The Ice Beneath Her

by Camilla Grebe

  Then Dad was down at the dock.

  I could hear him shouting something to Annika, but if she heard him she didn’t react, just kept swimming straight out into the cold water. Her head bobbed up and down in the waves.

  I suddenly saw something approaching from the corner of my eye. It was the ferry, which went from Utö to Ornö then on to Dalarö. Every afternoon it made the same trip. Dad used to praise the new boat and call her “our rugged workhorse.” She was fitted with cold storage to bring fresh produce to the little stores in the archipelago.

  I remember wondering whether Dad understood the danger. He was still standing on the dock, shouting for Annika. Then he made a decision: untied the rowboat and hopped in.

  It all happened very slowly. Annika swam slowly. Dad seemed to row even more slowly. The ferry, on the other hand, plowed along over the bay at a good clip. I suddenly felt a hand clutching my shoulder and turned around. It was Mom.

  “Oh my God. Damn that girl. What’s she up to now?”

  Dad was closing in on Annika, but at least a hundred feet still separated them. And again I felt that suffocating sense of impending danger. Like a mild nausea, an inner chill.

  “Why is she doing that?” Mom asked, as if the important thing right now was to sort out the causal relationship that made Annika dive gracefully from the dock and swim out to the channel.

  “You don’t swim straight out into…”

  Now Dad was standing up in the rowboat. He waved his oars in the air, signaling danger to the approaching boat. After a few seconds we heard the prolonged roar of a horn blowing from the boat.

  They’d seen him, at least.

  But the ferry continued straight ahead with undiminished speed, and what first seemed to be happening in slow motion was suddenly happening very fast. My father was still standing in the small rowboat, now with his head lowered and his oars hanging at his sides. The ferry plowed through the water.

  Time stopped.

  Those final moments are engraved, excruciatingly, into my memory forever. The ferry letting out another roar. Annika’s head disappearing somewhere behind or under the white hull. The dark outlines of passengers gathering on the deck, leaning over the railing to witness the drama. The sun going behind a cloud. Mom dropping her water glass onto the rock. The pin from the Left Party digging deeper and deeper into my palm.

  Then silence. A silence as if time itself had stopped. And somehow I knew already. Knew that she was gone.

  EMMA

  ONE MONTH EARLIER

  I lie awake in bed, listening to the storm outside. No matter how many blankets I pile on top of myself, I can’t get warm. The cold has taken possession of me, I think. Like a squatter that’s moved into my body and refuses to leave.

  I searched for a long time, thinking that Sigge might be injured and hiding somewhere. Animals do that, right? But he was nowhere to be found. It’s as if he’s been erased, has dissolved into thin air, swallowed up by the black, oily soil under the bushes in the yard. Or worse—has mindlessly disappeared into the traffic on Valhallavägen like the silly indoor cat he is.

  Is Jesper behind this? He took my money, my painting, and now Sigge too, the only thing I had left that meant something to me. Now there is nothing left to take, nothing more he can rob me of, I think.

  I’m shaking with cold. My fingers are still numb. Small wounds cover my hands, traces of prickly bushes that scratched me while I searched the yard. My mouth tastes like iron, and the tears burn my eyes. Meanwhile, a strange listlessness has taken root in me. Is this what it feels like to have nothing left to lose? At the center of these emotions—the eye of the hurricane, so to speak—is a kind of peace. A remarkable confidence that comes from the fact that the worst has already happened. I think I recognize the feeling, have actually experienced it before, because what has just happened is uncomfortably reminiscent of what happened with Woody. Jesper has opened up the abyss of my past again, an abyss I fought so hard to avoid all these years.

  Finally, I realize that I won’t be able to sleep. I get up, put on my thickest sweater and thick socks, and sit by my desk. I gently push the textbooks aside, take some paper from the top drawer, and start writing.

  I explain how I feel: that I still love him, even though he disappeared without explanation, but that something has happened and we have to meet.

