Sasha starts again, but he keeps on stopping her, about nine times in total, and then he allows her to continue to the end uninterrupted, just once. When she’s finished, Marcus stands up and paces around the table. Sasha stands there, frozen, as though she doesn’t dare sit down. Everyone looks at them, no one speaks. Then he sits down again and says, “You’re as boring as watching paint dry.” Sasha looks away, folds her arms in front of her body, and stands with her legs crossed. I expect her to reply, but she just goes out into the hall. No one reacts and no one gets themselves a coffee. Snakes slither through the room, a thunderstorm presses against the ceiling. Joris sits staring at the fruit bowl, takes a pear, looks at it, and then puts it back again. Jolene chews the end of her ballpoint pen, Frederik fiddles with his beard. I imagine myself outside in the fresh air. And Marcus, Marcus looks impervious to everything, his face reinforced concrete.
When Sasha comes back in, he sputters, “Right, so we can finally continue. I suggest we gather around the table for the rest of the day. Mona, have you thought of a way to structure the texts we already have?”
My breath falters. I haven’t. It feels like someone has taken bites out of me and it’s only a matter of time before I fall apart. Things keep changing every day: people get rid of bits of text and come up with new ones and sections are revised. It had seemed too soon for the big inventory.
Stone-faced, I reply, “It’ll be ready tomorrow,” as though this is the desired answer, that’s how I make it sound. I can feel my heart beating in strange places. Marcus is drawing on a sheet of paper, they look like phalluses from where I’m sitting, but that might be my imagination. He frowns, which makes his eyes smaller, and the corners of his mouth point down gloomily, then he looks at me and I brace myself.
“I have high hopes.”
After the rehearsal, I hurry back home. The rain chases me toward the buildings, a man with angry buttoned-up-to-the-neck clothing scurries along the street, a woman in a fluorescent-orange waterproof outfit bikes past, bent over as though she’s trying to pick something up from pedal height. Yes, that’s how I feel too, I think. The rain streams onto my face and my clothes grow heavy from the damp.
I wish I was somebody, I think. I wish I could do everything, or at least the things others want me to do. I wish I had the self-confidence of that kid over there with big ears. And the joke that just made that woman with the hair, the one at the window, burst into laughter. I wish I had a lion’s courage. I wish I had shiny good luck and true love that’s out of this world. I wish for bravery for me and everyone else who needs it. I wish I was brilliant at what I do. I wish I could give him what he longs for. I wish I had a father I could help more. I wish I had a mother. I wish for the mist above the mountains, for unforgettable things, and to be irresistible, that too.
When I get home, I work for another three hours. I sketch out a running order on a piece of paper, arrange the fragments, and bundle them together. Then I don’t dare to look anymore and stuff it into my bag. I take a long shower and put on my new skirt and the see-through blouse and the shoes with the big square heels. Then I try to call Louis but can’t reach him on either of his numbers. Where can he be?
I look around and notice the mess in the kitchen. I didn’t clean up after cooking. I see the junk on the table, the papers and the books dotted on the floor around the sofa. I pick up the phone again and call Jolene. Jolene is almost six feet tall, with long red hair, green eyes, and pronounced cheekbones. When she’s on stage, everyone looks at her, not only because she’s so unbelievably beautiful but because she can act so unbelievably well too. When she picks up, I blurt out, “Getting drunk is the solution, I think.”
She bursts out laughing and shouts into the receiver, “Give me ten minutes and I’ll be over.”
We go to the bar, the one we almost always visit before and after rehearsals, on quiet nights and on wild ones. We know at least three-quarters of the people in there, so before I know it I’m chatting in a circle of nine people, a glass in my hand. Jolene’s got something to do with this, I’m not stupid, but still. I drink and drink and I drink another, and I join in the arguments. I raise a toast, I can’t help laughing at the hilarious story of what went wrong at one particular premiere, and I think this is what the poet Hendrik Marsman meant when he wrote that he “wanted to live a splendid and thrilling life.” And I wish Louis could see me like this, that too.
