said.
‘I see,’ he said, nodding slowly. ‘Right.’
I don’t suppose he had much else to say. And he could hardly blame me.
I might not have been able to miss Mum but I missed Justin all the more. I touched that ugly business card, stroked my finger over his name and over the shiny gold words:
Foxy cars – we buy, sell, recondition.
But I didn’t phone. I was about to do it to several thousand times but I didn’t call. I guess it had something to do with pride.
When he phoned me for the first time, on the twentieth of May, and said: ‘Hello, it’s Jens,’ I didn’t realise who it was at first. Who the hell was Jens? But then I remembered. That it was Justin. Who was Jens. And when he told me he was going to deliver a newly reconditioned Corvette to Skärholmen that afternoon and asked if it was okay if he came round for a while afterwards, it felt like small flames were erupting in my heart. Small flames were licking my ribs. Burning like a fire in Cairo. It was exactly one month since he had left me outside my front door.
I said to Dad, slyly:
‘You don’t have to be here all the time if you don’t want to. I’ll be okay. You can meet up with Ola or … Denise. That’s perfectly okay by me.’
And he looked shocked, verging on horrified, when he said:
‘De …Denise? What? Do you … How do you know who she is?’
And I shrugged my shoulders and grinned.
‘No idea. I expect you mentioned her some time.’
He looked particularly suspicious, his eyes narrow, his forehead wrinkled, but he made the most of the opportunity and disappeared that evening, so I was alone in the flat when Justin came.
When he rang the bell I was so nervous I was shaking. But I looked in the mirror and adjusted my face – eyes open but not staring, a smile forming at the corners of my mouth – to signal “mild interest”. I opened the door. We said hello. It didn’t work. Forget mild interest. I was far too flipping interested. He sucked my gaze into his and then he bent down and kissed me and then he kicked off his shoes and staggering like that we snogged all the way to my room.
I think we kissed for three hours nonstop. The bedspread got more and more crumpled, the nervousness slowly evaporated. The only pause occurred after an hour when Justin noticed a diploma from a school athletics competition that was hanging on the wall. I had come second in the high jump when I was in year six, my one and only athletics prize. When he saw the date he quickly worked out that I couldn’t be eighteen, as I had so stubbornly insisted, and he propped himself up on his elbows, opened his eyes wide and said:
‘First year at college? Are you only in the first year at collage?’
I nodded and laughed nervously.
‘I knew it! I … that was why I asked, there … that time! I thought you were in the third year, at least. That you were about to finish. Shit! I knew it! How old are you? Sixteen?’
‘Seventeen, actually.’
‘Seventeen?’
‘Yes, seventeen. It was my birthday in March. That’s not so bad, is it?’
And he stared at me and I said nothing. Instead I leaned against him, pressing him down against the mattress and kissing him again. At first he hesitated, his tongue was yielding and slow, and I saw him staring sceptically at the diploma, but after perhaps twenty seconds he shut his eyes and responded hungrily. I interpreted this as if he had recovered from the shock pretty quickly.
Just after nine he had to leave to catch the last Norrköping train. He and Dad met in the doorway and Justin greeted him politely, took his hand and said: ‘I’m Jens.’ That hand, with its grease lines on the palm, its nails edged in unidentifiable grime. Dad looked astonished but glad as well in some way, and he said: ‘I’m Jonas’ and something bizarre like ‘Pleased to meet you.’
The following day, when I tried to check Dad’s emails and Facebook page, I couldn’t get access. The password had been changed.
Perspective
Late one Friday night when Dad and I were lounging on the sofa half-watching True Romance, he started talking about that family interview. He hadn’t mentioned a word about it before, so I stared straight ahead like I was afraid to look directly at him, afraid he would stop talking. On the TV a bloody, trailer trash Patricia Arquette was stabbing James Galdofini in the foot with a corkscrew.
‘At first they wanted me to go to Norrköping, but I couldn’t … or rather, I didn’t want to! Although I didn’t say that. So we … we did it over the phone. It was so odd, being interviewed. It’s usually me asking the questions. And she … the psychologist, Mia … Mia Lundgren or whatever her name was, she had a hundred questions about Jana. How she managed her job, her house, her relationships, even … even her hygiene, for crying out loud.’
He gave me a quick look. I concentrated hard on the TV, at Patricia Arquette in pink leopard-skin tights, off the shoulder blouse and turquoise bra. At the china figurine she smashed against Gandolfini’s head.
