The Fredrik Backman Collection_A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, and Britt-Marie Was Here

by Fredrik Backman

  Mum comes out of the headmaster’s office after at least ten eternities of fairy tales, and then they cross the deserted playground without saying anything. Elsa gets into the backseat of Kia with her arms around her backpack. Mum looks unhappy.

  “Please, Elsa—”

  “It wasn’t me that started it! He said girls can’t be Spider-Man!”

  “Yes, but why do you fight?”

  “Just because!”

  “You’re not a little kid, Elsa. You always say I should treat you like a grown-up. So stop answering me like a little kid. Why do you fight?”

  Elsa pokes at the rubber seal in the door.

  “Because I’m tired of running.”

  And then Mum tries to reach into the back and caress her gently across her scratch marks, but Elsa snatches her head away.

  “I don’t know what to do.” Mum sighs, holding back her tears.

  “You don’t have to do anything,” Elsa mumbles.

  Mum backs Kia out of the parking area and drives off. They sit there in the sort of silent eternity that only mothers and daughters can build up between themselves.

  “Maybe we should go to a psychologist after all,” she says at last.

  Elsa shrugs.

  “Whatever.” That’s her second-favorite word in English.

  “I . . . Elsa . . . darling, I know what’s happened with Granny has hit you terribly hard. Death is hard for everyone—”

  “You don’t know anything!” Elsa interrupts and pulls so hard at the rubber seal that, when she lets go, it snaps back against the window with a loud noise.

  “I’m sad as well, Elsa,” says Mum, swallowing. “She was my mother, not just your grandmother.”

  “You hated her. So don’t talk rubbish.”

  “I did not hate her. She was my mother.”

  “You were always fighting! You’re probably just GLAD she’s dead!!!”

  Elsa wishes she’d never said that last bit. But it’s too late. There’s a silence lasting for all imaginable eternities, and she pokes at the rubber seal until its edge comes away from the door. Mum notices, but she doesn’t say anything. When they stop at a red light she puts her hands over her eyes and says resignedly, “I’m really trying here, Elsa. Really trying. I know I’m a bad mother and I’m not at home enough, but I’m really trying. . . .”

  Elsa doesn’t answer. Mum massages her temples.

  “Maybe we should talk to a psychologist anyway.”

  “You talk to a psychologist,” says Elsa.

  “Yeah. Maybe I should.”

  “Yeah. Maybe you should!”

  “Why are you so horrible?”

  “Why are YOU so horrible?”

  “Darling. I’m really sad about Granny dying but we have t—”

  “No you’re not!” And then something happens that hardly ever, ever happens. Mum loses her composure and yells:

  “YES I BLOODY AM! TRY TO UNDERSTAND THAT YOU’RE NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO’S CAPABLE OF BEING UPSET AND STOP BEING SUCH A LITTLE BRAT!”

  Mum and Elsa stare at each other. Mum covers her mouth with her hand.

  “Elsa . . . I . . . darl—”

  Elsa shakes her head and pulls off the entire rubber seal from the door in a single tug. She knows she’s won. When Mum loses control, Elsa wins every time.

  “Cut it out. It’s not good shouting like that,” she mumbles. And then she adds without so much as glancing at her mother: “Think about the baby.”

  7

  LEATHER

  It’s possible to love your grandmother for years and years without really knowing anything about her.

  It’s Tuesday when Elsa meets The Monster for the first time. School is better on Tuesdays. Elsa only has one bruise today, and bruises can be explained away by saying she’s been playing soccer.

  She sits in Audi. Audi is Dad’s car. It’s the exact opposite of Renault. Normally Dad picks her up from school every other Friday, because that’s when she stays with Dad and Lisette and Lisette’s children. Granny used to pick her up on all the other days and now Mum will have to do it. But today Mum and George have gone to a doctor to look at Halfie, so today Dad is picking her up even though it’s a Tuesday.

  Granny always came on time and stood at the gate. Dad is late and stays in Audi in the parking area.

  “What did you do to your eye?” Dad asks nervously.