  I think for a moment, then continue. I tell him about the child, that I haven’t decided if I’m going to keep it or not. I write that I don’t expect him to take on any sort of fatherly role, but that I really need a sounding board and he needs to take some responsibility for what’s happened.

  I address the letter to the office, but label it with both his name and the word “PRIVATE.”

  Then I go back to bed. Pull the covers over my head.

  But the memories of Woody have been unleashed again.

  It was ten days after my father died. Ten days I spent alone with my mother in our small, dusty, overfurnished apartment before I finally returned to school. I didn’t really know what I felt yet. It was as if all of the emotions still tumbling around inside me hadn’t yet settled, like paper cranes caught in the autumn wind.

  I tried to think about it, to truly understand and accept the fact that Dad would never be coming back, but I couldn’t. The thought was just too huge to fit inside my head. Of course I knew he was gone, but it felt like he’d come back sometime. In the winter, maybe. Or for my birthday.

  Dead. Buried. Gone. Forever and ever.

  I couldn’t imagine it, and maybe it was just as well.

  Mom spent most of her time on the bathroom floor. I went in to her with food, and she ate obediently without saying anything. Like an animal at the zoo.

  Aunt Agneta came by almost every day. She’d hug me hard, so hard that my head got caught in the gap between her huge breasts, when she asked if I was okay. I always said I was—Aunt Agneta had a tendency to worry too much. Or at least that was what Mom used to say. Agneta would pack individual portions of the solid home cooking she’d bring with her into our small freezer, then go into the bathroom to see Mom. There they’d sit on the cold tile floor, smoking and talking for hours. I heard Aunt Agneta ask Mom several times if maybe I should come stay with her for a few weeks, until things calmed down, but Mom wouldn’t budge. She said it would be harmful for me to change environments now. Said Agneta knew very well how “sensitive” I was.

  I never really understood what Mom meant by that. I had always thought of myself as the opposite. I wasn’t sensitive; actually, there was something blunt about me. What other people thought of me didn’t bother me much, and I had no need to hang out with the girls in my class, or the guys either, for that matter.

  Insensitive. Maybe even uninterested. That’s how I probably would have described myself.

  “Emma, can you come with me to the storage room?”

  The question sounded innocent enough, and no one in the class reacted. Steffe and Rob were deeply absorbed in some sort of model of a guillotine. Another stupid thing to build in shop class. Beside them lay a tube of wood glue that I suspected they were planning on stealing at the end of class. The girls were standing around the carpenter’s bench giggling in a forced way. Only Elin saw me. She gave me a long, inscrutable look when I stood up.

  “Sure,” I said. “Great.”

  Woody touched my arm and went ahead of me toward the storage room door. On unsteady legs I followed after him. He had a special way of walking, a sort of swaying.

  “What?” Elin mimed to me, but I just shrugged as if I had no idea why Woody needed my help in the storage room.

  The rattle of keys mingled with his whistling. He seemed to be in a good mood today. The door creaked as it slid open. He stretched out his arm and waved for me to go in ahead of him. There was something impatient about the gesture, as if he were in a hurry to get me into the storage room. As if something important were waiting inside.

  For a second, I hesitated.

  On some
level I knew that if I went into the crowded storage space with Woody, nothing would ever be the same again. I’d walk out of there a different person, the world changed, the old Emma gone. Maybe I should have stopped there, turned around, and gone back to my dwindling butter knife, but my curiosity was too strong. My longing for another place, for a new Emma, won over my fear.

  The door swung shut with a bang. Woody locked it and walked toward me slowly. I stood there, unsure of what to do, looking around at the planks and tools hung neatly on hooks on the walls. Smelled the scent of fresh wood. Crossed my arms over my chest.

  Woody looked at me intently, and for a moment I was overcome by a paralyzing fear. Not of what would happen, but of my own inability to handle the situation. I wished I had more experience. That I was cooler.

  He put his hands on my shoulders, pulled me gently and slowly toward him.

