by Jay Quinn
“Why is he doing this? I thought they were fine aging where they are. I mean, why do they have to move?” Karl asked, dreading the answer he might get.
Sven sighed. “Karl, look… you know Dad. He’s got to feel like he’s in charge. He’s got to be the big dog. This is his decision. He’s given it a lot of thought and consideration, I’ll say that for him. But the main thing is he feels like he’s in control, got it? That’s very important for you to understand.”
Karl snorted. He knew his father. He had never not been in charge as long as he felt it was his business. Not until after Karl had graduated from college and married did he ever feel like his father loosened the reins. Only when he saw Karl on what he considered to be the right path did he let go entirely. “What does Mom think about this sudden urge to rearrange their lives?” Karl demanded.
Sven straightened his back, squared his shoulders, and gripped the steering wheel more tightly. Without looking at his brother, he calmly said, “That’s the worst of it, Karl. Mom has dementia. It’s not Alzheimer’s, it’s just geriatric, age-related dementia, and it’s not going to get anything but worse.”
Shocked, Karl sagged in his seat and rubbed his eyes tiredly. “How do you know this? I mean, besides the language stuff you told me about. Has she been tested or what?”
Sven stared resolutely ahead. “I have been taking her to specialists. She has been thoroughly tested—everything from shrinks to MRIs.” He sighed heavily and continued. “It’s the one thing Dad can’t control. And it’s fucking killing him.”
“How long has she got?” Karl asked awkwardly. “I mean, how long will she be herself?”
“That’s the bitch of it, Karl. Physically, she’s in great shape. She could live another fifteen years. But her mind will be gone long before she passes away.”
“Does she know?” Karl demanded.
“Yes, of course,” Sven said defensively. “You don’t think we would keep something like that from her, do you?”
“No, I don’t suppose you would,” Karl answered gently. “This place—this care community—can they help Mom?”
For the first time, Sven turned to look at him. “Yes. She’ll be able to stay with Dad as long as possible in their apartment. But when it goes past a certain point, when she can’t… when she can’t function anymore, she’ll be just a building away. Dad will be able to see her
Karl nodded and batted his hands against the air in small, futile gestures. “How long before that point?”
Sven slowed and came to a stop at a yield sign. “Just months, maybe a year if we’re lucky.”
“So soon,” Karl managed to say.
Sven checked both ways, then cut the big SUV’s wheels hard to the right and managed to turn the thing around in the intersection and head back in the direction of their parents’ house. “Not a word, Karl,” Sven said again. “Let Dad think he’s the one breaking all this to you.”
Karl nodded, and when Sven looked his way he said, “Yes, of course.” They rode a little way in silence before he gathered the courage to ask, “How bad is Mom right now?”
Sven shook his head and smiled. “Pretty much okay. It’s just that time is fluid for her. She’s stopped living in a straight line. You can be talking to her and she’s perfectly lucid one moment, and the next it could be an afternoon in 1984 or 1964. It’s subtle. She’s still pretty independent as long as she takes her meds. She’s not looney or anything, but she might forget she’s talking to you and start talking about you.” He snickered. “For some reason, I remind her of her brother Andreas, and she’ll start talking to him about me… about something I did when I was a kid. The best thing to do is go with it. She comes out of it herself.”
“Oh, boy.” Karl sighed.
“How’s your Swedish?” Sven asked rather smugly.
“About as good as it was when I was seven,” Karl responded bleakly.
“Just answer as best you can. Humor her, she’ll come back out of it pretty quickly,” Sven said. “Ja, mama. Tala mig hur mer.”
Karl understood this. Sven had said, “Yes, Mama. Tell me more.” Sven looked at him anxiously, and Karl forced himself to fit his stiff tongue to bend to the sounds that curved oddly in his mouth. “Ja, mama. Tala mig hur mer,’’ he repeated.
“That’s pretty good,” Sven encouraged him. “Don’t even try anything more complicated. What you just don’t want to do is frustrate her. She can get feisty if she thinks you’re playing dumb.”
