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I never stood up to my old man the way Hans did with me. That just wasn’t something you did. He was the one who made the decisions, and there was nothing I could say about that. I couldn’t even imagine it any other way. But Hans has never had a problem yelling all sorts of things at his father.
The movement makes my head spin, and I have to sit back down again. “Hold on—I’ll go and get a wheelchair.” Before I have time to tell him that my walker is just fine, he’s over by the entrance. Everything always has to happen so damn fast with him. Why is he in such a rush?
I meet your eyes and feel sad, because there is none of you left in there.
I understand why he insists on me tagging along whenever he comes to visit you. “Come on,” I say, putting a swollen hand on his left leg. He turns to me, and I realize I can’t help him. He wants to get away from me as much as any of this.
I know it was stupid, but I thought a letter might help you remember for a while. That my handwriting might wake something inside you. But now, in the cold light of day, I can see that was nonsense. “What’s the point?” I ask, fixing my eyes on myself. I would skip today if I could, lock the door and curl up under the blanket with Sixten. I don’t want to talk to anyone. But I hear the door in the kitchen again, and I rub my mouth and hang the towel back on its little hook by the mirror with a sigh.
“Useless fucking oaf—you know to hold the pad properly.” My old man’s voice is shriller than the sawblade. His hand strikes my cheek without warning, as unexpected as the fall a moment ago. I have to take a step back and shake my head, which usually helps the stinging fade a bit quicker. After a moment or two, I realize that a ring has formed around us.
It’s been a long time since my old man last hit me, and he’s never done it in front of other people before. “How fucking clumsy can you be?” he snarls, his eyes dark. Two of the older men start stacking the boards I dropped. “Second time this year. When’re you going to learn?”
Once my shift is over, I sneak down to the edge of the lake to take a different route home. Don’t want to walk with my old man. Don’t want to see him at all. Just want to get away.
Really, though, it was the silence that hit me hardest, the way everyone just stood around as my father carried on. I pull up a fistful of grass. I’m sixteen, for God’s sake. Not a little boy he can push around. I pick a coltsfoot and hold it to my nose. It smells so strongly of spring, and the scent helps to perk me up.
“What the hell…” I mumble with a frown. “I’ll damn well…” I say, a little louder this time, getting to my feet and looking up at the crown of the tree. “I’ll damn well apply to Hissmofors!”
Accommodation provided, the ad said. Bed, board, a place of my own. The thought gives me butterflies, and I feel like going straight home to pack a bag.
Before they fly south again, I promise myself, I’ll have left this place.
“Walking people’s dogs isn’t your job, Ingrid,” says Hans. “I know Sixten means a lot to him, but this can’t go on.”
“It’s part of the job to me,” Ingrid replies, in that calm way only she can, so firmly that it makes me loosen my grip on Sixten’s collar slightly. “But it’s not just that,” Hans continues. “He keeps going out into the woods with him. He could trip, break a leg, get stuck there.”
I can’t understand why he is arguing with her, why he thinks Sixten should live somewhere else. It’s like he really does want to hurt me.
“It felt so bloody good to get away from my old man,” I say after a moment. “When I left Renäs. Not having him there all the time, sticking his nose into everything, y’know? Things always had to be done his way, and there was no bloody arguing with him. You know how it is: he’d kick up a hell of a stink if I even stacked the wood in a different place.”
“Was he like that, too? Your old man?” I ask after a moment. Ture lets out a long sigh and shrugs. “Yeah, he was a difficult bastard,” he says, getting to his feet.
I don’t doubt for a second that my old man would’ve thrown me out if I’d been like him. “It’s kind of nice they’ve all croaked,” he says after a moment, turning around. His face grows serious. “I’m probably not supposed to say that, am I?” I shrug, and neither of us speaks. Waiting for the fish to finish cooking. I’ve never thought of it that way before, but he’s right. I slide the spatula under the fish to keep them from sticking. It was good when my father died, but it also feels wrong to think like that. Ture is brave for saying that sort of thing.
“Granddad!” Her hug almost makes me lose my balance, but I chuckle and stroke her fair hair, which is even longer than last time. “I’m growing it past my boobs,” she says, as I lightly take a lock between my fingers. She has always been like this: not embarrassed to say anything. The polar opposite of her dad, who clams up at the drop of a hat.
“Yeah, Dad mentioned that there’d been a bit of fuss over Sixten,” she says after a moment. So, the bastard has already had time to put his mad ideas into her head. I try to clench my fist, but my fingers won’t bend. Clearly everyone but me gets to have a say in what happens in my life.
I meet her eyes, and I see the same thing I saw in Hans’s recently. Something that tells me the roles have reversed. Something compassionate but superior. “Dad is actually right,” she says, which sends an ache through my chest. “It’s hard for you to take him out.” I can’t believe what I’m hearing.
“Sixten needs longer walks.” As though I don’t know what a hound needs. I close my eyes, don’t want to see her. My head is spinning, and I feel sick. After everything I’ve done for you, I want to scream. After all the toys and treehouses I built, all the times I drove you to soccer practice. She tells me that she knows it isn’t easy, and I want to scream that a twenty-one-year-old doesn’t know a bloody thing, but something stops me.
The last of my energy deserts me, and I lie in silence as our bumblebee betrays me. I don’t know why, but it feels much worse for Ellinor to let me down than Hans. I didn’t see it coming. I fix my eyes on a knot in the ceiling, and all I know right now is that I don’t want any of this. I don’t want to go on.
