Once the viewing was over, I sneaked out and found Allan asleep in the grass on the castle grounds. I dragged him to the car and we escaped before Monsieur Ponsard had time to realize it. That night, we slept beneath the stars in the warm air, curled up tight. We counted the shooting stars and imagined each of them representing a child we would one day have.
“Look, a boy.” Allan said, pointing to the first one.
“And a girl,” I said excitedly when the next one appeared.
“Another boy.” Allan laughed.
As the seventh star fell, he kissed me and said that was enough babies. I gently stroked his neck, buried my fingers in his hair, breathed in the scent of him, and allowed it to become a part of me.
The Red Address Book
S. SMITH, ALLAN
We had known each other for just over four months when he suddenly and unexpectedly disappeared. Just like that, he was gone. There was no more knocking at my door. No one waiting for me with kisses and smiles after work. I didn’t know where he lived, I didn’t know his relatives, I didn’t know who to get in touch with to find out what had happened. I had noticed that he seemed anxious the last time we met, that he wasn’t his usual happy and exuberant self, and he was dressed more soberly. I had assumed it was for my sake that he had bought a jacket and some glossy leather shoes. But maybe there was another reason? My worry and despair grew with every day that passed.
I went back to the bench in the park, the one where he used to sit while he sketched his buildings. Other than a one-legged pigeon hopping back and forth in the hope of finding a crumb or two, it was empty. I kept going back, sitting there for hours every day, but he never returned. As I waited, I could almost feel his presence; it felt like he was right there beside me.
The days passed. I walked our usual route, alone, hoping he would turn up. He started to seem more and more like a distant dream. I cursed myself for having been so naive, self-absorbed, infatuated. For asking too few questions, for not demanding to know more about him.
Where had he gone? Why had he abandoned me? We were supposed to be together forever.
The Red Address Book
A. ALM, AGNES
After Allan’s sudden disappearance, I was lost. Dark, swollen bags formed beneath my eyes, and my skin turned dull and pasty after so many sleepless nights and salty tears. I couldn’t eat, and I became weak and thin. Every minute, conscious and unconscious, was taken up by thoughts of him.
Separation is the worst thing on earth, Jenny. Even now, I hate saying goodbye. Being separated from a person you hold dear always feels like a wound to the soul.
It pains me to admit it, but the memory of most people tends to fade after a while. Not to the extent that they disappear or no longer mean anything. But that initial, panic-stricken sense of loss at their absence becomes dulled and is eventually replaced by something slightly more neutral. Something you can, somehow, live with. In certain cases, you no longer even want to rekindle an old friendship, and any remaining link is tinged with obligation more than enthusiasm. Such friends become people to keep in touch with—letters to be written, letters to be read and pondered for a moment—before you fold up the memory, shove it back into the envelope, and mostly forget it.
After a few years in Paris, even the memory of my own mother had faded. My recollection that she had once dissociated herself from me, throwing me out into an adult world I knew nothing about while she let my sister stay . . . that took over. To me, she became someone who had chosen between her children. I thought about her from time to time, I did. But the longing I felt for her gradually vanished.
Allan didn’t fade, not even slightly. He was almost always in my thoughts. The pain lessened slightly, but not the love. It was overwhelming.
At first I went through life one day at a time, one hour at a time. I searched for faults in myself, reasons why he had abandoned me. Eventually, I put more energy into plucking my eyebrows and sucking in my stomach than I did to thinking about the future. Seven years had passed since I left Sweden. I had money and I was independent; few women at the time were so lucky. My life became the clothes and the makeup that transformed me into someone else, someone to admire. Someone who was good enough. I filled my days with the pursuit of perfection.
