“Like what?” I say, I’ve been dreading her parents’ visit for days, but I frown, try to look as though I don’t know what she’s talking about.
She eyes me for a moment.
“Let me know when you come back, will you?”
“Come back?”
“Yeah, let me know when you come back down to earth, because I’m not finished talking to you,” she says. I look at her, don’t understand what she means for a moment, but then I get it, she’s referring, of course, to the fact that I look as though I’m on another planet.
“My, my, aren’t we witty today,” I say. “But if there’s anybody who changes character before your parents pay us a visit, it’s not me, it’s you.”
“Oh, is that so?”
“Honestly, Ingrid, you’ve hardly sat down since you heard they were coming. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with doing a bit of cleaning and tidying before they come, but you don’t need to sterilize the whole fucking house. As far as I know, your parents aren’t coming here to have their tonsils removed.”
“There you go again.”
“What do you mean there I go again?”
“Oh, forget it. But if you think I look harassed and run off my feet, why are you lying there on the sofa, watching a film, when you could be helping me?” she says.
“Lying on the sofa, watching a film,” I repeat, raising my voice slightly. “You make it sound as though I’m doing this for fun. I’m working, for Christ’s sake. I’m doing research!”
“Yes, but—er …”
“And anyway, I said I would wash the bathroom and hall floors and fill the dishwasher, but I hardly had a chance to draw breath before you’d done it all yourself. And as for all the other things you decide have to be done every time your parents pay us a visit, I freely admit that I don’t feel like helping you with them. I can’t be bothered moving heaven and earth to satisfy this need you have to show your parents how clever and conscientious you are.”
“David. How can you say that to me?”
“Well—you’ve always been so desperate to show your mom and dad how perfect and how successful you are, Ingrid,” I say. It’s on the tip of my tongue to say “Princess Ingrid,” luckily, though, I manage to stop myself, I know how mad that makes her.
“Oh, for God’s sake! It’s Friday, David. We always do the cleaning and tidying for the weekend on Fridays,” she says. She stands there openmouthed, trying to look shocked. “Is something the matter?”
“There you go again!” I say. I stare at her, wait a moment. “But if you really want to know, then yes, Ingrid. This time there is something the matter. I’m trying to work, but you won’t give me peace to do it.”
“Oh, really. Well, I do apologize,” she says. She turns on her heel, about to walk off, then she stops, turns to face me again. “It seems to me, David, that you can’t cope with seeing how well I get on with my mom and dad.”
“What on earth do you mean by that?”
“I think it reminds you that you don’t have any family of your own. That you grew up without a father and that your mother died so young.”
I look at her, grin.
“I know this may be hard for you to believe, Ingrid, but I wouldn’t swap my family and my upbringing for yours for anything in the world.”
“For God’s sake, that’s not what I said.”
“No, but it’s what you meant.”
“No, it wasn’t, not at all. What’s got into you, anyway. Now you’re just being mean, David.”
“I’m being mean? What about you?”
“David. I’m guessing that anyone who has grown up without a father must feel that loss. And that anyone who has lost their mother must miss her. All I’m trying to say is … well, maybe for you that sense of loss is rekindled when you see me with my parents.”
I raise my eyebrows, try to look astonished, sit like that for a moment or two, then give a little laugh.
“Uh … I’ll refrain from commenting on that,” I say.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
And then, suddenly, it dawns on her. She doesn’t say anything, but I can tell by her face, she glares at me, opens her mouth and shakes her head slowly from side to side. She feels like saying something hurtful now, feels like paying me back for being patronizing about her parents, it’s written all over her, but she doesn’t, she shuts her mouth and turns away, she’s not going to risk taking this any further, I know her, I know how her mind works, it means so much to her for her parents to see her as happy and successful and she can’t bear the thought of there being any friction between us when they’re here. I pick up the remote control and restart the film, delighted to have had the last word, it’s childish of me, I know, but I can’t help it. After a moment or two I hear Ingrid open the veranda door and go outside, there’s a faint creak as she steps on the loose floorboard, then silence.
