“What do you mean, take advantage?”
He threw his fork down and considered me sternly. “I am not going to have an argument with you about your American superiority complex. That is a lie. You know that, right? Look at your prisons. At your schools, at the health services in your country. Pay or out into the street you go. Or into the prison, depending.”
“Søren.”
“You are not Danish, Roxana. You do not understand. The system we have built functions only if everyone follows the rules. There can be no exceptions. Even cutting in line can unsettle everything.”
A haze descended, obscuring everything. There was no arguing with him. He went on.
“You are suffering the result of years of bad behavior from people like Geden. He has some tragic tale, as they all do, and that is of course very sad. The problem starts with the idea that it is our job to respect the backward customs and Stone Age lifestyle of these people and their religion. Religion! There is nothing worse in the world than religion.”
Søren downed the rest of his beer. “I see your expression. You damn me. I am not intolerant, Roxana! Why should the workday be divided into many parts so they can get down on all fours every so often to pray on their little magic rugs? Why is that my problem? If you claim you can speak to a man in the clouds, why does your insanity need to be recognized and accommodated with special dispensation? What does any of that have to do with the promise between the state and the citizen?”
Søren’s voice inflated, monotone. I already knew what he would say if I tried to respond: that he was concerned about preserving the culture of Denmark, that Americans were the real racists, that I didn’t understand what I was talking about. I felt more and more invisible beside him. How could he care so much about abstract categories and so little for concrete details?
Something inside me started humming. I tuned him out, tuned it in. Saw Geden slowly turn his head, walk into the trees.
Nothing seemed to give Søren pleasure anymore. He grew sullen. I had to be the one to take the hash from its place in the cupboard, to pack it into the little glass pipe. He smoked as morosely as he drank. The closest he came to being happy was after three or four beers and several pipes’ worth, when I found an old American comedy on the television. He brayed at every joke and fell asleep as soon as it ended.
Old movies had always depressed me. When Sylvie went through her New Wave phase, I watched the films begrudgingly, one eye on the magazine or coffee table book on my lap. Colorized films were even worse than black-and-white, that fuzzy grain, the familiar-but-not clothes and hair, the hopeful looks on the young faces of actors I knew only as wizened and creased. But I grew adept at feigning interest in Søren’s films, second-and third-tier comedies and made-for-TV dramas set in nameless soundstages. I had to. Absent entertainment, Søren buried himself in bad news on his computer, bathed in its blue light, his eyes boring into the screen. When I said his name, he jumped.
But all this was preferable to Søren in full fury. The attacks of rage and sadness could come at any time, could be set off by anything, his anger generalized and inescapable, a way of being. It filled every space in the apartment, made the front windows rheumy and opaque. We couldn’t see through it and no one could look in. If I parted my lips Søren’s anger flooded my mouth and choked me.
I wished he would do something violent and plainly crazy—break a chair, punch a hole in a wall, throw the TV out the window—just to break the spell of his melancholy. Sometimes I saw my original Søren, romantic and delicate, trapped inside the suffering gray shell perched on the other end of the couch, watching, hoping that he might be released.
No two of his moods were alike. Each carried a million new tiny shades of self-loathing. “I’m a moron, I’m a drone, I don’t know what I’m doing, why did I think I could do this?” he raged. “God, I’m such a fucking loser,” he would say, until the words no longer meant anything. I heard only the sound of his unhappiness and my powerlessness against it.
When he was like this, everything stopped. All of me clenched terribly, even my thoughts. And he never wanted me, not anymore.
One day I bought a bottle of lotion at the grocery store just to have something that was my own. I put it on the floor next to my side of the bed. It was one of my clocks. My little birth control pills were the other. Every night I popped one from its blister pack and swallowed it without water. Then I pumped my hand full of lotion and spread it over my legs to heighten the sensation of climbing between the sheets. In the dim twilight and searing daylight I hung upside down off the edge of the mattress and watched the line inside the bottle sink past the word emblazoned across its beige plastic hips, LUKSUS, which Søren said meant “luxury.”
What if Søren just didn’t know what I wanted? Perhaps I had been doing that thing women’s magazines talked about so much. Thinking he could read my mind.
We were on the couch, already stoned. His hand was on the remote, ready to start up the evening’s entertainment. I touched him, smiling as gently as I could.
“Can we talk?”
He didn’t put the remote down. “Right now?” He kept his attention on the black screen, his finger twitching on the button.
I made myself be direct. I couldn’t look at him. “I just really like it when we’re making out and I feel you get hard through your pants. I like to feel it under my hand. Before we even take off our clothes. It’s exciting. I like it when you lie on top of me and I feel you.”
I tried to keep my voice level as I looked at him. “You know?”
He raised his eyebrows. I kept my smile steady.
“Maybe it sounds silly. I just wanted you to know.”
He nodded.
“Are you okay?”
He stretched his fingers out in front of him, as if expelling a toxin. “Yes, thank you!” He stood and left the room.
I had to wait until I stopped shaking before I could follow him down the hallway. Søren was lying on the bed in the dark in all his clothes, facing away from me. I stretched out on my side of the bed. He did not move. I put my hand on his back.
