I allow myself at last to look at his face, long enough to take in the curl of his eyelashes, the pores of his skin, a broken blood vessel on his temple; the crow’s-feet in the corners of his eyes. I see everything.
So aren’t we going to kiss? Isn’t he going to come closer? Isn’t there going to be an exchange of glances and small advances, a drawing of breath, a dilation of pupils?
“The slanting walls here make for great acoustics!” the agent’s voice exclaims.
I turn around and find him looking at Bernard.
“And it shouldn’t be any problem to install extra electrical circuits,” he adds while the corners of his mouth tighten slightly, as if he’s suppressing a smile.
I clear my throat. “There must be some misunderstanding,” I say. “Bernard’s just a good friend.”
“Ohhh.” Now it’s me the realtor stares at.
“I need to see the bathroom too,” I say, leaving the room quickly. Inside the bathroom, I lock the door behind me.
Maybe I’ve also become unbalanced; maybe Frederik infected me. Two of the women from support group say they feel as if they’ve contracted their husbands’ disease. They become confused just like their men, take the initiative much less often, fumble for words.
And maybe, just like Frederik, I believe that I’m fully rational and well when in reality I’m doing something crazy. It’s not something I’d be aware of. I wouldn’t realize it any more than he does.
I fall into my usual escape fantasy about playing tennis. The sultry heat, the low sun. The strike of ball against racket; the sweat running into my eyes. A stroke. The sweat reaching the bridge of my nose now. Skidding on the crushed stone. Another stroke. I glimpse my opponent, and it’s Bernard I’m playing. He’s good. Athletic, power in his strokes. A handsome profile in the evening light. The fantasy’s mine, but Bernard has followed me here. Stroke on stroke. I’ve got to get away from him.
Another fantasy: my happiest years with Frederik. Sitting in the hanging sofa in our yard. We’ve blown off the neighbor’s garden party to be by ourselves. I rest my head against his chest. The sun still coloring the northern sky. His strong arm around me … but wait, Frederik’s arms aren’t strong! I turn my face and find myself looking up at Bernard. I’m not resting my head on Frederik’s chest; it’s Bernard I’ve run off with. I’ve been to the neighbor’s party with Bernard. I’ve got to leave again.
Walking along Lake Farum: Frederik and me in the sun. He wraps a strong arm around my waist. We meet the parents of some—
“Mia?”
I hear a knock on the door, and Bernard’s voice.
“Mia?”
I open the door. He stands close, right outside the door. Now I feel it. He comes even closer. The exchange. Our breath, our pupils.
I grab him, pull him into the bathroom, close the door, and kiss him. He kisses me. He presses me to him, so that for a moment I can’t breathe. Our tongues, our lips, our skin and spittle. I encircle his shoulders. Our eyes and noses, bellies and groins. It’ll never stop, we’ll keep on and on. So it was true. So there were signals from him. It’ll go on forever. So it’ll be the two of us now.
He gasps for breath, and I pull my face back a little so I can smile at him.
But now he’s gasping too much for breath. He tears himself free and stands doubled over, his hands on his knees as if he’s going to throw up.
I’ve been in a state of alert for months and I don’t even think, I just shout for the realtor before I know what I’m doing. “Call an ambulance! Damn it! Damn it! Call an ambulance!”
The husbands of my friends in support group keep having strokes. Strokes right and left. The men drop dead. The real estate agent’s steps sound on the far side of the bathroom door. He knocks over something with a crash and swears under his breath.
I’m not sure if I should reach out to touch Bernard. May I hold him?
“Bernard? Can you say something?”
“I’m not ill,” he says. “Or rather yes, I am ill, but I’m not … He shouldn’t call for an ambulance.”
I drop to a knee so that I can see his face. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
It takes time to get such wet cheeks; he must have been crying while we kissed.
“Bernard? What’s wrong?”
The realtor enters the bathroom with his phone to his ear. “They’re asking what happened. What’s wrong? What should I tell them?”
We both look at Bernard, who doesn’t answer.
“Bernard?”
“It’s nothing. Just hang up. We don’t need an ambulance.”
But he’s speaking with Frederik’s voice. The toneless voice from the weeks after the operation. My friends’ husbands. My husband.
I find myself shouting. “He himself doesn’t know! That’s one of the symptoms — apoplexy! His brain!”
Now Bernard is weeping — again, almost like Frederik. “It isn’t apoplexy. I’m sorry!”
I know what the eyes of a stroke victim look like.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he repeats.
“There’s no reason to … can you move your right side? Can you say your name? Do you know where we are?”
“I have to go now,” he says.
He straightens up and heads for the door.
“You can’t go now!”
“I’ve got to.”
I run after him down the narrow stairs.
“But you can’t drive a car,” I say.
“Yes. I can drive just fine.”
He’s walking quickly, so I have to run around the parked cars and back onto the sidewalk, where I plant myself in front of the station wagon door. “You aren’t allowed to get in. This is for your own good.”
“Mia, stop it now.”
And now he’s speaking in his own voice again.
Maybe it’s me who’s sick. He isn’t, in any case. Maybe I just can’t deal with kissing another man. I step aside, and he gets behind the wheel.
“I’m really sorry,” he says. “I’m really, really sorry.”
I want to go closer. Lean into the car. But something tells me I shouldn’t. And then he drives away.
The real estate agent and I are left standing there.
The agent leads me back to the apartment, and now it’s myself I don’t dare to let drive. With solicitude, he guides me over to an armchair in the middle room, the room we wanted to open up into the kitchen. And then he gets me a glass of water in what might be Frederik’s and my new home.
18
Soon we won’t be living here anymore. I look at my white house. The black-stained timbers, the light shadows on the wall where I scrubbed away the graffiti. I take it in as if I’m not looking at a real house, just paging through an old photo album.
Someday, years from now, I’ll point to this page and say, We used to live here.
It looks so charming, so homey, a future acquaintance will say, sitting beside me on the cheap ugly couch I’ll have then.
Yes. We were happy living there.
And then a stillness will descend between us. She won’t say, That must have been before it all went south—and really, what else could she say? And I won’t say, That was when I kissed another man. What else would there be for me to say?
The house back then, the photo poster you can faintly make out through Niklas’s window, the wicker enclosure I built around the garbage cans with my own hands.
I continue to leaf through the album as I walk down the flagstones to the front door. Yes; we were happy living here.
Before I pass the FOR SALE sign, I wipe my lips off on my sleeve one more time. Bernard also wanted to, didn’t he? Should I call him, text him? Have I done something awful? Have I wrecked the good working relationship we have with our lawyer?