More Bitter Than Death: A Novel Part 24

"You have to brush my teeth, Papa. It's important to brush your teeth," Tilda says, staring up at him with those blue eyes wide, giving him that serious look again, and he sighs.

"Whoops, Papa forgot. I'll go get your toothbrush, okay?"

She nods.

He goes to the bathroom, searching through the clutter on top of the washing machine for the little toothbrush that looks like a giraffe. He finally finds it under a tin of snuff but can't find her toothpaste, the one that tastes like candy. He puts a little glob of Colgate on the brush instead and walks back out to her makeshift bedroom. He thinks he should tidy it up for her, paint the walls a happier color, yellow maybe? Get some smaller, kid-sized furniture-Ikea has things that are cheap and good, he's seen that on the Internet-and get rid of all the hockey sticks and video games.

Cautiously he brushes her small, perfect teeth while she obediently holds her mouth open.

"There. Now you can go to sleep," he says.

She looks at him with a shocked expression. "But Papa, you forgot my nightgown."

"Ah, yes, ha ha, that was silly of me."

He puts her nightgown on for her, the one with Dora the Explorer on it, gives her another kiss on the cheek, and sneaks out of the room.

One more whiskey, he thinks. If anyone has earned that, it's me.

He positions himself in front of the window and looks out at the dark, waterlogged field, at the woods on the other side, at the silhouettes of the pine and spruce trees that are still visible against the dark sky. He sighs deeply, picturing the white, flour-like sand on the beaches in p.h.u.ket, the bars in Patong, the women's soft, brown skin and narrow hips under those way-too-short skirts.

He really needed to get away, finally get the rest he deserves, the rest he needs.

He leans his forehead against the windowpane, listening to the wind outside. He watches the glossy autumn leaves fluttering past in the darkness outside.

"Paaaapa."

At first he doesn't respond to her, isn't actually even up to opening his eyelids, just rests his full weight against the cold pane.

"Paaaapa!"

She's standing in the middle of the floor in her room with her face turned toward the window. The thin curtain flutters a little in the draft.

"Little lady, you have to go to sleep." He picks her up, but she wriggles out of his grasp and screams loudly.

"Papa, there was a lion outside my window!"

"But, honey . . ." He reaches to pick her up, but she's faster, darts out into the living room. He follows her.

"Honey, there is no lion."

"Yes, there is. I saw it."

"Yes, yes. But there's no lion here, in Gustavsberg. In Sweden. It's too cold here. They die."

She's been afraid ever since she saw that nature show on TV about the lion. How can they show that kind of thing during prime time? He just doesn't understand it, animals ripping each other to pieces: how is that appropriate for children?

Tilda sits down on the leather couch. Wraps both arms around her legs, buries her nose between her knees.

"I saw a lion in the window. I saw it I saw it I saw it," she insists.

"Oh. Well, should we go see if the lion is gone? Should we go look together?" he asks.

She glances up at him, their eyes meet, and she nods.

They stand in front of the black windowpane. He's carrying her on one hip and he's struck by how light she is-a child, so important, but no heavier than this.

A puff of cold, damp air hits them from the broken window, which can't really be closed fully, and he remembers he has to fix that as soon as it's warm and light enough.

"You see? No lion," he rea.s.sures her.

She peers suspiciously out the window, leaning forward so that her breath condenses on the pane of gla.s.s.

"Right?" he asks.

She seems to hesitate, scratches her scalp a little with a hand that is dirty. She is still wearing some of Susanne's light-pink nail polish.

He wonders if he's ever going to manage to learn to do those kinds of girly things with her: put nail polish on her tiny nails, put her hair up in pigtails, know which jeans are the right ones.

"There. Now you really do have to go to sleep."

"Papa?"

"Yes?"

"Promise you'll never kick me."

He stiffens, in midstep. "What do you mean, sweetie? Of course I'll never kick you. Now go to sleep."

His heart drums hard inside his chest and his temples break out in sweat.

Cautiously he put her back down again in her bed, which is also a couch.

Which is actually a couch.

He sneaks out of the room on shaky legs and pulls the door shut. He goes back to his gla.s.s of amber-colored liquid, turns the TV on just in time to see Federer trounce Soderling, notes that Swedish tennis has gone to h.e.l.l. He thinks once again about p.h.u.ket, the warm, salty seawater, about everything he had to give up.

He decides to pour himself another gla.s.s.

He wakes up shivering. The TV is still on, a woman and a man smiling and drinking some kind of diet cola. They're skinny and tan and look happy and successful.

Cold air blows through the room and his limbs feel strangely unresponsive when he tries to sit up. His head is throbbing and a wave of nausea washes over him.

Is the door open?

He reaches for the remote control and turns off the TV. In the ensuing silence, he hears a banging sound, as if the door were banging in the wind.

Slowly he walks out into the hall.

What the h.e.l.l?

Cold air sweeps around his legs and he looks down at his feet, confused, as if that were the source of the problem. He looks at the cold tile floor in front of him.

Bang, bang.

Then suddenly he has a thought, is filled with dread.

He walks over to Tilda's door and opens it, and the instant he does, all the noises of the winter woods rush into the house, drowning out his thoughts, subsuming his consciousness.

Ice-cold air sends the curtains up along the walls, like tattered sails. Leaves tumble onto the floor, clinging to his ankles.

The window is banging against the wall.

He looks at the couch where his military-green sleeping bag is wadded up in one corner.

Tilda is gone.

MEDBORGARPLATSEN.

NOVEMBER.

