by Alex Dahl
Strangely calm.
I’ve steeled myself for her death so many times that by now I can look it in the eye. I’ve known it is likely to come before my own so I’ve had to.
Still, I pray.
My sister Noa often tells me to visualize what I can’t control, so I do; Kaia on the operating table in this exact moment, eyes closed, face ashen but peaceful, a couple of wisps of dark hair emerging from a tight green cap, palms upturned and vulnerable, receiving. What I would give to have Noa here in this moment, just holding my hand.
Somewhere in this building, someone else will have stopped praying. They will be suddenly swallowed up by the same death that has been tearing at Kaia’s shadow since the day she was born. Before she was born, even. This death is the brightest light, so bright it will sear whoever comes near it, like an evil star. It is shining that cold, fierce light onto my baby in this very moment, but she doesn’t move toward its glow; she is flying faster than the speed of light back to me. She is going to open her eyes and look into mine; she has to. Her heart, the new heart, her last chance, her only chance, will resume its beat in her chest; it has to.
*
It’s the middle of the night and I’ve alternated between sitting, standing and pacing for hours and hours.
‘Look,’ says Dr Harari. She takes me down the corridor and into a big room filled with the sounds of machines whooshing and bleeping. ‘Over there.’ I nod and stare at my child on the bed, half-buried underneath tubes and equipment. I can only make out a patch of her dark hair against the pillow and the tip of her nose beneath an oxygen mask. Dr Harari points to a screen where neon green spikes lurch and fall rhythmically. ‘It’s beating steadily,’ she says.
Chapter Five
Alison
It is not yet six o’clock but already it’s as dark as the darkest night. I wish I was in the forest, where the only light would be that of the moon and the stars and the soft glow of the snow, which began to fall this morning. Instead, I’m in the shoe department of Steen & Strøm, staring at the shelves, trying to choose a pair. Any pair. Sindre said we don’t have to go to the dinner, but I said we should try. At some point we have to try. Don’t we? And yet, the thought of making polite conversation with Sindre’s work colleagues and their wives makes me want to cry.
I grab some plain black stilettos from the shelf and pull my feet out of my sheepskin boots. I push my socked feet into the heels, but they don’t fit. I push harder and they hurt my toes, and this is what bring tears to my eyes – at least that is what I pretend. A woman is looking at me. I blink at the tears, but I’m suddenly tired and feel like I can’t get up from the little stool I’m sitting on. I count to ninety-four. I stand up and present the shoes to a girl at the till wearing a Halloween witch hat with a spider-web veil. Sindre was right. Pretending to live, making plans for a dinner party, leaving the house, trying on shoes – it’s all wrong. I walk away from the till though the girl has just rung up the sale and she says something, but I run up the escalators and then I’m outside on Nedre Slottsgate in the freezing air, letting tears fall freely, blurring the glare from the fairy-light installation strung overhead. Just then, a taxi pulls up at a red light right next to me, and I get in, and only when I’m collapsed on the back seat do I realize I’ve left my Uggs in the shoe department. My socks are soaked through and my feet are stinging with the cold.
‘Go,’ I whisper. ‘Please, just go.’ I begin to count – streetlights and red lights and stark trees and people and the beat of the song playing on the radio but I can’t stop my mind from slipping into darkness.
Ninety-four days without you, Mills. Ninety-four nights awake. 2,256 hours since I closed my eyes for one moment and lost you forever. I have not asked your forgiveness, but I know that I should. Everything that has been lost, everything that you were, everything you would have become, is lost because of me. I am going to do it. I will bring Dinky Bear with me, and we will sit underneath the tree in the quiet, shaded corner we chose for you, next to your grandparents. Or I will go to the lake; you feel close, there. Or I will just spend the rest of my life, like this, saying those words over and over and over in my heart:
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
*
I walk up the snowy driveway in my bare feet, feeling the disbelieving eyes of the taxi driver on me as he reverses back out onto the road. The house is lit up, but when I open the door, it’s completely quiet. Our house is never quiet. I used to think that it was the house itself making an underlying sound, but it occurred to me when Sindre was in Paris that the sounds must be coming from Sindre in a consistent effort to stave off silence. Even at night. He runs the washing machine overnight with his running shoes inside, so I lie in the solid darkness listening to the thud of them tumbling in the drum. Or he pretends to forget to turn off the radio in his study, so the distant murmur of voices occasionally reaches me in that strange place which is not quite wakefulness, and not quite rest. Some evenings, when everything that needs doing is done, and there’s just him and me in the house, he puts the TV on in the den, music on in the kitchen and the radio on in his study, as if I then won’t notice what isn’t here.
