A Modern Family

by Helga Flatland

  When I fell pregnant with Hedda, I hoped she’d be a girl, and I was very open about that with everyone I spoke to. You can’t say things like that, Liv, Mum told me. Why not? I replied. Someone would have to be exceedingly simple to fail to grasp the fact that I’ll love my child regardless. But as things stand, I’d be happier with a girl, and I don’t see the issue in saying so. I’m just glad you didn’t end up having a boy who’d have had to go through life hearing about how you’d wished for a different child altogether, Mum said when it turned out I’d been expecting a girl all along. I replied that I hoped I’d never have such insecure, impetuous children, regardless of their sex.

  Nobody knows why Mum and Dad had so much difficulty conceiving Håkon, why it took so many years and so many miscarriages, but Mum eventually sought help from a private clinic, where it was suggested that it might have something to do with a birth-related injury from when she’d had Ellen. A terrible delivery, as Mum always says, to Ellen’s great irritation. Do you want me to be grateful or something? Ellen always asks her, followed by a squabble that is almost identical every time; they’re so alike, and both equally stubborn, sometimes it’s as if they’re competing over something that nobody else could ever comprehend.

  Håkon was a sorely wanted child, in any case, and remains so. He still acts like a child in the family context, assuming the role of the youngest, a hapless youth, sprawling out on the sofa while the rest of us cook meals, leaving the table without clearing his plate, sitting in company with his headphones on and his laptop out in the middle of the living room, and it wasn’t so long ago that he would still take his washing home to Mum and Dad – and that only stopped after his most recent girlfriend made a point of mentioning it to him. When it’s just Ellen, Håkon and me, he’s totally different, a grown man who participates in adult conversation and has his own adult issues to deal with.

  But sitting in the back seat of Mum and Dad’s car as they drive through Italy, as far as Dad is concerned he needs his sleep, in spite of everything going on around him, and I end the conversation without mentioning the satnav or offering to wait for them again.

  Olaf’s brother’s house is on a small hill in a medium-sized coastal town on the Riviera. We drive part of the way alongside the Mediterranean Sea, which sparkles turquoise in the sunshine, and part of the way further up in the dry, olive-brown mountains, passing through tiny villages where it seems that time has stood still, even though Olaf thinks I’m narrow-minded to say so.

  ‘What do you know about it?’ he asks. ‘You don’t know anything about her, or her life,’ he continues, pointing at an old lady dressed in black sitting on a stool outside her home, seemingly doing nothing at all.

  I don’t respond. Instead I turn to Hedda and Agnar in the back of the car, each looking out of their own window.

  ‘Just think, people live out here,’ I say to them.

  Mum always used to say that to us if we drove past places that seemed abandoned or uninhabitable in our eyes, whether we were at home in Norway or abroad. I remember one area of Portugal in particular; we’d rented a car and had driven up into the hills by the Algarve. I might have been fourteen at the time. We had driven along endless narrow, winding country roads; it was so hot that the heat flickered in the air just above the surface of the road ahead of us, and Ellen and I were stunned when Dad told us quite seriously that we could have fried an egg on the asphalt. We drove through a small village consisting of ten or twelve houses, a small square and a petrol station where Dad stopped to fill up. The station resembled a little shanty hut more than anything else, the signs and pumps reddish-brown with rust. Outside, a man sat in the patch of shade offered by a small parasol, getting up as we pulled in. He smiled, Ellen said afterwards that he’d only had one tooth, and he filled the car with petrol for Dad even though Dad would have preferred to have done it himself, and when we drove away afterwards, he stood there and watched us go. Ellen and I turned and looked at him through the back window as he grew smaller and smaller. Just think, people live out here, Mum said, as usual, and suddenly I understood what she meant. I felt a surge of overwhelming sympathy for the man who had to remain here, out in the wilderness somewhere in Portugal, outside a petrol station; this was actually his life. I spent the rest of the holiday thinking about him, burdened with a sense of guilt as I went about my daily activities. Back at the hotel a few days later, I asked Mum if she thought he had a family. She couldn’t remember him at first, and I started to cry as I explained who I was talking about, the lonely man with no teeth from the petrol station, who no doubt sat there day in and day out, no family or friends or money, no life at all. Oh, him. My love, Mum said, smiling at me, he’d probably find our life in Oslo unbearably tiresome and hectic. We needn’t pity those who don’t live life exactly the way we do.

