Jenny is silent for a long moment.
“But . . . but where were you after the war? Did he know where you were? Maybe he tried to find you?”
“Love always finds a way, Jenny dear, if it’s meant to be. It’s fate that guides us, I’ve always believed that. He probably died, he must have, but oddly enough it hasn’t ever felt that way. He’s always been by my side. In a strange way, I’ve often felt his presence.”
“But what if he didn’t, what if he’s still alive? If he still loves you? Aren’t you curious about what he would be like, what he would look like?”
“Bald and wrinkly, I suppose.” Doris’s quick answer makes Jenny laugh. Tyra, who was asleep in her stroller, jumps, and her blue eyes snap open.
“Hi, sweetie!” Jenny places her hand on the girl’s forehead. “Go back to sleep.”
She gently rocks the stroller back and forth, hoping the child will quickly doze off again.
“If he’s still alive, we have to find him.”
“Oof, don’t be daft. I’m barely even alive. No one is still alive. Everyone’s dead.”
“Everyone is not dead! Of course he could still be alive. You were the same age, weren’t you? You’re still alive!”
“Barely.”
“Come on, don’t give me that, you’re still alive. And you still have your sense of humor. Don’t forget that you were healthy and living at home just a few weeks ago.”
“Forget all that, forget Allan. It was too long ago. Everyone has a love they never get over, Jenny. It’s normal.”
“What do you mean, ‘Everyone has a love they never get over’? What does that mean?”
“Don’t you? Someone you find yourself thinking about now and again?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.” Doris gives her a knowing look, and Jenny’s cheeks flush. “An unfinished love, one that never got a proper ending. Everyone does. Someone who dug deep into your heart and stayed there.”
“And who, as the years pass, seems much better than he ever was?”
“Of course. That’s part of it. There’s nothing as perfect as lost love.” Doris’s eyes glitter. Jenny sits in silence for a moment. The redness flares up on her cheeks again.
“You’re right. Marcus.”
Doris laughs, and Jenny raises a finger to her mouth to hush her, glances over to the stroller.
“Marcus, yes.”
“Do you remember him?”
“Yes, of course. Marcus. The pretty boy with the self-tan lines on his forehead.”
Jenny raises an eyebrow in surprise.
“Self-tan lines? He didn’t have those, did he?”
“Oh yes, he did. But you were too in love to see them. He also went crawling about in the woods to give his jeans the perfect amount of wear, do you remember that?”
“Oh my God, right!” Jenny is bent double with suppressed laughter. “But he was handsome. And funny. He made me laugh. And dance.”
“Dance?”
“Yeah, he always said I should let loose more. It was fun.”
The two women smile in mutual understanding.
“Sometimes I keep myself amused by playing ‘what if,’ ” Doris says.
Jenny gives her a questioning look.
“You know, what if . . . What if you had chosen Marcus as your life partner? What would your kids have looked like then? Where would you have lived? Would you have stayed together?”
“Uh, those are horrible thoughts. Then I wouldn’t have met Willie, and wouldn’t have had the kids. Marcus and I definitely would’ve broken up. He would never be able to take care of children. Even Willie can barely manage that, and he’s normal. Marcus was too obsessed with finding the perfect jeans. I can’t even imagine him with a slimy patch of kid sick on his shirt.”
“Do you know what he’s up to these days?”
“Nope, no idea. Haven’t heard a peep from him. I tried to find him on Facebook recently, but he didn’t seem to be there.”
“Maybe he’s dead too?”
Jenny looks at Doris. “You don’t know Allan is dead.”
“I haven’t heard a single word from him since the Second World War. Do you know how long ago that was? The odds aren’t too good, if you ask me.” Doris snorts and fumbles for the locket. Her fingers shake as she parts the two sides and uses the magnifying glass to study the smiling man. A tear fills her eye, runs down her cheek.
“They’re so wonderful, those lost loves,” she mumbles. Jenny squeezes her hand.
