A Modern Family

by Helga Flatland

  I get up, make my way into the bathroom, take two paracetamol and step into the shower – I use the shower head to spray the warm water directly at my stomach in small circular motions. I rest my back against the tiled wall and cry, mourning the entire situation rather than any one particular trigger. Dinner tonight was like something from a clichéd Scandinavian noir, Simen said, laughing, after we’d gone to bed last night. I nodded. Aside from the lack of revelations, I said. Other than the fact that Mum and Dad have revealed themselves to be two old people who have convinced themselves that life has more to offer and who have decided to sacrifice their entire family in order to find themselves, I continued. Perhaps the revelations will come in time, Simen said, we don’t know what’s been going on between them. Nothing’s been going on, I said, and I felt certain of that, nothing other than the fact that in one breath they talk of retirement, and in the next they do all they can to gloss over their age.

  Mum retired from her role as editor at a publishing house when she turned sixty-seven, and she regretted the decision just four days after leaving, she says, as if her advancing years were within her control. She still does a little consultancy work for them now and then, as well as for some of the authors who refuse to let her go, as she often puts it with thinly veiled pride – though it’s obviously true, given that they’re on the phone to her with self-absorbed frequency. But as I stand there in the shower, I wonder if that might be the reason behind all this, if Mum simply has too much time on her hands, if she’s bored and looking for something to fill that time, and if Dad isn’t enough – if, perhaps, the verification and recognition and attention she received at work is missing from her life, and Dad and the rest of us aren’t enough to replace that. It strikes me that maybe she misses the sense of achievement, that she’s looking for something more meaningful than simply living out her days as a retiree who happens to be married to Dad. Perhaps I might have had a better understanding of it two years ago, but now it’s beyond my comprehension, it almost seems unjust, that she, with her children and grandchildren, should feel her life to be empty. The situation concerns Dad too, but it doesn’t occur to me that he might have been the one to initiate the split; he still has so much going on that fills his life. Too much, Mum clearly thinks, and I wonder why she’s been so preoccupied with the notion of him retiring.

  They both went to bed – in the same room – after dinner. I wonder what they talked about when they were alone, if they said anything to one another at all. When Agnar could no longer be bothered to remain at the table, and Liv discovered – to her greatly exaggerated and projected horror – that it was two hours past his normal bedtime, he was whisked off to bed and the party quickly broke up. Liv started tidying up, as usual, always her first instinct when things get difficult, tidying and clinging to her routine, as she had with Agnar’s bedtime. It’s so important to her, she feels compelled to act in the way she does, and Håkon and I often joke about it, but not today. Simen and Olaf helped her tidy things away, and Håkon and I remained at the table. I felt even angrier that Mum and Dad had simply left the table and gone to bed, leaving the rest to us, angry that we had to respond to their decision without them present. Are you alright? I asked Håkon finally, didn’t know what else to say. He chuckled under his breath and shrugged. Then Olaf and Simen returned and the three of them sat and talked about Italian football teams while I went to the kitchen to look for Liv. She was standing there, crying over a bowl of salad, and I couldn’t help but laugh. Oh Liv, I said, putting my arm around her.

  Liv has always been more dependent on Mum and Dad than I have, dependent on their recognition or acceptance of everything she’s done, even as an adult. I remember the way she practically asked for permission to marry Olaf, the way she anxiously called me every day in the lead-up to biting the bullet and telling them that she and Olaf were planning a church wedding, as if it were the worst thing she could have done to them. Liv, I said, it’s not Mum and Dad you’re promising to have and hold, it’s Olaf – maybe not so much for better as for worse, as far as he’s concerned, I joked. It’s alright for you, she said, you don’t know what it’s like. What what’s like? I asked her. They’ve got such high expectations, such strong opinions about everything I do. That’s not true, you’re just as guilty of establishing these expectations, you expect their expectations, it’s a vicious circle, I replied. I was twenty-six at the time, and I had no idea how much I would come to think about family, how important the concept would become to me twelve years on.

  Imagine we never have children, I think to myself now, standing in the shower. That would make this the only family I have.

