My cell phone rang in our bedroom, and I ran in to answer it.
It was Frederik, saying that he would be home later than planned. He apologized profusely, but he had to take care of something with the school’s bank.
“That’s okay, Frederik. Really.”
“But it might make it hard for me to get all packed.”
“I’ll pack for you too. I’m looking forward to seeing you.”
It was the sort of thing that would have once made me angry and unhappy. The day we’re going on vacation, and you can’t even …! But now it’s fine, because our relationship is fundamentally in order — and because Frederik no longer does it every time.
Sometimes it’s hard to be married to an idealist. You feel rejected while at the same time feeling like a huge egotist, just because you think that school kids shouldn’t rob you of your family life.
Fortunately, that’s all behind us. Frederik has made us more of a priority, and the two of us have never had it better.
• • •
Frederik turns off sharply onto one of the small gravel roads, low drystone walls on either side, and we skid in the gravel and scream, strike a stone wall, are flung to the other side of the road, hit that wall too, skid. Stop.
I turn toward Niklas. I want to be beside him in the backseat, clutch his head to my breast to protect him. But the car’s already come to rest. It’s too late.
“Are you okay?”
But I know he hasn’t been hurt. It was only a couple of minor collisions; we’re extremely lucky. I close my eyes for a moment and exhale. My pulse is throbbing in my temples.
“Are you okay?” I repeat.
“Yeah. How about you?”
“I think so.”
I look through the windshield. Frederik is already out front. He kicks the car with a resentful expression, squats to examine something by one of the fenders.
I yell, “Aren’t you even going to see if we’re all right?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Don’t you even care?”
“Well, I can see you’re doing fine.”
I jump out of the car. And for the first time in our twenty years together, I hit him so hard that it’s not just a game. He falls to the gravel and I shout, “What the hell, what the fucking hell? Have you gone stark raving mad?”
Sweat drips off of me and my fists are clenched, my pulse still pounding in my temples. He gets up staggering but unconcerned, as if he hasn’t noticed my blow, and takes a few steps.
“I don’t think I can get it to run.”
“That’s a stroke of luck, you big idiot. Maybe we won’t die today after all.”
“Mom!” Niklas’s voice calls from inside the car.
I breathe deeply, several times. For my son’s sake, I need to be the reasonable one here. And so I manage to pull myself together.
“What should we do?” I ask in a somewhat calm voice.
Frederik doesn’t answer. He climbs up on the stone wall and stands there, surveying the landscape.
Niklas gets out of the car too. His hair lights up in the sun. It’s lighter than mine, almost white. After cultivating a grunge look all summer, he resembles a sixteen-year-old Kurt Cobain.
“It says in the guide that you should ring 112,” he says.
I glance up at Frederik on the wall.
“What’s with you? Why are you doing this?”
“What’s with me?” At last he looks me in the eye. “You’re the one who’s been after me without a break on this trip! First I drive too fast, then I talk too loud in the restaurant, then I eat too much. Whatever I do, you say I’m doing it wrong!”
I look up at him and it seems he’s swinging his arms too much. The wildness of his gestures feels contrived.
“But I only say those things because you’ve been acting strange,” I say.
“I have not! But you’re after me all the time. And then you say I’m happy at the wrong time, and then you say I sleep too late.”
I can see what he means. It’s been a lovely vacation, but I’ve also been oddly irritated. And we’ve argued a lot.
“I promise to stop criticizing you,” I say. “Okay? Will you come down now?”
“It’s that way back home too. And why can’t I stand up here, if that’s what I want?”
“Look. You’ve just driven our car into a wall, so maybe I have a right to—”
“Now you’re doing it again. I can’t stand it! Look at Niklas. He’s not riding me the whole time. So it is possible.”
“Do we really have to go through all of this now, Frederik?”
“And I love Niklas too. He and I … we’re … he can really …” Frederik begins to cry.
I look over at Niklas, who appears moved. I sense that his sideways glance at me isn’t completely friendly.
I step closer to my husband.
“Are you going to weep now about how much you and Niklas like each other? Do you have heatstroke, or what?”
“And now I’m not even allowed to love our son anymore …”
“Of course you are. It’s just that—”
Frederik starts waving his arms around even more wildly.
“You piece of shit, Mia! You big fat piece of shit!”
And then he falls.
We run over to the wall. See him tumble down the mountainside, strike his head against a tree, and stop, caught lifeless at its foot, five yards away.
“Frederik! Frederik!”
“Dad!”
But he doesn’t move.
The mountain drops away just past the tree. We call 112, stare down at him, wait. And worry that he’ll start stirring and roll free.
2
I bat my tennis racket against the black chair leg in front of me in the emergency room at the Hospital Universitario in Palma de Mallorca. Eight hours, and Frederik still hasn’t regained consciousness. Then I bat it against the other leg. Maybe he’ll end up in a wheelchair. Could he continue as headmaster then?
I see before me the last day of school at Saxtorph. The headmaster rolls his wheelchair up a ramp to the podium. He’s clad in an elegant suit, the students and teachers prouder of him than ever. A triumphant look lights up his face. I feel proud too; he’s a hero. But then other images arise. At home: Do I change his diaper? Do I lift him into bed? Do we … sex?
And then maybe not. Early retirement. What if he’s not well enough to stay on as headmaster? He sits in his wheelchair while I spoon him soup. I am his nurse and wife three years from now, in ten and twenty, thirty. I am the old woman who drives around the suburban streets of Farum with a paralyzed husband. Thus our marriage; thus our life. I press my face against his loose hanging jowls and we weep, rubbing noses and foreheads and cheeks together. That’s what we’ll be doing in three years, in ten and twenty, thirty.
There are tennis courts in the mountains of Majorca. An odd notion, bringing my racket in the car. Of course I’d never use it. What was I thinking? I bat the racket against the first chair leg again. Look at the clock. It’s now eleven.
The emergency room isn’t like Danish emergency rooms. Cheap metal chairs with vinyl seats arranged in long rows. There’s room for at least seventy people to wait for their number to appear on the big red LED over the receptionist’s glass cage. Like the waiting room in a rundown bus station abroad.
We were supposed to fly home the day after tomorrow. Now I see Frederik’s funeral. His parents, his friends, all of us in black. Hundreds of bouquets and wreaths from school parents and teachers. I see how broken up I am. My hero, my beloved, my husband. The casket is lifted into the hearse. Niklas is a pallbearer, dignified and pale.
I’ll get on Niklas’s nerves soon if I don’t stop batting my racket against the chair. Thock, thock, thock. In a minute he’ll say, Stop it! It’s driving me crazy. I know. I hit the chair legs again, harder, harder.