The Boy at the Door

by Alex Dahl

  I see him immediately – he’s followed us silently back out of the forest and is sitting back up on the garage roof, staring down at me. I approach him slowly, the way you might a sea creature who’s still deciding whether to fear you. When I reach him, I pull him close, and he falls into my arms like a limp, unconscious body. He cries for a long time and I rock him gently back and forth.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers.

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Can... can I please call you Mommy?’ he asks suddenly, in a very thin voice. I’m still holding him, and I pull him even closer to me, because I dare not expose him to the expression on my face.

  ‘Tobias...’ I begin.

  ‘Please,’ he says. ‘Just once.’

  ‘I’m not sure if that’s a good idea, sweetheart,’ I say, wishing my violently thudding heart would slow its pace down.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I...’

  ‘Mommy,’ he whispers, and as he speaks I feel the most vicious dread spread out in my stomach like acid, turning everything it touches into pulp.

  ‘Shhh,’ I say, and we stay like that a long while, until I can be certain my tears have stopped.

  14

  It’s Tuesday, and in my world that means it’s usually a shit day. In an attempt to change this trend, I’ve decided to try something new today. I am at the pool with Hermine and Tobias. Usually I sit on a chair and read a magazine, but today Nicoline is at home with Johan, and I’m doing laps in the empty lanes on the far side of the pool, away from the children. I used to swim, and for some reason I stopped many years ago. As a teenager, it was how I managed the noise in my head, especially after what happened with my father, and now, as I gingerly take a step into the turquoise water, I’m filled by that same calm. I wasn’t going to put my hair under – I’ve curled it earlier today and for once this winter, it isn’t raining – but I do, almost instinctively, and immediately the hoots and laughter of the swimming club kids is muted, and the world is blue. I swim until my arms ache, mostly underwater. The years peel back and all the things I’ve become are irrelevant and here, under the surface, I can just be the very core version of Cecilia.

  In the last few days, ever since I sent that email, I have been swallowed up by the most intense turmoil. It has been like being dragged under by wild, gray waves, then briefly expelled to the surface, before being pulled back under, spluttering and gasping for air. One moment, I touch upon some perspective, and reason with myself that much of the craziness is in my own head, but then, the next, the reality of the situation hits me again full force and I want to throw myself to the floor and wail until someone kind gives me a sedative.

  I’ve been drawn repeatedly back to thoughts of my childhood in these last few days. Perhaps unsurprisingly, those thoughts make me feel like I’m drowning, too; though my childhood was largely happy, it was marred by some difficult times. Looking back, it’s the little things I remember; the lock on the bathroom door of my house, which was unusual and made to look like a padlock; my mother’s favorite rosewater scent lingering in the darkness of my room after she’d kissed me goodnight; the shapes thrown by the waves breaking against the cape in the distance; the feel of my leather satchel slicing into my shoulders as I walked alone through the birch forest to school; the way my glass figurines twinkled when the sun shone on them. When did I know that my life as I knew it was breaking apart? I don’t remember the day my father left, or my mother’s face when she told me. When did I become who I am now? Was my future persona added to childhood Cecilia layer by layer, like brush strokes to an oil painting? Or, did one Cecilia become another as a result of certain episodes? And if so, which episodes were the most influential?

  The water is so chlorinated, my eyes begin to sting and hurt after a while, though I’ve kept them firmly shut underwater. I come back up to the surface and rest awhile, holding on to the edge, settling my breath, when something catches my eye over by the diving board. Someone rather – it’s Tobias, shivering slightly, standing at the back of the long line of children. He looks lost in thought, and his eyes seem to focus on something in the water to the left of where I am. He looks exactly the same as the first time I saw him: small, different, afraid. I try to give him a little reassuring wave, but he doesn’t see me, and I feel overcome by a violent sense of dread and confusion. It’s as though I can’t trust myself, or even my own feelings and reactions. Have I told so many lies, both to myself and to others, that I have lost the ability to recognize the truth? I don’t know what’s real. I haul myself up on the edge of the pool and sit with my head between my knees, trying to remember my breathing exercises. It’s in your head, I tell myself. Everything is in your head. I look up briefly, and he’s still standing there in his Batman swimming shorts, and he’s looking at me now, alarmed. His face angular, exotic, beautiful, familiar, unreadable.

  When did I know? I try to think, try to force the one moment I knew for sure out from my memories, but my mind is murky with fear and exertion and regret. Or did I always know? Did I know Tobias’s face before I ever saw him that first night? I can’t isolate one thought from another and it is as though they pile on top of each other – good thoughts like Johan and wine by the fire and swimming fast and alone, but bad thoughts, too, like lost boys, split-second madness, façades toppling down, leaving the stark emptiness beneath exposed to the world... Pool water shoots from my mouth, though I am not immediately sure that that is what it is. My first thought is that it’s blood, and that it’s coming from inside me, broken free. Someone says something, careful at first, then loud, and then someone else begins to lift me, up, up, up away from the water, but a woman is screaming, screaming so loud that every other noise in the vast hall falls away. Blood, she’s screaming. My blood!