  I didn’t protest when he kissed me and held me closer. Kissing him was unlike anything I’d ever done before. His tongue was slippery and a bit rough and moved like a floundering fish inside my mouth. And the whole time I felt so unsure of what I was expected to do. Should I kiss him back, wrestle with his tongue? Should I press myself against him as hard as he was pressing himself against me?

  “Emma,” he murmured.

  But that was all he said. He fumbled under my shirt. Along my back, across my breasts. Squeezed them roughly and kneaded them. Then he pulled up my skirt, found his way in under my panties, investigating my body. Groping along my thighs. He put a finger inside me, then two. I fidgeted, not sure where I should draw the line, if I should draw a line. But my resistance was already shattered. I knew we had already broken all taboos. That it was impossible to go back now.

  He pushed me in front of him. I backed up, succumbing to him, letting him steer me, until I hit a small bench in the back. With a determined grip on my butt, he lifted me up onto it and began fumbling with his belt, unbuttoned his pants, and pressed himself against me.

  “What if somebody comes…”

  “Shh,” he said as he pressed his hand against my mouth. Then he kissed me again. His tongue slipped into my mouth, whipping around as if looking for something.

  I pulled my head back. “I don’t know…”

  “Emma,” he said. Then he pressed himself inside me.

  —

  Jesper. Woody. Jesper. Woody. Their names and faces seem to flow together. Places, bodies, words, and promises mixed like English confections. Jesper’s face on Woody’s body. Sawdust from the woodworking room on the floor of a pied-à-terre on Kapellgränd. The eyes of my classmates still burning into my back, even today.

  The time is half past two, and I’ve made up my mind. Tomorrow I’ll find out where Jesper lives. I have to confront him, can’t stand to wait any longer. I reach for the cellphone lying on the bedside table, find Olga’s number.

  Can I borrow your car tomorrow after work? I write.

  —

  There’s something wrong with the subway this morning. It’s moving unbelievably slow between stations, and the rising irritation in the train is unmistakable. Rain-soaked commuters pace back and forth impatiently; cellphones are taken out so passengers can text their colleagues that they’ll be late today, something’s wrong, and no, they have no idea what.

  Finally, the conductor informs us that the reason for the delay is a technical error and that it will take time, a long time, for the train to reach its final station.

  I’m lucky. I have a seat, and if it weren’t for the smell of sweat and wet wool, which brings my nausea back to life, I wouldn’t have anything against just sitting for a while. Outside the window, the black tunnel wall passes by slowly. The outlines of blasted rock loom behind my own tired reflection in the glass. My hair falls down over my freckled cheeks, and my eyes are dark holes staring back at me.

  Two teenage girls are having a whispered conversation. They giggle and whisper and then giggle some more. They seem totally unconcerned by the delay. The smell of cigarette smoke is noticeable, even though they are a few yards away from me. Suddenly it strikes me that my own adolescence seems infinitely distant. It’s not actually that many years since I was their age, but it feels like an eternity.

  Junior high. That cutthroat hierarchy and the power struggle between the girls in my class, which I somehow managed to keep out of, probably because everyone knew I was different, didn’t participate in the game. Those long corridors with their cinder-block walls. The spot where kids smoked in back. Mopeds parked in a row outside.

  Woody.

  I never understood why he chose me. There were so many girls in my class who were prettier, cooler. Had enough confidence to act provocatively toward him. Flicking their hair and sticking out their chests when he helped them with the lathe. I mostly sat quietly in a corner. Many teachers thought I was angry and defiant. Other people, like my mother, had decided I was shy.

  It took me a while to realize that Woody wasn’t looking for a pretty, lively girl who stuck out her chest in the classroom. That he chose me precisely because I was different, a little bit broken. I think he sniffed me out as effectively as a predator finds wounded prey. Certainly it was no coincidence that he approached me right after my father died. He must have sensed my grief, my vulnerability. Decided to use it to get what he wanted.

  Jesper, Woody. Woody, Jesper.

