You spend too much time thinking about yourself, Ellen told me when I finally asked her for some advice. People who spend too much time thinking about themselves when they’re giving a speech are the worst, always wondering how they’re coming across and what people think about them, she continued. Your job is to focus on Dad, how you portray him, what you want others to think of him. That has to be your starting point. That was my starting point, I tell her, but maybe that got lost somewhere along the way. You got lost in yourself along the way, Ellen replied, laughing. She works as an advisor and speech-writer, and now, standing in front of her and the others, it seems obvious that it ought to have been her who made this speech.
I carry on, holding Dad’s gaze.
‘Happy birthday. When I told Hedda a few weeks ago that we were going to celebrate your birthday, she asked how old you were going to be. I told her you’d be turning seventy. Is that less than a hundred? she asked me. It is, I replied. She thought for a moment and then, with slight disappointment in her voice, said: So he’s not really that old at all,’ I say, and Dad chuckles with delight.
‘Even though the reasoning behind her conclusion is a little different from my own, I agree with her. For me, you’re ageless, you’re Dad, just as you were twenty years ago, thirty years ago, and as you are now, a constant in my life,’ I continue.
I pause for a moment. Everyone is looking at me apart from Mum, who’s looking down at the table and nodding. Ellen smiles and gives me the thumbs up, and I exhale. We’ve been sitting at the table for an hour already, we’ve had our bruschetta and our pasta, the sun has just set, and for this brief quarter of an hour, dusk will surround us. Ellen, Håkon and Olaf’s faces, all of them sitting with their backs to the sea and the sunset, shine golden in the light of the candles that Agnar has arranged in a sort of heart shape in the middle of the table, while Mum, Simen, Agnar and Dad’s foreheads and cheeks are pink, whether as a result of sunburn or the reflection of the red sky opposite them. The smell of meat and garlic emanates from the open kitchen doors, while the scent of pine and lavender fills the air around us.
I tell Dad things I’ve never told him before – about him, about the way I see him, the way I think about him and us. I talk about how unusually present he was when Ellen and I were young, about the feeling that I was being taken seriously, regardless of what I had to tell him, both as a child and as an adult, and about the fact that in spite of his manner of listening – seemingly entirely without interest, distanced and often accompanied by fidgeting with his glasses, pocket knife or whatever else he has to hand – nobody else takes in quite as much as he does, both in terms of what’s being said but also what is left unsaid, that nobody else responds with such insight. I talk about how he handled Håkon, whose curiosity stretched far beyond that of any ordinary four-year-old, who asked why this or that or the other was the way it was until everybody else, including Mum, were so bored they wanted to explode. Dad, on the other hand, took almost all of his questions seriously, leafing through encyclopaedia and dismantling the radio for demonstration purposes.
I sneak the briefest of glances at Ellen, who no doubt feels that I’m not focusing on Dad’s personality, but rather on the fact that Håkon was showered with more time and attention and material possessions than she and I had enjoyed, but I disagree: the way Dad has listened, responded, treated us as being deserving of his attention, these things have been the same for all three of us.
I’m careful to include Mum too.
‘It’s hard, if not impossible, to talk about Dad without mentioning you, Mum,’ I say, looking at her. ‘Even though you are two very different individuals, you are a unit in our eyes, and each other’s. The way you complement one another, the way you cooperate, the way you demonstrate the values of respect and love – all while giving each other necessary space – is something that I’ve always strived for in my own marriage,’ I say, and Olaf laughs.
‘Some might suggest I’ve tried to follow your example with a little too much gusto,’ I add, improvising slightly and smiling at Olaf. ‘But still, the two of you are a formidable act to follow. It is said that women choose men who remind them of their fathers, often with a certain degree of irony, but I can honestly say that I have sought – and found – a man like you, Dad, because for me you represent the very best there is, in every way imaginable.’
Dad smiles, moved by my words, Mum looks down at her plate. I raise my voice and read on, ending with a poem by Halldis Moren Vesaas, a choice that I’m sure Mum silently judges me for making.
‘Cheers, Dad,’ I conclude. ‘And many happy returns.’
After finishing our saltimbocca and hearing Dad declare it the finest meal he’s eaten in all seventy years of his life, an expectant silence falls. Everyone is waiting for Mum to call for everyone’s attention, and nobody else dares to do so before she’s had the chance. I know that Olaf has been considering speaking, not giving a long speech or anything, he said before we left, but I feel it would be right for me to say something. It’s an impulse he seldom stifles; he loves speeches, especially giving them, and he doesn’t take himself too seriously; overall, I think it’s more about having the opportunity for someone – Olaf, in particular – to say things they might not usually say. An opportunity to pay the kind of compliments that are difficult to weave into normal conversation or convey through a pat on the shoulder. I know that Olaf takes advantage of every opportunity to say a few words to his employees, whether on their last day at work or on their birthday, not to mention at Christmas, when the speeches he practises at home grow longer and longer with each passing year. But he’s so good at it that it’s envy-inducing, and on my fortieth birthday he gave a speech more touching than the one Crown Prince Haakon famously gave on the day he married Mette-Marit, as one of my friends put it at the time. Ellen even asked if she could take elements from it to use in a professional context after the event. This did nothing to hamper Olaf’s desire to hold forth for an audience.
