More Bitter Than Death: A Novel Part 13

The nausea fills my whole body, from my head to my toes.

But today I make it to the outhouse. Kneeling, I vomit into the toilet.

"Were you outside?" Markus whispers sleepily when I return to the bed's warmth, stick my ice-cold feet between his powerful legs.

"Mm, I went to pee."

He pulls me up against him and I can feel his warm body, the perfect temperature. I've always been fascinated by his body, how muscular he is, how soft his hands are, how dry and never clammy, how they know exactly how to hold me, where, how hard.

He caresses my stomach. Kisses the back of my neck.

"You have gained a little weight," he says.

He sounds groggy, not quite awake. I slowly pull away to the other side of the bed, as far as I can now; the d.a.m.n bed is hopelessly narrow. I hope he'll fall asleep again as I stare out the window at all the darkness. Morning that isn't a morning, just a noiseless, cold darkness enveloping my little cottage.

I feel like we're alone in the world, with no friends. My patients are gone, my family too. Only Markus and I exist and my bed is the center of our universe.

Is that good or bad?

I hear him moving, propping himself up on his elbow, moving closer to me again, waking up.

And I sense the question before he asks it.

"Siri, is there something you want to . . . tell me?"

What do I tell him? The truth?

"You already know, right?" I say, my voice weak, brittle as the ice outside.

"Is it true?" Markus asks, fumbling for my hand in the darkness. When he finds it, he squeezes it, hard. "Is it true? Is it true? Is it true?" He's eager now, like a kid who has just gotten a present, something to be opened, inspected, and tried out.

No point in prolonging the inevitable.

"Yes, Markus, I'm pregnant. I really want to keep the baby, but . . . I want . . . to live by myself."

"Huh? What did you say? How . . . ? I don't understand what you mean. What do you mean, by yourself?"

"I want to live by myself. Here in the house. What part don't you understand?"

"But what about me? I'm . . . I'm going to be a father. I don't understand. Where do I fit in the picture?" Markus stammers.

You don't fit in the picture. I sigh and say, "Markus, I don't know. I feel so confused. I don't know if I'm ready for us to live together."

"Oh, I see. But you are ready to bring a baby into this world? Without a father?" He's upset. Which makes sense: in his eyes I must be the devil, I realize that of course.

"It's not like the baby's not going to have a father," I tell him. "You're going to be there and . . ."

"Where am I going to be?" he screams, and bolts out of bed. "Just where exactly did you think I was going to be? What role do you intend to allow me to play in your life? In my child's life?"

"Honey, don't be so mad. I don't know. I can't help it. It's not that I don't love you. I just don't want . . . I can't . . . you know. I don't want us to live together."

"Siri, I am so tired of taking your G.o.dd.a.m.n insanities into consideration all the time. You can't live with me. You can't meet my family. I don't want to have a kid with you if I don't get to partic.i.p.ate, on my own terms."

"No, well, but that's not exactly up to you, now, is it?" I say.

Of course, that comment was unnecessary. Did I really need to ram it down his throat, to rub in just how powerless he is in the face of the decision I have made totally on my own?

With surprising calm, he gets dressed, reaches for his backpack, and walks out into the hallway. I hear him putting on his coat. The door opens and shuts. I hear his footsteps fading away and the tinkling that sounds just like crushed gla.s.s as he shatters the brittle ice.

My office. It's light, but not particularly cozy, impersonal, you could certainly say. And that's how I want it. My clients come to meet Siri the therapist, not a private person with a penchant for geraniums or kilim rugs or art photography. My clients come to meet a professional, someone they can work through their fear with, without needing to repay the favor the way they would with a friend.

In the obligatory armchairs, upholstered in gray sheepskin, sit Mia and Patrik. Today I took the upright chair; I couldn't stand having Mia sit on it yet again while Patrik claimed the armchair.

They both look exhausted, drained of energy. Patrik's pale face gleams in various shades of white and green under the cold fluorescent lighting. Drops of water glisten in his dark stubble. Mia looks like she just rolled out of bed: baggy clothes, unwashed hair plastered in greasy strands around the pale flesh of her face, a strange matted area over her right ear, as if she had slept on that side for a long time and not combed her hair.

"No, it's not good. Not good at all, actually," Patrik says shaking his head. It's a sad gesture. It's as if all his usual aggression has vanished.

"Can you tell me about it?" I say encouragingly.

"I don't know," Patrik begins, faltering. "I don't know if this is going to work." He stops talking again and eyes me with an inscrutable expression, his jaws clenched tight, as if in a spasm.

"And you, Mia? Where are you today?" I ask.

"Where am I?" Mia says. She seems confused and our eyes meet for a second and it's like I'm peering right into the fog; all I can see is a damp, shrouded emptiness.

"What I mean is, how are you doing today?"

It's quiet for a moment.

"Fine, thank you." She says the words slowly, mechanically.

"Are you really fine? If I understand Patrik, he is worried about how you are doing."

Mia doesn't respond, gazes out the window instead, and unlike during our previous meetings, today she is sitting perfectly still, no telltale tremble at the corner of her mouth, no beads of sweat on her forehead. I clear my throat.

"Mia," I say. "I know that you haven't been doing well, but it is extremely important for the sake of therapy that you make an effort to express how you're feeling. Otherwise this isn't going to work. I can't help you if you withdraw like this. Do you understand?"

"Yeah . . . sure." Mia nods but stares vacantly out the window.

