by Linn Ullmann
The old house at the top of the road could have done with a coat of white paint, but in the misty light no one noticed that. And the grandfather clock in the living room, the one that had belonged to Jenny’s paternal grandmother, would strike seven and by that time everything would be ready. The garden would come to life. The house would come to life. The doors would be flung open. The rain would ease up a little and even if the fog did hang around the treetops, light would shine from lamps and lanterns both inside and out. And they would all be out on the front steps to welcome the guests. Jenny and Irma, Siri and Jon and Alma and little Liv and the moon-pretty girl whose name was Milla.
Jenny gripped one of the curtains. Let the festivities commence! Almost fifty guests from far and near. They came with presents and flowers and champagne and rain in their hair and laughter and summer dresses and white pocket handkerchiefs to wish Jenny Brodal happy birthday.
SIRI TURNED TO Milla. They were all out on the front steps now, waiting for the guests to arrive. They were also waiting for Jenny. She should have been downstairs by now, lined up there on the steps with them. It was her party after all. She was the guest of honor, she was the birthday girl, the star of the show. An hour earlier Siri had stomped up the stairs to her mother’s room and knocked on the door.
“Mama, how are you getting on? Are you about ready? Do you need help with anything?”
She received no reply. Siri put her ear to the door and listened. All she could hear was a faint humming sound. Was her mother singing in there? She opened the door a crack and peeped inside. Jenny was sitting on the bed. Her makeup was half done (powder and lipstick, but nothing on her eyes), she had on her black dress and those thick, gray woolly socks of hers. In her hand she had an almost empty glass of red wine.
Siri flung the door open and caught the flicker of pure fear in her mother’s eyes before Jenny raised her glass to her. They stayed like that, eyeing each other. Siri had to try to find a voice that did not cry, did not actually scream, a voice that said, “How much have you had to drink?”
Jenny scratched her head, looked at the ceiling, drank the last drops.
“To be honest, Siri,” she said, “I don’t know the answer to that question. Quite a lot, I think. But definitely not enough.”
“Why?” Siri asked.
“Well, why not?”
Siri took a step closer, but Jenny raised her hand to say stop. Don’t touch me.
“You shouldn’t be drinking,” Siri whispered. “It’ll kill you.”
“One day at a time, Siri. One day at a time. I never said never.”
“So why now?”
“Because you’re a grown woman,” Jenny replied, setting her glass back down on the bedside table. “You are, in fact, a middle-aged woman of forty … and you’ll be fine no matter what I do. You don’t really have to worry … You and I …”
Jenny looked away.
“You and I what?” Siri said. “You and I what?”
Jenny shook her head. “Forget it,” she said. “Would you please go. Would you please close the door and leave me be.”
Siri turned and started to leave. Before closing the door she said, “The party will be starting in an hour.”
Jenny laughed loudly. “Oh, yes, we mustn’t forget that. The party. The celebration. It will start in an hour! Of this we can be sure!” She waved Siri away, still laughing. “Of this we can be very, very sure.”
And now here they were, out on the front steps of the house, waiting for the first guests to arrive. All of them, except Jenny.
Milla had long hair hanging down her back, a red umbrella, red lips, and high-heeled shoes that squelched in the drizzling rain. She had pinned a white peony from Siri’s white flower bed behind her right ear.
Her dress was of thin red cotton and draped around her shoulders was the red silk shawl she had borrowed from Siri.
Siri wanted to say something about the flower in Milla’s hair. She felt Jon’s eyes on her and she knew she ought to let it go.
“Don’t you look lovely, Milla,” Siri said.
Milla’s face lit up. Jon knew there was more to come, he could tell from Siri’s face that she couldn’t let it go. Alma looked on with interest. Jon squeezed Siri’s hand hard. Don’t say it. Siri forced herself to smile and pointed to the flower in Milla’s hair.
She couldn’t let it go.