Nobody gets up to clear the dinner plates from the table, we start to chat idly, and Olaf looks at me; he thinks that Mum ought to speak first, he can’t say anything before she does, things have to take place in the correct order. I shrug. Dad is the only one who doesn’t seem to have noticed the atmosphere, he’s busy discussing Pokémon Go with Agnar; they’ve been enthusiastically hunting down numerous Pokémon over the past few months, and both made some valuable additions to their flocks while taking in the sights in Rome. Suddenly I feel uncertain about the motivation behind Dad’s trip to the Vatican and Agnar’s visit to the Colosseum, but I have no chance to think any more about it as Mum finally clears her throat.
‘Sverre already knows this, but I can tell you all, in case you’re wondering, that I’m saving my speech for the party Sverre will be having in Oslo once we get home,’ she says.
Dad picks at a red wine stain on his shirt and nods. We sit in silence for a few seconds. Olaf prepares to lift his fork to his glass, but Ellen beats him to it.
‘But why?’ she asks.
‘What do you mean, why?’ Mum replies.
‘Why don’t you want to say a few words now?’
‘I just told you that I’ll be doing it at the party when we get back,’ Mum says.
‘Can’t you do it at both?’ Ellen asks.
She holds Mum’s gaze for a long moment, unnaturally long, and I notice her summoning her reserves of concentration and strength to prevent her gaze from faltering. I realise that I’m not the only one to have picked up on the atmosphere between Mum and Dad, that Ellen has noticed it too. It hadn’t occurred to me that she might have caught the glances, the words exchanged, the inexplicable glimpses that suggest something has changed between them. I’m almost disappointed, if relieved, that I’m not alone in having observed it.
Simen, who isn’t accustomed to the social conventions within our family, who still can’t distinguish a joke from a comment made in all seriousness, who isn’t attuned to the nuances in express
ion and tone, laughs at what he believes to be Ellen’s joke – a joke that has fallen very flat, if anything – about Mum giving her speech on both occasions. He’s used to the clamour of us teasing one another, used to seeing a direct, confrontational spirit abound without us ever resorting to arguments, used to the fact that we might burst out laughing at the merest shared reference in the midst of an animated discussion. Even though they’ve been together for more than a year, he’s too new to this to realise that Ellen’s tone has changed, it’s filled with subtext. Defiant, angry, perhaps even scared.
‘Don’t joke about it, Ellen,’ Mum tells her, but her expression gives away the fact that she’s all too aware Ellen isn’t joking.
‘You were the one who insisted earlier on today that this was your celebration for Dad, surely it’s a natural part of any celebration to say a few words to your husband of forty years,’ Ellen says, imitating Mum for the last part of the sentence, Simen chuckling all the while, and I feel the urge to punch him.
‘Enough now,’ Mum says. ‘I’ll make my speech in Oslo.’
She gets up and starts stacking dirty plates. I feel a mixture of hope and fear that the conversation might end here, that Ellen might give in.
‘What’s really going on here?’ Ellen asks.
Mum stops and sets the plates down on the table abruptly. They clatter menacingly, and Olaf snatches a concerned glance at his brother’s crockery, but the plates appear to have held their own better than Mum under the circumstances.
‘Is it really so strange that I’m not giving a speech for Sverre this evening? That I choose not to stand up in front of you all and repeat the same things you’ve heard on every birthday leading up to this one, rather than to give a proper speech in front of his friends and colleagues at a big party in just a week’s time?’
‘It’s strange for you, of all people, to choose not to say anything to Dad on this particular birthday, given that you make a speech on every other birthday, yes,’ Ellen says.
Mum doesn’t always give full speeches, but she does always say a few words on our birthdays. In the case of Ellen, Håkon and me, she usually tells the story of our birth, our little quirks – I was born with a squashed left ear, for instance, which Dad spent many an hour rolling flat so that it would take the correct shape – or what we were like as babies – I cried a lot, Ellen was worryingly quiet, Håkon had his heart defect – and how we assumed our different roles within the family in such a way that it seemed they had been waiting for no one but us to come along. There are slight differences from year to year, and Mum always adds something from the year that has passed. If we aren’t together on our birthdays for whatever reason, she sends the same story via text. With Dad, she talks each year about how they met, a highly edited version of the events I read about in her diaries, always far more romantic.
‘You’ve been off with us ever since we got here,’ Ellen says before Mum has a chance to reply. ‘Can’t you just answer the question, rather than making such obvious hints all the time? What’s wrong?’
I hold my breath. I don’t realise I’m doing it until I feel my heart hammering inside my chest.
Mum keeps opening her mouth as if to say something, but no words come out. Eventually she turns to Dad.
‘Do you have anything you want to say about all this, Sverre?’ she says.
