You Disappear: A Novel

by Jungersen, Christian

  • • •

  So much would have been different if I’d stayed with Søren. My husband would be healthy. My children’s father would be healthy.

  • • •

  At twenty past ten, I hear a soft click from the front door. Niklas and Emilie did a good job of stealing down the stairs.

  They walk a little ways down the street before she mounts her bike; he doesn’t kiss her goodbye, doesn’t give her a hug either, and I think I manage to step back from the living room window before he turns around.

  I hear him go to bed, and even though I must have napped at least three hours, I’m ready to lie down too. For almost half a year now, I’ve slept alone on the air mattress on the floor, but I usually lie on my side of the bed first and read for a while. I’ve discovered that I have fewer nightmares if I read a women’s magazine just before falling asleep, and there’s no lamp over by the air mattress.

  A few hours later, Frederik wakes me as he shuffles around, toothbrush in his mouth, and sets his clothes out on the dresser. The alarm clock says half past two. I’ve fallen asleep in our bed with the night lamp on.

  It’s the worst imaginable time to start a serious conversation, but I find myself saying the first thing that crosses my mind. “You shouldn’t try to get Niklas to steal things for you.”

  Already as my mouth blurts out the words, I grow apprehensive. Now the rest of the night’s probably destroyed; I might have to listen to him yell at me for hours on end. And I have to go to work in the morning.

  But all he says is, “That’s something I could never do.”

  He smiles and then suddenly perks up—perhaps because lying stimulates him.

  “That would be a terrible thing to do,” he says. “I think that would be utterly, utterly, utterly wrong. And I haven’t done it.” He persists with this lie, though I haven’t contradicted him. “You’d have to be a real shit to have your son steal for you. That’s something I’d never do.”

  He stands quietly on the floor right in front of me, fixing his gaze upon me with unusual intensity.

  I’ve read enough neuropsychology to know the medical term for what he’s doing: he’s perseverating—meaning that he continues the action he’s in the middle of, long past what’s necessary.

  “Do you really believe I’d try to get Niklas to steal?” he asks. “I swear to you I wouldn’t. You can be one hundred percent certain that I wouldn’t do such a thing. One hundred percent. Because I think it’s wrong. One hundred percent.”

  I just want him to forget about it without going berserk. We’ll have to discuss it some other time. “No, I do know that,” I say. “Just come to bed now.”

  As he returns to the bathroom to spit out the last of the toothpaste, wearing a T-shirt and nothing else, I think about how easy I find it to shelve my impulse to talk about Niklas. Twenty seconds ago, the words just tumbled out. Was that due to poor blood flow through my frontal lobes as I was waking up? Did the blood start to surge then with fear and stress from the prospect of an argument? From what I’ve read, it seems very likely. Maybe this is as close as I can get to feeling how it is for Frederik all the time.

  Frederik settles down next to me with an auto-racing magazine that Thorkild bought him.

  I turn on my side to face him. “Sorry for saying that. I’m really glad that you had the strength not to get angry. You’re making progress all the time, and I appreciate it.”

  Irritated, he smacks his magazine down on the comforter. “Feelings, feelings, feelings! We always have to talk about the things you’re interested in! When can we talk about something I think is exciting?”

  “Well, but we talk about your speakers every single evening.”

  “That’s not so very much, is it? There’s also something called morning and noon and afternoon, and also night. And noon and morning.” He’s perseverating again.

  “Fine. So let’s talk about the speakers.”

  After I’ve listened once more to him go on about baffle plate density, harmonic overtone series, and Q factors, he calms down. I’m desperate to talk to someone about how I can support Niklas through all this in the best way possible, but Frederik’s started reading his magazine again. So I send Bernard a text message, figuring he’ll read it tomorrow.

  I have to think a long time to achieve the right casual tone. Whatever I do, it mustn’t sound desperate.

