Everything I Don't Remember
Page 21
“You can’t park here,” Grandma says.
“It’s fine. We’ll be quick.”
I empty the plastic bag into her suitcase. The photos and perfume bottles, Grandpa’s fur cap and the Lars Roos CD with the see-through grand piano. Then I follow her to the front door. I remember the mnemonic and enter the code.
“Did everything go well?” asks an aide I don’t recognize.
“Not too bad,” Grandma says.
“Oh my, what happened?”
“It’s not a big deal,” Grandma says, waving her foot.
“Ingrown nails,” I say.
We hug, I kiss her on the cheek, it’s rough and full of liver spots, she smells like Grandma, she will always smell like Grandma, which is adult diapers and old-lady perfume and Emser lozenges and a faint hint of Vademecum.
“Thanks for our day,” I say.
“That’s nothing to thank me for.”
I leave. I take the elevator down. Then I discover her suitcase and turn back. When I walk into the TV room she looks at me, throws out her arms, and cries:
“At last! I’ve been waiting so long!”
I hand over her suitcase, stand there for a few seconds. She wrinkles up her face.
“Well? If you’re waiting for a tip you’re wasting your time. I don’t have any change.”
When I get back to the car there’s a parking ticket on the windshield. It was written at five minutes to four. I curse, stuff the ticket into my wallet, and start the car.
*
That was the last time I saw Samuel. Although after the funeral I still saw him. Everywhere. I mean, not people who look like him, but him, I saw Samuel. For real. The real Samuel was walking around the streets of Stockholm. He was sitting at a cafe on Götgatan wearing a turquoise tank top, he was rushing by on an escalator and carrying a large kite, he was driving a silvery Citroën with rusty back tires as he spoke into one of those old-fashioned Bluetooth headsets that sits on your ear. And if it had been a movie I would have walked up and discovered that it wasn’t him at all, that it was someone else, an actor with similar features, but here, every time, I noticed that I looked away until the person had disappeared. I had no choice, it was like my body wanted to let me believe that he was still alive, that he was walking around with kites and driving Citroëns and sitting in cafes in turquoise tank tops.
*
I approach the place where it will happen, I exit the roundabout, I pass the gas station, the superstore, the McDonald’s drive-in. I’m not going terribly fast. I don’t recklessly try to pass any other cars. No one sees me, no one notices me. None of the oncoming cars have gone past the tree and thought, soon, right here, a car will go flying as if its driver has decided that the road should keep going straight ahead even though it curves to the left.
*
A few weeks after the funeral I heard Samuel’s voice. I was walking by Medborgarplatsen, I passed the lawn with the drummers and the drunks and the junkies and the class-cutting students and it’s not a place that has any link to Samuel at all. I had made it to, like, the fountain, and a few Roma were washing their clothes in the water, it was soapy, a couple of kids were cooling their feet, their mom was trying to get them to come back to their double stroller, the air smelled like grilled eggplant, a dog owner was sitting on a bench eating a popsicle with its paper peeled down like a banana, it was very normal, nothing was special, and suddenly I heard Samuel call my name. It’s true, I heard his voice, it sounded part happy, part annoyed, as if he had noticed me ages ago and was grumpy because he thought I had walked right by him, playing blind, as if we had decided to meet in this very spot and I had shown up twenty minutes late without calling.
*
I stop at the red light, I wait, I rev the engine, I think about Vandad, I think about Laide, I think about the house, I think about Grandma, I try to figure out how I feel, I tell myself I’m sad, I look at myself in the rear-view mirror, I try to cry, I try to squeeze out a few tears, but all I see is that blank face, that false body that has never felt a genuine emotion, that has never burst out in rage without considering it first, that has never kissed someone without thinking about how the kiss will look to outsiders, that is still waiting for emotion to win out over control someday, and when the red light turns green I put the pedal to the metal, I drive far too fast through the intersection, I pass the crosswalk going seventy, I take the first curve at ninety, whatever’s going to happen it has to happen now, I have to feel something, something has to make it in, it all can’t just keep trickling through, and when the road curves left I go straight, I didn’t plan it, it just happens, as the road stops and the car approaches the tree I’m still thinking, it’s fine, there’s no problem, my seatbelt must be good enough, the airbag will fix this, the hood of the car is hard, the tree is skinny, I don’t have any last thoughts, no last wishes, no flood of memories from my childhood, all I see is Panther putting on a turquoise turban and asking if I can tell it’s a towel, Grandma putting out her right hand and introducing herself, Laide looking up from the editorial page of Dagens Nyheter and roaring, “Have you read this piece of shit?” Vandad eating up the last slice of his two pizzas and asking if I’ve ever been in love with someone for real.
*
Even though my brain knew that Samuel was dead, my body spun around, my eyes searched for him, it was like my body wanted to show my brain that it still had hope that Samuel would one day call my name. I heard his voice, crystal-clear. I am one hundred percent sure of it. You don’t have to believe me, but I know that he called out for me. It was him. I know it.