And yet, now – quiet. I feel a sharp tug in my stomach, a dreadful fear. What if Sindre couldn’t stand it any longer, what if he’s just shrugged off this whole broken life and left me to it? He could be hanging upstairs, still warm to the touch. Or what if he’s blown his brains out? I take the stairs slowly, leaving a trail of mud and melting snow. I listen for sounds, unsettled by the absence of the constant background noise I’ve gotten used to, but still I don’t shout his name. I couldn’t bear it if I’m met with silence. I pick out a faint rustling coming from our bedroom at the end of the corridor.
Sindre is in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror in our en suite bathroom, trying to tie the knot on his tie, just like he has done so many times in his life, but his hands are shaking too hard, and when he sees me, he pulls it from his neck in one swift tug and tosses it toward the bath tub. He sinks down to the floor and I sit down next to him and that is where we stay; me picking at the grouting between two of the floor tiles, him leaning his head against the wall, closing his eyes, a faint hum rising from his throat, his hand trembling in mine.
*
It’s me who leaves the TV on downstairs this time. Long into the night we lie holding each other in bed, for the first time in a long while.
‘I feel like I’ve lost you, too,’ Sindre whispers.
‘You have,’ I whisper back, and we both cry, then. ‘I’m not me anymore.’
‘Neither am I.’
‘No.’
‘This is so crazy, but… Sometimes I blame her, you know? I know how insane that sounds. But I do.’ I want to say that I feel the same; I blame her too, sometimes. I once slammed her bedroom door shut incredibly hard because I was so angry with her for leaving me. I’ve screamed at her, my lost child, in wild rage. I took the large photograph of Amalie that hung above the landing, taken on her last day at nursery, and flung it down the stairs. But how can I say out loud, that I too, sometimes blame a small child for her own death when it happened on my watch? Everybody knows it was my fault.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
The silence is so long and so heavy, I assume that Sindre has finally fallen asleep. I listen to the pre-recorded laughter from some old comedy re-runs coming from downstairs and lightly stroke Sindre’s back. Suddenly he jerks and takes my hand in his own, turning around to face me.
‘I have to tell you something,’ he says. ‘Once, I shot a kid… I… I always told myself it was a mistake, collateral damage, of course it was, but…’ he trails off for a moment, tries to control his breath.
‘Shhh,’ I whisper, and place my index finger to his lips. He kisses my finger softly, but tears stream down his face. I draw him so close that every part of Sindre is pressed against me.
&nb
sp; ‘I’ve done bad things, Ali. More than I had to.’
‘No,’ I whisper. My hands travel gently across his eyebrows, then across his scalp to his neck, where I knead his tense muscles with my thumbs.
‘I have.’
‘No,’ I whisper again, because I don’t want to know.
‘What if what happened to us is punishment? You know, karma. Karma,’ he repeats, as though he has never heard the word before. ‘I can’t bear it. I can’t. I can’t stop thinking that I brought this onto us.’
‘Shhh,’ I say, more forcefully now. I press my finger against his lips again and then I turn slowly away from him. I feel a strange movement from his side of the bed and at first I think he’s getting up, but then I realize he is sobbing and pushing against the headboard with his fists. I turn back around and hold my husband close. I place my hand on his chest and feel his heart rush inside him, as though he were happy and not desperate. I don’t know how to be me, and I don’t know how to be anything at all for Sindre.
