All of this I figured out during the first months after you told me I was “like an old Maoist” and slowly but surely I was filled with a deep, quiet anger. I was no longer depressed, I was furious. Mainly with myself for not being strong enough to be present in my own life, but also, naturally, with Torkild, who had taught me to be the person I had become.
Trondheim, June 28th, 2006. Wine on a Wednesday?
I LOOK AT MOM, she still seems a bit shocked, standing there openmouthed, staring at Rex.
“But where’s he to be when you’re out gadding about, Susanne?”
“Here, I suppose,” I say.
“Alone?”
I wait a moment before answering, tilt my head to one side, and smile at her.
“Oh, Mom, it’s only a dog, not a baby,” I say.
A flicker of disappointment and resentment crosses her face.
“You don’t need to tell me that,” she mutters, glancing sidelong at the floor and giving a little sniff.
I immediately feel myself bristle, here she goes again, she never misses a chance to remind me of how disappointed she is that I’ve chosen to live the way I do, no matter how many times I’ve asked her to stop criticizing me for rejecting a traditional family life, she still harps on about it. I stare at her, but she won’t meet my eye. I’m about to ask her to just leave it, but I don’t, there’s no need, she knows she’s gone too far. She stands there, eyes lowered, takes a deep breath, then lets it out, as if pulling herself together, then she looks up at me again, a strained half smile on her lips.
“Would you like some coffee?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer straightaway, glances past me and into the kitchen.
“No thanks,” she says.
I swivel around and look into the kitchen, but I can’t see anything unusual, don’t know what she could have seen in there. I turn to her again. She still has that smile on her face, a long-suffering sort of smile.
“What?” I say.
“Susanne … there is such a thing as coffee-machine cleaner, you know.”
I glance behind me at the coffee machine. The inside of the pot is coated with a brownish film and the water container is maybe not as clean as it could be either, but it’s not that dirty. She’s only saying this to make a point, she may not even realize it herself, but the underlying message here is that I ought to spend my time on the kinds of things that she spends her time on, I know it is. I turn to face her again. She stands there for a moment longer, looking at me with that long-suffering smile on her face, then she gives a little laugh, a laugh intended to somehow make light of the fact that she’s criticizing me. Either that or to make it harder for me to be annoyed at her, I mean it’s not easy to answer back when she cloaks her criticism and accusations in smiles and laughter. I stare at her, smile thinly.
“Next time I’ll be sure to clean the place before you come,” I say.
That wipes the smile off her face. She tries to look surprised, as if she can’t think why I’m annoyed at her.
“Oh, really, Susanne.”
“I mean it. At the moment it looks as though somebody actually lives here and we can’t have that, can we?”
She opens her mouth, about to say something, but obviously thinks better of it. She shuts her eyes and puts a hand to her brow, stays perfectly still for a moment or two, then lowers her hand, looks at me, and sighs.
“All right, now, let’s stop this, both of us,” she says.
“Both of us?” I laugh.
“Susanne, please.”
“Fine,” I say, still smiling thinly. There’s a half-full glass of water on the table with a dead mosquito floating in it. I pick it up and carry it into the kitchen, pour out the water, and put the glass in the dishwasher. I open the overhead cabinet and go to take out the French press but stop halfway. “How about a glass of wine then?” I ask as my eye lands on the white-wine glasses, I can’t resist it, I know what Mom thinks of drinking in the middle of the week, never mind the middle of the day, but I ask anyway because there’s a part of me that feels like reminding her of how old-fashioned, how parochial and provincial she is. At least I think that’s why I’m doing it.
“Now?” Mom asks, looking flabbergasted, reacting exactly as I knew she would.
“Yes, why not?” I ask, acting as if I’m not quite sure what she means, feeling both gleeful and guilty, because I’m showing her that I don’t care about all the rules she has always tried, and is still trying, to impose on me. There’s something a little adolescent about her carrying on like this, though. Not that I see anything wrong with having a midweek glass of wine, but it does seem a mite immature to make such a thing of it.
“Er … well, I’m not really in the habit of tippling wine on a Wednesday forenoon,” she says.
“Me neither, I usually don’t have any more than a glass or two. Are you sure you don’t want some?”
“But—er,” she stammers. I detect a note of irritation in her voice now. “No, I don’t want any wine, all right!”
“Okay,” I say, taking out a glass for myself, I don’t really feel like white wine, but I can’t not take a glass, not after what I’ve just said, it’s stupid and childish of me, I know, but I open the fridge and take out the bottle of white wine, unscrew the top, fill the glass, cross to the door, and stand there. But now I really have to stop it, I have to drop this stupid Contrary Mary act.
“Well, can I get you something else?” I ask, smiling as naturally as I can.
She doesn’t answer straightaway, stands there frowning and staring at my wine glass, she can’t resist letting me see how much she disapproves of drinking wine on a Wednesday forenoon. I shouldn’t let it bother me but it does.
“What?” I ask with a little lift of my eyebrows, feigning innocence, just the way she did after that dig about the coffee machine.
She shakes her head in despair.
“Oh, nothing,” she says.
“Are you sure? You gave me such a funny look.”