*
I’m sure that this isn’t the end, the tree is getting closer, soon it will plow its way through the hood of the car, the rotational forces will crush my brain, my internal organs will be ripped apart, but for now I have all the time in the world, there are the clouds, and further off the tunnel and the gravel pit and the soccer field and the highway and I think about the noise, I wonder what it will sound like, if it will echo, explode, crash, rumble, squeal, how far the sound will travel, will the people standing at the bus stop be the first ones to reach me, will the kids on the soccer field notice what has happened before the ambulance arrives, how loud does a crash have to be for it to be heard all the way into the future, how fast do you have to go to survive in someone’s memory, how close to death do you have to come to be worth being turned into history? I move my foot from the gas to the brake, I ought to brake, I have to brake, at the same time as the tree the tires the windshield the shards of glass the smash and then the silence. They say it happens quickly but they’re lying. It lasts forever. I’m still there. Waiting for the tree. And afterwards, as if there is an afterwards, there are no sirens. No voices. No explosion. Just the hissing sound of steam from the crumpled engine that has been shoved all the way into the front seat. The squeal of bent windshield wipers moving back and forth, back and forth. Running steps. Voices. Chirping birds. Sirens. From far off: the chimes of an ice-cream truck. The click of a phone taking pictures. The wind whistling through what was so recently a car and what was so recently a person. Now it is happening. Now it is happening. I smile when it happens.
THE SELF (2)
The first time I ever hear of Samuel I’m living in Berlin.
*
This is the last time we’ll see each other. Before we’re done I want you to show me the money. Put it on the table. I want to see it before I tell you the end.
*
I have just walked down to the cobblestone street. I’m bending over to unlock my bike when I hear a mewling sound behind me. I turn around to find my neighbor. Not the schizophrenic German war veteran who puts up signs all over the stairwell about how together we can “drive the talking dildos out of the walls.” Not the unemployed Portuguese architect. But that girl, the Swedish artist, who for some reason wants to be called Panther.
*
Here are my memories from the last day. Samuel and I hadn’t spoken in a month or so.
After he moved, I went out to Kungens Kurva now and then. I didn’t do anything in particular. I walked around the parking lot. I grabbed a coffee. Sometimes I stood in the place where it happened and thought about how much better it would have been if it had been me and not my brother. There was a note outside the transport school that said that the museum at Skansen was hiring new train drivers. I smuggled the note into my pocket and called the manager later that same day.
*
My neighbor is huddled outside the door, she has dark streaks of make-up on her cheeks. Several minutes pass before she manages to tell me what happened. She was standing at a market in Kreuzberg, someone called to say that her childhood friend had died in a car crash. Then she walked all the way home. Why didn’t you take the U-Bahn? I wonder. And why does the name Samuel sound familiar? Did I meet him? Was he the one who visited you last summer, the guy who was sitting at that outdoor restaurant with a friend as big as a bodyguard?
*
The train looked like a toy train but it went on tires instead of rails and it had a steering wheel and a stick shift, just like a bus. Three cars and one locomotive. The tourists loved it. The manager said that it was hard to maneuver the train, especially when it was packed full of tourists, because then it weighed over three tons. But for me, a person used to parallel parking fifteen-foot trucks at rush hour, it was a piece of cake.
“You’re a little older than the people we usually hire,” said the manager, but he said it as a compliment.
*
Three months later I move home from Berlin. I give up the novel project with the working title The Genderless Love Story, which I have spent four years not finishing. I return home to Stockholm with fewer pages than I had when I moved down.
*
But still I was nervous when it was time to drive my first circuit. I was wearing the red coverall. The nametag showed everyone my name. I had driven it a few times without any tourists so I could learn to time the guide voice. I knew how slowly I needed to drive for the English-speaking voice to say “Stockholm. Look at her. Isn’t she beautiful?” as we crossed the Djurgården bridge. I knew how quickly I needed to drive down Strandvägen for the voice to say “To the right we see the prestigious Royal Dramatic Theater” as we passed Dramaten. I knew I had to zoom past Kungsträdgården so we didn’t end up stuck on the bridge as the guide voice started talking about the palace and Gamla Stan. The manager explained that this part of the route was new, an experiment, but if all went well and I did a good job they would continue to run the tours through the city and it wasn’t out of the question that my short-term employment for this project could turn into a full-time job.
*
Then Grandma gets a blood clot. M’s dad has a heart attack. D’s aunt dies of lung cancer. A friend’s son sniffs glue and dies of cardiac arrest. B and P are run down by a drunk driver on Birger Jarlsgatan.
And then E, who—
E, who—
I try to write it, but it doesn’t work, I can’t write it, it’s too soon. Too soon? It’s too late, when will you understand that it is too late?
*
Up on Katarinavägen you could choose whichever speed you liked, because the voice went on and on about the view and the cobblestones and the historical buildings. On Fjällgatan we made a stop for coffee and ice cream and photos.
*
I ought to write it, I try to write it.
And then E, who—
E, who—
But I can’t, I can’t, if I write it it’s like it really happened. It did happen, when will you realize that it happened? It happened it happened it happened it happened.
*
Fifteen minutes later I was driving back toward Skansen. The voice coming from the speakers was automatic, all I had to do was drive at the correct speed and ignore the teenagers who were laughing and pointing.
