by Alex Dahl
‘I can only imagine,’ I say, but I can’t imagine, I won’t imagine. I hate her now. Did this woman somehow manifest what happened to Amalie by wishing so hard for someone to die? People’s thoughts don’t influence what unfolds in life, Karen Fritz says, but, really, what does she know? What do any of us know? I pick up my wine glass and stare into it, my face reflecting on its surface…I could smash it into her face, tearing flesh from bone. Or I could… Stop it, Ali, stop it. I need to keep a firm grasp on reality. Iselin doesn’t speak again, seemingly comfortable in our prolonged silence now. I look at her sideways, and again, I’m struck by how very young she is – her skin has that plump, almost moist tautness to it that becomes so coveted in your thirties and forties. I need to find empathy for her, and mutual ground. I can only stay close to my baby if I stay close to this woman. I wonder what Iselin wants from me. Does she believe we could really be friends? I need her to believe that. Or is she merely after some help with her career?
‘You know, I’m so glad you two came up,’ I say. ‘You deserve some time away. If you want to head over to the hotel and use the spa tomorrow, I’m happy to watch Kaia at the children’s ski area.’ Iselin’s face lights up and she smiles at the prospect of a couple of hours on her own, but then the smile fades a little, leaving a slightly nervous expression behind. She’s probably worried about the cost. ‘We’re members,’ I continue. ‘You’re welcome to use it; it’s totally free.’
‘God, that would be so lovely,’ she says. I refill her glass again and she bursts out laughing. ‘This is all so nice! I’m a bit drunk, though…’
‘Nice feeling, isn’t it?’ I say, touching my glass to hers, and we both laugh. ‘Look at the moon,’ I continue. ‘It’s going to snow again.’
‘How do you know?’
‘See the reddish ring around it?’
‘Yeah?’
‘That means snow.’
*
I was right. I wake in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and stop for a moment at my bedroom window. Flurries of snow churn on brisk bursts of wind charging up the mountainsides. For a moment, I consider going out there, standing in front of the cabin, barefoot and in my nightdress, every snowflake landing on my skin like a tiny stabbing blade. Instead, I pad down the hallway toward the bathroom, but as I pass Kaia’s room, I pick out some strange sounds from the hushed, heavy silence. I shudder and move closer to the door. I’m not imagining things; Kaia seems to be crying, perhaps in her sleep. I glance down the hallway toward the guest bedroom, and stand completely still, listening. Not a sound, except the child’s muffled wailing. Iselin is probably fast asleep; she was so drunk she slurred her words when she went to bed.
I open the door to Kaia’s bedroom a crack and the sound intensifies.
‘Kaia?’ I whisper, but there’s no answer, just indiscernible words interspersed with soft crying. I step into the room and pad softly over to the bunk beds. I stand on the lower one and peer into the top bunk, the soft glow of the outdoor oil lamp streaming in through a gap in the curtains. Kaia is tossing and turning, her brow studded with sweat, her little pale face twisted in anguish. No, she says, several times. No. No. And then, Help me. I feel entirely overcome by a fierce maternal protectiveness for the distressed child. I place my hand lightly on her forehead and still she does not open her eyes.
‘Help me,’ she says again.
‘Shhh,’ I whisper. I place my other hand on her hands, which are clasped tightly together against her chest. ‘Shhh, little sweetheart.’ She tenses slightly, and suddenly, I can feel the thud of her heart against my fingertips. It’s beating wildly, and she lets out another cry, louder now.
‘The water!’ she says, clearly. ‘The water! Help me!’ I shake her firmly by her bony shoulders, she needs to wake up now, now, and finally she opens her eyes, wide and terrorized.
‘Mamma!’ she whispers and bursts into tears. ‘Where’s my mamma?’
‘Shhh, sweetheart,’ I say, ‘you were having a nightmare. It was just a dream.’
‘I dreamed I—’
‘Shhh!’ I interrupt her.
‘There was water everywhere. Black. Cold water. I was drowning. I couldn’t breathe. It hurt so much. I’m afraid.’ Kaia scoots down to the bottom of the bunk, clambers down the ladder and runs down the hallway to Iselin’s room, crying loudly, but I’m unable to move. I stand for a long while listening to her wailing and Iselin’s soft soothing voice filling the hiccupy gaps between sobs.
