The American Girl

by Monika Fagerholm

  And she emptied the contents of Doris’s desk into a plastic bag. She took everything Doris had in it home with her, threw nothing away. Did not go through it either. The full plastic bag stayed there in her room in the darker part, under the bed. She thought about taking it to the cousin’s house, but before the breakdown when it was of immediate importance, the cousin’s mama was in the hospital, and after the breakdown, yes, after the breakdown, nothing was of immediate importance anymore. And, to be honest: there was no one else who made a claim on these things either. Schoolbooks, booklets, paper. Paper, paper, paper. And then a scarf that smelled of young-fresh-woman perfume, the new Doris, Micke’s Folk Band Doris.

  Sandra had in other words emptied the contents into a plastic bag that she had carried home and taken to her room in the house in the darker part.

  The desk had been carried out of the classroom. The spell was broken, life went on.

  Out with Doris and in . . .

  . . . in with Santa Claus!

  Said Doris-in-Sandra and Sandra could not hold back a big smile. Because it was Christmastime, undeniably.

  Ann Notlund and some other students from Doris’s class who happened to see her smile looked at her strangely. What was there to laugh about?

  No. No one understood. It was incomprehensible.

  “Nobody knew my rose of the world but me.”

  Said Doris-in-Sandra AND Sandra at the same time, together (though of course no one could hear it).

  AND Eddie, the dead girl. Eddie’s raspy voice, on that record. Another voice from the dead.

  And anyone could understand from this that the breakdown was close now.

  The connections of thought-feeling words were looser in Sandra. What existed instead was, for example, this: music. Strange melodies that played inside her, melodies that sometimes had a counterpart in reality, sometimes not. Melodies that were recognizable, that existed. Sometimes those that were unrecognizable, those that obviously did not exist.

  The Marsh Queen: I don’t know if the music is music.

  Sandra hung out with Birgitta Blumenthal, in a normal way. They did their homework together. Birgitta Blumenthal was good in school. Sandra needed quite a lot of help in many subjects, especially math because she had been gone so much earlier in the fall semester.

  Birgitta Blumenthal helped her. She was good at explaining things so you understood. Sandra appreciated that. She also appreciated that there was quite a large amount of seriousness at Birgitta Blumenthal’s, that is to say, she did not diverge from the topic more than necessary. If homework was going to be done, homework was done. If it was math, then they would do math.

  No monkey business. No “games.” Like with Doris Flinkenberg.

  Later there was time for relaxation. What was called spare time when you were in school. Sandra understood now, maybe for the first time, relaxing things. You watched television, read, played games, made puzzles, spoke about “everything between heaven and earth.” Ordinary things, most of all, as if it was the most remarkable thing of all: boys whom you were in some way or another interested in. Birgitta Blumenthal was also completely hypersuperextranormal in that respect. Her secrets on that front were completely ordinary secrets but she still acted as though they were anything but. She admitted under solemn circumstances that she was in love with her riding instructor whose name was Hasse and she could not stand that Tobias Forsström looked at her in “an unhealthy way.” “But you know old men.” Birgitta Blumenthal laughed. And yes, yes. Sandra laughed along, she knew about older men even if she did not have a clue about the details here but that was not important; the important thing was she acknowledged normal behavior when she saw it and acted properly accordingly.

  There were things that never arose, which they had done with Doris Flinkenberg, in their world. Things that never swelled over the borders, that never ever became larger than, larger than life, everything. That never burst. Burst. Exploded.

  Even if you then, that is, afterward, paid the price for it.

  The dream had ended. Real love died. If it could be said like that.

  They talked about what they were going to be when they grew up. That is what they were talking about when the breakdown occurred. Birgitta Blumenthal loved animals and dreamed about becoming a doctor for animals. “Not a doctor like Dad though everybody says so,” Birgitta Blumenthal assured her. “This is my very own idea.”

