37.
“You
know I've seen it before
This mist that covers your eyes
You've been looking for something
That's not in your life
My intentions are true
Won't you take me with you
And baby you can sleep while I drive”
This mist that covers your eyes
You've been looking for something
That's not in your life
My intentions are true
Won't you take me with you
And baby you can sleep while I drive”
Melissa
Etheridge
Three days had passed since she went to the city and
talked to Robert, or according to him ambushed him. The first day she had been
so filled with excitement she had skipped down the street and every person she
had met smiled at her. The day after she had been exhausted, both mentally and
physically and now on day three, she still waited for resurrection.
They sat by the TV and watched a show on HBO, the
kids were already sleeping and Kristin’s mind was not really there.
“I need to go
home!” The words surprised her. She hadn’t meant to say them but as soon as she heard them she knew they were true.
“What?” John said.
“I need to go home.”
“Sure, we can go in the summer.”
“No! I need to go now, soon.”
“What?” John pulled his eyes away from the TV.
“I need to go home! I need to see my mother, my
brother, and my friends. I need to go home!”
“But,” he said, before he could continue she cut him
short.
As they were speaking, a plan had developed in her
mind.
“I will rent a car and I will leave on Thursday
after I have dropped off the kids at school.”
“But…”
“You have to talk to your parents to see if they can
take them in the afternoon and you just have to take Friday off.”
“What is this about?”
"I need to go home.” She knew she would start to cry
soon. “I am lost! I need to go home and figure some things out.”
And here came the tears.
“Lost?” John looked perplexed.
“Yes, lost! I feel like I don’t know who I am
anymore. Where I belong. I need to think. I need to see my own people. I need
to walk in the woods and think.”
John looked even more perplexed.
“Ok,” he said. “When will you be back?” She saw how that worry frown started to develop on his forehead and he had raised his shoulders.
“Monday, in time to pick up Jack.”
John’s shoulders dropped but the frown stayed put.
“Has something happened?”
She shook her head.
“No,” she hesitated for a moment, looked over at the
TV, the same actress who did the voice of the female spy car in Jack’s favorite
movie was under a lot of stress. “I don’t know. I am just thinking a lot
lately. About my life, about things.” She shook her head again.” I don’t know.”
“Ok.” John pulled the “ok” into a question.
She didn’t know what to say, how to explain without
saying too much. “Maybe it is an early 40 year old crisis.”
John’s eyes darted over to the TV again, and she
knew she wouldn’t have to explain anything more.
"You will talk to your parents?”
“Sure," he said.
Before she went to bed she turned on the computer,
looked at the grey dot next to Robert’s name. The dot that used to be green but
now always was grey.
Grey as in: not online.
Grey as in: I don’t want to talk to you.
Grey as in: I rejected you.
Grey as in: I think you are a crazy, needy lunatic.
Grey as in: I played you and fucked you and now I
don’t want you anymore.
Grey as in: Leave me the fuck alone!
This
is ridiculous! I am an almost 40 year old Bella Swan! Pull yourself together
woman!
Sat with the bottle of sleeping pills in her hand,
put on the lid, opened it again, put the lid back but ended with taking one of
the small pills anyway.
Only
a little longer, I need my sleep. I am not ready for hours of nightly dwelling.
I just want to sleep!
38.
"Life is
something you have to take care of-don't you realize that?"
Astrid Lindgren, Ronia,
the Robber’s Daughter
Mrs. Henke and Mary, mommy’s best friend had
been over at their apartment every day since grandpa, well since grandpa, left,
died, passed away. Mary and mommy sat in the kitchen and talked in whispers,
let the children tend to themselves. Kristin and Jonas were outside all the
time, the apartment was a trap of darkness and sorrow and a mother who didn’t
eat and barely talked to them. Outside there was sunshine, and the woods with
its everlasting trails and distractions.
If it
wasn’t for Mrs. Henke they would have been two hungry, dirty tangles of
confusion and neglect. But she brought over a big pot of food every afternoon,
showed Kristin how to put enough in another pot and heat it for dinner and lunch
the day after. She made them shower, brought home their clothes and washed them
and argued with mommy and Mary about that wanting the children to come home
with her.
