“I exercise. I play tennis sometimes.”
She snorts. “I can offer you a gaggle of ripped personal trainers to ogle. You’re not gonna find that at the tennis court.”
I laugh. Pernilla never changes. I’m glad I came here.
“It’s been way too long since we did this,” I say, tucking my feet beneath me.
“Got soused on a weekday?”
“Is that the plan?”
“I’m flexible,” Pernilla says and hands me a tray of cheese and crackers.
“I saw Mom this weekend.”
“How was that?”
“It was good.”
I take a cracker and taste it. Pernilla’s cell beeps; she picks it up, reads something, and puts it away.
I gather my courage and ask, “Do you have any contact with Maria nowadays?”
“Maria Sundkvist?”
“Or Daniel? Have you heard anything from him?”
I try to make it sound like an innocent question.
“Not so much in recent years. We’re friends on Facebook. Maria lives in Arvidsjaur, Daniel in Bro.” She glances sideways at me. “Why? Why do you ask?”
I shrug my shoulders. “Saw someone who looked like Maria.”
Pernilla seems content with that. She stares at her cellphone again, laughs at what she sees.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about Alice lately,” I say.
Pernilla wrinkles her forehead and finally looks up. “So that’s why you ask. Why have you been thinking about her?”
“Why?” I say. “What kind of question is that?”
“Sorry, Stella, I didn’t mean it like that.” She creeps closer to me on the sofa and puts an arm around me.
“When I saw Milo and Hampus today I wondered about her. How she would have looked, what she would have been like right now.”
“Don’t think like that, sweetie. Dwelling on that leads nowhere.”
“What if she’s alive?”
Pernilla grabs my hand and looks into my eyes. “You can’t do this. Do you remember last time, how bad you felt? Let it go, Stella. You have Henrik and Milo. Alice is gone.”
“How do you know that? What if I know she’s alive and that—”
“Stella, stop. I was at her funeral.” Pernilla impatiently shakes her head. Her cell beeps again, and she can’t stop herself from looking at it. “Maybe it’s the stress? Work’s been pretty rough lately, hasn’t it?”
I think about the death notice. About the menacing-looking man in the raincoat standing on the street watching me through the window. I want to talk to her about it. But Pernilla isn’t listening.
“Okay, let’s forget it,” I say, grabbing the wine.
“Is everything good between you and Henrik?”
“It’s nothing like that.”
“You need a hot weekend just the two of you,” Pernilla says and winks. “Send Milo here. Get away and have some fun together.”
There’s no point. I thought I’d be able to talk to her, thought she would understand.
“Who are you so eager to chat with?” I nod to the phone.
Pernilla smiles. “My personal trainer. I’m happy you were so kind to him when you met.”
It’s that easy to change the topic of conversation. Apparently, we’re just going to shoot the shit for the rest of the evening. I regret coming here.
“Yes, he was nice,” I say. “Henrik liked him.”
“Did he really?” Pernilla seems relieved. “Hampus likes him, too. I know he’s a little young, but he’s sweet. And funny. He makes me feel special.”
Pernilla goes off on a long monologue. Sebastian is so nice, so wonderful, more mature than anybody she’s ever dated, he’s charming, attentive, kind, and he’s good in bed, handsome, in great shape, young and strong and so hot, and she’s never felt this way about anybody before.
I let her prattle on. Drink my wine. Feel miserable.
I’ve tried talking to Mom, tried talking to Pernilla. Neither has shown the least bit of understanding. Both think I should forget the past and focus on the future.
I think about Daniel. I miss him, long for him even. I want to see him; I want to hear what he has to say. But I’m not sure he’d want to listen to me. Not after last time.
Pernilla gives me a long hug when I’m about to go and says she’d gladly meet again soon. If I want to talk. I don’t tell her that’s why I came tonight. She’s completely absorbed by this new relationship.
She wants to call a taxi but I explain I’d rather walk to the subway, get some fresh air. We hug again, and I leave.
It’s cold outside; I wrap my coat more tightly around me as I walk up Igeldammsgatan. The time is almost half past nine, but the street is deserted. There’s not much life on Fleminggatan, either. I’m rarely afraid, still I speed up. Wish I’d skipped the wine so I could have taken my car.
I turn right on St. Eriksgatan, descend down the stairs to the subway. I take out my subway card, continue through the turnstile toward the escalator. Steps echo loudly in this desolate hall. Is someone following me again? Or is it my imagination? On my way from Pernilla’s I had that odd feeling. As if someone was watching me. Surveilling me. Following me.
I walk even faster.
The man outside our window. Standing in the rain staring at me. I see his shapeless raincoat in front of me. The hood pulled forward over his face.
I stop and turn around. No one is there. The escalator is too slow. I run down it with my eyes on the steps. When I get to the bottom, I stop and look around again. I continue forward and crash into someone who grabs my arms. I scream and take a step backward.
“Look out there, lady.” A close-cropped, beefy security guard. The smile he gives me is friendly.
“Excuse me,” I say. “Didn’t see you there.”
He wishes me a nice evening and continues upward.