  In June, Simen and I buy our first flat together.

  When we returned from Italy, minus one imagined pregnancy and two married parents, the property pages were the first thing I checked. I was convinced that Simen would be leaving me at any moment, that everything was more delicate than it had been before. I had sat next to Dad on the flight home, trying to encourage him to expand upon what had happened between him and Mum. Nothing in particular, he said. People think that these things emerge from one point in time, a particular event, something concrete, but this has been much slower and more gradual than all that, he said. I don’t even know when it began. But you’ve been good together, I insisted. Of course we have, he said. But you can’t get away from the fact that duty has trumped desire for a lot of that time, it’s how I thought things were supposed to be. I turned to look at Liv, who was sitting a few seats behind us. She would have said that’s true, that is how things are supposed to be, that’s just life. I wish I could have said the same thing to Dad, persuaded him of that fact, but I was silent. I don’t know, he continued, people enter into all sorts of contracts as part of various different relationships in life, but not every contract ought to last a lifetime when the conditions change. Which conditions? I asked him. Torill and I have both changed, we’re not the same people we were when we first met, it shouldn’t be assumed that we’re still compatible.

  They’ve never been compatible, I told Simen later. And I’ve thought about it before now, the way they perceive and approach the world in such entirely different ways. She’s confrontational, intense and sensual while he is distant, logical, and emotional in ways she isn’t. Neither do they have any shared interests beyond us, I said. They have, as Dad put it, quite literally entered into a contract, and both have held up their end of the bargain. Do you think they were ever in love? I asked Simen, knowing that he couldn’t possibly answer that question, but the question itself was partly rhetorical to make him see the difference between them and us. I believe in relationships and families where the foundation is two people who love one another, rather than choosing to pair up with someone out of practical considerations or fear or anything else along those lines, I continued, attempting to reassure him.

  Simen is consumed with the concept of family, with frameworks and clear-cut relationships. Everything should be as normal as it can be, unambiguous and orderly. He hates any kind of vaguery, as he puts it, and I’m not entirely certain what he means by that, but I’m fairly sure that a couple in their seventies in the throes of divorce rather comfortably falls within that category.

  Until now, we’ve lived in a flat he bought several years ago with his ex-girlfriend. Even though I’ve changed the furnishings and painted the walls, hung up my pictures and filled the drawers with my coffee cups and clothing, it still feels like her space, her screws in the walls, her wardrobe with the sliding doors, her kitchen cupboards. Jealousy is new to me, and I almost felt pleased to discover that this was where my petty envy and need for self-assertion came from. I mentioned it to Simen, not without a certain pride: You do realise how jealous it makes me feel to be living in a flat you two bought together, you have so many memories here, I don’t know what you’ve done where. Even though Simen told me he understood where I was coming from, we remained there for a year after that conversation. We can’t have children here, I said to him s
ix months ago. No, Simen agreed. I was the one who started looking at houses, though somewhat half-heartedly, because in spite of everything, moving house is one thing I detest.

  The new flat is in St. Hanshaugen, on the fourth floor of a building with its own lift and a view over the park where mothers go jogging with babies in buggies. The flat itself has two bedrooms and a balcony. It went for almost a million kroner above the asking price, and even though Simen and I are both good earners, we took out a huge mortgage on the place, so high that it felt like an act of rebellion against Dad, who has always tried to teach Liv, Håkon and me about taking a responsible approach to financial affairs.

