Chapter 45-46

                                                                           45.

“You’ll stay with me?”

“Until the very end,” said James.

“They won’t be able to see you?” asked Harry.

“We are part of you,” said Sirius, invisible to anyone else.”

J.K.Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

 

When she came back to town it was lunch time, she was hungrier than she had been for a long time so she walked into the diner and sat down. Looked through the menu and ordered two eggs with bacon and waffles. The diner was full of people, some she thought she recognized from her school days; she relished the accent and the subject matter. Listened to farmers discuss cows and timber. Old women and men discussing the weather. Mothers discussing colds and play dates.

The eggs were crispy brown on the edges and dripping with butter. The bacon salty and the waffles fluffy and sweet. She ate slowly and read the local newspaper.

“Kristin?”

She lifted her head from the paper, the woman in front of her smiled broadly and Kristin frantically searched her mind.

“Oh hi how are you?” she said and smiled.

Who are you? Who are you? Oh, you look so familiar.

“I’m good! How are you? What are you doing back?”

Kristin smiled even bigger, trying to hide her brain’s furious struggle.

“I’m just visiting my mom and Jonas.”

She is Heidi’s friend! She was the maid of honor. Name? Name? Johanna!

“Oh, isn’t little Albert the cutest?”

Kristin relaxed.

“Yes, he is! Good to see you Johanna.” Kristin got up from the table and walked towards the counter to pay.

“Good to see you too Kristin.”

She walked outside with a smile on her face; it was good to be home. Good all the way into her soul. She stood still on Main Street for a moment, look down the street and then up. Things were still the same, nothing much had changed since she was small, this was still her town and peculiarly enough even though she had experienced such heartache here she still loved it. Loved the small stores, the simple people, the accent, the tidy gardens, and the fact that everybody knew everybody.

Outside the graveyard a big apple tree was blooming, she reached up and picked three branches covered in pink and white blossom. Then she opened the black iron gate in the stone wall. She walked down the path until she stood by her father’s and Emma’s graves. 

 She put the apple blossom branches on the ground in front of the gravestones. The small round stones from the creek she placed next to branches. The white one for Emma and the brown for daddy.

Then she lay down; her face close to his gravestone and her hand on Emma’s tiny white one. The ground was still cold under her body. The spring sun hadn’t had a chance to warm it yet.

“I miss you,” she whispered, “both of you.”

She started with Emma.

“Emma, sweet angel baby sister. You would have been 30 this year. Maybe you would have had children of your own. Sometimes it feels like I don’t really remember you anymore and sometimes I can recall every little detail of you. And I see you in my children. In their touch and the way they lay next to me at night. I wish you hadn’t had to die. And I miss you sweet angel baby sister”

She had to wipe the tears from her eyes.

“Daddy, I miss you. Every day! I have missed you my whole life. We had so little time together when I was little. And the time we had was always clouded by your demons. But I always loved you. Always!”

She rubbed her eyes again and tried to steady her whisper.

“I met a man, daddy. I thought he was the one. He touched me in a way no one had ever done. Both my body and my soul. He made me feel like I belonged. He made me dream of a future with him. I let him into my heart, my life and my body. And then he left, daddy. He left me and now he won’t even talk to me. And I am so confused. I wish you were here, daddy. Maybe you could make some sense of what happened. Sometimes I think I love him and sometimes it feels like I want to vomit because I miss him so. And sometimes it all feels like a dream, like he never even existed. But I know that he did. And sometimes I am so mad and I hate him. And I don’t know what to do with myself. Oh, daddy, I wish you were still here.”

Then she grew quiet. She laid on the ground; listened to the birds in the trees, felt the steady ground under her body and traced her father’s name on his gravestone.

When she came back to her mother’s house she called home again, she got the answering machine and she left a message filled with kisses for the kids. She sat down on the couch; saw the two brown photo albums on the bottom shelf. The only two with pictures from her childhood. She got down on the floor and put the first one in her lap and opened. For a long time after Emma’s death the albums had been hidden somewhere and when they finally came out again Kristin didn’t have any interest in looking in them.

The first few pages were filled with baby pictures of her. She was a tiny baby lying on the bed and her father lay with his head close to her smiling. She was sleeping on her side in her mother’s old crib. She was a little bigger sitting on grandpa’s lap. She was maybe six months old and her whole face was covered in carrots. She was taking a bath in the sink, chubby and grinning.  Then there was a gap of a few months and on the next picture she was holding on to her mother’s hands walking on the sidewalk outside their apartment building. And then she turned one and her face was covered in cream from a cake. And then nothing until spring the next year and she was almost two.

What happened for over eight months? Did they give me up for eight months?

Her throat got tight, hard to breathe, she turned the pages and after three of them Jonas showed up. She was a girl with skinny legs and her hair in pig tails and he was a tiny little red faced baby. She met the little girl’s eyes, a sadness lingered in them, a “I have seen too much, experienced too much for my few years” sadness.

 She touched the picture, caressed the little girls cheek, her small arms. Her stomach started to churn, her breath became shallow and then she cried. Leaning over the photo album she cried. Cried for the little girl she once was, cried for all the broken dreams, all the shattered innocence and all the pain.  

 

                                                                        46.

“The essential things in life are seen not

 with the eyes but with the heart”

Antoine do St. Expery

When she had stopped crying she couldn’t stay in the house anymore, her mother was going to be home in two hours and Kristin had to get some distance. She had left a note on the kitchen table and walked out to the rental car and started to drive without any real destination. Then she realized that she had unintentionally or out of instinct ended up on the road to Karen’s house.