  Neither Agnar nor Hedda appear to have any particular reaction to the same phrase. Agnar is mostly busy explaining to us all about the algae that gives the Mediterranean Sea its azure-blue colour, and Hedda blinks, nodding off. I wonder if it’s worth the effort required to try to keep her awake until bedtime, to avoid her disturbing and delaying the relaxing evening I’ve imagined awaits me, or if I should just let her sleep. She nods off before I make up my mind, and I don’t say anything to Olaf, who is usually more concerned with the children’s sleeping habits than I am.

  After four hours in the car, Olaf turns into a flagstone driveway some way up the mountainside, the sun now low in the sky, hovering just above the sea. I can’t see the house for all the vegetation around our parking space, but I catch sight of a small set of steps hidden among the greenery and Hedda and Agnar disappear up them, running off the long car journey. Olaf flashes me an expectant, self-assured smile. I follow them, emerging on a south-facing terrace with a view of the small town in its entirety, and the distant horizon beyond that. Agnar and Hedda shriek with delight at the pool that juts out slightly over the edge, and I feel my own tingle of childish glee at the pale-blue chlorinated water, even though the Mediterranean lies just beneath us, tranquil and inviting.

  The others join us up on the terrace. Olaf opens the glass double doors leading into the house, we make our way into a large kitchen with red terracotta tiles and open shelves and everybody goes off in their own direction, exploring the large house that Olaf has never suggested is anything more than a small holiday home he allowed his brother to inherit when their parents died several years ago – I hear Ellen’s shriek of delight and Dad’s murmurs of approval. Mum follows me into the largest bedroom, a southwest-facing room with a fresco painted on the ceiling; it smells of fabric softener and the sea. She stands at the window saying nothing, her hair lustrous in the light of the red sun, and for a moment I find myself worrying that she thinks it’s too garish, too extravagant and vulgar, but then she smiles at me.

  ‘What a place,’ she says, and I think she means it in a good way, running her hand along the wide windowsill.

  ‘Yes, I had no idea it was so spacious,’ I say. ‘It almost makes me a little bitter to think that Olaf passed it up.’

  ‘It didn’t look quite like this when his brother inherited it, though, I was under the impression he’d spent years doing it up,’ Mum says.

  I wonder when she and Olaf talked about it, he’s never told me all that much about the place.

  ‘Yes, well, still,’ I say.

  ‘I think you ought to be glad you don’t own it; imagine the upkeep,’ Mum says. She sees upkeep everywhere she looks, in every house or cabin Ellen and I have ever considered buying. No, she’d say, just think of the upkeep, her conscience no doubt weighing on her over all the upkeep she neglected to undertake in the cabin in Lillesand that she inherited.

  ‘I’m just glad that Olaf wanted his brother to have it, to be honest, glad that it didn’t turn into some kind of ugly inheritance fall-out,’ I tell her, and I mean it.

  ‘Yes, that’s understandable,’ Mum says, and her response harks back to a conversation that’s been had sev
eral times now, between her and me but also with the family as a whole, about the incomprehensible nature of fall-outs over inheritance that go on for so long that people stop talking to one another, about the way in which material possessions can tear emotional bonds to shreds, trumping memories and genes and any sense of belonging.