“I’ll gladly take them,” she said and put her
big hands on her hips.
“I want my children here with me. I already
lost one,” Mommy cried and rubbed her eyes.
“I’m not taking them forever, Linda, only
until you feel a little stronger.”
Her mother shook her head.
“She wants them around!” Mary said and glared
at Mrs. Henke with contempt.
Mrs. Henke sighed and looked at the floor, but
the next day she tried again. Kristin wondered what the difference was since
her mother had always been willing to give them up for a few days or a couple
of weeks. And she wished her mother would say “yes”.
Again she sat in the church with her hair in a
French braid, a stiff dress and a soreness in her stomach. She begged the white
rabbit to come once more, save her from another funeral. But it didn’t matter how
hard she begged, no rabbit came running down the aisle this time. She turned in
the pew so many times that her mother eventually grabbed hold of her arm and
squeezed hard. After that Kristin stared up at the stained glass window and
counted the blue pieces. Anything to keep her eyes off the brown coffin.
If the church had been full at Emma’s funeral
it was nothing compared to this time, and the women had out baked and out
cooked themselves. One dish after another was lined up, anything for Pastor
Berger who had married or baptized almost everybody who was there. Mommy sat by
a table with a dazed look on her face. Kristin knew that the doctor had given
her something, some kind of pill and she had seen her mother swallow it down
this morning. Jonas had the same look on his face as when he had been watching
too much TV, he wasn’t completely present.
Kristin walked over to the table with the
food, took one plate and decided it would be for mommy. Took some potato salad,
a slice of roast beef, a roll, all the while listening to the whispers that
moved through the air like smoke.
“He should have retired when he had the
chance. Don’t understand why he insisted on working. Pastor Andersen would
gladly have taken over full time.”
“What will happen to the poor children now,
without their grandfather? Their mother..” the woman didn’t finish her sentence,
only sighed and rolled her eyes.
“How can such horrible things happen all at once?
In our little town?” This woman sniffled into a handkerchief instead of rolling
her eyes.
“A stroke they say, not strange with all the
responsibility he had with a daughter like that.” These two women had their
heads together.
“And why is that man doing the service? We all
know.” The woman next to the one that was speaking looked over at Kristin and
put a hand on the speaking woman’s arm to quiet her.
She looked over at Pastor Hemstad, he stood by
himself, he wasn’t a stranger but he didn’t fully belong either. He was younger
than grandpa; his hair wasn’t completely grey yet. He had been in their
apartment and talked to their mother yesterday, but Kristin had hardly seen
him. She had taken Jonas with her to the playground and stayed out until it was
almost dark.
She walked with the plate towards their table
and the man lifted his head and looked at her.
And he had eyes just like hers, greenish,
brownish, yellowish. She tilted her head to the side and met the man’s gaze.
His eyes widened for a short moment, and then they stood looking at each other
for maybe 20 seconds until someone came and grabbed his arm and started to talk
to him. She put down the plate in front of her mother and walked back to the
food, filled another plate, this time for Jonas. Got a plate for herself and
sat down by their table. She had filled it to the top and started to eat. There
was something comforting with the whole routine; the familiar food and the
people around them. The creamy potato salad with dill, the slightly hard
meatballs, rolls with butter and of course a gigantic cake with sweet downy
cream. It all embraced them from the inside out.
After a couple of hours Mrs. Henke came to
their table, put a hand on mommy’s shoulder, squeezed it gently. She didn’t get
much of a reaction.
“You are staying with me tonight, dears,” she
said to them and moved her hand to Jonas’ head.
“Where is mommy staying?”
Mrs. Henke caressed Jonas’ hair.
“She is staying with Mary.”
Kristin looked over at Mary who sat with her
husband and two girls by another table. They rarely went to Mary’s place, they
were never invited to any parties and she knew it was because Mary didn’t like
her father. People seemed to either love her father or hate him.
They walked the few blocks from the church to
Mrs. Henke’s little white house. She opened the cast iron gate and let the
children in. They walked down the graveled path, past the pruned bushes, the
orange and yellow marigolds. So familiar, how many times hadn’t Kristin walked
here. The asters bloomed in pink and purple cascades along the house’s white
walls.
