A Modern Family

by Helga Flatland

  Håkon pulls me into the kitchen, places a large glass of red squash down in front of me. There’s a whistling in my ears.

  ‘Drink,’ Håkon says, sitting down beside me before getting up once again, making his way into the empty room, speaking to somebody. I can only hear snippets, not sure, no, there must be more to it, yeah, sure, don’t think so, great, I’ll stay here, of course.

  Mum’s voice in the hallway.

  ‘But she hasn’t said anything else?’

  I’ve remained where he seated me at the kitchen table, sipping at my squash while Håkon has been boiling eggs, defrosting rolls and chitchatting about all sorts, the weather and a friend of his who’s getting married soon, no doubt bound to be having children before too long. I’ve managed a few mouthfuls of egg and feel myself slowly beginning to think more clearly with the help of the sugar and protein.

  ‘Hello, my love,’ Mum says, making her way into the kitchen, and I hear the door closing as Håkon takes his leave.

  She sits in Simen’s place, takes my hand which is resting at the corner of the table top, squeezes it. I can’t look at her.

  She takes me home to Tåsen, the familiar smell in the hallway finally releasing the tears that have been held at bay somewhere beneath all of the wrinkles I’ve developed since Simen left. Mum runs me a bath, makes tea. In the wardrobe in my room I find some jogging bottoms and a hoodie that still fits. As I open the wardrobe door, I remember Liv shouting whenever the round wardrobe doorknob hit the wall adjoining her room. One day, the knob was simply gone, and although it was obvious who was responsible, Liv denied having unscrewed it and disposed of it. The absence of Liv, of everyone, or everything, of something, tugs at me, inviting thoughts that have lain beneath the surface as if sedated until this moment.

  I sit in Dad’s chair, his blanket draped across my lap. The wool fibres prickle at my legs through my jogging bottoms, the blanket itching just as it did when I was a child and Dad would cocoon me inside it whenever I was unwell and had to stay home from school. Mum sits beside me in her own chair. She rocks back and forth.

  ‘I realise that things feel hopeless just now, Ellen,’ Mum says.

  I don’t know what to say; I’m torn between wanting to uphold the embargo, to be sure she still feels the consequences, and the need to confide in someone, to benefit from some understanding and consolation – it takes no more than a few seconds of weighing things up before I come undone.

  ‘No,’ I sob. ‘You don’t … you haven’t…’

  ‘But of course, Ellen, my love, I understand, of course I do,’ Mum says after a brief pause.

  I can’t say a thing. I lean over, burying my face in my hands.

  Mum comes around the table, crouches beside me, just like she used to when I was young and I’d hurt myself and she would comfort me, blowing gently on wherever it was sore, stroking me, hushing me softly, you’ll be alright, it’s going to be alright, my little love.

  HÅKON

  ‘You’re doing it again!’

  It takes a moment before I realise what she’s talking about, then I pull my hand away from my ear.

  ‘Seriously, your ear’s going to fall off one of these days,’ Anna adds.

  ‘You’re the one who says you’re attracted to distinctive features, something you claim that I lack, surely you of all people can’t possibly object?’ I ask her, smiling, but still her remark lurks beneath the surface, stinging just as much as it has done these past few days.

  ‘Oh God, are you still hung up on that? I’ve taken it back!’ she replies.

  ‘No, you haven’t,’ I tell her, and it’s true, she hasn’t, but I really shouldn’t drag it out any more, this isn’t keeping things carefree and easy.

  Anyway, it’s Dad’s birthday, the first he’s set to celebrate without Mum – today marks two years exactly since they announced their divorce – and I shouldn’t say anything that might make Anna regret agreeing to come with me, I need her there, want her there, everywhere, all the time.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, I’m only joking,’ I add hastily.

  ‘I’ve explained what I meant by it anyway,’ Anna says. ‘You’re very attractive, but you don’t have any particular highlights, not as far as your appearance is concerned. Your personality is where your distinctive features are to be found – that’s much more of a compliment!’

