Andreas is sitting in the backseat reading his comic book. He doesn't react to Mia's outburst of fury and affection, he turns away when she tries to hold his face, he pulls his arm back when she searches for his hand. Signe is sitting next to him stuffing herself with candy. Nikolaj has taken Baby B out of the car seat and now he's bent over Nikolaj's arm, in that heavy snowsuit that makes his body look stuffed and deformed. His arms stick out helplessly, and he babbles with delight when he sees Mia, snot bubbles blowing out his nose. Nikolaj looks at her with a puzzled, tender expression. "Were you crying?" he asks. She sticks her hand into Tobias's pocket and pulls out his cigarettes. "What the hell are you doing?" says Tobias. She turns her back to the wind and lights it. Nikolaj furrows his brow and takes a step back. "Mom! What are you doing?" Tobias rips the cigarette pack out of her hand. "Mia, what the hell. . " says Nikolaj. "We agreed we weren't going to smoke." Mia walks over to the waiting room. He shouts after her, "You quit smoking, Mia!" She pulls the door open and sits on a bench. It smells of old, cold smoke. Two young girls are giggling sharing a cigarette. Mia smokes intensely until she becomes nauseated. Then she goes to the bathroom and drinks some water from the tap. In the mirror, her face is puffy from crying, her mascara and eye shadow run down her cheeks, it looks like someone has rubbed ashes all over her face.
* * *
Nikolaj has already started the car when she gets back. The children are sitting in their seats. Signe has given Baby B a lollipop, and clearly one of them has farted because it smells like a rotten egg. Mia rolls down her window. No one says a word. Nikolaj looks inquiringly at her, and Mia thinks: All is lost. His face looks sad. He looks as if he's undone. She puts her hand on his knee. "I'm sorry," she says, even though that wasn't what she wanted to say. "You owe me a cigarette," Tobias says. Signe starts singing the same two lines of a song over and over, and Andreas kicks her in the shin, Baby B grabs Signe's hair and tries to stick it in his sticky mouth that the lollipop has dyed bright green. Andreas and Signe burst out laughing over Baby B's green mug. They can't stop pointing and shrieking, even Tobias can't hold back a smile.
* * *
On the ferry, Andreas and Signe get some money to play the slot machine and, in return, they have to take Baby B to the playroom when they're done. Tobias disappears with a can of coke and his phone. Mia feeds the baby applesauce from a jar and Nikolaj goes to get coffee. The ferry rocks. After the older children take Baby B, Nikolaj sits down next to Mia. He puts his arm around her and pulls her close to him. "Sweetheart," he says. And they sit like that for a little while, silent, with the steaming coffee in front of them, watching the crowd of people around them. "What was that about your mother?" asks Nikolaj. "How is she? Better?" Mia nods. The coffee sloshes around in her stomach every time the ferry leans to the side. She's hungry. Nikolaj looks like he wants to say something else, but suddenly Signe appears with Baby B in her arms. "He pooped in his pants," she says. "He stinks like shit." Nikolaj takes the stinky child. She hands him a diaper. She notices how he smiles to Baby B as he walks away, kissing him and saying something in his ear. At first when Tobias sits down at the table she doesn't recognize him. It's not until he says something to her that she realizes it's him. "I'm going home on Friday, Mom. There's a party at Johannes's, and anyway, Niki's coming home." He's sitting across from her with both hands flat on the table, leaning forward, and looking her right in the eye. "I'm going whether you give me permission or not. Just so you know. I can stay at Dad's house." "He's in London." "I have a key." Mia shakes her head, thinking that it'll end up with her letting him go, having no idea if it's the right thing to do. Tobias gets up abruptly and goes off. It's as if a gust of wind is blowing through the reeds, and the reeds are growing inside her; she holds her breath. Nikolaj comes back and puts Baby B on her lap. "Tobias is going back on Friday," she says. "That's exactly what I was saying," says Nikolaj. "We should've just let him stay home." "But didn't you say you wanted him to watch the kids at the summerhouse?" Baby B sticks his hand in her mouth, digging into her lips with his small sharp nails. "As long as he's here, he can just as well help out. Don't you think?" Mia looks down at the table. Violent hunger, her stomach rumbles. "Honey," says Nikolaj, removing Baby B's hand from her mouth. "It's a good arrangement, don't you think? He's with us a few days, and then he goes home. Everyone gets what they want." Mia looks up, he pushes a lock of hair away from her cheek and tucks it behind her ear. He puts his hand on the back of her neck. Then all of a sudden, he kisses her, his tongue gliding over her teeth, the blood rushes between her legs, she grabs his hair, and Baby B whimpers, he's getting squished between their bodies as they try to get closer. At that moment, she recognizes Andreas's loud crying, he's sprained his left foot jumping off the slide in the playroom and landing wrong.
* * *
The car is full of candy wrappers, toys, and empty Coke cans. Tobias is now sitting in the front, and Mia has squeezed herself into the backseat with the children. She sings for Baby B. Signe sings along. Andreas sits between them, pale and silent. Mia strokes his hair. After awhile, Nikolaj and Tobias begin talking. She hears snippets of their conversation in the pauses between the children's songs, something about a rally that apparently Tobias has been to, something about the EU soccer championship, something about the number of absences Nikolaj had in German class when he was in high school. It's clearing up, but the sky is still dark in some places, dark gray, dark blue, and deep purple. Mia sings looking out the window. Wet plough marks, and now and then a strip of forest. The road winds through the hilly landscape. She remembers sitting on the bench freezing when she was on vacation at her aunt's house. She can distinctly feel the goose bumps on her arms, her hair that tasted like snot, and in front of her, there's a Nutella sandwich with flies landing on it. She's sitting at a table with a plastic tablecloth, to the right of the cupboard, on that smooth wooden bench, and she pinches herself on the knees and spreads Nutella around on the plate. She sniffs and sucks on her hair, the flies tickle her bare feet, she kicks at them, and in the background the radio is playing in the kitchen, pots clatter in the sink. And all the while there's a terror inside her, which her aunt calls homesickness, a very physical longing for her mother's body: to lean against her legs wrapped in nylon stockings and her hard hip, to reach out and grab hold of her. And mother's breath is often sour, but she lets her mother breathe on her anyway without turning away, even though it's so unpleasant, she sits there anyway, close to her large angular body, while she picks at a little sore near mother's mouth, that's it, that's the way it should be, and now her aunt comes into the room, puts her hands on her hips, and asks if she's really still sitting there playing with her food. Mia slides back and forth between the child's body on the bench and herself sitting here in the crowded car, where she can't even move, her wet feet in rubber boots, squeezing Baby B's pacifier in her hand. And it's not until Signe shouts, "Mom! Are you even listening to me?" that she opens her hand, allowing the pacifier to fall to the floor of the car, and she stares into Signes's outraged face, "Holy shit, Mom, you're so weird. Are you sleeping or what?" "Watch your mouth," she says sternly. Nikolaj smiles at her in the rearview mirror, she smiles stiffly back.