Bernard presses his groin against mine, and I can feel his erection through his clothes. I prop myself against the counter with one hand, next to a high stack of dishes.
The front door opens. Niklas’s and Frederik’s footfalls move slowly toward the living room; they’re carrying something heavy.
Bernard and I release each other, and I step into the hall. “Super,” I say. “Wasn’t that hard to get up the stairs?”
“That’s why it took us so long,” Frederik says. “What have you two been doing?”
“We’ve been getting the kitchen sorted. It’s going to be nice.”
Niklas doesn’t say anything. I asked him if he could get some of his friends to help us move, but he didn’t want to.
Frederik is too sick to see through us; his suspicions come only in flashes. It’s not too bad, and I can generally maneuver him back into the naïve thought that Bernard’s our new friend who’s lending a hand to get things organized.
But does Niklas notice anything? Teenagers are so unpredictable; sometimes they see everything, other times it’s amazing how oblivious they are — especially when it comes to their parents’ love lives, right?
Besides Bernard, Andrea from the support group helped us pack things up two days ago, and Helena and Henning were here yesterday with a couple of other friends who haven’t defected yet. And then of course my in-laws have been here a lot.
Bernard and I have to pass each other in these unfurnished rooms without giving ourselves away. But if he raises his hand someplace in back of me, I notice; if he takes a step toward the bookcase, I sense it. I know when he’s about to take a breath before he lifts a moving box or calls out to my husband or son.
Back in the kitchen I tell him, “I was thinking we should put the globe glasses on this shelf.”
He leans back slightly, to counterbalance the box of plates and glasses he’s bearing. A cord of muscle bulges from the top of his forearm as he stands there holding it. “Do you use them more than the tall glasses?”
“Not really.”
“I could put them there, of course,” he says. “But if I put the tall glasses there instead, they’ll be easier to reach.”
I pull aimlessly at the dust rag I happen to have in hand. “Yes, that’d be better. Will they all fit on the shelf?”
“Hmm. What do you want on the shelf underneath?”
“Plates.”
He sets down the box and squats, holding the top edge of the cupboard door with one hand. A lovely hand, and so close.
“But the plates won’t take up all the space, will they?” He peers into the cupboard, and I know that he’s making an effort not to look directly at me.
“Then we can set the plates on the right,” I say, and I realize I’m speaking too quickly. “And the rest of the tall glasses next to them.” I’m blabbering, I need to pull myself together. “No, we’ll put the tall glasses over here instead.” It’s completely impossible to dial it down. “And the globe glasses here. And any glasses we don’t have room for, we’ll set all the way over there.”
“And then the small plates here?” He’s pointing to the side of where the large plates will go, but I find myself looking at his arm instead of where he’s pointing. I know what it’s like to bite into that bare wrist, to rub the thin pale skin on its inner side against the sensitive skin of my belly.
“Exactly, exactly. The small plates should go there.”
Exhausting! If I could only sit down on the kitchen floor next to him. For just one moment.
Niklas pokes his head into the kitchen. “Dad and I are going to bring up the speakers now.”
Bernard says, “I’ll go with you.”
Then they’re gone, and I sit down on the floor as if he were still here.
If we’d moved any place other than Farum Midtpunkt, we couldn’t have afforded for Frederik to have his own room, and I saw how I’d have to put up with even more of a mess with electronic widgets and sawdust than in the house on Station Road. But now we have an apartment with three bedrooms; Frederik will sleep by himself in one of them, and all his speaker-building clutter will move in with him.
Yet building speakers doesn’t play the same role in his life that it once did. He rarely talks about it anymore — though on the other hand, he won’t admit it was the illness that got him started on it either. When once in a while he does work on the speakers, it’s easy to think he’s merely trying to maintain his dignity and preserve the illusion that something about these last months has been positive.
The men’s voices return to the hallway and I hurry to get up.
“I can understand,” Bernard is saying. “It must be wretched not being able to enjoy music. Naturally, you’d want to do anything you could to get that pleasure back again.”
There’s a bump as they set the one speaker cabinet on the floor in Frederik’s room. Frederik sounds so calm, he sounds oddly like the old Frederik.
“If you contrast what other people do to make their homes look good, what I’m doing to make my home sound good is actually not that much. All the emphasis on visual appeal — what’s with that? Gorgeous mansions with unpleasant odors and awful-sounding stereo systems?”
I’ve heard him deliver this little lecture on good sound before, but his voice sounds so sensible now. Bernard brings out his most coherent and healthy side, talking to him as if they’re equals. And Bernard apparently knows a great deal about speakers too.
“Have you considered building ribbon speakers or electrostats instead?” he asks.
“Yes! I certainly have!” Frederik isn’t so well that he can control the urge to raise his voice in excitement when posed a concrete technical question. “It’s a difficult decision, and it may be that I’ll come to regret mine. But there have been a lot of advances in the field of dynamic drivers during the past ten years …”
Then they’re out the door and heading down the stairs again. I can hear from their footsteps that Niklas is with them. This is the kind of male conversation I’d like to expose him to. Men formulating themselves cogently. He shouldn’t be soaking up the side of his father that Henning brings out.
I drop the kitchen, though it’s far from finished, and go into the living room. Here’s where the men have set most of the things they’ve hauled up, but they haven’t put them where I think they should go. As I place a small bowl holding ballpoints, loose change, and other pocket detritus in a cabinet, I find a wad of thin white paper that looks as if it’s gone through the wash. I unfold it. It’s a supermarket receipt, with all my usual purchases — plus a tray of sushi and some filled chocolates.
It’d take so little. I could talk my way out of having bought some sushi that Frederik remembered nothing about, but at some point it’ll go south: Niklas or Frederik will answer my phone when it rings, and then I’ll yell at them with terror in my voice to just let it ring. And as soon as they don’t trust me anymore, it’ll all come tumbling down.
What else is there that could flush us out? Hundreds of things, if you think about it — and that’s exactly what Frederik’s doing, more and more with each day that passes.
Perhaps more than anything, there’s my mood on a day like today. Why don’t I seem devastated by having to rip my life up by the roots and move here? For the same reason that our seventeen-year-old son isn’t: because I’m somewhere else entirely, so head over heels that it’s only on the outermost surface that I register anything that’s happening.