  “I don’t know,” Sandra said when it was her turn and the gin and tonic they had found in the bar had started taking effect. “Clothing designer, maybe.”

  It rolled out of her, over her tongue, and then it had been said.

  A highly normal wish, a totally normal answer to a totally normal question. That was how it was.

  “So exciting,” Birgitta Blumenthal said taking part and took a big gulp from her glass and made a face. “Wow. This is strong.” She whispered the latter, so that her parents who were taking their Saturday sauna on the floor below for sure would not hear them.

  “You think so?” Sandra said urbanely though she started feeling strange right after she had said it. “In the beginning maybe. But you get used to it.”

  “And it doesn’t taste good at all.”

  “It’s not supposed to taste good either.” Sandra said this with emphasis because now it was just as well to keep nagging about this one thing until the other—clothing designer—went away. This was normal, now it should be normal. Not like with Doris Flinkenberg in the end, and suddenly she remembered the terrible time too, when everything had flown away beyond rhyme or reason, into their own meanings. Yet every wave burns like blood and gold, as it had once played in Doris’s cassette player. But the night soon will claim what is owed.

  And the summer threw you away.

  In truth, it had been, with Doris, the best time. AND the worst. “Cheers.” Birgitta Blumenthal giggled. “It’s rocking, rocking.”

  But also for Sandra the floor was rocking properly despite the fact she had only tasted her drink. Rocked, rocked. The breakdown was an assumption anyway, alas alas, it could not be stopped, and it was not dependent on the alcohol rather on two words that had been said: clothing designer. It sang in her head quite cruelly. It was Doris-in-her, Eddie, and all order of other voices.

  A cacophony of the unbearable, of everything. Try now to be calm as though nothing had happened and celebrate a totally normal and relaxed Saturday evening.

  And this was the last thought that was somewhat normal inside Sandra.

  “Oh, now I’m starting to get drunk,” Birgitta Blumenthal whispered. And then she raised her voice, made a face in agreement at Sandra who tried not to look back. Everything was dangerous now, she stared at a seal pup who, with its flippers flapping desperately, was trying to get away from the poachers who were after it on the blue ice on the television screen, a hopeless undertaking. Living Nature, was the name of the program and it was on every Saturday evening at the same time.

  “So exciting. Wanting to be a clothing designer I mean. Tell me more.” And continued whispering, “It actually feels quite funny! I wonder if I’ll have time to sober up before Mom and Dad come up and it’s time for shrimp sandwiches?”

  At the Blumenthals’ they ate shrimp sandwiches every Saturday evening after the sauna; it was a pleasant ritual.

  Pang, the seal pup was shot.

  And the little silk dog wagged her tail.

  With Birgitta Blumenthal for example . . . one would certainly be able to solve a mystery and it would be the game it was intended to be, neither more nor less. Nothing else.

  But Doris, also the most lovely: would one be able to live without it? That which spilled over all banks?

  And PANG, unexpectedly it all came together. And it was there. The obvious answer to the question that it was impossible plus a lot of other things about guilt and secrecy and the most terrible of all, which they had come to, both of them together, more than brushed past, touched.

  And the consequence of it: D
oris’s death.

  In light of everything there was no possibility. It was not possible to live without Doris. There was no life after. No other possibility.

  Carry me, Doris, over troubled water.

  Oh! Who then? You then? Doris-in-her chuckled, full of scorn and derision. And with that it happened. There was no longer any security. PANG the breakdown crashed inside her.

