by Chris Power
It isn’t Dr Järnfors’s injunction that makes him temper his response, it’s that he doesn’t want to argue with this old, sick woman. ‘I always tried my best not to feel anger towards you, Eva.’
As the conversation has gone on she has hunched more and more into herself, but at this she draws herself up. ‘Did you? Did you really try?’
‘I tried harder than you can guess.’
‘Each time I left,’ she says, ‘it was the last thing I wanted to do. But it was the only thing that made sense. It was all I could do.’ She darts her head down to her coffee cup. Joe finds her movements disconcerting, as he does the chain of coos she emits. Her head snaps up, startling him. ‘You can’t know what it’s like for me,’ she says. ‘You can’t, Marie can’t. These doctors can’t.’ She smiles. ‘It’s OK. I know that.’
A few other people are coming into the cafeteria now, patients and medical staff. Lunchtime. The rain has stopped. Water drips from the bare bushes.
‘There’s a therapist here who takes us outside sometimes, into the birch forest. When it gets warmer I’ll stay out there all day long. I’ve always loved those trees.’
Joe nods.
‘She makes you write things, this woman,’ Eva says.
‘What kind of things?’
‘Stories.’
‘Made-up stories?’
‘They can be made-up stories. Or stories about yourself, your feelings. They don’t have to be “true” true. She says all stories, whatever they’re about, are about you anyway.
That every painting, whatever it shows, is a portrait of the artist.’
‘You wrote a story?’
‘Yes.’
‘About what?’
‘My mother. My childhood. A true story.’
Joe can tell she is proud of it. ‘Marie always loved the way you told stories,’ he says. ‘Can I read it?’
The nurse who escorted Joe to the cafeteria, about whose presence he has completely forgotten, leans over and speaks to Eva in Swedish. She nods, raises her hand and says, ‘Två minuter.’
The nurse looks at Joe and takes a few steps back from the table.
Eva returns her gaze to Joe. ‘I want to see Marie,’ she says. ‘I demand it.’
‘Demand?’
‘Demand,’ she says, continuing to stare and speaking slowly. ‘I should never have been a mother, but Marie is my child and I cannot regret her. Have you even told her I’m here?’
‘I told her. She said she didn’t want to come.’
Eva’s face slides downwards, as if her bones have crumbled. Joe hadn’t planned to say it, but now it’s out he can’t take it back.
‘Talk to her, Joe,’ she says, tears spilling from her pale eyes. ‘Talk to her for me.’ She reaches her hands across the table to clasp his, but he doesn’t take them. They remain there, trembling just above the table’s surface.
‘I can’t force her, Eva, can I?’ Joe says. Part of him is appalled at how reasonable he sounds.
Eva’s mouth twitches. Her hands, held out before her, shake in the air. Then the nurse is beside them again, and Joe stands to leave. As Eva is led away he calls her name and the nurse turns her around. ‘You are going to be a grandmother,’ he says. ‘In a few months.’
Eva smiles but uncertainly, as if she can no longer place who Joe is or why he is talking to her. She nods. ‘Bra,’ she says. Good.
*
Joe returns to London uncertain of what to do. If he tells Marie where Eva is she will go to her, immediately. Whatever anger she feels towards her, he knows it will all drain away when they are face to face. The thought enrages him. Why does she deserve forgiveness after causing so much pain? He promised that he would never let Eva hurt Marie again. This is his chance to honour that promise. Or is it revenge?
A week later his options are taken away. When he hears a voice tell him Eva is dead, his first thought is that she has finally taken the step she so often talked about. But no, it was a heart attack caused by a bleeding ulcer.
Joe tells Marie Eva was admitted to a hospital before she died, but he doesn’t say how long before. The staff did some detective work, he says. He is almost disappointed that she doesn’t challenge his version of events, that she doesn’t say ‘You saw her, didn’t you? She wanted to see me, didn’t she?’ She accepts what he tells her as the truth. A time will come when he’ll tell her, he thinks, after the baby is born, but for now he busies himself with organisation: flights, a cremation, and a sapling in a remembrance garden, a birch. The day before they fly a package arrives from Sweden. Expecting something administrative he is surprised to find a small pile of papers inside, with a Post-it attached:
You said you wanted to read it, so here it is. Eva
Beneath the Post-it is the title: ‘Sommar 1976’. He lifts the title sheet and looks at the first page, then the next: it’s written in Swedish. He laughs, drops the papers onto the table and sits down. He thinks of Eva in the days after his visit, hoping Marie would change her mind. He thinks of her in her room at night, listening to the zoo animals call to one another. He puts his face in his hands. Much later, a translation app open beside him, he begins to read.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I want to thank Heath Branigan, Jake Leighton-Pope and Toby Leighton-Pope for making me put my keyboard where my mouth was. Natasha Soobramanien for doing so much to help these stories walk at an early, crucial stage. Colin Barrett, Brendan Barrington, David Hayden, Yiyun Li, Alison Macleod, Jon McGregor, Nuala Ní Chonchúir and Luke Williams for your careful reading and invaluable guidance. Eva Järnfors, for telling me about the apple. Emma Mitchell for letting me sniff your spirit gum. Jessica Burdon for talking to me at that party. Jesica Uzureau, Fernanda Adame, Valeria Farill and Marisol Cal y Mayor for christening Nuria. Leo Robson for counsel and noodles. Maria Garbutt-Lucero and everyone at Faber for making me feel so welcome. Emmie Francis, all I could want in an editor. My agent Emma Paterson, and my agent past, Jack Ramm, for being true allies. And Sofia, Astrid and Sigrid: the greatest.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Power lives and works in London. His ‘Brief Survey of the Short Story’ has appeared in the Guardian since 2007. Mothers is his first book.
COPYRIGHT
First published in the UK in 2018
by Faber & Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2018
All rights reserved
© Chris Power, 2018
Cover design by Faber
Jacket artwork, ‘There was a girl’ (2016) © Wanda Bernadino
The right of Chris Power to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–33970–9