Pieces of Happiness

by Anne Ostby

  Of course he looks for it elsewhere, he always has. Shopping trips, conferences, the girls with summer jobs at the store. Lisbeth can’t remember when she stopped caring, although it was a whole new level of humiliation that day this past summer when he took a phone call sitting beside her in the car, without even bothering to hide it. When he sat there and agreed to meet her, whoever it was this time, in Denmark the following week. “Procurement meeting,” he said as he hung up. “I have to go down to Copenhagen for a few days.” He’d turned toward her and smiled, and she’d waited for the black pangs of nausea and despair, but nothing came. Nothing except a flat feeling of shame and indifference. A pond frozen over inside her, frost covering the surface. A white sheet waiting for her to pull her skates on and leave behind her, with gleaming steel, deep scars in the ice: I was here. I was somebody. But she’s never learned to ice-skate. She’s only run, long distance, year after year, lap after lap, in front of the mirror.

  Without getting any closer to her goal.

  And when she came home, Kat’s letter in the mailbox. That very day.

  I wonder, Lisbeth, if it all turned out the way you wanted. The prince and half the kingdom. Happily ever after. Or is that my letter I hear, rustling in your shaking hands? Ingrid keeps me updated on the old gang from time to time. You and I both know she’s no blabbermouth, but I’ve gathered that the roses that grow at the top of Toppåsen have thorns too. Princes don’t always turn into the kings they promised to be.

  So here’s an offer, if it’s time for a change. Could you swap your three reception rooms with panorama windows for one small room under a thatched roof? Or do you have too much to lose?

  —

  Lisbeth looks around and sees Ingrid wiping tears of laughter off her cheek. Her thick gray hair is cut short, a simple look that matches the glasses on a string around her neck. Solid, dull Ingrid—but something in her is new: a lively toss of her head, a glitter deep inside her brown eyes. Ingrid, who appears to have watched her life from afar. Who has known all about Harald’s dalliances and heard the gossip around town, to which she herself closed her eyes and ears for so many years. Who has told Kat, and is thus the reason Lisbeth is sitting here right now, with a flower in her hair and the red sun calmly burning its way down into the Pacific. A warm lump throbs in her throat, and she reaches for her cigarette case. Happily ever after? Does that exist anywhere?

  —

  The wicker chair next to the hammock creaks as Kat tucks her legs underneath her. Joyful, lively Kat, with the open face that knows nothing about playing games. If Lisbeth could be said to have had any competitors at Reitvik High, it would have been her. Kat with her strange laugh, her wide mouth—she had somehow mesmerized them all, captured them. Without ever taking advantage of it. Kat had just laughed, longed, and desired without shame, dreamed of things Lisbeth knew were never going to be for her. She had always felt out of breath after spending time with Kat, thrilled and dejected all at once. But she herself had had other goals, zeroing in on them, never letting them out of sight. She knew which weapons she could trust and which prize she was going to bring home. Still, it had been a relief when Kat had run off with Niklas, an unexpected turn of events that left behind only those still dancing to the same old tune. And Lisbeth was unbeatable at that dance, elegantly advancing to the top of the podium, where the trophy’s name was Harald Høie. Followed by Jr., and eventually preceded by Director. Third generation in his family’s construction materials business, solid, prosperous, and safe. First prize.

  —

  Lisbeth shifts her gaze over to Sina, and when their eyes meet, she’s startled for a moment. Sina doesn’t break eye contact, it’s Lisbeth who turns away, struck by a feeling she knows well—the sense of being challenged from an unfamiliar, unnameable angle. A relationship where the tightrope is always quivering. Then and now. Were they best friends? Yes, she supposes they were. Different as sugar and salt, but we needed each other, Lisbeth thinks. She is just as unable to explain why as she was back then. Sina, who always had a cold sore on her upper lip. Her coat hanging open—no wonder she had always looked frozen. Round-shouldered and flat-chested, she couldn’t even manage the simplest trick of stuffing her bra with cotton wool. Lisbeth still gets frustrated thinking about it; why couldn’t she at least try? To sit up straight, smile a little more, fix her hair. Sina wasn’t stupid, just so…weak-willed!

