The Ice Beneath Her

by Camilla Grebe

  “Relax, Emma. You have to learn to relax.”

  He was always telling me to relax, and not just in bed. And I really tried, but there was just something about him that put me on my guard. Something about our whole relationship. It felt too good to be true. Me and Jesper Orre. The poor shopgirl meets an older, wealthy, successful man.

  What did he see in me anyway? Why did he decide to start a relationship with an employee who was twenty years his junior?

  Maybe he was right. Maybe this was all about my low self-esteem. Why wouldn’t I be interesting to him? Why was our relationship so difficult for me to accept? Why was his love so hard for me to believe in?

  “Relax, Emma,” he said again. “I want you, and you are worth loving. How can I make you understand that? What do I need to do to make you believe it?”

  We fell asleep on the floor that night.

  When I woke up it was dark, and my back ached. I groped beside me on the rug, but Jesper wasn’t there. Slowly, I stood up. My body felt stiff and clumsy as I shuffled into the bedroom. The floor was cold; the window was still open.

  Then I saw him.

  He was standing perfectly still in the dark. His eyes were fastened on the Ragnar Sandberg painting that hung above my bed. His hair was disheveled and hung low on his forehead, as if he’d just got up. He had a blanket around his shoulders.

  “I think I love you, Emma,” he murmured.

  —

  I’m sitting in bed now, trying to get my laptop to work, but something is wrong with the Internet connection. It takes me a while to realize it’s probably because of an unpaid bill. Now neither the TV nor the Internet works, and it’s all Jesper’s fault.

  I decide to go down to a café on Karlavägen; I can connect to the wireless network there. The nausea has eased a little, and for the first time today I feel a kind of vague hunger.

  When I pull on my jeans, I feel something in the pocket. It’s a business card. I look at it and remember the journalist who visited the store. I hesitate a few seconds, then go to the kitchen, open the bread bin, and lay the business card on top of the pile of unpaid bills.

  —

  I sit in a corner with a half-full latte. Not far away sits a young guy with dreadlocks and a MacBook in his lap. Two ladies are whispering to each other in another corner, as if discussing state secrets. The café is dim, almost dark. I watch the autumn rain fall outside the large windows. The trees burn in shades of yellow, orange, and brown. Now and then a single leaf floats down from the trees, landing gently on the grass below.

  I skim through articles about Jesper. They call him both the “Fashion King” and the “Slave Driver.” Then I find an article in a business magazine: “Who Is the Real Jesper Orre?” I read the article. Jesper is originally from Bromma; both his parents were teachers. He studied business at Uppsala University, but dropped out after two years. What follows, according to the writer, is a string of question marks. Long periods of time that can’t be accounted for “satisfactorily.” Years of inexplicable holes in his résumé.

  I read on. The journalist has amused himself by mapping out Jesper’s social connections, claiming that he associates with criminals. Two of his close friends were convicted for economic crimes, another for drug possession. I don’t recognize any of them. This isn’t something Jesper has told me about.

  I search for images instead.

  Jesper in a suit. Jesper in gym clothes. Jesper in a tux. Jesper standing on a stage, his shirtsleeves rolled up, pointing toward numbers on a screen.

  Another picture: Jesper close-up, a smile playing around his mouth. But I see the deep frown on his forehead, and I know he’s uncomfortable. He doesn’t like to be photographed; we’ve talked about it many times, how he hates seeing his picture in the newspapers and on television.

  There are other pictures too: Jesper with a blond woman on his arm. She’s leaning back and laughing. Her dress is very low-cut. He looks tired. His shirt is wrinkled and unbuttoned at the neck. On his pants leg is a big stain, as if someone poured a glass of wine on it. I go on. There are more pictures of Jesper with women—always different women. Not once do I see the same woman at his side.

  I close my eyes and sink back into the couch, trying to think clearly. Were there any signs the last time we were together? Something that might reveal he was tiring of me? I can’t think of anything. Everything was as usual. He was just as loving as usual. We met, ate a good dinner, had sex. Giggled for hours in my narrow bed. Talked about the future, what we would do when we were together for real.