  He came back from Spain this morning, because he went there with Lisette and Lisette’s children, but he hasn’t caught any sun because he doesn’t know how to.

  “We played soccer,” says Elsa.

  Granny would never have let her get away with the soccer story.

  But Dad isn’t Granny, so he just nods tentatively and asks her to be good enough to put on her seat belt. He does that very often. Nods tentatively. Dad is a tentative person. Mum is a perfectionist and Dad is a pedant and that was partly why their marriage didn’t work so well, Elsa figures. Because a perfectionist and a pedant are two very different things. When Mum and Dad did the cleaning, Mum wrote a minute-by-minute breakdown of the cleaning schedule, but then Dad would sort of get caught up with descaling the coffee percolator for two and a half hours, and you really can’t plan a life with a person like that around you, said Mum. The teachers at school always tell Elsa that her problem is her inability to concentrate, which is very odd, Elsa thinks, because Dad’s big problem is that he can’t stop concentrating.

  “So, what do you want to do?” asks Dad, indecisively putting his hands on the wheel.

  He often does that. Asks what Elsa would like to do. Because he very rarely wants to do anything himself. And this Tuesday was very unexpected for him: Dad is not very good at dealing with unexpected Tuesdays. That’s why Elsa only stays every other weekend with him, because after he met Lisette and she and her children moved in, Dad said it was too “messy” for Elsa there. When Granny found out, she phoned him and called him a Nazi at least ten times in a minute. That was a Nazi record, even for Granny. And when she’d hung up she turned to Elsa and spluttered, “Lisette? What sort of name is that?” And Elsa knew she didn’t really mean it, of course, because everyone likes Lisette—she has the same superpower as George. But Granny was the sort of person you brought with you when you went to war, and that was what Elsa loved about her.

  Dad’s always late picking Elsa up from school. Granny was never late. Elsa has tried to understand exactly what “irony” means and she’s fairly sure it’s that Dad is never late for anything other than picking up Elsa from school, and Granny was always late for everything except for that one thing.

  Dad fiddles with the wheel again.

  “So . . . where would you like to go today?”

  Elsa looks surprised, because it sounds as if he really means they’re going somewhere. He twists in his seat.

  “I was thinking maybe you’d like to do . . . something.”

  Elsa knows he’s only saying it to be nice. Because Dad doesn’t like doing things, Dad is not a doing type of person. Elsa looks at him. He looks at the steering wheel.

  “I think I’d just like to go home,” she says.

  Dad nods and looks disappointed and relieved at the same time, which is a facial expression that only he in the whole world has mastered. Because Dad never says no to Elsa, even though she sometimes wishes he would.

  “Audi is really nice,” she says when they’re halfway home and neither of them has said a word.

  She pats the glove compartment of Audi, as if it were a cat. New cars smell of soft leather, the polar opposite of the smell of old split leather in Granny’s flat. Elsa likes both smells, though she prefers living animals to dead ones that have been made into car seats. “You know what you’re getting with an Audi,” Dad says, nodding. His last car was also called Audi.

  Dad likes to know what he’s getting. One time last year they rearranged the shelves in the supermarket near where Dad and Lisette live, and Elsa had to run those tests she had seen advertised on the television, t
o make sure he hadn’t had a stroke.

  Once they get home, Dad gets out of Audi and goes with her to the entrance. Britt-Marie is on the other side of the door, hunched up like a livid little house pixie on guard. It occurs to Elsa that you always know no good can come from catching sight of Britt-Marie. “She’s like a letter from the tax authorities, that old biddy,” Granny used to say. Dad seems to agree—Britt-Marie is one of the few subjects on which he and Granny were in agreement. She’s holding a crossword magazine in her hand. Britt-Marie likes crosswords very much because there are very clear rules about how to do them. She only ever does them in pencil, though—Granny always said Britt-Marie was the sort of woman who would have to drink two glasses of wine and feel really wild and crazy to be able to fantasize about solving a crossword in ink.

  Dad offers a tentative hello, but Britt-Marie interrupts him.

