by Anne Ostby
You know you’re more than welcome here whenever you’d like to visit. Maya asks about you sometimes, but never in panic or dismay; I don’t want this email to scare you or make you feel guilty. If you want her to come home, we’ll understand, and we’ll find a way to make that happen. But I want to emphasize that Maya isn’t a burden to us, even in the reality she now lives in, which we can’t share with her. And if the road should end here in Korototoka, we’ll be ready to hold her hand down the last stretch of it too.
Best wishes to you and your family,
Kat
42
Sina
She still feels awful. The wound aches; she walks hunched over like an overripe plum tree in autumn and moves her legs with slow, tiny steps. And the others don’t seem to care much. Sure, Ateca starts every day by asking how she’s doing, and Lisbeth does cast her anxious looks. Kat has brought her home again, so she probably thinks her job is done. Ingrid pulled her aside the moment they walked in the door with a story about Mosese, who’d been ill, and now they were behind on the preparation and packaging of the cocoa. And Lisbeth’s daughter in Norway wanted to know when she could expect the first chocolate delivery. Sina understands that, of course; after all, this is supposed to be their new livelihood, and Kat obviously needs to get back to business. With all the back-and-forth, this hospital ordeal has wasted over two weeks of her time, Sina thinks dismally. Not to mention how much it must have cost.
“The most important thing is that they didn’t find anything wrong,” Kat says, and shoves aside all talk of money. “We’ll deal with that later. They’ll send a bill.”
Sina knows that’s a lie; she saw with her own eyes how Kat took out her blue credit card and spoke quietly to the guy behind the counter while Sina was filling out her own discharge papers. But what can she do?
—
Sina drags herself the last couple of steps across the rough wood floor and sinks down into the wicker chair in the corner of the porch. She can’t even go for a walk with Maya; the doctor has ordered rest for at least three weeks.
“How’s it going? Are you in pain?”
Lisbeth has followed her out and sits down on the edge of the top step, her pack of cigarettes in hand. Her meek, nervous voice scratches and claws in Sina’s ears. Her slender butt looks like it’s ready to jump up and run away at any moment; Sina feels her irritation growing.
She digs deep inside herself: Is it jealousy she feels? Because Lisbeth has suddenly been given a starring role in Vale nei Kat’s new business venture? Because she has connections and knowledge, while Sina will never be anything but unskilled help? Or is it just the discomfort of seeing how Lisbeth is obviously so awkward around her?
“Can I have a smoke.”
Not a question, more of a short message between spouses who have been around each other for fifty years. Why can’t I stop being so grouchy with her?
Lisbeth throws her the pack, so quickly and eagerly that she misses the table and the cigarettes spill out on the floor. “Sorry!”
Lisbeth jumps up and starts gathering them. She gives Sina a cigarette and fumbles to find the lighter. Sina leans forward to take it, and feels a jolt of pain in her wound: “Ow!”
Lisbeth jerks back, and Sina suddenly feels tears pressing against her eyelids—dammit! Why can’t she just act normal, without fluttering around the house like a moth?
“Sit down!” she says brusquely. “Stop fussing so much, goddammit!”
“I’m not fussing, I was just going to—”
“Yeah, yeah.”
They smoke in silence for a while. Ateca comes around the corner with a laundry basket under her arm, and Lisbeth jumps to her feet. “I can fold those for you!”
But Ateca shakes her head. “That’s okay, Madam Lisbeth. I can do it myself. It’s better if you keep Madam Sina company.”
Lisbeth’s hand is shaking when she sits back down and retrieves the cigarette from the ashtray. She’s afraid of me, it occurs to Sina. The thought hits her like a lightning bolt: Lisbeth’s afraid when I talk to her!
The tears are there, a throbbing lump in her throat. The surgery, the painkillers. The aching wound. She’s so tired. She just wants to be done with all of it.
Sina takes a long drag of her cigarette and looks Lisbeth square in the face. “It’s Harald who’s Armand’s father,” she says.
