The Beloved Son

by Jay Quinn

  Karl walked over to her and bent to wrap her in a hug. “Don’t worry, Mom,” he said assuringly. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  “Thank God,” she said as she looked up at him and smiled. “Your father watches me like a hawk ever since I accidentally dropped a cigarette between the sofa and the side table in the living room and didn’t recall doing it.”

  Karl walked around the counter and into the kitchen, and found the coffeepot nearly full. “I’m not so sure I approve of you smoking, either, but because of your health,” Karl said as he found a mug in its familiar place in the cabinet over the coffeemaker.

  His mother laughed. “I am seventy-seven years old. Smoking hasn’t killed me yet and I haven’t had as much as a cold in two years,” she said as Karl poured his coffee. “It’s one of the few pleasures I have left now that I have to forgo most of my cocktails.”

  “Why have you stopped drinking?” Karl asked as he made his way back to the table and sat down.

  Annike chuckled. “It’s this medicine I take these days. It’s bad enough on its own, but if I have a scotch, or more than a glass of wine, I quickly become a vegetable.”

  Karl looked at her sharply, then masked his concern with a studied sip from his mug.

  “Your father has spoken with you about me, I suppose,” his mother said casually.

  “He’s told me you have some challenges right now, yes,” Karl answered carefully.

  Annike drew the cigarettes and lighter from her robe pocket and lit one, inhaling deeply. “In perspective,” she said before blowing out the smoke, “this,” she said, regarding the cigarette, “is not a real problem.”

  “True,” Karl allowed grudgingly.

  “JAG er snart går till bli en spoke,” Annike said happily. I am soon going to be a ghost “JAG skal bli så mycket som av mig själv så JAG kannaframför då,” she added confidently. I am going to be as much of myself as I can before then.

  Karl looked at her with some perplexity. “Sorry, Mom, I only caught something about you being… something, and you trying to be…” He lifted his hands and opened them questioningly.

  “I’m sorry, Son. I was only testing you. I know they say I drift in and out of my Swedish without thinking of it.” She laughed cheerfully. “Sometimes it just seems easier to use it to say what I mean. I do it without thinking,” she explained, then added with a sigh, “English is such a difficult language. It is clunky.”

  “But Dad and I can’t keep up with you in Swedish,” Karl said patiently.

  “I wish I had been more encouraging with you when you were small,’’ Annike said, and reached across the table to pat his hand. She took a drag off her cigarette and played its tip around the rim of the ashtray. “But you were a very stubborn child. “I Engelsk, Mama,” you used to say. “In English, Mama. By the time you were five, you were determined to speak English only.”

  “I’m sorry,” Karl said awkwardly. “I… I couldn’t think in Swedish.”

  “You could if you were being naughty, or if you didn’t want your father to know what you were saying.” Annike laughed.

  Karl smiled and looked into his coffee cup as if those long-old memories were distilled there. Once when he was small, he had scratched his father’s car rather badly with the edge of the handlebars of his bike, the red rubber grip having come off and become lost long before. His father had noticed the scratch and was threatening to spank him. Karl quickly told his mother in Swedish what had happened, and just as quickly she told Frank that she had made the scratch with her keys as she was juggling bags of groceries. Karl avoided his spanking, and his mother never betrayed him.

  “Ja, Mama. Du er rätt och du er underbar,” Karl said neatly in Swedish and gave her a grin. Yes, Mama. You are right and you are wonderful.

  “Very good,” she complimented him. “But you really can’t be blamed for not being able to keep up. It is different for you. You have no reason to use Swedish all the time, and if you don’t use it it’s like trying to grab at smoke when you need it. I feel that way about English more and more, Karl,” she explained gently.

  “Sven can understand you, though, right?” Karl asked her.

  “Sven is my baby,” Annike said. “Your father resents it when we speak Swedish. He feels left out. But I can’t be concerned about that when I lose my English. Sven tries very hard to make things go easily for me. Of course,” she said as she inhaled her cigarette once more, “Sven has a natural aptitude for the language. He has been going back and forth in English and Swedish since he was a baby.”

