The American Girl

by Monika Fagerholm

  She would stand at the bar and suddenly feel arms around her, octopuslike everywhere, breath stinking of beer in her ear. She turned around quickly and did not recognize him at first. He would slur about some girlfriend who had come to visit that time in the apartment. But now, he would say and take hold of her again, and she would have to tear herself free and try to escape to the restroom but he would also be waiting for her there outside. For a while she would think it would be impossible to get rid of him. He would not be “nice” either. He would be aroused and wild as if he knew WHAT he was dealing with.

  An erhm. Like Bombshell Pinky Pink.

  Also later, at the university, she would run into him. So many times those last days when she was still there in the city by the sea, she would start wondering if he was real or some kind of crazy mentally disturbed hallucination in line with the one the French movie star Catherine Deneuve experienced in the movie Repulsion, which depicted a young and unusually beautiful woman’s gradual sinking into insanity.

  (But if he wasn’t a hallucination, what was he then? An omen? Doris-in-Sandra was having fun, or was she? Sometimes Sandra could no longer tell Doris-in-her’s laugh from Doris-in-her’s crying. They were so alike.)

  She had seen the movie Repulsion in Rita’s and Kenny’s company a few weeks earlier, at the Film Archive. Rita and Kenny liked the kind of movies where tall, picture-perfect women who were similar to them became crazy or showed their emotions intensely in various subtle ways—for the most part that they needed to start tearing off their clothes during the main scenes was a part of the description of the illness or the intensity of the range of emotions.

  Sandra remembered Inget Herrman again: “Kenny hasn’t had any childhood. She has so much to make up for.”

  Though most of all they loved going to the Film Archive, where everyone who was anyone in their circles, who counted, would go back then. And Sandra, Sandra tagged along. Sometimes it was actually like that. She did not want to. But she had nothing else to do, the loneliness became too great. She tagged along.

  But the youth. The insecure, shy, skinny, unpleasant student. Sometimes she thought he was following her; it was possible of course, but she would never get clarity in the situation while she was still there. If they met, for example at the university, she would look past him, pretend not to see him. The strange thing was he would do the same. He would definitely not give any hints that it was him, the same person who had chased after her in an intoxicated state on the city’s streets the same night she had tried to shake him off in the underground disco Alibi.

  But he would be there. Everywhere.

  Maybe she was crazy. Not in the Catherine Deneuve way.

  But in her very own, invisible, unsubtle way.

  The harelip way, Doris-in-her filled in.

  Yes, yes, Sandra surrendered. And then, when you have surrendered, it was just a matter of carrying on.

  Then it became as she said. The harelip is here again. But completely without power or energy. Just crazy. Shut up in her own craziness.

  For example that time, the very last time she met Inget Herrman before she left (when she had already given up all hope of meeting Inget Herrman again: Kenny maintained she was wandering around on the streets in a bad state, she had friends who had seen Inget Herrman, and Kenny said troubled, that she so wished she could do something for her. But nothing became of that either. To do or not to do. You could do nothing for someone you could not find), then it might as well have been a part of Sandra’s inner landscape that was in the process of drifting away without any foundation, without reason, Sandra realized that herself. But that it was real made the whole thing even more confusing and crazy.

  IS it like this, has everything tilted? For real, in reality, she would have liked to have asked someone, but there was no one to talk to now when also Inget Herrman was sitting there in the stairwell in the university’s other main building, bleating. And it was Inget Herrman she had turned to then, earlier. Inget Herrman who had said to her, “See me as a bit of a mother. I can help. Try . . . provide protection.”

  She had looked at Sandra as she usually did when she meant what she said. Sandra had not doubted. Not then. Not later.

  It was just that—looking it in the eye—she did not need a mother right now. It was quite simply a letter she needed to show. A letter to you. Doris’s last letter.

  “I took it from you. I was going to give it to you. But. Here it is now.”