It feels weird to prepare for a group meeting again. Aina is on time for once and we arrange the chairs and tables together. One fewer chair. Today we're going to talk about what happened, give it words, understand it, explain it.

"Sometimes I get so tired of all this," Aina says. "Of everything we do. Do you really think we're doing any good, that we're changing anything? It's just words, words, words."

I look at Aina, surprised, as she stands there bent over the little table, putting out a pitcher of water, gla.s.ses, and a coffee thermos. Aina doesn't usually have doubts or feel helpless.

"Of course what we do means something. You know it does. You've met a ton of people you've helped. You're good at what you do. Great, even."

Aina looks at me, and I notice that her eyes are red and puffy. She's been crying.

"All these words." She shakes her head. "It's as if we fill reality with words to explain what we can't understand, to vanquish our demons, keep them below the surface . . . but actually we're not changing anything, we're just holding things at bay. We can't change anything. We are who we are. The world is what it is. What's done is done."

She shakes her head, and tears start flowing down her cheeks. She stands perfectly still. Nothing changes in her facial expression, just these tears.

"Oh, Siri, I can't bear the thought of Hillevi's kids," Aina says. "I can't bear that they have to keep living with their father who beats them, that their mother is dead, and that the only person they have in this world is their abusive father. It's crazy. It's insane."

She wipes her eyes with the backs of her hands, rubbing them like a little kid. Suddenly she looks like a girl, a hurt, lonely five-year-old girl. I walk over to her and put my arms around her, hold her tight, feel how her whole body shakes from the crying. We stand like that for a long time, me with my arms around Aina, until her sobs cease.

The group is gathered: Malin, Sofie, Kattis, and Sirkka. There is still an empty spot, an absence that is impossible to ignore. Hillevi was such a strong person, so forthright and bold. It's impossible to grasp that she's gone. It's as if she might walk in the door any minute, laughing, apologize for being late, and then sit down in her old spot.

"Why did you take away her chair?" Sofie asks. She sounds mad, defiant.

"We thought that, well, Hillevi is really gone. There is no denying it." Aina looks Sofie somberly in the eye. Sofie slowly nods and then backs down.

Aina starts discussing Hillevi's death, our last meeting. At first she is hesitant, faltering, but then her words start coming faster. She paints the scene again: Henrik, crazy and infuriated, with the gun, Hillevi trying to talk him down.

Aina talks and the rest of us listen, captivated by her words.

Suddenly Sofie chimes in, agreeing with something Aina said, identifying with a feeling. And then the group is up and running. They transform from a quiet, pa.s.sive audience into active partic.i.p.ants who turn themselves inside out, exposing their fears, their pain. There's such power in their words, in their experiences. Together Aina and I manage to steer them, manage to stay in control of the group, make sure everyone gets a chance to talk, to be seen and heard. We capture Kattis's fear, Malin's rage, Sofie's sadness, and Sirkka's silent melancholy, addressing their feelings until the group is ready to move on.

Malin says, "One thing I've noticed. I know a lot about all of you, except for you, Sirkka. It feels weird. I'd really like to know why you . . . why you ended up here, in our group."

Malin runs her fingers through her bangs and tucks them behind her ear. A calm has spread through the group. It's as if everyone has vented their emotions and now they need to talk about something else. I glance at Sirkka, who's picking at her cuticles, inspecting her light nail polish with a critical eye, looking for flaws where there aren't any flaws to be found.

"There's really not that much to tell," Sirkka says. "I had a mean husband who beat me when he was dissatisfied, which he always was." She sighs heavily, resigned.

"How did you guys meet?" Sofie interrupts with a glance at Sirkka. Sofie wants to understand who Sirkka is, what she's been through.

"Well, there's nothing special about that story." Sirkka glances around at the various group members. For some reason her eyes pause on me. She smiles faintly, almost imperceptibly. "I met Timo back in the early seventies, 1971. We were young then. We'd both moved from Finland to Sweden to work. That's what people did back then, come to Sweden to work. This is where the jobs were. We met on the boat, actually. Silja Line."

She smiles sarcastically and Sofie lets out a faint giggle.

"Seriously? You guys met on the boat?" Sofie says. "And stayed together for, what, like almost forty years? That must be, you know, kind of unique. I thought those boats were all about one-night stands and people getting drunk on tax-free booze." Sofie looks surprised. Surprised and a little tickled, as if she's just realized that Sirkka wasn't always the woman sitting before her now.

"Well, I suppose there was a little partying on the boats. And dancing, well, heavens . . ." Sirkka smiles again, happier this time, lost in her memories of a time long past.

"And?" Malin asks, peering at Sirkka with curiosity. "Then what happened?"

"Well, yes. We met and became a couple. Timo was handsome and fun. It was wonderful in the beginning. We were happy, actually, for a while, back when it was all fun and games. We lived in a little studio apartment in Solna, by Rsunda Stadium. We bought everything secondhand and it was really important to us that no one should know that, so we always snuck everything up the stairs. The apartment was tiny. We didn't have a kitchen, just a kitchenette. And you had to shower down in the bas.e.m.e.nt. But to us it was a palace. I was working as an a.s.sistant nurse at Karolinska and just needed to cut across Norra Cemetery to get to work. Timo was working for Scania in Sodertalje. He took the train into town and back. Then I got pregnant. It wasn't anything we planned, but it happened. Neither of us was particularly happy about it, actually, but what could we do? So we had our oldest daughter in April of 'seventy-two."

"But why didn't you have an abortion, if you didn't want the baby?" Sofie asks Sirkka, genuinely puzzled.