More Bitter Than Death: A Novel Part 18

"We don't know yet. Or do we? So, have you ever experienced anything like this before?"

"Maybe."

"What does that mean?"

He starts tapping his foot again, sighs, and buries his face in his hands.

"My mom . . . she drank a lot."

"So your mom was an alcoholic? How old were you when she started having trouble with alcohol?" I ask.

"Dunno. I think she always had a problem. But maybe I realized it when I was about six or seven."

"And how did her problem affect your relationship with her?"

"Oh, she wasn't really out of it or anything. Social services never swooped in on us, if you know what I mean, but she could be really moody. Sometimes she didn't feed us. I almost always ate at friends' houses after school. Everyone helped out. I grew up in Domaro, out in the Stockholm archipelago. It's a small town. People stick together. People . . . don't gossip about each other. They obviously knew that Mom drank, so everyone pitched in as best they could. But no one . . . said anything. And, well, sometimes she hit us or just yelled. I don't know which was worse. I used to take care of my little brother."

"How long did this go on?"

"I moved out when I was sixteen. Then Mom died the year I turned eighteen. It was a car accident, so it didn't have anything to do with the alcohol. I think."

"And what do you feel when you think about your mother?"

"I don't think about her." His answer came fast, and suddenly he looked at me without breaking eye contact.

"Obviously you do. Come on. Try to put words to your feelings."

"I'm . . . I guess I'm . . . p.i.s.sed off, actually," he says, and then hesitates for a moment before he continues. "Ha, I didn't think I actually cared. It's been so long since I've thought about it. But there it is. I'm p.i.s.sed off. Period."

"And what is it that makes you so angry?"

"Well, that she neglected us. Prioritized her addiction over her own children."

I lean toward him. "Just like Mia, you mean?"

Patrik studies me in silence, his hands trembling. Suddenly his eyes go moist and his face looks childish despite his black stubble. His eyes are pleading.

I don't say anything, just nod quietly.

Rain again.

Hard drops clatter against the windshield of my car. The windshield wipers try to keep up. The rhythm of the wiper blades is hypnotic and somehow safe.

I took today off. Rescheduled the sessions I was supposed to have and freed myself up. Now I'm on my way into the city, pa.s.sing black bays and summer cottages that look lonely and abandoned on these gray fall days. In the summer, the roads into town are all sparkling water, sailboats, and crowds of people out sightseeing. Now the landscape is deserted and the highway is almost empty. Every now and then I encounter another car, whose yellow lights reflect off the wet roadway, and at Baggensstaket Strait a local bus splashes my little car with rainwater from the street as it pa.s.ses by. Otherwise nothing.

The isolation leaves me plenty of room to think. What I had long tried to dismiss as an impossibility is now a fact. Evidenced by a faint blue plus on a plastic stick.

A baby.

I try to figure out when this happened. I'm a grown-up. I know how you make a baby and how you prevent it from happening. Still, I have absolutely no idea when this might have occurred, how this might have occurred. I can't grasp it. Only the nausea that has taken over my body makes it real. Because this is exactly how it was last time.

Back then, with Stefan.

The baby that was going to be ours, the baby that never came to be. And now, a new baby. Such a surprise, strange, inconceivable. And I think about Markus, his genuine joy about the pregnancy and pain over my lackl.u.s.ter response. For a brief instant I'm ashamed. I feel shame churning in my stomach because I'm unable to love Markus the way he loves me. I can't, don't dare to, don't want to. I'm not sure why. I just know that something inside me doesn't dare let go.

Somewhere in my mind there's a superst.i.tious belief: everything I touch is destroyed. Everyone I love dies. If I let go and give in to Markus, then . . . Well, then what? The thought is irritating and irrational, and I realize that it's morbid and not the least bit constructive.

I exit and head toward Sodermalm, getting closer to my destination. A few people hurry along under big black umbrellas. A flock of schoolkids emerges from the Sofia School, apparently not bothered by the rain. Their clothes are soaked and their hair is plastered to their faces, but they're totally wrapped up in kicking an old soccer ball and snacking on a bag of barbecue-flavored potato chips that they're pa.s.sing back and forth.

A few more blocks and I'm there. Miraculously I find a parking spot just outside the entrance and I run from the car to the gla.s.s doorway of the red brick building. Safely inside, balancing on one foot, I put on the ugly blue shoe covers sitting in a basket outside the front door. I follow the signs to the maternity clinic.

There's no one at the check-in desk, so I sit down on one of the big couches and start flipping through a magazine as I check the place out. A woman with an enormous belly is sitting on another couch, talking on her cell phone. I hear her discussing her blood pressure, admission, and preeclampsia, all as she strokes that gigantic belly again and again, apparently not even aware that she's doing it.

