Aftermath

by Carl Frode Tiller

  “What exactly are you getting at,” I ask, breaking in. I put my hand up to scratch my nose again and try to keep smiling, but I can’t. I narrow my eyes a little as I shake my head, look straight at her.

  Mom gives my arm a little squeeze.

  “What I’m trying to say is that I see all of this as a way of rejecting me and the straight, conventional life that I lead and have always led,” she says. “A way of rejecting the role of a responsible, grown-up mother and all that this entails … and that, in turn, I see as an attempt to defend the choice you made when you gave up Malin. I think you’ve been haunted by the terrible mistake you made when you gave her up, Susanne. And I think you’ve had—and still have—a great need to justify your decision, to yourself and to others. A need I believe grew even greater when Agnes was run over. As I say, I think Agnes’s accident forced you to relive the loss of Malin and filled you with a tremendous need to justify letting her go the way you did. And this … what can I call it … this exaggeratedly rose-colored view of the single life, of being fancy-free and apparently against me and everything that smacks of conventionality is, I believe, a way of satisfying this need. To be honest I think it’s a way of fooling yourself into believing that being single and childless and fancy-free, that’s the life for you. And then there’s this whole Rex thing. Only days after Agnes’s accident you get yourself a dog, something to which you can give all the love and care you would normally have given to Malin, it’s all so … so obvious,” she says.

  I look her straight in the eye, I’m so angry, I feel hot all over. I twist my face into a sneer.

  “You know what, Mom, you might not be aware of it yourself, but all that … pop-psychology jargon they use on your talk shows has become a part of your everyday language. You’ve been infected by it, did you know that, it’s become a part of the way you think and talk, and now here you are, going on as if you know more about me than I do. It’s so insulting, do you realize that?” I say, my voice rising, I can’t help it, suddenly I’m almost shouting and the people at the next table look around at me for a moment, then turn to face one another again, eyebrows raised.

  “Susanne, please,” Mom says, lowering her voice to let me know that I’m talking too loud. “Let’s not fight, not today of all days. We should be celebrating, we should be happy.”

  I look at her and swallow, breathe, I’m so angry, I’m burning up, but I have to pull myself together now, I have to calm down, but I can’t, I prop my elbows on the table and lean toward her.

  “I’m very, very happy for Agnes and May Lene, Mom,” I say. I don’t raise my voice, but it’s shaking, quivering with fury. “Every bit as happy as you are. But it’s so damn hard to sit here and look happy with you and Mette carrying on the way you are,” I say, looking her in the eye. I pause, then I feel my purse start to slip off my lap, I straighten up, place my hands on it. “Tell me, are you enjoying this, Mom? Reminding me of what I did to Malin … does that make you feel like a better mother yourself, is that why you’re doing it?”

  “Susanne, please.”

  “Or are you still mad at me for robbing you of your grandchild? Is that why you’re carrying on like this?”

  “Oh really, Susanne.”

  “Yeah, maybe that’s it,” I continue, glaring at her and giving another wrathful sneer. “Maybe it’s not me but you who’s reliving the whole business with Malin, maybe Agnes’s accident forced you to relive the loss of your other grandchild. And knowing there was a possibility, in fact more than a possibility, that Agnes would die, well, that brought it home to you that we could soon be a family with no children in it, right? And as far as you’re concerned, that would, of course, be my fault. Poor May Lene looked like losing her daughter due to an accident and Mette can’t have kids and has to content herself with being what she calls a second Mom. But me, I willingly gave my child away. I let the whole family down, our family was in danger of ending with May Lene and Mette and me, and it was all my fault. That’s why you’re so angry,” I say, twisting the strap of my purse around my hand and pulling it so tight it hurts.

  “Susanne, that … even you don’t believe that,” Mom says.

  I look her straight in the eye, wait.

