The doorbell rang. I felt tired and not in the mood to meet new people.
“That’s probably him,” Sune said, and sprang for the door.
I found my most enchanting smile.
“Hi there,” Sune said, and they exchanged a fist bump. As the guy stepped into the light of the hallway, I realized why Sune had been so eager to invite this guy over. He was in his late twenties, about the same age as Sune. It made sense. Sune was always hanging out with my friends and me. We were all in our thirties, and of course he needed someone a little younger to talk to every now and then. The two of them seemed to hit it off extremely well.
“This is Rebekka,” Sune said. “Rebekka meet Jeppe.”
The guy stepped forward with a shy smile. “Hello,” he said. I shook his hand. He seemed like he would rather have given me a fist bump as well.
Sune grabbed his shoulder. “Come meet the kids.”
Sune pulled Jeppe into the living room, where the kids were playing on the X-box. I returned to the kitchen, where William was sitting in his playpen, trying to fit square blocks into round holes. I chopped the salad, and put in tomatoes and some broccoli to make it fill more.
“So, who’s the new guy?” My dad entered the kitchen, leaning on his cane.
I smiled. He hadn’t been out of bed all day. He was very pale. He had lost a lot of weight from lying still. He suddenly looked so old. I kissed his cheek and helped him sit on one of the kitchen chairs.
“That’s Jeppe. He just moved in next door.”
“That’s good,” my dad said. “Sune got a friend to play with.”
I chuckled. That was exactly how I felt. Just like when you go somewhere and your kid finds someone to play with. I felt a little relieved. Maybe Sune would stop nagging me about moving out and getting our own place.
“You talk to your sister lately?” my dad asked.
“Not since Christmas. Why?”
I felt a pinch of guilt. My sister lived fifteen minutes from us, yet I didn’t see her much. She was always busy with her career and family, and she always made sure I knew how great she was doing. I didn’t like to spend much time with her, since I hated how she always criticized me and rubbed in my face how perfect she was. Plus, she had cared for my dad in the years after our mother died, so when I returned to Karrebaeksminde, she saw it as her way to get out of having to care for him anymore. It was my turn.
“Maybe I should call her,” I said. “Maybe tomorrow.”
“Do that. Now, is dinner ready soon?”
“As a matter of fact, it is,” I said, and looked at the timer on the stove. It rang at that exact moment, and I pulled out the lasagna.
“Dinner!” I yelled.
I placed the lasagna on the table and waited for the sound of feet running towards the kitchen, but it remained quiet.
“Maybe they didn’t hear you,” my dad said.
“Maybe.” I walked to the living room, where they were all sitting in front of the TV, while Jeppe was holding the controller for the X-box.
“He’s really good at playing Skylander, Mom,” Julie said.
Tobias looked at Jeppe with sparkling eyes. “Good? He’s excellent!” he exclaimed.
Sune seemed to be the most excited of them all. “You should have seen what he just did.”
“And he knows all the cheat codes, Mom,” Julie said.
“That’s all very nice, dear, but dinner is on the table.”
“Ah, Mom,” Julie said. “We were having so much fun.”
“Yeah,” Tobias agreed.
“Can’t we eat in here?” Jeppe asked.
I stared, baffled, at the man my boyfriend had invited. He looked like a kid with the controller between his hands.
“Yeah!” Tobias said.
“Yeah, let’s do that, Mom,” Julie said.
I stared at the two of them and shook my head. “No way.”
It was nice to see them agree on something, though, and not fight about everything like they had been doing lately. But I wasn’t going to have dinner in the living room and have lasagna all over the couch and carpet.
“Oh, come on, Mom,” Julie said
“Yes, come on, Mom,” Sune repeated. “Jeppe is about to show us something epic.”
“Please?” Julie said.
I stared at the pack, who were now all watching me with pleading eyes. What was this? Were they all ganging up on me now? I couldn’t believe them. Especially not Sune.
“Please,” Sune said.
“You’re kidding me, right?” I said. I felt like I had a room full of kids. Even Jeppe was making pleading eyes at me.
“No!” I said. “I have made dinner, and I want us to eat it at the table together as a family.”
“Aw,” they said in unison. They all looked sad as they got up from the floor.
I hated being the one to ruin all the fun and felt anger build up towards Sune for not backing me up in this. He walked past me and put his arm on Jeppe’s shoulder. They looked like they had known each other all of their lives.
“You’ll just have to show us afterwards, right?” Sune said.
“Sure,” Jeppe said.
“Yay,” the kids cheered, as they walked into the kitchen where my dad was waiting.
16
THEY LITERALLY shoveled dinner down. Never had I seen my kids eat this fast. Or Sune, for that matter. None of them seemed to take any notice of the food or me. Sune was busy talking to Jeppe about games and computer hacking, which apparently, they also had in common.
I was divided about this situation. I was happy for Sune, that he had made a new friend, but I wasn’t sure I liked the way he simply ignored me.
“So, Jeppe, where are you from originally?” I asked, trying to make some adult conversation that didn’t have to do with computers.
Jeppe looked at me, and was about to answer, when Sune threw his fork on his plate. “I’m done. Anyone want to go back and see what else Jeppe can do?”
