It was time for the baby’s lunch. In his room, he held his arms up to me, fraught with expectation. I looked at him, as I do. Waiting. Hoping to feel something.
I wonder if it isn’t somehow inherited. Maternal instincts, or the lack thereof. I cannot remember Maureen ever holding me. At six months old, she left me with a nurse so she could go off on a monthlong weight-loss program in Switzerland. As a child, any time I cried, she’d roll her eyes and say, It gets worse, Merry, trust me.
It was Frank’s mother, Carol, who showed me what it meant to be loved. To be mothered. How I adored her. The smell of her kitchen, the sturdiness of her body, its ability to hold you firm and rock away any number of sorrows. My mother would deposit me at Frank’s house as though it were a day-care center, waving to Carol from the car because she didn’t want to endure stepping inside their shabby Brentwood living room. They’d met through the husbands. My father, surgeon in chief at Cedars, and Frank’s father, Ian, a gynecologist.
I’d barely be out of the car with my little overnight bag and my mother would be reversing away, hurrying off to lunch with the girls or some act of maintenance. Hairdresser or nail salon or day spa; sometimes it was for a stretch of a few days while she recuperated from a procedure or detoxed at one of her retreats. You’re just the best, Carol, my mother would sing, but any time they bumped into one another at a social event, she’d pretend not to know her.
I longed for her never to return, so that I could stay always with Carol, wrapped in her arms, comforted by the sound of her soft southern drawl, safe and warm in the only place that ever felt like a home. My mother always came back for me, and always we regarded each other with that first brief look of disappointment: You again.
In his crib, the baby had turned his attention to Bear. The two of them appeared to be deep in conversation.
I watched. I imagined Frank, seeing my son for the first time, the soft curls starting to collect behind his ears, the gummy smile punctuated with sharp points of new teeth; those sparkling eyes, the fat belly he loves to have tickled. Those pudgy hands that grab and pull at everything in sight. The smell of him newly bathed or sound asleep, the milky sighs and wet open kisses, the tiny arms that reach around your neck to hold you in warm, exquisite embrace.
My child. My son.
I lifted him up into my arms and showered him with all the love I had.
Sam
Oh, Samson, you can’t honestly tell me that you’re happy over there.
My mother on the phone, calling from the States.
Samson, I know you.
I’ve told you, Mother, it’s wonderful here. I wish you’d come over and see for yourself.
She won’t, thankfully.
It’s a long flight, she said.
You’ve never even met your grandson.
Even this is not enough to persuade her. She cannot get over the fact that I left. She wants to punish me for it. Or maybe this is the extent to which she loathes Merry. She doesn’t even want to meet our son.
She sighed. That goddamn Ida, she said.
She left me a house, I said. She was a nice woman.
Please, she hissed. It’s thanks to her I’m alone and you’re a million miles away.
You’re being mean-spirited, I said.
Ida was a manipulative bitch, I always said so. Only married my father so she could stay in the country. And then she does this, leaves my son a house so he’ll move to the other side of the world.
Anyway, she said, they’re all the same.
Who? I said.
Women.
The line was quiet.
Samson, she said slowly. I played bridge with Myra last week.
I sucked in my breath.
You remember her daughter. Josie Rushton, from Columbia.
She paused.
It’s just gossip, I said, knowing what was coming.
But she said you were—
Gossip, I said.
That’s not why you left, she said. That’s not what you’re doing there, son, is it? Running away from your problems. I know it wouldn’t be the first one. I know you like your—
I’m going now, Mother, I said, and put down the phone.
I went outside. The calls with my mother usually end like this. Me in a rage. I opened the door to the barn at the edge of the garden. Ida’s boxes still piled up inside. A lawnmower, a canoe that needs to be stripped and painted. The list of things to do is endless. At least the house is livable now, the garden in check.
God, if I think of the day we arrived and saw what a state it was all in. A boarded-up house half falling apart, a garden overgrown, a tangle of thorns and rotting trees and sharp edges waiting to cut you to pieces. Merry pregnant, me circling the property in a daze as though waiting for it all to come into focus. It’s a wonder we didn’t run away.
The house was virtually uninhabitable—the few remaining pieces of Ida’s furniture covered in sheets brown with dust, the windows cracked, the roof tiles falling down. We covered our mouths with scarves and pulled off the sheets one by one, shoved open the windows and the doors and tried to let the fresh Swedish air do its work. I quickly realized how little I’d thought about logistics like beds and towels and kettles. Water, power, blankets for the cold. We had nothing and nowhere to sleep. No food, nowhere to curl up after more than twenty-four hours of airports and flights.
What are we doing here, Sam? Merry said, her eyes shining with tears and fright. I think it was the first time she ever looked at me that way. Like I didn’t have all the answers.
We drove the rental car into town and stopped at three guesthouses before we found somewhere with a vacancy. We left the luggage in the car, found a little café on the main street, and ordered burgers and milk shakes. By two in the afternoon we were back in the room, fast asleep and not to wake until the next evening, even though the jetlag ought to have kept us up through the night.
