“I’ve always loved you, Allan. Always. Every hour, every day, every year. It’s always been us.”
“And I’ve always loved you. And always will.”
Doris sighs, and as she drifts off to sleep, the smile remains on her lips. Allan watches her in silence. Tears are running down his cheeks. He no longer wipes them away.
Jenny comes back into the picture. “I’m sure you’ll be able to talk again tomorrow.”
“No, no, please, don’t turn it off. I’m begging you. I need to look at her a little while longer.”
Jenny smiles, tries to remain composed. “I’ll leave the computer on; you can turn it off yourself whenever you like. I understand. I understand.”
36
She studies Doris and glances at Allan on the screen. He is sitting in his chair with his eyes closed; he’ll soon be asleep too. Her phone buzzes in her pocket. Her heart swells when she sees Willie’s face on the screen.
“I understand,” he says warmly. “I really do understand now.”
“Yeah . . . love. I wanted to give Doris this, I didn’t want to let her die with an unhappy love in her heart.”
“I know, I understand. And listen, I love you. You’re fantastic; you always understand this kind of thing. I’m so grateful I didn’t lose you. That I get to live my life with you. Sorry I’m such an idiot sometimes.”
“Glad you can admit it.”
“What, that I’m an idiot or that I love you?”
“Both.” She laughs.
“I wish you were here now, so I could hold you. For a long time. I know this must be so hard for you. I’m sorry, again. I didn’t mean to be so insensitive.”
“I know. I wish you were here too. That you could say goodbye to her.”
Doris moans and Jenny whispers, “I have to go, I love you, bye.” Allan seems to be sleeping, and she closes the lid of the computer to avoid waking him. Then she sits on the edge of the bed, placing her hand on Doris’s forehead. The skin is cool, but it also feels damp. Doris’s eyes open and start to wander; it seems she can’t focus. Jenny rushes off to fetch the nurse.
“Allan,” Doris shouts. “Allan!”
A nurse comes running, pulls down the neck of Doris’s dress, and listens to her heart.
“Her heart doesn’t sound good. I’ll call for a doctor.”
“We rang an old friend of hers. Maybe I shouldn’t have done it, not right now, in the middle of the night.”
Jenny is crying. She’s shaking.
“She’s going to go no matter what you do, sweetie. She’s old.” The nurse steps over to Jenny, puts an arm around her, and strokes her back to comfort her.
“Doris! Doris, please wake up! Please, talk to me . . .”
Doris struggles, but just one eye opens. She meets Jenny’s gaze. Her lips are pale blue.
“I . . . wish you . . . enough . . . ,” she whispers, sounding exhausted, then closes her eye.
“Enough sun to light up your days, enough rain that you appreciate the sun. Enough joy to strengthen your soul, enough pain that you can appreciate life’s small moments of happiness, enough meetings that you can . . . say a farewell . . .” With trembling lips, she fills in the words she has heard Doris say so often.
The rattling breaths alter. A deep clearing of the throat makes Jenny and the nurse jump. Doris’s eyelids snap open and she stares at Jenny with clear eyes.
Then she is gone.
37
With tears streaming down her cheeks, Jenny takes out a pen and draws a thin, shaky line through the name on the inside of the cover. Doris Alm. Next to it, she writes the word Doris herself had written so many times. DEAD. She writes it twice, three times, four times. Eventually, she fills the entire cover.
On the table before her are Doris’s belongings from the hospital. A few pieces of jewelry. The locket. The pink dress. The clothes she was wearing when she was admitted, an old dark-blue tunic and gray wool trousers, which have been cut open. A handbag containing her purse and cell phone, which is still turned on. Her laptop. What should she do with it all? She can’t throw anything away. The apartment has to stay as it is. For a while, at least. She glances around and runs her hand over the rough surface of the table, the same table Doris has always had. Nothing has changed in this apart‑ment.
Suddenly, she remembers what Doris wrote about the letters. There must be more boxes than the two she has found so far. She runs to the bedroom and gets down onto all fours by the bed. There, in the back corner, she can see a rusty tin box. She pulls it out and blows away the thick dust, opens it, and gasps. So many letters. She’ll read them tonight.