  When we no longer had to sneak around.

  Then I remember one of our last meetings. We were at his apartment on Kapellgränd. I was lying on my side in the bed, facing the wall, and he came out of the shower with a towel around his hips, sat down beside me, and began to stroke my hair.

  “Do you love me?”

  It was a strange question. He’d never asked if I loved him before. We didn’t actually use that word too often, perhaps because it felt so binding, so big, almost scary.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I understand how difficult this must be for you. Sneaking around all the time.”

  He crawled onto the bed, cupped his body around mine, and held me from behind. I felt the warmth of his damp, freshly showered body against mine, breathed in the scent of soap and aftershave. Closed my eyes.

  “Promise me you’ll wait for me. That you won’t give up.”

  “I promise.”

  “Promise you won’t find anyone else.”

  “You’re so silly. You know there’s nobody else.”

  His grip on my body tightened. “What about before me?”

  I felt confused. “What do you mean?”

  “Before we met. Did you have somebody else?”

  Before Jesper.

  I thought about my life before we met: lonely evenings in front of the TV with my cat, endless days in the shop. Frozen dinners for one. There was absolutely nothing to tell. Nothing to be ashamed of or hide either.

  “You must have had someone before me?” he said.

  I didn’t respond at first. There had been someone before, but I didn’t want to talk about him now.

  “Of course.”

  “Who was he?”

  “You know, that guy I told you about. Woody.”

  “Your shop teacher?”

  I nodded and closed my eyes. As soon as I did, it all came back to me, despite how many years had passed. The long, cold corridors, the clatter of the cafeteria, the smell of burnt sawdust in the woodworking room. I’m lying on the bench. Woody standing in front of me in a flannel shirt with his jeans pulled down to his knees. His face grim as he penetrates me.

  I was crazy about him. And at home, everything was in chaos. I was so vulnerable. Only now do I realize how vulnerable. He took advantage of that. I was a lost ninth grader, and he seduced me.

  “It makes me furious to think about that,” Jesper mumbles.

  “Stop it—that was a long time ago.”

  “You had sex in the shop room.”

  “Yes but—”

  Suddenly his grip on me became almost painfully hard, until I found it hard to breathe.

  “Let go. That hurts.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “What?”

  “Fucking him in the sawdust? Did you like it?”

  Jesper held me like a vise. I couldn’t move. But I felt him getting hard. “You’re sick,” I said.

  He pulled off his towel, pressed himself closer. Then his cellphone rang, and his grip loosened for a moment, but I still lay there, frozen. I couldn’t move.

  “You liked it,” he whispered. “Right?”

  I didn’t respond.

  —

  I leave the café and walk home in the rain. The wind’s started to blow; leaves no longer fall quietly to the ground, but dance in the wind until they settle on the grass in the middle of the avenue. Why was Jesper so jealous of my past? Even though I’ve hardl
y had any relationships that he could be jealous of. Despite the fact that I was the one who had reason to be jealous, he lay there accusing me.

  And why did he get aroused when we talked about Woody? It was as if it turned Jesper on to talk about him.

  The nausea returns. I don’t understand it. There’s so much I don’t understand.

  I cross Karlaplan. The fountain is empty. Leaves and trash have accumulated in piles in the far corner. The area is deserted.

  When I get home, I’m struck by the fact that something smells different. There’s a faint scent of wet wool and soap in the air, as if someone just passed through on their way somewhere else. I walk from room to room, examining every detail, but nothing looks strange. Everything is where I left it. Nothing is gone.

  I walk into the bedroom, stare at the bright rectangle above my bed where the painting used to hang. It seems almost illuminated, vibrating, as if it’s lifting up for a moment from the dirty yellow wallpaper and moving toward me, trying to tell me something. From the kitchen, I can hear the crunch of Sigge eating his daily ration of the sad dry cat food that makes up the whole of his diet.

