“Interior design, I think. I like making homes beautiful.”
“Why don’t you do it, then?”
Alice hadn’t even designed the interior of her own home. That had been done by an expensive and much-hyped designer with a long list of Lidingö villas in his portfolio.
Alice shrugged her shoulders again.
“Then who’d look after the children?”
Faye opened her eyes wide and looked around the living room.
“The same person who does now. The au pair! Honestly, though, don’t you ever dream about doing anything else? Doing what you really want, independent of the children and Henrik? Being your own person?”
She was drunk, she knew that, but she couldn’t stop herself. She wanted to nudge open the door to Alice’s gilded cage, if only for a brief moment. Though they seemed to be living the same life, the differences between them were immense. She had an education to fall back on, and she had made a conscious decision, together with Jack, because they both thought it was for the good of their family. Unlike Alice, she wasn’t dependent upon her husband.
Faye drank some more wine. At least the child would get one hell of a hangover as a parting gift.
A lump rose to her throat and she let out a cough.
“I am my own person,” Alice said. “I don’t want to change anything.”
She moistened her lips. She really was like something out of a fairytale. Her peacock’s feathers were shimmering.
“You’re extremely beautiful,” Faye said.
“Thank you.”
Alice turned toward her with a smile, but Faye wasn’t quite ready to let it go yet.
“Doesn’t it bother you that Henrik would never look at you if you weren’t? That that’s why we’re in this house? Because we deserve to be shown off? Like dolls. Well, I used to be worth showing off, anyway.”
She poured herself more wine, hadn’t even noticed she’d finished the last.
“Stop it. You know very well that that’s not the case.”
“Yes, it is, it very clearly is.”
Alice didn’t answer, but held her glass out for Faye to refill it. The calories in wine evidently didn’t seem to count in Alice’s world.
A silence descended. Faye sighed. From farther inside the house came the sound of children yelling.
“Did you know that I’ve always envied you?” Alice mumbled.
Faye looked at her in surprise. There was something new, something sad in Alice’s eyes. Was this a glimpse of the real Alice?
“No,” she said. “I had no idea.”
“Henrik always speaks so warmly about you, says you’re the smartest woman he’s ever met. You understand the things they talk about, you understand the business. You eat what you like, you drink beer, you make them laugh. It’s probably that—the fact that you can make Henrik laugh—that I’m most envious of. He . . . well, he respects you.”
Faye shifted position. She couldn’t help thinking that a lot of what Alice had said was no longer true. She was describing the past. There was nothing left to envy. Nothing to respect. Sometimes she wondered if there ever had been, or if she had simply conjured up her own imagined version of what it had been like.
Sometimes unwelcome fragments of memory popped up. Of all the times she hadn’t been able to get hold of Jack when she needed him. Some memories, such as Julienne’s birth, were so painful that she daren’t go anywhere near them. So she suppressed them. And forgave. Over and over again.
Faye shifted on the sofa. Put the wineglass down on a side table. Julienne came running in to ask if they could go for a swim in the pool.
“Are Carl and Saga going to go swimming too?” Faye asked, glancing at Alice.
“Yes!” Julienne said emphatically, nodding hard.
When Julienne had gone Alice let out a sigh.
“I know Henrik would never have married me if I hadn’t had my looks and my background. I’m not naïve. But he makes me happy, and he’s kind to me. I know women who are in a far worse position.” She raised her glass and took a sip. “As a woman in this damn society you’re not allowed to say that you want to be looked after. But that’s what I want. I want Henrik to be the man of the house. I don’t care if he fucks around from time to time.”
She gestured with her arm, almost spilling red wine on the white sofa.
Faye couldn’t take her eyes off her.
All of Jack’s stories about Henrik’s affairs, how had she ever thought they were funny? She had never imagined that Alice knew about them. Poor, beautiful Alice, who had given away her rights.
“Alice, I . . .” Her conscience was throbbing behind her temples.
“Don’t. I know what’s been going on. And I’m sure you know too.” Alice shrugged. “Men are men. But I’m the one he comes home to afterward. The one he sleeps next to, the one he eats breakfast with. Our children are the ones he plays with. I know he loves me. In his own way. I’m the mother of his children. To be honest, it’s not a problem for me anymore. I . . . I’ve gotten used to it.”
She looked out through the glass at the dark water.
“I could never manage that,” Faye said.
The warmth in her stomach. Jack wasn’t like Henrik. And she wasn’t like Alice.
Alice turned toward her.
“But, Faye, he . . .”
“Don’t say it!” Faye said, so loudly that Alice flinched. “I know that plenty of the men we know are unfaithful. The women too, come to that. If you’re okay with that, good for you. But Jack and I are soul mates! We’ve built up so much together. If you ever try to insinuate otherwise, I’ll destroy everything you have! Understand?”
The frightened look in Alice’s eyes forced Faye to control her anger. She couldn’t let Alice know who she really was. Who she had been.
She got to her feet, swaying badly.
“Thanks for a lovely evening. We’re going home now.”