In the kitchen, Tyra is banging pots and pans, laughing at the noise. Jenny leaves her to it, sitting with her back to her, so the child doesn’t have to see her mother crying. The poor girl hasn’t had much attention over these past couple of days, but she won’t remember. Luckily, she’s too small to understand.
Jenny is tired. A night and a day have passed without sleep, and now that evening is approaching, her skin feels tight, her eyes tired. She rubs her face, rests her head in her hands. The small child within her has lost its one source of comfort. She doesn’t want to be a mother. Doesn’t want to be an adult. Just wants to lie in the fetal position and cry until she runs out of tears, until Doris comes back and holds her. She can feel sniffles turning into sobs that she can’t hold back.
“Mommy sad.” Tyra pats her firmly on the leg and pulls at her top. Jenny picks her up and holds her tight. The girl’s chunky arms wrap around her neck.
“Mmm, Mommy misses Dossi so much, baby,” she whispers, kissing her on the cheek.
“Hoppital,” Tyra says, wanting to get back on the floor. She runs over to her stroller, but Jenny shakes her head.
“No, not now, Tyra, play with this for a while.” She holds out her phone. “We won’t be going there anymore,” she whispers to herself.
She opens the lid of Doris’s laptop, presses the power button, and watches the icons appear on the desktop. There are two folders. One is called Jenny, the other Notes. She clicks on Jenny and goes through the documents. She has already read most of them; they’re the printed pages she’s been reading, but inside that folder is another one, called Dead. The word makes her shudder. She pauses for a moment and then clicks on it. There are two documents inside. One is Doris’s will. It’s short. She has written that everything goes to Jenny, and that she has stuck a printed and attested copy beneath the desk. Doris wants red roses on her coffin, and she wants jazz rather than hymns. And then there is a short message:
Don’t be afraid of life, Jenny. Live. Help yourself. Laugh. Life isn’t here to entertain you; you have to entertain life. Seize opportunities whenever they come along, and make something good out of them.
I love you most of all and have always, never forget that. My darling Jenny.
Then, a little lower down:
P.S. Write! It’s your talent. Talents should be used.
Jenny smiles through her tears. In truth, writing was Doris’s talent, she knows that now, having read through her memories. Writing was Doris’s dream. But it was also Jenny’s. She finally admits that to herself. She opens the second document and slowly starts to read. Word after word. Doris’s last echo.
The Red Address Book
N. NILSSON, GÖSTA DEAD
Almost everyone is dead now. Everyone whose life I have mentioned to you. Everyone who ever meant anything. Gösta passed away in bed, with me sitting by his side. I held his hand in mine. It was warm, and then it grew colder and colder. I didn’t let go until I knew that all the life had run out of him, leaving only a shell behind. It was old age that killed him. He was the second great love of my life. A platonic love. A friend I could lean on. The man who saw the child in me while I lived with Dominique, and who continued to see the child in me even as my hair turned white.
I’m going to tell you Gösta’s secret now. I promised him I wouldn’t say a thing while he was still living, and I kep
t my word. But I don’t want to take any secrets to the grave, so I’ll pass them on to you for safekeeping.
My apartment has a hidden room. It’s two meters by two meters, behind the closet in the maid’s room. You can get into it by moving the skirting board at the very back.
There, Gösta hid his paintings of Paris, his very own treasure-trove. They remain there to this day. Beautiful paintings of the place he held most dear. Paris was Gösta’s city.
Those paintings are now yours. If you want to put them on show for the world to see, do it in a museum in Paris. That would have made him proud.
The Red Address Book
A. ANDERSSON, ELISE DEAD
Now for the very last chapter. Your mother. Her fate has haunted you for as long as you can remember. Nothing I can write will change your image of a mother who tried, time and time again, but always failed. Nothing I can write will rewind the tape and make the needle she stuck into her arm drop to the ground and break.
But I can unburden my heart. Tell you what I have never dared say out loud. What has tortured me all these years. I hope I’m dead when you read this. And if I’m not, I beg you to let this story stand and become the only version. I won’t be able to answer if you ask me any questions, wanting to know more.
