“Yeah, but this isn’t just about that, is it? It’s about the way you always fucking treat me, the way you talk to me,” he says. “And no, I don’t see why you have to react to the fact that I’ve been selling hash either. I’m all in favor of free hash and you damn well know it,” he says, and then he nods at my state wine store bags. “Hash does a lot less damage than what you’ve got in those bags and as long as that’s legal I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to buy and sell a few grams if I want.”
I look at him, don’t quite know what to say. I can’t get into a discussion about free hash right now, I can’t be bothered anyway, we’ve discussed this so many times that each of us knows exactly what the other is going to say. I shut my eyes and take a deep breath, hold it for a moment, then open my eyes and breathe a little sigh, making it plain to him that I’m not in the mood for this, that we have to let it go, both of us. I look at him and smile a rather weary smile, he stands there staring at me for a second, then he gives a snort, he doesn’t show the slightest sign of meeting me halfway, he doesn’t say a word, just turns on his heel and walks off into the house.
I stay where I am, gazing at the steps for a second or two. “Well, well,” I mutter to myself, then I shake my head and follow him. I step into the hall and see Jørgen disappearing into his room. After a moment or two our bedroom door opens and Helen comes out. She’s still in her nightie, her hair all mussed up. She comes towards me with Daniel on her hip, dear little Daniel, his face lights up the minute he sees me. He smiles, displaying his one tooth.
“Ba-pa,” he says putting out his hands.
I look at him and smile. She’s put him in a pink onesie, I notice, I don’t like him wearing pink, know I shouldn’t care about such things, but I can’t teach myself not to, no matter how hard I try, I can’t, but I don’t mention it.
“Well, well, if it isn’t little Daniel, if it isn’t the best boy in the whole world,” I say, keeping the smile on my face as I set the state wineshop bags on the floor. I put out my hands and take him, lay my cheek against his warm, soft one and rock from side to side, close my eyes and say, “Mmm.” “Oh, it’s so nice to see you,” I say. I open my eyes and see that Helen is on her way back into the bedroom, she just turns and walks away, doesn’t say a word, doesn’t even say hello.
“What’s the matter, Helen?”
She turns and looks at me. I take a step closer, catch the scent of her, the warm fug of sleep and cigarettes.
“What’s the matter?” she says. “I’m in agony and I’ve hardly slept and Daniel’s been crying and crying and he’s just about driving me up the wall, I feel like throwing up.”
I look at Daniel, look at his chubby hands and his lovely rolls of baby fat, dear little Daniel, it cuts me to the quick to hear her talk about him like that, I don’t like her doing that, especially not when he’s listening, I mean I know he doesn’t understand what she’s saying, but I still don’t like it. I lay my cheek against his again, cuddling him while I look at Helen.
“Well, why don’t you ask Mom to give you a hand?” I say.
“Your mother!” she says. “No fucking way, I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.”
“What?”
“I know damn well there’s nothing she’d like better than to have me asking her for help, but that’s not the main reason she wants to help, no, no, she’s out to prove that I’m not capable of looking after the house and the kids.”
“Oh really, Helen,” I say.
“You should’ve seen the look she gave me when I took Daniel over there the day before yesterday,” she says, putting her hands on her hips and nodding at me. “Oh, yes, and you’d no sooner gone this morning than she was over here working on the flowerbed,” she says. “And of course she made a point of leaving the spade and the little rake on the porch so I’d see them when I went out for my morning smoke,” she says, and she crosses her arms and smirks. “She does everything she damn well can to make me feel lazy and useless.”
“Helen, come on, you shouldn’t take everything the wrong way.”
“I’m not, but I’m onto her, so I am,” she says. “For God’s sake, Ole, she’s forever doing things like that. Only the other day she came in here and scrubbed all the pots while we were out.”
“She just wants to help, Helen. And besides, she feels it’s good to have something to do, she’s not the type to sit twiddling her thumbs.”
