A Nearly Normal Family

by M. T. Edvardsson

  She truly did not want to believe it.

  “I suppose she’s scared,” I said.

  In the days that followed, Ulrika was firing on all cylinders. She contacted the principal and the school nurse, who arranged for drug testing.

  “You can’t fucking make me,” Stella said, and tried to break loose outside the clinic.

  “Of course we can,” said Ulrika. “You’re not of age.”

  People stared in curiosity as Stella continued her noisy protests in the waiting room. I tried to hide my face as best I could, but in the end it was all so awkward that I had to drag Stella into the lab and explain that we couldn’t wait any longer. Ulrika held Stella’s hand tight as the nurse guided the needle into her arm.

  A few days later, we got word by phone. There were traces of cannabis in Stella’s blood.

  “Why?” Ulrika repeated time and again. “Why?”

  She paced tight circles around Stella and me at the kitchen table. Now I was the one who felt like a defense attorney.

  “Because nothing ever happens,” said Stella.

  This soon became her default response.

  “Everything is so boring. Nothing ever happens.”

  Ulrika stared at her, quaking, one hand fisted and level with her hip.

  “Drugs. Stella! You were doing drugs!”

  “It was just weed. I wanted to try it.”

  “Try it?”

  “It makes things more fun. Just like wine, for you.”

  Ulrika banged her fist on the table hard enough to make our glasses jump. Stella rose and unleashed a long string of Bosnian curse words she must have picked up from Dino.

  When I got in bed that night, Ulrika had turned her face to the wall.

  “Honey,” I said, touching her back gently.

  Her only response was a sob.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I said. “We’ll fix this. Together we’ll get through this.”

  She gazed at the ceiling.

  “It’s my fault. I’ve been working too much.”

  “It’s no one’s fault,” I said.

  “We have to get help. I’ll call the teen psych clinic tomorrow.”

  The psych clinic?

  “What must people think of us?” I said.

  One evening later that week, I spotted Amina as I was on my way home. I recognized her pink jacket with its fluffy white collar and let go of the handlebars to wave, but Amina didn’t respond to my greeting. She slowed down until she was standing still next to a large electrical box, and I realized something must be wrong.

  As I approached, the shadows on her face became clearer. I hoped until the last moment that I was mistaken. Amina raised her hand to her cheek in a futile attempt to hide her plight as I braked and leaned forward over the frame of my bike.

  “Oh, Amina. What happened?”

  She turned her face away.

  “Nothing,” she said, striding away from me. “I thought pastors had confidentiality.”

  * * *

  After two weeks we secured an appointment at the clinic for pediatric and adolescent psychiatry. By then we’d already had a conference at school with teachers and the principal, the counselor, the nurse, and the psychologist. I felt like the biggest parental failure in the world.

  The therapist at the clinic had a handlebar mustache so long it curled at the ends. It was hard to look at anything else.

  “I like to say that a teenager problem is always a family problem,” he said, bending across the low, round table and making his necklace of black beads dangle.

  As soon as either Ulrika or I tried to bring up our opinions on the matter, he cut us off by raising one hand in the air.

  “Now let’s not forget about Stella’s perspective. How do you feel?”

  Stella stared at her feet.

  “Don’t care.”

  “Come on, Stella…,” Ulrika and I tried.

  “Uppuppupp,” said the counselor. “She has the right to feel however she feels.”

  My fingers itched. This wasn’t my little girl, sitting there with her arms crossed and a recalcitrant look on her face. This was some completely different person. I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her.

  “Please, Stella,” said Ulrika.

  My tone of voice was always harsher.

  “Stella!”

  But Stella continued to mutter her way through the appointments.

  “You don’t understand anyway. There’s no point. I don’t care.”

  I slowly became resigned to what had happened—our daughter had smoked marijuana. It was no disaster. But the drugs were just one symptom of Stella’s many issues, and it was frustrating that we couldn’t help her. At home, Ulrika and I were always walking on eggshells. The tiniest misstep could spark an explosion. Stella’s eyes would darken, and she would scream and throw things.

  “It’s my life! You aren’t the boss of me.”

  At its worst, we saw no other option than to lock her in her room until she calmed down.

  In the late autumn of that year, we exchanged the mustachioed man at the clinic for a mild woman with fiery hair. She gave us tasks to practice at home. Tools, she called them. We needed tools. But when Stella didn’t get her way and turned the whole world upside down, it didn’t matter what tools we whipped out.

  During one examination, it was determined that Stella suffered from a lack of impulse control. According to the redhead, this was something that could be improved.

  I confided in my colleagues, who were wonderful and supportive. “Teenagers aren’t easy.” Even so, I couldn’t help but suspect that some of them seemed a little too satisfied—relieved, somehow, that even I had cracks in my façade.

  However, the results from Stella’s subsequent urine tests came back negative and I was starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

  21

  That night, Ulrika and I were on opposite sides of the sofa. We were battling against time and the wound that had been laid open in the heart of our little family. The air was stifling, full of everything we didn’t say to each other.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about My Sennevall. Her words had poisoned me with dread. She was so sure that it was Stella she had seen on Friday because it wasn’t the first time Stella had been to Christopher Olsen’s home.