I’m on edge during the whole subway ride. In Alvik, the bus takes forever to come. I consider ordering a taxi after all, or calling Henrik and asking him to pick me up, but that feels silly. I don’t want to give in to fear. In the end, the bus arrives, and I get on.
It’s dark when I get off at my stop. The streetlights are broken, and I start running. I look behind me, but nobody is there. I run up the driveway to the front of the house. Breathless and shaking, I struggle to find the key in my purse, and it takes me a few attempts to get it into the lock. I get the door open, hear a sound behind me, and swing around. The wind has pushed the branch of a tree into the gate. It’s fallen down and lies there between the gateposts. I tear open the door and throw myself inside. Close and lock it.
It’s dark inside. Henrik still isn’t home. I send a text message to him, asking how long he’ll be at work. Receive no response. I want to talk to him about Alice. I want to talk to him about the man in the raincoat.
I sink down to the floor in the hall. My heart is pounding, blood rushing, I have difficulty breathing, and my field of vision has shrunk to a fuzzy circle of light.
I lie on my side and pull up my legs. Arms around my knees.
Inhale. Exhale.
* * *
• • •
The attack has ebbed out.
I get up from the floor and go into the living room. I draw the curtains. Go to Milo’s room and grab a golf club. I turn on the TV, flip to some ridiculous sitcom, and raise the volume. I lie on the couch with the phone in one hand and the golf club in the other.
Isabelle
It’s Friday, and we’re sitting at the café outside the KTH library. Johanna, Susie, Maryam, and I are working on a mechanics assignment. I’ve started staying behind after lectures again so we can study. Sometimes when we’re done we have a coffee or even go into town together. I find it easier to do every time I join them. It feels good to be part of a group, no longer just
an outsider.
I got through primary and secondary school by focusing on my studies. Never made any close friends. I wanted to get out of Borlänge the whole time. I longed to start over, to become the person I wanted to be.
A school counselor encouraged me to study at the university because my grades were so good. Dad thought I should go for it; he understood me and my need for independence. Mom didn’t understand at all. She still doesn’t. I’m not sure why. She moved around when she was young, but when it comes to me, she worries about everything. She wants to know every detail of my life, wants to protect me from everything. She has a long-held suspicion that the world is terrible, that people are dangerous. You can’t trust anyone. It’s awful.
And it’s poisoned me.
If Dad had died before I moved, I never would have done it. I know that. I would have ended up on the hamster wheel, working at a grocery store or at the nursing home like Mom. No friends, no life. Just like Mom.
My life has been so different from the lives of other people my age. It’s like I’m from another planet. My very own lonely planet.
When they talk about music, I’m lost. Mom doesn’t like “that pop music.” It gives her a headache. They’ve taken vacations in France, Thailand, Greece, the US. We visited my father’s relatives in Norrland. Fashion? What a joke. Most of my clothes came from secondhand stores in Borlänge. Old, sad, shapeless. I’ve been taught it’s unnecessary to buy things new, it’s too expensive. And the worst part is that sometimes I feel the same way as my mother. Just as judgmental, just as petty, inexperienced, and jealous. I never want to be like her. Never.
I’m glad I got away. Yet there are times I miss Dalarna. Mostly, I miss spending time with Grandma.
My grandma Aina is just what a grandmother should be. White-haired and round and kind. She still lives in a house next to the railroad in Kyna. It’s country red with white trim and a front door painted bright blue.
The garden is bigger than ours, more open and inviting. The flower beds are well cared for and full of pink and white peonies, so many kinds of roses, and quite a few lilies. Of course, most of them would be done blooming now. There’s a knotty apple tree in the middle of the garden; its branches bend under the weight of apples at this time of year. At the far end of the garden sits a playhouse. A trampoline used to stand next to it. I would jump there for hours, waving at the trains passing by.
As a kid, I spent a lot of time at Grandma’s house. She’d pick me up after school, and I’d stay with her a few weeks every summer. We baked and played games; we did crafts and spent time out in the garden; we picked apples and raspberries and made jam; we found tons of blueberries in the woods. I would go over to the farmhouse next door and play with the kids that lived there. They had cats, chickens, and a horse. I used to go to the stable and loved to pet the horse’s silky throat, feel the warm puff of his breath. And every day we went down to the lake and swam.
When I think of Grandma, it hurts. Without her, I don’t know how I would have made it. I don’t want to lose touch with her. But we haven’t talked for a while, and it makes me feel guilty.
“Your expressions are fascinating, Isabelle,” says Susie, interrupting my thoughts. “Amused, thoughtful, terrified, sad. What’s on your mind?”
“All sorts of things.”
“Did you really never visit Stockholm before moving here?”
“Never. We mostly went up to Norrland. I’ve been to Gothenburg and Malmö a few times. Stockholm stresses Mom out.”
“Surely you went to the Gröna Lund amusement park with your school, though? Every kid goes there.”
“I broke my arm and ended up in the hospital that day.”