“Oh, kiss my ass!” she says. She shuts her eyes and shakes her head, then she opens her eyes and looks at me again. “What do you think she’d have said if I’d scrubbed all her pots while she and your dad were out, hmm?” she says. “Hmm? D’you think she’d have been pleased, or d’you think she might’ve been offended?” she asks. She stops, looks straight at me, and I look at her, don’t really know what to say. “She’d have been offended,” she says. “Of course she would, she’d have been furious, and she’d have had every right to be, because traipsing into somebody’s house and cleaning it like that, it’s as good as saying they don’t keep it clean enough. It’s a sneaky way of telling people they’re no better than pigs, that’s what it is.”
“Or maybe she just wants to be useful,” I say.
“Useful,” Helen sniffs. “If that’s what she wants why the hell doesn’t she join a fucking aid agency or something. I’m sure they’d have a use for her and be happy to have her. In fact I’m sure she could run a whole aid agency single-handed, the way she’s working at the moment, racing around the fucking farm like a fucking Duracell bunny. It’s not normal.”
“Helen, please,” I say. “Don’t make this into a problem.”
“But it is a problem, for Christ’s sake,” she says.
“You don’t think … isn’t it more that you need a problem right now, something to vent your frustration and anger on?” I say. “So you fall back on the old cliché of the meddling mother-in-law. You’re crediting Mom with opinions and motives she doesn’t have, just so you’ll have somebody to offload all your anger onto.”
“Yeah right, because nobody could possibly be mad at your mother,” she sneers.
“Hey, Helen,” I say, and I lay my cheek against Daniel’s again, cuddle him as I look at Helen and smile.
She looks at me and smirks.
“You know what, Ole,” she says, “I really don’t give a shit what your mother thinks of me, she can clean the whole house from top to bottom once a week if she likes, that’s fine by me, but she still won’t make me feel the way she wants me to feel,” she says and she looks me straight in the eye, still with that smirk on her face. “And she can just carry on telling the neighbor’s wives about how much she has to do in our house, because I don’t give a fuck what they think of me either.”
“Wow,” I say. “I don’t know what to say, when you … would you like me to speak to her?”
“Ole, aren’t you listening to what I’m saying?” she says, still smirking. “I don’t give a shit what she thinks of me and I don’t give a shit about all the rumors she spreads about me, so you can do exactly as you please.”
I look at her. I’m about to say that I know she’s not telling the truth now, but I don’t, there’s no point in pursuing this, not when she’s in this mood, we should talk more about it some other time instead. “Right then,” I say, giving her a faint smile. “I’d better be getting to work. I have to finish clearing that cottage plot up on the hill for the viewing next week,” I say. “Should I ask Mom if she can look after Daniel for a few hours?”
“By all means,” Helen says.
I stand there looking at her, feeling suddenly at a loss. If I take Daniel over to Mom she’ll use that against me later, I know she will, even though she says it’s okay, she will. But if I leave Daniel here with her she’ll end up climbing the walls because she’s so tired and she got so little sleep again last night, I can tell just by looking at her that she will. So I really don’t know. I just stand here looking at her, hesitating.
“Okay,” I
say, looking at her and smiling. “You try and get some sleep.”
“So I’ll be in a better mood and easier to live with, you mean?”
“Humph,” I sigh, turning a rather sad, weary face to hers. “I meant just what I said, Helen. No more than that.”
“No, of course not.”
“Helen, hey.”
“Yes, yes,” she says, shaking her head as she raises one hand and kind of waves me away. Then she turns around and heads for the bedroom. “Oh, by the way,” she says, looking back at me, “have you seen my diary?”
“No,” I say.
I look at her, I know she was writing in it in bed yesterday when she was feeding Daniel and it’s on the tip of my tongue to ask her if she’s looked there, or on the bedside table, but I don’t have a chance. She simply turns away without a word, walks into the bedroom and shuts the door behind her. I stay where I am, eyes fixed on the door for two or three seconds, then I give a faint shake of my head and let out a small sigh, my heart always sinks a little when she’s like this. Oh well, I would probably be just as cranky if I’d had as little sleep and was in as much pain as she is, so I’ll have to try to be patient with her, she doesn’t mean any harm by it, and anyway, she’ll feel better once she’s caught up on her sleep. And besides, I bought some wine and some whisky. I can soften her up with that, she usually loosens up once she’s had a little drink, so it’ll all sort itself out. I look at Daniel and smile.
