The Summer House

by Philip Teir

  Anders focused, trying to summon pictures in his mind of places where he was happy, trying to pinpoint what made him feel safe.

  ‘As I said, I think it’s great to be here right now.’

  ‘That’s a start,’ said Kati.

  ‘And I don’t know what it is, but sometimes I think I’d like to be enclosed. Do you know what I mean? Enclosed in a dark embrace, wrapped in softness.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘I’m not sure you really do. Oh, this sounds so ridiculous …’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘Am I making any kind of sense?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, you are. For a whole lot of us, it’s basically all about wanting to be enclosed and loved, about feeling safe and warm.’

  Anders thought about the times when he’d tried, when he’d truly opened up to the possibility, but it had never worked out because he never chose the right person. Like the woman he’d talked to in the pub in Hanoi. He’d ended up sitting next to her by chance, and she had looked so beautiful in the dim light of the pub, and she had smiled at him – and that had been that. She had given him something that night, she was someone with whom he could share a moment, but afterwards it had become difficult and complicated. Until at last he was the one who was forced to console and explain, because she’d dreamed of sharing a life with him in Finland, though he’d had no interest in doing anything like that. Or what about Karin, the teacher at the community college where he’d attended classes one winter? He’d had a difficult relationship with her because the whole time he’d wanted much more than she had, until he’d finally realised that she was only paying attention to him because it was a way for her to endure her life, and she did the same thing with several others.

  These kinds of experiences had given him the feeling that it was best to shut down and not take any risks, since all risks hurled him out into a stormy sea where he eventually lost himself.

  ‘I don’t think feeling safe is for everyone,’ he said now. ‘Maybe some people are made so they can never feel safe.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Did you feel that way as a child?’

  ‘I was sick for large parts of my childhood. I had stomach problems. So I quickly learned to pretend, to say that everything was fine because I couldn’t deal with all the questions and worry. And it was embarrassing to be sick all the time, especially because my illness meant I had to keep running to the toilet. I constantly felt ashamed, and I had to keep the shame to myself, because I didn’t want to upset anyone else.’

  ‘Would you like more coffee?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure. That would great. Thanks,’ he said.

  When Julia’s parents came to visit a couple of days later, Anders couldn’t focus on the birthday celebration for Alice, no matter how hard he tried. All he could think about was seeing Kati again. Finally, after they’d all had a piece of birthday cake, he excused himself, saying that he was going for a walk.

  11

  LEO CAME OVER TO SEE Alice on the morning after the party. She’d gone down to the road several times to look for him, but she hadn’t dared go as far as his family’s property, afraid of making a fool of herself. They’d started following each other on Instagram, but otherwise had communicated only by liking each other’s pictures.

  ‘Why don’t you invite him over?’ her mother had asked, as if Alice had any say in the matter. She felt annoyed that her mother even knew about this, and talked about it as if it were any of her business.

  The whole thing was beyond Alice’s control, yet she liked the feeling it gave her. Not only the warmth in her body when she thought about looking at the nape of his neck as they’d walked down to the beach on that first evening, but also that she had something here in Mjölkviken that no one in her school had. That feeling. She’d be able to go home after the summer holidays and talk about him – or she might not; it really didn’t matter one way or the other. More important was the fact that this was hers. Like the ring that she’d found, it was enough just to know about it. That’s why she didn’t want her mother to talk about Leo as if he was just anybody.

  She listened to ‘Titanium’ and felt the blood rushing through her body as she walked down to the road, but she turned around before she got there and went back to the summer house. She stretched out on her bed to read a book, although she couldn’t really concentrate.

  Leo’s mother had come over to visit one evening. She and Julia had coffee out on the terrace and then switched to gin and tonic. They talked about old memories, and it was so annoying to listen to them.

  Alice’s mother had laughed way too loud at something stupid and then said to her: ‘Why don’t you go over to see Leo?’

  ‘He’s home with his father and probably totally bored,’ said Marika. ‘I’m sure he’d welcome your company.’

  ‘You could take Anton with you,’ said her mother.

  Then Julia and Marika had started talking about how antisocial kids were these days. They recalled running around the whole area, from one house to another, and playing with boys when they were kids. At that point Alice didn’t feel like hearing any more, so she put her headphones in.

  No, she thought, he should come here instead. And this time she wouldn’t let Anton tag along. She pictured herself with Leo, taking a path that led deeper into the woods, or on an outing to the public beach, just the two of them, alone. And he would understand when she talked about school and her friends; he would say ‘that’s exactly how it is,’ and they’d laugh at all the idiots in the world.

  But he didn’t make an appearance that day, or the next day either.

  Then on Tuesday he turned up, looking happy and a little shy yet delightfully nonchalant. He stood over her as she lay on the mattress in her ridiculous swimsuit, which made it impossible for her to turn around. Instead, she had to peer up at him from an angle, turning her head 180 degrees, since she didn’t want to lie on her back to look up at him. He blocked out the sun as he asked Alice whether she’d like to go down to the beach. She nodded.