*
It wasn’t like that. I know it. The water wasn’t black. It wasn’t cold, either. She could breathe but she no longer needed to. It was like swimming inside the sweetest, softest cloud. It was like dancing in the sky.
She wasn’t afraid. I need to know that she wasn’t afraid.
I stand by the window, looking out at the falling snow, like little shavings of heaven.
A sign, baby bear, I whisper. My eyes are closed and my fists are clenched. The harder I clench, the more clearly I can feel the throb of my pulse, and I know now that my sign was the strength of Amalie’s heart beating when I touched upon Kaia. She’s still with me.
Chapter Forty
Alison
When I wake, it’s still dark outside. I pick my phone out from under my pillow and squint at its bright screen. 8.30 a.m. I sit up and look around – it isn’t actually still dark outside, but we’re snowed in. Though it’s always quiet up here at Blåkroken, this is a different kind of silence, like being sealed inside a box and submerged in water. My mind returns to Kaia’s nightmare last night, how distressed she was, the impossible words she spoke. After she ran into Iselin’s room, I spent several hours awake, trying to think about something other than what she’d said. Black water, cold, fear.
I unhook the metal clasps on the window and try to push it outwards, but it won’t budge. As the cabin is built on a steep slope, the bedrooms at the back of the house are much closer to the ground than the living room and kitchen at the front. I listen out for signs of Iselin and Kaia as I walk down the narrow hall, but the house is entirely quiet. As I thought, the front of the house is much better, with snow rising less than halfway up the windows. I’ll be able to get out through the terrace door and can then use a shovel to dig the front door clear. I remember something I forgot last night after all the wine.
I get my phone and dial the number of Norefjell Høyfjellshotell, whose brochure we keep in a kitchen drawer. I give the lady on the other end of the line my credit card details and tell her that I wish to treat a guest to whatever she wants at the spa and to give her access to all facilities for the day. When I told Iselin that we had a membership at the hotel, that wasn’t strictly true, though we use it a lot when we’re here. After all those years praying for someone’s kid to die, I’m sure she deserves a day at the spa.
After I hang up, my phone begins to vibrate in my hand. It’s Sindre, but I don’t want to speak to him just now; I want to be here, in this moment, at Blåkroken, with Iselin and Kaia, far removed from my life in Oslo with my husband. And without my daughter. I crack four eggs into a bowl and whisk them together with cream and pepper as several messages tick in, making the phone twitch and bleep on the counter. Sindre has an annoying tendency to send five messages when he could have said everything he wants to say in one.
Morning Baby. I heard on the radio that there’s heavy snow in Norefjell?
Oliver and I thought we’d pop up.
Are you okay for food or should we stop in Noresund? Also, what’s up with the new pictures? A little weird?
Call me. S x
I am so startled by Sindre’s messages that I forget the bowl on the countertop behind me and I lean straight back, knocking it over, spilling its slimy, yellow contents across the counter, down the front of the kitchen cabinets and onto the floor.
‘Goddamn it,’ I hiss. I stab at the phone, trying to find Sindre’s number in the call history, but my heart is racing and my fingers are slick with the eggy mess. I
have to call twice before he picks up, sounding flustered.
‘Oh, hi, honey,’ he says, and the sound of his voice makes me suddenly yearn for him, for the safety and comfort of being held tight in his arms. What am I doing?
‘Hi,’ I whisper.
‘You okay, Ali?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Did you see my message? I’m just grabbing a few bits and pieces, and then I thought we’d hop in the car and join you. Oliver hasn’t been up since last year. Thought we’d catch a few hours on the powder in the afternoon.’
‘Listen, I… I really need to be alone.’
Sindre hesitates and I can’t tell if he’s annoyed or worried. ‘Ali, I haven’t seen you all week. I’ve missed you.’
‘I miss you too. I’m coming back down tomorrow, okay? I’d really just like a little time to think.’ Sindre falls silent again, and I know he’s worried now. ‘Listen, don’t worry, babe, okay? I actually feel vaguely like myself again. It was a beautiful night last night. I looked at the stars and cooked a nice meal and gave Blåkroken a much-needed clean. I just need to be alone here for a couple of days. I think it will give me the headspace to really start to pick myself up again, you know? Maybe even go back to work. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ says my husband.