“Now then, shall we go over and see Granny and Grandpa, you and I?” I say. “Hmm?” I say. I kiss his cheek, rub his little button nose with mine, then I turn and walk off, walk out of the house and out onto the steps. Two swallows swoop down to the barn and I turn Daniel around and point them out to him, but they dart under the roof ridge before he can see them. I walk down the steps and into the yard. And there are Mom and Dad, sitting on the cottage porch, having coffee and listening to the radio. Dad puts his hands on the wheels of his chair and rolls it slightly farther forward and only now do I see that he has the cat on his lap. He picks it up and lets it drop onto the step. The cat lands softly, pads down onto the grass, sits down and proceeds to lick one of its paws.
“Hello,” Dad says, looking at me.
“Hello there,” I say.
I pat Daniel’s back as I stroll over to them. I look at Mom and smile. “Do you think you could mind Daniel for a few hours so Helen can get a rest?” I ask.
“Well, I had actually been planning to finish painting the window-frames,” she says, nodding towards the two windows to the right of the door. One of them glistens with fresh white paint, the other is scraped and ready for painting, I see, the pot of paint sitting on the grass underneath it with the brush lying across the top, so she must have been just about to start. “But well … I’ll have to put that off till later,” she says.
I look at her, there she goes again, she always does this when I ask her a favor, she makes it sound like she’s making a sacrifice for me. Even if I ask her to do something I know she really wants to do, she still has to give the impression that she’s depriving herself of something. It’s annoying, but not worth getting upset about. And maybe it’s her funny way of showing that she loves us, an attempt to show that she would go out of her way to help us, I don’t know.
“Great,” I say, looking at Mom and smiling. She picks up a white rag and a bottle of turpentine from the porch rail, soaks the rag and wipes her hands with it. They glisten in the sunlight and the gnarled veins on their backs stand out even more clearly than usual. She looks at Daniel and smiles.
“Who’s Granny’s lovely boy?” she coos. “Eh? Has Granny’s lovely boy come to see her? Are we going to keep each other company again today, you and me?” she says. She puts down the turpentine-soaked rag, pushes her glasses a bit farther up her nose and then she stretches out her arms and claps her hands at Daniel. “Come to Granny, pet,” she says. “There now! But what on earth,” she suddenly says in a slightly different voice. “What’s that she’s put on him—a pink onesie?” She stares at me open-mouthed and almost gleefully for a moment or two, then she shakes her head despairingly and turns to Daniel again. “Dear, oh dear,” she says, cooing again, “come to Granny, my pet,” she says, “we can’t have you wearing a pink onesie, a sturdy little boy like you, no we can’t,” she says.
I look at her, saying nothing, but feeling a little annoyed with her for starting all this again. I don’t like Daniel wearing pink either, but that’s really neither here nor there because I did tell her that Daniel would be wearing clothes in all sorts of colors, and that she has to respect. And she talks as if it goes without saying that Helen must have dressed him—if anything, that’s even more annoying: has she put a pink onesie on him she says, although she knows very well that I dress and change Daniel just as often as Helen, but she acts as if she doesn’t know that, acts as if things are exactly the way she imagines they are and I’m supposed to feel that there’s something wrong when they aren’t. It’s a kind of protest, I think.
“You’ve got diapers and formula, haven’t you?” I ask and she looks at me and nods, then she buries her face in the hollow of Daniel’s throat and rubs her nose back and forth.
“Mmm, yummy, yummy, you’re good enough to eat,” she says and then she looks up at me again, gives her glasses another nudge. “Yes, but Ole,” she says putting on this kind of plaintive voice, “you shouldn’t let her dress him in pink, you really shouldn’t,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “Hmm?” she says. “You have to talk to her about it, promise me you will.”
“Oh, Mom,” I say.
“No, but you have to,” she says, and then she looks at me, pauses. “Well, I mean I can’t talk to her,” she says. “If I do she’ll fly off the handle right away.”