“Okay,” Karl said miserably. “How does Dad deal with it? He hardly speaks Swedish at all.”
“Mainly he ignores her,” Sven said sullenly. “If it goes on too long, he calls me on my cell phone and asks me to calm her down. Once she thought he was just being difficult and told me she was going to spank him with the wooden spoon.”
Despite himself, Karl laughed. When he was very small, that’s how she disciplined him. She would grab a wooden spoon and swat the back of his thighs. He found the picture of his mother doing that to his father in their kitchen genuinely hilarious.
Sven laughed as well. “It’s not funny,” he said. “But it’s really interesting sometimes.”
“Oh, man,” Karl said, and looked as their house came into view. It sat serenely on a lawn that showed the meticulous hand of his father’s boredom in retirement. Every bush, shrub, and tree was manicured with the precision of a topiary garden. Beds of bright impatiens flowed serenely around the trees and along the hibiscus hedge bordering the driveway. It looked like a storybook home. “How in the hell do I deal with this?” he asked Sven.
Sven pulled into the drive behind their father’s Buick and turned off the engine. He pushed down the emergency brake to hold the big beast of a vehicle in place on the slight incline of the drive and said, “Just be yourself, Karl. It’ll all be okay.”
Karl looked at his brother and shook his head before letting himself out of the SUV and into the sunshine. As he walked to the rear of the vehicle to retrieve his suitcase, he suddenly felt very warm. His cotton sweater seemed to cling to him annoyingly. He was glad he had a polo shirt on underneath the sweater. As Sven opened the back hatch of the Excursion and pulled out the suitcase, Karl pulled his sweater over his head. When he opened his eyes after he’d pulled the sweater over his head, he saw his mother and father standing on the porch waiting to greet him.
His father was dressed in a pair of khakis, a golf shirt, and sneakers. His mother was similarly dressed, right down to the sneakers. They gazed at him with obvious delight.
How long had it been since he’d last seen them? Only a little more than a year. He and Caro and Melanie had flown down for Christmas only fourteen months before, but the sight of his parents stunned him. They seemed so small, so doll-like, that he was taken aback. He simply stared at them, frozen, until Frank raised his hand and Annike started off the porch toward him, raising her arms as she made her way down the brick-paved walkway to the drive.
Karl quickly pulled his arms from the sleeves of his sweater and stepped toward Annike. He found himself bending forward to allow himself to be enclosed by her embrace. Awkwardly, he wrapped his arms around her in return and hugged her slender form to his chest. She felt soft and very frail, and he was suddenly afraid he would hurt her by holding her so tightly, as if her birdlike bones could snap like twigs in his clumsy embrace.
“Min Karl,’’ she said softly, the Swedish sweet in his ears, as she grasped his shoulders and pulled him down so his cheeks could receive her kisses. “Min Karl har komma hem,” she said. My Karl has come home.
Karl gently moved his hands to her shoulders and straightened up to look down into her moist eyes. Easily, he found the words waiting. “JAG älska du Mom,” he said softly. I love you, Mom.
“Du er så vacker,” she replied. You are so handsome. She touched his cheek. “Min vacker pojke,” she said lovingly. My handsome boy.
“Son,” Frank said as he stepped up beside them and extended his hand.
Karl rele
ased his mother and, ignoring the hand, quickly hugged his father as well. At one time, he had been the same height as his father, but now he was amazed to see his father’s eyes lower than his own as he looked down into the old man’s face. His grin was the same, the bright flash of denture white in the tanned and freshly shaven face, but his eyes seemed to have lost a spark of some sort. As he looked at Karl lovingly, it seemed his gaze was shuttered somehow. There was an absence there, a withdrawal that Karl could not have anticipated. “Dad, you look great,” Karl said as he let his father go.
Approvingly, Frank reached up and grasped Karl’s shoulder. “You do, too, Son. Staying fit, I see. Are you swimming still?”