“Yaaay!” the kids yelled.
William squeezed a lump of lasagna between his fingers, and I had to wipe it off and give him his fork. Tobias and Julie got up and followed Sune and Jeppe into the living room without taking their plates out as they usually did.
I looked at my dad. “Can you believe them?”
My dad chuckled, then patted me on my shoulder. “Don’t make a big deal about it,” he said. “They’re just having fun.”
“I know.” I sighed and ate another piece of lasagna. “But I’m not a part of it. I feel like the kid that is being left out in school.”
“Then go join them,” he said.
I patted his hand on the table and shook my head. “Nah. I’d rather spend time with you. I don’t know anything about their games, and I don’t want to. Maybe I should just let it go, huh? Let them have their thing.”
“That’s my girl,” my dad said, and drank his cranberry juice that I bought for him. It was supposed prevent another bladder infection. The doctor had told me it would help. His last infection nearly killed him.
I finished my portion and helped my dad back upstairs. He smiled wearily when I kissed him and turned out the light. I had a bad feeling inside when I left the room, and wondered how long I would still have him. I didn’t dare to think of the day when he wasn’t here anymore. I was going to miss him so terribly. That was probably why I wasn’t in a hurry to find our own place yet. I wanted to spend as much time with him as possible, before it was too late.
I put William to bed, sang a couple of songs for him, then left his room and walked downstairs. I started cleaning up after our dinner, just as my phone rang. Unknown number. I picked it up.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Rebekka. This is David. Is this a bad time?”
I looked in the direction of the living room, where the kids were screaming in excitement. Sune was being the loudest of all of them.
“No. Not at all. Actually, I’m kind of glad to hear from you,” I said, and sat on a kitchen
chair.
“Oh, good. I don’t want to cause you any trouble. I sensed I wasn’t exactly welcome the last time I was at your house, and wondered if everything is okay?”
“Everything’s fine, I guess.”
“Ah, but see, there’s the problem. I can tell it’s not fine. I can hear it in your voice.”
“It’s a long story,” I said with a sigh. I suddenly longed for a cigarette. I hadn’t smoked in a long time, not since I got pregnant with William. I hadn’t thought much about it, but now I did. I felt like the walls of the house were closing in on me and I couldn’t breathe. I needed to get out before I started screaming.
“Listen. Do you want to meet up?” I asked. “I was thinking about going for a walk. Get out of the house a little. Maybe you would like to join me?”
17
I TOLD Sune I was going out for a walk, which wasn’t a lie, then told him William was sleeping upstairs. He was so occupied with the game and Jeppe, I wasn’t sure he even heard me. Julie did, however, and she said she would listen for William waking up.
I kissed her on the forehead. I knew she would be responsible and make sure Sune took care of William, just in case.
“I’ll only be gone for a little while,” I said, and left.
I met David at the marina, where I bought a package of cigarettes and two beers at a small newsstand. We sat on a bench. The marina seemed so desolate in the winter. In the summer, it was always buzzing with people from all the big yachts and sailboats.
An old fishing boat was swaying in the water in front of us. We chatted a little about this and that, and then shared a few memories from our time inside the limestone mines.
“So, what brought you to Karrebaeksminde?” I asked, and handed him a cigarette.
“Can I be completely honest?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said, and pulled out a cigarette and put it in my mouth. He lit it for me and lit his own. It tasted so good. I felt guilty afterwards, but continued anyway. I felt like I deserved it somehow.
David looked at me. “I came because of you.”
I coughed and drank some beer to make it stop. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I came to see you. Ever since I left that hospital, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”
Uh-oh! I had not seen that coming. How had I not seen this? I was just happy to see him.
“David, I’m…I have a boyfriend; we have a child together…”
“I know. I know. That’s not why I’m here. I just…I just feel like talking to you. You’re the only person who truly understands me. Who knows what I’ve been through and who…you know…gets it.”
I nodded. I had to admit I felt the same way. It was so hard to explain to people what I had been through that I had simply stopped trying. I just kept it all bottled up inside of me, and it made me miserable. I knew it did.
“I know what you mean,” I said, even though I feared I might be leading him on. I wasn’t looking for anything romantic, I hoped he understood that, but I had hoped he could be my friend. I needed one. I needed an adult to talk to, one that understood me. And he did.
“I’ve tried psychologists,” David said. “I’ve tried therapists; my doctor even suggested medicine to help me sleep, but I didn’t want it. Nothing has worked so far. I feel so wrong, no matter where I am. Except when I’m with you. Is that weird?”
“A little,” I said with a light chuckle. “But I feel the same. Most days I’m simply surviving. You know, making it through, even though I feel like I’m constantly in the wrong place. Like I’ve changed somehow. It’s hard to explain. It’s like I want more now. I can’t just get by anymore. I want the most out of every moment of my life now. I don’t want to miss a second of my kids’ lives; I don’t want to miss the last of my dad’s. I feel like I’m drifting in this sea of indifference, like I’m on a hamster wheel that I can’t escape. I feel like everyone is on it, but not everyone knows. Like I have somehow had my eyes opened to it, like it has been revealed to me, and now I don’t want to waste my life running inside of it anymore.” I paused and looked at him.
