A Modern Family

by Helga Flatland

  ‘She’s walking in Hardanger, stopping at various cabins,’ I reply.

  ‘With…?’ Ellen asks, not knowing when to give up.

  ‘Auntie Anne,’ I say.

  ‘Anne? Well I don’t believe that for a second,’ Dad said, laughing. ‘The last time I saw her, she wasn’t far off needing a Zimmer frame.’

  In recent years, both Mum and Dad have mastered the art of remarking on everyone they know who shows any signs of ageing with thinly veiled triumph, as if it were some kind of competition. Perhaps it is, too, but there’s something odd about them emphatically pointing out that one’s friends and contemporaries are growing old, while actively suppressing one’s own age.

  ‘Maybe there were others, I don’t know, I don’t know everything Mum’s up to all the time,’ I say, then find myself saved by Liv, who emerges from the kitchen brandishing Mum’s tea towel – goodness knows how it’s ended up at Dad’s – telling us that dinner is served.

  You shouldn’t be caught up in the middle of all this, Mum commented last autumn as we cleared out the house, as if I were any old child of divorce. She and Dad disagreed about the division of their things, and in his anger, Dad had hopped on his bicycle and pedalled away. You can’t always have it all, Torill, I heard Dad say as I stepped into the hallway. What did you imagine? That you could carry on with life just as it was before, with all of the same things, the same habits, the same financial situation, and that the only difference would be that you’d be rid of me? he continued, his voice loud. Rid of you? Mum replied, I don’t think I need to remind you who it was who found himself wallowing in a ludicrous crisis, who exactly wanted to get rid of who to begin with. No, now you’re being unfair and you know it, egotistical and self-centred as usual, something that says a lot when all of this is actually your fault, Dad replied. My God, Sverre, just take the collection if it matters more to you than your decency, Mum said. Everything fell silent before I heard Dad making for the hallway; he spotted me and threw out his arms in infuriation, walking past me out of the door and jumping on his bicycle.

  It was good, in a way, to finally witness something that testified to there being any kind of confrontation between them. In spite of several situations over the past six months suggesting things weren’t quite as simple as they made out, like Mum’s anxiety attack and Dad’s escalated fervour for physical exercise, there had been strikingly little friction between them. In the presence of Ellen, Liv and me, they’d been polite and calm, discussing and addressing one another neutrally and with good intentions. I gathered after a while that much of this was rooted in pride, that they felt they had to prove something to us, and perhaps to everyone else – things had to go without a hitch, there wasn’t anything strange about divorcing at the age of seventy, it was the right decision, something they both agreed on, look how straightforward and good and right this can be, and so on – but even so, it was a relief to witness a small part of what unfolded when nobody else was listening, when they weren’t conducting themselves as if they were always being watched and judged on how they were dealing with the situation.

  The plan was for all of us to clear out the house as if we were still a functioning family unit, but Ellen, who had only just met Paul at this point, sent her apologies and said she’d come and take whatever of hers was left in her room later. Liv and Olaf popped in and took a few cardboard boxes from Liv’s room before disappearing again. It was Mum and me who stayed behind and cleared the place. We stacked Dad’s things in one corner and Mum’s in another, and it seemed that Mum experienced a pang of guilt, placing the record collection in Dad’s corner.

  Ugh, you shouldn’t have to be dealing with this, Mum said more than once. Maybe so, I replied, but I’m here anyway. Maybe there’s something therapeutic about it, Mum suggested hopefully, I’m sure you remember how much you regretted not seeing Grandad when he died. No, I regretted not going to see him the day I’d thought about doing so, not that I didn’t see him laid out in his coffin, you need to stop reimaginging things all the time. Anyway, this is hardly comparable, I said. This is a loss too, Mum said, before having to sit down.

