And the bathroom, he thinks. In Regina’s bathroom, there are all kinds of things: nose drops and bandages and thermometers and thousands of tissues. Plus a changing table. In Pernilla’s bathroom, there is just one pacifier and one big and one little toothbrush. Both brand new.
He would love to ask his mother some questions.
* * *
His suspicion is one he ought to reject, because he’s being paid to believe Pernilla, but as he thinks about it, he realizes he can find no objections. He thinks about bead mosaic kits, Thor, photos, kitchen chairs, and what happened six years ago. He needs a shower, but his thoughts don’t even give him ten minutes to rest. Before he goes out of the apartment, he goes into the kitchen to Regina.
“I have a weird question,” he says.
Regina looks at him. It’s probably the first time he’s talked to her twice in one day.
“Shoot!” she says.
“If you give birth, is there a lot of blood?”
“Yes, that and amniotic fluid. Why do you ask?”
He doesn’t reply, so she asks, “You haven’t gotten anyone pregnant, have you?”
The question warms his heart, just the idea that he could get someone pregnant. But he doesn’t answer. Instead he asks:
“And the embro … umbril … the cord thing?”
“The umbilical cord.”
“Yes. Is it thick or thin?”
Regina laughs.
“I know, it’s a weird question,” Kouplan says and tries to laugh himself.
“Well, it’s about this thick.” She shows him by measuring the space between her thumb and her forefinger. “Thicker than a finger, but not by much.”
“How do you get rid of it?”
Regina wrinkles her forehead.
“I mean, what are you supposed to do with it?”
He laughs again, hoping he sounds disarming.
“That is, I’m not planning on having a kid. I just have to know. My friend is pregnant and she has all kinds of questions.”
“Well, you cut it with scissors.”
“Like those?” He points to Ida’s pair of kid scissors. They have red polka dots.
Regina smiles. “Obviously, they have to cut through thicker things than paper. It’s a heavy pair of scissors. Sometimes you have to cut the cord a few times before it separates. The cord is pretty tough.”
“I thought it was soft?”
“It’s tougher than it looks. More like an octopus arm than a pair of pantyhose, if you will allow me the expression.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Is that it?”
“Yes.”
“Your friend doesn’t want to know if it hurts?”
He shakes his head, because he has to get going. He has to go to Pernilla’s place and look with new eyes.
“She already knows it hurts like hell. Thanks again!”
* * *
When Pernilla opens the door to her place, he looks into her eyes as if he can read an answer in an iris and a pupil.
“Maybe it’s Julia,” she says. “It’s just so blurry.”
“You mean the photo.”
“Yes, but I think it’s her!”
Kouplan is studying the hallway, just like he did the first time, but now he’s not looking for what’s there, but what isn’t.
“Aren’t we going to go get her? Where is she?”
“Wait a minute.”
Julia’s jacket is still hanging at the same spot as before. It still looks brand new. The shoes (size seven and a half) have no signs of wear.
“I just need to check Julia’s bed.”
He walks ahead of her, through the kitchen in the apartment, which is something other than he perhaps believed. At Regina’s place, there’s a child safety catch on the oven. Not here at Pernilla’s. On a hook, there’s a red-and-white child’s apron.
“Do you wash things often?” he asks as he bends over Julia’s bed.
The sheets have My Little Pony on them. They haven’t been washed much.
“Every other Sunday. Why? I usually don’t run into anyone when I go to the laundry room, if that’s what you’re…”
“May I look at Julia’s clothes?”
“They’re in the dresser.”
He pulls her clothes out of the dresser and puts them on the bed. Julia has twenty tops, all bright pink, a few pairs of pants, no underwear, five T-shirts, and three pairs of socks size 33–35. Kouplan feels his heart pumping information to his brain. The walls seem to undulate. Pernilla, astonished, watches him.
“What are you doing?”
Maybe he doesn’t know her at all.
“Do you have any drawings she’s made?”
Pernilla goes to get a folder.
“I’ve kept most of them,” she says. She opens it. “I even bought one of those plaster sets, you know, the kind where you can make imprints of hands and feet.”
The pictures are simple. Flowers, houses, squid, and octopi. The lines are perfect. Not a single brush has been pressed too hard against the paper. Nothing falls outside the lines.
“Do you still have the plaster cast of her feet?”
He’s amazed how normal his voice sounds.
“No, something was wrong with the plaster. It was too runny. Kouplan, talk to me. What are you looking for?”
He closes the folder with its perfect flowers and perfect houses. He takes some deep breaths. He needs the oxygen.
“Pernilla.”
“Yes?”
“Can you tell me about giving birth to Julia?”
* * *
Kouplan’s acting very odd.
“It’s important,” he says. “Please.”
