[2013] The Heart Echoes

by Helena vonZweigbergk

  But that’s not true. Lena pauses, as if wondering whether to go back into that office to tell them as much.

  It’s not true that she’s no longer herself. She is very much herself—and becoming more so. Layer after layer has been peeled away, one outward trait after another has disappeared, and what’s left now is her true self.

  She has to talk to Martha.

  Lena touches her left wrist. She’s so used to wearing the watch that Martha gave her. A watch that matches her own. Martha changed hers to Swedish time, and Lena’s is always set to New York time so she’ll be better able to imagine what Martha is doing over there, far away. But she has left the watch at home. It’s shamelessly expensive and liable to be stolen if she brings it to the hospital. Lena stares out the window, trying to figure out what time it must be in New York.

  Six hours behind Stockholm time. Isn’t that right?

  The anesthesia is still having an effect on her, and so is the shock of what the doctor said, his words taking the shape of an origami bird drifting down, one side black, the other white, with no nuances in between. Lena grips her left wrist to keep her hand from shaking. So that’s it. For real. It’s as if the truth has different layers, and the layer now revealed makes a brutally simple appearance. That’s what will happen. There’s no poetry left, no metaphors, no form of abstraction or distance.

  That’s it. Plain and simple.

  Both hands are shaking now, and she’s scared. She can’t figure out what the hell time it is in New York, and her hands just keep shaking and shaking.

  Suddenly Kerstin is in front of her, and Lena sees that her mother’s cheeks are bright red from crying.

  Lena squeezes her wrist hard and yells at her mother, “Can’t anybody tell me what the fucking time is in New York?”

  And as she stares at Kerstin, her mother falls apart.

  “Lena, what on earth are you saying? I don’t understand. I don’t know what to do.”

  Kerstin sinks onto the bed next to Lena. She puts her arm around her daughter, resting her head on her shoulder, and then she sobs so hard her whole body shakes. And it’s as if the trembling in Lena’s hands diminishes the more her mother shakes. Lena sits there, stiff and not moving, allowing herself to be hugged. The more emotion Kerstin shows, the more stony-faced Lena becomes.

  “We’ll get through this, Mamma,” Lena says. “Take it easy. We’ll get through it.”

  Kerstin looks at her daughter, doubt clouding her face.

  “We will!” Lena insists, even though she feels out of breath. As if she had to climb a steep slope in order to utter those words.

  “I’m sorry,” Kerstin whispers, wiping away the tears.

  Lena notices that her mother’s nail polish is chipped and there is grime under her fingernails. Kerstin, who is usually so well groomed.

  Lena takes her mother’s hand and examines her fingernails more closely.

  “You can’t let yourself go like this, Mamma,” she says. “This won’t do. You have to pull yourself together. We both do.”

  She has to talk to Martha, but she’s also scared to do that. As evening shadows slip into her hospital room, Lena doesn’t know what to do with herself. She feels restless, yet she is having a hard time moving. She has sent Kerstin home and told her to get some rest, then come back in the morning. There’s a clock in the corridor that gives a slight lurch every time a minute passes. Lurch. At that moment Martha sighs, wondering what her lover in Sweden is doing. Lurch. Now she’s laughing as she remembers something funny they said to each other. Lurch. Now her own fingers are rubbing her body as she closes her eyes and imagines Lena touching her.

  Lena goes into the bathroom to wash her face and comb her hair. It’s impossible for her to stand up straight. Cautiously, she touches the bandage over the wound in her abdomen. Tears sting her eyes as she realizes that her body is still working hard to heal. The edges of the incision are starting to close up and the tissue is growing, strong, resilient, and firm. To a certain extent, her body is still her friend.

  Lena tiptoes back to bed, aware of the hospital staff nearby. She doesn’t want to draw their attention. It’s past midnight now, which means it’s six o’clock in New York, and Martha is probably just sitting down to have dinner with her family. Ted usually doesn’t get home from work until late. Martha normally eats with the children, and around eight it’s possible to get hold of her. That’s around two a.m. in Sweden. But Lena can’t help trying to call her right now.

