Yes, I do … And besides, I remember reading a few nights ago, in one of the many neurology books I now have from the library, that teenagers aren’t fully developed, orbitofrontally. It turns out that you aren’t until the beginning of your twenties. No matter how clever teenagers can be, according to the books they’ll always have a trace of Frederik’s dramatic symptoms: the poor self-control, the wild mood swings, the lack of concern for others, and the limited ability to plan very far into the future.
I don’t say anything other than, “Well, what would you like then?”
“Not this in any case. It tastes like shit.”
“You don’t know that, Niklas, you haven’t tasted it.” My voice sounds mild when I speak. I feel unbelievably maternal. Room. Give him room.
He roots around in the fridge, using large rough movements. Like his father. Again I say, “I can understand if you want to stay home today. Just go ahead and stay.”
“How many times do I have to tell you I don’t want to stay home?”
“No, you should just … I think I only said it once last night.”
He doesn’t respond. I have a wild urge to stay home myself, to quit and never see my students or colleagues again.
“Maybe it’ll be mostly just the younger kids,” I say. “That’s probably right. Yes, the parents think they’re so clever. They’ll get the kids to ask for them.”
He must register something in my voice; he’s finally looking at me as if I’m a human being. He stands there with half a loaf of dark rye in one hand and a block of cheese in the other. “Well, are you going to school today?”
“Yes,” I say.
“What are you going to tell them?”
“Maybe I’ll say that it isn’t true.”
“But they saw it on TV last night, didn’t they?”
“Yes … I don’t know.”
• • •
For the first time in a long time, I don’t bike to work. Instead I take the car, which none of my colleagues or students will recognize, and park behind the school. From there, a back door leads to the stairway going right up to my seventh-grade classroom.
The office knows that I have problems at home, and when I rang this morning and said I’d be arriving an hour late, the secretary was kind and said they could find a sub on short notice.
I turned off my cell phone to avoid talking to journalists. Now I switch it back on for a minute, not checking messages, and call Bernard. When I called before from home, he didn’t answer and so I rang up his office, but no one was answering the phones there yet. He’s still not answering his cell, but this time when I call his firm a secretary picks up.
“Berman & Friis, Bernard Berman’s office.”
Her voice is friendly, her pronunciation straight out of a 1950s film.
My words tumble out in the wrong order as I try to explain that I know Bernard, that all our accounts have been frozen and I don’t know when we’ll be able to access our money again — if ever.
“Mr. Berman is in court right now, but I shall tell him that you have called. May I ask if he has your number?”
I give it to her and go in to my class.
The quiet in the classroom seems tense, but no one says anything about Frederik being on the news last night. As I teach, I wonder if it’s only my imagination, or if the knowledge that their math teacher’s married to a big-time swindler is making them uneasy. I also try to think about who the hell we can borrow from so we can make it through the month — and who we can borrow a lot more from if we still need money in the months to come.
The obvious choice would be Thorkild and Vibeke, of course, but even without any debt, it’s already hard to keep Vibeke from taking over the entire family. I understand that she wants to do whatever she can to help her sick son, and that as a retired nurse she has some caregiving experience that I do not. And there’s no getting around the fact that I do need their help. But when she insists that Frederik and I have to save money now and refuses to buy the organic goods I’ve written on the shopping list, or when she moves the vacuum cleaner to a closet where she says it’s easier to get to and replaces all my cleaning agents with other ones, or when she starts talking about staying overnight, then I have to put my foot down.
The psychotherapist training that she embarked on after retiring has made her more irritating than ever. One day I found myself losing it as she sat in my armchair, fiddling with the big piece of amber in her necklace while trying to convince me that the reason I wasn’t letting her move in with us was the immature nature of my relationship to my own mother.
The next person I think of in a situation like this is of course Laust. Until the day before yesterday, there was no question that he’d be there for us if we had a problem — and be there with money too. And then there’s Helena. I could ask her during lunch break, though I know that she and Henning are having trouble with their bills these days.
I’m in the middle of going through some problems in perspective drawing. “Can anyone tell me how to find the two vanishing points?”
Anna, who sits right in front of my desk, raises her hand.
“Is it true that your husband’s going to jail?”
Have they planned this? Have they talked to one another about who should ask? She looks so sincere — regardless of how rehearsed this might be — and ignoring all the responses I cobbled together last night in half sleep, I blurt out the truth.
“He might go to jail. We don’t know. He took a lot of money, but that’s because he has a disease. He couldn’t help it. His brain is diseased.”
We talk about it briefly, and they accept my explanations. It’s surprisingly easy, and then we turn back to math. During recess I send Niklas a text, telling him that I’ve been telling people the truth.
I’m late to my next class because I try to avoid the halls and the schoolyard between bells. I also avoid the teachers’ lounge, but during lunch I have to go in.
I texted Helena beforehand, saying that I want to go in with her. We meet outside the bathroom and we hug. A little later, she’s the one who opens the door to where all the other teachers are and quickly, with a dismissive air, leads the way over to our usual table, right by the window.
Here I go, the swindler — or maybe just the swindler’s wife, they have no way of knowing — in any case, half of the married couple that has destroyed one of the most highly respected schools in the land.
“It’ll work out.”
“It’s lovely the way you keep supporting Frederik.”
“If there’s anything I can do, just let me know.”
The teachers at our table are hugging me, they’re flashing me smiles. Others come over to say a friendly word, or wave encouragement from the other end of the lounge. Helena must have talked with some of them earlier, during one of the breaks. They don’t think I’m a criminal. They think that I’m staying to support my sick husband.
“That’s the way to do it, Mia. I only hope I’d have the strength to do the same.”
It really catches me off guard, and Helena can’t have spoken with all of them. I feel that I’m liked, and I find myself crying at the table a little, where everyone can see.
On the way out to the next class, I say to Helena as a joke, “I ought to call up the women Frederik had affairs with. I could say to them, Now the fun is over. Now it’s time to bear your share of the burden. For the time being, what we need from you is 20,000 crowns, here and now.”
Helena doesn’t laugh.
“Well anyway, I do know that I shouldn’t ask you for a loan,” I say. “That you guys are having a hard time right now.”