  “It’s helpful now more than ever,’’ Karl admitted, “isn’t it?”

  “For me, it is,” his mother told him and sighed. “I get confused between…” She hesitated and searched Karl’s eyes, begging to be understood. “… between now and other times, some long ago. They tell me the newer brain cells die more quickly. Soon, I will have only the past,” she said resignedly.

  “Are you frightened?” Karl asked with real concern.

  Annike took another hit off her cigarette and then stubbed it out decisively in the ashtray. “No,” she told him. “The past is very seductive. I have had a remarkable life, and I am not afraid to fall backwards down Alice’s rabbit hole. When I am alone, it is very pleasant. I stand in my kitchen in New Jersey with you playing on the floor with your trucks. I go back to very ordinary things, really. But when I get lost in time, your father just can’t go with me. I really wish he could live it all over again with me,” she said wistfully. “The doctor says eventually I will lose my way back to the present altogether. But I am not frightened by that—believe me.”

  Karl once more reached across the table and took her hand. “Don’t be in a hurry to leave us, Mom. We still need you.”

  Annike smiled wanly. “No. You no longer need me, my good son. But I need you to remember me as I was before I was… erased.” She cocked her head as if she heard something. “That is what I feel—as if I am being erased.” She laughed then and stood. “Can I heat up your coffee?”

  Karl handed his mug to her wordlessly and watched as she moved to the kitchen. “I wish I could do something,” Karl said with a ring of frustration.

  Annike freshened their mugs with coffee and cream and returned to the table. Standing over Karl, she handed him his cup and said, “Don’t be silly.”

  Karl looked up at her searchingly as he took his mug in both hands. “What do you mean?”

  “There is nothing anyone can do, dear. About being erased, or growing old, or dying. It’s just life,” Annike said as she sat down once more and took a sip of her coffee.

  “You sound so okay with it,” Karl told her. “Aren’t you angry? Don’t you feel cheated?”

  “You don’t go to mass anymore, do you, Karl?” Annike asked.

  “No, not really. I go sometimes on holy days, but I stopped really believing years ago,” Karl told her honestly.

  “How sad for you,” Annike told him gently.

  “You can’t sit there and be so sanguine about what’s happening to you because you believe in heaven and all that, not really,” Karl said defensively. “Why would God take your life from you before you stop living? What kind of God would do that?” he concluded angrily.

  Annike calmly took a sip of her coffee, then thoughtfully drew her pack of cigarettes and lighter from her robe pocket. She lit one and smiled. “There is so much comfort in simply having coffee and a cigarette,” she said, and looked Karl in the eye. “Why would you deny yourself the comfort of faith when it is so much richer?”

  “I have no answer for that, Mother,” Karl replied stiffly.

  Annike smiled. “I have no answers left at all, Karl. That’s where faith comes in. To be perfectly honest with you, I cannot explain it. But yes, I do believe m heaven and in that God you find so vindictive and uncaring.”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” Karl said, and defiantly concentrated on his coffee.

  Annike nodded and took a drag off her cigar
ette. “Okay. You have asked me how I am. Now let me ask you how you are.”

  Karl gave her a surprised look and shrugged. “Never better. Work is going well. I’m healthy, Caro’s healthy. My daughter has grown into an adult I find very easy to like and love. I’m a lucky average guy.”

  “So, you are happy?” Annike pressed him.

  Karl thought of what his father had said about happiness the day before in the garden. He was safe, he was comfortable. Like his father had told him in his way, Karl honestly told his mother he was happy.

  “That’s a good thing,” Annike said as she toyed with her cigarette. “A mother wants to see her sons happy and well. I have no reason to be anything other than very pleased with you.”

  “Well, that’s good to hear,” Karl answered, relieved.

  “But I miss you,” she said simply. “Simply sitting with you like we are now, just talking and being together. It is such a little thing, but it means a great deal.”

  “I wish I lived closer, Mom. It just didn’t work out that way,” Karl reasoned.

