Pieces of Happiness

by Anne Ostby

  What would have happened, Lisbeth thinks, what would he have done if I’d said it? Can I have you? I want you; can I have you?

  24

  Ingrid

  The chocolate expert is almost bald. His bare scalp is evenly tanned, and his shirt is stretched taut across his shoulders. Kat has picked Johnny Mattson up from Rakiraki, and Ingrid thinks she can already smell the aroma of sweet, bubbling cocoa mass. Wildrid smells it too; she’s the first one down from the porch to meet him with her flowing sulu and eager smile: “How nice of you to come and teach us a few things. We have a million questions!”

  —

  They dive right into it, starting by inspecting the shed they have named the sweet house. Kat explains how she plans to install a cooling system here, along with a new water tank and pump. Johnny nods, advises them on where to place benches and basins. He attended what he calls a “chocolate academy” in England, and has worked in product development for a large chocolate producer in Belgium for many years. Ingrid sees that Lisbeth is paying close attention. She herself is more focused on his hands, with which he enthusiastically underscores his points as he speaks. Strong and brown, with short, wide fingernails.

  “Did you take part in the chocolate production directly?” she asks, without quite knowing why. Maybe because she can’t imagine his bulky fists tinkering with soft caramel and finely ground licorice powder.

  “Oh, yes. Every step in the process. White chocolate, milk chocolate, dark chocolate.” A much younger man suddenly smiles through the wrinkles surrounding his brown eyes. “There isn’t a sweet temptation that doesn’t lure me in.”

  Ingrid has to smile back, feels the optimism like a gust breezing through her. No, like a taste on her tongue! Wildrid can feel the saliva pooling behind her teeth: soft mint spreading out on the back of her tongue, salty caramel sticking to her molars. Chili chocolate burning the inside of her cheeks, rum cream with ginger melting down her throat.

  “Pineapple truffle!” she says. “Mango nougat! Marzipan-covered kiwi!”

  Johnny looks at her and chuckles. “I thought you said you wanted to start slowly and carefully?”

  The others grow quiet and Ingrid stops, embarrassed by her outburst. An erotic poem wrapped in cellophane.

  “Well, how about that!”

  Kat is the first to break the silence; her rollicking laughter fills the tiny shed. “Let’s jump feet first right into the cocoa fat!”

  “But that’s not what we discussed.”

  It’s Lisbeth who objects. Sensible from head to toe today, in flat shoes and loose-fitting trousers, she reminds them succinctly of the basic idea they had all agreed on: “If the idea is to break into the health industry, we have to think ‘less is more.’ ”

  Where on earth has she learned these things? Ingrid thinks, and sees that red patches have flared up on Lisbeth’s throat as she continues.

  “We have to focus on the clean, the pure. Something that reminds people of an uncomplicated, relaxed lifestyle—the opposite of lavishness. Simple, pure experiences. Linda says that’s what people want these days.”

  Ingrid knows Lisbeth is right, and shoves away the dejection that replaces the effervescence of chocolate-covered starfruit in her mouth. Wildrid tosses her head and says no more.

  —

  She likes him, plain and simple. Johnny neither flirts nor tries to impress; he’s solid without being heavy. Sure of himself without bragging. The air is charged with electric excitement as they sit on the porch and he walks them through the production method. Ingrid feels herself sitting up straight, her hair standing ever so slightly on end, and a whiff of something unfamiliar hits her nostrils. Sea and a fresh breeze. A gust of new possibilities. His calm voice describes the process, first the fermenting and drying they already know about.

  “Then roasting, where the cocoa beans are tossed under hot air for an hour or so.”

  “Could we use a regular oven? A convection oven?” Kat asks.

  “I’m sure you could.”

  Ingrid has retrieved a notebook and scribbles away as Johnny talks them through the grinding, in which the nibs are ground and heated until they form a liquid cocoa mass. “It doesn’t taste good at this stage, just strong and bitter.”

  Onward through extracting the butter and mixing it with the correct amounts of cocoa mass, fat, sugar, milk…

  “And whatever else you might want to add.”