“Dad.” There it is again. “Dad. Hello?” His voice is coming from the mudroom, dragging me out of my dream. “You need to get rid of this, Dad.” I open my eyes and see our son irritably holding up one of your jackets. He looks stressed. “You can’t just have her stuff lying all over the place, as though she still lives here,” he continues.
Who the hell does he think he is? Coming over here and telling me what to do with your things. What difference does it make if your jacket is still hanging in the hallway? I feel the urge to get up, to hit the table and tell him I’ll do whatever the hell I want. That I’m the captain of this ship. But I don’t, because I’m not a captain. I’m a bundle that’s been lashed to the mast in a storm.
I study our fifty-seven-year-old son. There’s nothing that compares to that, to raising a child. No one ever said a word about it before you got pregnant. That it would be this hard.
I’ve been against them swapping it for what they call an “adapted bed” since Hans first mentioned the idea. I sleep best on the daybed, but my wheezing words don’t have much impact anymore. They drop like dead birds from the sky, landing in a place no one ever goes.
It looks like a hospital bed, the kind you slept in on the maternity ward after Hans was born. The kind I slept in after my heart operation. That you sleep in every night now. Seeing our son’s satisfied face, I feel like grabbing a bit of firewood and hurling it at his head, but I don’t have the energy.
“I’ll kill myself if they take Sixten away,” I say before I have time to think. Ture clears his throat again. “Those are big words, Bo.”
“Do you really think you would?” Ture asks after a moment. “What?” “You know, kill yourself if they took Sixten,” he says with a grunt.
“I don’t know…” I say, letting the sentence drift off.
“I don’t want you to do that. I don’t want that to happen,” he says, in a tone I don’t recognize.
“Bye, Bo. Make sure you stay inside now, okay?” she tells me. “I don’t want to find you down by the meadow again.” As though it’s my fault I fell and got stuck there. “Yes, yes,” I mutter.
I had asked whether your old man ever lost his temper. I remember being amazed, wondering how that was even possible. Maybe it had something to do with the drink, with the fact that your father didn’t touch the stuff, because my old man always got worse after a few bottles.
I gaze into your eyes for a moment. It feels absurd that someone as beautiful as you would want to be with someone like me. The ice on your lashes has melted, and I reach up to wipe some moisture from your eyelids.
I don’t know when it happened, but we’ve switched roles. He has never come close to being as big or as strong as I was, but he has all the authority now. He’s the one in charge of my life. I’m the reason he’s even alive today, but I’m also the one who has to bow down, who has to go along with his decisions. He’s the person people listen to, not me.
“This is how it’s going to be,” he says, getting to his feet. I haven’t complained or said a word against it, but he adds: “And that’s that.” My throat is oddly tight, and I wish you were here.
Sixten lowers his head to my belly and closes his eyes again. The tightness in my throat gets even worse, and I feel dizzy. Someone else will take care of Sixten. Someone other than me.
Bo had a visit from Hans this morning. It’s been decided that Sixten will be moving, and Bo isn’t happy. I put his food on the bedside table, but Bo didn’t want any. Ingrid
Fish balls still on the table, reheated them. Tried to tempt Bo to eat. Not interested. Says several times he’s not going to let Sixten go. Kalle
Sixten curls up beside me, nudging my sausage fingers with his nose. He doesn’t want this. I don’t want this. But it doesn’t matter what either of us wants. That stopped mattering a long time ago.
“I’m sorry, Dad, but this really is the only way,” he says. It sounds sincere, as though he is genuinely upset. I screw up my eyes as tight as I can. Don’t give a damn how he feels. Don’t want to hear his voice. All I want is to feel Sixten’s body against mine. — Once the door closes behind them, the silence digs its claws into me. Tears and snot pour down my cheeks, catching in my beard, and for a while it feels like I might actually suffocate. I gasp for air, but what I really want is to stop breathing.
“Let’s get you up.” “No,” I manage to say. “I don’t want to.” My voice breaks, and I start coughing. “This isn’t about what you want. It’s about what you need,” she says, pulling me upright and swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. She has me sitting up before I even have time to argue or fight back. “Just look how dirty your beard is. It’s full of food.”
Not that it matters what I say; she doesn’t give a solitary shit what I want.
Nothing matters anymore, after all. Sixten is gone. A sense of emptiness spreads through me as the battle-ax rinses me down. The more she scrubs with that ridiculous bloody sponge of hers, the redder my skin becomes, the more of me disappears. By the time she closes the door behind her later, once I’m tucked back up in bed, I’m nothing but a shell. Emptiness echoes through me. Don’t want to go on, don’t want to go on, don’t want to go on. That’s the only thing going through my head.
Bo feeling low, not in good spirits.
Bo wants me to write that Hans isn’t welcome here. Refusing to eat or shower.
Bo in bed, hasn’t touched his lunch. Reheated it for him and made tea. Took out some chocolate. Doesn’t seem to have much energy and still doesn’t want to shower. Ingrid
I refuse to look at Hans. Fix my eyes on the molding and wait him out. What did he think? That everything would just go back to normal? That I’d forget all about his betrayal? He’s been coming over more often since he took Sixten.
Bo asleep when I arrive. Lunch untouched. I try to tempt him with some frikadeller, but no luck. Not even interested in hot chocolate with cream. Also refused a shower. Johanna