  Dad eventually returned, wrapping an arm around me, thanking me for my help, it’s not always easy, he said to me, though really he was speaking to Mum, who was standing with her back to us out of consideration. It’s not just a case of sorting through furniture, it’s an entire life together, isn’t it? There are a lot of emotions involved, he continued, and was forced to swallow. It’ll be alright, I said. He moved the record collection to Mum’s corner and they resumed their polite cooperation.

  I lay on the bed in my old room, listened to the house, smelled it, felt it, and wondered how many confrontations and determined amends had been made over the years between Mum and Dad without me ever having known a single thing about it.

  Ellen thinks Mum and Dad are getting a divorce because they’ve never really been close, Liv told me a few days after we’d cleared the house. She’d started getting in touch with me more often, once again using me as a kind of substitute for Ellen while Ellen herself was so caught up with Paul for the time being.

  I can’t recall them being cold, not in front of us, but perhaps they were around one another? she mused. You know what I think, I replied. No, Liv said, looking genuinely curious. I felt irritable about having to repeat myself yet again: They’re getting divorced because it’s the only natural thing they can do, I replied, feeling like a robot, because it’s completely crazy to live with the same person for so many years, and now they’ve realised the absurdity of it without children around to take into account. You might be on to something there, Liv said, to my surprise. It must have felt terribly empty in the house when you moved out, I can’t imagine what it’ll be like when Agnar and Hedda aren’t getting under my feet all day long. And if I were to give up working too, and every day it was up to Olaf and me to give our days substance … I can understand how things might feel empty, to put it bluntly, Liv said.

  I think there’s a void there to begin with, I replied, and all romances are miscalculated attempts to fill that void, to be understood, but it doesn’t work, not in practice – because at the same time, you need emptiness and a sense of not being understood in order to maintain a necessary longing for the other person. People are always longing for someone who can fill something within them, longing to be fully understood, to access some sort of higher plane with another person, but at the same time it would kill every relationship stone dead if that wish were actually fulfilled. If you stop longing, you stop loving, I said, yet to meet Anna at that point. I was certain that Mum and Dad had never felt that about one another, that they longed for one another, to be understood by the other. The emptiness that Liv was talking about was another kind of emptiness, practical and almost physical.

  Liv looked at me. I didn’t think you believed in love, she said. That just goes to show how little you all actually listen to what I have to say, I replied, feeling short-tempered. I’ve gone over this a thousand times, I probably believe more in what you call love than you and Ellen and Mum and Dad and everybody else put together, but I don’t believe in regulating it, I believe that it has to exist without rules and without being forced into shapes that others impose upon us. Still, there needs to be room for longing, I continued, but by that point Liv had already stopped listening, always so ready to reject anything that might challenge her own decisions. Say hi to Olaf for me, I said, feeling puzzled to find that my own arguments on rules and norms for love no longer held the same resonance for me.

  ‘That was really wonderful, Liv,’ Anna said, making eye contact with Liv across the table.

  She always uses people’s names in a meaningful manner, even when she’s only just met them, which has a disarming and intimate effect in most contexts. I’ve always felt that people who use my name without knowing me are being invasive and almost cheeky, that there’s something false and condescending about it, but Anna seems genuine – and it’s one thing about her th
at I suspect Ellen will pick up on and approve of.

  My need to impress Liv and Ellen is never-ending, even as an adult, and if I can’t impress them, then I at least need to feel that I have their approval, and that goes for everything from my studies to work, clothing, activities, music and friends. The problem is, or at least has been, that they’re so different, and have such different preferences, that the same thing never impresses them both; Liv isn’t concerned with Anna’s manner of addressing people, for instance, she probably doesn’t even notice it, other than the fact that it registers somewhere in her subconscious as a positive. Ellen, on the other hand, doesn’t pick up on Anna’s personality and mood, her intoxicating charm, while Liv does, acknowledging it with the briefest, slightest change in her facial expressions.

  ‘Thank you. It’s my grandmother’s recipe,’ Liv says. ‘Anything I manage to make is usually a result of following one of her recipes,’ she says, laughing apologetically in our direction.

  ‘You do that lamb casserole that my mother used to make too,’ Dad says, smiling, clearly keen to provide some balance.