“Just about every day, Dad.” Karl replied. “Old habits are hard to break.”
Frank nodded and gave Karl a long once-over. “Keep it up. I’m almost eighty and my heart rate is the same as it was when I was forty. Swimming keeps you young.”
“Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad,” Sven said cheerfully.
To Karl, it seemed as if they ignored his brother, continuing to gaze at Karl’s face.
“Are you ready for some lunch?” Sven asked, and held up the bags from the deli.
“Did you remember my coleslaw?” Frank demanded.
“Sure thing, Dad,” Sven said, and took a step around them all. “I know Karl has got to be famished.”
“I have the table all set,” Annike said, and took Karl’s hand. “Come. Let’s go inside.”
Karl looked around for his carry-on bag and found it already in Frank’s clasp. The old man gently nudged his son along with one hand at the small of Karl’s back, tugging the carry-on behind him.
With Sven leading the way, they went in the front door and on to the breakfast nook next to the kitchen. Karl breathed in deeply the familiar smell of his old home. He allowed himself to be steered and led as his parents asked him what he wanted to drink and apologized for the temperature of the house. Annike let go of his hand once she had him positioned at his traditional seat at the table, already set for lunch. As Karl watched her move to her chair, something seemed amiss.
When he looked down at the table, he saw what was out of place. On each linen napkin, placed carefully next to each plate, rested an array of kitchen utensils. On his napkin lay a pair of tongs and a spatula. The other napkins bore a manual can opener, an egg timer, a pizza cutter, a small grater, and a carving knife. Wordlessly, Sven placed the bags of deli fare in the middle of the table and quickly began to collect the odd assortment of kitchen implements from each napkin. Annike and Frank sat down as if nothing were amiss at all, while Sven moved around the counter and into the kitchen.
“How was your flight?” Frank asked.
Annike placed her napkin on her lap and gave Karl her rapt attention.
“I upgraded to first class,” Karl began.
“Sven, bring me a beer when you come back,” Frank interrupted.
“I’ll just have water,” Annike added.
“It was a smooth trip, no bumps,” Karl continued and then said, “Sven, can I give you a hand?”
From the other side of the counter, Sven gave him a smile and shook his head. He pulled open a drawer and Karl watched as he pulled out the appropriate flatware and laid it on the counter. “Would you like a beer?” he asked Karl.
“Please,” Karl replied emphatically, and then looked at his mother and father in turn. “Caro and Mel are sorry they couldn’t get down today, but they’ll be here tomorrow afternoon. They are excited about the visit.”
“We’ve been counting the days,” Annike replied and sighed. “It will be so good for us all to be together.”
“Has Melanie still got her heart set on following that boy to New York?” Frank asked. “I don’t know why they just don’t go ahead and get married.”
Karl simply held up both hands in surrender. “I’ll let her explain it herself to you, Dad. She’s an adult, I’m sure she has her reasons.”
Sven rounded the counter hugging three bottles of beer against his chest, with one hand carrying the flatware and the other balancing a small blue plastic box on top of a glass of milk. He sat the glass of milk before their mother and put down the flatware before passing out the beers. Sitting next to Annike, he took the pillbox off the top of the glass of milk. Karl watched as he snapped open one of the tiny lids and extracted two pills. Then he snapped the lid shut and popped open another. Digging another pair of pills from the shallow container, he said, “Annike Preston, what am I going to do with you? You didn’t take your morning pills, and now you have lunch pills to take as well.”
“Leave her alone, Sven,” Frank said firmly.
Sven shot his father a tired look. “You are a big help, you know that, Frank?” Gently, he reached for his mother’s hand and carefully laid the pills on her open palm. “Moder, behaga. Ta din median nu. Du don’t vilja till få sjuk,” he said. Mother, please. Take your medicine now. You don’t want to get sick.
“I want to enjoy Karl,” Annike said petulantly. Then, “Den här förbanna pillren göra jag inte mig själv. I’ll bli sömnig likaledes,” she added m vehement Swedish. Those damn pills make me not myself. I’ll be sleepy as well.