  Olaf, who had been in the middle of dividing his parents’ assets when one of these conversations had unfolded, had argued that things weren’t as simple as all that, that material possessions can become metaphors for suppressed emotions, or for fair or unfair treatment, and that these things often only come to light under such circumstances. I don’t know if he felt that way about his own younger brother, I don’t think he did. I think the reason he allowed his brother to have the house in Italy at market value was to do with the fact that he didn’t really want it, but I believe it was also a consequence of his exaggerated and sometimes unnecessary concern for his brother, as well as the fact that Olaf didn’t wish to owe him anything, as was his wont, not even in the long run. Anyway, we’ve got enough money, he said, and he’s right, we do, but so does his brother, I think to myself as I stand here, and I feel embarrassed at the sudden stab of jealousy I feel, just as I always do – our family isn’t preoccupied with material things, and certainly not with money.

  I’ve always felt certain that when the day comes to split the inheritance we receive from our parents, Ellen, Håkon and I will agree to divide everything equally between us, and that anything that doesn’t lend itself to being split in such a way will be shared out fairly, that we’ll be generous with one another. Olaf has challenged me on this assumption: What if Håkon wants the cabin in Lillesand? He doesn’t want the cabin in Lillesand, I’ve replied, and I know that’s the case, he’d rather have Grandma and Grandad’s cabin in Vindeggen. But what if, Olaf insists, and I tell him that we’ll find a solution if that’s the case, but I know that the only solution is that it’s passed on to me, it’s quite simply unthinkable that it should go to Håkon or Ellen, and I feel the same way now, as Mum and Dad grow older, it’s unthinkable that Ellen or Håkon should receive any more than me, that they should emerge from things more favourably than I do.

  ‘I’m so glad we’ve come away like this,’ Mum says all of a sudden on her way out of the room, stopping before she reaches the door, standing in front of me, her expression grave.

  I smile at her.

  ‘That’s good,’ I say. ‘I feel the same.’

  She wraps her arms around me and hugs me. We’re exactly the same height, but her body is softer than mine, plumper and warmer, which makes her hugs some of the softest and most soothing I can imagine.

  ‘You’re not dying, are you?’ I mumble into her hair, as we often say when one of us gets overly sentimental, only ever half-joking.

  Mum laughs and lets me go.

  ‘No, I’m not dying.’

  Agnar and Hedda are allowed to go for a swim in the pool before bed. Dad joins them. I sit on the terrace and watch as they play, certain that Dad is having at least as much fun as the children, remembering the way he always played with us, too. He did things properly, took our games seriously. Whenever we visited Grandma and Grandad on their farm when we were little, we would build small colonies of dens on their land made with hay bales after threshing. All the kids in the village would be there, and there were always very clear agreements in place about how the game should unfold – which part was the designated kitchen, living room, sofa, who our chief was and who’d be our slave, and which of us were the robbers. Dad turned up one evening and everyone was convinced he’d come to fetch us in for the evening, but instead he asked if he could play with us. I felt embarrassment and pride all at once, but I soon forgot that Dad was Dad because he engaged so readily in our play – and did nothing at all to try to let the others win.

  Håkon comes out and sits down beside me. I often think about how different our childhoods have been and wonder how it’s affected us. Ellen and I share the same memories, the same references, the same rules. Håkon has something else entirely to relate to, he’s grown up differently, almost all by himself, and in a different decade.

  Mum, Ellen, Simen and Olaf are talking in the kitchen, I can’t hear what they’re saying but I catch Ellen laughing out loud. After a short while she emerges with a plate of olives, ham and cheese and some wine, placing everything on the table and sitting down with us. Simen comes over and wraps his arms around her from behind, kissing her neck a few times and making a grunting sound; I’m usually embarrassed by just how physical they are with one another in front of us all, but it doesn’t bother me this time.

  Olaf calls out to the children, pointing at his watch emphatically.

  ‘We had a deal, Agnar,’ he shouts.

  ‘Don’t listen to him,’ Dad chips in, to Agnar and Hedda’s great delight.

  I turn around and look for Mum, but she’s no longer in the kitchen.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ I ask.

  ‘She went to lie down for a bit,’ Olaf says.

  ‘No, she went for a walk,’ Håkon says.

  ‘By herself?’ I ask, an unnecessary question since everyone else is here, but I feel uneasy: it’s so typical of her to feel the need to do something demonstrably different from whatever it is everyone else is doing together.