The Red Address Book
J. JONES, PAUL
Month followed month, and I was full of disgust for the new life growing inside me. The life that had been planted there by evil. It was consuming my body, this life that I didn’t want as a part of me, though it was, all the same. Every day it reminded me of the evil. Would my child look like him? Would it be evil too? Would I ever be able to love it? At night, when its movements grew intense, I would hit myself hard in the stomach to make them stop. Once, I caught its foot in my hand and held it there. It hurt my skin, and I wondered whether it hurt the child too.
Paul and I never talked about the baby or what would happen when it arrived. He was a recluse, and he continued to live like one.
There was no money for clothes, but Paul let me borrow his when mine grew too small. Toward the end, I wrapped my legs and stomach in a wool blanket, which I tied above my breasts with a length of old fishing line. There was no money for food either. We ate fish and turnips. Or bread baked from water and flour, bulked out with finely ground bark from the trees in the garden. I spent my days as if in a trance. From the cottage to the beach. From the beach to the dining table. From the dining table to the loft.
As my stomach grew, my daily tasks became more and more difficult to carry out. My back ached, and my stomach got in the way when I reached down for the fish in the box. I bent my knees as much as I could, clutching at the slimy fish, which constantly slipped through my fingers. Rox rarely left my side, but I usually didn’t have the energy to care about the poor dog.
The United States felt increasingly distant, Paris like a vague dream, Stockholm too. I kept track of my days with Paul by drawing lines on the chamber-pot cabinet next to my bed. As the months passed, the number of marks increased. Line after line. I don’t really know why I did this because I never counted them up, didn’t want to know how long I had left. Still, I couldn’t help but notice the march of time. The heat was replaced by a damp coolness. The sun by incessant rain. The blooming green fields by thick mud.
We were sitting at the dinner table one evening when a jolt of pain suddenly carved its way through my body. I gasped for air, feeling equal parts pain and fear.
I looked over to Paul, who was slurping his watery fish soup across from me. “What are we going to do when it comes?”
He looked up. His face was covered by a thick white beard; small crumbs of food often got caught in it.
“It’s time, you mean?” he muttered, looking somewhere over my shoulder.
“I don’t know. I think so. What do we do?”
“Let your body handle it as best it can. I’ve birthed a lot of calves; I’ll have to help out. Go and lie down.” He nodded toward the ladder up to the loft.
Calves. I stared at him but then slumped forward onto the table as yet another jolt of pain shot through my body. It radiated down my legs and up into the base of my spine, and I clung to the table. I started to feel sick, felt the soup bubbling in my stomach.
“I won’t make it up there, I can’t, it’s not possible,” I panted in terror.
Paul nodded, got to his feet, and fetched a blanket, which he spread out in front of the fire.
Evening turned into night, which turned into day and night once again. I sweated, groaned, screamed, vomited, but no child wanted to come out. Eventually, the pain vanished and everything fell silent. Paul, who had been sitting next to me in a rocking chair the entire time, frowned. He looked blurry to me, as if he was off in the
distance. Then, suddenly, he was right by my side. His face was distorted, like the reflection in a polished thermos: his nose stuck out and his cheeks were sucked in.
“Doris! Hello, hello?” I couldn’t reply, couldn’t utter a single word.
At that, he opened the door and ran straight out into the dark night. Cold air came flooding in, and I remember how good it felt as my sweaty, aching body cooled down.
That’s where my memories end.
When I next woke, I was in bed up in the loft. The room was quiet and dark around me. My stomach was calm, but with a tight wound running downward from my navel. I stroked the bandage and felt the stitches beneath it. There was a candle burning on the bedside table, and Paul was sitting on a stool to one side of the bed. Only Paul. No baby in his arms.
“Hello.” He looked at me in a way he never had before. It took me a while to realize that he looked afraid. “I thought you were going to die.”
“I’m alive?”