“But, you know, I’d rather you didn’t pick the flowers in the garden. That white peony in your hair—that’s from one of my beds. It’s like you … wreck things, you see.”
“Oh!” Milla said and lowered her eyes. Her hand began to tremble. “I didn’t know.”
“Leave her alone,” Jon said.
A lapwing—noted for its wavering flight—was heard chirping in the distance.
Milla looked away and smiled. Leave her alone, he had said.
BUT NO ONE saw Milla’s face hours later when the young man they called K.B. pressed her head down into the grit. His hand was clammy and hard, his breath hot.
“You want it, don’t you,” he whispered. He drove into her from behind, ripping her apart.
She didn’t want it, but she couldn’t turn around, couldn’t shake her head no, couldn’t answer clearly choking on grit.
“Can’t hear you, darling,” he said.
And Jenny’s guests circulated in the garden, trying to master the art of balancing a small white plate in one hand and a wineglass in the other, they swayed to the music, they laughed loudly at something someone said, they strolled off on their own, up to the meadow where flowers had been picked that afternoon: bluebells, cow parsley, daisies, buttercups, globe-flowers, purple clover, rosebay willow herb, and stork’s-bill, and some guests stood quite still and looked up at the sky and debated among themselves whether the rain would soon come pouring down after all.
SHE CONSIDERED NOT leaving the party, she considered staying, even though most of the guests were a hundred years old. Milla glanced around, looking for Jon, but instead her eyes found Siri, standing alone under a tree. Siri could often be seen like that, alone, lost in her own thoughts. She was wearing a long, pale blue dress, an old silk dress that had once been Jenny’s. A lot of people probably think Siri is good-looking, Milla might have said to her friends, if she had lived long enough to show them her pictures from that summer. Although Milla seldom showed anyone her pictures. She liked to keep them to herself, put together secret scrapbooks. She was always on the lookout for nice, big sketchbooks with hard covers and thick, white, unlined pages that she could fill with photographs, drawings, quotations and song lyrics, diary entries, dried leaves and flowers and grass. Milla had not traveled to all that many places in the world (not yet!), but her plan for the years ahead was to go far, far away, and no matter where she was in the world, no matter how far from home she was, she would always pull a little tuft of grass out of the ground, paste it into her scrapbook, and write the date and the name of the place underneath it.
And this summer Milla had taken lots of pictures of Siri. Dark and slim and delicate and tough all at once. Tall and a little lopsided with lips that were large and full. The lopsidedness caused her a great deal of pain, sometimes for days at a time, Milla knew that, and she knew that Siri struggled not to show it, she had seen her when she thought she was alone, crouching down, closing her eyes, not moving.
Milla took a lot of pictures of people who were not aware that they were being photographed, and these pictures too she stuck in the album. She felt safe behind the camera. There was nothing heavy and moonish about her when she moved around with her little black cell phone clicking away. All those years watching her mother watching her, the camera between them. Oh, yes, Milla, that’s a nice shot, sweetie, don’t move. Baking cookies and getting sticky flour all over her face and in her hair and on her hands and clothes. Sleeping (or pretending to) so her mother could get her shot of the sleeping child, lounging around on the grass wearing nothing but those stupid dotted underpants.
On
e day, Siri had been fast asleep in the wicker chair in the big garden. Milla had just gotten back from the beach, in her arms she carried a big watermelon she had bought at the market. She was planning to cut it up and share it with Liv, who was hopping and skipping and dancing around her, singing, “We’re going to have watermelon, we’re going to have watermelon, we’re going to have watermelon in the mo-o-o-orning.”
“Ssh,” Milla whispered, pointing to Siri in the wicker chair. “Look, Mama’s sleeping!”
“Mama’s sleeping,” whispered Liv.
“Can you look after the watermelon?” Milla went on, gently placing the melon on the ground. “Can you sit here on the grass and look after the watermelon? I just have to do something.”
“What are you going to do?” whispered Liv.