In the earliest days, we vowed that we would stay together, that we would learn to live this life instead of the other one, that we would do the right thing and donate her organs so we could save someone else from such loss. We felt very deeply that she wouldn’t have wanted us to come undone, that if we lay down to die, her life would have been for nothing. We meant it, and right at the beginning, when people constantly rallied around, when the world expected nothing from us, when prescription-drug apathy was still a novelty, I almost believed that it could be true – that it was possible to get through it. I couldn’t have grasped, then, that it would grow bigger and sharper every day, that it would rot my heart, that it would devour everything that was once good, like a tumor in my head, pressing every normal function to the tight, dark corners of my skull.
I turn away from Sindre and clamp my eyes shut.
There you are, baby bear. Your hair is loose and when I pick you up, its ends tickle the tip of my nose. I hold you close, the way a koala carries her baby. When I call you my little koala bear, you laugh straight into my ear, your voice pouring into my entire being. I place you gently down onto the beach and your stubby pink toes sink into the wet sand. You stand a while looking out at the sun-speckled water before wading in, sunlight spilling down your back. You turn around to make sure I’m watching you, and I am; I’d never take my eyes off you. You splash around for a long while, shrieking and laughing, and I laugh, too, at the faces you pull, at your flailing arms, your legs pummeling at the water. After a while, I tell you to come back, but you don’t listen.
You half-swim, half-wade further out into the lake, where the water goes from golden and translucent to glittery and inky, like the night sky. Come back, I say, then I scream it, my voice thundering across the water, but you don’t come back – you are a mere speck in the middle of the lake now. In this state, held beneath consciousness but aware of it, I can’t move, not even an inch. I can only stand here, screaming. Come back, baby bear. Please, please come back. When you do come back, after a very long time, after I have screamed my voice bone-dry, I pull you from the water and your face is stricken and frightened by my urgency. I pick you up and you wrap your legs around my waist and my heart gallops against your cheek and I whisper into your hair: You scared me so much, baby bear.
Chapter Six
Iselin, two months earlier
‘Are you ready?’ I ask. Kaia nods and I pick her up as gently as I would a newly hatched nestling. Her hands are cold against my neck and I place her down into the wheelchair on the curb and spread her thick purple blanket around her shoulders. Kaia looks at the house as though she’s never seen it before, although it has only been five weeks. I’ve come back weekly, for clean clothes and quickly prepared meals, before heading back to Kaia at the hospital.
‘Guess what?’ I say as I unlock the door and push her inside. She looks up at me with her big, questioning eyes, but they seem far away, as though she can’t entirely understand what I said. ‘I got you a surprise. Two, actually.’
I pick Kaia back up from the wheelchair and half-carry, half-walk her into the main room. I’ve tidied everything up – we left in a hurry, leaving toys scattered about – but the apartment still looks small. I place her down on the sofa and she leans back, drawing her feet up, looking around the room slowly. Her eyes find the huge, crudely wrapped object by the curtain that separates her bedroom alcove from the rest of the room.
‘What’s that?’ she asks.
‘It’s for you.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a welcome-home present, sweetie.’
‘Can I open it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you please open it for me, Mamma?’
‘Why don’t I help you down to the floor and we can open it together?’
‘Can you just open it for me?’ My daughter looks tiny and exhausted where she sits on the sofa. Though she seems frail, there is a glint of strength in her eyes, and I tell myself it isn’t strange that she’s both exhausted and overwhelmed after what she’s been through. But she made it.
I slowly and theatrically unpeel the yellow-and-pink wrapping paper, revealing an enormous, uneven cardboard box beneath. Kaia giggles, then her eyes grow wide as she realizes what it is.
‘The Sylvanian Grand Regency Hotel!’
‘Yeah,’ I say, pushing the box over to Kaia so she can run her fingers across it. ‘With all the Sylvanians you could possibly want, too.’ I hand her a second package which had been concealed behind the first. This one she unwraps herself, serious and concentrated, and she keeps looking up at me with an expression of pure joy in her eyes. Many, many boxes of Sylvanians have been wrapped together: bears, bunnies, dogs and cats, tiny happy families.