  Hi Bernard—if you have the time, I’d really appreciate talking to you about living with a teenage boy when you’re married to someone with brain damage. Not so much a lawyer talk—more of a support group talk. Thanks, Mia

  Within a few seconds, the display on my cell phone lights up. I take the call before it manages to ring.

  “I think about that a lot,” Bernard says. “I’d be very glad to talk it over with you.”

  “Were you awake too?”

  I can hear him hesitate, and then we both start laughing.

  “It’s not a big deal.”

  “We can talk tomorrow—or whenever it suits you.”

  “Yes, let’s do that. But we could also talk now.” His voice sounds gravelly, in a way it doesn’t during the day. “Was there something particular that happened between you and Niklas today?”

  I have to draw a deep breath while I consider how best to formulate it. “He’s never stolen before, but …”

  Behind my back, Frederik grunts irritably. “Isn’t it time for you to go down to your own bed now?”

  I turn over so I can see him. He looks at me over the top of his car magazine.

  I switch off my bedside lamp and gather up my comforter. In my ear I hear Bernard’s voice. “Was that Frederik?”

  “Yes, I’m disturbing his reading. Hold on a sec, and then we can talk.”

  Dear Mom and Dad,

  Mia has asked me to thank you so much for the money you’re loaning us so that we can make it through this period while I’m not allowed to work. I’m writing to tell you to give us more.

  It would be easy to think that ordinary, inexpensive particleboard would be just as suitable as high-density fiberboard.

  That’s WRONG!

  A large percentage of the distortion—and with it the obscuring of microdetails—of the musical essence of music itself!—of the reason that we listen to music at all!—of the subtle musical communication we hope to achieve!—of the joy of once more being able to listen to great art!—originate not with the speaker driver but the cabinet. The heavier the cabinet, the fewer the resonances. That is why some of the world’s most-respected and well-reviewed speakers weigh a great deal more than 200 pounds. A quick internet search should convince you of this point.

  Normal particleboard would be TOXIC for the sound quality that is the whole point of my endeavor. With such material, all my efforts in speaker design would be wasted.

  Concrete is heavier than high-density fiberboard, and many DIYers have therefore imagined that it would be ideal to cast their own cabinets in concrete. HOWEVER, its natural resonance has a higher frequency than wood’s, so even though a concrete speaker weighing hundreds of pounds has less resonant energy, the resonance will be more annoying because it lies in a tonal range where the ear is more sensitive.

  For more than a decade, concrete has been DEAD! as a material for the serious DIYer.

  Therefore, you can clearly see that you should give me more money. At least 20,000 crowns!

  Love,

  Frederik

  PS. Niklas got an A+ in his social studies project.

  PPS. You CANNOT solve the problem by constructing the cabinet asymmetrically to avoid standing waves!

  Standing waves are a problem inside the cabinet, and you can design your way out of it by being meticulous in your blueprints, but it doesn’t solve the problem with resonances that penetrate the cabinet walls.

  14

  Monotony is sometimes the only thing you want: the ball coming at you. The stroke, the exhale, the balance. Three quick steps to midcourt. And then the ball coming bac
k. Stroke, exhale, balance.

  Stroke, exhale, balance.

  I’m playing with Helena. The stroke and the breath, the sweat on my face, the balance; the sun low in the sky, the crunch of crushed stone underfoot.

  As I play I concentrate with everything I’ve got. And at the same time I dream. I dream about playing tennis: another game with Helena. We’re on the same court, the balls strike at other angles, the sun perching a bit lower in the sky. And in that game I dream of a third game. The sun even lower. The balls harder. The skid marks longer on the clay.

  Stroke, exhale, our hour is up and I wipe my brow, gasp for air. This utter physical exhaustion is the closest I come to happiness. We saunter back to the dressing room and junior players run toward us in the passageway, some of whom I taught in PE. The passage rings with their shouts, we say hello, and Helena knows how much our playing means to me.