  And the other thing, which is still unnamed, which Lisbeth hasn’t felt or thought about for many years, wasn’t something Sina said. Or did. But it had always been there, in the hint of a smirk on her face when Lisbeth laughed out loud at the guys’ dumbest jokes. In the slow gaze that followed her in the ladies’ room mirror with Sina standing there wordlessly, clutching Lisbeth’s coat and scarf, watching her struggle with her brush and complain about her impossible hair. Something disapproving. No, spurning. No, disparaging.

  Lisbeth lets the smoke stream out her nostrils as she returns to her old quest for the right word. Judgmental? Mocking? She can’t find it this time either. She only knows that it’s still there. A kind of power, behind stooping shoulders and sullen replies.

  Quiet and passive, that was all the others saw in Sina. That’s why the shock was even greater that fall after graduation, when it became obvious that Sina couldn’t button up her coat anymore. It never became clear who the father was; Lisbeth doesn’t think anyone knows. But Kat had left; Ingrid was working and living her quiet little life; Maya and her Steinar had left town to go to teachers’ college; and Lisbeth herself had a shining ring on her finger and was planning her wedding. It seemed impossible not to care, not to do something, anything, for Sina, who had sat at the desk next to her for three years. Sina, who had vaguely mentioned something about going into nursing, maybe, but hadn’t gotten anything started—until this. Oh, Lisbeth had been dismayed, even irritated. Yet she’d pitied her as well, and had felt some kind of responsibility. She had ended up talking to Harald about her: a part-time job, even just a few hours a week? In the stockroom, so she wouldn’t have to listen to the comments (and so that people wouldn’t have to see her either, yes, she’d said that too). Sina’s mother, a widow in poor health, didn’t have much to contribute—couldn’t they try to help out? When Harald finally agreed to talk to Harald Senior about it and she could tell Sina, Lisbeth could taste her new life on the tip of her tongue. All of a sudden she had something to offer. A new gaze to meet Sina’s.

  She’ll never forget it. Nilsens Café, a table against the wall, next to the pastry counter.

  “Harald Senior said so himself! You can help out in the stockroom, pricing items and doing other jobs. I don’t know what it will pay exactly, but at least you’ll have something, right?”

  Lisbeth had felt warm under the collar of her coat, breathless at the thought of her excess wealth. A sweet and sinister sensation of power.

  The black clouds that gathered in Sina’s eyes. The throat stubbornly cleared, the jaw suddenly thrust forward.

  “Have something? You don’t think I have anything?”

  The face that leaned over the table—hot, furious breath.

  “I have a lot more than you, Lisbeth, so don’t think you and Harald Høie are doing me any favors!”

  She’d been paralyzed. Felt her fingers start to tremble around the cigarette, her smile start to wither. “What do you mean? I only wanted…”

  “You know exactly what I mean. You think I don’t know how your mind works? Poor Sina!”

  Her scowl, crooked and ugly and hard.

  “Poor Sina who ended up this way. I’ll tell you something, dammit: you’re the one who needs pity, Lisbeth. You’re the one who can’t turn sideways without worrying how your ass looks. You’re the one who practices your laugh in front of the mirror. Do you really think I want to be like you? Someone who has nothing to show except her appearance? I’m the one who has something, Lisbeth. Not you.”

  Sina had leaned back in her chair and drained her coffee cup before cont
inuing in a completely new, indifferent tone. “I’ll take the job, of course. I do have to make a living somehow. Give Harald my best and tell him thank you so much.”

  In hindsight, Lisbeth doesn’t know how she managed to push it away. How she went back to Harald and told him Sina was so happy and grateful, she says thank you so much! Looking back, she could almost convince herself that she’d misunderstood. Of course Sina was upset, she was in a horribly difficult situation. Of course she was distraught, she didn’t know what she was saying! And at least her gratitude for the job was genuine; she’d stayed at the store all these years.

