Jo claps at the idea.
Like she knows where Copenhagen even is.
I guess it’s settled then.
I set up a trust fund for Bergey — a fairly substantial amount, enough so she can travel, go to school anywhere in the world, but not enough to ruin her life.
Naddie doesn’t understand. She thinks I’m being inexplicably generous to someone I knew for only a short time, someone I may never see again. Of course she can’t understand. She’s never found herself running through a freezing fog, hands cuffed behind her back, depending on a near stranger to help escape from a foreign country.
How can she understand?
Every morning, both Naddie and I walk Jo to her preschool — one of the advantages of our moving to Denmark, and our sudden financial independence, is that Naddie found herself a job that gives her this flexibility.
Plus, somewhere during the move, Mélanie went missing. I suspect my sister but I don’t have the evidence to bring her in for questioning.
“Markus said something yesterday,” Jo informs us as she’s walks with me and Naddie held by the hand on either side. “I think he was saying something mean.”
“Which one’s Markus?” Naddie asks.
“He’s the one who eats his boogers,” I tell her. Naddie winces but she knows the one I’m talking about.
“He said my moms are lesbiske.”
“We’re not lesbiske,” Naddie tells her. “Your Auntie Lissie and I are sisters.”
“What does lesbiske mean?”
“It means women who love each other,” Naddie says. “And live together.”
Jesus, Nats. Could you possibly find an explanation more ripe for misunderstanding?
And why the hell does everyone keep assuming I’m a lesbian anyway?
“So you and Auntie Lissie are lesbiske.”
Naddie looks over Jo’s head in my direction, clearly at a loss. I stop little Jo and crouch down before her to explain.
“No, your mama and I are sisters. We love each other but we’re family.”
“We have no choice,” Naddie adds. “Family always love each other.”
Okay, that’s bullshit. There are always choices being made, though I’m glad Nats never had to learn this.
“Just like we both love you,” I tell Jo gently. “We love you more than anything else in the whole, wide world.”
Jo’s little brow furrows for a moment as she processes this information through a little brain where things just all kind of get mashed together. Then she beams at me, up at her mother.
“Good! Then I am lesbisk too! We’re all lesbiske!”
I can’t help laughing and as I stand Jo takes our hands again and marches onward to her school with a newfound determination. Naddie glances at me dubiously, not sure of what more to say.
“Fuck Markus,” Jo then proclaims.
Naddie blames me for this, though I’m pretty sure she learned that from that bratty little Markus. That little fucker has a mouth on him.
Things take so long with the U.S. government that most people think incidents have been forgotten but, in truth, very few things are forgotten. Ever. It was amusing, when we would come down on some person of interest and they would say something like Jesus! It’s been twelve years! I thought you guys had forgotten all about it, like we simply wrote this shit down on a scrap of paper or something.
So I understand why Nash laughs when I tell him that I thought they had forgotten about me. I call him because he had left me an indication that he needs to speak with me. He had posted it four months before, but I only just got around to noticing so he probably thought I was dead. I figure it has to do with some detail concerning Getting, who is finally put on the BOP to serve his time. Holy shit, how long’s it been? Not that he was allowed to wander free and stuff, but still, his house arrest was probably a huge step up in lifestyle for me.
“You’re going to be granted a pardon,” he says.
I don’t even have the chance to call him a fucking liar. I start crying.
29
Copenhagen — Malden — Montreal
The problem with pardons — they move with all the speed of the federal government and you’re left hanging in limbo. The duality of happening any day now and never going to happen.
Schrödinger’s cat of felony convictions.
And then, one day….
I have a U.S. passport — I am Elise McNeil, I’m an American, and I have my family again.
Naddie, Jo, and I immediately fly to Boston and track down Tonya’s new place in Malden. She had to sell the place in Cambridge within a year of my last seeing her; she couldn’t afford it anymore. The new place is nice, a modest townhouse in what looks like a pleasant neighborhood, made all the more picturesque by a soft, fluffy snow that falls during the week between Christmas and New Year’s.