  Then: “D’you know what, Mom, you’re absolutely right,” I say, my voice quivering with rage and triumph. “I don’t. I’m simply trying to show you how ridiculous this whole Oprah-inspired psychobabble of yours is. It’s entertainment, Mom.”

  “Well, I think Mom’s right in a lot of what she says,” Mette says.

  I turn to her, she leans back a little in her chair and sits there with her arms crossed, looking at me. I work my hand free of my purse strap and lay it on the table.

  “Oh, so you agree with her, do you?” I say with a baleful grin. “What else is new?”

  Mette blinks slowly, as if to say she’s above such sarcasm.

  “Well, for one thing, you’ve just turned down a steady job, a job you actually wanted,” she says, leaning forward again, putting her elbows on the table and propping herself on them. “You couldn’t say why,” she says, “but you did wonder whether it might have been a sign of a midlife crisis, whether you chose to carry on working freelance because it made it easier for you to see yourself as young and dynamic and free. And that fits with what Mom just said. You’re doing everything you can to live like some young thing, not because you’re scared of getting old, as you suggested yourself, but because living like that makes it easier to live with the fact that you gave up Malin. You … you’re out there drinking and partying and living it up for all your worth, you’re trying to be the girl you were fifteen or twenty years ago, you’re trying to be … how can I put it … irresponsible! You adopt an irresponsible persona and then you use this as an excuse, use it to justify to yourself your decision to give up Malin. It was the right thing to do because you and the life you’re condemned to lead are simply not compatible with parenthood.”

  “Oh, honestly!” I say, positively incandescent by now, my insides seeming to melt and swim around in my stomach. I look at Mette and swallow, then I glance down at my hands, see the red and white welts on one of them from where my purse strap has dug in. I pause, eye Mette again. “Words fail me.”

  “The way I see it, there’s also a self-destructive element to all of this,” she goes on. “I think you despise yourself the way you do because you gave up Malin, I think you feel the need to punish yourself, and I think this … I think this pushes you to even greater excess. You drink too much, you don’t exercise, you’re so unfit, and … and now you’ve started smoking again.”

  I breathe quickly through my nose, feel my nostrils contract and expand as I stare at Mette.

  “For the last time,” I say, speaking quietly now, speaking in a soft, tremulous voice, which makes it clear that I’ve had enough and that they’d better not go any further. “I do think about Malin every now and again, of course I do, but since I never see her, it tends to happen less and less often and to claim that nigh on everything I’ve thought and said and done over the past few years has actually been about her, well, that’s downright crazy,” I say. I pause, then: “Would you like to know why I wanted to go home now, Mette? It had nothing to do with Rex, that was just a poor excuse. So there went that argument, Mom,” I say, glancing at her and grinning. “So much for your neat little parallel between Rex and Malin,” I add, then I turn to Mette again. “You’ve been getting on my nerves for most of the evening, Mette. And then, when Mom turned up with the good news about Agnes, well … naturally I was as delighted as you two. But I found it hard to show it because I was still so pissed off … and I was afraid of ruining your happiness, that’s why I wanted to go home. It didn’t seem right to sit here feeling angry and resentful when I’d just been told that Agnes had regained consciousness. But I was angry, Mette, and I still am. Because … you’re such a phony. You’ve been making little digs at me all evening, you make them all sound like perfectly ordinary remarks from one sister
to another, but every one of them is intended to make you look like a winner and me like a total loser.”

  “What?” Mette gasps. She stares at me openmouthed, acting as though she doesn’t understand a word I’ve said.

