by Alex Dahl
Iselin draws sharply at the air, hesitates a while before she speaks. ‘I… Well, that would be amazing… But…’
‘Great!’
‘But don’t feel like you have to…’
‘I don’t, at all. I just figured I might be able to help. Seriously, if you need some pointers, I’d be happy to sit down over a coffee and talk about it some more. Sometime. If you want.’ I realize I’m holding my breath, like a teenager asking her crush out.
‘Sure,’ says Iselin, after a slight pause. ‘I mean, thank you.’
‘Hey, I remember being young and starting out and there were so many things I wish someone had told me. And it doesn’t hurt to come recommended. Besides, it was fun last night, until my little freak accident. I enjoyed speaking with you.’
‘I did, too,’ says Iselin.
‘My stepson has a little horse and I check on it a couple of times a week. I have to go see to it tomorrow afternoon. It’s in Sørkedalen, so not all that far from you guys. Would you like to meet for a walk or something after? I could bring a couple of my articles – I’ll see if I can find some from back in the day that were illustrated by Sami Haley. I love her work – she reminds me a bit of you.’
‘Sami Haley… Oh, wow. Yeah, that sounds great.’ Iselin’s voice is excitable and gushing now. From Frognerseteren to Fresno, flattery never fails. ‘I have to pick Kaia up at three, but could meet before that, like maybe one thirty? A walk would be nice, I don’t get nearly enough fresh air…’
*
I walk fast through the forest, drawing in icy air, holding my injured hand close to my chest. At the top of the long hill behind our house, I turn right where the track separates, toward Oslo Vinterpark. I stand a while by the ski lift at the bottom of the run, watching the chair lifts pass, mostly empty. A little girl comes down the beginner’s slope, held between her mother’s legs, plowing hard, and there is something about her posture and height that reminds me of Amalie. I squint toward them and finally get a clear view of the girl’s face as she lifts her ski goggles and lines up for the chair lift. It really is her. Honey-blonde hair, almond eyes, pink, full lips. I blink hard and begin to walk toward them but they are nearing the front of the line, scanning their lift passes to get through the barriers, moving slowly toward the pick-up spot.
‘Hey,’ I scream, and a couple of other people waiting turn around. I come up behind where they are standing just as the lift arrives. A man holds it steady for a moment so they can get on, and Amalie expertly places her ski sticks between her legs.
‘Hey,’ I scream again, and the girl turns toward me, but then, her face crumples and blurs like a mirage and I realize she doesn’t have brown, almond eyes at all, but blue, cold ones, rather, and an upturned nose. What I thought was honey-blonde hair is the beige lining of her ski helmet, and emerging from it are strands of limp, dark-brown hair. It’s not Amalie, it’s Kaia, and I scream, No, no, no as the lift surges off the ground, and I run after it, scrambling over the barriers, but someone grabs me and says, Hey, no, stop, lady what are you doing, hey. The little stranger, who looks nothing like Amalie nor Kaia, stares down at me from the lift with beady, blank bird eyes and I hear a rising cacophony of voices around me, but I’m kneeling on the tightly prepped snow with my eyes closed, saying, I’m sorry, just a misunderstanding, sorry, sorry.
*
At home, I drink tea with two tranquilizers. I unwind my bandage and pick at the still-fresh gash, making it bleed again, running my hand through my hair, and I just let myself cry and cry until the sky is dusky and velvet and long shadows spill across the floor. I pick up my phone and stare at my vague reflection in its screen, a haunted, twisted grimace etched across my face, and wonder who I could call. Sindre won’t talk about her. My mother doesn’t remember her, or anything at all now; she spends her days staring out the window of the care home at the empty, ochre desert sands, talking and laughing to herself. Oliver is just a kid and I can’t expect him to carry me, it isn’t fair. I open my mouth and just let my voice loose in the hushed air of the living room.
I don’t have anybody to talk to but you. You can’t carry me, either, but you’re going to have to. I need another sign. A sign, baby bear.
