Good Night, My Darling

by Inger Frimansson

  After dinner, he usually went there. He was able to ignore all kinds of discussions that way. He couldn’t deal with problems; she’d learned that during all their years together. Everything was supposed to flow easily and smoothly, and if it didn’t, he made a face and complained that a migraine was coming on.

  Berit’s mother insisted that she had noticed this trait early on.

  “I don’t want to make you upset, sweetheart, but I think you have to get used to the idea that you will be the strong partner in this marriage.”

  “But Mamma, how can you say that?”

  “Mothers see these things,” she answered cryptically.

  Mothers see these things. Berit was also a mother, and what did she see in Jörgen and Jens and their girlfriends? Who was weakest there?

  In many respects, Berit’s mother was right. Like the time that she was in labor with the boys. Tor had come with her to the hospital, but couldn’t stand sitting and waiting; the hospital smells went into his sinuses and made him pale and nauseous. So she had to lie there by herself and fight through the long painful hours and, once it was over, the midwife couldn’t reach him at home.

  Afterwards he said that he had wandered about the whole night and thought of her. He had sent strong and intensive thoughts her way, in order to give her strength. She must have felt them, right?

  And later, when the kids got chicken pox and all those other childhood illnesses- Jörgen kept getting ear infections-who had to take the blows? Of course, Berit was home those first few years, but she still could have used a bit of a break. But no. He hated illness of any kind and probably would have rather moved to a hotel for the duration, if it wasn’t for the fact that it would look bad.

  “Those analytical types,” her mother used to say with a special look in her eyes.

  Berit’s father raised cucumbers.

  She got out of the bathtub and dried herself off carefully. It was nine at night. Might as well get into a nightgown right away and get to bed. She was a bit warmer now, and it was best to go straight under the covers before she chilled off again.

  “Tor, I’m going to bed now,” she called. “You’re going to be up for a while, I take it?”

  “Yes, the evening has just begun!”

  He stood in the doorway; she pulled the towel up to her chin, shyly.

  “Are you coming down with something?”

  “No, not at all,” she said. “Just tired. Today was a hell of a day.”

  He surprised her by going into the bathroom and slowly and carefully loosening the towel. He looked at her, took off his glasses.

  “What’s up?” she asked peevishly.

  “Well, after some thought, I decided that I should go to bed, too.”

  Was he intending to make love? She couldn’t deal with that either. She realized that she didn’t remember the last time that they had made love.

  She lay on her back in the bed while he went around the house turning off all the lights. The dishwasher started. Yes of course, it was totally full. She was wearing her knitted pajamas and thick gray socks. Then he came in and she closed her eyes and pretended that she was sleeping.

  First he lay down in his own bed, but after a while, he lifted her blanket and got in.

  “Tor… I don’t want to,” she said.

  “Not that,” he said.

  He appeared hurt. Was she supposed to make it up to him now, make everything all right?

  “Sorry,” she said, and turned toward him.

  A few seconds later, she said, “Tor?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can you imagine moving to Luleå?”

  He chuckled dryly.

  “I’m serious. Can you see yourself moving?”

  “To Luleå of all places? No way.”

  “Well, then I guess I have to move by myself. That is, if I want to keep working. Curt is going to move the whole publishing business there.”

  His arm came out of the blanket. He scratched the wall searching for the light, found it. He sat up in the bed and looked at her, without really seeing her of course, because his glasses were on the dresser.

  “To Luleå?” he asked and in that moment she was so tired of him that she had to hold herself in check to keep from screaming.

  “Yes, Luleå! He’s getting a hell of a lot of subsidies, and he has his damned roots in that little corner of hell.”

  “Berit…”

  “That’s what’s happening! Shit!”

  “When did you find this out?”

  “He announced it on Monday. But you weren’t home, of course. I didn’t have a chance to tell you.”

  “Are all of you going to be fired?”

  “Oh no, not fired. And that is what is so devious about the whole thing, because only one or two of us are going to be able to move there. No one wants to go voluntarily.”

  “But doesn’t he need you all?”

  “Need, right. He is certainly going to downsize. And of course there’s lots of Norrlanders who’d want the job. If he wants to expand, that is.”

  “You should get in touch with the union, Berit. He can’t do this, not without following all the proper procedures and rules.”

  She snorted and put her feet on the floor.

  “The union! We’re not unionized. It’s not customary in this field, you understand.”

  He said, “Let’s go downstairs and talk for a while. Let’s go and have a cognac while we’re at it.”

  He lit a fire in the fireplace and wrapped a blanket around her. Gave her the glass of cognac.

  “Well, that’s a blow,” he said. “Luleå!”

  “I’m going to be unemployed, Tor. At the age of forty-five, almost forty-six.”

  “You can be a housewife again.”

  “I’d rather die.”

  “We wouldn’t have to eat take-out pizza.”

  “Something wrong with the pizza?”

  “Don’t ask me.”