  “Do you know whose this is?” she says, pointing at a stroller padlocked to the stair railing under the noticeboard.

  Only now does Elsa notice it. It’s odd that it should be there at all, because there are no babies in the house except Halfie, and she/he still gets a lift everywhere with Mum. But Britt-Marie seems unable to attach any value to this deeper philosophical question.

  “Strollers are not allowed in the entrance vestibule! They’re a fire risk!” she declares, firmly clasping her hands together so that the crossword magazine sticks out like a rather feeble sword.

  “Yes. It says on the notice here,” says Elsa, nodding helpfully and pointing at a neatly written sign right above the stroller, on which it is written: DO NOT LEAVE STROLLERS HERE: THEY ARE A FIRE RISK.

  “That’s what I mean!” Britt-Marie replies, with a slightly raised—but still well-meaning—voice.

  “I don’t understand,” says Dad, as if he doesn’t understand.

  “I am obviously wondering if you put this sign up! That’s what I’m wondering!” says Britt-Marie, taking a small step forward and then a very small step back as if to emphasize the gravity of this.

  “Is there something wrong with the notice?” asks Elsa.

  “Of course not, of course not. But it’s not common practice in this leaseholders’ association to simply put up signs in any old way without first clearing it with the other residents in the house!”

  “But there is no leaseholders’ association, is there?” asks Elsa.

  “No, but there’s going to be! And until there is, I’m in charge of information in the association committee. It’s not common practice to put up signs without notifying the head of information in the association committee!”

  She is interrupted by the bark of a dog, so loud that it rattles a pane of glass in the door.

  They all jump. Yesterday Elsa heard Mum telling George that Britt-Marie had called the police to say that Our Friend should be put down. It seems to have heard Britt-Marie’s voice now, and just like Granny, Our Friend can’t shut up for a second when that happens. Britt-Marie starts ranting about how that dog needs to be dealt with. Dad just looks uncomfortable. “Maybe someone tried to tell you but you weren’t home?” Elsa suggests to Britt-Marie, pointing at the sign on the wall. It works, at least temporarily. Britt-Marie forgets to be upset about Our Friend when she gets re-upset by the sign. Because the most important thing for her is not to run out of things to be upset about. Elsa briefly considers telling Britt-Marie to put up a sign letting the neighbors know that if they want to put up a notice they have to inform their neighbors first. For instance, by putting up a notice.

  The dog barks again from the flat a half-flight up. Britt-Marie purses her mouth.

  “I’ve called the police. I have! But of course they won’t do anything! They say we have to wait until tomorrow to see if the owner turns up!”

  Dad doesn’t answer, and Britt-Marie immediately interprets his silence as a sign that he’d love to hear more about Britt-Marie’s feelings on the topic.

  “Kent has rung the bell of that flat lots of times, but no one even lives there! As if that wild animal lives there on its own! Would you believe it?”

  Elsa holds her breath, but no more barking can be heard—as if Our Friend has summoned some common sense at last.

  The entrance door behind Dad opens and the woman in the black skirt comes in. Her heels click against the floor and she’s talking loudly into the white cord attached to her ear.

  “Hello!” says Elsa, to deflect Britt-Marie’s attention from any further barking.

  “Hello,” says Dad, to be polite.

  “Well, well. Hello there,” says Britt-Marie, as if the woman is potentially a criminal notice-poster. The woman doesn’t answer. She just talks even louder into the white cable, gives all three of them an irritated look, and disappears up the stairs.

  There’s a long, strained silence in the stairwell after she has gone. Elsa’s dad is not so good at dealing with strained silences.

  “Helvetica,” he manages to say, in the middle of a nervous bout of throat-clearing.

  “Pardon me?” says Britt-Marie and purses her mouth even harder.

  “Helvetica. The font, I mean,” says Dad skittishly, nodding at the sign on the wall.“It’s a good . . . font.”