  ‘Of course,’ Liv says. ‘Both of our grandmothers were good cooks. I’ll never be able to cook as well as they did. It’s like they both had some sort of secret ingredient at their disposal.’

  ‘The fact you were a child is probably the secret ingredient,’ Anna says, and it feels so natural having her here, she fits right in. ‘I remember my own grandmother’s food as being fantastic too, but as an adult I realise that it can’t have been as amazing as I remember it, there must have been something about the ambience too. Sitting in my grandma’s kitchen as a child, everything felt fun and safe and lovely – and then there was the simple fact that her food didn’t taste like Mum’s,’ Anna adds.

  Dad nods animatedly.

  ‘Not to say that your food isn’t fantastic,’ she adds looking at Liv, then laughs, and Liv’s expression and gestures soften upon receiving praise, as is her way.

  ‘So, how long have you two been friends, then?’ Ellen asks Anna, doing her best to imitate the trill of Grandma’s Hardanger accent.

  Anna looks at me and furrows her brow. Does she really have to think about it? And doesn’t she have any reaction to being described as a friend?

  ‘We’ve known each other for … what, three months now?’ she asks me.

  ‘Three months, four days and…’ I reply, looking at the clock, pretending to joke about what I know with all-too-great precision, ‘and nineteen hours.’

  ‘I’m actually living with Håkon now,’ Anna says.

  Everything falls silent. Everyone looks at me; Liv has inherited Mum’s ability to appear hopeful and sceptical all at once.

  ‘Just for a week, that is, while my bathroom is being done up,’ Anna adds and laughs, satisfied at the response she’s received.

  It was my suggestion, it seemed natural to offer when she said she had to find a place to stay while the builders were in her flat, but Anna’s reaction revealed that it didn’t seem quite as natural or obvious to her. Won’t it be a bit strange? she asked, almost suspicious. Why would it be strange? You’re not moving in, I said. It’s just a friendly suggestion, I added, realising I’d crossed a line that Anna was nowhere near reaching, and in spite of the fact that I was aware of her position, I’d subconsciously interpreted all of the time we’d been spending together and our conversations and our closeness and Anna’s arm in mine and the introductions to friends and family as progress. Without spelling it out too explicitly, I’d felt like things were going somewhere.

  Then I accept, Anna said. As long as we’re still in agreement about what this is. Relax, my outlook on things is crystal clear, not even you can rock its foundations, I replied, frustrated both that I felt a need to compete with her detachment – look at her, coming here and warning me against becoming too attached to her – and uncertain that there was any truth in what I was saying at all.

  ‘Haven’t you ever lived with anyone else?’ she asked me on her first evening at mine. I was so thoroughly content in Anna’s presence, surrounded by the things I’d so eagerly anticipated seeing – her suitcase in the bedroom, her laptop on my desk, her shampoo in my shower, her toothbrush in the glass by the sink – I’d been looking forward to it all for days. I lived on-and-off with an ex for a year, but she still had her own place, and she spent a fair bit of time there, so perhaps that doesn’t count, I said. What happened between you two? Anna asked, and I saw it as a good sign that she was finally asking me about my previous relationships, about something personal, about me. She wanted children, but not as part of an open relationship, and she issued me with an ultimatum of sorts that I couldn’t agree to, I replied honestly and somewhat urgently, possibly even with a hint of defiance in my tone. But as usual Anna wasn’t curious, she didn’t take the bait. It’s a strange idea, embarking upon a relationship with someone only to try to change them, she said, I’ve never managed to get my head around it.

  ‘But you’re a couple, aren’t you?’ Agnar asks us at the table at Dad’s.

  I’d barely noticed he was there, even though he takes up a disproportionate amount of space at almost six feet tall and with limbs he’s yet to fully master manoeuvring.

  ‘No, we’re not a couple, Agnar,’ I reply, beating Anna to it. ‘We’re just good friends.’