‘It was so hard to answer! I didn’t exactly have up to date information. I’ve gathered some things – we’ve been in touch from time to time – and I’ve heard you mention one or two things, but otherwise I had to rely on what she was like thirteen, fourteen years ago.’
He took a sidelong glance at me and sat up straighter in the sofa. I grabbed the remote lying beside me. I needed something to hold, to hold on to.
‘I don�
��t know,’ he said, hesitantly. ‘Perhaps I should have told you about this? About the interview? About the … assessment?’
Should he? I shrugged and looked out of the window where the sky was a dull blue-black without a star to be seen. That is precisely what had made me so angry, the fact that he kept things secret from me, things that were important. But should he have shared them? I didn’t know. I tried to see it from his perspective, but it was hard.
‘ …but Jana didn’t want that, didn’t want me to tell you. And in some way I felt I ought to respect that. I thought that if she doesn’t get a … diagnosis, then it’s unnecessary to even bring it up. More like … why worry you?’
The tower at Telefonplan lit up. A clear and practically neon yellow illuminated the windows on every floor.
Yellow! Someone had managed to get yellow!
Was that a sign?
I cleared my throat. To silence him. To gain time.
Because at closer examination I found I couldn’t see it from his perspective. Not his and not Mum’s. My own was too insistent and important; it lay in the way and blocked the view.
Because surely I was right about wanting to know about the speculation? About the assessment? Regardless of whether it had led to anything or not. I mean, I was her child! Wasn’t I the one she was mother to? It was me she lived with, even if it was only every other weekend. Dad interrupted my thoughts.
‘Then that psychologist asked a whole lot about Jana’s competence as a … as a mother.’
He fell silent. His forehead creased. He opened and closed his mouth repeatedly as if he couldn’t make up his mind whether to say anything or not. There was a vacuum-like stillness between us, like when someone switches off a fan and it’s only then you realise it has been on all day.
‘That was the hardest thing. I knew so little! I know so little, I realised that then. I had no idea what it was like for you, and those questions filled me with anxiety, such huge anxiety. I sat there with the phone in my hand and that psychologist patiently waiting. But perhaps it wasn’t anxiety for what it’s like now, but more for how it has been. It brought up so many memories. She was so sensitive to stress, your mum. When you were difficult, you know, like all children . . . like if you didn’t want to get dressed or whatever it was, she would just leave the room, leave you half dressed. She was completely inflexible. Or when you didn’t want to eat the food she had prepared for you. She’d throw it in the sink, walk out of the kitchen and leave you sitting there, strapped in your chair. She kind of thought that … that you ought to understand. You know: “I’ve told you to eat.” As if saying it once was enough. She wouldn’t try to talk you into it, coax you, or persuade you. Like you have to do with children. She didn’t somehow . . . have that ability.’
Dad threw out his arms.
‘Oh, I don’t know! Perhaps you should have lived here all the time, but . . . you had the right to have her, to have your mother. And it gradually improved, I assumed. As you got older. And she’s been so good about some things. She had enormous patience when you were in that phase, you know, when children are four or five and question absolutely everything. You were actually pretty unbelievable. Incredibly hard work.’
Dad smiled and looked affectionately at me. I felt the look against my cheek.
At that very moment Patricia Arquette made a firebomb out of a can of hairspray and a lighter and James Gandolfini’s face was instantly covered in flames.
‘You asked a thousand questions a day and it was driving me mad. We joked that you had inherited it from me, the probing journalist. But Jana was fantastic! When I left you there at the weekend and you started asking questions, she answered every one. Every single one! Every little question that came out of your mouth! And if she didn’t know the answer, she would look it up, Google it or ring some department at the university. I remember one time, you had tormented me for a week with some question about space, or stars – I can’t quite recall.’
He laughed.
‘Anyway, I was taking you to Norrköping and we were sitting in the car and I think you asked me “why” every hundred metres, and I simply couldn’t keep on answering! I just turned up the music. But as soon as we got to Jana’s she phoned the astrological institute or maybe the meteorological service. And you sat there on her knee with your skinny little body and you were so happy!’
I smiled, because I could remember that. Not the question itself, even though it would almost certainly have been about space, but the feeling. The intensity of her attention. How important it made me feel. How valuable. A little jolt of loss went through my body, because she was still like that.
We sat quietly for a few minutes, looking at the TV, watching them shoot each other. Christian Slater ducked in a red-splattered Hawaii shirt.
