by Linn Ullmann
She did not say: But don’t think that means we have anything in common, because believe me, we don’t.
What she said was: “I had a little brother, but he died when he was four.”
“Oh,” Milla said, lowering her eyes. “That’s so sad.”
Jenny’s skin had been soft back then, so soft that you could snuggle right up close to her, poke your nose between her breasts inside the open neck of her well-worn nightdress. And she smelled nice.
Under an apple tree
Sat a boy and he said, said he,
Hug me …
Siri thought it would be a good idea to give Milla’s parents a call and assure them that she was in good hands. Regular working hours. Good pay. The news was full of stories about au pairs and nannies who were treated badly: Filipino girls who were forced to work ten-hour days for next to nothing, young women who looked after other people’s children so that they could support their own kids back home, Norwegians who liked the idea of having a servant in the house.
“We’ll take good care of her, she’ll be just like one of the family,” Siri said.
“That’s nice,” Amanda Browne said, “but our sweet pea is a grown-up, you know, and does what she likes.”
“Sweet what?”
Amanda laughed softly. “Oh, it’s just a leftover from when she was little … sweet pea. That’s what we used to call her.”
Siri said, “If you and your husband wanted to come to Mailund during the summer to see Milla, we’ve plenty of room. You’d be most welcome. And I’d love to treat you to dinner at Gloucester—that’s my summer restaurant—we’re known for good seafood.”
Siri had no idea what made her say these things. The last thing she wanted was for Milla’s parents to come to Mailund, to have to socialize with them and give them dinner at the restaurant.
“Oh, no,” Amanda replied. “Mikkel and I wouldn’t dream of imposing.”
Siri could tell that Amanda was embarrassed.
“Anyway, we made other plans months ago,” Amanda continued. “Milla’s nineteen, she can’t wait to have a job and earn her own money and it will give her time, we hope, to think about what she wants to do next.”
“Of course,” Siri said, and added impulsively: “Your photographs mean a lot to me. I think they’re beautiful, and true somehow. I just wanted to tell you that.”
Amanda Browne was quiet for a few moments. And then: “Well, thank you very much. That’s very nice of you.”
And now here she was, Siri, with this rather lumpish, breathless teenage girl with one hand nervously fluttering on the tabletop. Siri had to concentrate hard to stop herself from placing her own hand firmly over Milla’s. Stop that! Pull yourself together. None of that fluttering, please, if you don’t mind. It wasn’t too late. Siri could still say, The nanny job’s off. I’m so sorry, but it’s all off. They weren’t at Mailund yet, they were still in Oslo. But she didn’t have the guts. The girl was counting on this. It was already decided.
Later, Siri told Jon, “Her mother calls her sweet pea.”
“Does she now?” said Jon, who had not yet met Milla and had been very much against bringing a nanny to Mailund. “Will we have to call her sweet pea as well?”
“No, no. It’s just that … there really isn’t anything very sweet pea-ish about her.”
Milla was suffering from a spring cold that she couldn’t shake off. She was pale and red-eyed and kept having to blow her nose. When they met that first time, Siri had tried to talk to her about all sorts of things and hadn’t gotten much out of her, and she soon realized that where Milla was concerned there were two types of answers: a faint, hesitant “we-ell,” which could mean yes, no, or I don’t know; or a giggle, which could also mean yes, no, or I don’t know.
Milla looked at Siri.
Under an apple tree
There was something about Milla’s expression that reminded Siri of herself at that age. She had no wish to go back there. Siri smiled (instead of screaming) and wondered how to get out of this. Jon was right. It was a bad idea. A very, very bad idea.
Sat a boy and he said, said he,
Next door, Emma called to her girls Come on in, you two! and the girls laughed and ran inside.
“Well, that’s agreed then,” Siri said. “You’ll come down on the twenty-fifth of June and I’ll pick you up at the bus stop. So we have a plan then. This is great. This is just great.”