There is a distant clink of porcelain and m.u.f.fled laughter. The walls are decorated with art from Ikea, posters about the women's helpline, and an invitation to partic.i.p.ate in a clinical trial about women's experience of pain during delivery.

Magazines about pregnancy and parenting are everywhere.

Suddenly a door opens and a woman in her fifties peeks out and notices me. She has frizzy hair and is wearing a tunic with flowers embroidered on it. A big bronze pendant is dangling between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She spots me and c.o.c.ks her head to the side.

"Are you Siri Bergman?"

I nod dumbly and feel a wave of nausea come over me. Suddenly I'm afraid I'm going to throw up in this tidy waiting room, but then it occurs to me that if you're going to have an embarra.s.sing morning sickness episode anywhere, this probably isn't the worst place.

"Hi, Siri. I'm Monica Wall. I'm one of the midwives here. Welcome, welcome."

She takes my damp hand in her warm, dry one and then leads me into her office, pointing to a chair right in front of a big desk. Hanging on the wall above the desk are a bunch of pictures of babies and thank-you cards from parents and children. I wonder if a picture of the baby in my belly will end up on this wall, but the thought is so absurd that I let it go.

Monica starts telling me about today's appointment and what it will include. She mentions something about height and weight, blood pressure, and information pamphlets.

"And where's the father?"

"The father?" My answer is a hollow echo. Monica looks up and our eyes meet. She has unusually clear blue eyes.

"Or maybe you're on your own. That's not at all uncommon. We have groups for mothers who are single parents. Well, we usually call them 'super' parents. Super, not single. Just because there's no partner in the picture doesn't necessarily make a person lonely or deprived," Monica says, and smiles encouragingly, and I have to swallow several times to get rid of the sour taste in my mouth.

"There is a father, but he couldn't come today . . . We're not living together but we are in a relationship, so-"

"I understand," Monica says, and then smiles again. "Of course he's welcome to come along if he wants. After all, he's going to be having a baby too, and we encourage the fathers to partic.i.p.ate. And is this your first child?" She smiles again and I realize that she's really starting to bug me, this calm, safe, smiling woman who seems to have an answer for everything.

"I had a late abortion before. My baby, the baby . . . the fetus . . . had a defect, so it wasn't going to be able to survive outside the womb. They determined that during a routine ultrasound exam. But that was five years ago now."

Monica holds out a box of Kleenex and I realize that I'm crying, which I hadn't noticed. The hormones, I think. It's these crazy hormones.

Monica looks unfazed, as if crying mothers were something she encountered every day, and I realize that that must be the case. She keeps asking questions: first day of last period, illnesses, birth control pills. I answer as best I can and she says that an ultrasound is the only way to determine how far along I am since I've had menstruation-like spotting despite being pregnant.

"Do you smoke?" She looks up from the computer, where she has now begun filling out a questionnaire about my health.

I hesitate.

"Because if you smoke, you can get help quitting. We cooperate with the health center to offer smoking cessation therapy through hypnosis."

"I smoke extremely rarely," I respond instead. "I'm not a regular smoker."

Monica appears satisfied and writes something down on the questionnaire, and once again I feel a wave of nausea come over me. I know which question is coming next. I just don't know how I should answer it. The question I dread. The question that puts a name to my anxiety, that brings up thoughts of fetal deformities, defects, tiny fragile nerve cells.

"And how much alcohol do you drink?"

"I just found out I was pregnant, so, well, I did drink alcohol before I knew that I . . . But I don't drink very much now. Really." I look into her clear, blue eyes and smile. "As a rule I never drink alcohol, just the occasional gla.s.s of wine on festive occasions and things like that."

Monica beams back at me.

"Well great, then it's time to weigh you," she says, pointing to a digital scale in one corner of the room.

Case Notes, Pediatric Health Care Center

Initial appointment An 11-year-old boy comes in with his parents. The boy is having trouble with aggression at school. His parents explain that the boy is big and strong and often ends up getting in fights since he has a hard time keeping his aggression in check when he gets teased. The boy complains a lot about the other children being naughty and says he would prefer to stay home from school. The parents have a lot of trouble getting him to school.

The parents describe the boy as a basically calm and secure child but one who's always been a little different. When asked to describe how he's different, they have a hard time providing details. They describe some learning difficulties at school and also say that the boy has always been a loner who prefers to hang out with his parents instead of other children. He likes to tinker with engines with his dad, who has an auto repair shop. The parents feel like they have a good relationship even though the difficulties with their son have taken a certain toll. The father says that sometimes he thinks the mother is a little lenient and that the boy needs a firm hand and clear boundaries. The mother agrees with him on this but at the same time she has a hard time being too strict with the boy when she can tell he's suffering.