She knew this garden as well as
grandpa’s; before Emma, Mrs. Henke was her and Jonas’ babysitter. They had
spent countless days in the shade under the cherry tree, on the screened porch
or in Mrs. Henke’s kitchen. One of Kristin’s first memories was sitting in the
kitchen window waiting for grandpa to come and get her. She remembered seeing
the blue Buick turning the corner and how her stomach had relaxed.
So familiar, but today everything was seen as
through a thin mist or film, not entirely real. Everything was the same but utterly different.
39.
“Oh Maggie, I
wished I'd never seen your face
You made a first
class fool out of me
But I'm as blind as
a fool can be
You stole my heart but I love you anyway
You stole my heart but I love you anyway
I'd never seen your
face
I'll get on back
home, one of these days”
Rod Stewart
The City was far away by now. The road had started
to wind through the landscape. No more straight highways! No more traffic jams!
No more roadside shopping malls! Nothing but smooth lakes covered in water
lilies. Straight pine trees. Mighty maples and oaks, with 500 year old trunks,
no storm could break them. Pastures with grazing cows; dappled in black and
white. She was close to home!
The road made a sharp turn and then Big Lake was in
front of her. She followed the shore line for about fifteen minutes before she
had to turn to the right and after only a few minutes she was on the outskirts
of town. She passed the road down to the beach, crossed the bridge over the
river and then she was in the town center.
She drove up Main Street, saw the
big sign on Eddie’s Ice Cream, “We are
now open”, she got a green light at the intersection and drove past the
bank, the barber, the jewelry store and saw that the tobacco store had closed
finally. She turned left at the end of the street and drove past the bakery and
the church; her eyes became filled with tears. Passed her old school, turned to
the right and stopped at the library, stepped out and took a deep breath in.
The air was cool, clean, and crisp.
Ten or twelve four year olds were gathered in a
circle around her mother. Her mother whispered as the boy in the book sneaked
through the dark forest. Kristin stood still and watched as her mother read.
Not until her mother had finished the book did she notice Kristin. Her eyes
flew open in surprise and then she looked worried. Kristin shook her head and
mouthed, “Everything is fine.”
After he mother had played “ring around the rosey”
and “I am a tea pot” and made the kids sound like their favorite animal was she
done.
“Sweetheart!” she said and hugged Kristin. “You are
too skinny.” She put a hand on Kristin’s ribs and shook her head. “Did you come
alone?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Why?”
Kristin shook her head.
“Not now mom.”
He mother looked worried but stopped asking
questions.
“I’m working until four today, do you want to go
home and wait?” Her mother put her hand in her pocket. “Did you bring your
key?”
“Yes, I did. Is there anything to eat?”
“Meatloaf and mashed potatoes from yesterday.”
Kristin gave her mother a kiss on the cheek and
left.
Drove another few minutes to the small house her
parents had bought when her father had returned. The daffodils were blooming
along the path and the forsythia had opened up. She went inside, heated the
leftovers and sat on the stoop and ate in the sun. When she was finished she
started to yawn. Every muscle in her body felt heavy and limp and she barely
made it to the couch before she fell asleep.
She slowly woke up, felt confused at first before
she remembered where she was. She heard her mother in the kitchen setting the
table with cups and plates and she smelled coffee. Put her feet on the floor
and stood up, the whole room swayed and she had to sit down again. She sat for
a few minutes before she was able to get up and walk to the kitchen.
“Did I wake you up?” Her mother put a plate with two
Danishes on the table and poured the coffee as Kristin sat down by the table.
“It’s ok,” she rubbed her face, “I slept for over an
hour anyway.” Her mother brought out the milk and Kristin filled up her cup of
coffee until the coffee was more beige than brown.
“How are Anna and Jack?”
“They are fine.” She took a danish from the plate
and bit into it. “They wanted to come but I…” She stopped and looked out the
window. One of the neighbors came walking by with her dog. A big Dalmatian who
pulled hard on the leach.
“How’s John?” Her mother took a danish and dipped it
in the coffee. Kristin let out a deep sigh and looked at her mother.
“I,” then she stopped and searched for words; cheated,
was unfaithful, fell in love. “I met another man.”
To Kristin’s amazement her mother’s face showed no
shock.