“Don’t tell me she’s thinking about mowing the lawn as well,” I mutter to myself. I wait a moment, then I press Pause, get up, and go over to the window. I watch her walk across the lawn to the far side of the garage. Fuck, yeah, she is, she stops, unwinds the hair tie from her wrist, and gathers her hair up into a ponytail, then she lifts the tarp off the lawnmower and pulls it out onto the grass, she’s un-fucking-believable, she’s doing her best to make me look like a layabout and herself as the tireless worker. “Okay, fine by me, sweetheart,” I murmur, then I grin and shake my head. “You’re not going to make me feel like a layabout, no matter how much housework you do and no matter how exhausted you try to look.” I watch her as she tugs the cord to start the lawnmower, then I turn and go back to the sofa. I almost wish the sound of the mower had woken Henrik because that would have given me a good excuse to be mad at Ingrid, I could have told her off and asked her what the hell she was thinking. It’s a low blow, I know, but I can’t help it, I feel a sweet frisson of schadenfreude at the thought, I almost feel like waking Henrik myself and blaming it on the mower, but I can’t, of course, I can’t take it out on Henrik, that would be going too far.
I grab the remote control, go to switch on the TV again, then think better of it, instead I pick up my notebook and go through to the kitchen, it’s so hot and I feel like having something cold, ice cream with peanuts maybe. People laugh when I say I love ice cream with peanuts, am I still living in the nineties, they ask. But it’s so damn good, particularly when it’s hot and I have the urge for something that’s both salty and cold. I lay the notebook on the kitchen countertop and go to open the door of the freezer above the fridge but stop myself, it’s a bit early in the day for a beer, but I would actually rather have a cold beer than ice cream, and besides, if Ingrid saw me drinking now she would be even more pissed off and I can’t resist goading her just a little bit. I grin to myself as I open the fridge and take out a can of beer.
“I’ll do what I like,” I mutter. I pick the bag of peanuts out of the drawer, pour some into my cupped hand, and sling the bag onto the countertop, then I snatch up the notebook and go out onto the veranda. Ingrid is hard at it, mowing the lawn between the trees and bushes down by the gate, and she’s obviously having trouble, there are so many roots around there and the trees and bushes are so close packed that it’s difficult to get the lawnmower right in between them, I don’t know why she bothers cutting that patch at all, but she says there are webcaps growing down there and she’s worried that Henrik might eat them. He could never make it all the way over there on his own, though, so I don’t buy it, she’s only saying that because she doesn’t want to admit how terrified she is that things won’t look absolutely perfect, she’s so fucking obsessed with appearances it’s unbelievable. I toss the nuts into my mouth, hum softly, and try to look as cheerful as I can as I dust the salt off my hands, open the beer can, and lower myself into a chair, I’ll show her just how unsuccessful her attempt to make me feel guilty has been. I swallow the nuts, take a big slug of beer, and let out a long aahhh, look at In
grid and smile as I flick through my notebook. She’s getting really riled now, I can tell by her body language, her abrupt, angry movements. She’s heaving and straining and making really heavy weather of it instead of gently edging the mower between the bushes.
“Yeah, well,” I murmur, grinning to myself. “I told you I’d do it, but if you don’t have the patience to wait, then hell mend you.”
She battles on for a while longer, but now what? The mower seems to have got stuck on some roots over by the black currant bushes, she’s pushing and shoving and tipping up the front end, but it won’t budge. Suddenly she gives it an irate yank. One second, two seconds, but uh-oh, what’s this, there seems to be a problem, I see her lips move as she lets out a torrent of swear words that are drowned out by the drone of the engine, then she hunkers down next to the mower, something must have broken, because she’s crouched there with her tongue between her teeth, fiddling with something.
I grin and shake my head, glance down at my notebook again.
Silence.
There’s a loud bang as something heavy is thrown into the dumpster belonging to the people who’re remodeling the second floor of the green house, it must be almost empty because I hear the metal sing out for a split second afterward.
Silence again.