It was my fault. I abandoned Elise when she needed me most. Not once, but several times. It began when I walked out of that house and left a crying baby with her sickly, elderly grandmother. When I left for France. For Allan. Elise was crying when I left, but I just closed the door behind me, preoccupied with myself and my hopes for future happiness. You’ve always seen me as someone who gets involved, who cares, and who helps. But that wasn’t the case back then. All I could think about was my own situation, my own future. And with my mind full of those thoughts, my future became more important than Elise’s. Every time Carl, your grandfather, wrote and pleaded for me to come back, I threw his letters in the wastebasket. I sent her presents on her birthday, but that was all. An expensive teddy bear or a pretty dress, as if gifts could make up for my absence.
The drugs were never the real problem. It was her start in life. It made her insecure. And that insecurity made her susceptible to drugs; they helped her flee from her fears. If it hadn’t been for that, she would have been a better mother.
I often tried to talk to her. Tried to make her leave the past behind. To see the goodness in life. But she just shook her head. She once told me that she felt happy only when she was high. That the drugs made her float above her problems, which vanished beneath her.
When Carl called to say that you had been born, I returned to New York for my first visit. Gösta had recently died, and I was alone. It was love at first sight. I sat with your foot in my hand and just looked at you. Then I returned when you were one, when you were four, five, six, and every year after that until you started college.
I lost a child once. A child I didn’t want, who I never even thought of as a child. But emptiness followed that loss, just the same. You filled it. You became my everything, and it was so easy to love you. You gave me a chance to compensate for everything, and I promised myself that I would let nothing bad happen to you. That you would get the support you needed to live your life. Because it is hard, Jenny. Life is hard.
Promise me that you won’t blame your dead mother anymore. I’m sure that Elise loved you. Forgive her. I should have been there for her the way I was for you. But I couldn’t. It was my fault. Forgive me.
Epilogue
They are sitting on the floor in Jenny’s kitchen, sorting the envelopes by postmark date. They slice open the ones that are sealed. Mary, Allan’s great-niece, is sitting next to Jenny. She had called to say that Allan was dead. He died less than forty-eight hours after Doris. And Mary too had found letters.
The envelopes have two things in common. All have the words Address Unknown stamped over the name, and all have been returned to the sender.
7 November 1944
Poste restante Allan Smith, Paris
Darling Allan,
Worries about how you are eat away at me. Not a day passes without thinking of you. I search for your face in the news reports, study soldier after soldier. I hope you managed to leave Paris unscathed and that you are back in New York. I am in Sweden now, in Stockholm.
Your Doris
20 May 1945
Poste restante Doris Alm, New York
Doris, I am alive. The war is finally over, and I think of you every day. Where are you? I wonder how life is for you and your sister, whether you are well? Write to me. I will stay here, in Paris. If you are reading this, come back.
Your Allan
30 August 1945
Poste restante Doris Alm, New York
Dear Doris,
It is my great hope that you will one day set foot in the Grand Central Post Office and read my words. I can feel that you are alive, you are there in my thoughts. I want to be reunited with you. I am still in Paris.
Your Allan
15 June 1946
Poste restante Allan Smith, New York
Sometimes I wonder whether you exist only in my dreams. I think of you at least once a day. Please, dear Allan, give me a sign. Just one line. I am still in Stockholm. I love you.
Your Doris
On it goes: 1946, 1947, 1950, 1953, 1955, 1960, 1970 . . . Short messages bouncing back and forth, passing the other by. If only . . . what if . . .
Jenny and Mary smile at each other.
“Incredible. They loved each other their entire lives.”
Love rests beneath every headstone. So much love.
Glances that throw an entire life out of balance.
Entwined hands on a park bench.
A parent’s gaze at a newborn child.
A friendship so strong that no passion is required.
Two bodies, coming together as one, time and time again.
Love.
It’s just one word, but it holds so much.
In the end, all that matters is love.
Did you love enough?
About the Author
Sofia Lundberg is a journalist and former magazine editor. Her debut novel, The Red Address Book, will be published in 31 territories worldwide. She lives in Stockholm with her son.
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