  But it was not like that, not such a loaded meeting. These weeks when she tried to find Inget Herrman, without success, but just seemed to end up in the arms of overgrown boys all the time, she had reconciled with the idea of telling everything. About the game, the games.

  But what would Doris have said if she had known about the letter, that it was unopened? She had to show it to Inget Herrman, talk about it. She had to. Was it not all a bit ironic?

  And the height of irony. Because suddenly, one day, Inget Herrman had been there.

  On the stairs. It was in other words a staircase, another staircase, an ordinary one, but one of the very longest in the university’s new main building. It was a staircase that went around, around through the building up until the highest floor right under the roof where the department of drawing was located and where Kenny sometimes went to sketch.

  Sandra had a lecture on the fourth floor this semester and she did not know if she was on her way to that class when she suddenly found herself on the stairs that afternoon. She did not know: it should be said just that artificially. She had wandered around in that way the last few days. From the streets where she walked around, walked and walked in her heavy hiking boots, to the hotels’ lunch cafés, to the university, but less and less in any systematic or logical order. It would actually happen that she found herself in the wrong type of clothes—clothes worthy of a striptease dancer in courses for oral proficiency, in boots in hotel bars. And what you did not get then was a “bite” (or how it should now be said), you barely got let in.

  Just this afternoon when she almost tripped over Inget Herrman and one whom she knew was called the Birdman, she was dressed in hotel clothes, a striptease dancer on wobbly high heels on her way to oral proficiency on the fourth floor. But she did not get any farther than that in other words. Because Inget Herrman and the Birdman were sitting on the stairs drinking wine and being in the way. And it was no hallucination brought on by insanity, that she could swear to, it was for real.

  “Shhh Sandra,” said Inget Herrman who immediately recognized Sandra despite the clothes, despite everything.

  “We’re sitting here waiting for our professor. We’re going to have a serious word with him,” Inget Herrman whispered but certainly loud enough so it more or less echoed everywhere. “Namely we have a definite feeling he’s been hoodwinking us in his review of our thesis.”

  And while she said that, that subjective feeling inside Sandra, all hope was lost.

  Maybe Inget Herrman saw Sandra’s openly unhappy, desperate expression because then she changed her tone of voice and, as it were, pretended to speak normally, as if she had complete control over a bizarre situation that in reality you could have no control over at all.

  “I’m having my bohemian period,” Inget Herrman whispered. “Don’t say anything to the Islander. Do you have money? I’m broke. Can I borrow some?”

  And it had echoed everywhere and Sandra fumbled in her pockets after bills, coins, but Inget Herrman had grabbed her entire bag.

  “Let me!”

  And Sandra tried to pull her bag back.

  But Inget started singing, or humming a bizarre little melody while she dug in Sandra’s bag for bills, coins.

  And while Inget Herrman sang and picked coins out of Sandra’s bag, roughly, so that pens and things, for example paper, for example the letter, flew around, the boy came. On the stairs. They were in the way, a moment, all three (Sandra, Inget, the Birdman). He looked at her, Sandra, and recognized only her and then managed to squ
eeze past. Said nothing, but then, at that stage, no words were needed.

  And then the guards were there and were going to throw all of them out. Inget Herrman was not in the mood to accept any orders from anyone and was not thinking about giving in without a fight. Then Sandra saw her chance and ran away, out. Collided with people in the swinging doors and almost rushed into the arms of two tall, beautiful, superb women. Rita, on her way to one of her lectures, and, yes, of course, Kenny.

  “Aha. Where are you off to in such a hurry?” Kenny asked nicely when Sandra had practically landed in her arms, but it was too much, it was enough.

  Now it was enough with all of it!

  Sandra tore herself free and ran away, raced through the city, which you do when you race. Was on her way forward at a high speed, but without knowing where.

  And Doris-in-Sandra laughed.

  She was really having fun now.

  You’re really going bananas.

  The bonds we tied, no one can undo.

  Then it had already happened. Inget Herrman had thrown the letter away herself, among many many other papers. Scattered around her in the tall stairs in the new university building without any of them being able to stop it.