I hide behind Naddie, she being so much taller than me now. She makes a noise, that noise of exasperation, telling me to grow up, but then the door gives a clack as a bolt is thrown back and then is wrestled open to present us with a startlingly tall pre-teen girl who stands there and blinks at us. From inside the darkened hallway, a mother’s voice calls Who is it, Rama? and our dear sister appears in the doorway.
Jesus, she looks old.
She looks at Naddie and Jo, who’s obediently holding her mother’s hand, and after a moment’s pause of disbelief, starts to say something. Then I step into view.
Tonya’s head visibly recoils, freezes for a second, and then she snatches Rama back away and closes the heavy door with such force that the knocker claps like a gunshot down along the quiet, snowy street.
Wait! What? We’re just going to continue from where we left off?
Naddie glances back at me, that terrible expression of all-in-one guilt, horror, and sympathy that I know so well. She starts to say something but is interrupted by the heavy door swinging open again and Tonya racing past her, audibly bawling as she takes me in her arms. She almost knocks both of us down into the snow. I’m not sure what to do — Tonya has never hugged me before. Ever. It takes a moment for me to think enough to hug her back.
“You left me,” she whispers through the tears. “You abandoned me.”
“No. I’ll never abandon you, Sis. I just got lost for a while.”
The trip from Malden to Montreal should be about five hours — maybe closer to six with all the snow — but it also depends upon what happens to you at Services Frontaliers Du Canada on the U.S.-Canada international border where the pavement changes and I-89 suddenly becomes Highway 133. It’s here that we’re almost turned back, I’m almost taken away, because some snothead with a badge doesn’t know what to make of the fact that I have a full fucking pardon. It’s the first one he’s ever seen.
I don’t say much of anything because, let’s face it, I’m used to being treated this way, but Tonya and Naddie won’t stand for this kind of shit. I’m pretty sure if the counter was any lower, my sisters would both hop on over and physically put the man on the ground. He even steps back a bit, to keep out of their reach, and speaks quick Québécois to one of his partners, who’s sauntered over to serve as backup. It looks like this is going to end badly with the entire lot of us locked up in some French-Canadian prison.
“Excusez-moi, monsieur l’officier.”
The voice is loud and firm and everyone stops. The snothead is bewildered at first but after seeing those of us on the other side all look suddenly down, he ventures forward to the counter and cranes over the top, peering down at tiny little Jo, who stands patiently on her tiptoes with her gloved hands folded solemnly before her. She’s decked out in her very best poofy dress and jacket, her pink lavender Jackie Kennedy hat, and if she had a pair of horn-rimmed glasses on you’d think she was a miniature model of the stereotypical 1960s housewife.
“Oui, ma bichette?”
“Grandmother and Grandfather are expecting my Auntie Lissie and she has traveled a long way to get here,” she informs the man in perfe
ct French.
Naddie and I have both been steadily losing our ability to speak French since we moved to Denmark but Jo has a retention with languages that’s remarkable.
“She is a very good girl and you need to let her through. If she was naughty, Julemanden would not have brought her presents, don’t you see.”
“Julemanden?” the officer asks with a confused grin.
“Yes. How do you say this in your country? Yuletide Man?”
“Santa Claus?”
“Father Christmas, I believe.”
The officer laughs. “Yes, Father Christmas.”
“So, as you can see, she’s been a good girl.”
“Well,” the officer says, becoming suddenly serious, “I don’t know. If I let her through, I will need someone who will keep an eye on her.”
“I will keep an eye on her. I keep my eye on her all of the time because she can never remember the way to the park, even though we go there every day. I know where the park is. I’ve been going to the park all my life. I will keep a good eye on her.”
Okay, to be fair, she’s confusing the fact that one park was in Charleroi and one is in Østerbro, the area of Copenhagen where we now live. And of course I know where they are — it just delights her so much to become exasperated with me, taking me by the hand and leading the way.