  It was only natural that they had grown apart. Sina had the boy, and the job. Her little life in her tiny two-bedroom apartment. Lisbeth had so much more. Had it all. The house in Toppåsen, the kids. Joachim first, heir to the throne of Høie Building Supplies. Then Linda, the princess. And it had all been good, hadn’t it? Busy, but good? And she had kept in shape, stayed thin, held on to Harald to the best of her ability. “A good fit,” that’s what they call it now. Have she and Harald ever been a good fit? She’s not quite sure what that means. Isn’t it simply the days passing by, without too much conflict, too many problems? Looking away when the view gets unpleasant? The empty rooms in the house, all those hours spent alone, was it really so bad?

  Life could have been much worse, Lisbeth decides as she rests her eyes on each of the women around her in turn. Sina: short of money her whole life, a useless jerk of a son. Ingrid: sturdy, safe, but how much fun has she ever had? Have a man’s hands ever warmed her up, made her excited? And Kat…who can make sense of Kat? Kat, who could have had whoever she wanted, but instead chose denim cutoffs and no permanent address. Kat, who lost her husband but never talks about it—a bit strange, no? And Maya. Maya who isn’t here yet, but who will soon move into the last and smallest room in Vale nei Kat—what a name, come to think of it. Kat’s House. Lisbeth wishes they could find another name. She can’t sit here as a guest in Kat’s house for the rest of her life. The rooms she shared with Harald flicker before her eyes—silent reception rooms, empty bedrooms. The thought hits her: I’m just as much a guest there. Everything is tasteful and complete. But there’s no one home. No one’s been home there for years.

  7

  Ateca

  Dear God

  You have to help me protect them. Madam Kat’s sisters, they’re so helpless! They have plenty of money and more food than they can eat, but there’s so much they don’t understand.

  I know everything is in your hands, Lord. But I have to teach them things. Madam Sina needs to put coconut oil in her thin hair. Madam Lisbeth has to stop covering her face with creams so it can breathe better. And Madam Ingrid, who wants to learn all kinds of things. But she wants to make decisions too, wants to be a little bosso. She’s decided that the wet kitchen trash should be kept in a pile in the backyard. She mixes it with rotten leaves and fruit peels, and tosses it all together with a shovel. “It’ll make the pumpkins grow better,” she says. I just nod and smile. She’ll find out in due time that the fish skin will make the sweet potatoes taste bad. And did you hear what she asked me today? Why the women don’t meet over the grog bowl in the evenings like the men do?

  And soon yet another madam will arrive. I watch over them as well as I can, Lord, although it’s not easy to understand them. Their choppy language and their pale clothes. The strange questions they ask. They’re good people, but they’re kaivalagi, they think in different ways.

  —

  You say we should give our worries over to you, so I’m leaving the madams in your care. Thank you for holding your hand over them and protecting them.

  In Jesus’ holy name. Emeni.

  8

  Kat

  I hope they don’t see this as an experiment. Something they can figure out whether they like, and pull out of as soon as it gets challenging. I’m not naive—God knows I’ve seen dreams and good intentions crushed by the sledgehammer of reality too many times. But I want this to work so badly, and they have to be prepared for some sweat and some tears, each and every one of them!

  Can we make it work? Re-create the sisterhood we once had, without putting a name to it? The question churns and spins in my head: we did have that once, a sort of fellowship? Or am I completely off base? Maybe it’s just wishful thinking and history rewritten, in which case I’ve surely set us up for mutual destruction.

  I never thought I’d need any of it; Niklas was always enough for me. His enthusiasm, that hungry optimism that pulled me toward him and into him, and let me stay there. And I haven’t regretted the journey, not for a second! Places I’d never heard of, places I didn’t know I longed for. People, smiles, voices. Tears, terror, bottomless despair. Sometimes we could help, but not always. Sometimes the pain was greater when we left than when we arrived. But it was always the two of us, always Niklas and me. I didn’t need anything else. It was so easy to keep moving forward, always forward.

  The few trips back home over the years have mainly been for funerals. A glimmer of gray rain and black clothes, beef patties on toast in a cold community center. No reason to hang around in Reitvik, not when the district nurse training program in Pakistan was almost ready to launch. As soon as the formalities and thank-yous were taken care of, I would be on the next plane to the Congo, or Malawi, or Bhutan. After Father passed away, my brother’s suggestion that we sell our childhood home seemed sensible. It was a relief to leave the whole business to him, I’ll admit it. If nothing else, there’s a kind of security in knowing there’s a sum of money sitting in Reitvik Savings Bank with my name on the account.