  The process of purchasing the flat has occupied my mind; the expectations, hopes, disappointments; I’ve poured my feelings into ads, viewings, bids, losses, increased mortgages, more viewings, more bids, and then the eventual intoxicating victory, and now here we are. Simen and me. In our new flat, sitting at our new kitchen table – we had to buy furniture to suit the place – sharing a bottle of wine. There hasn’t been the same pressure from Simen to avoid alcohol since returning from Italy, and even though that in itself worries me, it’s too gloriously numbing to drink until I feel like stopping. It’s all a load of nonsense anyway, I told Simen at the start, avoiding alcohol all month when I know I’m not pregnant. I can give up wine towards the end of my cycle, I suggested, still carefree. He asked if we shouldn’t just leave it; after all, there wasn’t any point in taking any chances, why would I risk it, surely it’s better to be sure I’m doing all the right things? For the Baby, I mean, he said to me, and it was hard to argue against doing the best thing for the Baby. As if there were already a child to speak of. It’s how we’ve talked about things ever since we started trying: always the Baby, with a capital B. Simen stopped drinking too, out of consideration for me, avoiding his favourite cheeses and cured meat at Christmas, all of which only served to increase the pressure on me. Eat, drink, please, I told him eventually, after our fourth failed attempt, have a big hunk of brie, I can’t face the idea of you being unable to enjoy yourself. We’re in this together, Simen said, still filled with a sense of misguided solidarity.

  It’s something of an anticlimax, I can’t enjoy the new flat, the table, the wine or Simen, not as I’d imagined I would. Too much simmers beneath the surface, too much that needs to be aired, talked about, but something in me has changed – I don’t have the energy for the fight. I can’t face having to formulate the words. I don’t even think it will help things; I no longer believe with such conviction that problems are better off being put into words, discussed and thereby rendered harmless. Liv has always thought me too confrontational, not everything needs to be talked about, she thinks, and maybe she’s right, because now it seems that talking to Simen about the Baby – or lack thereof – and Mum and Dad’s situation is more of a risk than it is reassuring.

  ‘Shall we sit out on the balcony?’ Simen asks.

  It’s raining, just as it has been ever since we got back, the air wet, the ground wet, Oslo sprawled before us, colourless and Eastern-Bloc-like.

  ‘Do you think summer will ever come?’ I ask Simen as we sit against the outer wall, protected from the rain by the balcony of the flat above us.

  Simen sighs, no doubt seeing the metaphor within my question. He doesn’t like metaphors, and avoids them as far as possible in everything he writes and says. He makes a good living teaching people working in industry and commerce to write well, and he’s steadfast in his approach; simple is always best when it comes to technical terminology. Metaphors obscure things, he thinks. They can enrich things, I say. Sure, if you’re writing fiction, he says, but not when you’re striving to convey a clear message. There’s been an inflation in the use of metaphors, Simen says, and I’ve pointed out that that’s a metaphor in itself, that it’s impossible to avoid them, even for him.

  ‘I’m serious, though, I saw something recently about what the climate might be like in a few years’ time, and in Norway we’ll have neither summer nor winter,’ I add.

  ‘We’ll still have summers and winters, even if there isn’t as much snow or sunshine as there once was,’ Simen said. ‘The seasons are about more than just the weather.’

  He leans his head back against the wall. Looks out across the park. I try to think of something else to say, something we can talk about, but there’s nothing. I’ve never been good at small talk, and the worst thing I can imagine is the idea of having to make polite chitchat to disguise a profound silence, particularly with a partner. Take breaks, exploit the silence, I’ve often instructed the politicians I work with, it’s nothing to be afraid of, it can often be a much more powerful tool than words. The silence between Simen and me is one I have no control over; it’s new, and it’s gaining ground.

  Mum texts me early in July, wondering if I’m going to the cabin this summer. She only asks about me, not about Simen, feeling a sudden need to underline the fact that everyone is an independent individual. Simen and I are going at the end of the month, I reply. I don’t return the question, but she tells me anyway. I’m off to the mountains, she says. Her sister has a cabin in Telemark, and though it’s not really all that many metres above sea level, Mum’s entire side of the family is surprisingly imprecise in this regard, describing virtually anything that isn’t situated along the coast as being in the mountains. I don’t reply, feeling that everything she and Dad are doing at the moment is intended to prove a point. They’re demonstrating that there’s been a change. None of our traditions or routines are to be carried forward. I don’t think that’s what they’re doing, Håkon said when I called him the other day. How else are they supposed to do things? The whole point is that things are supposed to be different from here on out, he said. I don’t know, I told him, I just feel like they’re rubbing it in all the time, they’re being inconsiderate. Inconsiderate of you? Håkon asked. Of us, I said. Even though nobody else knows that Simen and I are trying for a baby, and even though I know it’s unfair and childish of me for precisely that reason, I’m gripped by the sense that everyone should be more considerate of my needs. There are moments when I feel it’s hugely unreasonable of Mum and Dad to separate now, of all times; do they really have to do this in the middle of everything I’m struggling with, to impose this extra burden upon me? An insistent sense of injustice often follows; they’re rejecting their own family right before my eyes, and just when I’m so desperate to have one of my own. I always feel ashamed immediately after this occurs to me, ashamed of my self-centred thoughts, but the anger remains within me, despite all my attempts to force myself to think rationally.

