A Sister in My House

by Linda Olsson

  “Nice pictures,” I said. “So good to get to see them. I saw them at the funeral, of course. And Anna came to see me in London a few years ago. But apart from that, I’m not sure how many years it’s been since I saw either of them. To me, it’s as if they’ve gone from young children to adults with no childhood in between.”

  Emma looked at me, her brows furrowed.

  “There may be something to that,” she said.

  I couldn’t quite interpret her expression, so I made no comment.

  “After Anna left home, we only saw her sporadically and often there were long gaps between her visits. She would appear without a warning, only to disappear for months without being in touch. In a way, I was surprised when she turned up at the funeral. I had hoped she would come, of course. But she didn’t like Mother. So perhaps she wanted to see it with her own eyes. See that Mother did not exist anymore.” Emma gave a joyless laugh.

  “Yes, I think I might have felt something similar. People have such diverse and sometimes strange reasons for attending funerals. I think I may have been hoping for some kind of closure.”

  I stopped, surprised at my words. I hadn’t really known this was how I felt about Mother’s funeral.

  “That’s why I came, I think. But it didn’t really help. I don’t know why I thought it would. You are forever attached to your mother. There had been so many years since we last met, Mother and I. At your place, probably. It might have been one of those Christmases we had together. And, as usual, I felt invisible. It was as if she had no interest in my life at all. I realize now that she had ended our relationship long before. She had no daughter, but I still had a mother. And I was reminded of how it felt to be completely ignored by someone who should be central in your life. In spite of everything, I suppose in a twisted way Mother always was. And however much I fought my feelings, they welled up. As they do now, when we talk about it.” I struggled to hold back tears and swallowed repeatedly.

  “You are mistaken, Maria. Completely mistaken.”

  I didn’t want to hear what she had to say, and I signaled the waiter. He approached, and I paid the bill, in spite of Emma’s protests.

  “It will balance out. You can pay for dinner one evening. Shall we walk to the cathedral?”

  Emma nodded and we left.

  I am not religious. Not surprising perhaps. I can’t remember that we ever went to church when I was growing up or that anybody ever talked about religion. I was baptized, though. Amanda and I were, probably because it was touch and go whether we were going to survive when we were born. But I was not confirmed. And if I had ever married, it would not have been in a church. But this rather modest church, which is yet referred to as “The Cathedral” by the locals, and which looks as if it watches the whole town where it sits perched on a high hill, is special to me. A kind of peace fills me when I enter. Often I am the only person inside, and nothing disturbs me. I can simultaneously enter my innermost self and abandon myself entirely. It is difficult to describe. I have not experienced anything like it anywhere else.

  So it was with a measure of trepidation that I wandered up the narrow streets with Emma. I was going to share with her another place that I would have liked to keep to myself. But she would not understand my feelings. To her, I was just taking her on a little tour of the town, including the church.

  We stepped inside the cool darkness. It is not a particularly ornate church, and I doubt that there is anything culturally or historically exceptional about it, even though the baroque altarpiece is almost obscenely extravagant. But Emma wanted to wander around and see what there was to see. I sat down at the end of one of the front pews. The whole space lay in half darkness, but I could see a few candles flickering inside some of the small side chapels, and there was a faint smell of wax in the air. I closed my eyes.

  When I looked up again, a while later, I realized I was alone. Emma must have slipped out without my noticing.

  She stood, leaning against the white wall, in the blinding sunlight outside. She had her face half-turned away from me, looking out over the sea below. And I saw her for the first time as she would appear to someone who didn’t know her. We carried such a long past, the two of us. We had somehow been given parts in the same play, without really understanding what it was about. We had played along, year after year, together yet not together at all. Whether we wanted it or not, we were inevitably connected by our common past. And they blocked the view, all those years. But in that brief moment when I spotted her there, outlined against the intensely blue sea, I thought I could see what my sister actually looked like.

  I realized that Emma was no longer young. Here was a decidedly middle-aged woman. Nor was she as beautiful as I had always thought. It was as if something had left her forever. Not just her youth, but a part of her personality. Something that used to hold her up, had given her that proud bearing and the natural elegance.

  And the realization made me want to weep.

  I didn’t want to see what life had done to Emma. On no condition did I want to be pulled into her life. Become aware of her needs. I really had no wish to have anything to do with her at all. Before she appeared here in Cadaqués I had thought Mother’s death had cut the last tie between us.

  But here I was, struggling to control my feelings.

  She must have become aware of my presence, and she turned and waved. I slowly wandered over and joined her by the wall.

  “I don’t like churches,” she said. “So I had to get out. Those dark spaces make me feel utterly forlorn. I wandered around and looked at the artwork, the paintings and sculptures. Not one image of a happy person. Just grief, pain, and sorrow. People killing each other, torturing each other. But not one single happy human being. Not one smile. I just can’t cope.”