  After showering, we sit on the club terrace, where we’re used to drinking our homemade smoothies. While Helena pulls out glasses, straws, and a thermos of banana-and-forest-berry smoothies from her bag, she tells me of her friend Clara, who for years has confided to Helena her deliberations about whether to leave her husband or not.

  It’s only at Helena and Henning’s parties that I’ve met Clara and Poul, but over time I’ve heard quite a bit about them, and their marriage sounds infinitely better than what Helena and I have had to put up with over the years. Yet Clara doesn’t find that her sex life meets her expectations.

  I’m sure I sound cranky, but it does seem out of proportion to me, her dissatisfaction with trivial problems. “Who splits up because the sex is subpar—at our age, after twenty years? Otherwise everybody’d get divorced.”

  “But people do in fact. They really do.”

  “Well okay, men do.”

  “Not just.”

  We watch the other players in silence awhile, and then Helena speaks up again.

  “It sounds to me as if everything’s pretty normal for them. Clara’s only problem is that before she got married, she had this boyfriend who set an erotic standard that no one’s been able to meet.”

  We squint over at the players sitting closest.

  “So what did he do?” I lean in across the table as I stir my smoothie with my straw.

  “From what I understand, it never stopped being like the first couple months. He kissed and massaged and licked and stroked and was completely obsessed with her and … I don’t know. When she describes it to me, she gets all agitated just from talking about it, but it’s still hard to get a clear sense … Apparently he was quite playful too, but in a natural way—not that porno stuff.”

  I nod as if I have some idea what she’s talking about. We laugh nervously.

  Helena takes a sip of her smoothie. “Pretty good, huh?”

  “Excellent.”

  “I sweetened it with cranberry juice this time—and no yogurt … Anyway, it’s obvious that Clara’s never gotten over those early nights—even after having three kids with Poul. That’s where the real problem lies.”

  “But it couldn’t have been just what they did in bed,” I say, feeling naïve. “He must also have been the love of her life, right?”

  Helena shrugs.

  It’s devolved into a rather pitiful tale, I think. “So why’d she break up with Superlover?”

  “He found somebody else. One day it was just, J’en ai assez.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, he was a Frenchman.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Hmm … Can’t remember.”

  Silence.

  “Really, I can’t.” She looks at me quizzically. “Why? Do you know any Frenchmen?”

  “Nooo …”

  She starts laughing a little and says, “Tell, tell!”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “But you’ve met some Frenchman, someplace or other. So what’s his name?”

  “It’s just Frederik’s lawyer, the guy I’m going over to see later to talk about Niklas. His name’s Bernard.”

  “Jesus! That was this fellow’s name too! Could be, he’s—”

  “It is? Really? That’s just—”

  “Ha-ha! You should see your face!”

  Helena doubles up in her seat with laughter. Three teenagers at the far end of the terrace turn around and look at us with disapproval, though they can’t possibly hear what we’re talking about.

  “I did say I couldn’t remember his name.”

  We turn the conversation to other things. Only in the parking lot, when we’re about to take leave of each other, do I say, “You don’t recall hearing anything else about that Frenchman, do you?”

  Helena no longer looks amused. She shakes her head as she studies my features a little too closely.

  • • •

  Bernard is no doubt a busy man, so I suggested we have our chat at his house. That way I’d take up as little of his time as possible.

  “Sounds good—and then you can meet Lærke,” he said right away.

  As I drive to Brede, I speculate about what his wife’s secret must be. A partially paralyzed, mentally handicapped woman who, eight years after their auto accident, still makes her husband dizzy with excitement. How does she do it?

  Once I’ve parked, I check how I look in the rearview mirror. I gave it everything today, so that Helena wouldn’t beat me too badly—I’m not at all in shape after taking a couple of months’ break when Frederik got sick. My skin’s still flushed from the morning’s effort, and my pores still open, but my eyeliner sits okay. I’ve already opened the car door when I discover damp patches under my arms. I do happen to have, on the backseat, a white short-sleeved blouse that I picked up from the cleaners. Nobody’s on the street, so I do a quick change in the car.