  Then she got up and put on the big black T-shirt with ‘The Cure’ on the front which she’d left on the rocks next to the mattress. She picked up her canvas bag that held her books and other things, since it seemed like this was going to be a real outing. Then they headed off together without saying a word.

  Anders and the woman were together down there. They were sitting on the woman’s terrace, talking. The others didn’t know he was there, but Alice had seen him on that first evening. Now he waved to her. She pretended not to see him.

  Instead, she fixed her eyes on Leo’s downy nape, though she quickly averted her eyes when he noticed she was looking at him. He had freckles and was squinting at the sun. Alice sniffed at her hand. It smelled of suntan lotion. She was glad she had rubbed some on her skin.

  ‘I would have come over before,’ Leo said, ‘but Pappa wanted me to stay inside and do my homework. And that made me so cross.’

  ‘Aren’t you on holiday?’ asked Alice.

  ‘Yes, but Pappa has decided to homeschool me. Mamma and Pappa think it’s hard on me because I keep having to change schools. So they decided it would be easier if Pappa teaches me. We might be moving again.’

  ‘Where?’ she asked, feeling her stomach lurch with fear. But she should have expected this. She knew already that the summer would come to an end, and then it wouldn’t matter where he lived.

  ‘I’m not sure, but if I know my father, it’ll be some place that’s as remote as possible, probably somewhere in Scotland. Or here. He wants to be self-supporting.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Pappa wants to move here. He says it gives him a sense of calm that he can’t find anywhere else.’

  ‘But you don’t even have running water,’ said Alice, although she was happy to hear of this possibility.

  ‘That’s probably what Pappa likes. He says we can wash in the sauna every day. He’s been talking to somebody about raising dogs and keeping chickens, and he wants to
start here.’

  ‘How do you feel about that?’ asked Alice.

  She’d never had to think about suddenly moving away or living without running water. It made her like Leo even more; it made her think that he needed somebody, somebody he could talk to. And she wanted to be that person.

  They stopped now. They were near the rocks on the south side of the bay. When he sat down, his feet dangled in the air, unable to reach the ground. He had on a pair of old Adidas, more worn out than any trainers the boys in her class had, and she thought that was the difference between Leo and her classmates: he didn’t care. He might have shoes that were tattered, he might have a smudge of dirt on his chin, but he was stronger than anyone she knew. Now he tucked his hair behind his ears. His hair was like gold, not white and shiny but like burnished gold, as if made up of several colours even though there was only one.

  ‘I’m so fucking tired of my parents, the way they can never make up their minds. It’s like every day they think up something new in life, and it’s always the most important thing in the world. I’ve never had a friend for more than a year and a half,’ he said, but it didn’t sound as if he felt sorry for himself. He actually sounded angry, the way a grown-up might sound angry about something.

  ‘When I was little I always dreamed of living in the country. If you guys move here, we could at least see each other in the summertime,’ said Alice.

  ‘That’s true,’ he said, smiling at her. Then he turned sad. She could see it in his eyes, and she had a great urge to jump up and give him a hug.

  ‘Do you like music?’ she asked.

  ‘That depends,’ he said.

  ‘Want to listen to some?’

  They sat down in a cleft in the rocks where they would be warm and sheltered from the wind. Alice had a hard time deciding what to play first. She went through all her playlists, but she thought the song choices were too revealing – she didn’t want him to think she was trying to tell him something.

  Finally she chose an album that her mother liked too. Nina Simone. She sometimes listened to it when she wanted to feel totally calm.

  ‘I don’t really listen to this very often, but I think it’s great,’ she said, pulling her headphones out of her pocket and starting the music. Black is the colour of my true love’s hair. They lay down on the rocks so their heads were almost touching. I love the ground on which he stands. She thought about Leo’s hair and wanted to take a picture of the two of them, but he might not like it. She thought he might not like taking selfies.

  Anton had been inside the old playhouse on the property, looking out of the window when Leo walked past. He was glad Leo hadn’t seen him. He didn’t want anyone to think of him as a boy who played on his own inside a kids’ playhouse. In reality, Anton had taken his old Nintendo DS with him and was playing a Pokémon game that had been a birthday present when he turned seven. He’d hardly played with it back then, but now he’d rediscovered the game and had been playing for several days. He had only a few levels left. He liked the little playhouse because it was dark inside. The sun was too bright for him to play the game outdoors.

  When Leo and Alice headed for the beach, Anton left the game in the playhouse and followed them. At first he pretended he was tracking an animal, trying to spot their footprints in the sand. He followed them down to the shore and watched Alice and Leo walk across the rocks and then sit down somewhere out of sight. He wondered how he could spy on them without being seen. He realised he’d have to go into the woods next to the bay and get closer from the other direction, as if he were manoeuvring himself in a computer game.

  It was warm and dry, not at all like it’d been the past few weeks. Now the sun was blazing, which made him thirsty and long for a cool breeze from the sea. He walked past an old rotting rowing-boat abandoned in the woods, then headed for the rocks on the south side. He hid behind several pine trees, trying to spot Leo and Alice.