Around the bend and she saw the house crouched down behind the hill and the mighty maple trees. If you came the other way you would pass by it without even knowing it was there. When it was built, a hundred or so years ago, there hadn’t even been a road here. Only woods and fields.

She parked on the side of the road, the only thing she heard when she stepped out was the wind in the trees and the blackbird singing. The apple trees were blooming and the lawn was covered in English Daisies. Only Karen’s car was home, she looked down at her watch, if she was lucky the kids weren’t home yet. She walked up what was left of the stepping stones to the house and knocked on the door. She heard movement in the house and it didn’t take more than 15 seconds before Karen opened.

“What?” Karen exclaimed when she saw her. “When did you come up?”

Then she took a step out on the path and hugged Kristin. She took a deep breath . Karen still smelled vanilla and sweetbread.

“I came yesterday.”

They stepped into the house. She smelled the fire burning in the stove and fresh coffee. The hallway was neat as usual; you couldn’t tell that three kids lived here from the age of seven to twelve. All the clothes and all the shoes were hidden in the closet.

“I was just going to have a cup, before the kids come home. Do you want one?”

“Sure.”

She sat down by the kitchen table.

“Do you want a roll too?”

“Yes, please.”

Nothing ever changed here. The rituals were always the same, the days passed in a different pace, no one ever rushed anywhere.

“You didn’t bring the kids or are they with your mom?”

Kristin shook her head.

“No, I came alone this time.”

Karen poured coffee in the cups and brought over the plate with rolls. When she sat down Kristin blurted out.

“I cheated.”

“What?” First Karen stared then she started to laugh. “I’m glad it wasn’t me first”

Kristin started to laugh too.

“Tell me what happened.”

Kristin retold the whole story about the museum, and the emails, and the kinship/soulmate feeling and when they met and the kissing and then the whole crash and burn end.

Karen sat quietly for a couple of minutes.

“And now he won’t even talk to you?”

Kristin took a sip of her coffee.

“No.”

“Hmm” Karen sounded very discontented “What a prick! Acting just like a teenager.” She still looked so much as she always had done. The round cheeks, the big brown eyes and the dark hair, long and wavy.

“I have tried to understand what actually happened. I have gone over those last days in my head a million times. Sometimes I understand what happened and then sometimes I feel completely lost.”

Kristin took a roll from the plate. As usual, impeccably shaped and perfectly baked.

“You know what, it doesn’t matter what happened. If he doesn’t want all of you then he doesn’t deserve you.”

Karen put down her cup on the table so hard some coffee spilled, a black stain against the light wood.  

“I know,” she heard the anger in her own voice, “but it still sucks.”

Karen nodded thoughtfully.

“You know I have done that too.  Fallen in love too much and too soon. It seems to freak men out.”

“But we are grownups and I am married.  I can’t play games!”

Now it was Karen’s turn to say; I know.

“It is so strange I feel like…” she got quiet for a moment and looked out the window. “I feel like there is a string attached between us. A thread of red yarn from my body to his.”

Karen smirked and shook her head.

“Are you saying you love him?”

Kristin shrugged.

“I’m not sure but sometimes my whole inside hurt when I think of him.”

She got annoyed at herself; this feeling was pointless, made no difference.

“How can I be so stupid that I miss someone that so clearly doesn’t want me? I mean he won’t even talk to me.”

Karen took a mouthful of coffee and was quiet for a moment. The radio played gently in the background; Kristin thought she recognized the host from a long time ago, high school even. When they were kids some people called Karen a gypsy because of her dark hair and brown eyes, everybody around them was blue eyed and 99 % of the children were blonde and if they weren’t blonde they had red hair.

“I am not saying that this is true but maybe he doesn’t want to see you because he doesn’t want to be in love with you.”

Kristin looked at her skeptically.

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe he is protecting himself. It is not very wise to fall in love with a married woman. You know, it might leave you heartbroken.”

Kristin couldn’t help but laugh.  

“Or maybe he is just a fucking asshole.”

“Yes, perhaps, but a very sophisticated one then.”

“The worst kind!”

Then both of them laughed.

“Oh, Kristin,” Karen said and put her hand over her friends. “I wish you lived closer by.”

“Me too!”

“We should go out tonight.” Karen’s voice changed tone. “It is Friday after all! We could have some drinks, maybe even dance.”

“Yeah! That sounds good.”

I don’t even remember when I went out last, probably four years ago.

Karen got a curious and mischievous look on her face.  

“But I have to ask you. How was the sex? Was it like the best ever?”

Kristin laughed and shook her head.

“It was good.”

“That all you have to say? Come on! Give me some details.”

“Ok,” she said with a smile, “he is the best kisser I have ever had. It’s like he knew exactly how to kiss me.”

Her cheeks started to get hot. And of course Karen saw it.

“Aha!” she said and laughed.

“Well, he was very good at, you know, going down on me.”

Karen put out her hands.

“Of course he is! He probably has practiced for 35 years or even more.”

Kristin shook her head and laughed again. The laughter numbed the pain.

When the school bus stopped outside the house she left and drove home to her mother’s, cheerful and excited.

 In the bag on the passenger seat was a hot pink top she had borrowed from Karen. They were going to meet at Murphy’s at seven, have dinner and drinks and then see what they were up for. She turned up the radio and sang along to the music.