“I haven’t thought about it before,” I say.
“Well, I have,” Mahnoor states.
“By the way, is it okay if I leave a little bit earlier today?” I ask.
She looks searchingly at me and crosses one leg over the other. “Sure. That’s fine, I should probably close anyway. Now that I’m…responsible or whatever.” She adopts a frown that is annoying and comical at the same time.
“Thank you,” I say. “There’s something I need do.”
As Mahnoor and I are closing the store, a heavyset woman with blond hair and a far too small coat passes by, and without being able to stop it, I start thinking about Mom again. I remember one day when we were lying in bed, just her and me. It was one of those rare and precious moments of intimacy and love that usually occurred after Mom and Dad had been tired and angry for a long time.
Mom was stroking my hair. Her face was serious. “Sweet, darling Emma.”
I didn’t answer, just closed my eyes and let the warmth of the blanket and her affection envelop me.
“Sorry that…that…I’m so grumpy and mean sometimes,” she said suddenly.
I opened my eyes and met her gaze. She looked pained, as if she had a stomachache again and needed one of those small white tablets she kept high up in the cabinet.
“It doesn’t matter,” I replied.
She relaxed. “It’s just that…sometimes it’s so stressful…and I’m so tired. And then I…lose my temper.”
I guess a person could lose their temper in the same way you might drop a bag or a bottle onto the floor. Then again, if you dropped it, why couldn’t you pick it up? But I didn’t say that, because I didn’t want to ruin this delicate, perfect moment. I realized it was my responsibility to manage it.
“It’s okay.”
“No, sweetie, it’s actually not okay. I just want you to know that. When I get that angry, it’s my fault. It’s wrong and stupid, and as an adult, I should be able to control my temper better.”
There were tears in her voice now, but I absolutely didn’t want her to start crying. Suddenly it felt like the most important mission in the world to keep her from getting sad. Because if she started to cry, she wouldn’t be able to stop, and the day would be destroyed, and everything would be my fault.
“I don’t think you’re angry. I think you’re nice.”
“Oh, you’re Mommy’s little darling,” she mumbled, and kissed me on the mouth.
It smelled of sour coffee and old milk, but I didn’t pull aside. Instead I was careful to lie completely still, so that she could kiss me properly. At that very moment the phone rang in the hall.
“I’ll be right back,” she murmured. Then she stood up and wrapped the pink dressing gown around her big body.
Outside, the sun was shining and the children from surrounding buildings were on their way to school. I had been coughing for several days, and Mom had insisted on keeping me at home, which angered Dad. He didn’t think you should “act like a baby.” And lying in bed because of a cough with no fever was definitely acting like a baby.
I enjoyed those days at home alone with Mom. I spent so little time around her when she was happy and energetic. In the evenings she always sat in the kitchen with Dad drinking beer, and in the mornings she was always tired and worn out and needed her rest.
“No, we have no pets at home. Why?”
I could hear Mom clearly from the hall. She had that sharp little voice, the one that meant she was getting annoyed with someone. It was the voice she usually had in the evenings, just before she got angry for real and beer cans and plates started flying across the kitchen at Dad.
“I don’t understand. What do you mean, can’t relate to other children? My daughter has no problem playing with other children. She has lots of friends here in the neighborhood.”
There was silence again.
“I don’t believe that. I’ll ask her, but my impression is that she has a lot of friends in school too.”
I got up to close the door. My chest suddenly got tight even though I didn’t need to cough. “Special needs? You have to be joking. And why would it be any better if she spent time with animals? That sounds like complete nonsense to me. How does grooming a horse or petting a puppy make you any less shy? And yes, I think it’s shyness, nothing else, because…”
I shut the door and went back to bed.
Outside my window, early summer had exploded. Trees and bushes dazzled in shades of green. The perennials in the flower bed bloomed elegant and high; the rose-hip bushes by the swings were dotted with pink flowers that would soon turn into hard fruit filled with first-class itching powder.