  With great effort she takes off the hospital gown and puts on her own top—the one Martha likes so much. She sits down at the window with the trees and sky visible behind her. She doesn’t want to say that she’s in the hospital. Not yet.

  And suddenly, as if by some miracle, Martha is there and ready to talk. Lena thinks she’ll have to force herself to look happy, but that doesn’t prove necessary. It turns out to be so easy. Martha is like a jolt of oxygen.

  Lena wishes she could be at home in front of her computer, because the image would be so much bigger. But at least she can see Martha.

  “What’s up, baby? You look a little pale.”

  It’s Lena who says that to Martha, because she does look pale, and her expression is strange. Her smile isn’t the same, either. She doesn’t know, does she? thinks Lena.

  The thought scares her. If Martha has found out what’s going on with her, their private paradise will vanish. The cancer is like a snake, sly and insidious. She just wants to hold on to things for a little while longer—hold on to that carefree, happy, warm feeling. She swallows hard. Not yet, please not yet.

  Martha is looking straight at her, and yet she doesn’t seem to see her. She doesn’t answer Lena’s question, but instead just stares into the computer with an odd, unfamiliar, and remote expression.

  “Hello?” Lena has lowered her voice, trying for that bantering tone they often use.

  Martha responds with a wan smile and finally says, “There’s something I have to tell you, honey . . .”

  Martha starts speaking, her voice hoarse and subdued. She launches into a monologue, and it’s clear she has rehearsed what she planned to say. Ted is a tolerant and generous man. They trust each other and rely on their shared concern for their home and their children. Each allows the other a lot of freedom, but they’re always careful to ensure that their life together is never affected, that the positive atmosphere they have created continues. But yesterday Ted voiced his objections. He said that Martha can’t go on living this way. He can’t accept it. Even though he knows nothing about the actual situation, he’s noticed that Martha has been increasingly involved elsewhere and it’s started to consume her. She always seems lost in thought and more often looks sad instead of happy.

  “I can’t do this anymore, honey,” Martha says.

  How is Lena supposed to respond?

  There’s nothing she can say. She manages a feeble, “Please, no. Don’t do this.” But her voice is weak and she’s holding back tears. She hardly dares to breathe. They stare at each other and neither speaks for a long time.

  Eventually, Martha tells Lena this relationship has been so amazing. She has been overwhelmed by her love for Lena. She is always thinking about her. The other day she forgot Frank’s play at school because she was researching hotels online for Lena’s next visit. She was so immersed in her plans for finding a room with a Jacuzzi and a balcony that Frank ended up standing on stage in his squirrel costume, with neither of his parents in the audience.

  “And I’m so afraid that all I really do is make you unhappy, Lena. That sooner or later I’d end up hurting you . . .”

  Lena watches as Martha talks. The image on her iPhone looks smaller and smaller as Martha continues with her bullshit about how she is making Lena unhappy and it’s not going to work in the long run. Lena has a sudden urge to beg for mercy. Like Marie Antoinette’s lady-in-waiting, who apparently tried to bribe her way to a temporary reprieve when she realized she was about to lose her head. Just
a little more time.

  Please, please, just a little more time.

  But Lena doesn’t say that. When Martha’s speech ends and she looks at Lena with despair in her eyes, Lena is the one who offers comfort.

  “Darling Martha. Please don’t cry. I love you.”

  Martha bursts into tears, anyway, and covers her face with her hand. When she sees that, Lena has to gasp for breath.

  “Take your hand away,” she tells Martha in Swedish. She’s so upset that she stumbles over the words and forgets to speak English. “Please, put . . . how do you say it? Shit. Put away your hand. I want to see you. Please.”

  At that moment she notices someone else come into the room behind Martha. It’s Frank.