The truth is, on the day that an ill-fated telegram arrived at my apartment, I had devoted hours to buying a pair of leather pumps in the exact same shade of red as my new dress. I went from shop to shop, comparing them with the fabric, asking the shopkeepers to polish the leather until it shone, only to reject the shoe a second later because the buckle was ugly. It was a carefree life I was living and, looking back now, I do feel ashamed. Transforming young women into egocentric, self-obsessed witches is easy. Then and now. Many are tempted by the glitter of gold, but few actually stop to think. Many of the live mannequins of the time came from rich aristocratic families. It was thanks to them that mannequins gained status, that we became something to look up to, did you know that?
In any case, back to the telegram. It was from my mother’s neighbor, and it effectively ended my destructive life.
Dear Doris,
It is with great sadness that I must inform you of your mother’s passing after a long illness. Together with her friends and workmates, I have scraped together enough for a ticket for young Agnes. She will arrive in Paris by train at 13.00 on 23rd April. I pass her into your care. Your mother’s belongings are being stored in one of the attics.
Hoping that luck will shine on you both.
With affection,
Anna Christina
A dead mother I no longer knew. A little sister, crashing into my world like a parcel sent to the wrong address. When I last saw her, she had been a small child. Now she was a lanky fourteen-year-old wandering along the platform, looking lost. She was carrying a battered suitcase in one hand, strapped shut with a thick leather belt. It looked like Pappa’s old belt, flecked with white paint. Her eyes scanned the crowd, searching for me, her sister.
When she spotted me, she stopped dead and stared as people continued to surge past her. They pushed and shoved her, and her body swayed back and forth, but her eyes were fixed on mine.
“Agnes?” The question was unnecessary because she was the spitting image of me at that age. Just a little heavier, with slightly darker hair. She met my gaze, her mouth half-open and her eyes wide. As though I was a ghost.
“It’s me, your sister. Don’t you recognize me?”
I held out my hand and she took it. Right then, her body started to shake and she dropped her bag. She let go of my hand and wrapped her arms around herself. Her shoulders hunched up toward her ears.
“Come on, little one.” I put an arm around her and felt the trembling spread from her small body to mine. I breathed calmly and took in the scent of her; it seemed familiar.
“Are you very scared?” I whispered. “And sad? I can understand that. It must have been hard for you when she died.”
“You look like her. You look just like her,” she stammered, her face against my shoulder.
“Do I? It’s been so long, I can barely remember. I don’t even have a picture of her. Do you?”
I slowly stroked her back, and her breathing grew calmer. She let go of me and took a few steps back. From one of her pockets, she pulled out a well-thumbed photograph and handed it to me. Mamma was sitting on a piano stool in her long blue dress. The one she always wore to parties.
“When was this taken?”
Agnes didn’t reply; maybe she didn’t know. Mamma’s eyes looked so full of life. It was only then that it finally dawned on me that she really was gone, that I would never see her again. Anxiety washed over me. She had died believing that I didn’t care about her. Now I would never get another chance.
“Maybe we’ll see her in heaven.” I tried to comfort Agnes, but the words just made her cry. My own tears turned inward. I felt my chest turn cold, and a shiver spread through me.
“Shh, don’t cry, Agnes.”
I pulled her close and noticed, for the first time, just how tired she looked. Her eyelids were drooping, the skin beneath her eyes dark.
“Did you know that the best hot chocolate in the world is here, in Paris?”
Agnes dried her tears.
“And did you know that chocolate is the best cure for tears? The loveliest café happens to be right here, just around that corner,” I said, pointing. “Shall we go?”
I took her hand and we walked slowly through the station. It was the same way I had walked with Madame seven years earlier. I didn’t cry at all then. But my sister did now. My little sister, who, just like me, had been involuntarily thrown into the big, wide world. It was my job to take care of her. That terrified me.
Agnes turned my life upside-down. I had to act like a parent, and worry struck me immediately. She needed a good school, she needed to learn French. She would never have to clean or work as a maid. And I would never let her stand in front of the camera, flashing those fake smiles. Agnes would have everything I had always dreamed of: an education, opportunities, and, most important, a childhood lasting longer than mine had.
