by Karin Nordin
‘Herr Nygaard?’
Kjeld moved his thumb away from the call button and looked up at the doctor. He was a good-looking man. He stood a few inches shorter than Kjeld, his dark hair swept to the side by way of a thick layer of gel, and he wore a white coat that had been freshly starched. Kjeld’s first thought was that he was just one of many Indian doctors who came to Sweden to take on the work in the rural clinics that the Swedish doctors didn’t want, but when he spoke his Swedish was perfect. Probably even better than Kjeld’s. He had one of those reassuring physician smiles that irked him. A smile that reminded Kjeld of Bengt’s doctor. The one who managed his treatments. The one who filed a restraining order against Kjeld after Kjeld broke his nose upon discovering Bengt’s medical treatments also included Michelin-star dinners at the Upper House restaurant overlooking the city from the Gothia Towers.
‘That’s me,’ Kjeld said.
‘I’m Doctor Goswami. I’ve been attending your father.’
‘Is he all right?’ Kjeld sat up. His back cracked at the sudden change in posture.
‘He suffered a mild heart attack, but he’s going to be fine. I’d like to keep him overnight for observation, however. We’ll do some more tests in the morning to make sure he doesn’t have any partial blockage of the major arteries.’
Kjeld sighed and rubbed his palms over his face, wiping away the tension headache that had begun to throb behind his eyes. A cigarette would have done wonders for his nerves. ‘Will I be able to see him?’
‘They’re transferring him to a room on the second floor. Visiting hours are until nine.’
‘Thank you. I appreciate it.’
The doctor nodded and walked back to the nurses’ station.
Kjeld stepped outside for a cigarette and sent a quick text to Sara. A few seconds later his phone pinged, but it wasn’t from his sister. It was multiple texts from Hanna.
There’s a rumour in town that the body belongs to Peter Lindqvist.
Is that true??
Can’t be. Got a work email from him on Friday. Sent to all of the executive staff. Is someone playing a prank?
In her next message she sent a screenshot of the email. Kjeld turned his phone to enlarge the image. He didn’t know Peter Lindqvist, but the timing was unsettling. And rather than alleviate Kjeld’s concern that the body might have belonged to Norrmalm’s CEO, as his father suggested, it magnified it.
The flashing lights of an oncoming ambulance lit up the drive to the emergency room’s side entrance. Kjeld took out a cigarette from his pocket, but his lighter was empty. He cursed to himself and threw the lighter in the trash. Then he went back inside and made his way to the stairwell.
Chapter 27
It was another hour before Kjeld received a call from Sara that she was on her way to the hospital. When she arrived, Stenar was still asleep, but the on-duty nurse assured them both it was normal. It could be hours before he woke up and when he did he might be disorientated from the surgery.
Kjeld stood at the end of the hospital bed while Sara sat in the chair, leaning over the edge of the mattress and holding their father’s hand in her own. She had a firm expression on her face, but Kjeld could see that she was distraught. He expected her to rain hellfire upon him, but she didn’t. Perhaps she recognised that their father having a heart attack was a result of old age and bad health. That it could have happened regardless of Kjeld being there. That it hadn’t been Kjeld’s fault. He hoped that’s what she was thinking. Maybe that would help convince him.
Sara wiped a tear from her face. ‘What did the doctor say?’
‘That it was a mild heart attack. He said Dad would be okay. They repaired a blockage or something. I’m not really sure. It was hard to pay attention. He said he wanted to keep him under observation for the night and do a few tests in the morning before determining when he could go home.’
‘I’m such an idiot,’ Sara muttered. ‘I should have been there. I promised to take care of him.’
‘You couldn’t have done anything differently. These things happen.’
‘It doesn’t change the fact that I feel guilty.’ Sara smoothed down the blanket over Stenar’s chest. ‘I feel like I’m losing my mind. First the thing with the barn. Now this. I’m literally at my wits’ end.’
‘Anything I can do?’
‘Give me the last few years of my life back?’
‘Preaching to the choir, sis.’