I remember how I begged and pleaded to be allowed to go and still Mom refused. It was too dangerous; it was too unsafe. How could a few adults handle such a large group of children? She would never forgive them if something happened to me. But my teacher talked to her, and she eventually gave in. Unfortunately, I hurt myself the day before I was supposed to go.
“How’s it going at therapy?” Maryam asks.
“In therapy,” Johanna corrects her.
“Are there any freaks who, like, drool or twitch?” Susie wonders.
It annoys me. I regret telling them where I go every Wednesday after lunch.
“They’re just regular people,” says Johanna, who always defends me. “Maybe you should try it, Susie. You seem to need it.”
“Yes, I’m gonna need therapy after this horrible class.” Maryam bangs her head on the table. “Mechanics. Who invented it and why do we need to learn it?”
Everyone laughs at her and I feel better again. Next summer I’m going to go to Gröna Lund, damn it. I’m going to do all the things I haven’t done yet. I’ll live my own life.
Dad would have wanted it that way.
And I’m going to talk to Stella. I’ll say everything I didn’t dare to say last time. I want to get rid of this hate inside me.
Stella
My head aches: what’s left of my hangover. It’s not yet ten-thirty, but it feels like I’ve been at work for much longer than that. I’m sitting at my desk with my laptop open, and I should be working on my patient notes. I can’t seem to formulate a rational sentence. I can only think about finding out more about Isabelle.
I open her journal, read the notes I’ve taken so far. Read her referral.
The referral.
I pick up my phone and call the GP clinic in Vällingby. I leave a message for Dr. Siv Rosén asking her to call me back concerning an urgent matter. While I wait for her call, I wander around the room. I stand by the window and look down onto the street below. I rearrange the things on my desktop. When the phone rings, I pick up before the first ring falls silent.
“Hi, Stella, what’s on your mind?” Siv Rosén wonders.
“You sent a patient to me recently,” I say. “Isabelle Karlsson.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Why did you send her to me particularly?”
Siv Rosén is silent for a moment before asking: “Is there a problem?”
“Not at all, I’m just wondering if you know anything more about her.”
“Any more? What I know is in the referral—did you receive it?”
“Did you have her as a patient for very long?”
“I’ve only met her once.”
“Do you know anything about her family?”
“What I know is what I’ve written.” Siv Rosén sounds annoyed. “Her father passed away in May, she’s depressed, has some social difficulties. You’re a good, well-respected therapist. And—well, maybe this will sound strange, but something in how she carried herself . . . something told me you’d be a good fit for her. You’d be just the kind of person she needs to talk to. So I sent her to you.”
“So she didn’t mention my name? Didn’t ask for me specifically?”
“Certainly not. You sound upset—what exactly is the problem?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Nothing at all,” I answer. “Just wanted to check with you. Thank you for your time.”
I hang up. Cradle my head in my hands.
Isabelle didn’t seek me out. She doesn’t know who I am.
JULY 22, 1996
I’m searching for her. She’s still in the cabin. I hear her crying. Hear her voice when she calls out.
I dive into the water. Swim down, farther and farther. I search everywhere, but she’s not there. Only darkness.
If I give up, stay here in the deep, will I find you then?
* * *
• • •
Today you turn three. It’s been two years since you disappeared. Yesterday we buried you at Skogskyrkogården.
A “farewell service.” Your name on a stone, beneath a white dove. But you’re not there.
>
Everyone wants closure. Everyone wants to move on. Everyone but me.
Stella
The sun is shining when I get down to St. Eriksgatan. I buy some spring rolls at Mae Thai. Carry them in a take-out bag and head toward Kronobergs Park. From the playground, I hear the shrieks of toddlers wearing the yellow and pink reflective vests of their various preschools. One young woman from a doggie daycare is walking nine dogs. The smallest is a Chihuahua, the largest a Great Dane. It seems quite comical. And also difficult.
I lose my breath from climbing up the steep hill to the top of the park and remember what Pernilla said about the body’s decline in middle age.
I’m still annoyed with her. She of all people should understand. But she’s completely obsessed by her sexy boy toy.
The benches at the top are empty; I sit down on one of them. It’s a bit too chilly to be sitting outside, but the autumn wind and the clear blue sky feel so good.
Mourning a child is a lonely business. The longing and the loss are impossible to share with anyone else. And now? What happens to that grief now that I know Alice is alive? I don’t know why, but there’s a kind of sadness in her return, too. I should be overjoyed, should be screaming with happiness. But all I feel is the weight of what we lost. Those years. Those stolen years.
My child, she knows nothing about us or our history. She’s unaware of any of it.
I wonder how Alice ended up in Dalarna. She disappeared from her stroller in Strandgården, but then? How did she get to Borlänge? And when? Does she feel as I do, that there’s a bond between us? What does Kerstin know, and how did she end up with custody of my daughter? Is she a victim, too, just like me?
Who stole my child? Is Isabelle really my child?
I could be wrong. The constant questions are driving me mad, I know that. Their obsessive quality is a sign that something is not right. The panic attacks could also be the beginning of a more serious mental breakdown. Just like when Milo was little. Maybe I’ve lost the ability to see myself objectively.
Tell Me You're Mine Page 9