  “Aw, don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about, because I know you do,” I say with an indignant little toss of my head. “But the truth is that as a woman you’re every bit as oppressed as I am,” I continue, bringing feminism into it now—there’s every reason to do so, after all, but I’ll have to tread carefully because I know how Mom and Mette react when I start to talk about politics or feminism, they roll their eyes despairingly at the mere mention of women’s liberation and if I broach the subject of feminism now they’ll only see it as a desperate attempt to avoid the home truths with which they’re confronting me. “You have such low self-esteem, Mette, and you never miss an opportunity to boost it,” I go on. “Like most women you make unreasonable demands on yourself, you try to be perfect in every way, and when you don’t achieve perfection—because you can’t, of course—the demands made on women today cannot possibly be fulfilled, even by you … when you fall short, you feel like a failure. You’re ridden with guilt and shame because you feel you’re not good enough, so you shore up your self-esteem by reminding yourself and everyone else that, if nothing else, at least the people around you are even less perfect than you.” I notice the glances Mom and Mette exchange at this: helpless, rather sorrowful looks that say: Ah, now Susanne’s feeling cornered. I feel an immediate rush of anger, they’re not listening to me, they’re not even prepared to consider what I’m saying, they automatically construe it as an attempt to derail the conversation, to avoid having to face up to psychological traumas I’ve never suffered, but that they maintain I’ve experienced and that makes me so mad, the fact that they never believe I actually mean what I say, that all of my political opinions or observations are interpreted as evidence of personal problems and traumas, that’s what drives me wild, but I will not back down. “You’re suffering from good-girl syndrome,” I say. “And you vent all the frustration with which that fills you on me and everyone else close to you, you’ve always been the same, but this evening you outdid yourself. That’s why I had to get away. I was so angry, you’ve no idea. From the moment you parked your pert little butt on that chair you’ve been coming out with all this … humblebragging,” I say, talking way too loud now and glaring at Mette as I raise one hand and point a finger at her, and she just sits there openmouthed, pretending to be shocked.

  “Susanne,” says Mom. “Let’s calm down a bit now.”

  I don’t even look at her, keep my eyes fixed on Mette.

  “And the more successful you seem, the less successful I feel,” I say. “As a feminist I should be above this sort of thing, of course, I know I should, but I’m a member of this society too, I’m just as influenced by ideals of feminine perfection as you are, so I’m not, I’m not strong enough.”

  “Susanne,” Mom whispers, “lower your voice a little, please. People are looking at us.”

  “I don’t give a shit,” I shout. I cross my arms, stare at Mom for a moment, then glance around the café. One or two people are looking over at us, but they turn away as soon as my eyes meet theirs, all except the pasty, paunchy old rockers, they go on staring at us, grinning as they knock back pint number two or three or whatever. I stare back at them for a second or two, making it quite clear that they don’t impress me at all, then I turn to Mom again.

  “But, Susanne,” Mom says, then she pauses, shuts her eyes, obviously considering what to say, then opens them again. “Don’t you see … don’t you see that all the things you’re saying, all this feminist talk … don’t you see that that’s also connected to your grief and hurt over Malin. We’ve talked about this so often, Mette and May Lene and I, and we all agree that feminism is really only something you use as an excuse and an explanation for your decision to give up Malin.”

  “Something I … ,” I stammer, dropping my jaw and shaking my head, I don’t believe my fucking ears.

  “Since time immemorial men have been deserting their wives and children and you’ve used your obsession with equality and women’s rights as justification for doing the same, isn’t that so? Well, I mean, if the men can do it, why shouldn’t you, a woman, be able to do it. So you see, I think you became a women’s libber out of sheer necessity, Susanne. If it hadn’t been for the women’s libber in you, you would have gone to the dogs long ago. Every time the pain of losing Malin has become almost more than you can bear, feminism has helped you to believe that you didn’t do anything wrong. That’s why you see red every time someone teases you about being a feminist and a women’s libber, that’s why you freak out every time you’re witness to anything that … well, that so much as smacks of male chauvinism,” she says.