—
It’s as if she’s dreamed it. Lisbeth’s white, frozen face as she got up and walked away, down the stairs and along the road. Maraia, who suddenly appeared below the porch and looked at her wordlessly before turning around and following Lisbeth. Ingrid and Kat, who helped her inside and into bed: “Sina, sweetie, you have to take it easy! Don’t you know you need to rest? You’re exhausted!” The tears that kept running. For Armand and his pathetic life. For Lisbeth and for herself. For everything.
Sina lies on her back, breathing with her mouth open. She must have slept; through quivering eyelids she can make out the half-light in the room. She has to pee, but doesn’t have the energy to get up.
Ateca cracks the door ajar. She’s holding a bowl in her hand. “You have to eat something, Madam Sina. Here’s some soup.”
Sina lets Ateca prop her up in bed, tries to avoid putting pressure on her full bladder. Has Lisbeth come back? Has she talked to the others? She’s going to have to talk to the others. The betrayal, Sina’s own, Harald’s; it’s too big to be contained in Lisbeth’s skinny body.
“Eat some soup,” Ateca repeats, and holds the bowl out to her. “You have to regain your strength, Madam Sina.”
Her strength. She’s completely drained. Her blood runs thick and sticky through her veins, like an infection. She pushes the bowl away. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she mutters.
Ateca waits inside the door as she sits down. Turns away and rearranges the soap on the edge of the sink as Sina pees, a long, steady stream. Her eyes linger on her belly when she looks down to pull up her underwear. The pale, wide stripe of skin, like a long, unbaked loaf of bread resting on her thighs. The wrinkled, vertical bandage. She gets to her feet and lets Ateca help her back to the bedroom.
The door is open, and Maya’s sitting there in the armchair, on top of the pile of clothes. Ateca helps Sina into bed, takes the soup bowl, and closes the door behind her. Sina leans against the wall and shoots Maya a weary smile. What she really wants to do is sleep. But Maya’s gaze is fixed on her face, surprised and patient all at once. Her fingers fiddle with a long white strip of something or other.
“The dress,” Maya says. “I sewed it.”
Sina recognizes the ribbon. “Kat,” she says reflexively. “It was Kat who sewed Maraia’s dress, you remember.”
“I sewed it,” Maya repeats, louder. She drops the ribbon and ties an imaginary bow with her hands in the air. “Green and red.”
Sina doesn’t argue anymore. The insects outside buzz the minutes away. She slumps down in the bed and closes her eyes. Everything that kept us so busy, she thinks. Everything that mattered. And all we have left is the color of a dress.
When Sina opens her eyes again, the door is half open and two black silhouettes stand out against the light. Lisbeth’s thin shoulders and Maraia’s curly mane. Sina is about to open her mouth when Kat’s voice echoes down the hall: “There you are, Lisbeth. And Maraia, what are you doing here so late? Your mom must be worried about you.”
The big calm in the little voice. “I was just helping her find her way home.”
—
All her other feelings have blended into this one now. Sina has never realized that this is what sorrow feels like: a sticky, grayish brown toothache. A fog that never lifts, just envelops her like a mountain of hard work piling up on all sides. It has become everybody’s sorrow. Not just hers and Lisbeth’s, but Maya’s too, even Ingrid’s. And Kat’s. Nothing exists or is felt before it’s gone through Kat. A filter they all have to pass through.
“Does Armand know?” is the only question she had asked
Sina.
Sina had shaken her head. “No one,” she’d said. “No one’s ever known.”
“Not even Harald?”
She hadn’t responded. She’s sure Harald knows. He can count too, dates and months. But they’ve never spoken a word about it. And that the firm should have been called Høie & Son Building Supplies by now? She never thinks about that. Never ever.
—
Lisbeth hasn’t asked a single question. Not of her. In the murky slow-motion film the days have now become, that’s the worst of all. She has told Lisbeth, and everything is different now, though nothing has changed. She hadn’t planned on saying anything; she didn’t even know that the unspoken sentence still lay lurking there somewhere on the back of her tongue. What good would it do? It is all in the past now, lies abandoned by the side of the road behind her, used up and paid for.
“So why did you tell her now, then?”