  Ingrid takes note, and Wildrid holds back about mangosteen, guava, or pineapple.

  “You’ll have to give some thought to preservatives. As I understand it, you plan to export, so it’ll take some time before the product reaches the customer. But you also want a healthy image, so you probably don’t want too many preservatives on your list of ingredients.”

  Lisbeth looks deep in thought, and Ingrid knows she’ll be consulting with Linda tomorrow. How great! she thinks, and flashes Lisbeth an encouraging smile. We have expertise in this part of it too, just an email away.

  “What’s really important is the conching,” Johnny continues. “That’s what gives that silky smooth feeling, that delicious melt-in-the-mouth texture. The one that makes you want to fill your mouth with it over and over again.”

  He pauses for a moment, and Ingrid looks away when he catches her eye. She fixes her gaze on her bare feet on the wood floor and suddenly feels them twitching. “Dance,” Wildrid whispers.

  “That delicious feeling,” Johnny says.

  He goes on to talk about tempering and molding, but Ingrid has stopped taking notes. It’s too much to take in all at once. They’ll have to pick it up as they go along.

  —

  “Mattson,” she asks Johnny over a cup of morning coffee the next day, “you don’t have Norwegian ancestry, by any chance? Or Swedish?”

  He takes a sip of coffee before answering. “Well, you can guess,” he says with a smile. “Where do you think I’m from, anyway?”

  Ingrid is suddenly shy and feels put on the spot, as if she should know the answer.

  “I don’t know.” She hesitates. “I’ve just assumed that you were…Australian?”

  He laughs out loud. “Is that what I look like? With this nose? And this hair?”

  He strokes the crown of his head with its sparse, frizzy tufts of gray hair.

  She has to laugh as well, her shyness gone. “Well, there’s not much left of it, so it’s not easy to tell! But…”

  “Maybe I’m not as dark as I should be?” He grins and throws his hands up. “You got me! And I just might have your fine ancestors to blame.”

  Ingrid listens with interest to the story of how he was born on Kosrae, one of the islands in the Federated States of Micronesia. She tries to picture the map, the tiny specks of islands to the…north? Northwest?

  “The surname is actually Matson-Itimai,” he says. “And my first name is Yosiwo. Joseph. But it’s easier to go by Johnny Mattson in most of the world.”

  She examines his face, takes it in. He’s much more light-skinned than most people here in Korototoka, though he has similar features. The broad nose; the thick, solid neck that folds under the collar of his shirt. He meets her gaze, a wide grin. An easygoing invitation: Go ahead and look, I am who I am.

  “I don’t know how much truth there is to it,” he says, “but my grandmother always said there was some connection to Norway.”

  “Norway? Madsen, you mean?”

  He nods. “It’s possible. You’ve heard of the whale hunting in this part of the world? Apparently there was once a Norwegian whaling station on Kosrae. Maybe one of the Norwegian whalers fell for a Micronesian beauty and settled down on the island? Maybe there’s Viking blood running through my veins as well?”

  His eyes land on her face, and she quickly nods. “Maybe.”

  “By the way,” he adds, “I think Viking blood is just as hot as the Micronesian variety.”

  His smile lines tense up at the corners of his mouth again. Ingrid feels herself turning red, but she
doesn’t break eye contact. She moves the conversation in a different direction.

  “Do you go back there often? To Kosrae?” She stumbles over the name. “What’s it like there?”

  Johnny takes a moment before responding. “It’s been a while since I’ve been there. I don’t have anyone there anymore.” His eyes turn away. “But it’s beautiful.”

  His smile pops back up again. “I’ve mostly been doing my own thing in Labasa for many years. I have a small place on shore, but I more or less live on the boat.”

  She waits for him to continue.

  “Deep-sea fishing,” he explains. “I charter both myself and the boat. I sit in the captain’s chair and seek out the big guys. Tuna, mackerel, the massive schools still get an old man’s heart racing!”

  “You’re not old!”

  Ingrid’s face starts burning when she realizes she said it out loud. She hurries to grab her mug and gulps down a big mouthful of lukewarm coffee.