  Doris, Doris—if you only knew—

  “When you read this I will have . . .”

  To the sea, yes, she had run. It had glittered so. And she remembered another time, many years ago, on another planet in another life.

  A midsummer’s day with Doris Flinkenberg and Inget Herrman. How they had walked over the Second Cape down to the beachhouse and how the sea suddenly opened itself up in front of them, so new and glittering. And Inget who told them about the American girl.

  Light blue glitter, the water reflected in the monstrous façade of the Glass House.

  “Walk on the water for me, idiot,” Doris-in-her whispered in her overstrung way.

  “You are just,” said Sandra to Doris-in-her, “not really right.”

  And now it sailed up, finally. The image of the two of them, Sandra Night and Doris Day (and vice versa) who knew everything and could. The girls in the game with Loneliness&Fear in green paint over the stomachs of the shirts that Sandra had sewn for them.

  How they had thought there was something invincible in it in any case.

  Everything’s weary pettiness, instead. Stand face-to-face with it. Seeps through the fingers.

  Pang. Doris shot herself.

  Doris wrote a letter to Inget Herrman.

  A letter that Inget Herrman never read. Never opened, it remained there among her material for her thesis.

  Everything’s weary pettiness.

  It was a pity about Doris.

  It was a pity about Sandra too.

  The mother by the sea. Come, come to me. The attractive, attractive Lorelei, like her in the poem. On Åland. “The aunt.” Standing at a window.

  “Come to me.”

  The most secret story

  AS RITA TOLD IT TO KENNY IN A ROOM IN AN APARTMENT IN the city by the sea, in the middle of the night, while Sandra was eavesdropping in the hall, in her pajamas, on the shoe rack, among the shoes.

  . . . To some children who are alone or just in need of excitement, attention, a splash of eccentricity, if even self-made or imagined, a Pippi Longstocking in a frock and red pigtails, or Mary Poppins with an umbrella and a fiancé with a fedora and striped suits comes along. To us, Solveig and me, came, maybe a little too late in life, we had already turned ten, a Miss Andrews.

  Our godmother. That’s what she said about herself anyway, that was what she wanted to be for us. We named her. We loved that name. She liked it too. She said “Misss Andrews.”

  Solveig and I, we had a habit of hanging out in the garden outside the empty house on the First Cape, in the tumbledown garden, the one in English style. That means everything in it is measured exactly to a T and planned ahead of time, even though it can’t be seen because it should give the impression that it’s overgrown. She, Miss Andrews, taught us that among other things.

  She spoke a lot about her interest in gardens, “not necessarily the practical work, it can certainly be monotonous sometimes and there are gardeners for that,” but for the ideas behind everything, the thoughts themselves. She spoke about her own Winter Garden that she had put so much time and effort into. We were, well, fascinated. Miss Andrews stirred a lot of things in us. Longing, want, and desire. All of that before we knew who she really was, where she came from.

  We didn’t talk about those sorts of things those mornings at Bule Marsh when Miss Andrews taught us English and in return we taught her how to swim; it was a trade. We never asked any questions either. In some way we learned early on that it was important we not ask any questions. That it was a matter of waiting until she told us. Sometimes we waited in vain; then we just had to satisfy ourselves with that.

  But this was before everything. Before Eddie, the American girl as she was called in the District, all of that. It was before Doris Flinkenberg also, in the beginning’s beginning. In the evenings, in the dark, we found ourselves on a fixed place in the garden on the First Cape where there was a crystal ball. From that place you had a view over the entire District. You could see the cousin’s house, where a light in the cousin’s mama’s kitchen was shining as always. She was in the kitchen, with newspapers, crosswords, and her baking, it was comforting to know that. Later in the evening, always at the same time, she called us in. All her “boys,” which included the girls, that was just the way you talked in the District, for evening tea in the cousin’s house. Bengt, Björn, Solveig, Rita. When the cousin’s mama came out on the steps and called out into the twilight, “Boys, time to come home now,” everyone started moving toward the dull light in the kitchen window of the cousin’s house from their own directions. It shone warmly like a lantern in a valley.