MILLA HAD PROMISED herself that by the end of this summer she would have transformed herself into an entirely new person. Inside and out. From head to toe. When she got back to Oslo in August everybody would say, Why, Milla, what’s happened to you? You seem so different. And she would smile demurely and say, Nothing’s happened, I’ve had a great summer, that’s all.
Here in the annex at Mailund all was quiet. So quiet you could think. And pray.
Mailund belonged to Jenny Brodal. “The mother-in-law from hell,” Jon had said with a quick grin at Milla, and when he grinned at her like that she knew there must be something special going on between them. “Don’t ever tell anyone I just said that,” he had gone on, “I mean, she’s my children’s grandmother.” She should pretend she’d never heard it, he had said, grinning again.
Just a few days after she had arrived at Mailund Milla found herself alone with Jon one morning in the kitchen. He had been in a world of his own and she wondered whether he was thinking about the book he was writing, whether he was so taken up with the book that he didn’t even notice her there. He was making himself a cup of coffee. She was getting out bread and butter and ham and cheese to pack a lunch for Liv and herself. She positioned herself next to him and proceeded to butter the bread. Are you going to say anything to me? Are you even aware that I’m standing here, right next to you? Nothing. Not a word. Then out of the blue he reached out a hand and ran his fingers through her hair.
She raised her eyes and looked at him, but then he pulled away.
“Good,” he said as if to himself. “That’s good.”
And without another glance at her, he picked up his coffee cup and walked out.
When she was younger, Milla had liked to brush her long dark hair, put on a pretty dress or a pair of tight jeans, make up her face, and walk into a room or stroll down the street to see how much attention she’d get. Boys and men turned to look at her, spoke to her, wanted her. She had breasts by the time she was ten. Her mother was tall and thin and firm and flat-chested. There was nothing there to curl up against. Her mother’s body was a taut trampoline mat, if you ran into it you would bounce straight off again.
Her mother had tried to make Milla conceal her breasts under baggy, childish cotton sweaters. She would buy ugly clothes and have them wrapped in pretty paper. Surprise, I bought you a little present, sweetie. And always another sweater, size medium or large. White sweaters, pink sweaters, blue crew-neck sweaters. But Milla had her own style, she saved up and went to rummage sales and flea markets where she bought long T-shirts that she wore as dresses over thick, laddered tights, or figure-hugging sweaters, brightly colored short skirts, scarves, and boots. Milla’s mother and Milla were always fighting over how she ought to dress, arguments that started when she developed the breasts that men couldn’t help staring at.
They called her Milla, which was short for Mildred, but she also answered to sweetie or sweet pea. She liked the fact that men stared. She wanted them to do more than stare. She wanted to curl up against someone, not be bounced back.
She didn’t talk much, and for this reason many people would have described her as shy or timid. She told no one about when she was a little girl and how her mother had taken pictures of her when she was sleeping or swimming or playing. She avoided telling her friends that the pictures of little Milla had been exhibited in galleries all over and published in a book entitled Amanda’s.
Look at me, Milla. That’s it! Don’t move now! Look at me! Stay like that a moment longer!
Amanda took thousands of pictures of her
daughter as a child until the very thought of having her photograph taken had made Milla’s stomach churn. She could count on one hand the number of pictures of her there were from after she grew up and put her foot down. No more pictures! Her mother was a blitzkrieg, invading Milla’s little body, her bones, her pores, her vision, from every possible angle and Milla had laid down her arms, not old enough or smart enough or strong enough to defend herself, she was a kid, she didn’t have the words, but one day she knew she’d get back at her. She’d get back at everyone who just assumed they could intrude on her and make up their minds about who she was. Okay, Milla, now look serious, look happy, just pretend I’m not here, sweetie, her mother’s power, taking all those pictures, capturing stuff that was secret, untold, raw, Right there, Milla, hold it right there, deciding who Milla was, exposing her daughter only to show off herself, show off her sharp eye and brilliant artistry, selling Milla out. The little suntanned girl in dotted underpants. She hated that book, hated the pictures of herself, sometimes clothed, sometimes almost naked, it had robbed her of something, a part of her, how like her mother to call it Amanda’s, as if Milla were merely an extension of her mother, an offshoot, an appendix.
