Sweet Home

by Carys Bray

Adam cleared his throat before announcing, ‘Obviously, it’s me!’

  Martha gave an extra-loud snort. Jonathan wore his hurt around his eyes, like glasses. He blinked furiously and shivered his eyebrows.

  ‘That is not true,’ I said.

  Martha paused her piggy snores and opened her eyes. ‘Go on, Mummy. Measure who is your favourite. It’s me, isn’t it?’

  ‘No.’

  Jonathan looked hopeful again. He smiled at me, then looked down, bracing himself behind the wall of his forehead.

  ‘None of you is my favourite. I love you all exactly the same.’

  Jonathan shrugged, as if to say he knew it wasn’t him, anyway. Martha gave a strident snort and reclosed her eyes. But Adam heckled me with a loop of, ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire,’ and he was right. I was lying. I don’t love them all the same.

  The truth is that I love Adam the most. Adult teeth haphazard his gums like tombstones. He is barely put together: jumbly, slouching, still soft-skinned, trying on opinions, wearing ideas then discarding them like socks. He makes up quizzes.

  ‘How many goals did Wayne Rooney score last season?’ he asked once.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Do you know?’

  ‘No,’ he answered. ‘But it was probably about fifty.’

  He makes up jokes: Who is the grumpiest player in the premiership? Peter Grouch. Who is the rudest player in Man United? Wayne Mooney. Who is the cleanest Arsenal player? Van Persil.

  His disclosures curl like his free kicks, quickly and before anyone can protect themselves: ‘Yes I have got homework. Just a diagram. I’ve got to label it. It’s a big vagina.’ ‘I don’t know why you’re being so nice to Jonathan because he’s got a sore willy; I’ve got a hair on my balls.’ ‘Dad hit his thumb with the hammer. He says he said Slug in a ditch, but it sounded more like Son of a bitch to me.’

  At bedtime he chats to me. These chats are a diversion, a detour from sleep that I allow him to follow in order to experience his search for subjects, his quest for conversation. He nods sagely, pretends an interest in everything I say; even boredom is better than bed. He asks me questions about my childhood and although I discern a lack of interest in the side-to-side of his eyes, in the deliberate creases scaffolded by his eyebrows, I answer. I want him to be interested.

  Martha opened one eye, but when she caught me looking at her, she closed it again quickly.

  ‘Are you sure that you love us all exactly the same?’ Jonathan asked.

  And I realised. The truth is that I love him the most. His ears fan like trophy handles, cupping the prize of his face. His lips are gentle. They press regular kisses on my cheeks and forehead and they shuffle about silently as he reads to himself. He makes up sums and marks the correct answers with little tick-flicks of happiness. A nervous laugh attends him like the buzz of a diligent insect. ‘I think I’m actually your favourite, Mum, he-he,’ he finally managed.

  I smiled at him and he came to sit on my knee. The bones of his backside knuckled my thighs, he smelt of skin and fabric softener. ‘The favourite child is sitting on Mum’s knee, he-he.’

  Martha briefly opened both eyes and blew a wet raspberry at him.

  He is all arms and legs, stretchy, yet inflexible, no longer able to fold himself small. Of the three of them, he is the most eager to please, the most anxious to be approved of and yet the grumpiest and the most likely to be cruel. ‘Yes, your bum does look big in that,’ he occasionally says by way of morning greeting. ‘Your cooking is disgusting,’ he accuses me several times a week. ‘Of course I know it’s not a restaurant – the food’s too yucky.’

  I leaned forward and rested my head on the bony shelf of his shoulder. He squirmed a little, giggled as my chin tickled him, and then jumped off my lap. Martha opened her eyes to see what was going on. She stopped pretending to be asleep, and lifted alternate legs into the air, pedalling an invisible bicycle.

  ‘I like to ride my bicycle,’ she sang.