“Ok and what happened?”
“I fell in love and I had sex with him and now he
won’t talk to me.”
Her mother drank some coffee and then she reached
out her hand and put it on Kristin’s arm.
“Start from the beginning.”
So Kristin started with the museum and the instant
connection, the hour long chats, their two meetings and how he seemed to
vanish. Her mother sat quiet for a long time.
“If he really
wants you he will come back. Maybe not now, maybe not soon, maybe it will take
several years. But if you have a true connection with someone you come back, in
one way or another.”
“You waited 10 years! I don’t know if I can do that
mom.”
Her mother smiled at her.
“I’m not saying he is right for you or that he will
come back”
“But how will I know?”
“You won’t honey.” her mother’s voice was soft as
usual. “You can simply let him go too, that is always an option.”
She stood up agitated.
“Don’t you think I have tried? But not one day has
passed without me thinking of him”
“But isn’t it easier now?” her mother asked.
Kristin wanted to scream “no no no”, but she knew
she would be lying when she thought of the first few days when it felt like she
was ripped apart.
“Yes,” she said, “it is easier now but it is still
hard.”
“He must really have touched you, sweetheart.”
She nodded, closer and closer to crying.
“Yes! And I don’t understand how it all happened.
And I don’t understand how he can stay away. Did I mean nothing?”
Her mother shook her head and looked at her with
sympathetic eyes.
“I don’t know but I do know that it takes two to
tango.”
“So you are saying he only played with me?”
“I don’t know!” Her mother put in a little pressure
in her voice this time. “I don’t know this man but if he doesn’t come back I
would suggest, that yes, he only played you.”
Kristin started to cry, tired and feeble.
“But why?”
Her mother laughed a little now.
“Men have all different reasons to play a woman. For
sex, for company, for the fun of it. And
you, sweetheart, you are a very smart, beautiful, extraordinary woman that any
man should be lucky to spend time with. And some men know exactly what to say
and what to do to get what they want.”
Kristin looked down at the floor, looked at the
grain of the wood, followed the pattern with her eyes and said quietly.
“Well then he is the best actor in the world or I am
the worst fool. Because I can’t help but
think that he actually liked me. At least for a while.”
“Of course he liked you! He might just not be ready
for what you can give. Only a man free of demons, haunting ambitions and ego
can fully love a woman.”
Kristin couldn’t help but smile and roll her eyes a
little. Her mother didn’t seem to be offended, she just smiled.
“You know it is easy to desire and fall in love, but
to truly love you have to let yourself go. And he might not have the guts to do
so. Or maybe he has done it and been hurt, it is scary to love.”
Kristin sat down again and pulled her legs up on the
chair and put her arms around them.
“Sometimes the whole thing feels like one big
mistake. I mean, what is the point to like someone when they won’t even acknowledge
your existence?”
Her mother reached over and caressed the hair out of
her face.
“It is never a mistake to love someone. Yes, it
might hurt but love is never a mistake, never wrong.”
“Oh mom,” she said and that sinking feeling in her
stomach came back. Her mother got up and sat down on the chair next to her and
put her arm around her. She leaned closer and rested her head on her mother’s
shoulder. They sat quiet for a moment.
“Maybe he simply couldn’t take the pressure.”
“The pressure?”
“Yes like your father; as soon as I put pressure on
him he left. But if I hadn’t let him leave so many times he would never have
come back in the end. I know he had many women, played them all but in the end
he came back to me.”
“Did you know he would come back every time?”
Her mother smiled and shook her head.
“No, not at all. That last time he left,” she
stopped and sighed, “I knew it was different because he left without a word,
like he was ashamed of something”
“But how did you manage?”
Her mother huffed a little.
“What was I supposed to do? Lie down and die? I had
you, I had to keep going.”
Kristin groaned, and she could hear how much she
sounded like a teenager.
“But it feels like I will die”
“I know! You are like me, always have been. So
romantic, perhaps close to stupidity.”
Her mother still smelled of Dove soap, the way she
always had.
“But dad always said I was like him.”
“Of course he did, he adored you so. He knew how
tender you were so he tried to give you some hardness. He thought it would
protect you.”
“So I am not a wolf?”