  “I really wasn’t hungry,” she said and sipped the cognac. “Maybe you can understand the reason now.”

  “Berit,” he said softly. “Don’t throw in the towel! You’re still young. You should start looking for a new job now. It’ll work out.”

  “With the high unemployment these days? Don’t you ever read the paper? Today there was an article about this twentyfive-year-old guy who hadn’t found a job since he finished his engineering degree at The Royal Technical College. A fine, well-educated kid, highly qualified, who was looking for any job at all. He had a folder filled with rejection letters. More than forty of them from the whole country. Even Luleå, by the way.”

  “Hey, Sweetie, don’t make a mountain out of a molehill. At least not until you’ve looked around and seen whether the job situation really is all that bad.”

  They emptied their glasses and went back to bed. They didn’t have much more to say.

  He lay down in his bed, but reached to stroke her cheek.

  “There’s one more thing,” she said. “And I am terrified about it.”

  He mumbled a little; he was already falling asleep.

  “In Hässelby, last Saturday, when I came home so late. That old classmate of mine… the one with the French name…”

  Why was she the way she was? Why did things happen the way they did? What made a child into a victim?

  And what was it about me? Where did that cruelty come from?

  Children noticed differences, and what happened to her mother made her different from us. She didn’t have a real mother. Her mother died in that mysterious way in their house. When Justine was little. Then her father had married his secretary; there was a lot of gossip. We must have heard some of it when the adults were sitting down to coffee. It happened during grade school, first grade; we went to the stone building then… Justine had her place next to me, I wanted to sit next to Jill, but there was a misunderstanding. Our teacher said, that’s fine girls, sit there. Justine was ugly and spindly, like a fish. But weren’t we all…? She clung to me; jus
t because we happened to be next to each other, we were supposed to be best friends. I believe I told her right away that we were not going to be friends, but she was somewhat slow on the uptake; she didn’t get it. All normal people would have understood, but not her. During recess, she would follow Jill and me: what should we play now, can I play, too. We were forced to hit her to get away from her. She had money; her dad was rich as Midas. She went to the store and bought candy during recesses, a huge pile of candy. She would hide it in different places for us to find, and we crept around and looked for it. It also made me mad, I remember that. Miss Messer discovered her, and then it was forbidden to leave school grounds and forbidden to have candy at school. She had to stay after school, I believe; our teacher didn’t dare hit her, but made her sit and feel ashamed of herself.

  She made us crazy. It was her fault. We were kids; we didn’t know better…

  She tried to buy me. And the person who has to bribe is always lower down the ladder.

  “Come home with me after school, Berit. I have a whole box full of Sandy Candy.”

  “What about Jill?”

  “Jill can come, too.”

  It was that very house, the one down by the lake, and they had a dock that jutted straight out, and a large, fine boat. Her dad owned the whole Sandy concern.

  “Flora’s not home,” she said.

  “Flora… is she your mom?”

  She shrugged.

  “You’re mom’s dead, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is she in the graveyard?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She was foreign, right?”

  “She was from France. And when I am grown up, I’m moving there.”

  “Could she speak Swedish, your mom?”

  “Of course.”

  “Can you speak French?”

  “Pappa’s going to teach me. When he has time. But he has too much work nowadays. With the factory.”

  When we got closer to the house, she told us to sneak in.

  “In case Flora hasn’t left yet.”

  She hadn’t left. We lay behind the big stone and saw her come down the stairs. She didn’t look like our mothers. My mom was old; I could tell when I saw Flora. She was nearly as thin as we were. She was made up like a film star. She had trouble walking on the gravel with her high heels; they sunk in. A car was waiting for her at the road. We saw her get into the back seat; the chauffeur held the door open for her and shut it again.

  She didn’t notice us.

  “She’s going shopping,” said Justine. “She loves going shopping.”

  She had a key in a string around her neck. She had to stand on her toes in order to open the door. It seemed sort of disgusting to sneak into Justine’s house, as if we were doing something forbidden. As if she herself were doing something forbidden.

  Her room was on the second floor. It looked like mine. Bed, desk, books. Some dolls and stuffed animals. She went down onto her knees and pulled a box from under the bed.

  “Ta-da!” she said, and took off the lid.

  The whole box was filled with small boxes of Sandy Candy.

  “Go ahead. Help yourself,” she said.

  We took four boxes apiece, Jill and me; that was all we could hold.

  “OK. We’re going now,” said Jill.

  Justine jumped up and blocked the door.

  “Do you want to see the place my mom died?”

  We looked at each other.

  “OK,” I said.

  “Follow me!”

  It was next to the big window on the second floor.

  “Here on the floor was where my mom died.”

  “Why’d she do that?”

  “Something broke in her brain.”

  “Was your mom crazy?” Jill asked and giggled.

  “No…”

  “You’re crazy; maybe you got it from her,” said Jill.

  “I’m not at all crazy!”