When the front door closed behind her and Julienne, Faye turned around and looked through the window beside the door. Alice was still sitting on the sofa, staring out at the water.
STOCKHOLM, SEPTEMBER 2001
IN THE TAXI FROM ARLANDA I prepared myself for the possibility that Jack would disappear and life would go back to normal. Happiness only came to me in small doses. I tried to convince myself that I was satisfied with what I’d had as the taxi raced toward Stockholm.
But Jack took my hand in his as the northern suburbs rushed past outside the windows.
“What are you going to do today?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
We passed Järva Krog and the taxi slowed down as we hit the city traffic. I didn’t care. Quite the reverse.
“Me neither. Shall we go out and grab a beer?”
So we did. And that night I slept in Jack’s one-room apartment on Pontonjärgatan on Kungsholmen.
—
We spent the whole of the following morning in bed, until lunchtime. Talking, watching films, making love. But that afternoon my conscience got the better of me and I went out onto the balcony to study. The weekend in Barcelona had been wonderful, but I had a lot to catch up on.
Suddenly I heard a cry from the sofa where Jack was watching the news.
“What is it?” I called, but he didn’t answer.
I closed my book and went back inside.
Jack was sitting motionless in front of the screen. His face was drained of color.
The images being broadcast on CNN were worse than anything I’d ever seen. The planes. The exploding skyscrapers. Bodies fallings hundreds of feet. People jumping. People wandering the streets of Manhattan, bloody and covered with dust.
“What’s happening?” I stared at the screen in disbelief.
Jack looked up at me with tears in his eyes.
“A plane flew into the World Trade C
enter. At first everyone thought it was an accident, then suddenly another plane flew into the other tower. More planes have been hijacked. It looks like a terrorist attack.”
“Terrorists?”
“Yes.”
The situation in the studio was confused. We sat in front of the TV as if we’d been hypnotized. Numbed by sensory overload, panic. The unknown. The utterly unpredictable.
Jack got up and locked the front door. Fetched a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. When the towers fell, one after the other, we wept. The desolation, all the death, was such a contrast to our own happiness.
Suddenly I knew that I needed to be close to Jack, feel his strength, know that he would protect me. My scars were safe in his hands. He didn’t know they were there, but that didn’t matter. His presence soothed me anyway. It was as if his own scars fit into mine.
All at once I understood the baby boom of the 1940s. That men and women in times of crisis seek out comfort, they are drawn to instinctive, primal, basic responses. The security of reproduction, the very basis for the survival of the species.
I reached for the remote and muted the sound.
Jack looked at me in surprise.
“What . . . ?”
Something in my eyes silenced him. I pulled him to his feet. Undressed him, one item of clothing at a time, until he stood naked in front of me. Then he undressed me and we lay down on the sofa. When he pushed into me I was filled by a great feeling of security. The only thing that mattered was being able to lie here beneath him with his cock inside me. Inside me like life itself. I saw the images on the television in front of me, flickering on my retinas. Time after time they showed the footage of bodies falling from the burning towers. The smoke and flames as those immense, supposedly untouchable buildings fell.
I cried.
But I needed more. It wasn’t enough. Sometimes that worried me. That nothing would ever be enough.
“Harder,” I said.
Jack stopped. His heavy breathing calmed down and fell silent. Through the thin wall we heard the neighbors listening to the same news program.
“Fuck me as hard as you can,” I whispered. “Hurt me.”
I felt his hesitation.
“Why?”
“Don’t ask,” I replied. “It’s what I need right now.”
Jack looked into my eyes uncertainly, then did as I wanted. He took a firmer grip of my hips and thrust into me with increasing force. His breathing grew heavier and he tugged at my hair. Without holding back. Without trying to be gentle.
It hurt, but I wanted it to hurt. The pain was familiar. It was like balm to my scars. Made me feel safe. The world was burning, and pain was my anchor.
The eleventh of September.
The date already had a place in my life. It was four years ago that day that Dad was arrested for Mom’s murder. A year after Mom had found Sebastian hanging from a rope in his closet.
I was fifteen when he died. Perhaps that was when I became the person I became. Perhaps that was the day I became Faye.
Jack was thrusting with increasing frenzy and I could hear that he was crying too. We were united in sorrow and pain, and when he finally collapsed on top of me I knew that we had shared a moment that neither of us would ever forget.
We sat on the sofa for a long time that afternoon and evening, holding each other’s hands as we watched the world burn.
—
The year that followed turned out to be the best of my life. The year that lay the foundation for our life and the inseparable ties that bound Jack and me together.
He told me all about his childhood. The insecurity, the fights, the constant lack of money. Christmases without Christmas presents, relatives by turns criticizing or taking pity on his father. How everything fell apart when his mother left the family. The home where everything gradually disappeared, sold or pawned, people turning up at odd hours to demand repayment of debts or to drink with his father. The relief when he had been able to leave that life behind.
I didn’t tell him anything. And Jack never brought up the subject of my former life. He had accepted that I was alone in the world. That there was nothing left. In a way I think he liked that. That I was his, and his alone. We had only each other, and he could be my hero.