Sina doesn’t even have the energy to get annoyed at the fact that it is Ingrid who asks the question. She can’t bring herself to search for the words that could explain the most tormenting of pains: to be in possession of the power to crush another. And to know that you have it in you to use it. Realizing that the only way to soften the pain of having the upper hand is to lay down your weapons.
She shrugs and looks over at Maya in the chair at the head of the table. Her clear blue eyes are completely void of history.
43
Lisbeth
She just can’t think. Lisbeth is fully aware that she’s never been in the same league as Maya, or Ingrid for that matter, when it comes to being smart. She’s never cared; she’s always had other things they envied her for. But none of that counts anymore, and she doesn’t know what to do. She’s helpless when the mirror stares back blindly without telling her how things are supposed to get better. And her head is empty. Sina, Harald, Armand; she doesn’t know where to begin. Where to dig a sharp fingernail into the thick shell of the throbbing sphere of her head and start to peel everything away, piece by piece.
The worst part is Sina. That she had insisted on getting Sina a job in the store. That she, Lisbeth, was the one who had made sure Sina and the boy had a roof over their heads and food on the table all these years.
The worst part is Harald. Picturing him and plain, flat-chested Sina. His disparaging comment about Armand: “That lazy bum of a son of hers? I won’t take him in!”
The worst part is Armand. That she got all dressed up in her green silk blouse. His winking across the table. A red-hot wave constricting her throat: standing in front of the mirror in lacy black lingerie.
—
Lisbeth’s never had much use for God. Never needed anything that couldn’t be fixed with her makeup bag or paid for with her wallet. She has looked down with a condescending smile on Ingrid’s enthusiasm for exploring all sides of village life in Korototoka, including the religious part. Hymns and after-church coffee have never been Lisbeth Høie’s style.
For Lisbeth Karlsen, a lot of things are different. One of the strangest consequences of Sina’s revelation was that she immediately changed her name inside her head. Took back her maiden name to turn herself back into the person she was before Harald. She has to get away from his name. Is it possible to become who you were before?
Lisbeth Karlsen takes back her evening prayers too. She’s not sure whether she’s ever really believed in God, and she’s not too worried about it now. But when she lies in bed at night, she folds her hands and repeats to herself the prayer her mother would read to her and her brother every night: “From sorrow, sin, and deepest fear, protect me with your angel near.” It’s a little too late for sin and sorrow. But maybe she can at least sleep through the night without fear. Lisbeth Karlsen is free and wide open, free as only someone who’s lost everything can be.
—
Now she understands the hostility, the resentment in Sina’s voice, the glimmers of something like scorn. Or does she? She, Lisbeth, is the one who was betrayed; if anyone has the right to be bitter, it’s her. Disgust bubbles up like green bile in her throat: and she’s been the one walking around feeling sorry for Sina this whole time! Walking on eggshells around her to avoid rubbing salt in the wound of how pathetic she was. Her sad little life. That she, Sina, could take that nasty tone with her! With what she had on her conscience!
But Harald’s face is always there. His condescending tone whenever he talked about Sina: “Not exactly eye candy behind the counter.” The slap on Lisbeth’s butt, her fiftieth birthday present: “Guess I’ll have to buy you an ass job.” The compliment, the most loving words she could expect from him: “You’re a hot piece of ass, you know that.”
She stands in front of the mirror. Her mascara-free eyes are dry and the gray roots along her middle part stare straight at her, mocking her. Hot piece of ass. That was always enough for her. And Sina hasn’t even had that. Just some genes from Harald in a son who loves her about as much as he loves an insufficient ATM.
It hits her like an explosion, bursting in her head: is this about the family firm? Høie Building Supplies, which has provided for all of them for so many years: her, Joachim, and Linda. Sina and Armand. Harald is the third generation. The fourth generation, Linda and Joachim, don’t want to take over the business. But Armand! Is that what Sina wants? To throw Armand into the ring to fight for control of the family business? He is Harald Høie’s eldest son. The birthright of the firstborn, is that what Sina’s after? A whirlwind chaos in her head: paternity test, living will and testament. If this inconceivable thing is true, it will tear the safety net out from under Linda and Joachim. Has Sina told him? Does Armand know who his father is? His wide, gleaming smile: “You hens really live in paradise. No rooster to bother you.”