  Around two, Ulrika fetched another bottle of wine. On her way back she stumbled and had to catch herself against the wall.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t have any more to drink,” I said.

  “‘We’?”

  I shrugged.

  I have preached in several of my sermons on how it so frequently takes tragedy or catastrophe for people to come together and be united, for us to truly stop what we’re doing and devote ourselves to one another. In misfortune we rediscover each other and become aware of what it means to be a human among other humans. In sorrow, we need each other more than ever.

  “Adam, please, don’t tell me what I’m allowed to do,” Ulrika said. “My daughter is a murder suspect.”

  She swayed again, then sat back down on her side of the sofa. I took a deep breath. We were a family—we had to stick together. There was no room for lies or secrets.

  “You know what? I think Stella knew that man.”

  “Christopher Olsen?”

  I nodded as she sipped her wine.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I suppose it’s just a feeling I have.”

  Ulrika gazed at me, wide-eyed.

  Should I tell her everything? Reveal that I had spoken with My Sennevall? I was terrified that Ulrika wouldn’t understand. She would fly into a rage and think I had tried to influence My’s testimony. It’s a matter of honor for her, of course. If she found out, she might even feel duty-bound to report my little stunt to the police.

  “What did we do wrong, honey?” I asked. “How could this happen?”

  Ulrika’s eyes became shiny.

  “I’ve never been enough,” she said, almost whisperi
ng. “I’m a bad mother.”

  I moved closer.

  “You’re a fantastic mother.”

  “Oh, Stella’s always been a daddy’s girl. Everyone said so. It was you and Stella.”

  “Stop it.” I reached for her, but she turned her back on me and clammed up. “You and Stella have had a wonderful relationship. Recently…”

  She shook her head.

  “Something has always been missing.”

  “Maybe it has to be,” I said, although I wasn’t sure what I meant.

  * * *

  When sleep finally came to us, there on the sofa, it was fitful and fragmented. I kept waking up, my body aching, wondering where I was and trying to figure out what was real and what were only phantoms from my feverish dreams.

  Ulrika was half-reclining beside me, whistling as she breathed, eyelids fluttering. Sometime during the morning I cuddled up close to her so I could feel her presence in my dreams.

  The next time I woke up, she was gone. I rushed to the kitchen. The morning light was streaming into the quiet house. I ran up the stairs and flung open the bedroom door. The bed was empty. An instant later, I heard her in Stella’s room.

  “The results from the lab are in. There will be another custody hearing today.”

  She was standing in the doorway with hunched shoulders and dark circles under her eyes.

  “What does that mean?”

  “A person can be detained either ‘under reasonable suspicion’ or ‘for probable cause.’ I would say the difference is considerable. It doesn’t take much to detain someone during an investigation if they’re under reasonable suspicion, but the standard of proof is much higher to detain them for probable cause.”

  The words rattled in my head.

  “According to the prosecutor, there is strong evidence against Stella. She wants to increase the level of suspicion.”

  More suspicions? My heart skidded.

  “What did they find?”

  22

  Ulrika and I never spoke about the guilt and shame that resulted from having a daughter smoking pot and getting into trouble. We kept mum about the hours at the psychiatric clinic, made persistent proclamations about the future, and told everyone, whether they wanted to listen or not, that the most important thing was the welfare of our child, as if we seriously thought that set us apart from other parents.

  Ulrika worked fewer hours that fall. She spent more time at home, but she was at least as busy as she had been before.

  One night I woke up and heard her typing away. I sneaked into her office and found she was sitting there in the dark wearing only her underwear. Pounds had melted off her in the past few months, and in the faint light of the desk lamp I noticed she had angry red streaks and blisters just below the edge of her bra.

  Shingles, the doctor told us the next day. He refused to prescribe sleeping pills but was prepared to have her take sick leave.

  “You have to think of yourself, honey,” I said, helping her apply calamine lotion to the rash.

  “I have to think of Stella,” she replied.

  For Stella, though, life seemed to be carrying on at full speed. I suppose that’s just how it is when you’re fourteen, you don’t have time to put your existence on standby. You have to keep up or you’ll end up behind or left out. I frequently thought of Dino’s words, about how Stella was her own worst enemy. That she had to win the battle against herself. At times it appeared the only way she won that match was by forfeit.

  “I am so over it! I don’t care.”

  That spring, the redheaded counselor was replaced with a younger version of the same, a woman who was convinced that therapy could solve just about anything, at least until Stella exploded in the middle of a conversation and drowned her out with curse words. Then we were placed with a family therapist, a young man from the north with bangs and a smile full of concern, who urged us to “freeze the situation” whenever Stella had an outburst.

  “Stop and talk about how you’re feeling and how it ended up like this.”

  A few days later, Stella threw a sandwich at the fridge after Ulrika and I told her she wasn’t allowed to attend a party in Malmö.