‘Thank you,’ she whispers. ‘Wow.’
‘It’s from The Heart Foundation,’ I say and Kaia nods.
‘I’m so lucky.’
You have no idea how lucky you are, baby, I think to myself. No idea.
*
That night, Kaia sleeps next to me, spreading out on the bed like a little starfish, but I don’t want to move her for fear of hurting her. She stirs occasionally, mewling like an injured cat, her face twisting into grimaces, and I watch her in the soft glow of the streetlamps outside. I might have come back here alone. I might have been faced with a future without Kaia. I swallow hard and lay a while listening to the soft gurgle of water flowing in the drains upstairs somewhere.
When I wake again, Kaia is crying softly.
‘It hurts,’ she says, ‘I can’t breathe.’
I sit up, alarmed. ‘Where does it hurt? You’re breathing just fine.’ Kaia doesn’t answer, and I’m fumbling with the light switch when I realize that she is asleep, that these are words from a dream.
‘Please,’ she whispers after a while, and then, ‘Mamma!’
‘Shhh,’ I say into the soft, limp hair covering her ears. ‘Mamma’s here.’ And that’s how we stay, wrapped in each other, me listening to my daughter breathing until the late-summer sun appears in the sky.
Chapter Seven
Alison
‘I can’t breathe,’ I say after a prolonged silence. Karen Fritz knits, carefully looping the needles in and around a delicate spool of violet yarn. She doesn’t look particularly disturbed by what I just said, trained as she is in professional sympathy. Behind her hangs a drawing of a flock of birds flying above a seaside town of huddled, deep-red houses. Lofoten or Greenland, maybe? I count the birds: twenty-two. I close my eyes and imagine myself among them; the pull of the salty wind on my face, the only sound the rhythmic, soft flap of wide wings, the navy sweep of the ocean rolling out ahead.
‘Alison.’
‘Yes,’ I say, my voice as weak as though I’d just been punched in the stomach. I try to take a deep breath, but the air meets a wall of obstruction at the top of my lungs. ‘I can’t breathe,’ I repeat.
‘You’re breathing, though.’
‘Yes, but it feels strained
, like I just can’t get enough air.’ I stare at the birds streaking through the sky, at the shimmery steel-blue sea. I see myself far beneath its surface, clawing at dark water, drinking great gulps of salt water, opening my eyes and blinking at a hazy, staticky medley of gray-blues, my limbs growing slow and cold, then still.
‘It doesn’t seem strange to me that you would experience that sensation.’
‘I can’t…’ I begin, but I cannot finish the sentence because I don’t know what I was going to say. I contemplate getting up and walking out; I’ve done that more than once before. But there isn’t anywhere to run. The birds again, free, soaring above the ocean, beady eyes locked on the horizon, no thoughts besides flight, rest, food. I don’t understand where the awful, keening sound is coming from until Karen Fritz gently places her knitting down on her table, gets up, crosses the space between our armchairs and kneels next to me.
‘It’s okay,’ she says, nudging a soft tissue into my closed fist. ‘Shut your eyes, Alison. That’s it, keep them shut, just focus on your breath.’
But I can’t breathe.
‘I need to go home,’ I whisper.
*
In the kitchen I pour vodka into a water glass and drink it quickly. I listen out for Sindre, but hear nothing. The door to his office is shut and a sliver of light illuminates the floor in the hallway. Has he fallen asleep in his chair again? I put my sheepskin boots on and slip outside. I decide to walk, though it’s quite far.
*
The lake appears different now, in the autumn, than it did in July. The water is black, lightening to gold-flecked brown in the shallows, and the smoke from the surrounding farms’ bonfires drifts across to where I stand on the soggy beach. I inhale the smoke, trying to control my breathing. It’s still very early in the morning, not yet eight, and the vodka I drank before I came here stings in my stomach. Fall used to be my favorite time; I loved the trampled orange leaves, the sharp morning air, the scent of smoke and spice and upturned, emptied earth.