Then I hear someone say: “Can I help you?” I look up and see Halvorsen standing there stripped to the waist, looking at Ingrid. He’s usually so shy and diffident, that man, I don’t think I’ve ever known him to speak to us before, but perhaps he spies an opportunity here to assert himself slightly. He’s just about the only tradesman in the neighborhood so he probably doesn’t want to pass up this chance to make a good impression.
“Oh, yes, could you?”
“Sure,” Halvorsen says. He comes around the fence and onto our lawn, he’s short and stocky with disproportionately big hands. I watch him as he hunkers down and reaches those massive fists out to the mower, he looks like a crab.
“That … rod thing that the wheel fits on to, it fell off,” Ingrid says. She glances across at me, smiling triumphantly as she gets up and stands back, leaving the problem to Halvorsen: this is a godsend to her, Halvorsen the tradesman turning up and sorting things out while I just sit here on my butt, watching and drinking beer, it makes me look every bit as lazy as she wants me to look. Not only that, but it also makes me seem rather unmanly, it makes me seem kind of inadequate and surplus to requirements, hence the triumphant smile, a smile that says she doesn’t need me.
“Can you do something, do you think?” she asks.
“Yeah, yeah, we can fix this.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Ingrid gushes gratefully, laying it on thick. She’s out to hurt me, I know she is, trying to make me look small by overstating Halvorsen’s knight-in-shining-armor act, she’s so, so happy that he has come to her rescue. I feel my hackles rise, look at her, and curl my lip. I have to go inside now, though, before Halvorsen notices me sitting here, that way this will stay a silent skirmish between Ingrid and me: if he sees me sitting here, drinking beer while he helps Ingrid with the lawnmower, I’m going to look as small and ridiculous and unmanly as she wants me to look, and I don’t want that, I won’t give her the satisfaction. I place a hand on the arm of the chair, all set to get up, but too late, because suddenly Halvorsen looks up and straight at me. I feel myself growing hot and turning red as my eyes meet his, but he doesn’t seem particularly comfortable with the situation either, he obviously hadn’t been expecting to see me here and he looks confused and slightly embarrassed, he must feel that he has somehow trespassed on my territory. He looks rather as if he’s been caught in the act of doing something much worse than helping Ingrid with the lawnmower.
“Hi,” he mumbles, suddenly reverting to his old shy, diffident self.
“Hi,” I reply.
Then we both look away, do it quite instinctively, he glances down at the mower, I gaze at my notebook, but this only makes things worse, the fact that we’re both so quick to avert our eyes merely emphasizes the awkwardness of the situation, confirming as it does that we actually have good reason to be embarrassed and thus making it almost impossible to gloss things over and convince each other that this is all quite normal. I pick up my beer and take a sip, decide not to go inside after all, my cheeks are flaming, but I smack my lips contentedly and do my best to look as cool and laid back as I can as I put the beer down again. And why shouldn’t I feel cool and laid back anyway? I’m angry with myself for letting it bother me at all, I mean, for Christ’s sake, it ought to be just as natural for me to sit here while another man helps Ingrid with the lawnmower as for Ingrid to sit here while the same man gave me a hand. But it isn’t. I like to believe that I think what I want and do what I want and that I refuse to be governed by outdated rules for how a man should behave, but it’s not true. I mean, Christ, I’m sitting here blushing because another man is helping Ingrid to fix the lawnmower, and it’s so fucking annoying, almost as annoying as Ingrid making me look like a fool by exploiting those same outdated gender stereotypes, how hypocritical can she be? Not that she’s ever been one for taking to the barricades for women’s liberation, she simply takes it for granted that there should be equality of the sexes in all areas and she can become highly indignant if she witnesses anything she regards as discrimination against women. And yet she goes and does something like this, it’s so incredibly hypocritical.
“Trouble with the lawnmower?” I hear someone say. It’s the chairman of the residents’ association, he saunters over, pushes his sunglasses up onto his pink, shaved head, and regards Ingrid.
“Yes, but it’s no problem, not with such a helpful handyman for a neighbor,” Ingrid says blithely, doing everything she can now to make me look bad, making it sound as though I’m not particularly handy or helpful.