  Everything looks normal. The only thing that makes me uneasy is the smell.

  Tomorrow I have to go to work, I think, and sit down on my bed. No matter how I feel, I have to work. I already have five days of absences this month, and I know that Björne will be furious if I take any more. Absences are marked with angry red stickers on the calendar in the kitchenette. All the employees can see how many days their colleagues were sick or home with a sick child—another one of those strategies that sends the union through the roof, and keeps the media spending so many column inches on Jesper’s “slave driving” methods.

  I move my hand over the wall. The yellowing, shabby wallpaper makes me think of another wall, in another life.

  —

  It was evening, and I lay in bed looking at a wall that had once been white, but was now stained with a rich patina of cigarette smoke, grease, and dust. You could engrave letters on that dirty yellow surface if you had a sharp object, like a toothpick or a twig.

  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t sleep. In part because of the pale blue, early-summer light filtering in through the window—it seemed to penetrate even my closed eyelids—and in part because of the angry voices of my mom and dad coming from the kitchen.

  I had no idea what it was about this time, and it didn’t matter. They fought almost every night anyway. The trick was to try to fall asleep before they started; then you could sleep until the next morning. In the morning, they were always nice again, though tired, since they hadn’t slept very much.

  Finally their voices lowered until they eventually died out. I held my breath. After a few seconds I heard a clear tone, like someone singing. The tone rose and fell, turning into a protracted howl.

  Mom was crying.

  It was always Mom who cried. Not Dad. I didn’t even know if Dad could cry. Maybe dads don’t cry?

  A dull thud was followed by a shrill scream, and suddenly I felt worried for real. Had one of them fallen and hurt themselves? Had a piece of furniture turned over? I jumped out of bed, grabbed the jar with the cocoon inside, and started walking toward the door. The linoleum floor was slippery and cool under my feet. The only sounds I could hear as I entered the hall were my mother’s low sobs and the indifferent ticking of the kitchen clock.

  Dad was on the floor, his face buried in his hands, and Mom sat on a wooden chair weeping. For some reason, I was much more worried by Dad’s silence and strange, hunched-over position than by my mother’s tears. Dads shouldn’t sit like that: shrunken and resigned, silent, with their face in their hands.

  Then he moved a little. It was just a little twist, a few inches in my direction, as if somehow he’d spotted me through his hands. His voice was toneless as he spoke.

  “Emma, sweetie. Go to bed. You should be sleeping.”

  Mom jumped up out of her chair. Her eyes had that wild look they only got late at night after she and Dad had been sitting in the kitchen for a long time. She reminded me of some sort of animal. A wild, unhappy animal trapped inside a cage, and therefore very dangerous.

  “Fucking kid,” she screamed. “Have you been eavesdropping again, you freak?” Dad got up and stood between my mother and me.

  “Stop,” he muttered. “It’s not her fault.”

  “I know you were eavesdropping,” my mother slurred. “What are you going to do? Call Aunt Agneta and tattle? Huh?”

  “No,” I said, but Mom didn’t hear me. Instead, she grabbed the table for support and stumbled toward me, keeping her hands clutched tightly on the tabletop. Her body was strangely clumsy, and she overturned her chair as she tried to push past my father.

  “Let her be,” Dad said.

  “I’ve gotta teach her to stop eavesdropping,” my mother slurred.

  She forced her way past Dad and reached for me. But I was quicker and stepped aside. When Mom wasn’t able to grab hold of me like she’d intended, she fell headlong onto the floor instead.

  “Dammit,” she mumbled, and crawled up on her haunches. A narrow stream of blood ran from one nostril into her mouth. “Do you see what you did, Emma? Do you?”

  She stood up slowly. “But I didn’t—”

  The slap came like a flash, and this time I didn’t dare move for fear Mom would fall again and that the narrow stream of blood would turn into a torrent, or maybe even a sea.

  “You shut your mouth.”