“Do you feel like a wolf?”
Kristin moved away from her mother and stood up
again, she looked out the window, thought about all the anger she felt as a
child. How her father’s voice had been something to hold onto when things were
hard. A way to defend herself.
“No,” she hesitated, “I am not sure,” she leaned
against the kitchen counter. “I think I feel more like one of those old gnarled
pine trees by the ocean. The ones that have been beaten by the wind for years,
beaten but never broken. They only bend and adapt after the beating wind.”
Her mother smiled again.
“And they get more beautiful and intriguing the more
the wind beats.”
Now it was Kristin’s turn to huff.
“Yeah I guess. I have to call home.”
She took her cellphone and walked outside, it was
already 5:30. She got the answering machine so she left a message saying she
would call tomorrow morning at seven. The evening was chilly and bright; she
opened the door grabbed her fleece and called out to her mother.
“I will just take a short walk to stretch my legs.”
“Ok, I will start with dinner then.”
She walked five blocks and then she turned around
and walked back. She realized she felt a sense of relief, the distance to home
and Robert made her relax.
40.
“No one bites back
as hard
On their anger
None of my pain and woe
Can show through
But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be”
On their anger
None of my pain and woe
Can show through
But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be”
Pete Townshend
And she hated the lake and wished it would
freeze over. Hated it with all her guts and all her bones. Hated the smell of
it, the clear water and the greyish beige sand. Hated the fact that people
still were swimming in the water. Hated the arcade and the smell of hot dogs
and French fries. And the trees that gave shade and the kids playing at the
waterline. And the families who spent one last warm day at the lake.
Hated
the whole damn thing! If it wasn’t for this lake she would still have a sister,
and her daddy wouldn’t have left and grandpa would still live out on the farm.
She took a big rock and threw it in the water,
broke the smooth surface, circle after circle, bigger and bigger. Then it
healed itself again.
“I hate you! I fucking hate you!”
She took a bigger rock and threw it in the
water. The water splattered up on her but then the lake was still again like
nothing had happened.
“I hate you!”
She went further up the side, into the trees
and searched for something bigger. Eventually she found a small tree that had
fallen sometime during last winter. Some of the roots where still attached to
the ground but most of them were up in the air. She grabbed the trunk and
started to pull. Nothing happened, it didn’t move an inch.
“Fuck!” she screamed and kicked the tree.
“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid tree!”
She stood still for a moment looking at it,
and then she bent down and started to dig in the dirt around the roots with her
hands. The ground was dense and full of little stones but she dug anyway. Got
her hands all black from the soil.
If you don’t have the physical strength you
need a strong will and one thing she had was a will made of steel. She found a
stone and started to chop the roots. Her hands hurt and she scraped her
knuckles against the stone and the dirt. After a long sweaty exhausting time,
she had been able to cut off all the roots that she could see.
She started to pull again and this time it
moved slightly. Encouraged she took a better grip. She was able to pull it all the way to the
edge where it started to slope down towards the lake. By now her muscles were
quivering and she could barely breathe. She slumped down on the ground and
gathered her last bit of strength and started to push with her feet. The tree
rolled down the slope and went into the water with a big gurgle.
When she came down to the water most of the
tree was under the surface. She looked down at her hands, her feet, her legs,
her whole body was covered in dirt and her scalp was itching from sweat.
The water laid there, smooth and still warm
from the summer. Calling her to come in, soothe her warm sticky body.
“Not a chance! I will never swim in you again.
I fucking hate you!”
She turned around and marched back to her
bike, jumped on and rode half way up the hill and then stopped with her heart
racing. She realized she was scared of the lake and she didn’t like to be
scared. She hesitated for a moment then she turned the bike around again and
went downhill.
The lake waited for her, she took off her
shorts and her t-shirt then she walked slowly out in the water. Got nauseous
and cold all over even though the water was warm and lovely. When the water
reached half way up her thighs, she stopped. She could not make herself go out
where she wouldn’t be able to feel the bottom under her feet anymore. Instead
of diving in, she dipped her body in the water, rubbed away the dirt with her
hands and jumped out quickly. Ran back up onto the beach and pulled on her
clothes. The dry clothes chafed her wet
body when she rode home.
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