They stare at one another for a few long seconds. I can’t read their expressions. Dad is the first to look away, turning to Ellen, Håkon and me, ironing out the tablecloth on either side of his plate with the palms of his hands, hesitating slightly, then laying both hands flat on the table and letting his shoulders drop.
‘We’ve decided to get a divorce,’ Dad says.
Mum flinches almost as if he’d struck her; it’s clear that wasn’t what she had expected him to say.
Initially I respond more to Mum’s reaction than to what Dad has said, she suddenly looks so small and scared. I look at Ellen and Håkon, feel the immediate need to protect them both, want them to leave the table, the conversation, want to tell them that I’ll sort all of this out. And yet I remain where I am, silent. Mum sits back down.
‘Well, it’s probably just as well that you told them,’ she says to Dad. ‘But it’s not as dramatic as it sounds,’ she says, looking at me.
‘How on earth can it be less dramatic? Are you not getting divorced?’ Ellen asks before I have a chance to say anything, as if she has suddenly transformed into an obstinate teenager.
Mum throws a hand out in Dad’s direction with a resigned look on her face, as if passing the matter on for him to deal with.
‘Yes, we’re divorcing. But it’s difficult to explain. We’re going to sort things out and work out something between us, tie things up. It certainly hasn’t been an easy decision.’
Ellen looks at me, seeking out somebody to hold responsible.
‘We’ve put a lot of thought into this. We both feel an emptiness, a sense that we’ve taken everything we possibly can from one another and from our marriage,’ Dad continues. ‘We just no longer see a future together.’
‘Did you know about this?’ Ellen asks me.
‘No,’ I tell her, looking over at Mum.
‘We’ve talked it through again and again, tried to find some sort of solution, but it’s quite simple, when it comes down to it: we’ve grown apart,’ she says.
I try making eye contact with Håkon, but he’s staring at the table. Agnar was allowed to leave the table after dinner and is sitting on a sun lounger just a few metres away wearing his headphones, he can’t hear any of what’s going on. Fortunately, Hedda went to bed hours ago.
‘We’re going to try to work things out between us, they haven’t been right for years now. I’ve tried talking to you all about it,’ Dad says.
‘Not to me you haven’t,’ Håkon says.
Not to me either, as far as I can recall. Silence falls. Mum and Dad look like two shamefaced children, and it pains me to see them. I automatically reach out to take Dad’s hand and squeeze it, but I let go as soon as I catch Mum’s gaze upon us and see the way her hand smooths the tablecloth, nervous, alone. I can’t control my thoughts, they leap from one scenario to the next: thoughts of how I might go about explaining this to Agnar and Hedda, images of Dad moving boxes of his things out of the family home, or perhaps Mum will be the one to move, the house in Tåsen without Mum’s armchair in the corner of the room, the prospect of who we’ll invite over for Christmas, I’m a child all over again.
Suddenly Ellen doubles up. Her laughter sounds genuine.
‘Grown apart? Future? Seriously, you’re seventy years old!’
ELLEN
The meat is bloody, the red liquid seeps out from between the fibres of the veal fillet as my fork pierces the steak’s crust. I do my best not to compare it to the blood I awoke to this morning, large streaks of red staining the bedsheets and my underwear and my thighs. My body is trying to make a point, I told Simen as I pulled off the bedsheets while he still lay in the bed. Don’t even bother trying, that’s what it’s saying, I’m here to show you that the more you hope, the more unequivocally I’ll refuse you, tell you no, not a bloody chance of it, I muttered quickly under my breath. I didn’t cry this time, not like last month.
Last month, twenty-nine days ago, we awoke to cloud cover and cold rain in Oslo.
The beams of sunlight that shone through the window and illuminated my body as I showered this morning, the scent of the sea and the slightly spicy fragrance of our natural surroundings here in Italy made this setback slightly easier to deal with. It’s Dad’s birthday, after all, I said to Simen after the blood and my initial reaction to its appearance had washed away down the plughole. Either way, I have to pretend as if nothing’s amiss, I just have to suppress it. Yes, he replied, we just have to make the best of the day ahead; he held me close, a long embrace, and I felt as if I could smell the disappointment where my head rested at the hollow of his neck.
I extricated myself fro
m his embrace and left the room without looking at him, making my way to the kitchen where Hedda was the first to meet my gaze. I tried to avoid eye contact, did my best not to lose my composure because she’s always reminded me of what I don’t have; over the past year I’ve felt myself on the verge of being so furious with Hedda that I don’t know what to do with myself; it comes out of nowhere, sudden and explosive, and I can do nothing but remove myself from the situation. It’s totally unacceptable, I haven’t even mentioned it to Simen, I realise how unfair and petty and embarrassing it is. Today I chose to make jam for her instead, mostly to have a dig at Liv, exaggerating the sweetness, which Liv and Olaf seem more afraid of than anything else in life. And for once it helped to be close to her, to stroke Hedda’s smooth hair, her soft skin, to see her so thrilled with the jam that was so sweet it was virtually inedible, the jam I’d made just for her.
A Modern Family Page 5