  “You’re killing me!” she shrieked. “What’s the point of living when you’re not allowed to do anything?”

  I stood up and threw out my arms like a hockey referee.

  “Let’s freeze this situation.”

  “Oh my god!”

  Stella ran for the hall, but I quickly blocked her way.

  “I can’t even deal!” Stella said, rushing past Ulrika and up the stairs. The door slammed behind her and I sighed at my wife in disappointment.

  “She has to deal,” I said, leaning against the kitchen island. “All three of us have to deal.”

  “I don’t understand what’s going on,” Ulrika said.

  Neither of us did. At the age of five, Stella had sat for hours with puzzles that were much too hard for her. Her preschool had never seen anyone with so much patience. These days she couldn’t even sit down and concentrate for ten minutes.

  But every time the psychologists brought up ADD or ADHD, Ulrika went on the defensive. She never gave them any concrete reason for her reaction, but to me she confessed that she was terrified that a diagnosis would stigmatize Stella and somehow become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  “When I was little, the adult world constantly told me I was a good girl.”

  Her face twisted as if she had tasted something nasty. I didn’t quite understand what she meant.

  “‘Good girl,’ they said, patting me on the head. ‘Ulrika’s such a good girl.’ In the end I had no choice but to become that good girl everyone was expecting.”

  I had never thought about it like that before.

  * * *

  Sometime in middle school, Stella stopped coming with me to church. I didn’t make a big deal about it; I saw it as a perfectly natural form of rebellion. Children become teenagers earlier these days, kicking their way free from their parents even before puberty. There was nothing strange about the fact that Stella wanted to become independent. Furthermore, I would never dream of foisting my belief in God upon her.

  As the years passed, it became increasingly common for Stella to blame religion for all the misery in the world; she was scornful and dismissive of people who believed in anything but strict atheism. I realized, of course, that there would be nothing to gain from challenging her views. I had once been like her. But the distressing thing was, I was convinced that she was doing all of this to hurt me. It was taxing. It’s painful to watch your child change and move in a direction you never could have predicted.

  * * *

  Considering Stella’s negative attitude toward the Church, it came as a surprise when she wanted to attend confirmation camp.

  As a newcomer to the congregation, one of my first projects had been to get a good confirmation group off the ground. Along with the neighboring congregation, we found the perfect camp location by Lake Immeln, on the border with Blekinge, and by chance we also managed to recruit a young deacon named Robin as camp director.

  The camp was an immediate success, and leading up to Stella’s year we received inquiries from teens and parents all over the city. I knew that a great deal of our popularity had been thanks to Robin, who was young and charming but not without depth, so I allocated an exorbitant portion of the congregation budget to hire him as director once more.

  Of course I noticed how the confirmand girls looked at him; I realized that his charm concealed certain dangers, but the fact was, I was simply too naïve to hear any warning bells.

  “I think we should let her go to confirmation camp,” I said one evening in April as the wind was blowing hard enough to shake the walls.

  We were sitting around the dinner table, the whole family gathered together for once. A week had passed without a major outburst.

  “For real?”

  Stella threw her arms around my neck.

  “You are so the b
est,” she said with her mouth full. “I love you, Dad!”

  “Let’s see what Mom says first.”

  Ulrika was chewing with great focus. She had just been hired on as assistant counsel for the defense in what would become one of Sweden’s most infamous trials. She’d thrown herself headlong into the task, going from working too much to working even more.

  “What am I supposed to say?”

  She took a few sips of milk and stared at me.

  “Say I can go,” Stella said, still hanging over me.

  “Please,” I said with a rather foolish smile.

  I will confess that to a certain extent I viewed the confirmation camp as an opportunity for Stella to discover new value in Christian fellowship. A chance to open up and find herself. Perhaps, I hoped, this might be the start of a path toward return. A way for Stella to come back, but also a path for me, back to the daughter I missed.

  “Of course you can,” Ulrika said at last.

  It felt like this could be a turning point.

  One Friday in August, Stella boarded a bus in the church parking lot. Ulrika had missed her flight from Stockholm, but I stood there waving as the bus backed out. Stella’s smile took up the entire back window. She never waved back.

  23

  On Wednesday afternoon we were back in the courthouse. Ulrika walked ahead of me through the metal detector at security. When it was my turn, the frame began to beep and blink. All eyes were on me, but the guard quickly discovered that I had only forgotten to take off my necklace.

  Michael Blomberg hardly had time to give us a proper greeting in the corridor. His forehead was dripping with sweat and the knot of his tie looked sloppy. Was he really the right man to defend Stella?

  I could barely feel my feet as we walked into the courtroom. Stella was already inside, and from behind she looked like anyone, a typical teenage girl, a young person with her whole life ahead of her. Only when I saw her listless gaze did reality catch up with me. Nothing about this was normal.

  The custody hearing began, and this time neither party demanded closed doors. Prosecutor Jenny Jansdotter had the floor. She spoke rapidly and with no hesitation.