“Roxana,” he warned.
I withdrew my hand, then folded my arm against my torso and rolled over it onto my stomach. If I could have erased my arm from my body, I would have.
“Are you okay?” The words felt old in my mouth.
“Yes! I’m fine! I don’t know how to respond when you say things like that to me! What the hell am I supposed to say?”
In that moment, I didn’t know what he was talking about. I searched my mind for an accidental slight.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say when you talk about things like this. Erections through my pants? You want me to get hard but I can’t do that on command! I’m sorry!”
I want to have sex, I thought. I want your sex. I want you to put all that violent energy into a kiss. Remember the night I was in my flowered pajamas and you called me onto your lap and held me there, feeling me through my clothes, and we talked lightly, lightly about how I was twelve, about how no one else could know about what happened between us? And remember how after you took me to the bed and fucked me and stopped halfway through to put your mouth on me, and you ate and ate until I was just my lower face salivating and beating like a heart in your mouth?
“I’m sorry.”
He didn’t answer.
“I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”
I felt alone in the room.
“I was trying to be nice.”
Was he even breathing?
“I’m sorry.”
Silence upon silence. I waited in its long breath.
Finally Søren exhaled. “I am sorry, Roxana, that you are stuck with someone as fucked up as me. I do not doubt that you are very much looking forward to going home.”
He rolled away from me. I lay in the cold room until I was sure he was asleep. Then I made a pilgrimage to the bathroom, where I took off all my clothes and prostrated myself on the floor and c
ried until I was out of tears and my body was just a problem on the tile.
7
INDEPENDENCE DAY HAD COME AND GONE UNNOTICED SAVE FOR AN E-CARD FROM MAMA AND DAD, AN ANIMATION OF RACING AMERICAN FLAGS THAT MADE ME FEEL FIRST LIKE CRYING AND THEN AS IF I WAS LOSING MY MIND. The Fourth of July had been the midway point of every summer of my life, the reminder that it was passing. In Farsø it was just another day in an endless stream. Life would get more and more like this as I went on, it seemed, meaning leaching out along with everything that had once made sense. I went out into the white-hot day.
I wasn’t hungry for a hot dog or an ice cream, nor did I need any of the wares displayed in front of the stores I passed, final markdowns and last sales. My right hand skimmed the plastic and the not plastic, the spaces in between, until I reached a corner and turned left, into the scaffolding’s shadow.
All day I had been having a silent argument with myself about writing to Sylvie. Would she understand about Søren, or would she see the situation to its sad bones: a depressed older man who had secreted a young woman to a remote location. She would ask if I was Søren’s girlfriend, and I would tell her about the time we had talked about that, kind of, and she would withdraw into a reflective silence.
“Well,” she’d say after a while. “You have your answer.”
It was ridiculous to think about, I told myself to loosen the ringing in my head. I was in a place where no one knew me. The summer air carried Jutland to me like a hallucination, the bright sun and grassy smell muted, gauzy. One breath, and everything would disappear.
My eyes landed on a distant figure. I blinked and he sharpened. Familiar and tall in his khaki coveralls. Geden. I made my face still and kept my pace.
I had walked all over Farsø looking for him. I had come to recognize perhaps a dozen strangers. The tired young brunette mother struggling with her triplets. The old man out for his daily constitutional. The legging-clad teenager with Asian eyes and blonde hair, jogging. But I had not seen Geden since the day he walked away from me.
Then we were beside each other and my hand was in his.
It happened so quickly I thought I imagined it. Geden’s hand was at his side, mine at mine. We came toward each other and at the moment of passing he took my small sweaty fingers in his large dry ones. I was still moving when my arm registered the connection. Caught. Recoiled, sending me back to him. We stood at a diagonal, eyes downcast, as if we were about to dance.
“Roxana.” Geden’s voice was unsurprised. “Hello.”
“Hi.” I willed my hands to stop sweating.
“What are you doing?”
“Walking.”
“Walking where?”
“Nowhere. Just a walk.”
He smiled, revealing perfect teeth next to his luridly soft lip. “Keep your eyes open.”
“Yes.” I smiled back, cursing myself. Don’t be unfair, I thought. To Søren. The tops of my thighs were already wet.
“Where is Søren?”
“Excuse me?” I shivered. How did he know?
“This is a small town. People see each other. Søren is also having a walk?”
I looked away from him, across the street, where two women openly watched us. Geden did not turn. I caught the eyes of one of the women, a dyed redhead. Was she the teenager from the park? No—and I dropped my gaze, let her float away from me like refuse.
Geden’s mouth was pink and soft in his beard. I had a feeling of déjà vu.
He let out a painful little sigh. A wince. “Are you lonely, Roxana?”
My heart careened around in my chest, drunk. What would Mama say? “Excuse me?” I said again.
“Are you lonely?” He looked very serious, as if much rode on my answer.
“No.” I lied. “I don’t know anyone here, that’s all,”
Geden nodded, his hand still in mine. I remembered the International Abroad Experiences mission statement, the one Sylvie and I had memorized in the hours we spent over the Parisian Experience brochure.