  ‘Oh, OK,’ Agnar replied, then laughed. ‘Just friends.’

  I forget that he’s sixteen, because in spite of his height and his broad shoulders and the shadowy beginnings of facial hair just visible along his jawline, Agnar is a child in my eyes – perhaps because he and Hedda are, for the time being at least, and perhaps for evermore, the sole representatives of the next generation. Agnar, on the other hand, regards me as a buddy of sorts, an ally within the family, and he often calls me to ask for my advice – whether about girls or friends or Liv and Olaf. Mum wonders why you never have a girlfriend, he said a while back when he was over at mine playing on the Xbox. She knows the answer to that, I said, and anyway, that’s not true, I’ve had more girlfriends than your mum has had boyfriends. Dad says it doesn’t count because you always have several on the go at once, Agnar said, he didn’t dare look at me, just stared at the screen, clearly curious and a little embarrassed. He’s half-right about that, but I think it counts all the same, I said. Agnar turned to look at me, couldn’t maintain the façade any longer. How does that work? Is that even allowed? he asked. Only you and the person you’re with can decide if you’re allowed to have more than one partner at any given time, I replied. But don’t they get annoyed at you? he asked. These are the kind of things you have to work out for yourself, Agnar. But just look at how many people are getting divorced these days, look at Grandma and Grandad, what do you think the reason for that might be?

  The following day Olaf called, clearly on Liv’s behalf, asking me to refrain from spreading my propaganda to Agnar, since he’d now got it into his head to dump his girlfriend and live as a free man.

  ‘I agree with quite a lot of Håkon’s theories and points of view on relationships,’ Anna says now. ‘To be quite honest, it’s liberating to meet someone so … well, liberated.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Liv asks, I can see that Anna’s response has stirred something within her, whether reminding her of the propaganda I had exposed Agnar to, or perhaps arousing a need to defend herself.

  ‘I thought you’d told them all about it?’ Anna says quietly, cautiously.

  ‘Don’t worry about that, everyone knows, it’s only my lovely sisters who fail to listen or take anything I say seriously,’ I reply, smiling at Ellen and Liv in the full knowledge that they disagree, that both are no doubt keen to point out that I’m the person in the family whose voice is always heard above all others.

  ‘But surely it’s not the case that you don’t believe in relationships?’ Olaf asks.

  ‘No, of course not,’ I say, and now I’m not certain how to continue; I don’t want Anna to taste blood, to provide more argumen
ts for her to agree with, not when I’m starting to feel uncertain about how I feel about them myself. At the same time, I can’t go back on what I’ve stood for all these years, not in front of Ellen and Liv, and especially not in front of Dad.

  In the chaotic hours after Mum and Dad announced their divorce – before I properly got a grip of myself and anchored everything in the unfeeling acknowledgement that this was an obvious course of action – I felt infinitely let down by them. They had broken the contract I’d done my bit to keep. I’d conducted myself like a responsible son should, while remaining dependent on their care, and for their part they should have played the part of accepting, protective parents. No matter how thoughtful and mature I could be among friends, partners and colleagues, this entire sense of independence disappears in the presence of family, and I automatically become caught up in the role of younger brother and youngest son; should I ever attempt to break free, it’s seen as insincere and gently mocked, or in the best-case scenario, regarded as ‘cute’. The fact that Mum and Dad could apparently so easily abandon their own roles was impossible for me to get my head around.

  For a while I put all of my energy into rationalising things, suppressing the sense that someone had pulled the rug from under my feet. This is totally natural, I told Dad, and it helped to say it out loud as often as possible. It’s crazy to think you might have spent your whole life with Mum, I said again and again. He and Mum had previously been sceptical, wondering if my philosophy on life was simply a form of protest for a generation so fixated on the individual. But in the wake of the separation they both showed a greater interest in my theories than ever before, and I no doubt exaggerated in order to underline how natural this was, not just to them but also to myself, harmless and unthreatening, not something with the capacity to rock the foundations of my entire existence.