The very next day, I gave notice at the apartment I shared with two other mannequins. I looked through my bookings. Viewings at the department store. Photo shoots for Lanvin and Chanel. Work that at first had brought me anxiety and fear had become my everyday life.
Suitors still pursued me. I met up with them when I had time, accepted the gifts they brought, and chatted with them in a friendly enough way. But none of them could take Allan’s place in my heart. None had his gaze, none looked into my soul the way he had. None made me feel so safe.
Nor could they take Agnes’s place. From the day she moved in, I sold the presents these men gave me as quickly as I could and used the money to buy her schoolbooks. And I no longer spent my time trying to find shoes that exactly matched the fabric of my dress.
11
“I hope you understand?”
She turns away, stares out of the window at the clouds. The wind is playing with them, making the small white balls move at different speeds: the top layer is still, but those beneath it pass by with speed and then disappear from view.
The man sitting by her side clears his throat. A fleck of spit flies from his mouth and lands in his short beard. He says her name. She turns back and stares at him as he talks.
“You can’t live alone, not while you can barely walk. How would that work? You won’t even be able to get to the toilet without help, now that you’ve had surgery. I’m reading here that you could barely even do that before. Doris, trust me. You’ll be better off in assisted living. You can even take some of your own furniture with you.”
This is the third time the hospital social worker has come to see her with his form. Three times now, she has had to sit through his speech about how important it is for her to sell her apartment and put into storage any furniture and memories that won’t fit into her rooms at assisted living. Three times now, she has had to fight the impulse to hit him on the head with something hard. She would never leave Bastugatan. This will be the third time he’ll have to leave without her signature.
And yet he’s still sitting there. His fingers are drumming the form. She turns her head, defies the pain of moving it.
“Over my dead body,” she hisses. “Forget about getting me to sign, I’ve told you already.”
He sighs deeply and whacks the form against the bedside table. Tries, anyway: one lonely piece of paper doesn’t make much noise.
“But how are you going to cope on your own, Doris? Tell me that.”
She fixes her eyes on him.
“I managed perfectly well before this happened. And I’ll do the same after. It’s just a broken hip. I’m not crippled! I’m not dead. Not yet, anyway. And when I do die, it’s not going to be here or at that Bluebell place. By the way, you should be wishing me luck with my rehab rather than wasting your time and mine. Give me a few weeks and you’ll see that I can walk perfectly well again. Or maybe you should try breaking your hip and having a new joint put in, and then we’ll see how cocky you are in the weeks after!”
“There are worse places than Bluebell. I’ve had to talk the manager into taking you; they don’t usually take patients in your condition. Take this opportunity, Doris. Next time you might not be so lucky; you’ll end up in long-term nursing-home care.”
“Threats don’t work on old biddies. You of all people should know that by now, the way you’ve been running in and out of here. If not, then you’ve learned something new today. You can go and harass someone else now. I want to sleep.”
“Is that how you see this?” His eyebrows are tense, his mouth a thin line. “That I’m harassing you? I actually just want to help you. You have to see that this is for your own good. That you can’t live alone. You don’t have anyone to help you.”
When he eventually leaves the room, tears run down Doris’s cheeks, sneaking between her wrinkles and finding their way into her mouth. Her heart is still pounding angrily. She raises her hand, the one bruised from the IV line, and rubs her cheek. Then she fixes her eyes on the wall. She stubbornly moves her foot, back and forth, ten times. Just like the physical therapist showed her. Next, she struggles to lift her foot a few millimeters. She stares at her thigh, visualizes her heel in the air. One short second in the air, then she lowers her foot to the pillow again. The movement took all her strength. She allows herself to rest for a moment and then moves on to the third exercise. She presses her knee into the bed so that her thigh muscles contract; then she relaxes, and repeats the sequence. Lastly, she tenses her backside so that her hips lift a few millimeters. She feels a twinge in the wound from the operation, but her hip can now manage small movements without hurting too much.