The purpose of International Abroad Experiences is to connect people. When you make friends in another country, you become a citizen of the world. We believe strongly that this experience is one all young people should have. It enriches lives and deepens character.
I know you will make lots of friends, Dad had written.
“Don’t let anybody think they know more than you,” Mama said on the day I left. “Except for when they do and you need their help.”
“It’s difficult to meet people,” I said to Geden. It felt like a concession. “I don’t speak Danish.”
“Danish is not my first language, either.”
“I know,” I said, before I could stop myself.
He gave me a tiny smile. “It is not fair that I know nothing about you and you know so much know about me. An imbalance we must even. Have you been to eat in Farsø?”
“In a restaurant? No.” All Farsø’s three restaurants stood together among the conglomeration of barren storefronts on the main street. When I asked Søren which was his favorite, the answer was a stream of derisive laughter.
“In another town, then? Aars? Randers?” Geden asked.
“No.”
He squinted at me. “How do you fill all those lonely hours in Søren’s uncle’s apartment?”
A chill ran down my spine. “You just said you know nothing about me, but you know how I spend my days?”
“A guess,” Geden said. “Which you have confirmed. Tell me you have something to do in that flat other than tidy the same rooms over and over.”
I raised my eyes and then dropped them, ashamed.
“And he has not even taken you to a restaurant. I’m sorry.” And he did look sorry. Anguished even. What was going on?
“It’s fine.”
“No.” His hand moved. I thought he would drop the clutch. Instead he lifted his other hand and pressed them together around mine. My palms flamed. “I have an obligation, one foreigner to another. I will take you to eat. And in this way I will learn about you.”
“What do you want to know?” I found it hard to breathe.
“Oh, anything.” For a burning moment his palm was on my cheek and I raised my hand to hold it there and we looked at each other and then it was over.
“Meet me here at this time next week. Yes?”
“Yes.”
He let go of my hands. I closed my eyes. When I opened them, he was gone.
Was the street I took back to the apartment the same one I had walked to get there? Were the stairs the same? I almost expected a new apartment behind the heavy door, vibrant colors and loud music and billowing fabric in the place of Søren’s uncle’s tepid minimalism.
But inside, the same low blue sofa still sat across from the pressboard coffee table. The same coffee-stained dishtowels still hung from the oven door in the kitchen. I opened the cabinets and cupboards, peered into their same dark corners. How could they be unchanged? It didn’t feel the same inside, to stand under the poor water pressure and wash my hair with athletic determination. Something was different. Finally I saw the change in the steam-fogged mirror. My face had shifted, become subtly other. It was me. I was what had changed.
I tore the bedroom apart. Emptied the closet and drawers into a great heap and wiped the surfaces down. Hustled dust bunnies out from under the bed, crushed them under my feet, swept them into the trash. When everything was empty and clean, I sat panting beside my pile. The cheap closet door bobbed on its hinges, excited too, showing me the locked metal box. I hadn’t thought about it since the day we moved in.
It was cold to the touch and heavy as I remembered, so heavy I couldn’t lift it, only pull it out onto the floor, where it landed so loudly I worried I had cracked a floorboard. The intricate combination lock was printed with rudimentary little slashes, characters I didn’t recognize. I pushed it around, trying to pry it up by its corners, but the box’s lid stood firm.
I fell backward onto the clothes mounded on the bed. I c
losed my eyes and held Geden’s hand under the scaffold again. I couldn’t invent anything better than what had happened. The way we had come toward each other and touched.
That night was no different. Søren, despondent about his thesis, defrosted tiny cold shrimp in the sink and served them to me on toast spread with mayonnaise, a wet meal my stomach morosely accepted. It would sit there a long time. I was constipated from all the processed flour and meat. Or maybe I was just knotted up with thoughts of Geden.
After dinner Søren suggested we watch a movie. A famous old film that every Dane knew and loved was on television that night, even running with English subtitles! His excitement fatigued me.
The movie was about a pair of vagabonds who come to a farm and befriend the family that owns it. Much dull fun is had until evil businessmen show up to buy the farm out from under the family and the vagabonds jump into action to repel the opportunistic capitalists, uniting everyone in bucolic joy. This was apparently one of the most beloved films in the history of Danish cinema.
The actor who played the younger vagabond, Søren explained, had been so iconic in the role that for the rest of his career he had been typecast. As long as he could pass for young, the actor played honorable boys on the verge of manhood who swept into the lives of farm girls and impoverished noblewomen and shy Copenhagen schoolteachers and showered them with morally upright kindness and love and respect. He made honest women of them and was a true husband. There was a Danish word for the actor’s special character type: førsteelsker, “first lover.”
“First lover.” I passed the words through my mouth. “Who is the second lover, then? Who comes next?”
“Roxana.” Søren shook his head and put his arm around me. It was the first time he had touched me in days. I stiffened, afraid he would take his arm back. He looked deep into my eyes and for a moment I was sure he would kiss me. His tongue would slip into my mouth, a word I had forgotten. I would speak it again and time would restart.
He stroked my face. “Silly Roxana, there is no second lover. The førsteelsker is also the girl’s last. Once he wins her heart she can never win it back.”
Open Me Page 15