  It was so unexpected that I couldn’t think of anything to say. What she said was as wrong as her bitten nails and the cigarettes. I just couldn’t reconcile it with the Emma I remembered. The Emma who had always wanted to smooth over even the slightest unpleasantness. Make everything pretty.

  “Oh, I just sit down inside and allow the stillness to take over,” I said eventually. “It feels like I can put myself aside for a moment. Be released from having to carry everything that is me. At the same time, I feel as if I am able to reconnect to something fundamental.”

  I laughed, a little embarrassed. Why did I tell her this?

  “I’m not sure how to explain it. It has nothing to do with religion. But it has helped me.”

  Emma’s blue eyes regarded me for a moment. “I envy you that, Maria.”

  * * *

  We did our grocery shopping on the way back and arrived home for a late lunch. Emma offered to make a salad, and I accepted gratefully and went upstairs and sat down by the computer.

  I opened my diary again.

  She asks for nothing. She is awfully easy to deal with. And yet she completely overwhelms me with her very presence. She already interferes with everything I do, just by being here. I wish that I had never heard from her. Or that I had never issued that damned invitation. Because now it would make no difference even if she left today. It is already too late.

  I sat staring at my own words. I could hear Emma working in the kitchen below. My sister was making lunch for us. I should be happy having her here. Normal sisters would laugh and chat and be comfortable together. But we moved as if walking on thin ice, scared that it might crack under our feet at the first misstep. Was that just me? Or was it equally awkward for Emma?

  I closed the computer and went downstairs to help with lunch.

  When we had eaten, we sat together on the terrace, Emma with her slim white legs in the sun and her upper body in the shade. I sat completely in the shade.

  “How do you pass the time when you are by yourself here?”

  “Time passes regardless, doesn’t it?”

  “Ah, you know what I me
an. What do you do when you’re not working? Doesn’t it get lonely and . . . well, empty?”

  I struggled to defend my aimless existence even to myself. I was ashamed of my empty life. So much harder, then, to justify it to Emma. Suddenly I felt a wave of unreasonable rage well up inside. What right did she have to question my life?

  “What about you? How do you fill your days?” I said instead. “I don’t even know if you have a job.”

  Emma was reclining in the sun chair and had closed her eyes, as if blinded by the sun that didn’t even reach her face. Her response took a moment. Finally, she turned her head and looked at me.

  “You, you have always had a job. Gone from one good position to another as it has pleased you, never having to worry.”

  “Strange description of my life. But, sure, I have always worked. I have supported myself since I left school. So, yes, that’s correct. If I have worried, you know nothing about it. And it’s none of your business.”

  Emma nodded slowly.

  “Fair enough. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. But to answer your question, no, I don’t have a job. It’s been a long time. First I stayed at home with the children. And then it wasn’t that easy to find something. Mariefred is such a small place. We moved there because that’s where Olof’s job was. It was a good place for the children too . . . So, well, that’s where we ended up.”

  I waited for her to continue.

  “Unlike you, I have no real education. Father thought it was ridiculous when I wanted to go to art school.”

  “But, God, you were an adult by then! Surely you could have decided for yourself?”

  Emma shrugged. “That’s not how it felt at the time. So I did a one-year course. Business Administration, it was called. But we really learned how to become secretaries, unaware that we trained for jobs that would soon disappear. It didn’t matter much, though. I only worked a few years before we married. But you know all this.”

  The conversation was drifting in an uncomfortable direction. I didn’t want to talk about Emma’s life. Certainly not about her father. And not about her and Olof. So I gave her what she asked for. An outline of my lonely life.

  “Like I said before, I do a little work in the morning. Then I take a few hours off. On good days I work in the afternoon too. And sometimes in the evening. But I am my own master, so sometimes I take a day off and go for a hike in the hills with my binoculars. There is rich and interesting birdlife here.”

  “That sounds like a very free life.”

  “It is. For now. I am working on a thesis in historical linguistics. But it’s something I have been working on for several years. I may never complete it.”

  What I had just said surprised me. I had given no thought to my abandoned thesis for a long time. To my great relief, she asked nothing further.

  “You don’t have a car?”

  “Haven’t felt the need for one. I’ll see. If I decide to stay, I may get one.”

  This line of questioning felt even more awkward. Where were her questions leading?

  “It’s not always easy to remember, in hindsight, what you once hoped for or had in mind. And, you know, Emma, it’s hardest when all your circumstances have altered, none of it your own doing. When nothing at all is as it was when you once made your decision.”

  Emma was lying with her eyes closed again. I wasn’t sure if she was listening. But then she spoke again.

  “Just recently, it struck me that I have not made a single decision. Small things, yes. Unimportant little decisions, sure. But none of the large, life-changing ones. It is as if I have just drifted along aimlessly all my life. I realized that I haven’t even allowed myself to feel very much. Perhaps because it would be too painful to admit that my life was the result of other people’s decisions. As if I had never really existed.”

  She sat up in the chair, with her legs pulled up and her arms around them. She looked out over the sea.