The boy seems shy. He avoids eye contact with the undersigned, staring at his hands instead. He speaks in monosyllables and does not express any strong emotions. It appears that he keeps a lot of his aggression bottled up inside him as a defense against his own destructive energies. He says that he thinks his schoolmates are dumb and that they don't usually let him join in. A little while ago two cla.s.smates played a "nasty joke" on him when they pulled down his pants and exposed his p.e.n.i.s, which they called "fat d.i.c.k," to a girl the boy likes. The boy says that his whole body felt "very hot" and that he just "wanted to pulverize" the other boys. Because he's big and strong, he was able to overpower them, and he did hit one boy in the face so many times that the kid needed eight st.i.tches. The boy does not show any remorse for this, but rather thinks the kid got "what he deserved." He also says that the other children are always mean to him and that he doesn't want to go to school anymore. When asked what he wanted to do instead, he says that he would rather work in the auto repair shop with his dad.

Summary a.s.sessment

Boy, 11 years old, is occasionally aggressive and acts out, sometimes pa.s.sive and withdrawn. He is the only child of parents who live together but are not married. The father works as an auto mechanic at his own company. The mother is a florist. The parents are overprotective and controlling and it is likely that the boy's pattern of acting out can be seen as a reaction to this. The problems at school probably have something to do with the parents' initial reluctance to let the boy go to school. His high absence rate more or less confirms this hypothesis.

The boy's difficulties can thus be seen a symptom of a pathological family dynamic, and therefore the best treatment would probably be family therapy interventions. The parents will meet with the undersigned again in two weeks.

Anders Krepp, licensed psychologist, certified family therapist

Markus sets the plates out on the worn drop-leaf table, lines the gla.s.ses up, and arranges the utensils in two neat stacks.

"How's this?" he asks.

"That's fine," I reply. "That way everyone can help themselves. It's just Vijay and Aina after all. We don't need to serve a formal sit-down meal."

Markus smiles and stretches out his long, muscular arm, capturing me and pulling me in to him with obvious authority. He smells fresh out of the shower and I bury my nose into the crook of the elbow of his gray sweater.

The feeling that's growing in me is hard to define. A hope is incubating somewhere inside me, a sort of confidence that I haven't felt for years, and something else as well: a soft, warm, happy feeling that radiates through my body. As if the sun were shining on me in the middle of Stockholm's November darkness.

Just about the same time as Markus opens the bottles of Amarone, there's a knock at the door. I pad into the drafty little front hall, lean forward, and peek out the peephole in the door that Markus had installed after I was attacked here.

Aina's and Vijay's faces smile at me, grotesquely warped by the lens.

There's a bottle of wine in Vijay's hand.

I open the door, let in the cold, raw autumn air, and give them both hugs.

A while later we're sitting at the kitchen table and eating Markus's home-cooked beef bourguignon. From the living room I can hear the fire crackling in the woodstove. A faint scent of smoke lingers in the house. Aina is wearing a knit wool sweater and thick wool socks. I suppose she's still cold, because she's pulled her knees up under her sweater and is sitting on the kitchen chair like a frog. Her cheeks blaze in the faint light of the candles on the table.

It's pitch-black outside the windows. The darkness is so complete that I can't even make out the contours of the trees lining the bay, can't see the sky reflecting in the restless sea. But I can hear the waves through the thin, single-pane windows.

Vijay approaches the topic cautiously, looking hesitantly at both Aina and me before asking the question, "How are things going for you guys . . . now? After everything that happened?"

Aina takes a big sip of her wine and peers out into the blackness and shrugs. She says, "Don't know. It feels weird. There are so many emotions, I think about it all the time. I'm not exaggerating when I say it's the first thing I think of when I wake up and the last thing before I go to sleep."

"I dream about it," I interject, and the moment I've said it I regret it, because I see the concern in their eyes.

"What do you mean, you 'dream about it'?" Vijay asks in a deceptively quiet voice, but I know what he's thinking. I know what they're all thinking, that I'm still fragile, that maybe I can't handle a situation like this, that in the best-case scenario, my career will suffer, and in the worst-case scenario, my mental health will be in jeopardy.

Vijay brushes a few grains of rice off his sweatshirt, which bears the name of a hard-rock band from the seventies that I recognize. I think about how you can never really tell with Vijay; he might really love the music, or it might be some new trend, one that I'm completely out of touch with, the kind that never makes it to the unhip stores I shop in.

"Oh, forget about it," I say, waving my hand to stave off any further concern, but when they still look troubled, I decide to try to explain. "Yeah, okay, I did actually dream about it, but in my dream I was the one who tried to save Hillevi by plugging the wound with my hand, not Sirkka."

Suddenly I remember the dream as clearly as if it were a real memory: the blood is gushing out of Hillevi's slender body, my hands drowning in her warm, pulsing insides; the life slips out of her as the pool on the floor of the clinic meeting room grows, and the scattered cinnamon rolls become gigantic roses.

Blood roses.