Pernilla doesn’t want to think about when Julia was born. First, because it was a day filled with fear. Second, because nobody was with her. She’d even called Patrick, but he’d hung up on her. I can’t deal with you, he’d said. I’m giving birth! she’d screamed back. All he replied was: Don’t ever call me again. Kouplan’s velvet eyes are looking at her. She sighs.
“It was a very difficult day.”
All she knew was her time had come. She couldn’t call anyone. She had the emergency number on her phone just in case anything went wrong. She was determined that Social Services was not going to take her child, but she also did not want to die.
“I lay on the floor.” She pointed. “Over there.”
She doesn’t remember how long it took. Maybe several hours. Maybe fifteen minutes. She remembers sweating. She remembers how her body hurt like a fleshy extension of her fear. And then.
“But then when she was here…” she says. “When she was here—a tiny human that was all mine. It was worth it.”
Kouplan is watching her, though barely meeting her gaze.
“And then what did you do?”
“Held her. Dried her off. Felt extremely relieved that I didn’t die.”
“What did you do with the umbilical cord?”
Pernilla is still feeling her relief: The fear had turned to a memory because she was alive and she had Julia.
“The best thing that ever happened to me,” she emphasized truthfully.
“The umbilical cord, Pernilla. Did you cut it yourself?”
She nods.
“Which scissors did you use?”
“I don’t remember. I only have two pairs. One for the kitchen and one for paper.”
She doesn’t understand what he wants from her. Maybe they can find some clues in Julia’s bedroom. Fingerprints of the person who stole Julia’s lock of hair. Maybe now Julia’s drawings had also disappeared. She’d have to check the folder again once he was gone. But what does she have in her memory about an umbilical cord?
“Could you … I know this sounds strange … but could you lie down and show me how you cut it?”
“On the floor?”
“Preferably.”
Pernilla lies down on the kitchen floor. She puts a towel beneath her rear, as she’d done six years ago. For
a second, she feels an old feeling: This is not my body. It sweeps through her like a spirit.
“I was lying here like this.”
“Did you catch her with your hands?”
She nods, because she’s suddenly not so sure.
“I think I got on my elbows like this. So she wouldn’t hit the floor.”
“And the umbilical cord?”
He handed her the kitchen scissors. She shows how she cut it—halfway between where Julia was lying on her chest and her lower body where Julia had just come out.
“So it was fairly easy.”
“To cut it, yes. Giving birth was hard. It was terrifying.”
“Was the cord soft?”
She stretches her legs, looks at the ceiling. Tries to remember, because it must be important.
“Yes, it was like, like an intestine … giving what a child needs. You can think of a long balloon. But not blown up.”
“As easy to cut as a pair of pantyhose?”
Lying on the floor is more emotional than she’d expected. It was an echo of what she had experienced that day. She remembers how the walls seemed to storm.
“Approximately.”
* * *
Even if you can’t see everything behind an iris and a pupil, Kouplan can tell that Pernilla is not lying. She’s stretched out straight on the floor, a blond woman of about thirty, and she’s speaking from her heart. But there’s the truth, and then there’s modified truth. Julia’s twenty tops are as fresh as if they came right from the factory. Julia does not own a single pair of underwear. And there’s no parent in the world who does laundry only twice a month.
He often feels that he needs his brother. But today, he really needs his mother. He calls forth her face, with her glasses and her brown locks that have just started to go gray. Mama: First, is it possible? Second: What’s the question? His picture of her does not say anything, but he knows what she would say. First, everything is possible with the human psyche. Second: The answer comes to the one who does not question her experience.
“Did anyone ever accuse you of not being pregnant?”
He can see her answer both in her iris and in her pupil. Her blue eyes seem to hang on to him and they alternate between truth and modification.
“Everyone did.”
CHAPTER 35
At first, she was just one of many church visitors. During the service, she sat in a pew far back. She recited the Apostles’ Creed, but did not come up for communion. She looked like she’d come to the wrong place … something about her body language.
After the service, he thought she’d gone home. But during coffee hour, she turned up. She picked up a small slice of sugar cake and sat at an empty table.
“She seems lonely,” Hasse, the organist, said.
“I’ll go talk to her,” Thor said.
* * *
Her smile was forced and shy. She held out her hand.
“I’m Pernilla.”
“I’m Thor. Are you new to the congregation?”
Her eyes almost met his, but got lost. Her nervousness might flow into him if he didn’t sit down, so he did.
“We haven’t been to church for a long time,” she said. “But I needed some peace. It’s been so…”
She was quiet for so long that he thought she wouldn’t say anything else. But a good shepherd knows how to listen.
“… stressful,” Pernilla finished with a sigh.
Her sigh let him understand that she wasn’t talking about the stress of catching the bus every morning.
“Do you have anyone to talk to?”
The question triggered something.
“I refuse to go to a psychologist!”
That day, Thor handed her a brochure concerning conversations about the care of souls.
The next day, she called and made an appointment.
