So who cares that Bernard didn’t get this way until after his and Lærke’s accident. I can no longer see that it makes any difference.
• • •
Though we both told our families that we want divorces, there’s still a lot of juggling we need to do to keep their daily lives functioning, and so make the breakups as easy on them as possible.
Bernard’s moved out of his lovely house in Brede, and his in-laws have moved in to take care of Lærke. That also lets them spend a lot of time with the twins, who’ve just begun gymnasium.
Yet it’s only a temporary solution. Bernard will probably move back in with the boys soon, and Lærke will enter an institution nearby, where he says he’ll visit her every day. He’ll never stop seeing her. He just needs to have a life of his own.
But it caught Lærke completely off guard to hear that Bernard missed having an equal partner in his marriage. The doctor’s prescribed her some sedatives, yet she still weeps and talks about him all day long at the handicapped center. Bernard’s had long discussions with her doctor and nurses about how to make everything as good as possible for her, and they’re full of advice, having encountered this situation hundreds of times before.
And then there are the kids. We knew that if we were ever going to have a good relationship with each other’s offspring, we couldn’t just barge into their lives the day after the breakups. So Bernard hasn’t been over to our apartment yet, and I make sure I’m home every morning when Niklas gets up for school.
Meanwhile, in the middle of this earthquake that’s turning everyone’s life upside down, Bernard and I have been like teenagers: living on cheap food, cheap wine, sex, love, and endless gazing into each other’s eyes. We savor each day in the small student apartment he’s sublet in Nørrebro, Copenhagen’s most bohemian neighborhood.
One afternoon, I’m sitting with Andrea in a café nearby and telling her how happy I am.
“I’ve found the man of my dreams!” I exclaim. “I could live like this forever.”
We have an hour before Bernard meets me here to take me to the opera.
Andrea looks tired. As usual, she isn’t wearing any makeup, and she’s at least a month overdue for a haircut. She’s been telling me how, earlier today, she drove Ian to his fifth appointment for some bronchial problems caused by his paralysis.
“I only wish everything could fall into place for you too,” I say.
She quietly raises her coffee cup. “But everything is already in place for me. That is, if you mean living a good life.”
“Yes, a good life.” I don’t finish my thought. She knows quite well that what I wish for her is my form of happiness — a new man.
She says, “Only in the old days did people think it was critically important for a woman to end up with one man instead of another. It’s the sort of thing that you once would have read in the last chapter of a noveclass="underline" Ah, she finally chose the doctor instead of the aristocrat. Hurray, you’d say, a happy ending! But now we know that that’s not the key to a good life. It’s a lie, an oppressive delusion.”
“The key isn’t whether you get one man instead of another? And that’s something we know?”
“Yes, it’s an antiquated way of thinking.”
“Then what is the key?”
“Well, happiness can occur when the brain’s level of dopamine and various other neurotransmitters rises. That happens when you have sex, win the lottery, get a new house, that sort of thing. But the levels fall back down a very short time later, and then you’re no happier than before.”
“So you’re saying that if we just think ahead a bit, nothing in life would really matter.”
“No, that’s not at all what I’m saying. Because there exists another form of happiness — when the level of activity in your left frontal lobe exceeds that in your right. This form of happiness doesn’t run dry. On the contrary, you can train it so that it keeps increasing your entire life.”
“So how exactly do you obtain this form of happiness?”
“You get it by doing good deeds, meditating regularly, and dedicating your life to something meaningful. These are all things that neuroscientists have measured and verified.”
“So you meditate and you’re happy.”
“That’s what I do. And I help Ian, and I help my kids. And yes, I’m happy. That’s what’s so brilliant about atheism, I think: it points the way to a worldview that’s infinitely richer and more beautiful than what you’ll find in any religious book. And it points out the most ethical approach to boot.”
And then I ask her something that perhaps I shouldn’t. “So you think I’d be happier in the long run if I went back to Frederik?”
“That’s not something I can really say, of course. Or … no. No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying that I think the difference isn’t as big as you make it out to be. Not as big for your life, anyway.”
• • •
I still wake at night from dreams where I’m in love with Frederik.
He and Niklas and I are on vacation in Greece. We’re having coffee and cake in the broiling sun near some ancient Greek ruins. Frederik wants to tease me, so he sprints down the slope next to the café tables and chairs, knowing that I’ll think it dangerous and won’t like it. But then he starts running too fast and can’t stop and he falls into a deep chasm at the bottom of the slope. I scream and wake up.
I’m always so unhappy when I wake from these dreams. Why the hell do I still love him when I’m asleep?
I turn on the light and get up. I want to go out and pee — and more than that, to stretch my legs and try to drive the dream from my body. I open the door to the hallway and there’s Niklas, standing outside my room.
He’s had his Kurt Cobain hair chopped off. He’s just as handsome without it, and now he looks even more like a man.
“What’s the matter?” I ask.
“You were talking.”
“Did I scream?”
“Yeah.”
“Sorry if I woke you. It was just a dream.”
Of course he’s been upset that his father and I are no longer together: nonetheless, I’d say my relation to him has improved. Since our talk by the freeway, there have been days now and then when he lets me in on something he’s been doing or thinking.
I suppose I’m still waking up as I tell him about the dream. As soon as I finish, he asks, “Do you think you might still love Dad?”
“Yes, definitely.”
But I need to find the right balance — more openness between us, but not too much. I don’t want to get him tangled up in all my layers of doubt.
Will I end up in a situation like last time if I go through with the divorce? There’s something within me that I don’t recognize. Last time I threw Frederik out I was happy, I wanted to paint, I wanted to meet another man. I had tons of plans. And then it all went south, and I’ve never understood why. Perhaps I simply can’t live without him. Which is precisely what Frederik says.
And my fear of dying without him — in some solitary fit of madness in the night — feels an awful lot like love.
Niklas shouldn’t be involved in any of this. He should hear nothing but what I’m convinced, 90 percent of the time anyway, is the truth.