I lay on the bed, hoping that Mom would stop talking soon. That she would come back and crawl into bed and be soft and kind again.
I longed to be babied by her again.
My chest still felt strangely tight. As if someone had wrapped a jump rope round and round my body.
Then I saw something. A motion on the floor beside the bed. I carefully lifted the glass jar. On one of those bare, jagged branches sat a large blue butterfly. Its actual body was black and round and a little hairy. Its wings were an intense cobalt blue with black markings at the edges. It gracefully brought its wings up and down, as if learning to move again after spending such a long time in its little cocoon.
—
It’s dark as I walk from the square at Sergels Torg down Hamngatan. My umbrella only partially protects me—gusts of wind keep sweeping rain underneath it. The streets are strangely empty, and only the occasional pedestrian hurries past in the darkness. By the time I arrive at Regeringsgatan, it’s five o’clock. The big C&M store is illuminated like a cruise ship, shouting out its message, promising a better, more exciting life on the other side of the window. A few women with wet hair wander aimlessly between the shelves, searching through the garments.
I turn to the left onto Norrlandsgatan and continue another hundred yards. I see the entrance to the Clothes&More corporate office across the street. The wooden door is dimly lit. It almost seems to glow in the dark.
Next to me is a doorway. I glide into the darkness, glad to have protection from the rain. Here I can wait without being seen. The question is whether I’ll be able to determine who’s going in and out of the door on the other side of the street. It’s not that close, and it’s dark.
I put on my gloves and prepare to wait. After maybe five minutes the door opens and two women around my age come out. They laugh loudly and cross the street while putting up their respective umbrellas. The wind takes hold of one and turns it inside out. They laugh even louder. I’m pretty sure they can’t see me huddling in the darkness.
Several times I catch myself thinking: Am I losing my mind?
I’m standing in the rain, spying on Jesper. Like a stalker. If someone had told me a month ago I’d be doing this, I’d have thought that person was crazy.
Still. Given the situation, I don’t know what else to do. I have to talk to him. I realize there’s so much I don’t know about Jesper, endless gaps to be filled in. So many holes and so little solid matter to lean on. I’m starting to wonder if I ever knew him.
The rain falls unabated for the next hour. Periodically the door on the other side opens, and people come out and disappear into the darkness. Not once does anyone glance in my direction. It is as if I’m invisible, as if I’ve turned into a rock on the ground.
Despite the fact that I’m standing under a roof, the occasional raindrop finds its way in. Settles into my hairline, my neck, along my wrists. I take a few small steps to try to warm up. Discreetly slapping my arms in the darkness.
At exactly ten past six, he walks out.
I recognize him immediately. He has a black, unbuttoned coat on over his suit, and it flutters behind him in the wind as he hurries across the street. Suddenly I can’t move; it’s as if my body won’t obey me, as if I’ve turned into a piece of uncooperative meat, frozen solid on the wet street.
Just a few weeks since we met last,
I think. Yet it feels like months. All those calls, text messages, and there he is, the man I love, a shadow in front of me in the rain.
Then the paralysis releases its grip on me. I take a few steps out of the doorway and start hurrying after him. The rain lashes my face, but I don’t have time to stop and open my umbrella, can’t risk losing him in the darkness.
His stride is confident and somehow graceful, as if he’s almost dancing in the rain. Then he’s suddenly gone, swallowed up by the black asphalt of Regeringsgatan. I pick up the pace, and when I reach the place where he disappeared, I see an entrance to a parking garage.
Of course.
Why didn’t I think of that? Of course, he drives to work. How can I follow him now?
I look around. No cars or taxis in sight. I see a door opening twenty yards ahead. Headlights are visible from inside the building. He drives a black Lexus. For a few seconds I see his silhouette against the lights of the parking garage. Then he drives out and disappears into the darkness toward Stureplan.
—
I don’t care about the rain anymore, don’t even feel it. I walk Hamngatan down toward Nybroplan. If I hurry, I’ll be home in fifteen minutes, but what does it matter? There’s nobody waiting for me there, and I have nothing I need to do.
