A Nearly Normal Family

by M. T. Edvardsson

  My phone rang as I turned onto Chris’s street.

  “Hey,” Amina said breathlessly. “Wait outside. I’ll come down.”

  “Why?”

  I scrutinized the yellow building at the end of the street and saw the flicker in the stairwell before the lights came on.

  “I’m on my way,” Amina panted.

  “What’s going on?”

  She hung up. An instant later, the door flew open and she stormed onto the street.

  I took a few quick steps and met her halfway.

  Her eyes were huge and her breath came in small, violent bursts.

  “Let’s forget about him.”

  She stared down at the asphalt. Her mascara was all smudged and her shoelaces were untied.

  “What?” I said.

  “Let’s just forget that piece of shit Chris Olsen.”

  77

  For once, I’m more or less well rested when I wake up. It gives me a fresh, healthier outlook on everything. You don’t understand how important sleep is until you’re unable to sleep undisturbed.

  The police have arranged for another interview right after breakfast. I slowly chew my dry slice of bread and wonder what I will say to Agnes Thelin.

  Elsa and Jimmy take the elevator with me, down to the interrogation room, where Michael Blomberg is waiting.

  “Good morning, Stella,” he says.

  He seems nervous. Is he afraid of what I’m going to say? He huffs and puffs as he wrestles his way out of his tight jacket. His shirt is navy blue.

  Agnes Thelin rattles off a few pleasantries before settling down across from me and starting the recording.

  “You’ve had some time to think since we last spoke, Stella. Is there something you want to tell me, or clarify?”

  “Well…”

  Agnes Thelin smiles patiently.

  “I don’t think so,” I say, peering at Blomberg, who’s messing with his tie.

  “It’s just that your activities on the day of the murder…,” says Agnes Thelin. “We can’t quite get a handle on them, Stella.”

  “No.”

  She watches me for a long time without a word. A little too long. At last I just have to say something, anything, to get out of her grasp.

  “Blomberg says Dad gave me an alibi.”

  The lawyer’s eyes widen. He scratches his nose.

  “Well,” Agnes Thelin says, with a look at Blomberg. “It might not be quite that simple.”

  “Oh? Why not?” I ask.

  “It’s nearly impossible to pin down the exact moment of a human death.”

  “What about the neighbor? Didn’t she hear screaming at one?”

  Agnes Thelin doesn’t respond. I still don’t know how much to tell her.

  “Can you try to recall exactly what you did after you left the restaurant that night, Stella?”

  I breathe deeply, heavily.

  There’s nothing wrong with my memory. I remember exactly what I did.

  “What does Dad say?” I ask.

  Agnes Thelin looks me straight in the eye.

  “Your dad says you came home at exactly eleven forty-five on Friday night. He claims to be one hundred percent certain of it.”

  I still don’t get it. Is Dad planning to lie in court? Why?

  “He says he spoke with you. Is that right?”

  I shift, but don’t say anything.

  The next look Agnes gives me seems to carry an appeal.

  “When did you really come home that night, Stella?”

  She leans toward me, but I look past Agnes Thelin, past everything, into the bare wall behind her. I think about Amina. I can still hear her terrified breaths. I can see her broken gaze.

  “Is your father’s information correct, Stella? Did you come home at quarter to twelve that night?”

  “Mm.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  The room falls dead silent. Everything is holding its breath.

  “I didn’t come home until two.”

  It feels good in my heart.

  Blomberg’s eyes are about to pop out of their sockets, but Agnes Thelin exhales and now I’m looking only at her.

  “What happened that night, Stella?”

  “I biked over to Chris’s.”

  I think about Amina. I picture her before me, in a doctor’s coat. She is beaming, as usual. She must have started med school by now. I think of all the years we shared, everything we made it through. I don’t feel any dread; the smell is gone; everything is fine.

  “What happened after that?” Agnes Thelin asks.

  Blomberg wipes sweat from his forehead.

  I think of what he said about Amina. If you care about Amina, you won’t say anything.

  I think of Shirine; I think of my trip to Asia. I think about Mom and Dad.

  I think of the rapist.

  I can’t keep quiet any longer.

  78

  Amina hesitantly brought the glass to her lips.

  “We were going to surprise you,” she said. “We were going to think of something together. He wanted me to come over to his place.”

  I fixed my eyes on her. She took a quick sip.

  “He kissed me,” she said then, almost in passing.

  “What? Chris kissed you?”

  I took a huge gulp of rosé.

  “I swear, I wasn’t expecting it at all. Suddenly he was just there, totally on top of me, and his lips … I tried to shove him off. You have to believe me.”

  I stared at her and downed the rest of my wine. We were sitting in the outdoor seating area at the Stortorget restaurant; it was Friday night and full of people. Even so, it felt like we were all alone in our little bubble, just Amina and me. The rest of the world was canned elevator music.

  “You trust me, right? You know I would never do anything with him,” said Amina.

  Her giant pupils darted back and forth. It was a point of honor, of course. We were best friends.

  “Obviously,” I said, since I knew what a horrible liar she is.