She raises one hand as if to say “Stop right there.”
“It’s nothing, Susanne.”
“Okay,” I say. “Well, is there anything else you would like?”
“No thanks. I got to the hospital during visiting hours and I had coffee and cake there, so I’ve had all I need,” she says. She pauses, then looks down and slips her hand into her purse. “I really only popped in to give you this. You left it at the hospital.” She pulls out my wallet, holds it up, and looks at me as if to say how careless could I be, a look that says she’s shocked and she expects me to look shocked too, expects me to look as though I despair of myself, but I refuse to do that, even though to some extent I do despair of myself. I’m not going to let her know that, though, I won’t give her the satisfaction, not when she’s being so self-righteous.
“Oops,” I say brightly, smile as I go over to her, put out my hand, and take the wallet from her.
“Oops, indeed,” she says. “One of the nurses found it in a bathroom along the corridor. With almost a thousand kroner in cash in it, plus your Visa card, driver’s license, and God knows what else.”
“Oh, good,” I say, keeping my voice bright and chirpy. There’s no way I’m going to agree with her and be appalled by my own forgetfulness.
“Good?”
“That she found it.”
“Well, yes,” she says, shaking her head in bewilderment. “Of course it’s good. But really, Susanne … how could you be so careless, I mean … anyone could have found it.”
“I know, I know, but most people are pretty honest, Mom,” I say. I drink some of my wine, set the glass down next to the wooden elephant that stops the books from sliding off the shelf, open my wallet, and check inside. “Oh, but the condoms are gone,” I say, purely on impulse. I didn’t have any condoms in my wallet, but I say it anyway, she’s got it into her head that I have much more casual sex than I actually do, and I know how much she disapproves, which is probably why I’m pretending that I always
have a stash of condoms in my wallet. I shut the wallet, look up, and smile at Mom as brightly and artlessly as I can.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Susanne,” she says. She stares at me openmouthed and moves her head from side to side.
I give her a look of faint surprise.
“What? Aren’t you glad I use condoms?”
She shuts her eyes, opens her mouth, and gives a quick shake of her head, raises her hand slightly as if in warning.
“I don’t want to get into that, that’s not why I said ‘for heaven’s sake,’” she snaps. She breathes, then opens her eyes and looks at me again, shaking her head helplessly.
“It’s just that … you don’t … you don’t seem to care.”
“But I do care. I said it was good that she found my wallet, didn’t I?”
“I know, but—er …”
“Well, what do you want me to say? Don’t I seem grateful enough to you for returning it to me?” I say. “Is that it?”
“Oh, Susanne, now you’re being unfair. All I meant was that you … well, your mind always seems to be somewhere else. First you manage to leave your wallet at the hospital and then, when you get it back, it’s like …” She pauses, looks at me, and shrugs. “Like … well, of course!” she goes on, with a flick of her hand. “It doesn’t seem to bother you, you take it for granted that things will work out all right one way or the other.”
“Well, things do have a way of working out all right,” I say, maintaining this “don’t worry, be happy” attitude, doing all I can to defy her self-righteousness, I ought to be above this sort of thing, I ought to stop being so willful and perverse, but I can’t. “I mean look, it did all work out all right, didn’t it?”
“Yes, but it might not have. You could have lost a wallet full of money and important documents, your bank account could have been drained, and … and …”
“So what you’re trying to say is that I should wake up and start worrying a bit more about everything under the sun the way you do?” I say, picking up my wine glass and taking a sip as I lay my wallet in its place.
“Oh, really. Don’t twist my words, Susanne.”
“I’m not. I’m simply trying to make you see that there’s a veiled criticism in almost everything you say to me. Almost everything you say is somehow meant to remind me that I have to stop being me and be more like you instead.”
“Oh, Susanne, don’t start all that again, please, you have to be able to take … it’s just that I get a bit tired of you being so scatterbrained. Don’t make it out to be more than it is.”
“Yes, but that’s my whole point, Mom. So much of what you say to me, including this, is more than it seems.”
She puts a hand to her brow, gazes at the floor, and gently shakes her head.
“Oh, Susanne, don’t tell me we’re back to that again,” she says, then she raises her eyes to me, a mournful look on her face. “You’re thirty-five, we’ve been having this same conversation since you were eighteen, nineteen. What’s happening to us … I … I would have thought we had enough trouble in this family without you and me slipping back to where we were fifteen years ago.”
I regard her, about to say that if we are regressing, then it’s her fault, not mine, but I don’t, because it wouldn’t be true, it’s just as much my fault. For some reason she’s started criticizing me the way she used to do fifteen years ago, but only because I give her cause, I’m not sure why, but I do, and I ought to be mature enough to admit it. I look at Mom, smile at her, and breathe a little sigh.
“Sorry, Mom,” I say.
She smiles sadly back at me.