14
“Literally,” Anne-Sophie says, “she said that it’s proof I don’t love her.” She picks at a scab on her elbow, her left hand points away from her, her head tilted so she can see what she’s doing. “Another five years and I can leave home and go to college,” she adds in a businesslike tone, as though she’s just counted up the cash register and is announcing the total while she neatly makes a note of everything. She was born an adult because that helped. She continues to pick at the wound, which starts to bleed again.
Anne-Sophie is a special child, I’ve always thought that. Her ideas are clear-cut and not all of them square up with the dictates of puberty. She rarely shows her emotions, but she is very emotional, and tempestuous, I’m certain of it. She likes to talk, in the right situations she does, and she’s smart in a worldly way. She often seems so alone and she can be very suspicious, which is unusual, I think, in such a young girl. Perhaps she already understands a lot, though she doesn’t let that show at school—her grades are far from impressive. Lack of concentration, apparently; it’s not for a lack of intelligence, if you ask me.
She goes into the kitchen, gets some tissues out of her backpack, and dabs at the wound. She studies the red on all that white, the tip of her tongue sticking out of her mouth, a little girl again momentarily.
I’ve let her down, not seriously perhaps, but that’s what it feels like. I left for the city. I was eighteen and had been ready for university for a long time—I mean for life elsewhere, for a flight away from the old, the volcanoes always on the point of eruption, the hidden swamps that sucked you down, the frozen ponds where the ice was never thick enough to cross safely. I left for the city and I left her behind. I left Anne-Sophie to her own devices when she was only seven. I said she could always call me. I wrote down the phone number of my dorm room on three pieces of paper in case she lost one, and then a spare, but she never called. In the early years, I’d go home on the weekends like you’re supposed to, and I did see her, of course, but I also went out a lot. Returning to something you wanted to leave behind is harder than always having been there.
These days, Anne-Sophie comes to stay with me a couple of times a year. I take her to theaters and the movies, out to see obscure bands, to cafés where she drinks Coke and my friends include her in the conversation. It’s not much. I try to reassure myself that if enough people see you, really see you for everything you are, and if you discover, when you’re still young, that life can be all kinds of things, that this counts for quite a lot.
It’s the first time she’s taken the train here on her own, unannounced and without asking permission at home. I see her sitting there, that little big girl with trouble in her eyes and something grim and determined about the set of her mouth. She looks at her arm, there’s blood on her pale-blue blouse, and when she sees that, she begins to cry loudly. I go to her, smooth her hair behind her ear, and ask her what the matter is.
“I don’t know.” She cries like infants do, with everything they’ve got.
I sit close to her. “There’s something going on, Anne-Sophie, I can tell. Just tell me. You can tell me.”
She shrugs, and sobs. It’s heartbreaking. Sorrow can’t be shared, I think, because words aren’t enough. Arms that hug cannot take away the feeling, because understanding, true understanding, simply doesn’t exist, not even between sisters who know their parents’ expressions, and the sound of hearts being torn to shreds, the suffocation of the stuffy air of dining rooms and living rooms and kitchens where many words are used to avoid talking to each other.
I s
tay with her, I let her cry, I’ve got time. Outside, the bells of the little church nearby ring. I’ve often wondered why it sounds as though calamity is around the corner, a calamity everyone knew about beforehand, the wind and the trees and the children and the barking dogs in the distance, everyone except me.
Anne-Sophie wants to go get some food, yes please, she is still sobbing a bit as she says this. I let her choose, she wants to get Italian, she loves pasta and I know a cozy little place she’s sure to like. Comfort can take so many different forms. I’ll drive her home afterward. I should call Dad now to tell them not to worry, I’ll think of a reason to explain why she came to see me.
I’m relieved my father’s standing in the doorway waiting when we arrive. Anne-Sophie rests her hand on the arm I’m using to put the car in neutral, and she looks at me.
“You can tell me everything, you know, little sis.”