I hang up and turn back to the spilled eggs, but Kaia is standing there, right behind me.
‘Oh! You have to stop sneaking up on me,’ I say, ruffling her hair and smiling at her, but her face is serious. ‘You okay?’ She nods slowly, and nothing in her expression betrays whether she understood that I just lied to my husband on the phone.
‘I’m just going to tidy this up,’ I say. ‘Then, if you want, you and I could go outside and dig the front door clear of all the snow, what do you think?’
Slight nod.
‘Is your mom still asleep?’
Slight nod.
‘Where’s the man?’
‘Which man?’
‘Your man.’
‘Oh, you mean Sindre.’
Slight nod.
‘He’s at home. In Oslo. He was working, so he couldn’t come to the mountain.’
‘Oh.’
‘Is he much taller than you?’
‘Umm, yes, he’s pretty big. Yeah, he’s quite a bit taller than me,’ I say, rinsing the egg-stained cloth under scalding water, avoiding Kaia’s serious and unnerving little face. ‘Why?’
‘I just thought he looked like a giant in the drawing.’
‘Which drawing?’
‘There’s a drawing taped to the ceiling of the bunk I slept on.’
‘What? Show me!’ I try to control my tone of voice, but it comes out shriller than I intended and Kaia looks at me warily.
‘You can only see it when you lie down. I guess the big boy drew it.’ I walk her into the kids’ bedroom and climb up to the top bunk, and there it is – a drawing in Amalie’s hand I’ve never seen before. It is painstakingly sketched, but clearly the work of a very young child. She has drawn a sharp, pointy mountain and on the left side of it is me and Sindre – me a tiny little lady next to Sindre’s gargantuan shape. On the right side of the mountain she’s drawn Oliver and herself, smiling merrily, holding skis and sticks. I unpeel the drawing and climb back down without a word, leaving Kaia standing there.
*
‘I’m cold,’ says Kaia, the moment she steps out of the car.
‘You’ll be fine,’ I say, sitting down inside the open boot, kicking my Uggs off and then pushing my feet into my tight, clunky ski boots. Kaia has insisted that if she is going to try downhill skiing, I have to ski alongside her. ‘You won’t feel the cold once we’re up there.’ I smile encouragingly at her and we look up at the long, gentle slope and the mostly empty T-bars gliding up and around the turnstile, then down again. It’s still early, but it’s a beautiful day and half-term, so soon the children’s beginner run will inevitably be swarming with children much younger than Kaia.
In the ski rental shop, Kaia bounces excitedly up and down as we wait our turn. In Blåkroken’s shed I have Amalie’s brand-new skis and boots from last year and which she only got to use a couple of times, but I clearly couldn’t have mentioned them, so here we are.
‘How old are you then, sweetheart?’ asks the young woman behind the counter.
‘Seven,’ says Kaia.
‘Cool. What size shoes do you wear?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Okay. What size shoes does your little cutie wear?’ The young woman turns to me expectantly. Kaia and I exchange a brief glance and I open my mouth to say, Actually, I’m not her mom, but Kaia pulls her boot off and turns it upside down.
‘It says number one!’
‘Okay, great,’ says the girl and walks over to the huge open shelves holding ski boots of every size. She picks out a purple metallic pair and Kaia’s eyes light up.
‘You like purple, huh?’ I ask, awkwardly patting the top of her head.
‘Yeah, it’s my favorite color.’ The girl returns with the boots and a pair of short pink skis and a purple helmet. Kaia slips the helmet on, I help her with the boots, then we lock up our belongings, and go back outside. I help Kaia slot the boots into the ski bindings and pull her by a ski stick toward the lift, slowly in my cumbersome gear. I turn back to look at her, and in that moment, I am overcome with a sense of profound déjà vu. How many times have I pulled Amalie along, just like this, in this exact place? With the helmet and ski goggles on, Kaia could pass for my daughter. Even the wry little smile is similar. I stare at her and marvel at how, suddenly, it is as if some order has been restored, as if the universe has realigned itself – as if I have her back. I turn around and keep sliding slowly toward the lift, a small, excited girl tugging at the stick, and underneath my ski goggles, my eyes are streaming.
