• • •
It’s after eleven, and I’m beat after the long evening with the support group and, before that, a long day at my school. But I’m glad to have met these people, for now I feel there’s someone I can talk to who understands. And that changes everything.
I park in front of our house, and even before I’ve turned off the ignition, I notice an orange glare from the lawn. I rush over and find the remains of a campfire still glowing a few yards from the house. I stamp out the largest of the embers close to the house, then storm in the front door.
“Niklas!”
He comes out of the living room, a confused look on his face. “Yes?”
“Who lit the fire on our lawn?”
“Mathias and I found some branches on the sidewalk. I asked Dad, and he said we could.”
“But you can’t just light a fire in the yard! What were you thinking? The entire house could have gone up in flames, and now the lawn is ruined!”
My hand passes close to his face as I hang my coat on the hook behind him.
“And you know very well that it doesn’t matter what Dad says you can do!”
“Yes, but I wanted to take some pictures, and he said as long as we were careful.”
I proceed to the living room. “Why did you say Niklas could burn up the yard?”
There’s an auto race on TV. Frederik lies on the sofa watching it with the sound cranked up way too high. On the rug there is a clump of pillows where Niklas must have been lying and watching with him.
Frederik knits his brows, trying to think of what to tell me. But I only ask him from force of habit. It means absolutely nothing anymore.
Rather than wait for an answer, I turn back to the narrow entry to change into my slippers, squeezing past Niklas on the way.
“You knew that wasn’t okay,” I say.
No response. I take a few deep breaths, and I consider that it ended all right after all. The house hasn’t burned down, and in a little while I’ll go out and extinguish the last embers. But now I see that my boots have toppled over, and when I pick them up, one seems oddly heavy. I turn it upside down, and a large salad onion tumbles out.
Back to the living room. “Why’s there an onion in my boot?”
Niklas is lying back down on the rug, his eyes glued to the set as he answers. “We had an onion fight.”
“An onion fight? You mean that you and Dad ran around after each other throwing onions?”
“Yeah.”
“But you can’t just do that!” I shout, though in reality I’m relieved they’ve found a way to have fun together. A day of onion fights and fires in the yard is a hundred times better than the life I feared of having to be his nursemaid.
I have to force myself not to laugh. “Did you break anything?”
“Just a vase.”
“Just a vase! There’s no such thing as ‘just a vase’!”
“It was Dad who started it,” he says, still following the race.
“No, it was him!” Frederik shouts, and at last they both look at me.
I can’t hold it in anymore. I splutter with laughter, and they start laughing too. I go over to Frederik and try to kiss him on the forehead, but he turns his face away. It’s like trying to kiss a ten-year-old boy — he doesn’t like it or see any point in it.
“I swept up the pieces,” Niklas says. “And besides, it was him.”
“Good. It’s good that it’s only one vase that broke. Which one was it?”
“The little green one.”
“That’s okay. You got all the shards, right?”
“Yeah.”
Against the noise from the cars on TV, I go out and mix myself a big glass of black-currant juice, the way Niklas likes it. Glass in hand, I stand by the end of the sofa where Frederik’s legs are and prepare to sit down. But he doesn’t move them, and several seconds pass before I remember that I have to ask. “Frederik. Would you kindly move your feet, so I can sit down too?”
“Oh yes, of course.”
Then I sit down and watch the race. In the old days I would have thought with my two men, but tonight I think with my two boys.
I listen to how they sigh with irritation or satisfaction, and after a bit I ask, “Are we rooting for the yellow?”
“Yes,” they both say.
I swing my feet up on our small Ole Wanscher coffee table, not caring whether I make any scratches. I sip my juice and cheer the yellow car on. We’re almost a real family again — except that a sex life is out of the question, and my husband doesn’t care what I think or feel. I say to myself, Just like lots of other families. Again I chuckle to myself, thinking I should remember to pass the joke on to Helena.
And I can be happy, I think. I’m happy now. And if I can be happy now, then anything’s possible — for then I can be happy other times too.
I slip off to our bedroom, to call Helena and thank her for pushing me to go to the support group. It’s changed everything. I know it’s okay to call, even though it’s almost midnight.
I lift the receiver, but there’s no dial tone. I see at once that someone’s pulled the cord from the jack. With vague unease I decide to wait with the call and go instead back to the living room.
“What happened to the phone?”
Neither of them replies, and now I see that the cords have been taken out of both the answering machine and the living room phone. I stand there waving the two phone lines.
“Frederik, what’s this all about?”
He keeps looking at the TV.
“Frederik!”
He looks up for a moment. “Well, Laust kept on calling, and I didn’t want to talk to him.”
I know right away that something is very wrong, and hurry out to my bag where my cell phone is. I set it on mute during support group. There are five messages from Laust.
“Mia, will you call me?”
“Mia, it’s urgent that you call me!”
“Mia, pick up the phone, damn it! What’s wrong with you all?”
“What the hell’s going on? Are you mixed up in this too, Mia?”
“You’ve ruined us, haven’t you. And Mia, don’t try to tell me you aren’t involved!”
I run upstairs, shut the door, and call him.
He’s furious and won’t talk to me.
“But why were you calling us then?”
“I couldn’t get myself to believe it about you. But then Benny showed me the documents. There’s no other way to understand it.”
“No other way to understand what?”
“You know what!”
“No.”
“Frederik didn’t bring home an extra twelve million crowns without you noticing and buying a few pieces of designer furniture or whatever it was?”
“Twelve million?” I let myself fall on the bed. “I’m coming over to your house now.”
“No. Anja’s sleeping, and she doesn’t know anything.”
“Where are you?”
“Where Frederik keeps the ledgers.”
“Then I’m driving over to the school!”
I hang up.
In the living room I pull Frederik away from the TV so that Niklas can’t hear us. Niklas doesn’t even look up, he’s so used to me dragging his father off.
Up in the bedroom, Frederik denies everything. He insists that he knows nothing. I grasp him by the shoulders and look into his eyes, probingly.
“Can I trust you?”
“Yes.” He looks back at me with large wide eyes that show not a trace of bad conscience.
“One hundred percent? Can I trust you one hundred percent?”
“Yes.”