Karen Fritz said I should go to a grief support group, where I could sit around with others like myself: ex-mothers, angel parents, the bleeding-to-deaths. I could talk about her there, and people would listen; I could talk about the bears she draws, the way she never stops swinging her legs underneath the table, how she stares into Misty’s eyes and the old horse falls as still as if Amalie had cast a spell on her. The ex-mothers would listen and cry and that’s what I don’t want, for her memory to always be steeped in sadness, for any mention of her to prompt tears. I want to speak about her and say that she is funny and silly and that even when she was little, she’d laugh gleefully at any unexpectedly comic occurrence. I never want to use the past tense about my baby, not ever. I want Sindre to see her the way I do, I want him to talk about her and laugh a little, I want to talk and talk and talk until my words restore everything she ever did, until I have rebuilt her, not leaving out even a single little freckle or scar or expression. But I don’t have anyone to talk to.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Alison, February
I’m on my way out when the phone rings. I let it go to answerphone and Karen Fritz’s voice fills the room. It is the voice of a person trying to talk another off a bridge, and the familiar gentleness of it makes me linger for a moment, my hand on the door handle.
‘Alison. Ali. It’s me, Karen. If you can hear me, please pick up. Today was the seventh session you’ve missed. I am very concerned for you. Please call me back any time. If it’s too difficult for you to come to me, I will come to you. Alison. Are you there?’
I step outside and close the door. It’s snowing heavily, and thick wet flakes cover my hair as I rush across the courtyard to the car.
I run a red light down by Røa, not on purpose, but because I was driving too fast and didn’t realize it was red before I was already going through it. A car making a right turn has to brake hard, skidding on the snow and veering into the oncoming traffic lane. Thankfully it’s empty, but I pull over as soon as I can, wheels sinking into pristine, new snow in someone’s driveway. I pull the slide for the mirror cover back, the little light snaps on and I stare at myself hard. Still here. Fleshy, dry skin has gathered at the corners of my eyes, dragging them down and giving me a look of permanent exhaustion. My face is very pale, and my cheeks have sunk beneath a protruding ridge of bone, making me look ill. My hair hasn’t been colored since the end of May, and is pulled harshly back in a greasy ponytail, streaked through with gray. I am a little shocked at just how bad I look – I am forty-four years old but I have aged a decade in six months.
I try to recapture the memory of how I used to look, when I was a teenager in California. I remember that all my colors seemed to pick up warm, golden tones – my naturally highlighted hair from hours of surfing and running on the beach, my bronze skin, and the honey flecks in my eyes. I must have looked like the archetypical California girl. And now, this gray, crumbling shell of a woman. I open the door and step outside. I take a couple of steps forward, then place my feet about a foot apart in the snow before stepping back into my own footsteps so it looks like someone just dissolved into thin air.
‘You are supposed to be here.’
I look around to see who spoke, but there is nobody there, just the slow crawl of traffic toward Holmenkollen in one direction and Ullern in the other, the blur of heavy snow against a somber, fading sky. I heard the words, as clearly as I hear the wet crunch of metal-studded wheels gliding through thick snow, as clearly as the rumble of the T-bane speeding away in the distance. You are supposed to be here. Did it come from inside myself? My heart begins to race, and I get back in the car and switch on the ignition. I catch my own eye again, unguarded this time, and this moment feels pivotal in the intense empathy I feel for the woman look
ing back at me. I am going to teach you how to live again, I think, mouthing the words without a sound.
I am not going to give in to tears, not now. I am not going to be sucked down into the darkest corners of my mind and heart, not now. I am going to go to Misty, and then I am going to meet Iselin. I’ve decided to do whatever I can to help them – no matter that we are bound together by the strange circumstances of the heart transplant – I genuinely want Kaia to grow up in stable, comfortable surroundings with a mother who has some support. And I could be that support. Meeting Kaia has planted something inside me – an urge to see her again, to be close to her, to help her. I need to help her to help myself. I inch the car back onto the road, and before pushing the mirror holder back I give myself one last, reassuring gaze.