  Martha turns to look at her son and yells, “Could you please leave me alone for just five more minutes?” When she turns back to the computer, both she and Lena know that what she just said clearly illustrates that things can’t go on.

  They both pull themselves together and offer the other a brief smile before saying good-bye.

  Lena puts down her phone, staring straight ahead. That’s all she can manage to do—as if her shattered heart might hurt less if she sits absolutely still. A cautious knock on the door makes her turn her head slightly.

  It’s one of the nurses, though Lena can’t see very clearly because her room is in shadow, while there’s a bright light shining in the corridor.

  “I thought I’d ask if you want something to help you sleep.”

  “Yes,” Lena replies. “Yes, I would. I definitely would.”

  Lena knows what she’ll see when she looks in the mirror the next day. She knows that expression. She goes back to her bed, sobbing, and pulls up the covers. When anyone comes into the room, she is curt and dismissive.

  She is thinking about what happened during that summer so long ago. She remembers saying, “He’s gone, Astrid. He’s not coming back.”

  Then came all those worthless, fleeting phrases spoken by everyone rushing to console her sister: “Well, he might come back, of course. He probably just got scared. Don’t forget how young he is. You’ll see, it will all work out.”

  But Astrid looked at Lena, and both of them knew, even though Astrid wasn’t fully aware of everything that had gone on. They both knew it was over. Just as Lena now knows her relationship with Martha is over. The realization is like a sharp lethal blow to the head, and there’s no use pretending anything will change. It’s impossible to survive being abandoned by the person who is the great love of your life. Astrid managed to survive at least partially. But Lena will not.

  When Lena looked in the mirror and pictured Astrid in her mind’s eye, she thought that from now on the rest of her life would be merely a formality.

  Was that how Astrid felt back then?

  Lena turns on her side with her cheek resting on her hands. She closes her eyes, thinking, All right, let’s get this over with now.

  It’s the only solace she has left.

  Kerstin arrives early in the morning. She has brought crossword puzzles, grapes, books, and comfortable slippers for both of them. She sits down close to Lena without saying much as she strokes her daughter’s cheek.

  Lena’s sure she’ll go mad if her mother just sits there staring at her the whole time. Then she’ll have to pretend to be alive, and Lena can’t do that.

  Kerstin has a way of moving her lips as if warming them up whenever there’s something she wants to say. “I have to tell you that something terrible has happened,” she says now, with a slightly embarrassed look. “Well, what you have to . . . I mean there’s so much . . . But something else—”

  “What’s happened?” Lena asks, interrupting her.

  “Well, I didn’t want to say anything about it yesterday, but some men beat up Viktor. He was in Copenhagen with his girlfriend. He was supposed to be visiting Michael, you know. And it’s just so typical that something like this would happen.”

  Lena sits up in bed. “How is he? Is he okay?”

  “He’ll be fine. They’re back home now, and that’s a good thing. I never thought he should have gone there in the first place.”

  Lena sinks back on the pillow. Viktor.

  “Where’s Pappa?” That’s what Viktor kept saying at the end of that summer. “Where’s Pappa?” Which prompted everyone’s nervous explanations. Viktor’s simple question released reactions and emotions that made the small boy even more upset and scared.

  He was so young, but was it possible that something died inside of Viktor back then, when he too lost someone he dearly loved?

  What effect did that have on him?

  “At least Viktor is home with Astrid now,” Kerstin says. “And she wants to come and see you, of course, as soon as she can get away. I’ll call her and—”

  “No, Mamma, don’t.”

  Kerstin looks confused. She laughs a bit, as if she thinks Lena is joking.

  But Lena is adamant. “I don’t want Astrid to come here. I can’t explain why. Just tell her I’d rather not have visitors. I need time to think, that’s all.”

  “But—”

  “I said no!”

  When she feels strong enough, she will build a fortress. It will be the last thing she does. She will build a fortress as a means of coping with the way things have turned out. She can’t look forward, because up ahead there is only death for her. But she might be able to look back.