  Nobody says a word, and nobody looks worried, so I make up my mind to think no more about it, try to follow Olaf’s advice that I should spend less time worrying about others, their moods, keeping an eye on whoever might be feeling a certain way and when. It serves no purpose, he tells me, and of course he’s right. It’s a hard habit to break, because I’m so accustomed to keeping an eye on Mum, watching for even the slightest change in her expression; I can see the tiniest wrinkle appear at the corner of her mouth when she’s feeling frustrated or resigned, the tiny lift in her brow when she’s worried, I can see it in her eyes when she’s happy. I’ve often thought that I’d be the only one who could communicate with her if she had a stroke and lost the ability to speak, the only one who would really understand her, so committed to memory is my interpretation, so automatic, that I barely have to see her to know her temperament at that moment.

  She returns after half an hour, just as I’m putting Hedda to bed, and comes in to say goodnight to her granddaughter. She looks as if she’s been crying, and it takes every effort not to probe, not to ponder, instead forcing my attention back to old farmer Pettson and his cat Findus, the one book that Hedda elected to bring with her on holiday.

  The crickets wake me the following morning with their intense song, and I remember Agnar explaining to me once that the distinctive sound I’m hearing isn’t, in fact, a song, but a noise created when the males rub their wings together to attract the females for mating. I look over at Olaf, lying on his back with his hands crossed beneath his head as if caught mid-pose. I turn towards him and lay my palm flat on his chest, the tips of my fingers brushing the delicate hollow of his neck, which quivers momentarily with every heartbeat. I’ve always found a sense of security in the rhythm of breath and the thud of a heartbeat.

  My touch doesn’t wake him and I wonder if I should rouse him properly so we can have sex before Hedda wakes up, as I’ve imagined we might while sitting back at home in Oslo, daydreaming about long mornings with plenty of time at our disposal, a gentle breeze and sunlight that darts and flickers through rippling white curtains, just Olaf and me, but then I remember Mum and Dad, that today is Dad’s seventieth birthday. I kiss Olaf softly on the neck instead, he wakes up and shifts his arm, which must be dead from the loss of blood flow, then wraps it around me and pulls me close.

  ‘I wondered about waking you up so we could have a bit of fun, if you know what I mean,’ I tell him. ‘But then I remembered it’s Dad’s birthday.’

  Olaf opens his eyes, looks down at me and laughs.

  ‘So instead you decided to wake me up to tell me that?’ he says.

  I nod, smiling. It was years before I would have sex with Olaf w
hen Mum and Dad were in the same house or cabin, or even in the same hotel, even when their room was miles away from our own. Their presence is equally strong regardless of how many metres of concrete or brick walls might separate us. I had to give myself a few years after we got together, waiting until we spent a whole summer with my parents at the cabin. But I still find it uncomfortable, I can’t relax or keep from thinking about them – and worst of all is the thought that they probably think we’re having sex. Olaf doesn’t get it. We’re adults, we’re married, he says, we’ve got two children. I can’t explain it, but it feels invasive and embarrassing that they might think of me or look at me in that way.

  ‘Well, then, we’ll have to find another way to celebrate your dad,’ Olaf says.

  Dad has a lie-in for once; I know how difficult it is for him to stay in bed long enough for Hedda and Agnar to have the fun of waking him with their rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’, and I’m grateful to him.

  He’s usually up by six every day for a run, says it has a knock-on effect on his whole day if he doesn’t fit it in. He’s having issues with his left knee after so many years spent running on asphalt and was disproportionately upset by the doctor’s advice, which was that he should have an operation; he talked about it for weeks, refused to stop running, and got to the point of hobbling past Voldsløkka Stadium before agreeing to take a break for a few weeks. Now he wears a support bandage under his running leggings, refuses to see the doctor again even when his knee puffs up like a football, and we’ve given up nagging him about it. If he wants to wear out his knee, he can go right ahead, Mum says, but she also seems conspicuously lacking in motivation to make him see that he either needs to give up running or have the operation – or, as is the most likely scenario, both.