Love
He’s peeled me like an onion. Surrounded by the leavings of my own sallow skin, I’ve dwindled to nothing, and my eyes smart.
Contract
One of his friends is doing her master’s abroad. She has an apartment on Válastígur, and she’s offered to rent it out to him. It’s a much better space than the basement apartment, and he’s invited me to move in with him . . . if I promise to stop acting crazy and cutting myself. Now everything will be better. I tossed out the pocketknife. It’s our new beginning.
Household
The new apartment is great! It’s right downtown, and we wake up to the bells of Hallgrímskirkja Church. We’re close to everything. The kitchen is on the large side and it has these gorgeous orange walls. We stock the fridge with vegetables and health food—no Diet Coke, no hot dogs or meat of any kind. I don’t know what’ll become of his roommate; I hope he doesn’t end up snowed in by piles of dust and lint. We’ve never had so much room to breathe and be ourselves; we have a living room just for us, plus the bedroom. You could almost go wild from comfort. The living room leads to a beautiful garden. In summer, we can sit there and drink beer and play games. I haven’t quite figured out how I’m going to pay my portion of the rent with my gig at the café, but I’m sure it’ll turn out okay.
Books
The sheer number of books he has caught me completely off guard. I knew that all the windowsills and empty surfaces in his room were stacked with books, but I had no idea about the rest of them. As we packed everything up, I realized that his closet and all its shelves were full of books instead of clothes. When we ferried over to Válastígur and started to put the books in order, I felt like I was walling myself in. But I’ve promised to stop being crazy, so I don’t breathe a word about the choke of claustrophobia that’s encroaching upon me.
Compromise I
Even though we live together now, I don’t call him my boyfriend. I think that label is too cliché, and it’d be too awkward after all this time. I call him my fake man.
The Natural Habitat of Vegetarians
It’s great to feel grown up. On Válastígur, we can have everything the way we want it. We recycle, cook vegetarian meals, read as many books as we want, and sometimes we stay awake all night and watch movies. Our home, on our terms.
Childhood
He has such beautiful eyes. Sometimes he snuggles up to my chest and looks up at me, deep into my soul. Then he’s so cute that I almost want to have him, to be his mommy, to start anew and take care of him. He went through so much when he was a kid that can’t be taken back. When I asked him to tell me about his life with his father, he drew back, acted strangely, but I know a little bit. I know that his father had all sorts of questionable girlfriends, and some of them were really chaotic, but he usually had time to read in peace when his father was in a relationship. I also know—mainly because of the stories he’s told me—that his father was a drunk who didn’t tolerate weakness and mistreated his girlfriends.
Like when he was seven years old in Norway, he vomited all over the kitchen table. His father hit him so hard that he knocked him off his chair, and he continued to kick him with steel-toed boots.
Another time, his father took him to some woman’s flat and made him wait while he fucked her upstairs. But he got to watch cartoons in the living room. That was a good day to him—until they came home to find his father’s girlfriend raving, demanding to know where they’d been.
When he was twelve, he moved back to Iceland. Nobody ever talked about those years in Norway. He wouldn’t speak about the alcoholism, the violence. He often tells me that he thinks his mother is clever and beautiful, but on the few occasions he’s talked about his father, he’s marveled at how his mother could’ve been with such a jackass.
Primitive
We are naked and sweaty. My ear against his sturdy rib cage, a delicately spicy aroma from his underarms. That is my favorite smell in the entire world. I want to bathe in his sweat, go out into the world with the scent of him ensnaring my senses.
Special Place
Our love is raw. We trust each other down to the core, something nobody in my life has ever come close to. When I feel as if I’ve flayed myself with a potato peeler, I remind myself: Love is a spectrum. It is as painful as it is wonderful.
Principles
My friend Bryndís is in homemaking school. The other day she came for a short visit to check out the new apartment. She brought a delicious-smelling cake that she’d taken out of the oven just before she came over. He was in his room with his computer the entire time, only saying hello to her when she peeked into the room. When Bryndís had gone, he came out and scrutinized the cake. “What type of eggs did she use?” he asked accusingly. He’s much more of a purist than I am. Even though we’re both vegetarians, he’s much stricter about his diet.
“I don’t know, probably just brown eggs,” I answered, getting myself a glass of milk to drink with a warm slice of cake.
“Can you call your friend and find out? I’m not going to eat murder eggs.”
I did, and Bryndís said that the shells had been white. She apologized, saying they were just the eggs they use in school. I told her it was fine, the cake was surely going to be delicious. He rolled his eyes and grimaced as he watched me try to deal with the egg issue. Just before I hung up, he stormed out of the kitchen and locked himself in the bedroom. He eats only pastries that are baked with brown eggs or eggs from hens that have definitely ranged freely.
I sat alone next to the cake and my glass of milk. I ate the entire fucking cake because I thought it was rude to throw it out. To me, cake is just cake.