  I don’t believe her, but I’m flattered all the same, I just want her to keep talking to me, just want her to keep talking about me, it’s intoxicating that her brain should formulate thoughts about me at all, that it might be filled with me, and that her voice should convey those thoughts. I pull her close, long to hold her tight, so unfamiliar, so incompatible, so new, so hopeless.

  I don’t believe in monogamy, it goes against the laws of nature, I said to Karsten once as we left Blindern campus after an undergraduate lecture. We were about eighteen years old at the time, which was when I’d properly started to encounter and object to the structures that had made me increasingly surprised and furious with each passing day. Everybody conformed to a system to which they gave no thought, one that perhaps they weren’t even aware existed. They believed that the world simply was the way it was, they didn’t realise how submissive we were, subjected to religious notions and old-fashioned beliefs – systems that suppressed the biological nature of human beings in an attempt to control us.

  I can laugh at myself when I look back on it now, I can see how extreme I was, how much I failed to grasp – and how hard-line I was all the same. But my views were rooted in a genuine desperation over the idea that I could never be free, that there would always be something – even in the unavoidably learned fragment of my consciousness – that would limit development in every area of my life. At times it weighed heavily upon me, so contrived that I could hardly stand it.

  You just want to sleep with as many girls as you can, I remember Karsten replying with a laugh, failing to realise the gravity of what I was saying. It’s more than just a sexual thing, that’s way down the list, I said, genuinely on the verge of tears, these are the rules we abide by all our lives without ever questioning them, we just take it for granted that it’s how we’re supposed to live, that it might even be the best way to live. But just think of the alternatives, think of everything we’ve never tried. Think of all of the structures and rules and norms shaped by religion, do you realise how absurd that is? And more important than that, think of all of the choices you make every single day, things you aren’t even aware are choices. Now you’ve been reading too much Sartre, Karsten said, humans need systems to situate themselves within. That’s biological too, and I’m glad someone’s created a framework for me to live within, at any rate, he said.

  Even though I’ve had several life-changing realisations over the past twenty years as far as human nature and intelligence are concerned – as well as about the degree of freedom we have to begin with – I’ve always been of the belief that the twosomeness we consider a model in large parts of the world is simply a way to institutionalise emotion and love. It’s a manifestation of oppression and control, and, until now, I’ve refused to enter into monogamous relationships. This was something that generally – and particularly during my studies – sparked unforeseen interest in several of the girls I met. It probably stemmed from the typically attractive nature of a man you can’t have paired with the sincerity of my conviction. The fact that I truly believed in the free individual, in existentialism, and as an extension of that, naturally became a feminist – you don’t become a feminist, Ellen said, that would mean someone would have to become an anti-feminist. I read up on de Beauvoir, quoted her in discussions; the very principle of marriage is obscene, I would often say, for instance, it transforms what ought to be spontaneous affection into a question of rights and obligations. I used de Beauvoir’s relationship with Sartre as an example whenever I needed to explain what I meant, it’s not that a person doesn’t want to relate to another, I said, but it’s about the way in which the
y relate to them: freely, with enjoyment, intellectually. It shouldn’t be systematic and subordinate.

  You can’t just say it, you have to mean it, I told Karsten, who grew increasingly jealous as the girls came and went. You have to accept the fact that she’s free too, that she’s also sleeping with other people, it goes both ways. And the point isn’t to sleep with other people just because you can, the point is freedom, independence.

  For my own part, I’ve never had a problem with my girlfriends meeting other people. Now I wonder if this was more a case of me having a greater intensity of feeling for the cause than I ever did for these girls: I’ve been more in love with the concept than I have with them, the execution of the project, the feeling of being freer than those around me.

  I viewed my sisters with scepticism, happy that I neither had to nor ever would end up living the way they did. Liv and Olaf, like an unalterable unit, a shared, irreversible life sentence. Ellen’s eternal search for Mr Right, the one to give his all and be everything for her. You both know that you have a choice, you can choose differently, I once said when the three of us had met up for a beer and the two of them had done nothing but complain about Olaf in one case and a distinct lack of any Olaf in another. They dismissed me, just as they tend to dismiss most things they don’t want to hear, or that they can’t face taking seriously, all while continuing to explain that I’m too young to understand.