  I glanced at the shining brown floor and tried to imagine how the woman who had been Justine’s real mother had lain there and breathed her last.

  “Did you cry?” I asked.

  “What do you mean, cry?”

  “When your mom laid here and died.”

  “Probably.”

  She ran in front of us down the stairs.

  “Want to see something else?”

  “No.”

  “Come on. Don’t you want to see something else?” “What?”

  “In the basement.”

  “What in the basement?”

  She had already opened the door to the basement and started down the stairs.

  Jill looked at me. “You go ahead.”

  There was nothing special about the basement. A big oil heater, a clothes rack with sheets hung up to dry. A mangle by the window and a pile of square stones with empty flowerpots on it.

  “What’s so big about the basement?” I asked.

  She looked secretive. Her beret had gotten loose and was hanging by a few hairs. She opened the door to a smaller room.

  “There!” she said and pointed.

  There was a big washtub in the room, one that people used to boil laundry in. Nothing else.

  “What about it? My grandparents had one of those.”

  “Flora puts me in it sometimes.”

  “Huh?”

  “When she’s angry with me.”

  “She puts you in that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why’s she do that?”

  “She puts water in it and says she will boil away my stubbornness.”

  Prickles went up and down my spine, but it wasn’t sympathy or fear; it was something else, and it felt kind of good.

  I’ve been thinking about this the last few days. Children seem to lack empathy. But do all children lack empathy? Or was it just me… or my home? I had nice, kind parents who treated me well. Maybe even spoiled me a little; they were very old when I was born. I was the only child; no other children to rub against. Of course you get a little spoiled in such a situation.

  But even a child can choose her friends. She should have bothered someone else, not just Jill and me the whole time. She carried Sandy Candy boxes in her school bag; we could choose menthol or honey, and if we couldn’t choose, we got both. Oh, how we wanted to be rid of her!

  I believe it was my suggestion that we go to the cemetery. It was a long way, the whole length of Sandviksvägen, if you went there directly and didn’t run through side streets.

  She stuck to us like a leach. Jill and I talked to each other and pretended that she wasn’t there, but I knew that she was going to follow us and, in fact, I was counting on it.

  It must have been late September or early October because the leaves were still green, but there was a snap in the air. We were wearing jackets and long pants and we had our school bags, which we always took with us. We were still very proud of them, and of being old enough to go to school.

  The boxes of candy lasted until we reached the cemetery. “What are we going to do?” asked Justine.

  “We’re going to visit your mom.”

  With some effort, we managed to open the heavy iron gate, but then we couldn’t figure out how to close it again. We left it open. Justine knew exactly where the grave was; she led us straight for a while, then to the right. The stone was tall and white and there was a name that I no longer remember.

  “I wonder what she looks like now,” I said. “Probably just bones left. And a lot of hair. They say that hair keeps growing on the dead when they’re in the casket. Hair and nails, too.”

  “I don’t want to be a skeleton!” shrieked Jill. “I don’t want my fingernails to keep growing!”

  “Nobody does,” I said.

  Justine said, “You have to have a skeleton inside yourself, or you’ll fall into a heap.”

  We wandered toward the white building which was a bit farther in. An old man was right behind it, raking the pathway.

  “That’s the house of the dead,” I sai
d. “The bodies lie in there, the ones that need to be buried, and wait their turn.”

  The old man stopped raking and yelled at us. We pretended not to hear. We hid behind a hedge. After a while, he hung up the rake and left. He went through the gate and shut it firmly behind him. Now we were alone in the cemetery.

  There was a rain barrel beside the house of the dead. There was a great deal of rain in the barrel, which I saw when I peered in, and the sides were slick with algae.

  “Let’s play fish,” I said, because I noticed that Jill was going to say that she wanted to go home.

  “What do you mean, play fish?” asked Justine.

  “Aquarium,” I said. “The rain barrel can be our aquarium.”

  Jill said, “We shouldn’t be playing here.”

  “The old guy’s gone.”

  It was totally quiet. The wind moved through the birch leaves, but no birds. They must have left for warmer climates already. I remember all this so well. It’s strange. I was only seven years old.

  “Justine’s going to be the fish,” I said, and noticed that she wanted to protest, but then pulled herself together as if she were gathering courage to say yes.

  “Do I have to take my clothes off?” she asked.

  “What do you think, Jill? Should she take off her clothes?”

  Jill bit her lip and nodded. Then she began to giggle; she had this way of suddenly exploding into giggles. I was giggling, too. We told her to take off her clothes, and she did so. She didn’t have to. Everyone has free will. She probably liked it somehow? Maybe she liked it when Flora put her in the washtub? Otherwise, why tell us about it?

  There were pee marks in her underwear; I saw that when she put them aside. She had goose bumps. She couldn’t climb in the rain barrel by herself, so we had to help her. There was a splash when she slid in. She screamed a bit; the water was cold against her naked tummy.

  “Now you’re our fish,” I said.