Sara tried to smile, but the effort never made it to her eyes. Kjeld didn’t really know what to say so he didn’t say anything. Instead they shared the silence for a few minutes, the lull broken up by the occasional beep on the heart monitor and their father’s shallow breathing. After a while, Sara looked back at him. She had a measure of composure in her face that surprised Kjeld. He remembered her being much more histrionic when they were children. Even when they were young adults she was prone to being a little hysterical. It was just proof that she’d been through the proverbial trenches with her family. With their family. The first family that Kjeld had abandoned.
‘You hungry?’ she asked.
‘Not really.’
‘You want to come over for dinner anyway?’ Before he could decline she added, ‘Tom and the kids would love to see you. It’s been such a long time.’
‘What are you making?’
‘Spaghetti?’
‘The way Mum used to make it?’
‘That’s the only way I know.’
‘Sounds good.’ Kjeld smiled, but it felt forced. And he imagined it was just as flaky as hers had been.
Sara nodded. ‘I have to pick up the kids from school and stop by the store on the way home. How does six o’clock sound?’
‘That’s fine.’
‘You going to head back to Dad’s before then?’
Kjeld looked over at his father, watching his chest rise and fall, wondering if he’d pushed him too far on the event he witnessed in the barn. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t block his father’s arteries. He didn’t cause the heart attack. He didn’t believe a bit of his own thoughts.
‘No,’ he said, uncertain if it was for his own sake or his father’s that he decided to remain. ‘I think I’ll stay here. He shouldn’t wake up alone.’
Chapter 28
Tom’s handshake was firm but soft. He had the smooth touch of an office worker. The hands of a man whose most tactile confrontation was the persistent typing of fingers against a keyboard. A far contrast to Kjeld’s hands which were rough, coarse around the palms, and covered in cat scratches.
‘Kjeld!’ Tom exclaimed, holding on to Kjeld’s hand a little longer than Kjeld would have liked. ‘Good to see you! How long has it been?’
‘A while,’ Kjeld replied with a crooked grin, pulling his hand out of Tom’s squishy grip.
‘Three years!’ Sara called out from the kitchen.
‘That’s right!’ Tom said. ‘When we went to Gothenburg for the Tall Ships Regatta Festival. That was great, wasn’t it?’
‘Sure, I guess. If you like ships.’ Kjeld preferred to keep his feet on dry land. The last time he was on a boat was for Bengt’s thirty-eighth birthday party. Kjeld ended up spending half of the trip spewing his guts over the bow and the other half sleeping on a bench in the cabin. Needless to say, he wasn’t the seafaring sort.
Tom opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off by the screeching wails of two children racing down the steps from the second floor. The boy, who was the older of the two, reached Kjeld first and held up his hand for a high five, but before Kjeld could respond he was tackled around the waist by the girl.
‘Uncle Kjeld!’ the girl shouted, tightening her hug. Then she picked her legs off the ground and dangled by the strength of her own embrace. She felt like an anchor.
Kjeld struggled to remember their names.
‘Stop being such an attention queen, Lykke!’ the boy yelled.
‘I am not!’ Lykke replied.
Kjeld gently lifted her underneath her ar
mpits and set her back down on the ground. Then he adjusted his jeans back on his hips.
‘Don’t yell at your sister, Alexander,’ Tom said. ‘How about the two of you go help your mum set the table?’
Lykke dashed off to the kitchen, play-acting the role of the dutiful daughter, and Alexander followed, rolling his eyes.
‘They’re getting big,’ Kjeld said, vaguely recalling the time he strolled the docks with them during the ship festival. What he remembered more clearly, however, was how Tove was supposed to be with them. But that had been right after their separation and Bengt had been extra spiteful in those months. He did everything he could to keep Tove from Kjeld. Kjeld tried to fight that for a while, but he eventually gave up. Emotions gradually cooled down between them and they managed to find common ground. But Kjeld never did try to gain full custodial rights as Tove’s biological father. Now when he saw his daughter it was during weekends that were convenient for Bengt. Or on the odd occasion when Bengt had to go out of town for work.