  ASTRID

  This can’t go on.

  Astrid has an impulse to turn to anyone who happens to walk past and say out loud, “This can’t go on.”

  Life has not turned out the way she’d expected. She has convinced herself that she’s used to feeling like an outsider—that it’s simply a side effect of who she is. She has nothing that might interest anyone else. Nothing that even she finds worthy of attention.

  She is someone who is always standing on the periphery.

  She was once abandoned and out of fear she retreated to a tower, where she has observed life from a distance ever since. She has never really dared come back down.

  And?

  It’s possible to live that way.

  But after what Sandra told her, she realizes it can’t go on like this. Nothing can continue as usual.

  Astrid pauses in the middle of the sidewalk, right in front of the Konsum supermarket. If she takes another step, it will mean that she accepts the circumstances of her life the way they have turned out.

  Here I am, living in a world that has betrayed me, she thinks. A world that has conspired against everything I understood and that is undermining the stability of all I thought was rock solid.

  As she stands there, she meets the gaze of a little girl coming toward her, who is carrying a grocery bag that seems too heavy for her. The girl gives Astrid a quick glance, but then turns her full attention to the task at hand.

  Astrid starts off again. Moving like a sleepwalker, she goes inside the supermarket. Regardless, she has no choice but to continue forward.

  Lena and Michael. Sandra and Lena. And herself, alone.

  Loneliness is the worst. That’s what she wants to yell as she picks up a shopping basket at the entrance. She looks around the store at the other customers who all seem engrossed in selecting groceries.

  I know you’re lonely, too, she thinks. You were born that way and you’ll die that way, but you won’t ever have to live with the acute loneliness that I’ve been forced to endure. I am an island. Do you understand? I’m some kind of damn island.

  Astrid takes a deep breath and blinks several times, trying to pull herself together. The only thing to do is keep moving forward.

  She carries her loneliness like an inaccessible core in her soul. It is a place that echoes forlornly, no matter how much Henrik and the children shower her with love.

  As Astrid takes a carton of milk from the cooler she thinks, There’s always something I refuse to say or reveal. As if I’m constantly banished from the most candid of statements, from uninhibited interactio
n, from experiencing the freedom and security of having both my feet firmly planted on the ground.

  She catalogs all the ways in which she has faltered and stumbled, all the things she has concealed.

  She has never truly felt in the moment when interacting with other people.

  An hour ago, when Astrid went to the hospital to take Lena the things her sister had requested, she was shaking with resentment. In that instance, she couldn’t even play her expected role.

  Of course not. How could she?

  Lena didn’t seem surprised to see her. Astrid realized that someone must have told her she was coming. It was probably Sandra. For a moment Lena blinked nervously, but that was her only reaction. Mostly she looked completely exhausted. Astrid panicked for a few seconds when she noticed there was not even a spark of life left in Lena’s eyes.

  “How . . .”

  That was the only word Astrid could muster when their eyes met. How? But there was no answer to that. None at all. Astrid took out the things she had brought in the paper bag and Lena barely gave them even a glance.

  Astrid couldn’t be angry with her sister. What sort of revenge could she seek from Lena, when illness had already taken such a toll? How could she be mad when a great sorrow was approaching?

  “I’m going up to Fårö this summer,” Lena suddenly said, as Astrid stood there wondering what to do with that stray word how still hovering in the air. “I don’t want to stay here in town,” Lena went on. “I can’t stand the thought that anybody can pop over and see me like this.”

  Astrid had just sat down on a chair next to the bed, but she made a move to get up when she heard what Lena said.

  “I’m talking about friends,” Lena told her. “Not you.”

  Astrid sank back down on the chair, feeling both confused and stupid. So she’s Lena’s sister but not her friend?

  “I’m sure your friends want to—”

  “I know that,” Lena interrupted her. “But I need to be alone. I don’t want to have to comfort everybody and answer dumb questions about how I’m feeling and then go through my whole medical history. There are other things I want to think about.”