“Five more years,” she replies.
“Which really isn’t that long at all.” I smile because I can’t think of anything better. Then she smiles too, because smiling is sometimes a kind of crying too.
“I’m here for you,” I say. That’s too easy, I think, and then we get out.
Daddy is already gesturing to us, finger to his lips, be quiet, then he uses the same finger to point upstairs to the bedrooms. We say nothing, kiss him one after the other, and slip into the living room.
“Have you done your homework?”
Anne-Sophie nods. “On the train.”
“I’ll pay you back for the ticket.” As though he feels comfortable in his powerlessness. “Have a quick drink or whatever and then hurry to bed. It’s much too late for a school night.”
“Is Mommy already asleep?” Her voice becomes shrill as she asks this, her gaze fixed.
“Yes, she went to bed a while ago, she was”—he hesitates for a second—“tired.”
I picture Marie taking a Xanax and saying, The pills aren’t good for me, but well. Anne-Sophie returns from the kitchen with a glass of milk, looks at me with an expression that worries me, says good night, and then disappears upstairs.
“You have to go, I guess? Rehearsals tomorrow, or . . .”
Why does he ask it like this? Is that what he wants? For me to run off so that he can watch the TV shows that relieve him of the need to think, so that he can forget that his youngest child just got onto a train to go and get help, so that he can ignore the fact that he’s the father of children who expect something from him, as all children do, even when they know better, even if they never say it. Or has he just formulated it that way so that I don’t have to feel obliged to stay, which isn’t very subtle either?
“I could stay for a drink if you’d like.” I say it as neutrally as possible.
He smiles and goes into the kitchen. “Beer or wine?” I choose beer, he shuffles to the fridge, looks behind the jam and mayonnaise and jars of gherkins and pickled onions and yogurt, everything bought in large quantities as though war’s about to break out. He picks up a bag containing eight apples with one hand and uses his other to feel around in the back corner. He finally manages to wangle a single bottle of Duvel from behind the confusion of foodstuffs. “Shall we share, then? You still have to drive.”
“Fine,” I say.
I see him bending over and it occurs to me that my father’s got a lot of hair, certainly for a man in his fifties. If he dressed in a more interesting way, you might think he was a painter or some other artistic type. He’s got wild hair, a ruthless look in his eyes, and strong hands, too large and coarse to be feeling around inside people’s mouths, to be honest.
He pours out a perfect Duvel and only remembers then that we were going to share it. He looks for a second glass, more or less suitable for beer, transfers part of the contents, and spills on the pink tablecloth covered in piglets, one of them eating a string of sausages, which I find perverse of whoever designed it.
“Phew,” I say, “that’ll have to go in the wash.”
Dad grins—sharing minor irritations forges a bond, we always found that.
“Let’s sit there,” he says. He keeps the Duvel glass for himself and gives me the other one.
The TV is still on in the living room, the sound muted. Raging Bull, he’s seen that a few times, I’m sure. Dad often does this—watches the same films again, as though the reassurance of knowing how they end gives him a feeling of well-being in this restless, unpredictable life. He doesn’t turn off the TV when we sink down into the cushions of the sofa. The bulky piece of furniture is a kind of vague brownish-green color, the color of food that’s been in the fridge too long, of the curtains in retirement homes they can’t afford to replace, of moss on rocks near water.
“Why don’t you buy a new sofa?” I ask.
“Is there something wrong with this one?” He looks at the sofa in surprise, then at me, and then he focuses on the TV again. “Mom wasn’t very happy about her youngest just getting on the train to go see you.”
“No,” I said. “Anne-Sophie was struggling with a few things. Sometimes I think there’s something the matter with her.”
“Marie will call you, I suspect.” Dad gulps down his beer.