  “Oh, I know that,” Annike assured him. “And I certainly wouldn’t grudge you your life up in North Carolina.” She looked at him a long time and took his form in as he sat hunched over his coffee at the table. “You just don’t understand the sense of closeness I miss. It’s a mom thing,” she said and laughed. “I made you. You never stop being amazed at that as a parent. You are a grown man, with an adult’s life and responsibilities, but you are still…”

  “Still your baby,” Karl said and smiled.

  “Yes,” Annike said simply.

  “I thought Sven is your baby,” Karl teased her.

  “Sven is more like me,” Annike said with certainty. “You are so much like your father. It’s as if he is distilled in you. I suppose it is a natural extension of my love for Frank to love you, his son, so. You look like him, you have his… his distance from me. I’m losing my words. I can’t explain,” she said finally.

  Karl was taken aback. His mother had never spoken so intimately of her feelings for him before. In a thousand ways that were inarticulate, he knew she loved him, but she had never spoken to him this way.

  As he considered this, she looked away and sat smoking in silence, absently taking sips of her coffee and gathering herself back into herself. He could almost feel the moment dissipating in the smoky room. He badly wanted to reconnect with what they had been sharing, but he couldn’t find the words himself. Finally he took a sip of his coffee and said, “I’m going to miss you so much.”

  She looked at him and smiled. “Well, I’m not gone yet. Let’s concentrate on having a wonderful weekend, yes?”

  Karl leaned across the table and kissed her cheek. “Ja Mama. Det er alt god,’’ he said. Yes, mama. It will be good.

  Her only reply was a loving look and a happy smile. “So, are you hungry?” she demanded.

  Karl nodded, unwilling to admit that so much coffee and such deep conversation were turning his stomach a bit sour.

  “Publix makes the most marvelous pastries,” she said as she stubbed out her cigarette, then stood and picked up her ashtray. “I can offer you an excellent cheese or raspberry Danish, or some Danish pecan ring. I no longer cook in the mornings. If you would like something simpler, I have an oatmeal cereal your father eats each day for his cholesterol.”

  Karl grimaced at the final offer and said, “How about a small slice each of the cheese and raspberry Danish?”

  “Good choice,” Annike said and patted his shoulder as she passed behind him on her way to the kitchen.

  “When is Dad coming in?” Karl asked as he peered out the back door.

  Annike emptied her ashtray and then put it back in its place on the counter, under the cabinet where her official cigarettes were kept from her reach. “After he finishes his paper,” she replied easily. “On pretty mornings like this, he likes to take out a Thermos of coffee and have his breakfast en plein air.” She laughed as she reached for two small plates and napkins. “He will be in once he has checked in with his friends George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. Then we will get to hear all about how they are making America safe from the terrorists.”

  “He’s re ally into it, then?” Karl asked, bemused.

  “Oh, yes,” Annike replied as she opened the pastry containers with a shriek of stiff plastic. “They cannot run the country without him. But Nancy Pelosi or Howard Dean will say something to infuriate him and he will come in very irritable. You mark my words,” she said with an upraised finger wagging knowingly.

  Karl watched as she cut pieces of pastry far too large for him and only slivers for herself.

  “Or it will be the gay people, or the president of Venezuela, or the black people, or those poor migrants from Mexico. Your father is angered by many things beyond his control,” she said as she returned to the table with the sweets. She set his plate and napkin before him and then sat down herself.

  “No fork?” Karl asked carefully.

  “You have no fingers?” his mother replied tartly.

  Karl laughed as he picked up a piece of raspberry Danish and took a bite. The pastry was actually very good, and he found himself wolfing it down with relish. Then he ostentatiously licked his fingers before using his napkin. “Delicious,” he said easily.

  His mother took a small bite of her pastry and nodded. She chewed carefully and swallowed before she continued. “I tell him, ‘Frank, your son is gay, our maid is from Colombia, our lawn man is Haitian, and I am an immigrant myself. Why must you pick on those people so?”’