He nodded. “Would you like some water?”
“What happened?”
Paul shook his head, his eyes sad and his mouth a thin line. I placed both hands on my stomach and closed my eyes. My body was mine again. And the life in there, the one that had come to me in the worst circumstances possible, was one I would never have to see. I breathed a sigh of relief, my body relaxed, and I sank back against the rough horsehair mattress.
“I ran to get the doctor, but there was nothing he could do. It was too late.”
“He saved me.”
“Yes, he saved you. What do you want to do with the baby?”
“I don’t want to see it.”
“Do you want to know what it was?”
I shook my head. “What I had inside me, it wasn’t a child. I’ve never had a child.”
But when Paul eventually got up to climb down the ladder, the trembling started. It began in my tender stomach and spread outward, into my arms and legs. It was as though my body was driving out the evil. Paul left me alone. He understood.
25
The nurse hesitates when she spots Jenny and the stroller. “She’s sleeping.”
“Has she been asleep long?”
“Almost all morning. She seems very tired today.”
“What does that mean?”
The young woman shakes her head regretfully. “She’s very weak; it’s hard to say how long she has left.”
“Can we sit with her?”
“Of course, but try to let her rest. She was upset about something yesterday. She spent a long time crying after you left.”
“Do you think that’s strange? Isn’t she allowed to cry? She’s dying, of course she’s going to cry. I would too.”
The nurse gives her a strained smile and then disappears without a word. Jenny sighs. Of course people are expected to die without any tears. In this country, at least. Struggle through life, be like everyone else, and then die without shedding a single tear. But deep down, she suspects she knows the real reason for Doris’s tears. Dejected, she fishes her phone from her handbag.
“Hello?” A sleepy voice on the other side of the Atlantic.
“Hi, it’s me.”
“Jenny, do you know what time it is?”
“I know. I’m sorry. I just wanted to hear your voice. You don’t have Tyra waking you up every night right now, so can you handle me waking you up just this once? I miss you, sorry for leaving so suddenly.”
“Of course, sweetie. I miss you too. What is it? Has something happened?”
“She’s going to die.”
“We’ve known that a long time, babe. She’s old. That’s how life works.”
“It’s morning here, but she’s fast asleep. The nurse said she was tired, and she cried a lot yesterday.”
“Maybe they’re tears over things she regrets?”
“Or people she misses . . .”
“Yeah, or maybe it’s both. Is she happy to have you and Tyra there?”
“Yes, I think so.”
They fall silent for a moment. Jenny hears him yawn. Summons her courage.
“Willie, can you help me with something? I need to track down a man called Allan Smith, Allan with two l’s. He was probably born around the same time as Doris, around 1920, and he might live somewhere in or near New York. Or in France. His mother was French and his father was American. That’s all I know.”
Willie doesn’t say anything for quite some time; he doesn’t even yawn. When he eventually speaks, his reaction is exactly what Jenny has been expecting.
“Sorry, what did you say? Who? Allan Smith?”
“Yeah. That’s his name.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. An Allan Smith from 1920, how am I supposed to find him? Do you know how many people there are with that name, even with the double l? There must be hundreds!”
Jenny smirks, but she is careful not to let it show in her voice.
“What about your friend Stan, he works for the police in New York. I thought maybe you could give him a call and ask him to check. If Allan lives anywhere near New York, that should work. Tell Stan it’s important.”
“Important in comparison to what . . . murders in Manhattan?”
“Stop. No, of course not. But it’s important to us, to me.”
“Are you even sure he’s still alive?”
“No, not exactly sure . . .” She ignores Willie’s snort, despite its being so loud that it definitely isn’t meant to be ignored. “But I think he might be. He was very important to Doris, which makes this important to me. Really important. Please, just check it out. For me.”
“So you want me to track down a man who’s almost one hundred, who might be alive, and might live in or near New York?”
“Exactly. I think that was everything.”