  He doesn’t laugh, and looks at her. She can see he knows what she meant.

  “Thanks,” he says. “You’ll have to come out on the boat with me sometime. Just let me know when you’re ready.”

  —

  They have to learn the bulk of it from him in three days. Johnny has “a couple of crazy old fishing dudes” he’s going out with over the weekend; he has to be back in Labasa by Thursday night at the latest. “We’ll have to make the most of our time,” he says, “and do feel free to ask all the questions you have.”

  He gives the top of his head a quick stroke—always with his left hand, Ingrid has noticed—and looks at them encouragingly.

  She knows she should ask about the business side. The administration. Licenses and regulations. But the words Wildrid pushes onto her tongue are all about flavor. About sweetness and texture and lingering aroma. Ingrid holds them back behind clenched teeth and doesn’t have any questions. She lets Lisbeth ask about the additives and Maya wonder about the importance of the wrapper. Ingrid and Wildrid sit in the back of the room and let their mouth fill with saliva and anticipation.

  —

  Her heart nearly stops when Kat says it, right after dinner. She pulls her aside while the others clear the table; her tone is casual.

  “You could just go up to him.”

  Ingrid stares at her, feels the blood rush to her cheeks.

  “What do you mean?”

  Kat keeps her words light, but there’s something affectionate in her voice that makes a lump form in Ingrid’s throat.

  “Johnny. He’s leaving tomorrow morning. And in half an hour everyone here will be asleep. Just go up there. He’ll be happy.”

  Ingrid is paralyzed.

  “Has he…said anything?”

  What are you thinking? was what she meant to say. What are you imagining?

  But there’s nothing judgmental about the look on her friend’s face. Nothing disparaging or pitying. Only a wish for her to find happiness.

  “You’ve loved so little, Ingrid,” she says. “Just go to him.”

  —

  She doesn’t dress up, doesn’t even glance in the mirror before leaving the house. Doesn’t take special care when opening the front door, doesn’t tiptoe down the stairs. This is madness in any case, it’ll just have to be what it is. There are lights in a few of the houses down the road, but there is no one outside. Just her own footsteps along the road where the dust has settled for the night, and a solitary bird calling out a short message.

  The room Salote rents out is around the back of the house. It has a door facing into the backyard, but Ingrid still has to go down the driveway, past the little shop, and around the cassava field by the fence. If Salote comes out and finds her here now, it’s all over. “No, no,” Wildrid whispers. “Just pretend you’re sleepwalking.”

  His door is shut. She can do it; she can knock. Can say goodbye to Ingrid Hagen of the County Bus Service once and for all. Become someone she’s never been. She lifts her hand, feels the deep taste of dark chocolate spread across her tongue, swallows it. You’ve loved so little, Ingrid.

  She knocks twice, hard.

  His eyes are happy and bright when he opens the door.

  “I’ve been waiting,” he says. “I thought you would come.”

  The hands that close around her wrists and pull her in are warm and dry.

  25

  Sina

  What in the world does Armand want?

  Sina is nervous and embarrassed. Nervous to tell Kat and the others. Embarrassed that he’s just planning to show up, unexpected and uninvited. And unwelcome, she thinks. Lets the thought rise to the surface: I don’t want him to come.

  She’s been mulling over the email for two days. Worried and scared one moment, irritated the next. He doesn’t ask whether it’s a good time or whether there’s a reasonable place for him to stay, just takes it for granted that everything will be arranged for him: “I’m taking a trip down to Fiji. I land in Nadi on the 29th.”

  He doesn’t say a word about the great deal with the Lithuanian imports, or about whether he’s sold her car.

  How is it possible that her son still makes her nervous and embarrassed? Does she really have any face left to lose when it comes to Armand? Hasn’t he bled her dry long ago?

  You chose this, Sina reminds herself. Repeats her mother’s words in her head, the small, piercing arrows she shot out of the corner of her mouth when the boy had cried all night and Sina stood there in the morning, dead tired, with her purse on her shoulder, on her way to Høie Building Supplies to sign for paint sample deliveries and take inventory of linoleum flooring rolls. “You chose this yourself, Sina, dammit.”