“COULD YOU TAKE Liv out and pick some flowers,” Siri said, twining her long hair around her fingers. “You could go out to the meadow behind the house.”
No, she was not impressed by Milla’s performance as a nanny. Milla could tell. Siri couldn’t even decide exactly what to call her. Nanny? Babysitter? Au pair? Friend of the family? None of them sounded right. Mainly because Siri did not like to see herself as a woman who needed help with anything. Certainly not with taking care of her own children. Siri may have thought that Milla could not see her, but Milla saw her, saw all of Siri, saw Siri even though Siri didn’t know she was being seen.
Jon was a different story. He had kissed her on the cheek once. At least she thought it was a kiss, it felt like a kiss.
She’d been at Mailund just a little over a week. She remembered how she had knocked on his study door and asked, “Is it okay if I run down to the shop and get some DVDs for Liv, since it’s raining?”
He had turned and looked at her. “Where is Liv?”
“She’s out in the garden. She doesn’t want to come in, she just wants to run around in the rain, but I thought we ought to find something else to do until the weather clears up. She’s soaked to the skin already and pretty cold.”
“Couldn’t the two of you read a book instead?” Jon asked.
“Well, yes,” Milla said uncertainly, “I had a look through the big bookcase in the annex, but I couldn’t find any children’s books.”
Jon got up.
“Let’s go down to the living room and find something there,” he said. “That’s where the children’s books are.”
He edged past her and out of the narrow door, and it was then, in the doorway, almost by accident, that his lips brushed her cheek. Not a word. Not a glance. It was like that time in the kitchen when he had run his hand through her hair.
“They’re books from when Siri and Syver were children” he said.
When they reached the foot of the long stairway, he pointed to the living-room door. She had thought he’d come in with her to help her find a book, but obviously not.
“Bottom shelf on the left,” he said. “Now I have to work.”
Halfway up the stairs again he called back: “And be sure to get Liv into some dry clothes.”
When Milla looked at Siri she thought to herself: Siri’s getting old. Over forty. There’s something wrong with her back, she’s lopsided, often in pain, and you almost have to lean a little to one side when you talk to her. I’m young. My lips are young. My hands are young. No one can see all the snapped bones inside me. It’s a shame for Siri. She’s lopsided, she’s always in pain, and when she was a child her little brother drowned in a lake in the woods while she just stood there and watched.
Milla moved soundlessly around the house, gleaning snippets here and there. Jon had told her how, when Siri’s little brother died, more than thirty years ago, no one had talked to Siri. She had been six years old at the time. Not even Jenny had talked to her, and Jenny was her mother.
Jon lowered his voice. “And you know what I think of Jenny.”
Siri was always at the restaurant, was not to be disturbed. Milla hated the way Siri snapped at her no matter what she said.
Jon never snapped at her, on the contrary he seemed almost happy when she knocked on his attic study door to ask about things. He always invited her in, asked if she’d like to sit down—and then they would talk.
Milla had known Jon for only a few weeks, but she was quite sure that there was something between them. The sort of thing that could not be put into words.
THE TRUTH WAS that she had been unable to guard herself against him.
The first time she saw him he was standing on the corner of Akersgata and Karl Johans Gate, staring. The year was 1993 and Siri was twenty-five.
She wondered what he was staring at.
He was tall and dark and Giacometti thin with big curly hair, wearing battered jeans, a white linen shirt, and a billowing gabardine coat. He was a handsome man, but there was something unsettling about those glittering, staring eyes.
He was standing stock-still, steadfast you might say, calling to mind the statue of King Haakon VII a few blocks farther on, the one she greeted every night as she passed it on her way home from work.
So there he was, this man whom she did not yet know and who would very shortly turn his eyes on her: the billowing coat, a newspaper pressed to his chest, a slim, upright, windblown, valiant pillar of a man.