* * *
All kinds of people come with the need to speak about their souls. People in mourning, people who were addicted, people who were rejected or filled with guilt. During the first ten minutes, Thor tried to put Pernilla into some category in order to understand what she needed, but she seemed to hide from his scrutiny and skittered away from him. Finally, he leaned back to let the Holy Spirit enter the room. That was when she began to relax.
“I feel so confused,” she says. “Perhaps it shows?”
Thor let the Holy Spirit fill the room.
“I believe you are afraid.”
And Thor believed it. Pernilla reminded him of other women who needed more than just spiritual help. She was picking at one of her bracelets.
“I don’t dare tell you.”
“I will keep what you say in professional confidence,” Thor said. “You need not be afraid of what I might say to other people. What you tell me in this room, I cannot repeat to anyone else.”
“You can’t report things?”
He shook his head. “Not even criminal activity. My professional silence is complete.”
This seemed to calm Pernilla.
“I’m afraid Social Services will find her,” Pernilla said. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”
He hummed as if he understood.
“Who are you afraid they will find?”
Pernilla nodded toward the floor.
“Julia, my daughter.”
It seemed she thought Julia was in the room with them. Did he miss seeing a child enter the room? Nobody was hiding behind Pernilla. Her nod could be a tic.
“How old is Julia?”
“Three. Julia, say hello to the nice priest. It’s all right.”
No three-year-old appeared from behind the chairs. Pernilla smiled as if she wanted to excuse her daughter’s behavior.
“She’s so shy.”
Caring for someone’s soul means listening and understanding. One has to be careful with the souls of human beings.
“I believe I’m at fault for her being so shy,” Pernilla said. “I feel such guilt sometimes … but I really don’t want to lose her.”
Pernilla started to tell him a fantastic story while Thor was trying to see into her true soul. How they’d threatened to take her unborn child. How she faked a miscarriage and decided to have the child at home. How she now had given birth to a child who was not registered—she gestured toward the floor again. He could have said, “There’s no child there.” But he did not want to lose her thin thread of trust.
“Why were they threatening to take her from you?” he asked instead.
“I was in the psych ward,” she explained. “Because I tried to commit suicide. But that was before Julia came.”
“You mean Julia helps you to feel better.”
Pernilla smiled.
“She gave me something to live for. When you have a child … it’s like you’re able to see the light again. The light she sees.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Thor said.
He meant it. Whether or not this child existed, it seemed wonderful for Pernilla’s broken soul.
“I’m just … I’m thinking all the time that they’re just going to come and take her. It makes me so afraid.”
There are priests who believe in demons and there are priests who believe in modern psychology. Thor believes more in the latter than the former, but Pernilla’s statements about psychologists during the church coffee hour told him that she was not receptive to that. And if they gave her medicine that took away the only thing that made her happy, what would that do for her soul?
“Could it be,” he asked. “Could it be that you are worrying yourself unnecessarily? Social Services usually doesn’t come around for children they don’t know exist.”
Pernilla was silent for a moment. She glanced at the floor and then back at him, looking him right in the eyes.
“That’s what I thought. But it sounds so much better coming from you.”
That was their first conversation regarding the care of her soul. As Pernilla got ready to leave, she leaned over and seemed to pick up the weight of a chi
ld from empty air. She mumbled something toward her shoulder.
“Aren’t you going to say good-bye? Say good-bye to the nice priest.”
Thor did not know if he was making the right choice. All he knew was that Pernilla was feeling much better than when she’d arrived and he knew he had had to make a choice. He reached to the invisible being next to Pernilla’s cheek and stroked it.
CHAPTER 36
Kouplan asks Pernilla to sit down and he’s going to lie to her. As she sits on the sofa, he says, “Pernilla, I’m going to tell you what I believe and you have to decide if I’m telling you the truth.” Then he starts to lie.
“I’ve been thinking about a few things. Like Julia’s shoes in the hallway. When was Julia wearing them?”
It’s the worst kind of interrogation even though it’s Kouplan, with his velvet eyes, who is asking her. This is not making anything any better. Her body gets goose bumps from worry.
“She has shoes, she wears shoes, what’s the matter? Shouldn’t you be out looking for her?”
He’s supposed to be out looking for Julia. He’s not supposed to be making her feel uncomfortable. Her legs and arms feel like they’re falling asleep. Isn’t she paying him to look for Julia?
“It doesn’t make sense,” Kouplan explains. “She should have a much larger size, perhaps size seven and a half especially if she’s tall for a six-year-old.”
It’s creeping, creeping, creeping and Pernilla has to close her eyes to hold back a headache in order to answer, as if she needs a veil between herself and the world.
“So what? Maybe my daughter has small feet! I doubt very much having small feet is a crime! I’m not a criminal for having a daughter with small feet! Should I be arrested because my daughter has size seven and a half?”
She’s just talking as she often does if she’s under this kind of interrogation. Maybe they are behind him? Maybe they sent him?
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