  Like a stone in the well and the well that was her, Sandra, dark and bottomless. She quite simply passed out, falling to the floor with a thud. On the bottom floor Birgitta Blumenthal’s mother screamed, a short and suddenly childish cry, she remembered, or her body and head remembered, the bombs falling in the city by the sea and the bomb shelter. “The war is coming,” she thought but in the next moment she realized that this, it was absurd, but her husband was already paying attention to another cry, the kind that only their daughter Birgitta could produce when she was really upset or afraid. And now she was calling for HELP upstairs. And both parents had run up, barely had time to put on their identical light blue, terry cloth robes, and shortly thereafter they found the passed-out girl on the floor of the living room.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Birgitta Blumenthal said. “She just passed out. Maybe it’s . . . alcohol poisoning.” And she started confessing to what had been going on up in the living room without any of the adults really listening to her. The parents understood immediately that the alcohol was not the problem. This was something else, maybe something more serious than that.

  “She’s warm,” said Mr. Blumenthal who was a pediatrician and was kneeling on the floor next to Sandra Wärn. “Fever. Maybe it’s meningitis.”

  So besides: Sandra had in other words been farsighted enough to collapse in good hands.

  You could also look at it that way.

  Unlike Doris. Doris who had not had any safety nets. Doris who had to look death in the eye for real, absolutely defenseless and on her own.

  You could also look at it that way.

  • • •

  CLOTHING DESIGNER.

  Sandra did not know what happened. When she woke up the next time she was in her own bed, and the Islander and two unfamiliar young pucks of the female sex, rather made up and with teased hair and in some way exaggeratedly elflike, were standing next to the bed. At first she thought these strange women’s faces at the Islander’s side were part of an ongoing hallucination and that she, since she certainly recognized the Islander and understood she was lying in her own bed, thus found herself in a state between consciousness, insanity, and illness. But in the next second she understood that everything was for real. There was a realism about all of it and that was the Islander standing there with a Santa Claus hat on. Sandra had happened to collapse at exactly the point in time when a small, playful Christmas party, which the Islander had been looking forward to, had gotten started and these two unfamiliar female faces belonged to two, this you could say first after pediatrician Blumenthal had left the house in the darker part of the woods, erhm.

  Two unfamiliar female faces and a pale papa Islander face in the middle. Sandra smiled a faint smile at the whole situation, which was so amusing and in order to assure the Islander she was certainly still alive. Then she drifted off into confusion again. The fever rose to 102 degrees.

  Clothing designer. The thought itself became even crazier.

  She took one whore elf’s hand and squeezed it for all she was worth.

  Because it was Saturday evening and the party had, as said, almost started when the doorbell rang—a shrill buzzer signal (that doorbell was newly installed AFTER Doris’s death)—and Blumenthal the pediatrician almost scared the life out of a groggy Islander with guilty conscience at the ready, if nothing else just because in the capacity of his profession Blumenthal the pediatrician could inspire in any parent in a giddy party mood, when there were finally no children in the house, a bad conscience.

  “I have your passed-out daughter in the backseat. I could use some help.” Blumenthal the pediatrician’s first line had not exactly made the situation any better. And he, Blumenthal, was also known for his rather special, sometimes rather sadistic humor. And his predilection for drama. For example, once a long time ago during the time when Lorelei Lindberg was still there and everything was still different (that is to say, you could venture to be a bit drastic—later on sympathy for the Islander, who was carrying the load himself, so to speak, got the upper hand), in passing he pointed out to Lorelei Lindberg in the food store in the town center that a harelipped child who had been operated on would not always be able to count on a normal life without a division after. Admittedly physiologically, he had said, but maybe not mentally.

  Blumenthal the pediatrician was standing on the steps to the house in the darker part of the woods and during a fraction of a second he enjoyed the effect of his words, and then, when it slowly started taking effect, donned his objective doctor’s role again:

  “Presumably a fever. Nothing worse. Possibly as a result of mental exhaustion. The girl has been through a lot lately. And she has shown great bravery. Maybe too great. Now she has to rest and become well again at her very own pace.”

  With these words Sandra had been handed over to her own home, in her own bed, the great marital one, and in the middle of the party besides.