“Yeah, well, I can see how you might need that, living with an artist as you do,” the chairman of the residents’ association remarks, raising his voice and speaking loud enough for me to hear, trying to be funny and pull my leg a little bit, but I pretend not to hear him, I’m in no mood to laugh at his stupid artist jokes, so I sit here clutching my notebook and act as though I’m concentrating on reading my notes. “Wouldn’t you say, David?” he says, even louder, but I still don’t answer. I can’t bring myself to meet their eyes, my cheeks are flaming and I just can’t do it, they all know I can hear every word, I know they do, but I hide behind my notebook and try to look as though I’m totally engrossed.
“The great author seems to be in a world of his own,” Ingrid says, the wry note in her voice designed to let everyone know they’re absolutely right in assuming that I’m aware of everything that’s going on.
Silence for a moment or two. Then they carry on talking, chatting about one thing and another, laughing now and again, leaving me to sit there like a fractious child whom no one can be bothered paying any more attention to, that’s how I feel too, feel the way I used to do as a kid when I went in the huff and Mom would say “let him just sit there and sulk.” I hear Ingrid let out a loud peal of laughter at something that happened when the chairman of the residents’ association and his wife were on holiday, she’s trying to pay me back by appearing to be even happier than she is, I can tell, she knows what I’m like, the more bright and cheerful she seems, the worse I’ll feel, so she’s doing all she can to make me think she’s in sparkling form, it makes my blood boil, anger courses through my veins. I reach for my beer and take another sip, leave a dent in the can with my fingers as I set it down again, I didn’t mean to, I tensed my muscles without thinking about it and it just happened, I’m so angry. I see the chairman of the residents’ association tip his sunglasses down onto his nose and stroll on.
“D’you have a star screwdriver?” Halvorsen asks. He gets to his feet and scratches his nose. He looks even shorter and more crablike standing next to Ingrid, who’s so tall.
“Yes, of course, hang on a minute,” Ingrid says and she walks off.
&nb
sp; I stare at her, try to catch her eye so she can see how angry I am, but she doesn’t look my way, maybe she realizes she’s gone too far and needs to tread carefully now, maybe that’s why she looks straight ahead as she heads for the shed, doesn’t dare to antagonize me any more than she’s already done, doesn’t even dare to look at me. After a moment I lay down my notebook, pick up the beer can, and give it a little squeeze to straighten out the dent, then I get up and go down the steps and onto the lawn. I stroll over to Halvorsen, don’t stop to think, just do it. I have a huge, hot ball of rage inside me, but I smile cheerfully at Halvorsen.
“Can you fix it?” I ask.
He has hunkered down again and he glances up at me, then immediately looks away, clearly uncomfortable with the situation and possibly a little scared, maybe he’s heard that I can be a bit unpredictable and prone to over reacting sometimes, I know there are rumors about me in the neighborhood and even if he doesn’t have much to do with our other neighbors, he may have heard something on the grapevine, who knows—he certainly looks alarmed and uneasy, his eyes flicking back and forth as he tries to scrape the blackish-brown crust of old grass off the underside of the mower. I can’t help having a little gloat, feel a little stronger too, somehow, it’s as if the sight of him looking so uncomfortable makes me stand a little taller.
“Think so,” he says.
“Great,” I say. I take a sip of my beer, lower the can, and flash him a bright but cool smile. “Hey, you know what, there’s something wrong with the faucet in our kitchen, it kind of seizes up sometimes, maybe you could take a look at that as well, while you’re at it?” I say, nodding toward the house but keeping my eyes fixed on him. He doesn’t answer straightaway, he’s trying to figure out whether this question is my way of throwing down the gauntlet or whether I am actually asking for his help, but he can’t make me out, I can tell by his face, he looks confused. “You being so handy and all,” I add.
“Oh, well … I could always have a look, I suppose,” he says. He raises one enormous hand, puts a finger with a blackened nail to his eye, and picks something out of the corner of it.
Aftermath Page 33