*
Long gentle strokes with my uninjured hand, but still, Misty is restless. Her wide, wise eyes stare at the ground, ears sharp and alert. I brush her for a long while, then I cling to her mane, drawing her scent deep into my lungs. I change her water even though it was clean. I stand for a while, just watching her. She’s different from before; it is as though a kind of lethargy has settled on the little horse, slowing her movements. Perhaps it’s age – she’ll be sixteen this summer. She was a feisty little thing when Amalie first rode her; Amalie’s tiny body bobbing around in the saddle like a ragdoll as Misty waddled about the track.
‘Bye,’ I whisper, and turn around to leave, but Oliver is standing there. A girl is with him.
‘Oh, hi, Oliver,’ I say. He looks nervous and not particularly happy to see me. I imagine he is afraid I might say or do something embarrassing in front of his girlfriend. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Well, I come here sometimes. You know, after school.’
‘You do?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I didn’t know that. You must be Celine,’ I say, turning to the girl. She’s tall and dark-haired, with fine bone structure and brown doe-like eyes, not unlike Misty’s. I smile and she nods.
‘I’m Alison, Oliver’s stepmother.’
‘Umm, yes. We met before. A couple of weeks ago? At your house.’
I smile coolly and try to think back – wouldn’t I have remembered meeting Oliver’s girlfriend? ‘Oh yes. Of course, I’m sorry. Nice to see you again, Celine.’ Walking away from them, I feel Oliver’s gaze on me. A vague memory comes back to me; waking up on the sofa to the sound of someone talking to me, my mind blank with alcohol, going unsteadily upstairs, Oliver behind me, catching his eye in the mirror at the top of the stairs, bumping briefly into someone on my way into our bedroom – Celine. In the car, I run my hands through my hair, and this reminds me of last night, the desperation of those hours, drinking and sobbing and talking to Amalie, my blood-soaked hand streaking my hair a grotesque red-brown. I look in the rearview mirror and feel the same strength I felt earlier. You are meant to be here, I whisper, and hold my own gaze for a long while before turning the key in the ignition.
*
We don’t walk far; it’s too cold, and the snow falling bites at any skin left exposed. Circling Iselin and Kaia’s nondescript suburban neighborhood of detached family houses and low-rise apartment buildings, I tell Iselin about my early years as a journalist.
‘So you just left home and moved to Istanbul?’
‘Yeah, pretty much. I’d been traveling around for a few years, making a living as a freelance translator, and occasionally selling travel articles, at one point selling bracelets on the beach in Bali, then Thailand. I started to write quite a bit for Lonely Planet at the time. At first from Istanbul, and then Kyrgyzstan. Then I returned to Europe, and started writing more and more features.’
‘That must have been so fascinating.’
‘It was incredible. I loved learning some of the languages, and getting to know the cultures. Especially central Asia. And Thailand. It is just so beautiful, and the people, the landscapes, the food, all absolutely amazing.’
‘It must have been a real shock to your system.’
‘Yes and no… I grew up in Walnut Creek, in San Francisco Bay Area. I guess you’d say it’s pretty fancy. But I think, even as a kid, I knew it wasn’t real life, you know? And I was always so curious about other places and cultures.’
‘Yeah. I was like that, too.’ Iselin looks at me and I like the unmistakable look of admiration on her face.
‘Yeah? Where did you grow up, Iselin?’
‘In Nordland. In the most underwhelming place you can possibly imagine. I mean, it was beautiful, but there was always this sense that life was elsewhere, you know?’
‘Oh, I know. Story of my life.’ We laugh a little, and I can tell I am winning Iselin over. We have come to a stop outside their apartment, having looped around the neighborhood, but it feels like she doesn’t want our time together to end.
‘I should go,’ I say. ‘I’m sure you need to pick up Kaia.’