He stared at me.
“You think I’m nuts, don’t you?” I said.
“No, not at all. That’s exactly how I feel. I was in this black hole when the accident happened. I’ve never told anyone this, but I was actually about to kill myself when the ground opened up underneath my brother’s house. I was that depressed. Being swallowed into the sinkhole was probably the best thing that could have happened to me at that point. I have started to see it as a blessing, like a divine intervention of some sort. I usually don’t believe in that sort of thing, but…I don’t know. It’s just…It has changed everything.”
I smoked my cigarette and looked at the fishing boat. It was such a relief to finally talk to someone whom I could be completely honest with. Someone who didn’t think I was crazy for thinking and feeling the way I did.
“My only problem is, I don’t know what to do with it,” I said. “I don’t know how to break out of the hamster wheel, how to escape the indifference, how to live a life that really matters.”
David smoked his cigarette as well. “Me either,” he said. “I hoped you could help me figure it out. That’s the real reason why I came here. I thought you, somehow, were the answer.”
18
“GOOD MORNING!”
Jeppe peeked his head over the hedge with a smile. He scared the crap out of me, and I couldn’t stop the feeling that he’d been waiting behind the hedge for me to walk to my car.
“Have a nice day at work,” he said with a cheerful voice, and then added, “Tonight, I’ll bring some chicken wings for dinner.”
I was completely taken aback. Jeppe smiled a little shyly, and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. He was all alone in that house. But I also really wanted my family back. I didn’t want him to come over for dinner again. Still, I couldn’t really say anything but, “Okay.”
I drove off, feeling strange. Sune was going to drop off the kids, as usual, since he never had anything to do until nine at the earliest. Today, he didn’t have anything yet. As a freelance photographer, he would sometimes wait at home for hours until they suddenly called him to go somewhere. Sometimes, they would book him a few days in advance, but that was rare. As a matter of fact, he hadn’t had as much to do as he used to, and it was getting to him a little. There were entire days when he didn’t have any work to do, and he hated that.
I hoped we would get something at the paper today. We had come far on the story about the killings, but I still couldn’t get anything confirmed by the police, so I couldn’t write it. Jens-Ole thought about making one of those, The Newspaper learns from a reliable source that…articles, but up until now, I had refused that. I hated those kinds of stories, where you knew a lot of stuff, but couldn’t document it. So, I let the story linger for a little while, and instead decided to do a story about a couple that were building an organic house made entirely of sand on Enoe, the island outside of Karrebaeksminde. It was one of those stories with great pictures and it would be easy to write. I needed that. Jens-Ole liked the idea, and I called Sune to get him to be the photographer on it. He didn’t answer his phone.
“That’s odd,” I said to Sara. “He always answers his phone. He has to if he wants to work.”
I got a worried feeling in my stomach, wondering if there was something wrong, maybe something happened to one of the kids? I called him again, but still nothing.
“I’m gonna go home and pick him up,” I said to Sara, then grabbed my stuff and walked to my car. I drove home and rushed inside.
“Sune?”
No answer. The living room was empty, so was the kitchen. I ran upstairs, calling his name again.
“Sune?”
I opened the door to my dad’s bedroom. He was sound asleep, so I closed it again before I checked the kids’ bedrooms.
Maybe he went grocery shopping? Yes, that’s it. He went to shop and couldn’t hear hi
s phone. That has to be it.
I left the house and drove downtown to his favorite shopping center. I walked towards SuperBrugsen, where we always shopped, when I passed the Internet Café next to it, and spotted Sune’s bike parked outside.
“You’ve got to be kidding me?” I said.
I opened the door and walked into the darkness, only lit by the many screens. Loads of teenagers skipping school were staring at them, playing games where they were holding big guns.
“What the…?” I spotted Sune by one of the computers, and next to him sat Jeppe by another computer screen wearing a headset. They were grinning and poking each other, eating chips, and drinking sodas.
“What’s going on here?” I asked, and pulled Sune’s headset off.
“Oh, hi, Rebekka. What are you doing here?” Sune said.
“I have a job for you. Are you not picking up your phone anymore?”
Sune grabbed his phone from the table. “Sorry. I didn’t hear it,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Rebekka,” Jeppe said. “I thought I’d take him out and have a little fun. He seemed so bored at the house.”
I forced a smile. “Well, Sune can’t play anymore.”
19
EXACTLY WHEN their parents consulted the doctor for help, the man couldn’t remember, but he remembered going to the clinic numerous times during his childhood. He remembered driving for a long time, then sitting in a strange office furnished with a couch, Oriental rugs, and lots of plants that reminded him more of a living room than a doctor’s office. He also remembered the pictures and sculptures of erect phalluses and vaginas. But, most of all, he remembered how his sister hated the doctor. How she loathed coming to his office. How she would scream and yell every time they told her that’s where they were going.
Their parents, on the other hand, adored the doctor. The man remembered how his mother listened attentively to everything the doctor said, and how his words soon became law in their home.