She has to talk to Sina. Must ask her if this is what she has planned. If what she and Harald did almost fifty years ago—she can’t bring herself to picture it, can’t stomach it—is going to shatter her own children’s future.
Suddenly she longs for Joachim. How has she managed to let her son slip away? How did she allow Harald’s contempt—“Well, if that’s all he wants to do with his life!”—to shove her out of Joachim’s life? Her quiet, considerate son. She’s let him disappear, into a different life and a family she doesn’t know. His daughters, Viva and Sara, do they even remember who she is?
The little weekend bag looks silly at her feet. It sits on the ground, silver-gray with a stylish retractable handle, a perfect match for her lightweight linen trousers over newly painted toenails. Ingrid has driven her to the bus station in Rakiraki; she’s insisted on taking the bus alone from there to Denarau. The luxury dreamland bubble of Denarau, where the hotels sit side by side along the white, newly combed beaches. The artificial island just outside Nadi, a mere fifteen minutes from the airport, where Australian tourists stream in every week to hotel rooms with freshly made beds with masi-patterned bedspreads and yellow blossoms adorning the sides of the bathroom sinks. Manicured lawns, swimming pools with scrubbed tiles and striped beach towels, spas with hot stone massages, foot massages, coconut milk massages. Chiffon-draped wedding chapels with ocean views, golf courses, torches, and kava ceremonies every afternoon at five.
Lisbeth needs to be alone. Everyone gets that, no questions asked. When she’d gone over a week without speaking to anyone, it was Kat who finally suggested it: “Why don’t you take a few days away for yourself, Lisbeth? Go to Denarau, go soak up the sun by the pool. Visit the spa, use the gym, watch the sunset from the bar.”
She’d only nodded. She hadn’t even asked how much it would cost. And now she’s climbing aboard, sitting down in a window seat on the bus to Nadi and Denarau, with three days at Royal Davui Plaza ahead of her. She’s not going to think. She’s not going to cry. She’s not going to do anything at all.
—
The cool, dry air envelops her when she enters the room. Her suitcase is already perched on the bench by the wall, and she turns to the young man who has clicked her keycard into
the slot on the wall: “Vinaka vakalevu, many thanks!” He observes her for a brief moment, just enough for her to wonder whether he’s waiting for a tip—but hadn’t Kat said they don’t do that here?—before he bows hastily and shuts the door behind him. She sinks down onto the bed, fixes her gaze on the bamboo blinds in front of the balcony door. Through the glass she hears the noise from the pool, a whining, roaring jumble of voices over a background of music. Her eyes glide across the room. The fruit bowl packed in cellophane on the table. The carved wooden turtle on the wall above the minibar. Armand would have liked it here, it occurs to her. The cool, soft whisper of luxury. The polite bows of younger, more handsome men further down the ladder.
Armand. She examines her thoughts. What is that taste in her mouth: Nausea? Shame? Anger? She has the vague sense that there’s something wrong with her internal circuitry. She should feel something; the thought of Armand should spark some sort of reaction, but she feels nothing. A mild discomfort, but nothing that riles her up, pokes her, strangles her. She prods further, testing herself: Sina. What does she feel for Sina?
It’s as if she’s left it all behind outside the door of Room 206. Sina and Armand, the betrayal—she says it out loud to herself: “She betrayed me!”—but nothing happens; it’s been left out there, as distant as the shrieking of the kids in the paddling pool. Her friend’s colorless gaze, the emptiness in her voice when she said it. As if the words meant nothing at all. Lisbeth lifts one hand from her lap, traces it slowly upward, and places it over her heart. Strokes back and forth over her linen blouse with slender fingers. But she feels nothing. Nothing broken in there. No raging tears yearning to burst out.
Lisbeth gets up from the bed. Opens the dewy cold white-wine bottle from the minibar and begins to unpack.