‘You could come with me to get her if you wanted to and then come back to ours for a coffee or something… If you have time, that is?’
‘That sounds great,’ I say.
Iselin is twenty-six years old. I almost can’t believe that she is the mother of a seven-year-old child and try to imagine myself in her shoes at that age. What if I’d had a kid with my high-school boyfriend, Fred the Red, we used to call him, because of his thick, ginger hair. Would I have ended up there, in the scraggly hills of the Bay Area, living in a bungalow and raising red-haired kids who by now would be well into their twenties? I watch Iselin as we approach the school, how young and soft she is, and yet there is something hard there, beneath the surface. I wonder if she feels resentful. The thought of this makes me go cold – to think that any woman could resent being a mother. I want to grab her by the arm and make her look at me and shout, Cherish every second, because look at me. Look me in the eye.
*
‘Hey, Mamma,’ exclaims Kaia, perched on the bottom rung of the red pyramid climbing frame in the playground. And then, ‘Hey, Alison!’ I’m so surprised that she remembers my name that my mouth drops open. I keep my right hand close to my side and give her a little wave with my left. Kaia hops down easily and runs over to us, throwing herself into Iselin’s arms and immediately retracts her legs, like an airplane pulling its landing gear up after take-off, so Iselin is holding up her full weight. She looks cheekily over at me, and I notice that her bandage has been removed, leaving a fresh, puckered little scar.
‘Hi there,’ I say. ‘What a cool playground you guys have here.’
‘Yeah.’ Kaia comes over to me and gives me a quick, surprising little hug.
‘What is that smell?’ asks Kaia, nestling her face at my waist.
‘Kaia!’ says Iselin. ‘Don’t be rude!’
‘It’s… uh, from our horse,’ I say. ‘Misty.’
‘You have a horse?’ Kaia’s already big eyes swell.
‘Yeah. Someone else takes care of it a lot of the time, but yeah.’
‘Why does somebody else take care of it?’
‘Because, well, because I don’t have time to go see it every day.’
‘Because you’re a journalist!’
I smile at this. ‘I am, yes. But I’m not working that much right now. I’m… taking some time out.’ I pause, still focusing on maintaining a calm, controlled composure. ‘I am going to start working again soon, though. Writing and stuff.’
Kaia tightens her brow into a frown, and it occurs to me that she of course has no idea what I’m talking about. ‘My Mamma doesn’t work.’
‘Kaia…’ says Iselin.
‘Your mom does work,’ I say. ‘She’s a very talented artist.’
‘That’s not a job.’
‘Of course it is,’ I say, giving Iselin a reassuring glance. Kaia runs ahead of us the last few meters to the apartment, then turns around at the door and beams at us. I notice how pale she looks, how short she is for her age. How must it have felt for a small child to know she was likely to die? Amalie had no conc
ept of danger, or of death. Sindre and I created a dreamy bubble around her, trying to make ourselves believe that nothing bad could ever happen to her. I swallow hard and give Kaia a weak smile as she leads me into her home.
Kaia pulls me over to a slouchy, moss-green armchair with a tear partially covered by a fluffy cushion, and perches on the armrest, but Iselin gently leads her over to a blue-and-white stripy sofa across from me and puts an arm around her, as though she might otherwise rise up and away like a balloon. I glance around the apartment, overcome with the strange situation. The living room is small and quite cluttered, with shoeboxes overflowing with paper pushed underneath the sofa, dolls staring hard at us from a storage box by the window, bits of Lego studding the carpet. I wonder what Amalie would have made of this stuffy, messy space. I just can’t picture her here, sitting by the toy box, pulling out random plastic pieces and starting to put them together.
‘If I had a horse, I would go and see it every day,’ says Kaia.
‘I bet you would,’ I say softly, letting the fragrant steam from the green tea Iselin has made rise into my face.
‘What’s his name again?’
‘She’s a girl. Her name is Misty.’
‘Misty! I like Misty!’