‘But,’ Dad went on. ‘There was so much that didn’t fall into place. Sometimes it felt as if nothing ever ran smoothly. Everything had to be planned, discussed, dissected. And her need for control! It almost drove me mad! That’s why I had enough. That was why we separated. I couldn’t cope with it any more.’
He stopped himself abruptly and looked sideways at me, guiltily.
‘I probably shouldn’t be talking to you about this,’ he said.
‘Probably not,’ I replied.
On the TV Patricia said:
Amid the chaos of that day, when all I could hear was the thunder of gunshots, and all I could smell was the violence in the air, I look back and am amazed that my thoughts were so clear and true, that three words went through my mind endlessly, repeating themselves like a broken record: you’re so cool, you’re so cool, you’re so cool.
And Patricia reminded me of Debbie who was called Sarah and her voice instilled in me some sort of courage and my heart began to beat hard with angry conviction.
‘I … I think you should have told me.’
My grip on the remote hardened. As if it was crucial. As if I could control something with it.
‘What? What about?’
Dad turned to face me. Our eyes met and I looked into the golden-brown eyes that I hadn’t inherited. I noticed how his hair curled and fell over his forehead.
‘About the assessment. I had a right to know, regardless of what had happened. Regardless of whether she had been diagnosed or not. I mean, I’m her child! You’re both my parents!’
He looked at me for a long time without blinking.
‘Maybe you’re right.’
‘Don’t you think I’ve understood that she’s … different?’
‘Yes…’
‘I mean, what are you trying to protect me from? She’s the way she is, anyhow! With or without the diagnosis.’
‘Yes, yes, I expect you’re right.
‘Trust me, I am right.’
He sat in silence. After a while he said:
‘Hmm. You are right.’
Fucking Deadly
The last day of term was approaching. The last jittery days of my first year at college would soon be over. It was about as cataclysmic as picking your nose.
Dad had been insisting for ages that he wanted to be in church with us, but I thought that was unnecessary. It wasn’t like I was graduating or anything. He allowed himself to be persuaded on the condition he could buy me some new clothes to wear. Not that I thought new clothes were essential – I mean, what was wrong with the old ones? – but I wasn’t hard to convince. It’s just that I hate it when people try to make clothes so absurdly important, as if they were some crucial statement of opinion. It’s only material we cover ourselves with to protect our genitals and to stop us freezing. Okay, I won’t kid myself, of course I cared. I didn’t wear just any old thing. And clothes were a big concern of the New Romantics. But I refused to be a clothes victim, like the others of my fashion blog-damaged generation, and it would never cross my mind to wear ballerina pumps and cropped leggings or anything ridiculous like that just because they happened to be slightly fashionable.
I joked about wearing Valter�
��s T-shirt. It was white and genuinely made a statement, but Dad didn’t think that was funny at all.
‘With that T-shirt, all your inexplicable injuries and your concentration-camp hair style, I’d be reported to Social Services before the ceremony was over!’
I wasn’t exactly delighted about that comparison of my hair, but rather that than looking like a Nazi. From one extreme to the other.
It ended up with both of us kind of having our own way: a mixture of new and old clothes. I bought a white dress with dramatically large red roses and a gathered waist at Judith’s second hand shop on Hornsgatan. With it I thought I’d wear white gloves and my black steel-toed boots. I even sent a text to Sarah with a picture of myself and she swiftly texted back enthusiastically: ‘Cat! You look fucking deadly!’ and that made me happy because I’d rather look deadly than undead.
Anyway, the hole in my head had healed up well and I realised my fingers often made their way there to feel the place where the stone had hit me and where the skin was thin, smooth, and sort of shiny. Only a memory now.
As for my thumb, I had got used to it. I liked it. I’d relearned how to do up buttons with it, tie shoe laces and use a keyboard correctly. It was still painful and I still had nasty flashes of memory about the saw’s metal teeth vibrating through my flesh, cutting off a piece of me. But I could put up with that. And that little part at the tip, the part that was no longer there, only hurt occasionally. Only occasionally did I feel that weird phantom pain.
THURSDAY, 7 JUNE
Mum
At our end-of-term service in Kungsholm Church, the stillness and the atmosphere of weighty responsibility were striking. Even FAS-Lars kept his mouth shut and looked appropriately moved. Perhaps his parents had secretly crumbled a few sedatives into his breakfast cereal so he wouldn’t embarrass them, what do I know?