Jack and I would meet up in the bars around Hantverkargatan or in Chinatown after school, sometimes just the two of us, sometimes with Henrik and Chris, we would talk about life, economics, politics, and dreams. We were all equals, though Chris and I often felt like we were queens in Jack and Henrik’s world. Sometimes I noticed Jack staring at me jealously when he saw the way other men looked at me. And he didn’t like it when I did things on my own. He always wanted to know where I was, what I was doing. I thought his jealousy was enchanting. I wanted him to own me. And I stopped doing things without him. Chris occasionally protested, but we met so frequently as a foursome that it didn’t make much of a difference. I stopped dressing in short skirts and low-cut tops. Except when Jack and I were alone. Then he liked me to dress in clothes that were as tight, short, and low-cut as possible.
“You’re not like other women,” he often said.
I never asked what he meant. I just soaked it all up. Wanted to be different.
We had sex everywhere. Sometimes we arranged to meet between lectures, giggling as we hurried into the restroom and tore each other’s clothes off. We fucked all over Stockholm. At the Central Library, in McDonald’s on Sveavägen, in Kronoberg Park, in an empty lecture hall, at Sturecompagniet, East, and Riche, in an empty metro car heading for Ropsten in the middle of the night, at private parties, in Henrik’s parents’ house and on the balcony. Two or three times a day. Jack couldn’t get enough of me. I wouldn’t have minded skipping a few, but the sex was good and he made me feel like the most desirable woman who had ever walked the earth. I got excited just from the way he looked at me and knowing how much he wanted me. He didn’t like it when I said no, he got grouchy and irritable, so I simply never said no. It was no more complicated than that, to my mind. If he was happy, I was happy.
The Karolinska Hospital. A fan was whirring monotonously. The saggy velour sofas groaned whenever anyone changed position. A cough echoed off the almost bare walls.
Faye was fiddling with her mobile, looking at pictures of her and Jack’s wedding. Their tanned, hopeful faces. The stylish, radiant guests. Expressen had sent a photographer; he had taken a picture from one of the hotel balconies. She would have preferred a smaller wedding, in Sweden. She would even have considered a registry office. But Jack had insisted on a big wedding in Italy. In a house overlooking Lake Como. Four hundred guests, only a handful of whom she knew. Strangers congratulating and air-kissing her behind her veil.
Jack had chosen her dress. A meringue fantasy in silk and toile, specially made for her by Lars Wallin. It was beautiful, but it wasn’t her. If the choice had been left to her, she would have picked something much simpler. But when she saw the look on Jack’s face as she walked toward him she was happy she hadn’t gone against his wishes.
She put her mobile down. Jack was going to be there any minute. He would run a hand through his hair, sit down, put his arm around her, and apologize for being late. For letting her sit here alone, waiting.
“We will bear happiness and unhappiness together,” as he had said in his beautiful speech at the wedding, a speech that made the female guests cry and look enviously at Faye.
She was the oldest of the women waiting, and the only one without a man by her side. Apart from a young girl who looked no older than sixteen at most, who had her mother with her. Boyfriends held their girlfriends, lovingly stroking the backs of their hands. Talking in low voices with sombre, attentive expressions. Everyone felt that something extremely private was being exposed to public scrutiny. Wanted to be alone. Without anyone looking on. Without anyone wondering. Every so often a nurse would come out and
call someone’s name. The rest of them would watch as she walked off.
Faye’s name was called and she glanced quickly at her phone again. No text from Jack. No missed call. She did a double-check that she actually had coverage.
She stood up and followed the nurse into a room. As she answered the introductory questions, she wondered if the nurse recognized her. Not that it made any difference. Faye assumed she was under an oath of confidentiality.
“Is anyone coming to pick you up later?” the nurse said.
Faye looked down at the table. She felt embarrassed, without knowing why.
“Yes. My husband.”
The fluorescent lights in the ceiling cast a cold light on the paper-covered bed.
“Okay. Some people like to walk around the corridors a bit to speed the process up and keep the pain under control. Just let me know if you need anything and I’ll keep an extra eye on you.”
“Thanks,” Faye said.
She still couldn’t look the nurse in the eye. But how could she explain why she was there on her own? She didn’t even understand why herself.
“You took the tablet yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“Good, here’s the second one.”
A pill in a plastic cup and a warm hand on her shoulder. She fought against the urge to lay her head in the nurse’s lap and cry. Instead she popped the pill into her mouth without looking at it.
“Take these as well,” the nurse said, putting some painkillers in front of her.
Faye swallowed them. She was used to swallowing.
—
Faye was lying down on a large yellow piece of furniture that resembled an armchair, looking up at the ceiling. At least she hadn’t had to lie on the green table and was grateful for the chance to lie undisturbed behind a screen. They had put a pair of diaper-like padded pants on her to catch the blood, and she could already feel herself bleeding. At the ultrasound the nurse had told her how old the embryo was, but she hadn’t paid attention to how many weeks, she didn’t want to know.
The Gilden Cage Page 12