  “He’s a jerk, a total fuckboy,” she said. “Jesus, you just don’t do that. He knows we’re best friends. It doesn’t matter that you…”

  She stopped, apparently regretting her words.

  “That I what?”

  She looked down and fiddled with her necklace, the one with the silver ball I’d given her for her eighteenth birthday.

  “That you were going to dump him.”

  “But he didn’t know that,” I said.

  “No, of course not.”

  She kept messing with the silver ball.

  “You told him?”

  She really does suck at lying.

  “I’m sorry. He just kept nagging me about it. He said he’d texted you a bunch of times but you never responded. He knew something was wrong.”

  I couldn’t produce a single word. I didn’t even want to look at her.

  “He was a bad summer fling,” Amina said, attempting a half smile. “Maybe it was for the best that it ended up like this. Now we know what a jerk he is.”

  I couldn’t smile. Nor could I see any plus side to what had happened. I was still having trouble taking it in.

  I really wanted to be angry. I wanted to call Chris and tell him what a pathetic pig he was and that he could go to hell. But my rage was forced into the background by other emotions that were new to me.

  Above all, I felt betrayed.

  * * *

  The next day, he sent more messages over Facebook and Snapchat. I resisted the impulse to respond and blocked him everywhere instead. I never wanted to have anything to do with Christopher Olsen ever again.

  During that week, I stopped thinking about him. Or, well, at least long periods passed without him infiltrating my brain. Several hours without an ache in my heart. I decided it would simply take time, that I had to withstand it. It was like quitting smoking.

  When I got home after work that Wednesday, as August was panting its last hot breaths, I realized that Chris
had hardly been in my thoughts since early that morning. I was already moving on; I had buried whatever feelings might still be there under the surface, and I wasn’t going to dig them up again. It was actually going faster than I’d thought.

  Neither Chris Olsen nor Linda Lokind would be part of my future. Just like thousands of other people, they had passed through the fringes of my life. They’d had nothing more than brief cameos. Soon I would have forgotten them. In ten or twenty years, I would recall this crazy story and tell it to new friends with a smile full of horror and delight: the guy fifteen years my senior who took me to Copenhagen in a limo and booked the suite at the Grand for us; his mentally unstable ex who stalked me. I would only have vague memories of what they looked like, who they were, and what actually happened. I would definitely laugh at the whole mess and people who listened to it would question its accuracy.

  If only it hadn’t been for Amina.

  79

  Friday was the last day of August. The end of this summer had been magical and there was nothing to suggest that the spell was about to break. The sun was shining and the sky was blue.

  I thought about my Asia trip. In a few weeks, when the darkness blew in across the plains around Lund, I would finally have my one-way ticket to sun, heat, and adventure in my back pocket. Finally. I would scrape together enough money even if it meant toiling from open to close seven days a week.

  Last night I had listed the Vespa for sale online. I felt horribly ungrateful, but I had made myself clear. I didn’t want a Vespa—I needed money for my trip.

  In the morning I messaged Amina to ask if she had time to meet up that night. We had to talk. I was disappointed about what had happened, but I also couldn’t shake the feeling that I was making a mountain out of a molehill. What did it really matter that Amina had revealed to Chris that I didn’t want to see him anymore? In some ways, she had done me a favor.

  Amina wrote back that she had practice, but that she’d love to get a glass of wine afterward.

  I kept Chris out of my mind all day. I found there was a new lightness in my chest and walked around smiling and humming Disney songs all afternoon.

  When we closed the store at seven, I tagged along with my coworkers to grab a bite at Stortorget. Amina’s practice wouldn’t end until eight anyway.

  At eight thirty she sent a text.

  Too wrecked to go out match tomorrow

  No problem, I responded. Xoxo.

  Sorry youre not mad right

  Course not, I wrote.

  We can talk tomorrow love you xoxo

  I had to get up for work too, and I wasn’t planning to stay out very long. Also, I was coming more and more to terms with what had happened, and I accepted it as a good thing. I really didn’t feel like having a deep conversation about trust and shit.

  I ordered a glass of sparkling wine, put on my sunglasses, and leaned back to enjoy the sun.

  My colleagues started chattering about their usual topics: diapers, doo-doo, baby food, and BabyBjörns, and even though I fake-yawned as wide as I possibly could, they didn’t seem to catch on. We needed a better topic of conversation, something more acute, something to get people riled up a little.

  Malin said that the preschool her children went to was focusing on the lesson “each person is of equal worth” and the others chimed in, in unison, about how important and good that was.

  I saw my chance.

  “Come on,” I said. “Do you really think everyone is truly equal?”

  They stared at me like you do when you’re not sure if someone is trying to make a joke or if they just said something unusually stupid.

  “I’m totally serious.” I turned to Malin, the manager, since she’s the easiest to get worked up. “If you had to choose, either fifty kids in Syria have to die or else your Tindra does, what would you do?”

  “Oh, lay off,” Sofie whined. “You can’t say stuff like that.”

  But Malin wanted to answer.

  “That example has nothing to do with people being equal. Of course Tindra is worth more to me, because she’s my child, but from a purely objective standpoint she isn’t worth more than any other person.”