Tom nodded. ‘Eight and ten. Hard to believe, right? They grow up so fast.’
‘That they do.’
The house was dark because it didn’t have many windows, built back before architects realised that people needed sunlight to maintain a healthy level of optimism, but the furnishings were light-coloured oak and pine. Sara had attempted to brighten the living and dining room with a coat of sterile white paint, but it just made the shadows from the hanging lamps all the more visible. The walls were mostly bare aside from a few school photographs of Lykke and Alexander and a framed needlepoint of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”, which Kjeld recognised as once hanging in the living room of their parents’ house. He thought perhaps that his mother had made it, but he could have been wrong. He didn’t have any memories of her doing needlepoint, but it felt like something she might have done when he was very young.
Kjeld recognised the dining-room table as also having been from their parents’ house. It was a sturdy rectangular block of wood with thick rounded legs that could easily fit six people. Eight if the space it was occupying hadn’t been so small. As it was, it practically took up the entire room.
Lykke set the plates in front of the chairs and Alexander followed her with the cutlery.
‘You want a beer?’ Tom asked, passing Sara in the tight kitchen to get to the fridge.
‘Yeah, that’d be great,’ Kjeld said, hovering near the doorframe. He felt awkward around Tom, but he couldn’t tell if it was because Tom’s politeness was so overbearing that it almost seemed fake or because of his irritating deference to Sara.
Tom walked back out into the dining area and handed Kjeld a can of beer. Kjeld accepted it with a polite nod, popped the tab, and took a sip. The taste was weak and watery. He glanced down at the label. Two point eight per cent. Supermarket beer.
Tom sat at the table, took a long swig from the can, and gave a satisfied sigh. It was probably his first taste of alcohol in years.
Kjeld went to pull out one of the chairs when Lykke hurried over and tugged him at the elbow.
‘Sit here, Uncle Kjeld! This is where I always sit! You can sit next to me!’
‘Are you sure I can sit there?’ Kjeld asked, his tone unconsciously adjusting to the sort that was expected when speaking to children. Lykke’s enthusiasm reminded him of Tove.
Lykke laughed, pulling the chair out for Kjeld. ‘Of course, silly. Mum won’t care.’
‘Well in that case I would love to sit next to you. You are my favourite niece, after all.’ Kjeld helped her pull the chair the rest of the way out from under the table and took a seat.
‘I’m your only niece!’
‘Really? Are you sure? I could have sworn there was another around here somewhere.’
‘You’re crazy, Uncle Kjeld.’ Lykke giggled and ran back into the kitchen.
Tom set his beer on the table. ‘You’re good with kids.’
Kjeld shook his head, leaning back into the chair. The flowery cushion that was supposed to be tied to the seat slid out from under him and he fidgeted to adjust it. He hated chairs with detachable cushions. They seemed so impractical.
‘Not really,’ Kjeld said. ‘To be honest I usually scare them.’
‘Could be that they just scare you and you’re deflecting your feelings about them.’
Kjeld raised a brow. ‘Shit, Tom. Did you get a psychology degree since the last time I saw you?’
Tom chuckled. ‘I’ve been doing a lot of reading on self-awareness. Trying to get in touch with my base self. You know, my cores and ideals. Help me get a better understanding of who I am in the world and what I need from the environment and people around me.’
Kjeld didn’t really know how to respond to that. ‘Sounds deep.’
‘He’s supposed to be researching how to find a job,’ Sara said, walking out from the kitchen with a pot of spaghetti.
Lykke chased Alexander into the living room, screaming like a banshee.
‘You, two, knock it off!’ Sara yelled after them.
‘When I discover who I am and what my inner values are then I’ll be able to apply them to my career prospects,’ Tom said without missing a beat.
‘I asked him to update his résumé and this is what he goes out and does.’ Sara rolled her eyes on her way back to the kitchen. ‘We need money, not existentialism.’
Tom waved a hand at Sara and focused his attention on Kjeld. ‘The book I’m reading now guarantees that you’ll either receive a promotion at work or find a better job if you follow their steps towards personal empowerment and self-understanding. It’s only a matter of patience and reflection.’