"So how are you actually doing?" I ask.

"It's . . . just fine, now." Mia speaks slowly and steadily, almost as if she were reading a storybook to a toddler, careful to enunciate each syllable.

"So it's better now than the last time we saw each other?"

"Yes, of course," she says. Then she is quiet and I wait for her to elaborate, but she doesn't.

"So what has gotten better?" I ask.

"I think it's fine, that's all," she says in the same steady voice, with the same stoic expression. Suddenly I hear sobbing from the other armchair. Patrik's long, skinny torso is leaning forward and his head is buried in his hands, his fingers compulsively ma.s.saging his scalp as his body shakes.

"d.a.m.n it, Mia," he howls, his voice filled with despair. "d.a.m.n it, I want this to work. I know I've said terrible things. I know I've let you down, left you taking care of the kids. But now I can't even . . . talk to you. It's like you've checked out. I don't even know where you are. Do you understand?"

"Here." I pa.s.s him the Kleenex box, but he doesn't notice.

"What's wrong with me?" Patrik wails. "Why are you shutting me out? Why does it have to be so hard?"

I turn to Mia again, who is still sitting in the same position in the armchair, looking out the window, which is now black. Her facial expression still impossible to read, she suddenly places her strong hand over his. And there's something wrong and frightening about this mechanical gesture. Her hand rests limply on top of his, like a piece of meat. Patrik turns his palm over and squeezes her hand hard.

"d.a.m.n it, Mia, can't we try again? I promise that it'll be better this time. I'll . . . help you. I promise."

She awkwardly pats his hairy hand and says in a monotone, "Of course we can."

Markus and I share a gla.s.s of wine on the flat rock formations by the water. It's cold but there's no wind even though the sky hangs over us, ominous and gray, and I can make out black clouds on the horizon. On top of our thick sweaters, jackets, and shoes, we've each wrapped ourselves in a throw blanket.

We sit like that in silence, watching the sea.

Markus holds the winegla.s.s, rotating it slowly, as if he were going to taste it. Markus rarely drinks, but I have the sense that he needs the wine today. He clears his throat and carefully sets the gla.s.s down in a hollow in the rock that's filled with brown pine needles.

I'm watching the black water, the leaves that turned yellow ages ago and are now drifting along the sh.o.r.e. I can just make out the slippery seaweed, a poisonous green undulating under the glossy black surface, imagine the fish traveling below, in a cold, dark, endless universe.

Stefan, in the middle of the cold. His head on a pillow of tangled seaweed. Curious sea creatures examining his pale, soft body, with tentacles, or suction cups, or what?

Tasting it, maybe?

Enough of that. That's enough of that.

Stefan, ever present. Despite the pa.s.sage of time, which supposedly heals all wounds.

I'm a psychologist who's supposed to help other people take control of their lives, but I can't let go of my own past. I'm human, Aina says. Like any old person, imperfect, weak, incapable.

"I have to ask you something," Markus says, looking at me with his pale eyes. "I mean, I've really been wondering."

He looks at me with a strange expression, a mixture of amazement, skepticism, and . . . disgust, as if I were some new breed of insect he had just discovered creeping along the foamy edge of the water.

"What?" My voice is feeble, weighed down by guilt.

"Did you love me, ever? Actually?" Markus asks.

"Markus, what a strange question. You know I love you. And why are you using the past tense?"

Markus's eyebrows are furrowed now. He doesn't believe me. "You say that, sure." Then he's quiet. "But . . ."

"But what?"

"But I wonder if you know what love is," he says.

I squirm. I don't like this discussion, but for Markus's sake I indulge it. "What do you mean? I don't know what love is?"

"I mean, if you really loved me, like I love you, then you wouldn't do this to me. You wouldn't take my child away from me and . . ."

"Enough already. I'm not taking any child. It's every bit as much yours as it is mine. I just want to live by myself. Like I do now, like we do now. That's all."

I watch Markus, twisting the fringes of the throw blanket so fiercely that his fingers go white. When he speaks his voice is hushed. "You wouldn't do this to me if you loved me. The way I love-"

"No? Well then, maybe I don't. Maybe I love you in my own way. Can't I do that? Why is your way the right way? And why can't everything be the way it usually is? Why can't we just continue to-"

"To what? Live in limbo? Be a couple and be single at the same time? Live together and apart? Be everything at the same time, which means we're . . . nothing. We have to make a decision, Siri. Not making a decision is also a kind of decision."

"I see," I say. "Well then-"

"Well then, what?" Markus says.

"Well then, I've decided."

Even before the outburst comes, I see it bubbling in him, see the clenched jaws, the redness spreading over his light skin, how he stands up, stiffly, with control.

"You are completely nuts! I hate you. I wish we'd never met. You've messed up my life. Do you get that? Do you get that?"

His words are like a blow to my solar plexus, they take my breath away, make me feel sick. I turn away from him, toward the sea, which rests quietly and infinitely undemanding before my feet, welcoming me, filling me with some kind of peace.

"You are completely . . . empty. Do you have any feelings at all?" he roars into my ear.

I curl up into a ball, like a little child trying to avoid a beating, but no blows come. Instead, out of the corner of my eye, I see him hurl the plaid blanket out over the dark surface of the water. It flutters in the faint breeze, coming to rest on the surface of the water, where it bobs for a bit before it sinks.

Excerpt from the Student Health Records, alvangen Elementary and Middle School