  I hadn’t expected anything else. Malin isn’t dumb.

  “Would you say that Tindra is worth the same as a pedophile?”

  Malin made a face.

  “Pedophiles don’t even deserve to be called human.”

  I smiled triumphantly.

  “What about murderers? Rapists?”

  “Those are extreme examples,” said Sofie. “Ninety-nine percent of people are neither pedophiles nor murderers.”

  “What about someone who beats their wife or kid? A racist? Someone who writes hate messages online, a bully? Is that person worth the same as an innocent child?”

  Sofie started to respond, but she was interrupted by Malin, who thought that the “discussion was pointless.” I tried in vain to goad her back into it but soon the mommy chatter was back in full swing again. The step from moral dilemmas to vitamin drops and Pull-Ups is not as far as you might think.

  I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “See you tomorrow,” I said, hugging them one by one. Then I strolled across the town square to get my bike.

  You could tell it was a payday weekend. It was ten thirty, but people were streaming through town, excited at the chance to treat themselves to an extra drink, happy about the nice weather, pumped about sucking up the last few drops of warmth as fall was approaching.

  At the bus stop I lifted my bike out of the rack and had just swung my right leg over the frame when something caught my eye.

  There she was, right across the street, her back to a brick wall and her eyes roving the bus stop, wearing a floral, summery yellow dress, boots, and a beige coat with her bag held tightly over her shoulder.

  I had to look again to make sure.

  My arms turned to spaghetti and the bike tipped. I lost my balance.

  80

  Shirine’s eyes are glistening with tears.

  “Get ahold of yourself,” I say.

  Sentimental farewells are, like, not my thing. So obviously I’m crabby.

  “I’m sure I’ll still be here when you get back.”

  “I don’t think so,” Shirine says, biting her lower lip.

  She’s leaving tomorrow; she’ll be gone for three weeks.

  “It’s going to trial, right?” she says.

  “Seems like.”

  I don’t really want to talk about it.

  “The Canary Islands?” I say instead, a skeptical look on my face. “I’m sure you can still change your mind. You got cancellation insurance, didn’t you?”

  It works. Shirine’s teary sad-face transforms into a sparkling smile.

  “You’re just jealous. Eighty degrees in the shade all week long.”

  “Don’t forget your sunscreen.” I laugh.

  She nods, wrinkling her nose.

  “Can I ask you something, Shirine?”

  “Of course.”

  I hesitate. I try to find the right words, but it’s not easy.

  I lay awake all night, thinking about Dad. Why did he claim I came home much earlier that night than I actually did?

  “How far would you go to protect your daughter?”

  “I’m not quite sure what you mean,” Shirine says. “I would do anything for Lovisa. I think any parent would.”

  “Perjury?”

  “Huh?”

  Shirine shoots me a look of suspicion.

  “It means lying under oath.”

  “I know what it means, but I’m pretty sure you can’t be forced to testify under oath against your own child.”

  “No, but forget the details. Would you lie in court to protect Lovisa?”

  “That’s a tough one,” she says, apparently thinking it over. “It depends…”

  “Come on.”

  “Okay,” she says, with resolve. “I’m sure I would do everything in my power. Even lie. In court.”<
br />
  “Good.”

  “I bet a parent could do the most unimaginable things to save their child.”

  “But my dad does things for his own sake. Or so that other people won’t find out that he and his family aren’t as perfect as he wants them to be.”

  A prominent wrinkle appears on Shirine’s forehead. She doesn’t say anything for a minute.

  “Know what? I don’t think that’s so unusual. I suppose we all want our families to appear a little more harmonious and faultless than they really are.”

  I shake my head. Shirine doesn’t get it; she can’t even imagine what it’s like.

  “My dad didn’t want to raise me. He wanted to create me, as if he was God himself. He wanted me to be exactly like him. No, wait, he wanted me to be the way he imagined a daughter of his would be. And when it didn’t turn out that way…”

  That’s all I can manage. My voice gives out and fades away.

  “I actually don’t believe that your dad would lie about just anything to protect himself or his family’s reputation.”

  I turn away from her. What the hell does Shirine know about my father?

  “Then why is he doing it?”

  “Because it’s what dads do. Because he loves you.”

  I won’t look at her. I want to say something mean, something hurtful, something to poke a hole in this sentimental mood, but I can’t muster a single word.

  “It’s going to be okay, Stella.”

  I feel her gentle hand on my arm and all I want is for her to leave.

  “Hey,” she whispers.

  The tears make my eyes overflow. Jesus, just go!

  She slowly strokes my back. It makes me feel safe and hopeful, but at the same time I know she’s about to leave me. Soon she’ll be sitting on a lounge chair by the pool on some Canary Island, tickling little Lovisa until her sides split.

  I shove her hand away without meeting her gaze.

  “I have to go now,” Shirine says.

  I still have my back to her.

  “I really have to go now, Stella.”

  “Okay.”

  I turn around and see her at the door. She’s peering back over her shoulder and shifting slowly back and forth from foot to foot.

  “Okay,” I say again.

  Then I take two steps forward and put my arms around her neck.