With a howl she twisted out of my arms and took a few wobbly steps. I followed her and tried to give her a hug, but then she kicked and howled even louder.
“Honey,” I said and kissed her on the cheek.
She whined quietly, “I want crackers and milk! And Diego!”
“Sure.”
I carried her to the sofa, smelling her soft hair and feeling a tug at my heart, as if a thin thread were being pulled through it.
“Lovely, lovely Alva,” I murmured and laid her down.
“Crackers.”
“Yup. Do you want a blanket?”
Alva nodded, and I covered her with a blanket and turned on the TV. I should have tried to get her started on something more active, get her to play with her sisters, get out the art supplies or beads. Or maybe something more gender neutral, like blocks. Instead I turned up the volume on the TV and headed for the kitchen.
A vague sense of frustration quivered in my chest.
I should go for a jog. That would put my humors back into balance. Reduce the level of black bile. It had been a while now, over a week.
But I didn’t have it in me. My body felt weak, soft like jelly.
Which is why I chose instead to unload it all on Bjørnar as he stood over the cutting board later, his sleeves rolled up and with that wrinkle in his forehead that didn’t usually go away until late in the evening.
“I got so irritated,” I concluded, “both at the au pair, who clearly doesn’t care, and at Titus’s parents, who just renounced all responsibility for the whole preschool. Quantity time? What does that even mean? That’s what it’s like for everyone. That’s life! I know that it’s mostly their fault, but she could have shown a little interest, couldn’t she? I was just trying to help! I was being a mensch! And it’s her job to take care of the kid!”
“Don’t you think maybe she had other things to think about?” he asked calmly, walking over to the sink to rinse the brussels sprouts. He usually parboiled them, then sautéed them in sunflower oil and sprinkled them with sea salt. My mouth was watering at the thought.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, where did you say she was from again?”
It wasn’t because I didn’t follow the news. I considered myself a relatively well-informed person and I had seen countless TV images of cities, pulverized and destroyed by the inconceivable and gruesome forces of nature.
So it wasn’t that. I just hadn’t made the connection. The distance between the preschool and the natural disaster was so vast. They were like two satellites orbiting their own end of the galaxy.
Until now.
I thumped my fist against my head and pursed my lips.
“Doesn’t it embarrass you to be so self-absorbed?” Bjørnar asked.
“It didn’t occur to me that she was from the Philippines,” I mumbled.
“It might make sense to think a little before you speak.”
“But I live locally,” I protested. “If you start looking at life from a global perspective, I don’t know how you can bear it: natural disasters, war, poverty, human trafficking, pornography, and prostitution. The Western world’s exploitation of development-challenged countries. I can’t think about all that on a daily basis. I don’t have the bandwidth!”
“Development-challenged? Is that even a term?”
“Well, I think third world is kind of outdated, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“You get that you’re going to have to apologize, right?”
“To the au pair?”
“Yeah.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes.”
I stared out the window. At our cherry-tree-less yard.
“Fine,” I sighed. “I’ll apologize.”
I probably had to.
Yeah, I had to.
But only if I ran into her. Because if I didn’t run into her, it would be physically impossible for me to apologize. Even Bjørnar had to concede that.
5
The next day I left work directly from the reading center to avoid the meeting room. Just in case. Earlier in the day I had run into Peter, who was all up in arms.
“Do you know the University of Bergen just lowered the number of credits their courses are worth?” he announced and then made a hiccuping sound, which seemed to have become chronic. “Which is the opposite of what we’re doing. What we’re doing is just a way to cut back on staffing. Mark my words!”
“What do you mean? Are they going to lay people off?”
“Lay people off, reorganize, offer incentives… Who knows what form it will take? This administration isn’t really calling its own shots, if you know what I mean. They’re going to get a taste of their own medicine, though.”
“Uh, what do you mean?”
“Oh, you’ll see,” he said, nodding knowingly, “you’ll see.”
That exchange created small ripples of uncertainty in my mind. After all, I was one of the most recent hires. If anyone was going to be re-orged, there was a good chance it would be me, especially after my lackluster performance as faculty coordinator. Plus, I hadn’t published all that much since I’d started here, either.
“Zero point seven points,” the chair had told me. “That might do during the honeymoon period, but it won’t cut it over the long haul. We’re evaluated based on our output, as you know. The bibliometric indicator system may not be the soundest system in the world, but fair or not, it’s how we are assessed right now.”
I had nodded vigorously, but the fact of it was that after completing my dissertation I wasn’t really up to starting a new research project. My plan was to put off the problem by signing up for conferences now and then. Then at least I would have something to pull out of my hat. Though the conference I’d received a grant to attend was still a few months off, it was already starting to bug me. The plane could crash. I could be raped and murdered. I could get stress cancer from excessive dread beforehand. To put it succinctly, my life could be torn asunder. All in the attempt to score a few idiotic career advancement points with my department chair and a colleague who hardly knew what my name was and certainly had no idea what my research interests were.
Luckily it wasn’t raining and the bicyclists were back doing their thing again, so there was less traffic. In just under half an hour I was able to carry a beaming Alva off the playground and into the hallway, where I immediately started stripping off her hat, mittens, rain gear, fleece jacket, and wool socks.
“You came to get me before snack!”
“Yes, sometimes I pick you up before snack.”
“But not always.”
“No, not always.”
“Not on Saturday.”
“No, but there’s no school on Saturdays. Now we have to get your bag.”
Only then, when I looked up into the cloakroom, did I notice Titus’s au pair digging around in his cubby.
And I’d gotten here early. To be on the safe side.
I straightened up and took a few steps forward.
“Hello,” I said, smiling uncertainly.
The au pair jumped.
I took another step in her direction and held out my hand. Not to touch her. More to show her that I meant well.
“Ahem… about yesterday. It didn’t occur to me that you were from the Philippines, but of course you are. And they just had a typhoon there, I know that. Is everything all right with your family?”
Up until the last sentence it didn’t seem like she understood any of what I was saying, but at the word family the muscles in her face started contracting. Her eyes filled with tears and her lips began to quiver.
“I have no contact,” she said, her voice trembling. “One week. I cannot reach.”