That’s where we disagree.
Still in my running clothes, and with sweat pouring down my face, I pop into the mini-mart at the train station. I only have a few minutes before I need to be home and shower, but we’ve run out of milk, since I never went shopping yesterday after all.
There are already people here. I grab two quarts of milk and stick my credit card in the terminal.
The girl behind the counter says, “Didn’t go through. Try again.”
I remove the card from the slot and slide it back in.
The display says it’s not working. The girl doesn’t say anything.
“You know what, I have another card,” I say. “Let me try that one.”
I fish Frederik’s card out of the inner pocket of my damp sweatpants, stick it in, and enter his PIN.
“It says on my screen to confiscate it,” she says.
“Confiscate it? Why?”
“I don’t know. You stole it, maybe.”
She stares at me with big blue eyes that might have been beautiful if the rest of her pale face wasn’t so listless. You’d think it must be all she can do just to sit upright.
“Of course I haven’t stolen it!” I say. “It’s my husband’s card.”
“Give me it,” she says.
“What if I don’t want to?”
“I don’t know. Hasn’t happened before.”
She wants me to think she’s an idiot. That’s what she wants. She wants me to think she doesn’t give a damn about me or the store or her own future. Doesn’t give a damn about anything but TV, fries, ketchup, and a boyfriend who’s as dumb as she is.
“I need it, really,” the girl says. “You’ve got to give me it.”
Two men are now standing in line behind me. One of them lives on our street, and I know he’s a sales manager for a discount shoe chain. I suppose he’s seen the item about Saxtorph on last night’s news. In front of the milk fridge we nodded at each other, but now he pretends to examine something in his basket.
The girl’s face is as wrinkle-free as a blow-up sex doll’s. I find myself talking with much too much volume and emphasis. “I have no idea what this is all about.”
I force myself not to look away from the men. I’m determined to look as if our family hasn’t done anything wrong. The second man sends me a frightened little smile.
“I’m going to try the other card again,” I say, a little too quickly. “Are you sure there isn’t something wrong with your machine?”
She doesn’t answer.
It’s only a matter of two quarts of milk, but what else are we going to have on our cereal?
She looks at her screen. “Now it says I’ve got to take that card too.”
“What! My card? You also want my card? It didn’t say that before!”
“Does now. Maybe you stole that one too.”
“Stop saying I stole it! I haven’t stolen it! It’s my card!”
“Well maybe, but hand it over.”
I don’t answer her, I keep the cards and leave the store without any milk. I run back the way I came — toward the woods. It’s impossible for me to go home now, I have to keep running in order to flush this from my body. Even if it means I’m going to be late for my first math class.
How long can the bank freeze our accounts? A month, a few months, a year? Some of our friends will have to lend us some money. But will they?
The rhythmic strike of my feet against the wooded path, my panting breath, the big crooked black branches between me and the sun; the light scratching me in the eyes. I’m standing before my seventh graders. Tons of light:
After taxes, the Hallings receive 23,000 crowns a month from a disability pension and a teacher’s salary. They owe 10 million crowns that Mr. Halling embezzled from money entrusted to him. How long will it take the Hallings to pay the money back if:
a) they spend 2,000 crowns a month on food and clothing and move into a one-room apartment, enabling them to reduce their fixed expenses to 10,000 crowns a month?
b) they move together into a rented room and cancel all their subscriptions, memberships, and insurance, cutting their fixed expenses to 6,000 crowns a month?
c) they say screw it and live as they’re accustomed to, even though that gives them a shortfall of 8,000 crowns a month?
Now calculate a, b, and c again, based on the understanding that the family finds 6 million crowns of the embezzled funds in an account that the father has forgotten about because he has brain damage.
I’m going to have to call Bernard again. Is it too early? Definitely. Yet he’ll be up now, won’t he? No, I don’t know him that well.
I leap to the side to avoid three big wet furrows, and Anna, who sits right in front of my desk, raises her hand.
May we assume that the Hallings borrow a lot of money from their friends, and that they never pay it back?
No you may not. Other questions? Kevin?
May we assume that the parents of the brain-damaged father give the family a large advance on their inheritance, to use as a down payment on a condo?
I enter a stretch with lots of spiderweb filaments streaming over the path; no one else has run here today. The filaments are the color of the lake mist, the lake, my sweat. They cling to my forehead and cheeks and mouth, and when I pass trees standing right by the path, I lift my arms and try to bat away the invisible strands. I run and strike out with my arms, grimacing as yet another filament drifts through my defenses and sticks to my eyes.
• • •
It was late when Niklas came home last night, but I went to his room anyway and insisted we talk about prison, about his father on the evening news, and about the poor girl on the street, who I found out is called Emilie. I said it would be okay if he needed to stay home for a day before seeing everyone at school again. That was what I wished I could do myself, yet it was as if he almost couldn’t wait to go back. He didn’t want to put off having to face them all, my strong son. I gave him a hug, and when I left, I told him to just wake me up during the night if he wanted to talk about it some more. I placed my hand on the top of his head as I said this, though I’m not sure he liked that.
Back from my run, I set out breakfast, still in my sweaty running clothes. Niklas tromps down the stairs and looks at me in that teenage way — as if he doesn’t notice anything and yet is justified in being annoyed.
“Why haven’t you taken a shower?” he says right away.
“I was held up.”
“Are you going to eat breakfast in that?”
“Yes. I’ll take a shower afterward.”
“I don’t want to sit and eat breakfast while my mother’s sitting next to me all sweaty and gross.”
I want to say that he’s going to have to, that I’m not gross, that he needs to show some consideration when he speaks to me. But his tone and his entire manner remind me too much of his sick father. Niklas isn’t himself — and he has every right not to be.
Then he pours muesli in his bowl, concentrating deeply, as if I’m not there; but today there’s no milk. Niklas looks around, appearing not to notice the big glass pitcher of water that, for the first time ever, stands on the table in front of him.
“Where’s the milk?”
“Today we’re going to have to eat our muesli with water. It’s no big deal, people did that all the time in the old days.”
“I don’t want to eat this shit.” He’s already shoved his chair back from the table and stood up.
Make room for his anger. I have to accept it, his anger and my anger both. Accept everything he feels. Of course he’s angry, of course he’s self-absorbed, of course he doesn’t have any extra energy to be considerate of his mother. Don’t I have room for that?