  It is also true that I love her the most. When she parts the curtain of her hair, her chin peeps out like the point of a star. There is a dimple as deep as a pencil poke in her right cheek and when she grins it burrows further, arcing like an extra smile. Her hands are still baby-padded and blunt, they pat and stroke with impunity. She is stubborn and unyielding. Once she blew up a crocodile rubber ring. She huffed around the house encircled by green plastic, chastising the grinning creature with her forceful hands. She refused to remove it at meal times, and at bed time I found her lying awkwardly in bed still wearing it. ‘I am an explorer,’ she said. ‘I’ve finished explorer school and I must wear this to my congradulation. No, congradulation is what I meant, Mummy.’ There are emotions which are still too big for her. There are times when she must clench her teeth and scrunch her face to help the words on their way out: ‘Why has Daddy peeled off his beard?’ ‘I don’t like these shoes any more. No, they’re not too small; they’re too fat.’

  She stopped pedalling her invisible bicycle and began to kick her legs against the sofa. It was probably the rhythmic pounding of her feet that caused Adam to leap up and shout, ‘Pile on Mum!’ I made a half-hearted attempt to escape and then allowed them to drag me onto the carpet. From my position on the floor I could see the chocked clouds were beginning to sieve a light scatter of snow on the garden.

  ‘This’ll teach you to say I’m not your favourite,’ shouted Adam.

  ‘You’re not the favourite, Adam. It’s me, he-he,’ Jonathan dared.

  Martha oinked at the pair of them.

  ‘Look! It’s snowing,’ I said. ‘Shall we go outside? We could build another—’

  ‘Stop changing the subject,’ Adam interrupted. ‘Who do you love the most?’

  Martha printed her palms over my eyes and pushed hard into the sockets. Jonathan sat on my stomach. ‘Surrender,’ he shouted.

  Adam held one of my legs and removed my sock as he prepared to tickle the truth out of me.

  ‘I love you all,’ I shouted above their laughter. ‘You’re all my favourite. It’s true!’

  I remembered my five-year-old self, immobilised by the stiff puff of a snowsuit, constrained and compliant; the good girl who buttressed her parents’ truth. The children’s hollers and whoops dispersed the image. Their weight was mashing, crushing. I wrapped my arms around as many bits of leg, shoulder and foot as I could reach, and I squeezed them tight: my three favourites. I love them because they are not like me. And that’s my truth.

  The ice baby

  It was Winter Solstice in the North Country, and a day as dark as the inside of an eyelid had imperceptibly stretched into night. Jens was supposed to be in the hall with the rest of the villagers, watching the Mayor light the Yule Log, but he’d slipped away. Liv wouldn’t notice, he decided. She was cradling their newest nephew, smiling carefully, determined to make a performance of happiness to any who might pity the mother and child tableau in which she was caught.

  Jens’s reindeer-skin boots crunched along the powdery crust of fresh snow, which glowed yellow in the warm light of his clockwork torch. Tree skeletons crowded either side of the path until he reached the fjord, where a world of slate-darkness and sparkle opened out in front of him. He switched off the torch to enjoy the black of sky and shadow. He looked at the outline of the snow-wrapped mountains piling in the distance and the smudge-light of the moon, reflected in the frozen fjord. He sat down on a hump of snow-covered rock. He could breathe properly here. The air sliced in and out of him, cauterising his thoughts, making things clearer, cleaner and less complicated. In the spring when the fjord melted, he and Liv would leave the island and travel to town. They would visit the hospital there. At the hospital pieces of both of them could be mixed up and made into a baby. Lots of people did it. Liv didn’t want to, but he would persuade her.

  On the way back to the village hall, his torch caught the edge of something slightly off the path and he paused to stroke light over it. He was familiar with feather ice and candle ice, with au
feis sheets and pancake ice. He’d even seen ice discs once as a boy; he’d watched the thin, perfect circles spinning like CDs in the slow-moving river. But he’d never seen anything quite like the piece of ice at the side of the path. Perfectly round, and slightly larger than a football, it was like a giant, glass hailstone. He knelt in the snow and ran his gloved hands over it. He gave it a tentative push. It was heavy, but manageable. He put the clockwork torch in his jacket pocket, lifted the ice ball up to his stomach and walked slowly and carefully along the familiar twists of the path home.