  Have you spoken to Liv? Mum asks me in a text message ten minutes later, after receiving no reply from me. I roll my eyes at the phone, realising that this is what Mum had been wanting to know all along. No, I reply, and ask her to call Liv herself. Mum is terrified of invading her space, as she puts it, since Liv can be so emotional. She’s tiptoed around Liv for as long as I can remember, and she hasn’t been anywhere near as controlling with Liv as she can be with me, apparently under an unspoken impression that I’ve needed clearer boundaries.

  I haven’t spoken to Liv or Håkon much since Italy; aside from my brief chat with Håkon just a few days ago, I’ve hardly spoken to anybody and the silence has gripped almost every inch of my body. For the first time I feel as if nothing I have to say could change anything. In a framed cartoon of me that hangs above the desk in the office is the saying Words matter! It was a thirtieth birthday gift from an illustrator friend, and he’s drawn me with one long arm gesticulating wildly, a finger pointing upwards, my mouth open and a stern expression on my face. This is how my friends see me, I thought to myself with surprise.

  As someone who judges people every day, given my age I’ve demonstrated an embarrassing inability to judge myself. I didn’t realise that I only ever revealed a few sides of myself to those around me, instead wandering around believing others thought me to be as vulnerable as I felt. It’s because
you look the way you do, nobody believes you could possibly feel any weakness, my ex once told me. I didn’t mean it like that, he said when he realised I was angry, I just mean that you don’t have to compensate – you don’t feel the need to smile and laugh and hold back in situations where others do, he said. He didn’t know that I’d compensated for my appearance since I was a teenager, that I’d worked hard to be taken seriously, spent thousands of kroner on clothing that didn’t accentuate my figure, that I’d dyed my hair darker, made myself reliable and serious and reflective, and worked twice as hard as most others around me to ensure that nobody could ever accuse me of getting something for nothing. We have to be careful not to be considered vulgar, Mum told me when I was fourteen years old and already well endowed in the chest department. She meant well, I see that now, but she has no idea how much time and energy I wasted on fearing vulgarity, on worrying about not being taken seriously by others, or being seen to be playing on my appearance.

  I should really ring Liv, I think after Mum sends me yet another message. It’s almost impossible to have a normal exchange of messages with both Mum and Dad; they have no understanding of the medium of text messaging and it stresses them out when things don’t take the same form as a conversation would. Goodbye, Mum writes, seeking a conclusion. I know that she’s waiting for me to say the same, but she’s acting as if she were someone half her age and she needs to learn.

  I don’t call Liv, knowing that she will expect me to put into words what she’s feeling so that she can then comfort me. That’s how things go between us, and it works for the most part. Or it did, at least, until Simen and I started trying for a baby; since then I’ve found it difficult to talk to Liv about anything. At first, I said nothing about trying, not to her and not to anybody else, for that matter, because I imagined the moment I’d ultimately reveal to everyone that I was pregnant, two or three months along, taking Liv by surprise after having her nag at me for so many years about becoming an auntie. I want to be an auntie too, she’s said; I’ve never really understood that desire when she already has children of her own. My own joy at being an aunt is first and foremost the access it gives me to children who are partly mine, and all without having any responsibility for them, not least because it allows me to be so much cooler and more relaxed than Liv, in Agnar’s eyes, giving him permission to do things she’d never allow him to do, leaving her to deal with the consequences further down the line.