  You show just how spoiled you are, thinking the way you do, only an extremely sheltered, secure person could possibly allow themselves to act and live and think the way you’ve done! Ellen shouted at me when things ended between her and Simen last year, and I tried once again to formulate something absolute in order to salvage my own convictions.

  We were sitting at Mum’s house, where Ellen had been staying since the break-up a few weeks earlier. We’d had a lot to drink, and Ellen was initially aggressive, confrontational: And what about you, she said, why don’t you get yourself a girlfriend? It’s not something I’m aiming for, I replied. Mum thinks you’re gay, Ellen said, staring at me. I couldn’t help but laugh as I imagined the conversation between Mum and Ellen, no doubt Liv had been there too. I’ve said it before, I want to live as free a life as possible, I want to make my own decisions, I said.

  I don’t know why Mum and Liv and Ellen could never accept it, I’d been over it with them so many times. It was as if it weren’t enough, as if they accepted my opinions as some sort of surface explanation, but that there must be something going on at a deeper level, something I wasn’t telling them. But don’t you want children? Ellen asked me, then looked away as she started to cry. Yes, maybe, but it makes no difference, I said. She grew all the angrier: So you don’t want to be with the mother of your child, then? You’ll have to define be with, I replied, I’m not all that sure if mother, father and child living in deadlock is the best model for society either, I continued. Ellen initially looked hopeful, then unsympathetic, then furious once again, and we started to argue – I pleaded my case without listening, impassioned by my own theories and Ellen’s resistance, as well as the fact that for once she wanted to discuss these things with me. I didn’t realise just how angry she was before she shouted at me about the position I was speaking from, how spoiled I was to be able to think and live in such a way. She didn’t know the effect her words had on me, of course, I didn’t appreciate it myself – I’d only just begun to sense an undefined change and a greater uncertainty.

  I was drunk and snapped back with something almost unthinkably thoughtless about Simen and the biological instinct a man has to sow his seed, regardless of the circumstances – but especially when he hasn’t yet produced offspring.

  My God, to think I said those words to Ellen, it’s so awful that it still turns my stomach when I think about it and I want to bang my head against a wall. The only explanation is my almost clinical approach to Mum and Dad’s divorce, the way I very quickly decided that it was simply a manifestation of what I’d known all along: that marriage isn’t natural, living with another person, relating to that one same person sexually and emotionally for more than thirty years, it goes against the laws of nature. I saw the divorce as nothing but a confirmation of this. In this day and age, when the majority of people are no longer confined by their religious views, when we’re healthier and live longer, the natural consequence is that more people choose to divorce.

  So, how do you explain the reactionary wave of young people donning enormous meringue dresses and getting married in celebrations that go on for three days or more? Mum asked one day as we sat and discussed this subject in the kitchen in Tåsen the autumn after Dad had moved out. It’s just fear, I replied. They can’t stand the freedom or the choices that come with that. They retreat to what they perceive to be safe, and with that, they destroy equal opportunity for everyone – it’s not just anti-feminist, it’s two steps back for every modern and liberated individual out there. I really believe that the women – and men – who are choosing to return to the gender roles of the past, following this hair-raising trend by emulating the description of the kind of family you might find in some home economics textbook from the fifties, apron-clad and showing off their baking, they’re spitting on the entire fight for independence. That’s spoiled – choosing to ignore the freedom that someone else has fought for, I continued. Oh, Håkon, is anyone out there truly free? Mum asked, sighing heavily as she loaded the teacups into the dishwasher.

  I remember how intensely I argued that break-ups, divorce and open relationships were all entirely natural – a necessary part of the advancement of society – going around and looking at people with an expression on my face that constantly seemed to ask them what I’d said to instigate their reaction, as if Mum and Dad’s divorce was a universal symbol for the rest of the world, too.