  The nausea returns. Stronger this time. My body reminds me of what’s happening inside. Jesper and I never talked about children, but for some reason I assumed it was part of the package. That our shared future, the one that we planned for, contained a couple of kids and a house in a good suburb.

  How wrong I was.

  I remember that night in August, when we had a picnic in the Djurgården park. Jesper had had a tough day. A particularly malicious journalist from a business magazine had turned up at the reception desk in the corporate office demanding an interview immediately.

  “So what did you do?” I asked him.

  He gave me a surprised look, as if he couldn’t understand why I’d asked such a question, and poured more wine into my plastic cup. Despite his suntan, he looked more tired than usual. His thin skin seemed stretched over his cheekbones and chin, and the wrinkles around his eyes looked like deep grooves carved with a sharp knife. “I gave him his fucking interview.”

  “But why, when he behaved…like that?”

  “You can’t win with them. You’re totally fucking powerless. If I hadn’t talked to him, he would have made a big deal out of it. Punished me. That’s what this is all about, you know. That’s why I don’t want us to be seen together. They would love to butcher me in the media for having a relationship with an employee.”

  He took out a pack of cigarettes, shook one out, and put it in his mouth—a sure sign that he was more stressed and frustrated than usual.

  We were sitting on a blanket in the grass under a large oak tree, near the path that leads to the Rosendal garden. Despite the beautiful weather, we were almost alone. Now and then a cyclist or dog walker passed by. Above the treetops, in the east, the sky was beginning to darken.

  Jesper lit the cigarette, inhaled deeply, and coughed.

  “You shouldn’t,” I mumbled.

  “Please.”

  “Sorry. I just don’t want—”

  He raised his hand. “No. It’s my fault. You meant well, and I took my irritation out on you. Sorry, Emma.”

  We fell silent. In the distance, birds were singing. The moisture from the ground soaked through our thin blanket, and I suddenly felt cold.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  He took my hand, squeezed it hard, locked me in his gaze. “Are you sure?”

  “What?”

  “That you forgive me.”

  His grip tightened on my wrist, and he twisted a little. The pain came unexpectedly, like a whip; it spread up toward my shoulder, and my fingers went numb.

  “Let go. That hurts.”

  He released me immediately, smiled almost as if
in embarrassment.

  “Whoops,” he said as if he’d knocked over a glass of water rather than practically dislocated my arm.

  I sighed. Rubbed my arm.

  “Do you always have to be so freaking rough?”

  “Forgive me. Please.”

  “I forgive you. For everything.”

  When I said that, he immediately looked relieved, almost happy, but I glimpsed something mischievous in his eyes as well. He got up on his haunches, brushed off his jeans.

  “Come here,” he whispered.

  “Why?”

  He motioned to me with his hand, craned his neck, and looked around. “I want to show you something.”

  I stood up; my body ached from sitting on that cold blanket. All around us, it was starting to get dark. August twilight had crept up without our even noticing. The smell of damp earth hung heavy in the air. He took my hand and pulled me into the woods, behind a big oak tree.

  “What…?”

  He didn’t answer, just turned toward me, took my face in his hands, and kissed me. His palms were cold as ice on my cheeks. I kissed him back and put my arms around his waist. A branch snapped as I leaned toward him, startling us, and we giggled. Somewhere in the distance we heard a boat departing for the archipelago.

  He put his icy hands under my shirt, caressing my back with slow, circular motions, and then moved down to my waistband, under my jeans, and to my buttocks.

  “I want to fuck you here, in the woods.”

  “People can see.”

  “Don’t be such a prude.”

  He sounded a little annoyed, as he could be when I didn’t show the same enthusiasm for his little antics as he did. His hands remained on my buttocks, like two ice packs. Then he let go, started to unbutton my jeans, and kissed me again. His tongue was cold, too, and tasted like white wine and cigarette smoke. I pushed him away from me with a gentle nudge.

  “You have to be careful. I forgot to take my pill several times this week.”

  He shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  “Of course it matters. What if I got pregnant?”