  He hefted the ice ball straight to his workshop, where he examined it in the fluorescent-bright light. He unlatched his toolbox and felt the familiar squirming of creativity in his stomach, the twitch of his hands, and the casting of his thoughts. While he’d been carrying the ball he had wondered how it might feel to finally see Liv expanding with their child. To see her moving slowly and carefully through the snow. And that was when he’d decided. As he walked around the sphere of ice resting on his work bench, he pretended to consider other possibilities, but he already knew what was inside it, just as he did when he sculpted wood. And he was right. Every chisel was perfect. When it was time to use the knife, it was as if he was following existing perforations in the ice. It seemed that he was breaking the baby free rather than making her. He sculpted fine lines and decorative cuts across her forehead, knuckles and toes with a V-tool. And then she was finished. The thing he wanted most in the world. She was perfect: diamond bright, and flawless. The most wonderful creation he had ever crafted.

  Liv saw the ribbon of light shining under the workshop door when she returned from the Yule celebrations. It was just like Jens to retreat into work rather than face up to the discomfort of another family birth. She was about to knock on the door when she heard a strange sound. It was a cry, but the pitch of it was extraordinary, like the shattering of glass, a tinkling, splintering explosion. She opened the door without knocking. Jens was standing by his work bench holding something wrapped in his coat. The table was shiny-speckled with splinters of ice and trickling puddles.

  ‘What’ve you got there?’ she asked as the jagged crying began again.

  ‘Shh,’ Jens whispered. ‘Look.’ He parted the edges of the coat bundle, and lifted it towards Liv. She stared at the glassy baby as it wriggled and cried.

  ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Made us a baby. Made the thing we want most in the world.’ He smiled. ‘Isn’t she beautiful? Let’s call her Asta: it means love.’

  Liv took the proffered baby and rocked her gently in the cradle of Jens’s coat. ‘She’s like glass,’ she said. ‘It’s as if she’s from an old tale, from the old world of ice, Niflheim.’

  ‘Isn’t she lovely?’

  Liv felt the cold of Asta’s back creeping through the layers of Jens’s coat and her own jacket sleeve. ‘She’s freezing.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that.’ Jens wafted his hand at her in a return-of-serve, I-don’t-care gesture. ‘I can’t believe I made her. Look at her toes! Aren’t they tiny? And look at her ears. All the curly, foldy bits – they’re like little flowers.’

  The cold was beginning to burn Liv’s arm. She handed Asta back. ‘What will we do with her, Jens?’

  He nodded towards a sheet-covered pile in the corner of the workshop. ‘Get the baby stuff out,’ he said.

  Liv pulled the sheet away from the carefully-arranged baby items they had made over the years: a crib, highchair, playpen, rocking horse, and a box of expertly fashioned toys. All crafted for a child who had no existence.

  ‘The crib, fetch the crib. That’s right.’ He lifted Asta into the crib. ‘There.’

  ‘Shall we carry the crib into the house?’ Liv asked.

  He looked shocked. ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said. ‘She’ll get hot in there. Fetch me the sleeping bag and some blankets, and I’ll sleep out here with her.’

  Jens slept in the workshop with Asta all winter. He was happy. His love for Asta zigzagged through his chest like an icicle. He loved her crystal cries and diamond gaze, her cool smile and frosty fingers. During the daytime he placed her in the playpen on a supermarket freezer bag. He talked and sang to her while he and Liv worked. During breaks they wore thick gloves and ski jackets so that they could pick her up. Sometimes Liv looked sad. But Jens was certain she would get used to being a mother. Some women took a while to adjust to the idea, he’d read up on it. Once, Liv kissed Asta without thinking, and Jens had to help peel her mouth from Asta’s glassy forehead. Liv cried, which surprised him as it hadn’t hurt much.

  As the weeks passed Jens’s happiness was niggled by the approach of spring. He worried that in its uncovering of the winter, spring may also undo Asta. He remembered Liv’s comment about Niflheim and found a volume of Norse mythology in an old box of books. He read about Muspelheim and Niflheim, worlds of fire and ice that combined to create life. As he and Liv laboured in the workshop, fulfilling furniture commissions, he wondered about installing air conditioning. He thought about the internal electrical generator in his clockwork torch and considered whether such a mechanism might fit in Asta’s chest cavity, allowing her to keep cool during the summer.

  ‘You can’t do that,’ Liv said, when he mentioned it to her.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We’re not living in some fairy tale world. A clockwork baby! You’re like the Emperor in “The Nightingale”. Asta is not a real baby, Jens.’