*
After E’s funeral I start doing research on Samuel. I contact people who lived in his grandma’s house, I email his mom and sister, I call up the girl who rented her apartment to him, I have coffee with his old basketball coach. I convince myself that I am a part of the real world, that words are not more important than people, that all I want is to try to understand what happened. But is that really true?
*
After a few days at my new job I felt confident behind the wheel. I joked around with my coworkers, I brought my lunch in a lunchbox. I was finally on the right track. Soon I would be able to start paying back the loan from Hamza. I thought about reaching out to Samuel pretty often. But I didn’t do it. I didn’t call him and he didn’t call me.
*
I record voices and ask follow-up questions, I listen and nod as people say that it was an accident, he lost control, he ran into a tree, he fell asleep at the wheel, it wasn’t anyone’s fault, it really wasn’t anyone’s fault. The only one at fault would be Samuel, if he had been driving too fast. And maybe his uncles, if there was something wrong with the car.
*
It happened on a Thursday afternoon in April, two thousand twelve. I was up on Fjällgatan with the train. The group of tourists were a white-toothed American family, a few British girls, three young people from Japan, and two middle-aged guys, Italians or maybe Croatians, suntanned with expensive shoes. Everyone had been impressed by the view, had taken their photos, drunk their coffee, eaten their ice cream. Soon we would go back downtown. My phone vibrated. It was a foreign number. I answered.
*
People say that if it was anyone’s fault, it was the fault of the home. They ought to have taken better care of his grandma, if they had discovered her infected foot maybe she would have passed the simulator test and then maybe Samuel would have been in a better mood when he drove off.
*
Panther’s breathless voice told me what had happened. Sometimes I think about that phone call. What would have happened if I hadn’t answered. How long it would have been before I found out. I wouldn’t have gotten fired. I would have driven back downtown, waved goodbye to the tourists, parked the train, and gone home. But I answered the phone.
*
People say that the dementia home had nothing to do with it. It wasn’t the nursing staff’s fault, and it wasn’t the parking lot attendant’s fault, either. It was no one’s fault. But it never would have happened if Panther hadn’t moved away. She left him and stopped calling and her betrayal reminded him of other betrayals and that was what made him drive off the road.
*
Panther told me that someone had called her from the scene of the accident, they had found Samuel’s phone and dialed the most recently called number.
“It must have just happened, it was close to a gas station in Solberga. Apparently they’re waiting for the fire department.”
*
People say that’s a load of crap, he and Panther kept in touch, she called him on the last day, the last text he sent was to her. The only one who has any blame in this is Laide, because she said she loved him but she was never brave enough to let him in for real. She was terrified of the feelings he awoke in her and when he got too close she made him start doubting himself, he started to see himself through her critical gaze, and that was what made it impossible for him to keep living.
*
The line went dead, I thought: The fire department? Why do they need the fire department? Is the car on fire? Do they have to cut him out? My hands turned the key, my foot slammed on the accelerator.
“Woohoo!” shouted the American dad as the train leaped into action.
*
People say that’s not true. Laide had nothing to do with it. Their relationship lasted for a year and when it ended Samuel moved on, it took a month or two but then he started seeing other people and that was really what made him feel desperate, that he realized that it was possible to move on, that none of what had seemed so major was major enough for him to truly remember it, and that was why he aimed for the tree.
*
The
train whizzed down toward Katarinavägen, the tires squealed as I skidded onto Hornsgatan, the cars rattled, the wind howled, I just wanted to get there, I had nothing to lose, or what I had to lose was nothing compared to what I risked losing.
*
People say it all hinged on the house. It was those undocumented people’s fault, there were too many of them, it was the smokers’ fault, they threw their cigarette butts on the terrace, it was the neighbor’s fault, he set the fire, it was his family’s fault, they wouldn’t talk about anything but money.
*
The tourists were holding on tight, the children were crying, the pre-recorded guide voice kept speaking as if we were headed back to Skansen. As we passed the pool hall in Zinkensdamm the guide voice said, “To the left we can catch a glimpse of the famous restaurant where the Swedish Academy have their weekly meetings” and as we crossed Ringvägen and were honked at by a bus and passed the Chinese pub that did the Asian buffet the voice said, “After the Swedish Castle you will see the Swedish Government building, or as the Swedes call it: the Riksdag.” As we zoomed out of town across the Liljeholm bridge the voice said, “We are now returning to Östermalm—one of Stockholm’s most affluent areas.”
*
People say that’s a load of crap. It was only one person’s fault, and that person is Vandad.
*
We passed cars on the left, people pointed and laughed, one of the tourists shouted:
“Hello please where are we going please?”
But I thought, to hell with them, I didn’t have time, I just had to get there, it wasn’t too much farther. As we came out of the roundabout in Västberga and passed the industrial area and the gas station I heard the guide voice saying, “Honestly—have you ever seen a more beautiful view? This is why Stockholm is called the Venice of the North.”
*
People say Vandad would do anything for cash. He was emotionally disturbed. He would have sold his own mom for a thousand kronor.
*