  Bernard’s low white house looks exactly as homey as I imagined, and the woods at the end of the street can’t be more than seventy-five yards away. I can smell dank soil and the Mølle River; everything seems so lush, even though here I’m closer to Copenhagen than when I’m home in Farum.

  But it’s not Bernard who opens the door. Instead I find myself standing before a striking older woman with an upright bearing and impressively upswept grey hair.

  “Hi. Bernard called to say that he’s been slightly delayed.”

  “Oh, but that’s all right.”

  I already know that she’s Lærke’s mother, Winnie, but we introduce ourselves anyway.

  “Lærke’s in the yard,” she says. “Can I get you anything?”

  “If you have any cold juice, that would be lovely.”

  “You bet. Just go out to her and I’ll make up a pitcher.”

  My eyes are drawn to a photo on the wall of the entry, the same holiday snap that Bernard showed me on his cell phone the other day: all that happiness, all those smiles. It’s odd that it stayed with me, for I only saw it briefly, yet I have the sense of having dreamt about it since.

  Winnie follows my gaze. “Yes, simpler times,” she says.

  We both stand there, looking at the picture.

  “One can get so angry,” she says. “But he’s dead now—the driver.” I keep staring stiffly at the photo, but not from curiosity anymore; I just know I can’t bear to look into Winnie’s face.

  “He changed lanes and rammed three cars into each other,” she says. “There was nothing they could do. Two seconds, and it was all over.”

  As we walk through the living room, I take in everything I can, trying to get a reading on their home without drawing too much attention to myself. Low ceilings, quite cozy, and lots of framed black-and-white art photographs on the walls—just the thing for Niklas. And thick art books on a set of shelves that cover an entire wall.

  They’ve clearly done something with the space, a bit like I have, but more inventively. More French signs and fun things they might have found at a flea market, less Danish design.

  The backyard is decidedly larger than ours, and it slopes gently down to a large impenetrable thi
cket. Perhaps that’s actually the woods extending all the way to here.

  Seated at a table in the middle of the lawn, Lærke looks, with her flowing blond curls beneath a broad-brimmed hat, as aristocratic and dreamy as her yard. She’s hardly aged in the past eight years. Blue tits dart about the blooming honeysuckle halfway down the slope.

  I walk all the way over to her before she notices me.

  “Hi, I’m Mia.”

  She smiles but doesn’t get up. I can see the grips of her crutches sticking out from the darkness under the table. “Oh yes, welcome. Good that you could come.”

  “What a magnificent yard you have!”

  “Thank you, we like it a great deal too.”

  “And it’s so well maintained! Are you the one who takes care of it?”

  “My mother does.”

  “I’ve got to say, it must be great having a mother like that.”

  “Yes, we like it a great deal.”

  I sit down. “Your mother’s coming out with some juice for us in a little bit.”

  “Well now, juice. That’s something I really like.”

  Everything is so inviting, so tempting, so marvelous, yet I feel like the healthy person whose hand approaches a dangerous pile of cards in the Iowa Gambling Task. I can’t say why, but there’s something about her replies that gives me a strong urge to retreat. Instead, I make an effort to find my cheeriest and most relaxed tone of voice. “We were just standing and admiring the picture of the four of you in your entryway.”

  “That’s from the Cévennes.” A long curly lock of blond hair has fallen across her forehead, but she leaves it there. “We love those mountains, they’re in France. Bernard’s family has a house in a village there, Aumessas. It’s our favorite place.”

  “I’ve never been down there.”

  “It’s lovely.” She smiles and says, “You’ve been tennising?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just like Bernard.”

  “Yes.”

  “I also tennised. Or … it’s not called that, is it?”

  “You also played tennis.”

  “Ah yes. Ha-ha!” She has a sweet, girlish laugh. “I plaid tennis.”