He speaks quickly and coolly, summarizing something he’s evidently already been arguing for.
“You contact the sixteen parents of former students whose names I wrote down on that list. You speak with Aksel at the bank about dealing directly with him and Jørgen—not with Anette on any account. And I’ll e-mail you the letter for the Friends of Saxtorph.”
He can sound so persuasive. If anyone can rescue the school, it’s him of course.
I find myself blurting out, “Is this a plan, Frederik?” I turn toward Laust. “Is that what it is? A plan?”
“Naturally, we’ve tried everything like that,” he mumbles, not looking me in the eye. “We aren’t idiots.”
Frederik’s agitated, but it might not be just his illness, since he’s also dedicated his life to the school. “That’s not true!” he shouts. “I talked to Kim yesterday, and he hasn’t heard from you!”
Laust finally raises his voice too, and it’s as if I needed him to. “We’ve tried everything. Everything! To save us from all the shit you dumped on us! The party’s over, like I’ve told you a hundred times.”
“You haven’t talked to Kim! Have you talked to anyone else on the list I gave you? They’re precisely the people you should be talking to.”
Something now about how to position myself — body language and facial expression — I should show that I’m backing up my husband. Or should I? Should it be the opposite — should I show Laust that I know Frederik’s a nut the two of us have to appease?
Laust enters a short number on his phone, no doubt the police. “Your coming here didn’t do much good, eh Mia?”
Frederik continues, undeterred. “It has to be them. All sixteen.”
I don’t know if I should step toward Laust, or back, or … “Laust, will you let me talk to him alone? Two minutes?”
He doesn’t answer, just turns his back on me and puts his phone in his pocket. He’s giving me a chance.
After Laust has gone out in the hall to the kitchen, I slowly get Frederik to sit down on the sofa, seated at my side. He’s still worked up; I hold his hand. “Frederik, what’s this plan?”
“I’ve figured out how we can rescue the school.”
Laust sticks his head back in the room. “Mia, I’m holding you responsible if he smashes anything.”
Then he’s gone again.
Assuming my gentlest voice, I ask, “Why didn’t you just ask to call Laust and suggest your plan on the phone? Wouldn’t that have been a lot easier?”
“I did call him. Often. But he hung up on me every time.”
Now I know he’s lying again. Shit. Only Niklas and I know the codes for the phones. Why do I keep having these moments where I believe him? They just wear me out.
Softly, I say, “Fine. Come along, Frederik, we’re leaving now.”
“I’m not going before Laust says he’ll save the school.”
“Yes you are. Come, we’re leaving.”
“No.”
I’m used to him fighting me tooth and nail until finally he does what I say anyway. I get up. “Come Frederik, we’re going now.”
“I won’t. I’m not leaving.”
“But you never called Laust, damn it. You can’t, after all.”
“I got permission to borrow Niklas’s phone, as long as I let him hear what I said.”
Right away I know he’s telling the truth. And the repercussions of what Niklas has done are enormous. “But we’re involved in a court case, God damn it! Neither of us is supposed to talk to Laust unless we’ve agreed with Bernard first about what we’re going to say.”
Frederik looks up at me. “Bernard? But he’s not our lawyer anymore.”
“No no, I know that. Not Bernard. The new … Neither of us is supposed to talk to Laust unless we’ve agreed with the new lawyer …”
It comes to me in a flash: the strong urge to be done with it all. As if it were unfolding before me, I see how I take quick long strides out to Laust and Anja’s kitchen without letting anything distract me. How I find Laust’s carving knife on the left side of the fourth drawer from the top. How I — before I myself or anyone else has a chance to think or feel a thing — draw it across my throat. Freedom. Joy. It’s over.
The silence, the sense of purpose, the knife.
One of Frederik’s psychiatrists told me that when she’s making a diagnosis, it’s important for her to listen to her own feelings. If a patient makes her nervous, it might be because the patient is afraid and can ease his fear by spreading it. Or if a patient makes her confused, perhaps it’s because he finds life chaotic.
Frederik sits at my side. He’s tensed like a boxer waiting for the fight bell to ring for the next round, but I have to take these suicidal impulses seriously. Only by listening to them will I be able to understand him.
And it comes to me that when we get out of here, we need to drive to the psychiatric emergency room at Hillerød Hospital. I’ll have to put up with sitting by myself again in some sad waiting room while he’s being examined — this time for life-threatening depression. But if he’s going to give me such vivid fantasies, I don’t dare shoulder the responsibility for him alone.
• • •
It’s Sunday. For four days, Frederik’s been in the hospital, under observation for depression. I’ve lain in bed since Friday afternoon. The curtains are drawn. The blackbird outside the window lacerates my ears, and nothing’ll stop it.
In another hour and a half, the realtor’s coming by with three families to see the house. Everything’s a mess, and I need to wash my hair before going out. I can’t put it off any longer.
While I’m standing under the showerhead, I hear my cell phone ring. Could it be Bernard, wanting to take on our case and see me again? I run to the bedroom and find the phone on the dresser, but the display doesn’t show any calls. For a moment — perhaps longer — I sit naked on the edge of the bed, though it makes the mattress wet.
Back in the shower. It smells bad in here, I think. I need to air it out before the buyers come — better that it’s too cold than that it stinks. Now the cell’s ringing again. Or is it? There’s an echo of distant melody, my ringtone, but it might just be the shower water splashing on the floor and the crooked green tiles. The tones could be arising spontaneously.
I run back to the bedroom anyhow. Once more there haven’t been any calls, and once more I sit down on the bed.
This time I leave the cell on the table in the bathroom while I finish showering, and when I’ve dried my hair, I bring up his number. It’s something I’ve been doing often, each time with some convoluted new pretext in my head, and each time I stop myself before the decisive depression of the call button. The pretexts are all too transparent anyway.
Now I’ve found the simplest, most watertight excuse yet. I press the button, and when he answers I assume my most innocent voice.
“Hi Bernard, it’s Mia. Sorry I didn’t take your call, but I was in the shower.”
“What?”
“Yes. You called, but I was in the shower.”
“I didn’t call.”
“Well that’s weird. I must have been looking at a list of old calls … Well, uh, you’ll have to excuse me.”
It’s quiet for a bit.
His voice. “How are you doing?”
The voice is deep, it booms from my cell’s tiny speaker in a way that it doesn’t boom in person. I know both timbres so well. We actually don’t need to talk anymore. That was all, I just needed to hear his voice. Now I can relax, now everything’s better.
He asks again. “How are you, Mia?”