Few people can affect my mood like my father can. He doesn’t have to say anything, do anything, it’s the directionless grief in the way he silently stares, I think. Is this all because of my dead mother? That one desperate night? Sometimes I think he was already the damaged man he is now even before that. He was already eaten up by gloominess, sadness, and God knows what other kinds of old wounds. I remember arguments between him and my mother. I remember how often he hid away in his office, always blaming it on too much work. I remember the way he listened to Bach, his eyes closed, and the way that could make him smile, as though he was only happy in a world without us. I would like to ask him about this, all of it, but I don’t. I leave him in his fortress, the place he’s been locking his dead heart away all these years.
I sometimes think Dad loves me most of all. Alexander has a father-son battle to fight with him, which has been going on between the two of them for years. And Anne-Sophie came too late, a present to Marie, who was desperate for a child of her own, but not a child he truly wanted, I fear. Of course, I hope for my little sister that this isn’t true. I also believe that he thinks I’m his most kindred spirit and if that’s the case, I’d feel proud, which is nasty of me, I do realize it.
Dad was pressured by his own father into becoming a dentist. What if he’d been allowed to choose? He performed in amateur theater productions in his younger years. When he talks about that, his face glows in a way I rarely witness. Dad likes me to ask about it, about those stories from the past, as though there’s more life in them than in the here and now. He remembers a collective laugh from the audience that lasted so long he began to count the minutes, that’s what he says, and that afterward, a woman came to tell him she’d wet herself, it was that funny. Dad recounts this as a happy moment, not as something indecorous he is sharing without permission. Maybe he’s jealous of my career, maybe that’s why he doesn’t openly support it, or maybe I’m just hoping that.
Dad’s half glass of Duvel is finished, I pour some of what’s left of mine into his.
“Give Anne-Sophie a bit more freedom. More time for her music. She needs that.”
“Like I have any say in it.” He doesn’t look at me as he says this, just at the silent images on the TV. Life is always elsewhere for him.
15
Even though the street stinks of urine-soaked doorways, and there’s a lot of noise outside day and night, their house is really nice. It’s a narrow little place where every wall is crooked, with wooden beams on the ceiling, an old tiled floor, and at the back a little courtyard, shaded by the neighbor’s tree. And what they’ve made of it, all those odds and ends they’ve effortlessly brought together to produce an interior with character. I don’t come often, but I enjoy being here when I do.
“The playpen or the crib?” Alexander asks.<
br />
“The playpen. I can do less damage to that, I suspect.”
“It’s a calculated risk,” my brother says, passing me the box with a grin. “If you break it, you’ll have to buy us another, one we don’t have to assemble ourselves.”
“You know how clumsy I am, don’t you? I only promised I’d try.”
“Well, you’re more capable than you think.” Charlie laughs. She’s radiant, even though her belly has gradually turned into a basketball. She clutches it as she sits down, as if the child might fall otherwise.
“Are they still bringing up my great failing as a son?”
“Oh no, it’s not that bad,” I lie. It’s better to keep to yourself admissions that don’t help the other person. “Is it bothering you?”
“Yes,” Charlie replies, kissing his neck. “I try to make it clear to him that he has a right to his own life. He should set boundaries, he won’t harm anyone by doing that, but I don’t think he understands.” Her words sound as caring as they are assertive.
“They’re still our parents, though, eh?” I say.
“In my world,” says Charlie, “that’s a title you have to earn.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do I really have to explain it?”
Yes, I think, but I don’t dare say it. Charlie’s older than us, and sometimes it feels as though she’s started a whole new second life and has already learned everything from her first one.
She seems to pick up on my uncertainty. “Tell me, then. What do you think when you look back on your childhood?”
“Well, it wasn’t always great, but Alexander and I came through it reasonably OK, didn’t we?” I laugh. “I do worry about Anne-Sophie, but well, she’s at a difficult age, she—”
“Don’t start talking about Anne-Sophie. What did you struggle with?”
“Oh, well, I got through everything, so there’s no point sitting in the corner crying about what—”
“What was difficult for you? Dare to say it for once, Mona. You can, you know, it’s just us.” Charlie rubs her belly and looks at me with gentle eyes.
Mona in Three Acts Page 17