*
Kaia loved it. After an hour or so, she was coming down the slope on her own, steering carefully around the padded penguins, snowmen and monkeys placed on the run to practice turning. We came back to the cabin after a lunch of hot dogs from the slope-side barbecue, sitting side by side on the tightly prepped snow looking out over the valley down to Lake Krøderen far below. I almost didn’t dare look at Kaia for fear of breaking the spell that had been cast. For the last run, we skied down together, holding hands as we set off, soon breaking apart, laughing, and it was the kind of laughter that isn’t touched by despair. It was just happiness.
‘When is my mamma coming back?’ Kaia asks. She’s sitting on the wooden bench by the window, drawing.
‘Soon, I imagine. She’s been up there for a good few hours now.’
‘Yeah. What is she doing?’
‘Not sure exactly, sweetie. Probably relaxing in the sauna, getting a massage, stuff like that. It’s good for your mom to have some time to herself to relax.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it isn’t easy to get much time to yourself when you’re a mother.’ Kaia nods and seems to consider this. I take the milk, which has just begun to simmer, off the hob and pour it over chunks of chocolate in the two mugs on the counter. Mine is a plain blue mug, but I’ve given Kaia Amalie’s favorite mug in the world – a faded yellow Disney Goofy mug with several chips along the rim. As I stir the hot drink I wait for the onslaught of pain that is sure to come by giving this mug to another little girl, but it doesn’t happen; it feels okay and so I place it on the table in front of Kaia. Kaia stares at it for several moments, turning it around and taking in Goofy, running a finger around his outline. Her eyebrows scrunch together in a frown and she rests her little index finger in the white hollow of a chip, and glances up at me. Will she complain that I gave her this battered old mug?
‘Thank you,’ says Kaia. ‘I love this mug.’
‘Do you?’ I whisper, looking away for a moment into my own drink, where swirls of chocolate pattern the surface.
‘Yeah. I think I have one like it. Or a bit the same. I think Noa gave it to me.’
‘Noa?’
‘Yeah, she’s my aunt. She helps Mamma with me sometimes because they’re sisters and best friends and Noa loves me almost as much as Mamma does.’
‘Ah, that’s nice,’ I say.
‘Yeah. Noa lives in Paris and I’ve never been there. They speak French.’
‘Yes, they do.’
‘Have you been there?’
‘I have. Many times. It’s a long time ago now, though.’
‘I can’t go on a plane ’cause I’m sick. No, I was sick. Not anymore. Maybe I can go on a plane now. My mom lived in Paris, too, before I was born, and she says if I wasn’t always sick and if I didn’t always have to see the doctors, we could have lived there and it would have been so great because my mom loves it there and didn’t want to leave. She only left it because of me.’
‘Oh. Wow, well… I’m sure your mom is so happy that she got you, even if it made living in Paris difficult.’ Kaia shrugs, and stares into her mug again. I am overwhelmed by a feeling of protectiveness toward her, something tells me she hasn’t always had her mother’s full attention. Iselin is so young, so nervous-looking; it can’t have been easy for her. And yet, none of that is Kaia’s fault. Kaia deserves the best; a mother who truly sees her and who doesn’t feel like looking after her is some kind of sacrifice.
‘Yeah, but she’s sad because she has to do everything for me.’ Kaia takes a long sip of her hot chocolate and smiles up at me unguardedly; clearly this is the kind of thing she has been told over and over, and being seven, she doesn’t understand that a mother shouldn’t speak like that to her child. I’m struck still by a vicious contempt. I try to think whether I ever said such things to Amalie, and I’m sure I didn’t. I had my daughter at thirty-eight, when I was financially, and emotionally, secure. Perhaps I shouldn’t judge Iselin, yet I just can’t help but feel furious at the thought of Kaia being made to feel unwanted. Again, I am gripped by a visceral need to protect her and help her. If I was Kaia’s mother, I would give her everything.
‘What do you want to do now?’ I ask.