“How are you doing, Doris? How does your leg feel?” A nurse sits down on the edge of her bed and takes her hand.
“It’s fine. No pain.” She lies. “I want to get up and walk tomorrow, or try anyway. I should be able to manage a few short steps.”
“That’s the spirit,” the nurse says, patting her cheek. Doris shrinks back from her touch.
“I’ll write it in your chart so that the morning team knows what you want.”
And with that, Doris is left alone once more. The beds across from her are empty tonight. She wonders who might be brought in tomorrow. It’ll be Monday. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. She counts on her fingers. Just three days until she can talk to Jenny again.
The Red Address Book
A. ALM, AGNES
An apartment close to Les Halles. A room with a kitchenette. Water pump and outhouse in the yard. It wasn’t the best neighborhood, but the apartment was ours and we could be ourselves. Me and Agnes. We slept together, in the same little bed. The creaking when one of us moved eventually became like a melody. I can still hear it when I close my eyes. Even the smallest movement would make the rusty springs rasp and the lopsided iron frame sway. Sometimes I actually worried that the entire thing might collapse.
Agnes was so sweet. That’s the word that describes her best. Always helpful and understanding. Quiet and a little melancholy at times. She squirmed in her sleep at night, whimpered as the tears ran down her cheeks, still not waking. She would just press herself against me. If I moved away, she would follow until I was lying on only a thin strip of mattress.
One morning, as we curled up in bed with cups of tea, Agnes started to talk about her life in Stockholm. What she said helped me somewhat understand her melancholy nature. It had been awful—an experience that could have been mine. She and our mother were so poor that they didn’t have enough to eat. Agnes couldn’t go to school. They were thrown out of the apartment and had spent the last few months of my mother’s life with Anna Christina.
“Mamma had such a terrible cough,” Agnes said, her voice so faint that it barely carried. “There would be blood in her hand, dark red and thick as phlegm. We were sleeping together on the daybed in the kitchen, and I could feel her body trem
bling in pain with every cough.”
“Were you there when she died?” I asked, and she nodded. “What did she say? Did she say anything?”
“I wish you enough sun to light up your days, enough rain that you appreciate the sun . . .” Agnes’s voice trailed off. I took her hand in mine. Wound my fingers between hers.
“I tell you what we’ve had enough of. Enough rubbish. Don’t you think?”
We could laugh about it intimately, the way sisters can, despite the fact that we didn’t really know each other yet.
I’ll never forget that first summer with Agnes. If you ever want to really get to know a person, Jenny, share a bed with her. There’s nothing more disarming than curling up together late at night. In that moment, you’re nothing but yourself, no evasion, no excuses. I thank that rusty iron bed for making us sisters once again. Sisters who shared everything.
Whenever I wasn’t working, we would wander the streets of Paris, both wearing hats and gloves to protect us from the sun. We spoke French with each other. Every word she learned we found right there on the streets. Car, bicycle, dress, hat, sidewalk, book, café. It became a game. I would point to something and say the word in French, and she would repeat it. We searched for words everywhere. She learned quickly and was looking forward to starting school. And I got to take a few wonderful steps in childhood, something I had lost far too early.
Then the worries flared up. Rumors of a war, whispered in every café, proved true, and by September 1939 had become fact. The terrible Second World War. The heat hung heavily over Paris’s streets, as did fear of what was to come. France had thus far been spared, and life in Paris went on like normal, except it seemed that someone had stolen people’s smiles. Soldier and rifle were new words that Agnes and I heard on the street. Suddenly, I also found myself working less. The fashion houses were saving money, which meant financial catastrophe for us. Even the department stores stopped hiring mannequins. Agnes continued to go to school every day while I waited for the phone to start ringing again, for the familiar jobs to reappear. Eventually, I asked around about other jobs, but no one dared take anyone on. Not the butcher, not the baker, not the aristocratic families. I still had some money in savings, but the balance fell lower and lower.
The Red Address Book Page 9