On the third day, we got up early and drove to the big supermarket on the outskirts of town. We loaded up the car with cleaning products and groceries and candles and a couple of cheap beach towels. We had the water and power set up later that day, and then we went to work with the mops and the window cleaner and the polish, every corner and crevice of the house we scrubbed and shined, every inch of dust we caught and dispensed with, every sign of neglect we reversed and restored. We fitted new light bulbs and tested the old fridge and stove; we ran the taps to clear out the pipes and washed the huge glass windows with soap and water. Together we wrote endless lists of the things we needed to buy for each room, the repairs that needed to be made; every time you looked there was something else.
We bought a car from a dealership in Uppsala and drove to the nearest Ikea, made frequent trips to the hardware store and the garden center. I built the baby’s crib and painted the walls of his room. I moved in one of Ida’s old armchairs, we bought a woven blanket and cushions to make it comfortable. In Stockholm we shopped for strollers and car seats, bath chairs and diaper bags and thermometers and educational rattles. The prices in krona made your eyes water but we loaded up the cart and handed over the card to swipe.
I bought a wheelbarrow and a toolbox, a power drill and a ladder to fix the roof. The sweat dripped off me; I tied a bandanna around my forehead and removed my shirt. I was pure alpha, man on a mission. It was exhilarating.
Outside, I pulled weeds and hacked down waist-high bushes. I measured frames and bricked in vegetable patches and rebuilt fallen walls.
Fixing, making, shaping. Building our new lives one drop of sweat at a time.
You can’t honestly tell me you’re happy over there.
My mother refuses to believe any American can be happy anywhere but America. She sends over care packages from the States, all the things she thinks we’re missing. Boxed macaroni and cheese dinners, triple-chocolate-chip cookies, hot sauce. In the last package, she included an American flag, just in case we needed reminding.
You were all I had, son, and now yo
u’re gone. With that woman.
The women, the women. Always it’s the women.
If I think about the part that’s really addictive, the part that’s the sweetest, it’s the way they look when you’ve hurt them. The way they crack and break. Even the strongest woman is just a little girl in disguise, desperate for you to notice something about her. So hungry for it, she’ll do anything you ask. Low things.
You’re a cruel man, Sam.
I have heard this more than once. It always feels good, though I can’t say why.
In Ida’s shed, I looked for the box marked Train Set and removed the bottle I keep stashed away inside. I took a long sip, then another. I examined the wooden trains; they must have belonged to Ida’s brother. There was a story about him I can’t quite recall. Drowned in the lake or stung by a bee. His trains carefully carved and painted, each carriage a different shape and shade. A labor of love.
Probably his father’s. This is what fathers do. I tested out the train on a little stretch of wooden track. Chug-a-chug-a-choo. Conor will love it. I took another sip. It dawned on me suddenly that Ida’s dead brother is the only reason I’ve been left the house. One man’s misery is another man’s fortune, and all.
I’ll need to call my mother back. Make up a vague apology. Get her to wire over more money. Weave in some guilt about her not bothering to know her grandson. That’ll do it.
Our cash is running out, not that Merry knows. Not her department, I always say. Funny, I always thought she’d inherit a decent amount from her mother. But turns out old Gerald wasn’t as astute an investor as he was a surgeon. Bad decisions, big losses. After he died, Maureen lived outside her means; in the end there was nothing left but a load of back taxes and a series of unpaid aesthetician bills.
I took out my phone. Tomorrow? I wrote.
Yes, came Malin’s reply.
She asked me once, Do you love your wife?
Yes, I said, of course.
She nodded sadly but said nothing more.
I downed a final drink in the barn and went inside.
Merry
An email arrived this morning from Frank. Her flight details confirmed. See you soon, she wrote. I felt a wave of unexpected dread, a sort of preemptive exhaustion. Frank in need, always hungry for approval. Always watching to see if there are any slips. Continuity errors. She loves to catch me out.
No, I must focus on the good. Her face when she sees the house. When she holds the baby. When she’s confronted with all the parts of her that are lacking.
Just like that, she will be sure of nothing.
And I will have it all.
I wrote down the details and deleted her email. I clicked on the website I visit most days. I came upon it by accident. An anonymous forum. Mothers, all of us, but not the ones who share recipes for birthday cake and ideas for Halloween craft projects.
I don’t write anything but I read it all.
Val in Connecticut who drops buttons on the carpet in the hopes her baby daughter might choke on one, dropping a single button each day so that it will be down to fate in the end. Anonymous in Leeds who calls and then hangs up on social services every morning, trying to work up the courage to hand over the twins she cannot bear.
Pretend women, playing at being mothers.
Sam emerged from the studio and I quickly exited the page. He came up behind me and pressed his hands into my shoulders, kissing the top of my head.
Who’s Christopher? he said, as an email popped onto the screen.
Just an old client, I said. He probably doesn’t know I’ve left the States.
Better tell him, Sam said, and walked off.
I read the email and then deleted it. I had an overwhelming need suddenly to get out of the house. I pulled on running gear and went to find Sam. I’m going for a hike, I announced.