  Later, when Björn was dead, that changed too of course. Bengt didn’t come in anymore. The cousin’s mama took tea in a thermos and a sandwich in a basket out to him in the barn. Solveig and I, we stayed in the cottage by ourselves. In the beginning anyway because we were scared senseless. And yes, when Doris came, everything became so different. There was nothing wrong with Doris Flinkenberg, it was just a bit difficult to have the energy to deal with her after everything that had happened.

  But from there, from the garden on the First Cape, you also saw other things. For example the great woods, which started behind the First Cape, the one the English Garden imperceptibly blended into. A way into the woods, the marshes. First, Second, Third, Fourth. And the only one of the marshes that had a real name, Bule Marsh, where the public beach was for a short while before it was moved to a lake west of the town center.

  Farther north (out of sight but you knew they were there) the outer marshes where the frozen and beaten Doris Flinkenberg came from, the one who was found in the house on the First Cape wrapped in a blanket.

  . . . But in the garden, there was of course the other direction. The Second Cape with the housing exhibition, it was the first year after it. The houses were sold but life on the Cape was still new. Bencku was crazy about the Second Cape and the houses there, he knew everything about them and it was important to him that it should be that way, that he was involved, that he was a part of it. But Solveig and I, we didn’t bother about the Second Cape, the sea certainly, but as a body of water to swim in—that first year we mostly fretted about the public beach being moved from the bay surrounded by cliffs on the Second Cape to Bule Marsh because the area was now private. Though the fretting soon passed. Bule Marsh also had its good sides. It also became interesting later, when Miss Andrews came.

  But so, it was one evening, a while after we had met Miss Andrews in the English Garden, and we looked around. Then Solveig out of nowhere yelled, “Look! There she is! Miss Andrews!”

  It was in other words at the Glass House on the Second Cape, just outside. It was the baroness’s house. And Miss Andrews—she was the baroness herself. She was the one who lived in the
Glass House; it was a remarkable discovery. We became very excited about it at first.

  But it was like this that it started, a bit earlier, this was how we met Miss Andrews at Bule Marsh’s beach. It was an early summer morning and we had gotten up at five o’clock already to go swimming. We were going to become swimmers, that was our plan. Not a secret plan exactly, but certainly unofficial in such a way that neither of us wanted to talk openly about it. Not to mention how trite it would sound.

  Training was required in order to become swimmers, training, and even more training, and a disciplined life. It was also a matter of not bothering about all the peripheral factors, like how the weather was and if it was cold in the water—in the beginning of the summer it was always needless to say ice-cold in Bule Marsh. It’s deep and the current is strong. But you got used to the cold and the currents. We jumped headfirst from Lore Cliff, taught ourselves the high jump all on our own, me and Solveig, though Solveig was the better one. “It’s just the two of us,” said Solveig and she said it all the time, already back then.

  We were well under way with our morning training when it happened. She came out of the bushes, hullabaloo, like an animal. At first we thought it was a moose or something, but before we had time to become really frightened she was standing there in front of us, didn’t introduce herself but asked, almost harshly and strictly, who we were and what we were doing there.

  We were quite surprised. This is what she looked like, Miss Andrews: She was maybe fifty–sixty years old, both of us thought old, Solveig and I, and light. Light hair, light skin, slender, thin, and tough so to speak like some women are who look good for their age, you know. She spoke quickly and nervously and didn’t breathe between sentences. And sweat often ran down her face, her cheeks and forehead were scarlet. Because of the excitement of a game—an adult game.

  We would also learn that Miss Andrews had another way of speaking. Not entirely different, but she had many different vocal pitches for different situations. When she was someone else in other places, the ones we didn’t have access to. But we understood that later. Places where she wasn’t what she said she wanted to be for us. Our godmother.