  ‘What if I order a chest freezer from the internet?’ he said. ‘If we could just keep her frozen for the summer—’

  ‘King Midas,’ Liv interrupted. ‘With his golden statue of a daughter. That’s what it would be like.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘We’d wake her up each winter.’

  ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ Liv hit back. ‘It wouldn’t be fair, Jens.’

  Spring came early to the North Country that year. By mid-April it was above freezing and Asta began to melt. Jens was unprepared. He retrieved ice packs from the cool box, froze them and placed them in the playpen. He brought the electric fan down from the loft and fixed its bracing blow, but Asta lay limply in the workshop as the temperature increased. If this was one of Liv’s fairy tales, he thought, something would happen. He didn’t know what, but it would be something. He thought the thoughts that parents of dying children think, he made the impracticable bargains that parents make, yet all the while Asta continued to melt in the warmth. And as she melted it seemed to Jens that her glassy face was streaked with tears.

  ‘Look.’ He held Asta up so that Liv could see.

  ‘It’s spring,’ she said. ‘What did you think would happen?’

  ‘Don’t you care at all?’

  Liv studied him carefully. ‘Yes, of course I do. I care that you’re upset. But she isn’t a real baby.’

  ‘She is to me.’ He shooed Liv out of the workshop. Asta was dying, dissolving in his arms. He felt a break at the edges of his heart. He struggled for breath as the fracture fissured, splitting through him like a fault line. He knew he would never feel joy again. It would catch on the cracks and go against the grain of him. Despair raged through his capillaries, tears scorched his cheeks, anger blistered across his forehead and temples. He was boiling hot with sorrow. As hot as Muspelheim, he thought.

  Liv dashed out to the workshop when she heard the cries. She found Jens, sprawled in front of the door with a pink, wailing baby tucked under his wilting arm. His lips were blue, his eyes glassy.

  ‘What’s happened? Whose is this baby? What’s wrong? Get up!’

  Jens smiled at her and his watery eyes directed her attention to the baby.

  ‘What? What do you want?’ Liv put a hand to his head. He was cold and clammy. ‘Are you breathing? Can you hear me?’ She ran her hands down his arms and across his chest. He was freezing wet.

  ‘I gave her my heart,’ he whispered. ‘Hot and cold. I made a life …’

  Liv made a furious noise that was somewhere between a disbelieving laugh
and a wail. The baby stopped crying and looked at her curiously. ‘Asta?’ Liv lifted the baby out of Jens’s arm; she was soft, and warm.

  At first Liv felt nothing. She pretended that Jens was in the workshop fulfilling a particularly demanding commission. As spring warmed to summer, she fumed. She seethed as she harvested wild cloudberries, Asta’s warm bulk dangling from the baby-carrier. She set herself pointless challenges: if I collect enough cloudberries to make jam, he will come back. If I can keep going until the first snow, everything will be all right again. By the time the snow began to fall in early October, she was indifferent. She held Asta up to the workshop window to watch the floating flakes. Asta was entranced, but Liv stared beyond the snow flurry into the past where Jens survived in memories.

  Despite Liv’s preoccupation, Asta loved her mother with a whole-hearted, unqualified affection.

  ‘What a loving little girl,’ people said.

  ‘She has her father’s heart,’ Liv replied.

  As the winter thickened, love for Asta bound the splinters of Liv’s grief. She loved Asta’s hearty cries and warm gaze, her merry smiles and exploring fingers. She held her on the rocking horse and listened to the sway of her laughter. She sat her in the highchair and fed her toast fingers, spread with sweet, cloudberry jam. She wrapped her in snug layers and carried her down to the fjord, where Asta liked to sit and watch the ice-hard, winter-sparkle of the water.

  It was on the way back from the fjord with Asta one day that Liv had the idea. Now that her grief was tight and hard enough to see past and swallow around, there was space for her imagination to operate. When she got home, she went on the internet and ordered the largest chest freezer she could find. She also ordered enough insulating, aluminised bubble wrap to fashion into several pairs of trousers and shirts.

  And so, on Winter Solstice, when a day as dark as the inside of an eyelid had imperceptibly stretched into night, Liv left Asta in the village hall with her extended family and crunched through the deep snow along the path to the fjord. Lighting the way with Jens’s clockwork torch, she searched for a ball of ice.