“I’m going to get myself a new job,” she said.
“Good luck,” Helen said, and resumed her filing.
Eva left the living room and walked out into the kitchen, hastily shuffling together the papers from the unemployment agency and pushing them in among the cookbooks in the kitchen. Patrik would be home soon.
The rhythmic filing could be heard all the way out in the kitchen. Eva ended up standing in front of the cabinet where the box of O’boy was. The most routine duties became important, every movement, such as taking out milk and chocolate powder, became significant. She stretched out her hand. The white line on her wrist where her watch had been was a reminder of the passage of time. She moved guardedly as if she were a stranger in her own kitchen, while the seconds, minutes, and hours marched on relentlessly. Her hand was warm but the cabinet handle cool. Her arm was tanned and covered in tiny liver spots that had grown more numerous over the past few years.
Eva opened the cabinet. The filing had stopped and the only thing she could hear was the rustle of Helen turning the pages of a magazine.
There was sugar, flour, oats, popcorn, coffee, and other dry goods on the shelves. She sized up each package as if it were the first time she was looking at it.
Her paralysis was only broken when Patrik suddenly opened the front door. Eva quickly took out the powdered chocolate mix, then opened the refrigerator door and took out some milk. Barely two liters left. The cucumber was almost gone, the cheese an ancient monument, the eggs, okay, and enough yogurt, she summed up.
“Hello!” she yelled, surprised at how happy she sounded, but only the sound of his feet on the hallway floor made her smile.
Behind his shuffling movements and somewhat grumpy demeanor there was a capacity for observation that never ceased to amaze her. He was becoming wiser and more mature. When she pointed this out he became dismissive, and when she praised him he appeared completely bewildered, as if he did not want to admit to having been thoughtful or kind.
He walked into the kitchen and sat down. Eva set the table in silence.
“Who is here?”
“Helen. She wanted to borrow the iron.”
“Doesn’t she own one?”
“It’s broken.”
Patrik sighed and poured out some milk. Eva watched him. His pants were starting to get worn. When he claimed that they were supposed to look like that, she laughed heartily. When worn clothes became trendy, the poor man had the advantage for once.
“I have a job for you,” Patrik said suddenly.
He was making his fourth sandwich.
“What?”
Patrik looked at her and Eva thought she saw concern in his eyes.
“Simon’s mom was talking about it. Her brother is moving to Uppsala, for a new job.”
He took a sip of the O’boy chocolate milk.
“What does that have to do with me?”
“They need a waitriss. He’s a chef.”
“Waitress, not waitriss.”
“But chef is right.”
“I’m going to work as a waitress? What else did she say? Did she talk about me?”
A new sigh from Patrik.
“What did she say?”
“You’ll have to talk to her yourself.”
He stood up with a sandwich in his hand.
“I’m going to the movies tonight.”
“Do you have money?”
He shuffled off to his room without answering, and closed the door behind him. Eva looked at the clock on the wall. Simon’s mother, she thought, and started to clear the table, but stopped. Hugo would be home from school soon.
Helen came into the kitchen and sat down at the table.
“Where’s Patrik?”
Eva didn’t bother to answer. Helen knew very well where he was. Fury boiled up in Eva at the sight of her friend.
“You think I put you down, yes, I know it,” Helen said, with unexpected loudness. “You dream of sailboats and nice, wonderful men, but have you thought of something?”
Eva stared at her.
“That you never do anything about it. Get it? It’s only talk.”
“I’ve got a job,” Eva said.
“What?”
“Waitress.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know,” Eva said.
Helen looked at her and Eva thought she saw the flicker of a smile on her lips.
When Helen had left, Eva poured out the last of the coffee and sank down on a chair. Not to be taken seriously, she thought, that was the worst. Or rather, that others didn’t have any faith in one’s abilities. Helen had tried to hide her taunting smile, she knew her friendship with Eva could not withstand everything, but the split-second insight that in the future, her friend would spitefully remind her about the waitress job made Eva rage inside. Helen would probably ask about it in passing, about how did that turn out, because… yes, what? Only in order to feel superior? To take her frustrations out on Eva when she ought to put her own life in order? Helen had not worked since she stopped running her home day care several years ago.
She drank some of the coffee. She could hear music from Patrik’s room. Eva wished that he had stayed in the kitchen and told her a little more about what Simon’s mother had said. But she sensed there was probably not much more.
Am I worthless? This question came to Eva Willman as she was pulling out a new trash can liner from under the sink. At the bottom of the plastic container there was a decomposing banana peel and a sticky, foul-smelling mass, in whose brown gooey center new life appeared to be flourishing. She took out the new liner, at the same time pulling out the trash can and placing it on the counter. Then she ended up sitting in a crouch, staring into the hole under the sink that the drain pipes disappeared into.
She was about to call out to Patrik, have him come out into the kitchen and show him how disgusting everything became if one did not take care of something as basic as the trash, but why should she bother? She came off as enough of a nag already.
How many times a week did she take out the garbage? How many times did she reach in under the sink, press down the contents, pull up the bag, and tie it?
The sharp smell penetrated her nostrils. This is my smell, she thought, and this is my terrain, drain pipes and a collection of packets of hygiene products and brushes. She reached for the sponge that was tucked in between the pipes and had the urge to bite into it, chew it into green-yellow pieces and savor the taste of cleaning and dishwashing and chores that were threatening to overwhelm her.
There was a splashing sound from inside the pipes. That was probably the upstairs neighbor, a newly arrived Bosnian woman doing the dishes. The sound reminded Eva that she was not alone in the building.
She visualized the apartments as boxes arranged one on top of the other. Five entrances, four stories, and three apartments on each level. Sixty apartments. She knew the names of ten or so renters, nodded in recognition to some fifty people, and did not associate with any of them.
Her legs ached and she sank down on the floor, leaned against the kitchen cabinets, resting there with her elbows on her knees and gently stroking her forehead with the tips of her fingers. Why was she sitting there, nailed to her own kitchen floor as if an invisible hand was pressing her down?
Sometimes she entertained the idea of getting up, taking Hugo and Patrik and walking around to all sixty apartments, ringing the doorbell and saying… What should she say? Would they even open up, as suspicious as everyone had become since the shooting incident down at the school? No one had been hurt, of course, but the sound of the shots had rung out over the entire area.
The woman one floor up had just stepped off the bus with her two children when it happened. She had recognized the sound of gunfire and had picked up the youngest and held the other by the hand and had run straight into the forest, through wilted grass and brush and into the shielding cover of the trees. She had run into the woods as people have always done in uncertain times and was only discovered under a spruce the next morning by an orienteering team from the UIF sport club who were setting up signs. Luckily, it had been a warm night.