He was taken aback, but thrilled. Fantastic, he said. Should I watch Con?
Oh no, I said, I really want to have some mommy-son time.
Strange, how the words come so easily, how the untruths roll off the tongue while the rest stays locked away.
You’re such a great mom, Sam said.
I nodded. I’m doing my best.
And I am, I am! I must be, because why else would it all feel this torturous—as though I were day and night on stage, under the harsh lights, face melting, body corseted into an ill-fitting borrowed costume. The same show, again and again, enter stage left, deliver the lines you have rehearsed. And into the crowd, looking out at a sea of faces, searching, hoping—desperately needing to hear the sounds of applause. Or even just a single clap. I see you. You exist.
I settled the baby in his stroller and pulled the door shut behind me. We walked down the path in the direction of the lake, then veered left onto the dirt road that leads to the forest trails. It was a fair climb up the first hill, to the flattish clearing of forest with views of the south side of the lake.
In the last months of my pregnancy, I would wake some nights and find myself here, having wandered through the house in the half darkness, out the door and through the garden and down to the gate, a trance that took me inexplicably all the way to the start of the hiking trails, and out to this clearing. I’d cut my feet on gravel and stones and the pain would make me wince and cramp and cry out. I was weighted down with the life inside, an awkward shape, clunky and dense in the darkened forest, knocking into trees and branches as I lumbered along. There were noises and movements in the night but none of them scared me as much as what was inside. Sometimes in the mornings, Sam would find a thin trail of blood leading from the front door to my side of the bed; nocturnal Odette turned back into the cursed swan. How did I get here, how did I get here? I could not understand it.
It was good to be outside in the cool and the quiet, just the trees and the soft calls of insects at work. I looked around. There was not another soul about. A cabin nearby was boarded up, the windows shut, wooden beams nailed across them. A gingerbread house, I thought, and perhaps inside, a cannibal witch.
I looked into the stroller. The baby had fallen asleep. In the soft dappled sunlight, he looked almost painterly, the golden-haloed child of devotional art. I touched a finger to his nose. He stirred but did not wake. I considered the stroller. I remembered the salesman in Stockholm describing state-of-the-art suspension, a fixed front wheel, pneumatic tires. Mountain Jogger, it says on the handlebar. Built for this terrain.
I breathed in the morning air, fresh and warm; held out my arms as though awaiting some divine benediction. Then I began to run. Harder, faster, farther and farther into the trees. Around me, the pines loomed tall and ancient and indifferent; the ground underfoot crunched with fallen leaves and weeds and thick-growing lichen, everything alive and wild, a world unto its own.
I did not look back. I ran and ran, as though running for my life. I ran and ran, until everything ached and stung—heart and lungs and head. I wondered briefly if the baby would be all right, out here in the woods, exposed to all the elements. But surely it could only do us good. Hearty exertion, fresh forest air. I pushed on. The sweat poured off me in sheets. I pushed, I pushed; I ran. I thought: I may never stop. I imagined how easy it would be to keep going, to keep running, pushing farther and farther north, to Uppsala, then Gävle, then Sundsvall. And farther still. All the way to the far north, to Kiruna and across into Finland, to Kilpisjärvi. From there you keep going, Alta, then Nordkapp; I’ve looked on the map, nothing but space and sky, the water and the ice. Svalbard. Greenland. Land so barren you would surely feel like the first person to set foot on earth. Or the last.
All those voyages north, the polar expeditions into nothingness and white. Searching for the unknown, for places to name and land to call one’s own. Or maybe it was just blankness they were after, a world made new.
I ran and ran, stumbling occasionally over uneven ground and unfamiliar terrain; rocks and roots and the stumps of felled trees. I ran until I could no longer breathe, until my legs could no longer move me f
orward or support my weight. I collapsed to the ground. I gasped air into my shocked lungs; I gulped at it like it was water. More, more, pounding heart, ready to burst right out of its fragile cage of bone. I held my hand over it. It would not quieten. It was the feeling of death. Or maybe of being alive.
I lay in the soil, leaves at my back, millions upon millions of subterranean creatures busy belowground with secret endeavors. A discarded husk of snail shell I held and then crushed, the sharp points digging into my fingers. My breath was steadying slowly.
And still, my heart raced. The feeling of being free. Here where I am no one and everyone, a mass of cells and atoms like everything else that lives and breathes and is of this earth. It all came flooding in, the noise of the silence and the stillness and the smell of life uninterrupted. I tried to inhale it, to steal some for myself.
I don’t know how long I lay on the ground.
Before the baby and I made our way back home, I paused to take a photograph on my phone. Something about the light and the colors compelled me. Perhaps I would send it to Frank. A taste of what’s in store.
Wasn’t that fun, I said to the baby, who had woken. Wasn’t that a fun adventure for us.
He gifted me with a smile, and I was reassured. His cheeks were a little flush, his hair matted to his skull from all the movement. I made a note to double-check the safety of the forest, to rule out any encounters with wild animals. But I shouldn’t think there’s anything sinister in these parts.
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