‘And finishing the book,’ Kjeld said.
‘Don’t encourage him.’ Sara placed a pot of sauce and bowl of salad on the table. Then she shouted for the kids that dinner was ready.
Lykke and Alexander came running from the other room, pushing and shoving to be the first at the table. Lykke gave Kjeld a big grin as she climbed up into the chair beside him. She was missing one of her front teeth.
Kjeld motioned to her mouth. ‘You’ve got a hole.’
‘I can slurp spaghetti through it. Wanna see?’
‘Sure.’
‘No,’ Sara interrupted. ‘There will be no slurping at the table.’
Alexander belched.
‘No burping either.’
Alexander made a goofy face. ‘Slurping and burping.’
Lykke giggled.
‘Sounds like a good name for a band,’ Kjeld said.
‘Or a carnival game.’ Tom finished his beer and got up to get another.
‘Did you really shoot someone, Uncle Kjeld?’ Alexander asked.
‘Alexander!’ Sara glared from across the table. ‘Where did you hear such a thing?’
‘The internet.’
‘Not everything you see on the internet is true,’ Sara said.
‘But did Uncle Kjeld really shoot a guy?’
‘Was it a bad guy?’ Lykke asked, eyes wide.
Kjeld tried to think of an appropriate way to answer their questions, but was thankfully spared by Sara who, being the model of overworked maternity, interrupted him. She was probably afraid he would answer truthfully. She was probably right.
‘All right, that’s enough of that kind of talk,’ Sara said, placing a napkin in her lap. ‘Who’s going to say grace?’
Never having been a particularly religious household growing up, Kjeld wasn’t prepared for the act of prayer before eating. Sara shot him a pressing stare from across the table, one meant to insist that he follow suit, but he just stared back at her with equal defiance.
When he didn’t respond, either in word or action, Sara resorted to using that reserved tone of voice that was anything but innocuous. ‘Kjeld?’
Kjeld gave his sister an irritated look. ‘Jesus Christ, Sara. It’s not Christmas.’
Lykke stared at Kjeld with her mouth wide open in shock. ‘You said Jesus Christ.’
‘It’s not a bad wo
rd, Lykke.’ Alexander reached across the table for a bottle of cola. ‘It’s just a name.’
Sara sent Kjeld one of those admonishing glares from across the table and then folded her hands in front of her. ‘Just because you’re going to hell doesn’t mean the rest of us have to join you.’
Sara cleared her throat and the rest of the table followed her in bowing their heads while she said a short prayer about being grateful for food and family.
Kjeld watched the scene as he would a group of macaques grooming each other at the zoo. With an awkward sense of foreign familiarity. When the prayer was over Lykke looked up at him expectantly and he pretended like he had just raised his head. Then he finished the watered-down beer in a single gulp and tuned Tom out as he continued his diatribe on the merits of self-discovery.
* * *
‘Sorry I was kind of snippy with you at dinner,’ Sara said, slumping down on the overstuffed sofa.
Kjeld scooted over to give her some space. After dinner Tom took the kids upstairs to get them ready for bed and read the next chapter on his path to self-enlightenment. Kjeld had stayed downstairs to help Sara clean up.
‘I know you didn’t mean it.’ He really wanted a cigarette.
‘I didn’t. I don’t. I really don’t. I just haven’t been dealing well with everything.’ She placed one of the flower-print throw pillows in her lap and wrapped her arms around it.
‘You’ve done an amazing job.’
Sara scoffed.
‘No, seriously. Taking care of Dad and your own family? I can’t even take care of myself.’
‘Well, you’re a man. That doesn’t exactly qualify you for being able to multitask.’
Kjeld reached over and gave her a playful nudge in the arm. ‘You can be such a bitch sometimes.’
‘I know.’ Sara ran her fingers over the seam in the pillowcase. ‘I just hope he’s going to be all right.’
‘The doctor seemed optimistic,’ Kjeld said, stretching his legs out in front of him and crossing them at the ankles.