  Mom swayed slightly and her hair stood straight up like it did when she first woke up in the mornings. Dad had sunk down again and was holding his hands to his face as if trying to shut out the whole scene. I wished he would stand up and tell Mom to stop, explain that it wasn’t my fault. I wished it were morning already, and they were tired and nice again. That they’d give me money to go buy breakfast, because they had a headache. I wish I were someone else, anywhere else. Just not Emma. Just not here. Just not now.

  Mom grabbed the jar with the cocoon.

  “Give me that stupid jar,” she growled. “You take that with you everywhere. I guess it must be important to you. More important than your mother, maybe. Right?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “I’ll teach you what’s important,” Mom said, then staggered over to the kitchen window, opened it, and threw out the jar.

  After about a second, I heard it shatter on the asphalt below. “No!” I screamed. “No, no. No.”

  “Yes,” Mom said. “Yes. I have to teach you what’s really important. That was a fucking jar. Do you understand? A dead thing.”

  I wasn’t listening anymore. Instead, I ran toward the front door, opened it, hurried down the stairs, and rushed out into the courtyard. Shards of glass sparkled like stars on the black asphalt. I tiptoed carefully, trying not to cut my feet. Then I fumbled with my hands on the cold, damp ground. The only thing I found there were a few dry leaves.

  “Here, Emma.”

  I turned around. Dad was squatting next to me with his hand outstretched. In his palm he had some thorny branches. The cocoon still hung from its branch. The moonlight made it look almost luminous.

  —

  “That sounds seriously sick.”

  Olga shakes her head so that her heavy earrings rattle. We are standing by the jeans table, folding. Björne isn’t in sight, but we both know he’s in the store. It’s a bit like being out on the savannah—you know the predators are out there, somewhere.

  “What should I do?”

  Olga shakes her head slowly, as if she finds the situation too weird to even comment on. Then she pulls up her distressed jeans, which had dropped down to her hips.

  “He proposes to you, then leaves. Who is this man? You can tell me now, can’t you?” Of course I could tell Olga about Jesper, but something makes me hesitate. If I tell her, everyone else will know soon enough. And that could mean trouble for me, too, not just for Jesper. What would Björne say if he knew about my lover from the
corporate office?

  “He’s…nobody. Just somebody you see in the tabloids sometimes. It doesn’t matter. Even if he wants to end it, I still want my money back.”

  Olga doesn’t answer, and instead stretches for a pair of jeans that are about to fall off the small table onto the floor. She grabs them just before they do.

  “What money?” she says in an indifferent voice, and it occurs to me that I probably didn’t tell her about the loan.

  “He borrowed a hundred thousand kronor from me to pay some contractors.”

  “Are you crazy? You gave him a hundred thousand?…And?”

  I shrug my shoulders.

  “Come.” Olga takes my arm and pulls me toward the staff room.

  Suddenly Björne is standing in front of us. He looks stern. He has his hands on his hips, stands a little too close to us for comfort. I can see he’s working on growing a beard. Ruddy stubble covers his narrow, protruding chin.

  “And where are you off to?”

  “Break,” Olga says without further explanation, then pinches her lips into a thin line.

  Just then Mahnoor comes out of the staff room. She is pulling her long hair into a knot at the nape of her neck.

  “Can you watch the register?” Olga asks at lightning speed.

  “Sure.”

  She looks at us curiously, but Björne seems satisfied with her response, and turns around and walks to the menswear department. Olga pulls me into the staff room, then pushes me down onto one of the white chairs in the kitchenette.

  “What a fucking asshole,” I mumble. “Did you know they fired a girl at the Ringen store because she took off too much time to be with her sick three-year-old? She had like ten absences a month. But they blamed it on a shortage of work, so the union couldn’t do anything.”

  But Olga isn’t listening. Instead she’s leafing through a stack of magazines located on the shelf in the corner.

  “So you been trying to get ahold of your guy?” she says quietly as she lifts up an inch-thick stack of magazines and puts them in her lap.