  Four days later

  I’ve always thought that madness is something that happens to other people. Most people think that, I imagine, mad people included. The problem is that once you have been there, on that stretcher, shouting disjointed gibberish and throwing up and tearing at your skin, it is very hard to explain to people that it was just a bit of a funny turn. I feel better now, off I go. What made me really angry was the kindness. The professional, calm attempts at understanding. No, Mrs Wilborg, of course we understand that you’re not crazy. Nobody will use the c-word, in fact. It’s all a cognitive setback and emotional confusion and stress-induced psychosis.

  Nobody will say, Sorry, Mrs Wilborg, you went completely fucking batshit crazy there for a while, but fear not, here is the pill that will cure you. For a loony bin, they are remarkably restrained with the drugs here. Not that I’ve ever been to a loony bin before, but I’d imagined they’d like you nice and mellow during waking hours, and out cold at night. All I get is one pill in the morning, and one at night, and I can’t say I feel that either of them makes much of a difference. My thoughts still feel interwoven and inseparable, like a tight, tangled ball of hair at the nape of my neck.

  ‘How long have you been feeling overwhelmed?’ asked the female doctor who came to see me the morning after I came here.

  ‘Who says I feel overwhelmed?’

  ‘Don’t you feel overwhelmed?’ That is how these people carry on.

  ‘I feel tired.’

  ‘Okay. How long have you been feeling this kind of tired?’

  ‘For a very long time.’

  ‘Cecilia, your journal says you are currently prescribed Zoloft and Xanax. Do you take any other medications? Have you made any recent changes to your dosage?’

  I take Adderall and Diazepam and a couple of other helpful pharmaceuticals, but as I get them off the Internet I am certainly not going to inform Dr Nielsen about this. ‘No.’

  ‘Have you at any point previously experienced hallucinations, internal voices or unusual visual disturbances?’

  ‘Look. I know you think I’m crazy. You’re probably right. Now can you please run some tests and find out what kind of crazy I am, so I can get the right cocktail of drugs and go
home? You can’t hold me here against my will.’

  ‘You’re right about that, Cecilia, and nobody will hold you here against your will. The standard procedure after a panic attack with psychosis is to keep a patient in for at least a day or two, before making a longer-term therapy plan, most likely in combination with medication.’

  At the end of the second day, the same doctor came back and said I could go home if I wanted. Johan was ready to pick me up at any time, and I could come back the next morning for counseling. I sat perched on the window sill as she spoke, looking out at Tønsberg. Snow was falling in drifts, chased by a strong wind and settling against the sides of buildings in steep crags. I watched Dr Nielsen’s face as she spoke, at first thinking that I kept mishearing what she was saying, but then realizing that it was much worse than that; underneath her voice, another voice was speaking, inside my head. You ugly, stupid girl, it said. Everybody hates you. You’re going to die soon. Make it so, Cecilia; hurry up. What a waste of skin you are. Spare the world having to put up with you any longer. Ugly, stupid, crazy – those were the only words I could hear as the doctor spoke, and in the end, I closed my eyes against them, and began shaking my head vigorously.

  ‘No,’ I whispered, and then, louder, ‘Shut up!’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Shut up!’ It sounded very loud when I shouted inside the small room. ‘Sorry,’ I said, trying to catch Dr Nielsen’s eye to reassure her that I’m not an actual crazy woman, or at least, not like most of the people she probably sees, but she wouldn’t meet my eye. ‘Sorry. I wasn’t talking to you,’ I shouted. ‘I said sorry! I didn’t mean to say shut up to you! When everybody’s talking at the same time it isn’t so strange that I become confused. Sorry.’

  So now they won’t let me go. It’s not so bad. I have my own bathroom and TV. The food is nasty, but I needed an incentive to diet anyway, so it doesn’t bother me much. What I want is for Johan and the children to come and visit me, but Johan said in a message the doctors showed me that he thinks it’s best if he waits until we can be certain there won’t be new ‘episodes’ as the children, and Tobias in particular, were so unsettled by the episode at the pool. I know there is something I need to do, something to do with Tobias. I have little recollection of the days leading up to that Tuesday – all I can remember clearly is taking a lot of my pills and feeling constantly on edge. I remember other things, too, but they are less clear; pacing up and down the stairs late at night, feeling Tobias’s eyes on me across the table, thinking I could hear the scratch of his pencils in the dead of the night, Hermine or Nicoline speaking to me and me feeling unable to decipher what they were saying. I remember the night I drove to Østerøysvingen 8 and, looking back, I wonder whether that was the start of whatever is happening to me now; it was hardly a sane thing to do, sleeping on the bare floor of an unheated house in Norway in November, wearing a cocktail dress and with only a small, lost boy for company.

  And later... I recall the intense conviction that I had to contact someone, to tell them something of utmost importance, taking a long time composing an email, but I can’t quite touch upon the details – it is as though every time I get close, the truth edges away from me.

  I have slept for many hours and just woken up. Soon, they will bring me the little white pill to take. What if... what if it’s the pill that is making my head so heavy and strange? If I just don’t take it, perhaps clarity will return to me again. I sit up in the bed, and outside, the snow is still falling like it has all week, but heavier now. Even though it must be morning, I can barely make out the faint glow of the streetlight across the road through the white haze. There is a knock at the door.