“I don’t understand you. Can’t you just come home? We miss you here, we need you.”
“I’ll come back as soon as I can—sooner, if you help me with this. But right now, Dossi needs me here more than you need me there. And we both need to find out what happened to Allan Smith.”
“OK, but do you have any more information about him? An old address? A picture? What did he do?”
“He was an architect, I think. At least before the war.”
“Before the war? Which war are we talking about here? Not the Second World War, surely? Please tell me she’s heard from him since the Second World War.”
“Not much, no.”
“Jenny . . . not much or not at all?”
“Not at all.”
“Do you know how poor the odds are of finding him?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“Stan’s going to laugh so hard he cries! Am I supposed to just call him up and ask him to look for a man who disappeared during the Second World War?”
“You don’t understand, he didn’t disappear. She just hasn’t heard from him. He probably came home, had a couple of kids, lived a long and happy life, and now he’s just taking it easy in a rocking chair on a porch somewhere, waiting for death. Just like Doris. And thinking of her like she’s thinking of him.”
She listens to Willie’s breathing. When he speaks again, he sounds resigned. “Allan Smith, you said.”
“Allan Smith. Yes. Two l’s.”
“I’ll do my best. But don’t get your hopes up.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too. Clearly!” His warm laugh makes her long for home.
“How are the boys?”
“Yeah, don’t worry. There’s always fast food. God bless America.”
“I’ll come home as soon as I can. I love you.”
“Come soon. Nothing works when you’re not here. And I love you. Say hi to Dossi.”
Jenny peers into the room where Doris is lying, sees her stirring beneath the covers. “She’s waking up now, I have to go.” She whispers goodbye to her love back home and walks toward the painful wait for death.
The Red Address Book
J. JONES, PAUL DEAD
; I lay there for days, possibly even weeks. Allowed the time to pass while I stared up at the ceiling and experienced all the hormonal changes: my breasts straining with milk, my womb slowly contracting. But eventually, I got bored. I didn’t go straight down to Paul; I began by exploring the loft, everything hidden away in its boxes and cupboards. The chamber-pot cabinet was locked, but I decided to break it open one day. I found a bowl full to the brim with garish toy cars. The inside panels of the cupboard were covered in faint lines of red chalk, looping forward and back, up and down, a tangle of markings only a very small person could have left behind. The cars were heavily dented and their paint was peeling. I turned each one over in my hands, set them out in a row on the floor, and pictured the races that had taken place on the rough wooden floorboards. Where was this child now? I rifled through the trunks. In one, I found a number of dresses, folded up and tied with coarse green fishing line. I wondered whose they were. What had happened to the woman who had worn them, and to the child?
Curiosity eventually sent me back downstairs. My belly strained as I descended the ladder. It was still big, and my back ached, just as it had during the last few weeks of pregnancy. Paul smiled when he saw me, even said that he had missed me. He made me sit down at the table, heated up some soup, and handed me a piece of dry bread. But when I asked who the cars belonged to, his mouth tightened and he shook his head. He didn’t want to tell me. Maybe he couldn’t. Who knows what sorrows a person bears? I didn’t ask again, and started fantasizing about the woman and child instead, gave them names and pictured how they looked. In an old exercise book, I wrote short stories about their characteristics and adventures. When I started talking to them at night, I realized it was time for me to move on.
I wrote to Gösta, a cry for help. His reply arrived at the post office two weeks later. He had been worried for some time, he wrote, and wondered why he hadn’t heard from me. Now I could finally go to live with him. In the envelope, he had included a name and address. A friend of a friend had been given a painting in exchange for bringing me home on a cargo ship. I left Paul’s cottage a few nights later. I saw his bearded chin tremble, saw him bite his lip. In that moment, I think I truly came to know Paul. During our two years together, he had rarely looked me straight in the eye. Right then, I finally understood why. Saying goodbye would be painful.
The Red Address Book Page 18