“It’s just as much my fault, Susanne,” she says, putting her hand to her brow again. I look at her hands, notice the thick blue veins crisscrossing the back of her hand, I’ll never have hands like that, hands marked by a long life of hard work, I suddenly feel something akin to tenderness for her. Dear, sweet Mom, I love her so much, I’ve had it up to here with her nagging and all the sly little digs she’s always making at me, but at the same time I know it’s only because she really loves me that she says and does the things she does. I swallow, feel an even stronger rush of tenderness as my eye falls on the red lipstick she’s wearing, I’m not sure why, but there’s something almost beautiful about a working-class woman from the provinces sprucing herself up a bit for her rare trips to town, something rather dignified.
Silence.
“Are you sure you won’t have something?” I say. “I could make some coffee in the French press instead.”
She dismisses the suggestion with a wave of her hand, that sad little smile still on her face as she lifts a pile of newspapers and magazines off the armchair, places it on the table with my cactuses, and sits down.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Susanne, filter coffee’s fine. It was just … ah, I don’t know what it was, I don’t know what made me say that about the machine.”
I smile at her, happy to hear her say this.
“So would you like some?”
“Yes, please. Preferably just ordinary coffee, though.”
“I only have fair-trade coffee, Mom, I don’t buy anything else,” I say. I look at her, about to add that she knows that only too well, but fortunately I manage to stop myself, it might sound like an accusation, so I shouldn’t do that, I have to drop the Contrary Mary act and have a proper conversation with her now.
“But isn’t that the stuff with the earthy taste to it?”
I look at her, not quite with her for a moment, but then it comes to me: once when she was here, I gave her some Nica’s Coffee that I’d bought from the LAG guys and she didn’t like it, that’s what she’s thinking of.
“No, no,” I say, smiling through clenched teeth, then I go back into the kitchen. I put my glass down on the counter, take the coffee pot and give it a good rinse, fill it, and pour the water into the reservoir.
“How were things at the hospital?” I ask.
“Oh, no change.”
“How about May Lene, how was she?”
“No change there either.”
“She’s still refusing to leave the room?” I ask.
“Yes.”
I spoon coffee into the filter paper, close the lid, and switch on the machine. I almost say something about how May Lene would have to try to come to terms with it, but I don’t, it sounds so cold, it would sound as if I was making light of the whole situation and I would never do that, there’s nothing worse than losing your own child, so that’s the last thing I want to do. Besides which, I don’t know whether Mom has progressed any further than May Lene in the grieving process, she says she has accepted that it can only go one way and that in all likelihood Agnes won’t come out of the coma, but I’m not so sure. I pick up my wine glass again, I don’t really feel like wine right now, I’d rather just pour the whole thing down the sink, I don’t know why I don’t. If Mom can be big enough to change her mind and accept the offer of coffee after all, I ought to be big enough to pour out the wine. But I don’t, I take a little sip and go back into the living room, look at Mom, she’s sitting with my calabash and my bombilla in her hands, eyeing me quizzically.
“What’s this?” she asks, motioning to the bombilla and sounding a little anxious.
“It’s for drinking maté,” I say. “It’s a kind of tea.”
“Oh, thank God,” she exclaims. “I thought it was something you used for smoking drugs,” she says with a little laugh as she puts it down next to the pile of newspapers and magazines.
I smile at her as I set my wine glass on the table and flop down onto the sofa.
“So, how are things otherwise?” Mom asks.
“Good,” I say. “Busy, busy. I’ve just finished a long piece on Rigoberta Menchú. On what life has been like for the indigenous people of Guatemala since she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992.”
She looks at me and nods, says nothing for a moment. Then: “But no sign of anything more permanent?” she asks.
I don’t ans
wer straightaway, simply sit there staring at her. I don’t know how many times I’ve told her I prefer to work freelance, but she still manages to make it sound as if I’m just hanging around waiting for a “proper” job to turn up. I did actually consider taking a full-time post not that long ago. I almost said yes to a job with Adresseavisen, but Mom doesn’t know anything about that, she thinks I’m still as determined to work freelance as I’ve always professed to be and this supposedly casual question is just another way of trying to get me to do what she believes to be the right thing, I know it is, she thinks it will be harder for me to stick to my guns if she simply acts as if she takes it for granted that everyone actually wants to have a full-time job; she thinks this will make me feel weird and out of step and that this, in turn, will make me change my mind. I lean forward, pick up my glass, and take a sip of my wine, feel my earlier annoyance returning, because it’s true what I said to her a moment ago, almost everything she says to me is somehow meant to remind me that I ought to stop being myself and be more like her instead and that really pisses me off. I ought to rise above it, but I can’t. I look at her, I’m so close to telling her straight out to stop it, but I don’t and I won’t, I need to try to keep it civil now. And besides, I’m not even sure she knows she’s doing it, not all the time anyway, I rather suspect she doesn’t, I think it’s just become the way she talks and thinks when she’s with me.
“No, I’m much happier working freelance,” I say, setting the glass back down on the table.
“But it’s so insecure, you never know if you’re going to make enough to pay next month’s rent, or your electricity and food bills, you don’t have the same rights as other people if you fall ill or are disabled or … oh, I don’t know how you can live like that … that you’d want to. I mean … you’re not twenty anymore,” she says, as if for the first time, even though she’s said it a hundred times before, it’s the same old refrain, I’m so sick of it.
Aftermath Page 19