  Fonts are the sort of thing Dad finds important. One time when Mum was at a parents’ evening at Elsa’s school and Dad had called at the very last possible moment to say he couldn’t make it because of something that had come up at work, Mum, as a punishment, signed him up as a volunteer to do the posters for the school’s tag sale. Dad looked very doubtful about it when he found out. It took him three weeks to decide what sort of font the posters should have. When he brought them in to school, Elsa’s teacher didn’t want to put them up because they’d already had the sale—but Elsa’s father had apparently not understood what this had to do with it.

  It’s a little like Britt-Marie not really comprehending what the Helvetica font has to do with anything at all right now.

  Dad looks down at the floor and clears his throat again.

  “Do you have . . . keys?” he asks Elsa.

  She nods. They hug briefly. Relieved, Dad disappears out the door, and Elsa darts up the stairs before Britt-Marie has time to start talking to her again. Outside Our Friend’s flat she stops briefly, peers back over her shoulder to make sure Britt-Marie is not watching, then opens the mail slot to whisper, “Please, be quiet!” She knows that it understands. She hopes that it cares.

  She runs up the last flight of stairs with the keys to the flat in her hand, but she doesn’t go into Mum and George’s flat. Instead she opens Granny’s door. There are storage boxes and a scouring bucket in the kitchen; she tries not to pay any attention to those, but fails. She hops into the big wardrobe. The darkness inside the wardrobe settles around her, and no one knows she is crying.

  It used to be magic, this wardrobe. Elsa used to be able to lie full-length in it and only just reach the walls with her toes and fingertips. However much she grew, the wardrobe was exactly the right size. Granny maintained, of course, that it was all “faffing about because this wardrobe has always been exactly the same size,” but Elsa has measured it. So she knows.

  She lies down, stretching herself as far as she can. Touching both walls. In a few months she won’t have to reach. In a year she won’t be able to lie here at all. Because nothing will be magic anymore.

  She can hear Maud’s and Lennart’s muted voices in the flat, can smell their coffee. Elsa knows Samantha is also there long before she hears the sound of the bichon frisé’s paws in the living room and, shortly after, its snoring under Granny’s sofa table. Maud and Lennart are tidying up Granny’s flat and starting to pack up her things. Mum has asked them to help, and Elsa hates Mum for that. Hates everyone for it.

  Soon she hears Britt-Marie’s voice as well. As if she’s pursuing Maud and Lennart. She’s very angry. Only wants to talk about who’s had the cheek to put up that sign in the vestibule, and who’s been impudent enough to lock up that stroller directly under the sign. It s
eems very unclear, also to Britt-Marie herself, which of these two occurrences is the most upsetting to her. But at least she doesn’t mention Our Friend again.

  Elsa has been in the wardrobe for an hour when the boy with a syndrome comes crawling in. Through the half-open door Elsa sees his mother walking about, tidying, and how Maud carefully walks behind her, picking up the things that are falling all around her.

  Lennart puts a big platter of dreams outside the wardrobe. Elsa pulls them inside and closes the door, and then she and the boy with a syndrome eat them in silence. The boy doesn’t say anything, because he never does. That is one of Elsa’s favorite things about him.

  She hears George’s voice in the kitchen. It’s warm and reassuring; it asks if anyone wants eggs, because in that case he’ll cook eggs. Everyone likes George, it’s his superpower. Elsa hates him for that. Then Elsa hears her mum’s voice, and for a moment she wants to run out and throw herself into her arms. But she doesn’t, because she wants her mother to be upset. Elsa knows she has already won, but she wants Mum to know it too. Just to make sure she’s hurting as much as Elsa is about Granny dying.

  The boy falls asleep at the bottom of the wardrobe. His mother gently opens the door soon after, and crawls inside and lifts him out. It’s as if she knew he had fallen asleep the minute he did. Maybe that is her superpower.

  Moments later Maud crawls inside and carefully picks up all the things the boy’s mother dropped when she was picking him up.

  “Thanks for the cookies,” whispers Elsa.

  Maud pats her on the cheek and looks so upset on Elsa’s behalf that Elsa gets upset on Maud’s behalf.