“Oh, Mom, now you’re exaggerating, and besides …”
“Ole,” she breaks in, twisting her lips into a smile that says in matters like this we both know she’s always right. “Helen doesn’t exactly dote on me,” she says, “that’s no secret.”
“Oh, don’t talk like that,” I say. I put my head on one side and stand there looking a bit sad, and I feel a bit sad too. The idea that she thinks Helen doesn’t like her, that she thinks Helen is out to get her and would like to be rid of her, that is kind of saddening. “Helen just feels sometimes that we live a bit too close for comfort,” I say. “She finds it a bit hard to get used to us popping in and out of each other’s houses whenever we feel like it and … well, you know … that’s why she can seem a bit … standoffish at times,” I say. “But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t like you.”
The cat has wandered over to me, he weaves around my legs and I crouch down and stroke his head, he closes his eyes, tilts his head back slightly, purring blissfully. I glance up at Mom again, she’s sitting there looking at me with a smile on her face that says she doesn’t believe a word I’ve said.
“Yes, well,” she says, closing her eyes then opening them again. “But still, a pink onesie,” she says. “I doubt if your dad would have let me dress you in pink when you were a baby. Would you, Steinar?” she asks, turning to Dad.
“Nope,” Dad says. He tips his wheelchair back slightly and swings it to the side, nudging the newspaper that’s lying on the rail as he does so and knocking it into the flowerbed underneath. I get up and go round to pick it up; there are two brown coffee rings on the front page, just under the green lettering of the masthead: Nationen. I bend down, pick up the newspaper and put it back where it came from. “Not that it seems to have done this one much good, dressing him in blue,” Dad adds and then he looks at me and smirks.
I look at Mom and pretend I didn’t catch what he said.
“It was me that put that suit on him, Mom,” I say, lying to her face, don’t really know why, maybe to protect and defend Helen in some way, or maybe to make it clear to Mom that I really don’t care what color Daniel’s clothes are.
“There, you see, it didn’t do the slightest bit of good, him wearing blue,” D
ad says with a faint grin, nodding at Mom then looking at me again. He picks up his coffee cup, leans forward and blows on his coffee while he waits for a reply. I eye him a little helplessly. I almost say that I feel secure enough in my own masculinity not to mind changing my kid’s diapers, but I don’t, I can’t be bothered arguing with him about this.
“It’s okay, Ole,” he says. “I’m only joking.” He always does this, he always says he’s joking or pulling my leg when he gets in one of his little digs, but when he’s with his friends he voices exactly the same thoughts without a trace of humor, so I know he means what he says. I look at him and smile, act as though I believe him when he says it’s just a joke.
“So how long’s Helen planning to sleep for this time,” Mom asks. This time, she says, making it sound as if Helen does nothing but sleep. I look at her and smile, ignore the note of accusation in her voice.
“Just let her sleep,” I say. “If you have to go out or if you need anything you’d best call me on my mobile and I’ll come,” I add. “I’m only going up the hill to clear the last cottage plot, so I won’t be far away.” She doesn’t say anything for a moment, just gives me a look that is both surprised and mildly exasperated, then she raises her eyebrows and shakes her head, making it quite clear what she thinks about leaving Daniel with me if she has to go out. I put my head on one side and give a rather strained little smile.
“Now Mom,” I say. “Helen hardly slept at all last night and she’s in so much pain that she scarcely knows what to do with herself sometimes.”
“Oh, is she?” Mom says, in a voice designed to make it clear that she doesn’t believe Helen gets as little sleep or is in as much pain as we make out. I look at her, saying nothing. To be honest I think she could put up a better front, I think she could make more effort to keep her doubts and suspicions to herself. I almost feel like lying and telling her that the doctors have actually found out what might be causing the pain Helen’s having. It would be so good to present my mother with a diagnosis or something that would quash her suspicions. But I don’t. I can’t lie and I won’t. I just stand there looking at her. She sets Daniel on her knee, takes his hands and jiggles him up and down as if he’s on a horse, opening her eyes wide and saying “clippety-clop, clippety-clop.”
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