  “But then I realized it actually is a decision, this not making any decisions. It is deciding to shirk, to give the responsibility to someone else.”

  She turned her head and looked at me.

  “But I don’t know how to do it. Even the smallest decision fills me with apprehension. You have no idea how hard it was to write that e-mail to you.”

  I searched desperately for something to say.

  “It’s probably impossible for you to understand, Maria.”

  She didn’t sigh, but as she returned her gaze to the sea, it was as if her whole body gave a long sigh.

  I stood up and leaned on the railing. The metal was still warm under my hands. I still couldn’t think of a proper response and felt increasingly self-conscious.

  “Do you ever think about Mother?”

  The question appeared out of the blue. I had no idea what had prompted me to ask it.

  “Of course I do. Don’t you?”

  I shook my head. “No, I have tried to teach myself not to.”

  “Easy for you, perhaps. You were not there.”

  “Well, seventeen years is a long time. I was there all those years. My whole childhood, my youth.”

  “Were you? Were you really there, Maria? Were you ever present in any of our lives? I remember how I longed for you when you had left. How I missed your presence, even though you never seemed to notice me. It would have helped just knowing that you were asleep in the room next to mine. When you disappeared, it was as if the light dimmed. It became harder to see. And I could find no way out. Do you know, Maria, that was when I became a prisoner? That was when I lost the strength, the hope of ever getting away.”

  I heard her rise from the chair. She took the cigarette pack from her pocket and looked at me for permission. I nodded, and she lit one and inhaled deeply. I thought I could see how it calmed her. Or comforted her. We stood there, side by side, leaning against the railing.

  “Of course, it was not your fault. Nothing seems to be anybody’s fault when you look back. It’s as if everything just aimlessly happened. Evolved without anybody’s interference, and turned into a hopeless mess. A chaos where all you could do was to sit on the edge, hold on for your life, and hope that eventually a pattern would emerge. That something would point you in some direction. That somehow you would survive. Or at least that it would pass. That there would be an end.”

  She exhaled. A white, sheer cloud of smoke left her lips and lifted. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. The cropped blonde hair. The classical profile against the afternoon sky. And that cloud of smoke. For a second, I wished I had my camera available. And then I was ashamed that I had even had the thought.

  She stubbed out the cigarette and began to gather the plates and glasses from the table.

  “Just take what you can manage. I’ll take the rest,” I said. She nodded but said nothing. Then she turned and walked a little unsteadily across the floor toward the glass doors.

  For a moment, I was overcome by an impulse to stretch out my hand. To ask her to stay a little while. Talk to me a little longer.

  “Think about that walk tomorrow. You don’t need to decide now.”

  It looked like she stopped in her tracks. Then she turned to face me.

  “All of this is yours, Maria. Isn’t it? You found it. You chose it. You pay for it. Even if you don’t own it, it is yours.”

  The sound of a scooter passing in the alleyway below silenced her for a moment.

  “You know what, Maria? I have never had anything that was mine. Nothing. I wonder if you can understand what it is like to have nothing.”

  She carried on and disappeared down the stairs.

  * * *

  During the past year, I had learned to just let time pass. Allow hours and days to pass, often unable to tell what day or week it was. It was easier for me to tell the time of day. A quick glance out over the sea below was all I needed.

&
nbsp; I don’t know what I did after lunch. I sat in front of my laptop. Listened to music. Wrote a few lines in my strange diary. Responded to some e-mails. And when I looked up, it was late afternoon. I thought I had heard Emma leave the house at some stage, but I had not heard her return. So I was startled when I heard her voice from downstairs. Hers and a man’s. I stood up and looked out the window overlooking the entrance below, but I couldn’t see anybody. Then I heard the front door open and now the voices came from the kitchen.

  When Emma called my name, I suddenly felt stupid. As if I was hiding. I walked quickly down the stairs.

  Pau and Emma stood by the kitchen counter, and it looked like Emma was making coffee.

  “I came by to ask if you would like to come for a trip in my boat,” Pau said, and gave me quick peck on the cheek. “It will soon be time to take it out of the water, and I thought it might be fun for Emma to see a little more of the coast.”

  I glanced at Emma but couldn’t quite read her expression. It felt awkward to stand there, with Pau in my kitchen again. For the first time in such a long time. And I didn’t like that it had been Emma who let him in.

  “What do you say, Emma?” I could hear that I sounded curt, but I couldn’t think of anything to add.

  It felt like she took a little too long to respond.

  “Oh, I’m not sure. I don’t want you to feel like you have to look after me. I am happy just to stroll around . . .”

  “It’s no bother at all. The boat and I both need a last outing. You choose a day that suits. We can bring lunch and anchor in a bay somewhere. The weather is supposed to hold until after the weekend, I think.”

  We looked at each other, Emma and I. I wondered what she was thinking. If, like me, she weighed the advantage of having a third person around, to avoid being pulled into painful personal conversations, against the effort of pretending to be two normal sisters for a whole day.