Kungsträdgården lies silent and deserted, and I have the sudden urge to cross the street, walk into the park, and find someplace to lie down, maybe under a mighty tree. Let the wet grass accept me, go completely numb. Become one with the plants and gravel and wet autumn leaves. Disappear. Forget. Die, maybe.
Then I think of Woody.
It’s hard not to think about him now that everything has turned out the way it has.
At first glance, his appearance was rather unremarkable. Dark, shoulder-length hair, worn-out jeans that were always a little too big. Plaid shirts. And he was old, too, of course.
At least twenty-five.
There was a lot of talk about Woody that semester. All the girls in class gossiped about him. I can’t say that I was a part of that, really. I was kind of an outsider, observing the social games without really participating. Maybe I was a little shy, or maybe I just wasn’t interested.
Maybe I remember wrong.
That autumn we made butter knives and bowls and other unnecessary items that could be given away to family members or friends. I couldn’t make a proper butter knife. At first it was awkwardly shaped and too large, and when I tried to correct the proportions it shrank more and more, turning into something that resembled a fat toothpick.
“Watch out that it doesn’t disappear completely,” Woody said one day, and winked at me.
I didn’t know what to say, but I felt myself blushing. Do you think he’s handsome? Elin had asked me earlier that day. I don’t know, I had answered truthfully, because I had actually never thought of him that way. He was just one of my teachers, albeit a little younger and less dull than the others.
But still. Super old.
“I can help you later,” Woody said, and ran his big finger over the scratchy surface of the wood, pushing bits of sawdust onto the table. I felt him looking at me, but didn’t dare to meet his eyes, just nodded silently.
It was the same year Dad fell down into his dark hole. The one that only he could see, and that for some reason was so deep he couldn’t climb out again. Trapped by hopelessness and fear, he spent his days in self-imposed isolation in our apartment on Kapellgränd. They called it depression. Outside our kitchen window, spring woke up, but Dad lay in his bed becoming more and more tired, staring at the seaweed wallpaper as if those long blades might give him some kind of answer. Mom tried to talk to him. They had long mumbling conversations inside their bedroom. I tried to hear what they were saying, but never succeeded. Whatever it was, though, it was terrible enough to require whispering.
The beer cans and wine bottles disappeared from the kitchen at about the same rate that Dad got worse. Now Mom would be cooking dinner when I got home: meatballs or sausages with slices of tomato and onion inserted into them. I wasn’t used to seeing her playing house, and it made me nervous. Mom’s little projects often ended in disaster. Like when she tried to sew curtains. Having failed to make the curtains symmetrical, she ripped the fabric into long strips and tossed them out the window. The strips hung there fluttering in the bushes for months, a reminder of the curtains that never were and Mom’s dangerously explosive temper. She tossed the sewing machine at Dad’s shins, and he ended up with a big, dark blue bruise.
I looked at my butter knife again. Sighed.
“What is it?” Elin said when she saw my critical gaze.
“It’s ugly.”
Elin didn’t answer. Instead, she returned to the sleek little wooden box she was working on. Everything Elin made in shop class was good. It was as if her hands possessed some kind of mystical knowledge, as if they intuitively knew what to do when they came into contact with wood or fabric or paper. Not like my hands. They refused to do what I told them to; they destroyed everything they touched. Or at least it felt that way.
Elin moved the sandpaper gently over the already perfect lid to polish away some invisible unevenness, at the same time blowing a big bubble with her Hubba Bubba gum. Marie, who was sitting at the table in front of us, leaned back her chair and turned to Elin.
“Are you going to Micke’s party?”
Elin shrugged. “Haven’t decided. Petra is having a party the same night.”
“Petra is a freak.”
Elin fired off a crooked smile. “And Micke is pathetic.”