Growing Pains
When I visit my parents, he never comes along. Since I’ve left home, I miss them sometimes. They invite us to dinner all the time, and they’re always ready to cook a hearty vegetarian recipe—they never feed us side dishes. It’s clear that he’s welcome, but he has difficulty being around my folks. My mom and dad are so normal, and he says he doesn’t know how he should act.
Sometimes I stay longer than expected, talking or watching a film. Then he gets peeved because he’s been sitting at home waiting for me. He doesn’t understand why I’m still so attached to my parents. “When are you going to leave the nest? When will I get to be your family?”
Treasure Hunt
Often, when I visit people I know, I look in their medicine cabinet. I don’t go through it; I just open it and check out its contents, see how it’s organized. I’ve done this since I was little. Back then, I’d rummage through every cabinet in my parents’ house in search of treasures, unearthing birthday and Christmas gifts, looking for dark chocolate or spare change to buy myself jellies. The girl who owns the apartment that we’re renting took almost all her things with her before she moved out. Except in the kitchen, where she stashed a few things in the lower cabinet.
Ever since we moved in, I’ve been itching to find out what she left in there. One day, when I was home alone, I emptied out the cabinet—one item at a time. She hadn’t left anything really interesting—lots of crockery, crafting supplies, tools. In the toolbox, I found a matchbox, and something inside of it rattled. It was full of wafer-thin paper packages. I picked one out of the box and unfolded it. A stainless steel razor blade. I’d never handled anything like that before; it was featherlike, with an hourglass shape carved out of the middle.
I replaced everything else in the cabinet, carefully putting it all back in its place. Or nearly everything. I took the razor blade that I’d opened and hid it in the bathroom. I haven’t cut myself since we moved in, but I think it’s good to have the blade on hand, just in case.
Compromise II
When we first met, I was very outspoken. I had principles, feelings about coexistence. People shouldn’t piss on the people they care about; they shouldn’t sleep around while keeping someone dangling. I thought anal sex was out of the question, I didn’t like to give blow jobs, an
d when I was forthright about all those things, he made a face, like he was gloating. After we started living together, he told me that he knew from the beginning that he would turn me, bring me over to his side.
Depression
A haze in my head. Body fatigued, numb. Housefly lands on my cheek, don’t have the energy to swat it away. Eyelids heavy under the weight of air. They fold. I want to sleep for a hundred years. I want to forget myself.
Alchemy
We take turns cooking. But I still do it more often because he’s such a messy cook. He splashes food on the walls, fills the sink with pots and pans, the cutting board, dirty utensils. One evening, I’d planned to make a North African stew, and I told him about it the day before; I’d even soaked the beans overnight. But when it came time to cook, I didn’t feel like it. I lay in bed all day and didn’t want to do anything apart from retreat from the world.
When he found me spread like a jellyfish under the blankets, he lashed out. “You said you were going to cook! I’ve been looking forward to it all day!” He said that was typical of me; I never do anything I say I’ll do, and I never finish anything. I rolled out of bed, shuffled into the kitchen, shutting him out. While I chopped vegetables, I cursed and cried, throwing the ingredients carelessly into the pot. I cooked noisily, tumultuously. I threw the dishes on the table, poured tepid water into a carafe, and called “Bon appétit!” when the sweet potatoes were still half hard to the tooth.
In the meantime, he sat at his computer in the living room, not once looking up to acknowledge my cooking conniption. He walked into the kitchen, sat down at the table, grabbed a plate. I watched him scoop a forkful of vegetables and beans, blow on it, and slide it into his mouth. He chewed, scowled, tore off a paper towel, and spat the food back out. Without saying anything, he stood up from the table, grabbed an apple, and went back into the living room, where he sat down in front of his computer.
Knowledge
He is private. I’m not allowed to go through his computer. But I know he’s online all the time chatting with other people, other women, and he doesn’t want me to have anything to do with it. He works for a nonprofit human rights organization two nights a week, and once, when he was running late for his shift, he forgot his computer as he tore out of the apartment. I was alone at home, and suddenly I realized that the computer, this technology forbidden to me, was left wide open on the coffee table. For a microsecond I thought it would be best to trust him—to leave it alone—but as I sat in front of the computer, I couldn’t help but let my eyes wander across the screen.
It was February, dark out. The lights in the living room were off, and the screen’s gray-blue gleam shone cold. I saw that he had been talking dirty, flirting with girls while we were together. But the redhead had a special place. He had praised her for her cleverness, her beauty, raved about their encounter, and he regularly made plans to meet her. I read through their messages again and again, calculating them against the amount of time we’d been spending together, like lining up pieces of a puzzle. He had been talking dirty with her while I was baking for him, studying, or on the toilet. He repeated over and over how much he loved her. I realized that, on the first night he told me that he loved me, he’d met up with her at the pub, at Kaffibarinn, told her exactly the same thing, and fucked her. If she hadn’t had a boyfriend at the time, he would’ve almost certainly asked her to move into the apartment on Válastígur.