  I simply sit there staring at her. I don’t fucking believe this, she even manages to make this fit with her stupid theory: my political views, feminism, and, no doubt, my involvement in poverty and third world issues, all of this is apparently proof of private and personal problems I may have or have had. I glance at Mette, then turn to Mom again, they’re both gazing at me sad eyed. I still miss Malin, of course I do, but I’ve learned to live with that and there’s no reason whatsoever to feel sorry for me, and yet they do, and it’s so fucking infuriating, my heart’s beating faster and faster and I feel like jumping up and spitting in their faces, I hate being belittled like this, to have them stripping me of the ability to think for myself and making me out to be a passive, emotionally driven creature, the way they always trivialize, neutralize, and depoliticize everything that’s said or done, thereby diverting attention from the things we really ought to be discussing, it’s a social disease and I hate it. I’m just about to get up and leave, but I don’t, nor will I, this is far too serious for me to simply run away, no fucking way am I going to back down. I’ll swallow my anger and try again to talk to them.

  Trondheim, August 13th–17th, 2006

  Before we left for Central America you rented out your apartment to a friend and when we got back he moved out and we moved in. It was far too small for two, but since we were out a lot in the evenings and I was at university all day we thought we would be fine there for a while. But we were wrong, it didn’t work out. Not because of the apartment, though—because of you. You thought you were still living the bohemian life we had led prior to the trip, but you weren’t. I don’t know exactly when it dawned on me that you weren’t the same person you had been before Central America, but I think it was during one of our many boozy evenings at Café 3B. At 3B it was by no means unusual for cash-strapped students to finish off any beer left in abandoned glasses—we did it ourselves, especially toward the end of term when our student loans were running out. And one evening you and Terje came up with a way of exploiting this custom. You sneaked into the men’s room with your empty beer glasses and peed into them, then you took them back out and surreptitiously placed them on empty tables or windowsills, preferably slightly hidden, tucked halfway behind a curtain, for example, so that it would take a little while for someone to find them—the reasoning, according to you, being that “the longer they sit there, the less chance there is of identifying the culprits.” You and Terje thought it was hilarious to sit in a corner on the other side of the café and watch the facial contortions of some poor unfortunate who had just taken a great gulp of piss, but those of us who were in on your game found it disgusting, crass, and childish, none of us laughed. On the contrary, we made it quite clear that we thought it was a despicable trick and eventually threatened to tell the staff if you didn’t stop it. But you didn’t stop, you carried on playing this and other, similar pranks. Time was when I would have been dazzled by all the crazy things you and Terje got up to, but more and more often I now found myself getting angry or feeling uncomfortable and embarrassed for you both. As, for example, when you escorted an almost senseless young student to the railway station and put him
on the night train to Bodø, or the time at an after-party when you found a can of red paint and painted the host’s dachshund.

  It took a while, but gradually I began to see why the pair of you did such things. Your efforts to outdo yourselves and others with your antics were in fact a ploy to convince everyone that you were really fun guys and not just a couple of common drunks. You wouldn’t admit that you were turning into the two sad, pathetic thirtysomethings whom you were becoming in everyone else’s eyes, so you tried frantically to present it all as youthful high jinks. But this only made you seem even sadder and more pathetic, of course. Most of those who had started university at the same time as you and Terje had long since completed their education. They had jobs and families, they rarely went out for a drink and then only on weekends. And there were you and Terje, hanging out in student cafés and pissing in beer glasses. Not just a couple of times a month, but three nights a week. Always equally drunk and tiresome and always on the hunt for an impromptu after-party in some student sublet. Me, I hopped off the carousel long before the end of term. I sometimes joined you for drinks at the start of one of your nights out, but it was all so predictable and I knew exactly what would happen once you were drunk and out on the town, so more often than not, when you guys were getting ready to go down to Café 3B or Fru Lundgreen, I would pop over to Kjersti Håpnes’s place for a glass of wine. I could not be bothered sitting there watching you making a fool of yourself, I could not be bothered having to rescue you from awkward situations or drag you away from people you had upset, I simply could not be bothered babysitting you. Better to lie alone in bed, waiting for you to come stumbling through the door in the early hours.