Marie laughed delightedly at Elin’s analysis of Friday’s events, flipped her long hair, and turned around. Meanwhile, I looked down at my deformed butter knife. No one ever asked me if I’d like to go to a party. But I wasn’t bullied either. No one in my class had ever been mean to me. On the whole, it was as if I didn’t exist to them. I might as well have been one of the chairs in the room.
I didn’t really know how to feel about it. Maybe I ought to be sad, feel ostracized, insulted. But the truth was that I thought it was nice to not have to participate in that game. I didn’t need to go to Micke’s party and get drunk and puke in the flower bed or pass out in the bathroom. I didn’t want to listen to Marie’s never-ending complaints about her boyfriend or hang out with Elin outside the kiosk. I preferred staying at home and watching television.
The bell rang.
The room began to empty out, but Woody signaled for me to stay. “You don’t say much,” he said.
I didn’t know how to answer that. My grip on the butter knife tightened, and I felt my hand become damp with sweat. My cheeks flushed.
“You’re pretty, you know that?”
Woody pulled out a chair and sat down next to me. Bent forward so that our faces were close.
“Thanks,” I said.
For the first time I met his gaze. His eyes were close-set, warm brown, and bordered by long black lashes. He had a few gray hairs sticking up here and there in his thick black hair, like dead trees in an otherwise lush forest.
“Sorry, I don’t want to seem pushy, but I wanted to ask you something.”
He fell silent, chuckled, and shook his head slowly, almost as if he was embarrassed. Out in the hallway the sound of laughter and footsteps was replaced by silence.
“Yes?”
He closed his eyes.
“Do you have a boyfriend, Emma?”
—
When I get home, I find the familiar smell of people cooking and stale cigarette smoke in the stairwell strangely soothing. I look at my hands. They are wet and pale, but have stopped shaking. Somewhere in the darkness outside, Jesper Orre has parked his big black Lexus and entered whatever he calls home. I try not to think about it, but the realization that he’s probably sitting on a sofa somewhere, maybe with a glass of wine in his hand, hurts.
As I climb the stairs, my boots leave wet prints on the worn stone steps. It’s starting to dawn on me that Jesper was hiding something. Why did
we always meet only at his pied-à-terre or at my place? Why was it so enormously important for him that we were never seen together? It couldn’t have just been his job. Could it?
I stand in front of my door, breathless from the exertion of climbing five flights of stairs. My body has started to relax, finally begun to get warm.
As soon as I put the key in the lock, I realize something is wrong. The door is unlocked, and when I open it there’s a bang from inside the apartment. I always lock up when I leave, and no one else has the key to my apartment, not even Jesper.
I look around. The stairwell lies dark and silent behind me. If someone is hiding down in the darkness, I can’t see them. The thought makes my stomach knot up.
I carefully crack open the front door. The hall is quiet and empty. There’s no sign that someone has been here. I stretch out my hand, grope for the switch. Seconds later the hall is bathed in light, and I take a cautious step inside.
Nothing seems to have been touched, but I feel something else. A draft of cold air flows through the apartment, sneaking past my ankles. I shut the door behind me, and the air grows still once more, but it’s cold, too cold, and I wonder if something is open. Without taking off my shoes, I go to the living room and turn on the overhead light. Everything looks the same: the slender green Malmsten armchairs, the small desk with physics textbooks piled up on it. I haven’t even had time to think about school for the last week. For a moment I wonder if I should put my physics textbooks in the bread bin too, so I don’t see them.
As I continue toward the kitchen, I realize that something is wrong. I can hear the rain and the noise of the city too clearly, almost as if I were standing outside in the storm again. I turn on the light and stand in the doorway.
The window is open.
I almost never open it, and yet there it is, wide open, inviting the night into the apartment. I walk over to close it, but as I do, it hits me.
Sigge.
I call his name and search through every room. Under the bed and the sofa, inside closed closets, on the hat rack, in the bathtub. Sigge is nowhere to be found. He’s not in the habit of hiding, so I become increasingly convinced that he’s disappeared out the window.
The Ice Beneath Her Page 14