“Ssh, don’t wake Mama,” Milla replied softly, putting her finger to her lips. “It’s a surprise. Shut your eyes and count to twenty in your head and afterward we’ll go into the kitchen and cut up the watermelon.”
“What’s the surprise?” Liv cried.
“Ssh, ssh. I can’t tell you that, because then it won’t be a surprise, will it? So you’ve got to sit very quietly here on the grass and look after the watermelon and count to twenty in your head—and maybe the surprise will have something to do with ice cream.”
Liv sat down on the grass, squeezed her eyes tight, and whispered, “One, two, three, four …”
Milla took her phone from her shorts pocket, crept over to the wicker chair in which Siri lay sleeping, bent over her, and took a picture. She looked at the picture, she looked at Siri. Siri did not wake up. Milla took another picture. And another. Siri had covered herself with a light blanket and this had slid to the ground, a little thread of drool ran from her open mouth. Milla slipped her phone back into her pocket, picked up the blanket, and laid it over her.
“… fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen …”
Liv opened her eyes and in a whispered shout said, “Can I stop counting soon, Milla?”
Milla turned to the girl on the grass and told her she could stop counting now, because it was time for watermelon.
“And ice cream!” Liv cried.
“And ice cream,” whispered Milla, putting her finger to her lips again. “Remember now, don’t wake Mama. Let Mama sleep.”
Siri was constantly on the verge of getting really angry with Milla—and then she would regret it and try to be particularly nice instead. And when she was feeling regretful she let Milla borrow things of hers, like the red silk shawl that went so well with her red dress.
Milla wanted Siri to like her, but she was never good enough. It wasn’t Milla’s fault that Jon sometimes preferred to talk to her rather than Siri, or that Liv and Alma would rather be with her than with their mother. Siri was always in a bad mood. Alma had told her that all chefs were bad-tempered. Especially those who were trained in France.
But the chicken skewers were delicious. To begin with the plan had been to have suckling pigs, that was what Siri had decided, she’d had a vision of the sort of celebration this would be, as if it were a play or a painting, but no one wanted her vision. And that made her even more bad-tempered.
Milla had eaten a lot of chicken skewers on the sly before the party, taken a couple here and a couple there from the freezer and heated them up in the oven after everyone else had gone to bed.
“And what I’m making now, Mama, is chicken skewers with satay sauce,” Siri had said in a loud, shrill voice. She was standing in the big old kitchen, sweating in the heat, her shoulder-length hair loosely pinned up with a lovely old clasp.
Milla wished she had a clasp like that.
This was a few days before the party and Milla was in the pantry, hiding behind the half-open door, observing the scene unfolding in the kitchen. She had been on her way in to get a jug of lemonade for the children, but when she heard that Siri and Irma and Jenny were there, she stopped and hid behind the door.
Jenny leaned against the wall with her arms folded. She stood like that, perfectly still, watching Siri and not saying a word. Irma sat on a kitchen chair, chuckling. Her cheek bulged with tobacco.
Then all at once Jenny said, “Satay what?”
“Chicken skewers in satay sauce,” Siri said. “It’s a Thai dish made with peanut butter and coconut milk and—”
Irma snorted loudly.
“I don’t want any goddamned Thai dish,” Jenny interrupted. Irma looked at Siri.
“You should have listened to me,” she said.
“What?” Siri asked, confused.
She looked at her mother, then at Irma.
“What are you saying?”
“I don’t want any goddamned dish!” Jenny shouted.
Irma laughed even louder.
“Are you listening, Siri?” Jenny was still leaning against the wall.
Siri turned to Jenny with tears in her eyes.
It occurred to Milla that, had she dared, had she been sure not to be discovered, hiding there behind the door, she might have taken a picture of Siri at that moment. Siri with tears in her eyes. Siri being yelled at by her mother.
“I don’t want a party!” Jenny screamed. “I don’t want a party! I don’t want suckling pigs and I don’t want your dish! I don’t want anything from you! I don’t want this!”