  I think it was the first time in my life that I had so actively suppressed my own emotions.

  Håkon was born without a filter, Mum often said when I was young, smiling as if it were a compliment. It’s no doubt turned out to be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy for us both – even very normal reactions have been attributed to my sensitive nature. I’m sure that no one would react at all if I were a girl, I once commented to a female friend who was equally fascinated by how sensitive I was. And by ‘sensitive’, she, Mum, my teachers and coaches all meant that I was affected more deeply than anyone else, that everything got under my skin that little bit more. I would cry over old people and disabled people and animals and insects; highly empathetic, as my primary school report phrased it. That makes it sound like a positive thing, and it was a long time before I grasped the condescending aspect of the fact that I always pitied others. It’s no longer possible to describe it as a trait, or as a part of my personality, since being naturally sensitive to opinions, feelings and other people has become a kind of quasi-diagnosis with which everyone seems keen to adorn themselves: I’m so sensitive.

  There’s something feminine and enigmatic about the whole thing, and given that I’ve also inherited Mum’s long eyelashes and full lips, my sensitive nature is something I spent long episodes of my childhood and adolescence trying to suppress. I probably put on more of a tough exterior than all the other boys in the class put together, without anyone ever realising just how much it went against my natural instincts. It’s also made itself apparent in many of my political expressions over the years – fifteen years ago I was ahead of the curve, living just like every modern-day blog-writing, animal-loving advocate chooses to live now: I didn’t eat meat, in fact I was virtually vegan after all the thinking I had done about the poor animals, I didn’t wear leather boots or Canada Goose coats. The only difference is that it was embarrassing back then to live the way I did, I lied to people, telling them the fur on my coat was real, picking the ham and cheese out of my obligatory lunchtime baguette and smuggling it away inside a napkin, and so on.

  I feel a great many things, and I feel them keenly, I’ve told myself as an adult. That doesn’t have to
be a negative thing; just think of all the exhilarating delights I’ve experienced that more neutral, balanced people miss out on, the enthusiasm, the glimpses of pure and explosive joy, the tiny connections in the human experience, the deepened understanding, the thousands of signals I pick up on without even thinking about it – I’ve realised that you’re pretty much psychic, Anna said most recently just a few days ago – and that’s a gift, I tell myself, as if in an attempt to convince thirteen-year-old me who harboured such shame over this part of himself, hating himself and his sisters for bestowing him with such a weak, feminine personality. Even so, it’s nothing short of a curse to be so attentive to change, so exposed to it; I can sense the slightest tiny side effect of any medicine I might take, for example, and four days after a night out on the town, I can still feel myself trembling like a leaf in the wind. And not least, I’m haunted by an extreme intolerance to the sounds other people make.

  Look at this, it’s got a name, Liv wrote in a Facebook message a few years ago, sending a link to a page on misophonia. The nearer and dearer the relation, the more intense the reaction, she wrote, adding a heart-eyes emoji. Liv was referring to my near-phobia of what Ellen calls human noises – Håkon can’t bear human noises, she explained to her high-school boyfriend over the dinner table. And it’s true, the sound of bodily functions such as the smacking of lips and the drawing of breath and the whistling of air escaping a person’s nostrils can drive me to the point of desperation – I grow so irritated and angry that I become incapable of focusing on anything else. It’s particularly true if the source of these sounds is someone in the family, or anyone else close to me. When I was younger, I was prone to explosive outbursts at the dinner table when one of the others was guilty of making one of any number of unavoidable sounds associated with the natural process of food in contact with teeth and spit and tongue. The moist sounds that came from the back of Liv’s jaw were the worst of all, and I dreaded her coming home for dinner every night. It was so unbearable that I wanted to punch her and tear my own hair out, and even though my place at the table was far away from hers, mealtimes often ended with me screaming at her. You’re not the only person in the world, you know, Mum would often say after such mealtimes, you need to learn to put up with other people. Just imagine what it’ll be like when you get yourself a girlfriend!