Siri was on her way to work, yet another function attended by customers who paid well and thought that ordering thousand-kroner bottles of wine was synonymous with fine dining. Until two years ago she had been the head chef at a restaurant on Frognerveien that had gone bankrupt. Now she ran her own catering company, Iris Catering, and had time to think, not that thinking was necessarily an advantage. Siri would rather not.
To the extent that Siri reflected upon her choice of career at all, she thought of herself as a craftsman, like her father who had worked with stone. No sensual culinary experiences from her childhood (apart from her mother’s casseroles simmering on the stove and tubs of pistachio ice cream in the freezer).
But she was good, she was one of those who had done well for herself. First as a sous-chef, then as the head chef at the restaurant on Frognerveien (with no time to think), and just as she was really making something of it the place went bust. So now she had this stupid catering company, which had, it’s true, been an instant financial success and had allowed her the time to have a life, that was the expression, wasn’t it, but which in the long run seemed nonetheless untenable, which was the only word she could come up with.
Bachelor parties, weddings, office parties, business functions, holiday dinners. Fat middle-aged men who ordered Château Pétrus from Pomerol and expected her to go all weak at the knees. Untenable.
Her long dark hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, she was wearing her corn-yellow high-heeled boots and the short, belted corn-yellow autumn coat that had been Jenny’s, and her slightly asymmetric back that sometimes caused her pain. Other people did not necessarily notice this, she was a woman who was noticed for her beauty.
But if Jon, who would, year after year, stroke the aching spot and try to straighten it, were to say anything about her back he might say, “A lopsidedness, a graceful little kink in her waist—as if she had turned a cartwheel and stiffened just as she was about to straighten up, caught and held in the movement before it was completed.”
He was standing on the opposite side of the street, staring: Neither the king’s palace nor the Parliament building was on fire, so what was he staring at? Siri followed his gaze and, yes, there it was. On the square outside the Samson bakery was a young blond woman in a short, tight skirt, black, patterned with tiny white elephants, who a
ppeared to be bending in his direction.
So that’s what it was.
He was staring at a woman. It was very simple. A young and pretty one.
Siri looked from the one to the other. It seemed as though he was trying to stare her to him. And it was working. The young blond woman stretched and bent and swayed toward him, and it occurred to Siri that if this unknown man (who reminded her of a stone pillar) went on staring and the young woman went on bending, the tiny white elephants would eventually pull themselves free of her miniskirt and thunder deliriously toward him.
If asked, Siri could not recall thinking much else at that moment, other than about elephants charging through the streets of Oslo, but if she had been able to put into words what she felt when she saw Jon for the very first time (before he saw her and before she knew his name was Jon), she might have said, “Unbelievable. That a woman would fall for that. Unbelievable that she would fall for the oldest pickup trick in the world. A man looking at her. What does she think? That he sees her, somehow? That he sees right through her? That he somehow fathoms her? That he has decided she’s the one for him, and that this fixity of purpose, or rather fixity of gaze, is just a taste of what he will show her once he has her to himself? That he, the great seducer, has already begun to make love to her as she stands there bending outside the Samson bakery?”
“Silly women and vain men,” Jenny was prone to say when Siri was little. “And all of them lonely and wanting attention, like little children huddled in a corner of the living room, howling.”
Siri felt like teaching this man a lesson, this man who evidently thought he could stare any woman to him. She removed her hair band and let down her long dark hair. Putting one foot in front of the other she walked across the road—from her street corner to his. One step, two steps, three steps. Now he had spotted her. Four steps, five steps, six steps. The blonde in the elephant skirt was history. Seven steps, eight steps. Now he was staring at her and wondering why the stare wasn’t being returned. Why wouldn’t she bend, stretch, sway? Nine steps. Siri tossed her hair back. Ten steps, eleven steps. Now she was passing him. Twelve steps. Now she was past him. Thirteen steps. And now I will forget that I ever saw you.