  —

  Kids were the only thing we disagreed on, Niklas and me. Well, disagreed…it was more like a discussion we never really had. A classic example of the time never being right. There was always somewhere we were more urgently needed, always a new project more critical, more crucial than the previous. The flood that had poisoned the drinking water of a village. A whole population driven out of their country by rebels and desperately in need of camps with tents and food. The union of our cells followed by a nine-month gestation was never the right project. The timing just didn’t work out. Niklas was and remained the sun in my solar system, the center of my universe. It was his moral compass that steered us, his intuition for need that showed the way. It was Niklas’s straight backbone that made mine straighten out as well, his infallible ability to find new scenes of suffering and crowds of fellow human beings who needed our help. A baby couldn’t compete in this arena, so I never brought it up. I couldn’t be the one changing the course of his benevolent journey. An egotistical, self-absorbed wish I had no right to speak out loud. We were responsible for so many kids who had already been born. So many kids, so many places.

  —

  Neither one of us had much education to speak of. Niklas carried around a half-finished degree in anthropology, and all I had to show for myself was a mere high school diploma. But forty years on the road brought us experience in fields, in jungles, on boats, and even up in the trees. In south China we carried out a pilot project with elevated house construction in a flood-stricken area. But although our intentions were good, the initiative was shelved: as it turned out, the new treehouses scared away the crested myna that kept the potato crop pest-free, and the people would rather have potatoes than flood-proof houses.

  So we didn’t shy away from the challenge of a cocoa farm. As a matter of fact, we sought it out: the farm outside of Rakiraki that Niklas first heard of around the tanoa one night in a village on Fiji’s Coral Coast fit perfectly into the retirement dream we didn’t realize we had. After the tenth, or perhaps fifteenth, bilo of kava, one of the men gathered around the large wooden bowl began telling a long story about his brother-in-law’s uncle, who many years ago had made the mistake of leaving a piece of his property to a kaivalagi, a foreigner, a “stranger from the clear blue sky.” The land had been put to proper use while the brother-in-law’s uncle owned it: row upon solid row of
dalo, the dense root vegetable that is the staple of all Fijian cooking. The oversized cousin of the rutabaga isn’t my favorite; it’s served boiled, tasteless, and with the texture of hard butter. The kaivalagi—an Australian, as Niklas understood it—had insisted on growing cocoa beans instead, and look what had happened: not only had a furious neighbor cut him down with a machete after a dispute over a loan of a few dollars, but his wife and son had ended up driven off the road after taking a taxi to Rakiraki to reach safety. “Cursed,” the man said, and finished another coconut half-shell in one gulp before muttering the obligatory bula, solemnly clapping his hands three times.

  “And the farm?” Niklas asked. “Was it ruined as well?”

  The Fijian glared at him with bloodshot eyes and shook his head. “The plants grow large and the beans are golden as sacks of money. But what good is that when you’re dead?”

  The very next week we managed to track down the owner’s relatives through Mosese, the manager of the farm. “He’ll keep running it until the sale is finalized,” Niklas said, the enthusiasm glowing in his eyes, “and beyond that too, if we want. Can you imagine, a cocoa farm! We’ll name it after you: Kat’s Cocoa!”

  He loved me. Sometimes it hurts so badly I can’t breathe. I have to shut my eyes, grab hold of something, and slowly inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth. He loved me; he wanted beautiful things for me! The joy in his voice: “We can learn, Kat, it won’t be hard!” The fervor that always lit a fire in me: “Our own project, and if we make it work, we can help even more people. Local vocational training! Microfinancing! Seasonal jobs!”

  The enthusiasm in his words, but most of all, this is what I saw: This is for me. He loves me. The sweet, heavy pleasure it takes months to cultivate, a long and laborious process: the love in the glistening fat brown cocoa bean. It’s all for me.