  And yes, she had chosen it, in a way. She’d heard, not least from Lisbeth, that there were “ways.” And from her mother, who wrote to a friend in the next town asking if Sina could come and stay there until it was all over. But she didn’t want to! Weak-willed, unambitious Sina Guttormsen—she knew how they looked at her, all right—had held her own: she was going to have the baby, and she was going to have it in Reitvik. It hadn’t occurred to her that Lisbeth, and by extension Harald, would help her out; at first it was enough to wrap her head around her own crazy decision. She wasn’t the first person this had happened to in Reitvik, and she wouldn’t be the last. But Sina wasn’t Kat with the carefree laugh; she wasn’t buttoned-up Ingrid or sensible Maya. She wasn’t Lisbeth with the hair and the body and all the things Sina would never have.

  So this became what she had. The boy. And the secret, dizzying triumph that she was the one they all looked at now. It was Sina who had done what made them shudder, tremble, and whisper.

  —

  She hadn’t thought about money, either—not much, anyway. After all, what does a nineteen-year-old know about the cost of living? From paying for salami sandwiches for school lunches, ski boots and bus tickets and money for football trading cards and pool entrance fees? But she’d learned and she’d managed. She had fought tooth and nail to hold on to the little apartment she had found, had gone to work, paid the rent. A sudden sharp pain, a deep pool that Sina rarely dives into: Can’t he see any of what she’s done for him? Why hasn’t Armand appreciated any of it? Where did she go so wrong that a forty-seven-year-old man still sees his mother as an open wallet? A middle-aged man with nothing to show for himself but an endless string of disappointments and things that didn’t go as planned. And it’s never his fault.

  She’d had high hopes for Astrid. Armand was in his early twenties when he met her, college student and king of the world back then too. But there had been something about the young girl from the south coast, something sturdy and dependable under her ponytail and her dark eyebrows. Something that had given Sina hope that she saw through Armand, right through his gloating arrogance, and was encouraged by what she glimpsed underneath. He’d brought her home for a few days over Christmas, and Sina had observed the tone between them, thinking she saw something real there, something respectful. But when spring came there was
no more mention of Astrid, and by the next fall student life had lost its luster: “Two more years just for a piece of paper, what am I going to do with that?” That time it was a few of his friends who had started a band; the money and the opportunities were in London, and Armand was the one they needed: “Manager, right? With a good manager, these guys are a sure thing!”

  She’d never seen anything come of it, but that’s not what hurts. He’d never needed to be rich, her boy, never needed to be famous. It would have been more than enough if he’d held down a job, bought an apartment, built a life.

  When Harald Høie kicked his son Joachim out of the house, the rumors in Reitvik flew. Sina had been promoted to the front of the store then, and said a brief hello to Lisbeth when she stopped by once in a rare while. Harald’s office was upstairs, and all Sina usually saw was the back of Lisbeth’s expensive coat on her way up the stairs. The director and his wife had moved away from downtown long ago, to a custom-designed palace high up in Toppåsen. But she’d hear things, of course, there was always talk about the boss. About how the missus never went along on business trips and conferences. About who had seen and heard and been offered this, that, and the other. About how Harald Høie had been furious when his son wanted to become a nurse instead of fourth-generation director of the building supplies company.

  If only Armand had done what Joachim Høie did and found a vocation, if only he’d learned to demonstrate knowledge and show compassion, how proud she would have been! Not of a diploma or a title, but about purpose and drive. Armand has neither of those. And that’s why Sina is embarrassed.

  “Why are you so nervous, Sina? Third cigarette in a row, what’s wrong?”

  Maya hides her rebuke behind a chuckle, but the wrinkle in her nose is real enough. Sina reflexively puts out her cigarette and looks up at Maya guiltily. Had it been anyone else, she would have shrugged and kept smoking, but Maya still has this teacher’s air of authority about her. She’s judging everything we do, behind those sunglasses, Sina thinks.