  Here in the woods he could hear his own breathing and pulse, small twigs dropping to the ground, the steady rushing from the sea and the gulls hovering over the shoreline. When he’d almost reached the edge of the woods, where the rocks started, he saw them.

  They were lying on the rocks with their eyes closed. Not speaking, focused on the music coming from the headphones. They didn’t move, and he thought at first that they might be dead. He stood there for a long time, breathing as quietly as he could, straining to be as motionless as a statue. But finally he got tired of looking at them, so he sat down.

  Anton sometimes wondered whether his brain might function differently from everyone else’s. He wasn’t like his classmate Elliot who could concentrate on whatever the teachers said and always got top marks in everything. Anton didn’t have trouble in school. He got good grades, but he was always more interested in what was happening inside him.

  For a while he worried that he might be taking part in a film. He wondered whether it might be possible that the world around him didn’t really exist. Or rather: that everything he did was being filmed and someone was watching the film of his life. And maybe even listening to his thoughts. If that was true, he wondered whether that meant the eavesdropping would stop if he discovered it. If somebody was listening to his thoughts, that would mean they were also listening when he thought about them listening.

  He had brooded about this when he decided he liked a girl in his class. It felt as if everybody knew. That was a year ago now, in the springtime.

  Her name was Agnes. She had long brown hair and sat two seats in front of him.

  The only person he told was Iiris. And that was only because she’d asked him whether he liked anyone, as if she already knew the answer.

  A few days later his phone rang.

  He was home alone, sitting on the sofa, and he’d just heated up some pierogies in the microwave. He picked up the phone. It was afternoon, and the sun shone through the big windows in the living room. The school day had just ended.

  ‘Hi, this is Maija.’

  Maija was also in Anton’s class.

  ‘I’m here with Agnes. She wants to be your girlfriend.’

  What she said seemed true and yet not true. Maija giggled, and someone else in the background did too. But what if it really was true? Anton froze and could hardly say a word.

  ‘She does?’ he said cautiously.

  Suddenly he was no longer sure that’s what he wanted. It seemed too overwhelming now that it was happening in reality.

  ‘She wants to know if you could meet her at four o’clock at the school,’ said Maija. Anton said he could.

  It was only three, so he nervously roamed through the flat for almost an hour. He went to his father’s cabinet and took out a bottle of cologne and sprayed a little on his neck.

  His stomach was churning as he walked to school to meet Agnes. He had combed his hair and put on his favourite jacket. It seemed to take much longer than normal, and for some reason he kept feeling like he should stop and look at everything. He walked past the shoemaker’s shop and the antiques shop. He looked both ways several times before crossing the street, then walked past the big car park and entered the schoolyard.

  Agnes was nowhere in sight. Instead, he saw a girl from a different class – he didn’t know her name – with Maija and Iiris.

  ‘Hi, Anton. Are you here to meet Agnes?’

  He nodded, sensing at once that this was a mistake. Nausea surged in his throat.

  ‘Did you really believe that?’ asked Maija. Iiris stood next to her, looking very pale. She didn’t say a word.

  ‘Did you really think Agnes wanted to be your girlfriend? We’re the ones who called you,’ said Maija. She and the other girl started laughing.

  ‘It was just a joke!’ they yelled after Anton as he left. ‘Can’t you take a joke?’

  All the way home he had to hold back his tears. Then he threw himself on his parents’ bed and cried for a long time, hitting himself on the head for being so stupid. He hated Iiris and her friends. The only consolation
was that maybe they hadn’t talked to Agnes. Maybe she knew nothing about all this.

  It seemed unfair that Alice had a friend. If she hadn’t been here, maybe Leo would have played Nintendo with him instead. But Alice was the one who had Leo. He was hers now, and she didn’t want to share him with anyone.

  Finally Anton heard them get up and brush themselves off. They jumped back up on the rocks and headed for the tennis courts. He waited a few minutes and then followed.

  He thought about how it would be to live in South Korea, because lately he’d seen so many YouTube videos with South Korean guys talking about games, and he thought it seemed so cool there. Would it be possible to live in South Korea and earn a living by making YouTube videos? Or did you have to be Asian to do that?

  As he walked through the woods towards the tennis courts, he thought about all these things. At the same time he imagined how he’d post a video on YouTube in which he talked about the game he’d been playing all week, and he constructed long sentences in English in which he explained how to make your way through the different levels, and the woods all around became more like a level in a video game, and that instantly made the game even more fun, as he imagined how he had to make his way past various obstacles to reach the tennis courts.

  He reached them just as Leo and Alice disappeared into a root cellar. He watched as Leo held the door open for Alice, who ducked her head and stepped inside.

  Alice saw there was a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Presumably a wire was buried in the earth and connected to the electricity at the house. Leo turned on the light and they stood in the glow, looking each other in the eyes. Then he turned it off, and Alice instantly thought that felt better. She didn’t even flinch when he took her hand in the dark.

  ‘All right?’ he asked, raising his other hand to lightly touch her breast. ‘Just tell me if you want me to stop.’