I pick Jo up and kiss her cheek again and again, causing her to giggle on impulse. She then pushes herself away so she can give me an expression of grave concern and mistrust — she thinks I’m trying to put something over on her, trying get away with something naughty and make a fool of her in front of the man. But she must see the truth in my eyes because just as quickly, her face breaks into one of unrestrained glee and she throws herself at me, wrapping her tiny arms about my neck and squeezing so tight that I gasp when she finally relents.
“I love you, bokkie,” I whisper into her ear.
As I hold her, I catch a peek of the man on the other side of the counter as he’s watching us. He gives me a look, but it’s not the look I’m expecting, the look of suspicion — it’s something else.
I can see what he’s thinking.
You are a lucky woman.
Yes, believe me, I might just be the luckiest person in the whole world.
Another townhouse, another door, another collection of idiot sisters and their children. Idiots because we’re all still giddy from the long, long trip.
Dad is the one to open the door and after a flash of sheer panic at finding himself face-to-face with six of the most fearsome women he will ever meet (after Mom, of course), he actually has the presence of mind to stop us before we all shout out Surprise! Only little Jo gives a squeak. You can see that he’s nearly ready to burst with cheerful laughter, but he manages to bring himself under control as he gestures with his hands for all of us to settle.
Then, with a throat so tight that he has to go into near coughing fits to control his voice, he calls “Iffie, sweetheart, the door. It’s for you.”
Isn’t it strange, hearing your Mom called by some other name?
She appears shortly from the room where we can hear a television playing. Her hair is lighter than it once was, as gray is clearly taking hold, her face more worn, lined, but her eyes are as fiery as ever. She starts to say something and then stops when Dad steps aside to show her what’s waiting on her doorstep. She stands there, the same delay of disbelief, and I half-expect her to start in on a lecture about how we’re endangering the children by traveling in this weather, or why has it been so long before her own children came to see her, or why…
She gasps for air and then comes at us sobbing like I’ve never seen my Mom sob before. My God, she can cry with such joyous fury!
She goes to Naddie first, covering her cheeks with kisses while near crushing her with her embrace. Naddie introduces her to her newest granddaughter and the girl squeals with frightened delight as she’s lifted from the ground and endures the same treatment. Then to Tonya and Rama and Mariame, each suffering the same fate, and it seems like it’s never going to end and I wonder if she even knows that I’m there, standing behind the rest, down on the sidewalk. It’s finally Naddie who draws her attention and motions in my direction.
Mom gazes down at me.
What do you say? Whatdoyousay…whatdoyousay…whatdoyousay?
“Mom…”
What do you say at a moment like this?
“I’m sorry. I don’t have a baby girl for you.”
Stupid, I know, but that’s what I’m actually thinking.
She tsks this aside, coming down and telling me not to be silly as she places her hands on my shoulders and regards me.
Is that it? Don’t I get my hug?
She looks me over, placing a hand under my chin, lifting my face as she sweeps the hair back from the left side. She’s trying to say something but she’s having difficulty with the words, and her smile trembles as tears leave light trails down her dark cheeks. She takes a moment to breathe, and finally…
“You’re my baby girl.”
I burst out crying and she sweeps me up in her arms, holding me close for the longest time.
Thank you, Mom. Thank you! This is all I’ve ever needed.
A mother who’ll say that she wants me.
About the Author
Billie Kelgren started writing after a peculiar incident during an overnight stay in Keflavík, Iceland, while wandering the town in search of pizza with her autistic son and stumbling upon a Subway.
She hasn’t achieved bestseller status yet, as this is her debut novel, but her publisher feels that the word “bestseller” or “bestselling” must be included here somewhere because…well, isn’t it always?
Billie is currently working hard to complete her second and third novels, with the hope that her bio will then have a more relevant use of the term “bestseller” and her publisher will finally leave her alone about the subject.
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