“I’m only twenty-nine after all”: pulling her nails across her dry summer skin, white powder stripes on the skin.
Twenty-nine years, she never became any older. Has never become. And: as if she has never been anywhere else but here.
Jump, jump, in the avenues. A small baby, a baby bird under her jacket, love, life. My love, my life, hop crow, hop sparrow—
“You have arrived at your destination,” says the woman’s voice on the navigator, the engine stops. The navigator lady has a name, Gertrude, named after the aupairgirl. “Oh, Gertrude.” They have a habit of saying that, she and her husband, in the car sometimes, even though that lady on the navigator actually has a different name, now she does not remember what it is.
But: a private joke they have, because Gertrude, their Gertrude, can undeniably maintain order and navigate the family’s sometimes chaotic life filled with children and many residences around the world and a great deal of keeping up appearances. What would we do without Gertrude? is the question they often seriously ask themselves and each other.
Gertrude who steers and arranges with the same calm voice as the navigator in the car—except when she gets angry, of course; then she roooars, and she has done so today, the aupairgirl’s terrible scream that Susette still has ringing in her ears. Despite the fact that it has not been anyone else’s fault but hers, Gertrude’s, that a bunch of fragile glass was sitting in an unpacked box in an open box in the wrong place in the new residence where the family had just moved from abroad and that Tom, who had been in an unusually bad mood and had come home earlier than usual from his job, managed to knock down on the floor by accident so CRASH, a lot of invaluable drinking glasses broken into thousands of pieces.
So Gertrude, she does not always find the right path, does not always navigate correctly. And she has that in common with the lady in the navigator: suddenly ending up in the middle of a winery somewhere in Germany just because she has directed you there—it must have been the previous summer? “Oh Gertrude, Oh Gertrude.” Tom had laughed in the middle of the jungle of vines and suddenly the embittered German wine farmer with the rifle on the little road in front of them, “an auf hinter zwischen wir sind turisten,” pretended not to speak the language so that things would not get any worse. “Grüss Gott.” An amusing family memory, pointing with the tip of the rifle, but they had gotten out in one piece.
“Make a U-turn,” Susette says out loud in the car in Rosengården 2 suddenly alarmed by the strange merriment growing inside her. Hop crow, sparrow, CRASH, tabula rasa. But “courage,” her husband Tom said a little while ago, while they were still driving down the avenues, he had taken her hand, it had calmed her down and calms her, a little, now. But she has not been afraid, and besides, he certainly wants to make up after the scene at home earlier. And of course: when she says that about the U-turn Tom does not hear it, even as a joke. He has already gotten out of the car and is on his way to the other side to open the door for her. Then, briefly, almost simultaneously, it quickly rushes through Susette’s head that she has forgotten to tell him that surprisingly his sister Maj-Gun came by the new home that day for a visit. And that Maj-Gun sends her greetings to him—or does she? Now Susette does not remember exactly how it was, also not exactly what was said between her and Maj-Gun, so to speak. Just a bad feeling, and a complete feeling of alienation, nonconnection. Red and slender, after the Scarsdale Diet, anything is possible, a person like that, new.
But Susette did not have the intention of hiding from her husband that Maj-Gun had stopped by that day. There just has not, during the afternoon and evening up until now, been an appropriate time to mention it: Gertrude and Tom had been shouting at each other.
And now. No turning back. They are there, here. And Susette: never anywhere but here. Never more than twenty-nine; there. Tom Maalamaa opens the door, she steps out.
“Don’t forget.” He discovers the shoe bag with the silver shoes in the backseat. “Thank you.”
And then she drifts away again. Forever. Everything else disappears now. Never anywhere but here. Never more than twenty-nine. The silver shoes. Tabula rasa.
To the house that is beaming; they have stepped into the house.
Also here she has recognized where she is, but no longer a surprise. Italian granite on the ground floor. And crash! Yes, that house. In other respects, foreign.
“Peter, Nellevi.” Laughter. Naturally your name cannot be Nellevi nor can it be Susette either. A name from a tabloid, a serial Susette and love.
“So nice.”
A daughter. Ulla. Talented. Oh oh oh. “The theater, the dance, the music… a band called Screaming Toys.”
Headstrong. Does not come downstairs.
“ULLAAAA! Ulla is sulking. Temperamental. Artistic temperament—ULLAAA!” resounds through the house. “Peter also has a good singing voice,” the wife, Nellevi, laughs.
ULLLAA! Susette’s ears temporarily become deaf.
“Oh well, to the oysters. When she’s done sulking. Ulla loves oysters.”
“I CAAAAAN HEEEAAR YOU! LAAATER!”
A voice from upstairs. The voice cracks everything. Absurd, immense. Like from the abyss.
“Ulla is talented.”
“Are you cold?”
Tom Maalamaa puts his arm around his wife’s shoulders. Nono.
The living room, the kitchen… beautiful view. You see: the Winter Garden. Like a blaze of light, strong, farther away. Light over the trees as well, part of the road.
The Winter Garden. The Rita Strange Corporation.
In the living room, the sofa.
“We knew each other. From the Rita Strange Corporation. The Winter Garden. Was going to be magnificent. Wasn’t. An idea. Became something else.”
“Architectural dreams.”
“Ho-ho, Tom.” Peter Bäckström laughs. Tom, like himself.
These people, Peter and Nellevi, are also in the “business,” of course, architects, both of them.
But she, Susette, as mentioned, actually, she is not listening. Is not really even there. Twenty-nine years old, never got any older. Rosengården 2, her Rosengården. Recognizes and recognizes.
She gets up.
“The bathroom is upstairs, one floor.”
I know. She mumbles, quietly, to herself. Already on the stairs then.
“The American girl.” A black-and-white poster on the wall in the bathroom.
The girl on a cliff, her hair flowing, flying. She is going to fall.
Black-and-white photography on the poster, matches the decor. White tiles, black trim. THAT was what it was like then. Otherwise she does not look at the picture. An old story. Neither it nor the old theater poster says anything to her.
She steps out. Not back to the others, but up the stairs, landings. The third landing. There they are. The rabbits.
She is here. Has never been anywhere else.
And farther, quickly up the small stairs, to the attic room. The door is slightly ajar, but she sees, before she sneaks in, THE GLITTER SCENE in glittery letters, on a plaque on the door.
And Susette in landscape here again. The same room, the empty room, fall 1989, before everything. The duality NOW, still, full empty full empty, the old new at the same time, everything here: Susette on the Glitter Scene.