  The sudden interruption caused the party to stop abruptly. It did not end because of a command, but ebbed out. In any case right there, in the house in the darker part of the woods, maybe to continue somewhere else. Just before midnight a long line of taxis left the house in the darker part. Those were all the guests, with the exception of two women who stayed.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and held Sandra’s hand, with tears in her eyes. Who dried Sandra’s hot forehead with cool tissues that the other woman brought to the room. She also boiled tea, made sandwiches, lined up gingersnaps on a small plate, and brought everything in on a tray.

  Sandra did not eat or drink anything, she just squeezed a hand. A hand. She longed so terribly. Missed. And in that dazed state she found herself in, the longing was shaped into a name that just came out of her time and time and time again.

  “Bombshell. Pinky. Pink.”

  The women, who unfortunately did not know the Bombshell, of course did not even understand what she was talking about but did their best to calm her down.

  The Islander had locked himself in the rec room. He was in a bad mood. The party would have to continue and culminate without him. Not just the party. Everything else too.

  The next day, however, early on Sunday morning, he got up and started cleaning. He sent the women home of course because when Sandra woke up in the middle of the day the house was clean and empty. He also called Inget Herrman and asked her to come. As an exception Inget Herrman stayed in the house the following days also, even though it was the middle of the week.

  Sandra went through the house and searched—yes, for what? The party? It was melancholic in a way. Then she went to bed again. Lay there. Lost herself in lethargy. Did not get up for ages. Slept, slept, slept. For a thousand years.

  The fever came back, it rose and fell. Then suddenly, a few days later, it was gone. Days passed. Sandra had recovered physically but she stayed in bed regardless.

  No one said anything.

  “Rest,” pediatrician Blumenthal had said. “Become well. At your own pace.”

  • • •

  Sandra had personally made a decision. She would get up when there was a point to getting up. She had not thought about taking her own life. She thought about just remaining in bed and in the worst case dying, just by itself. But as long as she did not find a reason to get up she would not get up. All the voices in her were gone.

  But what looked like extreme passivity and monotony still were not. In any case not directly. Thoughts floated in and out of her head. A transistor played at night at the slightest disturbance in the air and the radio waves could reproduce themselves freely all the way to Luxembourg or wherever that radio s
tation was where the kind of music that was like pouring rain rushing in and through her head played.

  “I’m not in love. It’s just a crazy phase I’m going through now.”

  Longing, Pinky, it had been one word. A formula, a memory, an association. Now others came. “Just because I’m looking you up, don’t misunderstand me, don’t think it’s sorted now. I’m not in love, it’s only because—”

  It was the Boy. The longing that ran in that direction, again. Because he was there. The boy who was not a boy any longer. He was Bengt.

  She was not surprised to discover him outside the house. Not really. For the most part he stood on or near the jetty, which you could see well through the tree trunks now when the leaves had fallen and there was snow on the ground. He looked up at her room. She understood he wanted something from her.

  And she—

  She sat at the end of the large marital bed in the darkness in her room and stared out into the darkness. Looked straight at him, whom she discerned as a shadow there.

  Sometimes he stood unmoving and she had the idea they were looking at each other without seeing, but for the most part he moved nervously, like someone who is waiting and waiting and soon has been waiting too long usually does.

  “Who is that?” One day right before spring break when Birgitta Blumenthal had forced her way into Sandra’s sickroom she happened to catch sight of him, a shadow that was moving at the edge of the ice in the twilight.

  “Someone.” Sandra had shrugged her shoulders.

  “He’s staring this way. He doesn’t look . . . completely well.”

  “Mmm. And so?”

  “Are you scared?”

  Sandra sat up in bed and said:

  “Man. Why would I be afraid?”

  There had also been a distance, almost a threat, in her reply. She did not want Birgitta Blumenthal to be there. Did not want her pathetic everyday depictions, her pathetic homework assignments, her pathetic dreams (Hasse Horseman!), her pathetic dreams for the future and future prospects. Remember a saying from so long ago: a matchstick house with matchstick people who live a matchstick life.