Then she stormed out of the kitchen in her high heels and did not acknowledge Milla or even notice that she almost knocked her over in the pantry.
A few days later, when the party was finally under way and Liv was dancing on the feet of some distant uncle, Milla decided to stay, at least a little while, even though it was her night off, she’d get to maybe exchange a few words with Jon. She could mention to him that she had played the song he had said she ought to listen to. He had given her a CD (not a new CD, but one that had been lying around in his study, and he hadn’t exactly given it to her, it was more of a loan), and then he had sent her a text in the middle of the night and asked her to listen to “Sweetheart Like You.” Just that, nothing else.
Dear Milla, it said. Listen to Sweetheart Like You—you’ll like it. J.
Milla had played the song several times. She wondered why Jon was up in his attic study, sending texts to her, instead of being asleep in bed with Siri. Could it be that he wasn’t happy with Siri? Was he thinking of her—of Milla? Late at night? Was that why he couldn’t sleep? Milla played the song over and over, she found the lyrics on the Internet, read them again and again, wrote them down on a separate sheet of paper, and glued this into her scrapbook. Maybe there was a secret message from Jon to her in there somewhere.
By the way, that’s a cute hat
And that smile’s so hard to resist
But what’s a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?
Milla knocked back a glass of white wine. And then another. She walked with studied care across the garden in her high heels (the stilettos piercing the lawn and sinking into the earth with every step she took) and into the bathroom off the hallway, the one reserved for guests; she stood in front of the mirror and took her mascara from the little fringed gold evening bag over her shoulder. She smiled at herself in the mirror, adjusted the red strap of her dress. Surely there was something she could do this evening. She had seen people her own age in the Palermo Pizzeria, and she knew there were usually lots of people at the Bellini. Let Jon party with the geriatric set and maybe at some point in the course of the evening he would stop and look around the garden, searching for her, and wonder where she had gone.
Sweetheart like you
Sweetheart
Sweet like you
She took a last look at herself in the mirror and stepped back out into the garden. The old trees sighed in the breeze. The fog coiled around clusters of festive people. Here and there, someone gazed up at the heavens, to see whether they were about to open and wash them all away, fragments of the same conversation heard everywhere. Is it going to rain soon? Does Siri intend to move the whole party indoors if th
ere’s a downpour? Is there a plan? What about all the food? And then a woman’s singsong voice rising loudly above all the others: A spot of water in our hair is just good luck. Milla felt a drop of rain land on her shoulder and could not help smiling. She stepped under the outstretched sails that Jon and Irma had slung between the trees and stopped by the buffet table. She sneaked one chicken skewer and then one more, she couldn’t seem to get enough of them, that salty taste, she felt a flutter of excitement in her stomach, maybe it was the wine, maybe the salt, maybe the text message from Jon, she had this feeling that something wonderful was about to happen.
She looked around her and again her eyes met Siri’s. Milla felt sorry for Siri. Lopsided Siri who lay alone at night while her husband was thinking of other women. Milla smiled at her. Lopsided Siri who was never happy. Come on, smile back! I know how sad you are! More drops of rain landed on Milla. She felt them on her shoulder. In her hair. On her cheek. Running down her spine. She felt like laughing. It tickled. But when, after locking eyes, Siri turned away, as if repelled by her, she suddenly felt more like crying.
Bitch! Fucking bitch!
She didn’t say it out loud and no one could hear what she was thinking. She was just a girl in a red dress standing by the white-clothed trestle table with her mouth full of chicken. Milla swallowed, tossed her hair, and made her way toward the gate at the end of the garden. She turned around one last time and looked straight at Siri, now surrounded by her guests. Milla wondered what Siri would say if she knew about her and Jon. Milla took out her phone. Could she send him a text right now? Or should she wait? She knew how he liked talking to her, even if he was thirty years older than her, liked the fact that she popped into his study when he was working. He liked showing her things. Liked telling her things. About himself, about music and books.