  ‘Yes?’ I say, and Johan’s sweet face appears. It’s etched with worry, and judging by the blue circles around his eyes and the deep frown lines, you’d think he’d been up all night several nights running. In his hand is a small bunch of supermarket tulips, and for a short, sharp moment this makes me really angry.

  ‘Hey,’ he says nervously, glancing back out into the hallway, as though he were stepping into a lion’s lair and not his wife’s hospital room.

  ‘Hey,’ I say, but as I speak, my words are drowned out by a loud voice shouting ‘Fuck off!’ and it is as though I have no control of myself, or my mind, because it would seem that I shout it out loud. Johan stares at me.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, and then, ‘No! Shut up! Just shut the fuck up!’ because the other voice is so loud that I can’t hear what Johan is saying, never mind my own thoughts. Johan takes a step back, so that he’s barely in the doorway and his mouth is moving like he’s talking to someone out there in the hall, and then Dr Nielsen and two nurses appear and they say ‘It’s okay, Cecilia. It’s okay. You are going to be just fine. Now, you’re going to go back to sleep for a while, and when you wake up, you’re going to feel a whole lot better.’

  Several days later

  We drive in silence, but I can feel Johan’s eyes on me frequently, as though I’m suddenly going to go nuts again and jump out at a red light, running down the street babbling incoherently.

  ‘There’s, uh... there isn’t that much food at home, I didn’t get a chance to shop on the weekend. Okay if I stop at Meny now?’ asks Johan.

  ‘Can’t you just go later? I want to get home to the kids.’ The thought of wandering around the brightly lit aisles of the supermarket fills me with dread – at this hour of the morning I’d be likely to bump into one of the other mothers from the school, or one of my friends from the tennis club. Do they all know? Sandefjord is a small town. You can’t have a public meltdown and be sectioned here without everyone knowing about it. I’ll be a pariah from now on – the crazy lady who went berserk and threw a fit in front of a group of children. We’ll have to move. Johan seems to read my thoughts, because as we drive down the last bit of road by the sea before turning up the hill towards our house, he takes my hand from my lap and strokes it.

  ‘Nobody knows about this, by the way,’ he says.

  ‘What about the people at the pool? The other parents? They know about this!’

  ‘A couple of people called and I told them you’d had a severe allergic reaction to mercury that can lead to intense confusion.’

  ‘Jesus, Johan.’

  We’ve come to a stop in front of the house and I’m about to get out of the car, when Johan stops me. ‘Cecilia, wait.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just… Wait... wait a moment.’ His eyes are pleading with me, but this is typical Johan, getting all worked up about something, and making me feel like something terrible has happened, when actually what he’s trying to say is he forgot to take the bins out.

  ‘For God’s sake, just say it.’

  ‘It’s Tobias.’ I hear myself draw a sharp breath. Tobias. I haven’t even thought about him for several days, but now I feel a strong yearning for him, as strong as for Nicoline and Hermine. I want to be inside, upstairs, in my favorite chair, drinking my tea while the house hums with the activities of the kids.

  ‘What… What... what about him?’

  ‘Cecilia, he’s gone. They took him away.’

  ‘What do you mean? Oh, God, what are you talking about?’ I’m shouting now, and opening the door, but Johan reaches over and closes it hard. I glance at the house and can make out a faint rustling of the curtains in Hermine’s room.

  ‘Look. This was only meant to be a temporary arrangement, Cecilia. I know you’ve grown increasingly fond of him, and so have I, but it’s in his best interests that they find a more stable long-term home for him.’

  ‘When? Who did this?’

  ‘The day after... after the pool. Laila Engebretsen called me. She explained that it wasn’t possible for Tobias to remain in our care when you were in a psychiatric hospital.’

  ‘That fucking bitch!’ I’m crying, in spite of myself, and the old, ugly fury returns – the same fury I felt all those weeks ago when Johan agreed to take Tobias in the first place. How everything has changed si
nce then. He’s got under my skin; the serious, lost boy. And I want him back.

  ‘Cecilia...’

  ‘No! Don’t “Cecilia” me! That goddamned bitch has never liked me. She was always out to get me. I’m going inside to have a shower and change my clothes, then I’m going straight down there and have her immediately return Tobias. For God’s sake, it’s less than ten days to Christmas! All his presents are in the attic with Nicoline and Hermine’s!’ Johan doesn’t speak for a long while, merely stares down at his own hands still resting on the steering wheel.

  ‘Try to see it from their point of view, honey. He’s not our child, and it is their foremost duty to shelter an already vulnerable boy from unstable influences.’

  ‘Unstable influences? Is that me?’ Silence. ‘Shelter? We have given him shelter when he had nowhere to turn.’

  ‘Yes, but the plan was always for him to move into a permanent home in the longer term, Cecilia...’

  ‘So have they now miraculously found him a permanent home, is that what you’re saying? That Tobias has been placed in a loving home, where he can live until he is eighteen, in the custody of foster parents, who will treat him like their own?’ No answer from my husband. Obviously.