“Yes … then he’ll realize how important it is.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go inside? Because you do sound like you’re freezing.”
“I’m going in now.”
As soon as I’m in the house, I discover how cold I am.
“I’m going to lie down on the sofa,” I say into the phone. “I’ve got to enjoy it as much as possible before we have to sell it.”
And then we both laugh.
• • •
“What happened to the house?”
Niklas is speaking to me, and I struggle to figure out where I am. The sofa in the living room, still mine. He stands in front of me. It’s dark; I must have slept for several hours. Where’s Frederik? Did he run outside? And where’s Niklas been — what was it he said?
“What happened to the house?” he says again.
Yes, what did happen to the house? I sit up. How dark it is! It starts coming back to me.
“The house? The house? Somebody wrote on it this afternoon. Can you see it in the dark?”
“It looks like big clouds on the front.”
“That’s where I scrubbed off the spray paint. The surface is lighter there, isn’t it?”
“From the street it looks like there’s ghosts floating around the yard.”
“Have you had anything to eat?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Is it late?”
“After nine.”
I stumble up to Frederik’s office. He isn’t there, but I find him sleeping in our bed. So I go down to the kitchen to throw together a bite to eat. I imagine that his brain heals better when he’s asleep, so I never wake him unless it’s absolutely necessary.
On the kitchen counter stand a half-empty carton of milk and half a pear pie I bought on my way home from work.
“Niklas!” I shout.
He doesn’t respond, so I go out into the entry.
“Niklas!”
“Yes!” The voice comes from his room.
“Would you come down here, please?”
The potatoes are boiling by the time he appears. His shirt is buttoned wrong; it wasn’t before.
“What’s up?”
“You’re old enough to set the milk and pie back in the fridge when you’re done with them.”
“I forgot. Why didn’t you do it yourself, since you were here already?”
“Because you need to learn to do it. We have to save money. We can’t let food go bad.”
“Dad forgets the butter on the table all the time.”
“Yes, which is why it’s even more important that the rest of us remember to put things away. Dad can’t help it.”
“I can’t help it either. My orbitofrontal region is also—”
He breaks off suddenly when he catches sight of something behind me. I wheel around, but I can’t see what he’s reacting to. There isn’t anything there, just one of Frederik’s typical piles of speaker clutter. I step closer: electronic components soldered together, a soldering iron, a coil of solder, some sort of meter. I haven’t seen the meter before. It looks highly technical, and expensive. I lift it up; engraved on the bottom it says PHYSICS LAB / PROPERTY OF BIRKERØD GYMNASIUM.
“What’s this?”
“It’s for Dad’s speakers.”
“Did you take it from the school?”
“I borrowed it for him.”
“Did they give you permission to?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Have you started stealing?”
“Everything Dad does is just fine. All the time, no matter what. You don’t give him a hard time for stealing twelve million crowns! But if I borrow just one little tiny thing that isn’t even for myself—”
“Niklas, your father is gravely ill.”
“Yeah, but my frontal lobes don’t function the way they should either.”
Something here isn’t quite right, but I can’t put my finger on it. He’s not yelling at me as loudly as he usually would; his shirt is misbuttoned; he’s taken a double portion of pie. Does he have someone up in his room with him — Mathias? The girl that Frederik was so rude to, Emilie? Is she up there now? My thigh bumps into the counter so that the soldering iron tumbles over the edge and dangles on its cord, three-fourths of the way to the floor.
A note of Frederik’s indifferent, unsympathetic tone creeps into Niklas’s voice. “You should also show some concern for my brain. My impulse control and long-term planning aren’t—”
“What are you talking about?”
The thought of Emilie in his room: myself once, in Casper’s room. Sixteen years old. He let his fingers slide lightly — almost floating — up the length of my forearm. And down again, back and forth, floating. That’s what we did — for an eternity. The darkness and Duran Duran. On the captain’s bed in his room with our clothes on.
“There was an article about it lying on the coffee table.”
“An article about what?”
“Something you printed out. About how when you’re sixteen, you’re just as smart as a grown-up, but some parts of your brain still need to develop and won’t finish till you’re twenty.”
Casper thrust a hand underneath my blouse, and afterward down my pants. The thin pale boyish skin of his cheeks, still hairless.
Niklas regards me defiantly. “They’re in the frontal lobes, same place as Dad. So I’m just as—”
“Niklas, you can’t think about yourself that way. It doesn’t give you permission to do whatever you want.”
“But it’s true!”
“Yes, it might be true enough. But you should think that way only about others. With other people, it can help you understand and forgive. But with yourself …”
We discuss the matter. I’ve never caught him taking something from school before, and I want him to understand how serious it is. But the whole time, I see before me Emilie and Niklas. She’s such a beautiful girl, pale and freckled. And Niklas is better looking than Casper was … Are they girlfriend and boyfriend? Niklas lets his hand glide across one of her breasts while she lies on the captain’s bed in Casper’s room. Duran Duran. Culture Club. Niklas’s own music.
He’s anxious to leave the kitchen.
“Did you bring someone home with you?”
He hesitates, tilting his head slightly as he answers. “I might’ve.”
“Is it Emilie?”
The way his face freezes, eyes wide open. He’s in love, I can see it in his fright.
“You’re not going up there.”
I find myself smiling. “No, of course not.”
He’s in love. Frederik and I went in for an ultrasound; the heartbeat, his first day of school, the day in the yard when we played badminton. I’ve got to stop myself, to act adult. Niklas is in love; am I smiling too much? He looks so incredibly serious. Theft, responsibility, pregnancy.
“Do her parents know where she is?”
“Of course!”
And then he’s on his way back upstairs.
• • •
Every day, I try to empty my head of thoughts about how different my life would have been if I’d stayed with one of the men I knew before Frederik. Niklas would have had less amazing genes, been less intelligent, less creative, looked different. But perhaps he’d have wanted to play tennis and go running with me. Perhaps we would have been closer.
We’d probably have been something of a sports family, since all the men I was with before Frederik were interested in sports. And maybe Niklas would have had siblings. The fertility specialist said that the problem lay with me, but with another man you never know.
At one time I lived for a year and a half with Søren, who was studying public administration. We were sure that it would be the two of us for life, and we both sobbed on the foam mattress in our dank, noisy apartment on Pheasant Road when it became necessary for me to tell him I’d met someone else. But I was too obsessed with Frederik to stay — Frederik was so much fun, so attentive, he knew everything, he was so honest and could share his feelings. The problems I’d had with Søren, and which I’d thought were problems with me, weren’t there with Frederik. No one could compete. No one came close.