  “And what does Dad say to that?” Karl wondered with interest.

  Annike rolled her eyes and took another bite of her pastry before she said, “He mostly says nothing to that. He just shakes his paper and gives me a dirty look.”

  Karl laughed.

  “America should be more like Sweden,” Annike said. “There are many taxes, but everyone has health care and it is a quiet, peaceful country where people take care of each other. When I tell him this, he says I am crazy and a socialist.”

  “And how do you answer that?” Karl asked once more.

  “I tell him I am a mother and a very well-educated woman. It would be better if women ran the world and let the men play with their little armies only in the Arctic or someplace harmless,” she said stubbornly.

  “I bet he loves to hear that,” Karl said evenly.

  “He pays no attention to me,” Annike said dismissively. “He thinks I am une naïf.”

  “You are not naive or simple-minded,” Karl told her. “I think much the way you do.”

  “Don’t tell your father that.” His mother chuckled. “He will become most difficult.”

  Karl gave her a complicit look and nod of his head before attacking his cheese Danish. When he finished it, he said, “Your granddaughter is looking forward to taking him on. She isn’t afraid to argue about politics one bit.”

  Annike laughed delightedly. “Melanie is afraid of no one. And she is very intelligent. I will sit and cheer her from the sidelines.” Then Annike grew silent and played a moment with her napkin, folding it prettily before placing it once more in her lap. “Karl,” she asked, “do you approve of her living with this Andrew before she marries him? She is moving far away, with no guarantee he will look after her or be kind to her. I am concerned.”

  Karl scooted back from the breakfast table to allow himself room to cross his legs. He looked at his mother and shook his head. “Mom, I trust her instincts. She tells me she is only moving in with him for practical reasons. She wants time to become established in a new job, and to get used to living with Andrew before she goes ahead with the wedding. To tell you the truth, I think he would marry her now. It’s obvious he is in love with her. Melanie is putting off the wedding.”

  Annike sighed. “Young women these days wait so long to have their babies. I was twenty-two when I had you, and you were a very busy little boy. You could be exhausting. Melanie is now twenty- four; when does
she plan to have children?”

  “I don’t know, Mom,” Karl said earnestly. “But remember, you were thirty-seven when you had Sven, and he’s turned out well. I know I was almost thirteen, but you seemed to handle both him and me, for God’s sake.”

  Annike made a dismissive wave of her hands and said, “I had Sven because I was bored. Your father believes Sven was an accident, but I wanted another child. Your father did not want me to work, and you were nearly a teenager. He worked long hours and was away a great deal. Back then he was in love with his job more than me. I had Sven to have someone I could play with,” she admitted.

  “Do you ever regret that?” Karl asked.

  “Do you know what Sven means in Old Swedish?” Annike countered.

  Karl shook his head.

  “It means beloved,” Annike answered gently.

  “And what does Karl mean?” he asked out of curiosity.

  “Strong,” Annike told him. “I wanted to name you Andreas, after my brother, but your father didn’t want you to have a Swedish name. He compromised on the spelling. I got the K, but he wanted you to be an American boy.”

  “You never told me this,” Karl said, taken aback somewhat. “So I’m supposed to be the strong one.”

  “There is a lot of magic m names, Karl,” Annike told him with assurance. “You are strong and independent and a man’s man.”

  “And Sven is beloved,” Karl said snidely.

  “You’re no less loved,’’ Annike told him patiently. “But I told you I had Sven for myself.”

  Karl wasn’t sure how this new information sat with him. It came from a line of reasoning he felt to be distinctly feminine, and thus alien to a certain extent. The fact that his mother could simply choose to create another child, and then do it, was on the other side of that no-man’s-land between men and women that had always existed. That decision, made forty years ago, seemed very powerful to him at that moment. It was a part of his mother he had never considered.

  “Have I made you sad?” Annike gently asked him.

  Karl chuckled hesitantly, but gave her a smile. “No. Not sad, it’s just something I’ve never given any thought to,’’ he admitted honestly.