Disapparation
I am such an idiot. How can one person be this much of a failure? I thought I could just wait it out until I was good enough. That he’d come to love me eventually. But he just looks through me. I am transparent. I don’t exist.
Redhead
I lay on the sofa, crying uncontrollably. Trembling under the heavy sobs, my body stiffened into a spasm until I passed out. When I recovered my senses, I felt like I was in a fugue state. I knew. I knew what to do. I went to the bathroom and closed the door behind me. Pulled out the razor blade from its hiding place in the medicine cabinet. Crouched down in the shower, I stuck the blade deep in my left wrist, dragged a determined sluice, pin straight. Everything was in a fog, but I cut again and again, watching as blood sprang from the wound. I smeared the blood into my hair, screamed, cried; I would be a redhead too when he came home. I carved five strokes into the wrist of my right arm, but they were less substantial, less sure. I curled up on the floor of the shower and cried until I lost consciousness.
Capulet
I felt as if I were aboard a submarine, hundreds of meters under the sea. But out of the deep, I heard him close the front door. Damn it, can’t I do anything right? I can’t even off myself like a proper person. I heard him call me, heard his footsteps as he entered the living room, as he saw the laptop I’d discarded on the floor. I heard him open it, heard the playing of fingers on its keys, the realization that I knew. “Fuck . . . Lilja, where are you?”
I didn’t want to answer him. I wanted to lie quiet and still. I wasn’t sure if I could talk. My throat was so dry and painful and I was so weak, I didn’t believe I could make a sound even if I willed it. I heard him walk through the apartment, search the bedroom, the living room again, the kitchen, and the bath. He knelt beside me, pulled me into his arms, and cried. He lifted my wrist, repeating, “What did you do?” But he’s not an idiot; he knew I wasn’t dead. He shook me until I moaned an incomprehensible something. I couldn’t look him in the face. I had no language for what I had tried to do.
Shame
He wrapped gauze around my arms, dressed me in a big sweater, called a cab. The taxi driver watched me in the rearview mirror the entire time. “She’s not going to throw up, is she?”
“No, no, nothing like that,” he answered plaintively, reaching for my hand.
In the emergency room, I gave the woman in the window personal details: name, social, address. She asked why I came; I choked. “Do I have to?” I answered quickly. “Can’t I just tell the doctor?”
“You have to tell me so that we can assess the urgency of your case.”
I looked around. The waiting room was full of people who looked morose, as if they’d been waiting there all evening. I eventually pulled myself together, tempered my thoughts, and said in a half whisper, “I had an accident.”
The woman in the glass cage pursed her lips. “What sort of accident?”
I lifted my arm up and showed her the wrinkled bandages, by now seeping blood.
“I understand. Take a seat over there. The doctor will be with you shortly.”
We sat on blue vinyl chairs, the arm jabbing my side when I snuggled up to him. He was my shield against the fluorescent lights and the gazes of injured people in the waiting room. “Can’t we just go home? I don’t want to be here,” I whispered.
“You have to let them look at it, then we’ll go home,” he said, tightening his arms around me.
He’d barely said the words when a young doctor called me. I looked around the room, not quite sure why I was called ahead of everyone else. The doctor led us into an exam room, where I sat on the examination table.
He took a seat in the corner. He looked so stocky, sitting there in the corner and staring at the green laminate floor.
The doctor unwrapped my right arm and said calmly, “Lilja, can you tell me what happened?”
I looked down to avoid his attentive gaze, couldn’t answer. Wasn’t it obvious? Why did I have to put up with such idiotic questions?
“You have to tell me what happened,” he continued slowly.
I started to wail, shaking and shivering, hoping that I wouldn’t have to answer any of his questions. The young doctor turned to where he sat in the corner.
“Do you know what happened?”
He raised his hands to his face, wiped aside tears that ran down his cheeks, brushed his lips with the heel of his hand, and began, “I just found her like this. I was at work when she did it.”
The young d
octor inspected the wounds. Medical staff were constantly coming and going, and he spoke to them in low tones until an older nurse arrived to help. She hung around. She and the doctor whispered to each other before he turned to me, resolved: “Lilja, you have to tell me how you got these wounds.”
I was ashamed. Why couldn’t I even manage to kill myself? Then I wouldn’t have to listen to this bullshit. I couldn’t say anything; I had no words to describe what had happened. The doctor pressed me for an answer until I pushed through my silence: “I fell in the shower.”
The doc and nurse looked at each other. I expected that they would chide me for lying to them so boldly. But the doctor answered with intention, “What did you hit when you fell? I need to know how you got these wounds in order to assess the severity.”
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