“Goddamn it, Sven. Stop humoring her. She understands English and she needs to remember that,” Frank said irritably.
Ignoring him, Sven closed mother’s fingers over her pills and handed her the glass of milk.
Glaring at her son, Annike brought her hand to her mouth and slowly took a sip of her milk. Then she brought her napkin to her lips.
“Mother,” Sven said and shook his head.
Defeated, Annike put her napkin back in her lap and, taking up her glass, took two long swallows of milk. “Satisfied?” she asked Sven lightly, then turned to Karl. “If you live long enough, your children treat you like a child.”
“Mom,” Karl said gently. “Don’t skip your medicine because I’m here. You’ll make me sorry I came if you get sick.”
“If I have to take a nap, please forgive me. I so much want to spend time with you while you’re here, but the medicine makes me drowsy. You’ll understand, won’t you?”
“Of course I will, Mom,” Karl said, and took her hand. He smiled at her warmly, and Annike nodded and looked at Sven reproachfully.
“Let’s eat,” Frank said suddenly, and reached across the table for a bag. He opened it and pulled out a sandwich wrapped in paper. Opening it, he peered inside and declared, “Tuna salad,” before unceremoniously tossing the sandwich in the direction of Sven’s plate.
Karl watched as Sven picked the sandwich from the table and unwrapped it slowly. Karl reached for his beer and took a long pull. He hadn’t been in the house more than fifteen minutes and he had already learned a great deal about how life had changed in his family. He was suddenly aware of how long he had been away. And how he wished he’d never come.
Throughout lunch, Karl mostly remained quiet, eating his Reuben sandwich and ignoring his cold french fries. Around him, his brother and parents ate quietly as well, proffering only an occasional question about his work, which Karl deftly answered with enough information to give them an idea of his projects, without taxing them with details.
After everyone was finished eating, Sven stood and quickly cleared away the remains of the meal. As he moved from the table to the kitchen, loading the dishwasher and disposing of the trash, Karl saw his father watching his brother with a look that seemed to contain both resentment and appreciation. When Sven returned to the table with a bowl of fresh strawberries and dessert plates holding slices of pound cake, Frank took a plate and said, “I would say you’d make somebody a good wife, but evidently that didn’t work out so well for you, did it, boy?”
Karl looked at his brother with alarm, anticipating a sharp response. Instead, Sven chuckled and resumed his place at the table, where he took his mother’s plate and began to serve her a portion of the fresh strawberries. “I’m good at a lot of things, Dad.”
“Gay marriage.” Frank s
norted, then, looking at Karl, said, “Can you believe that son of a bitch left your brother after completely dominating his life for twenty-six years?”
Annike took up her fork and, before taking the bite, said, “Rob loves Sven. He’ll come back, you mark my words.”
“You’re better off without him,” Frank said to Sven, making his point with a jab of his fork. “For once in your life, you can think for yourself.”
Sven merely shrugged and turned his attention to his own plate.
“I should have beat the crap out of him—or both of you—when you were teenagers,” Frank said resignedly. “But I listened to your mother instead. Leave them alone, she said, they’ll outgrow it, she said. Now you’ve wasted your whole life, and for what?” he demanded.
Sven looked up from his plate and met his father’s eyes. “Frank, give it a rest. I’ve hardly wasted my life,” he said evenly. “And it really doesn’t concern you. I’m happy, okay?”
Frank turned to Karl and said, “He’s happy. If he had kids of his own, he’d be too busy to show up here all the time and try to run my house.”
“No, Frank,” Annike said sharply. “Sven is a good son. He is a tremendous help…”
“Yeah,” Frank retorted. “Well, not for very much longer.”
Helplessly, Karl watched this little exchange as if it were a game. Extremely uncomfortable, he had nothing to add, so he simply finished his dessert and sat back in silence.
Sven finished his dessert and stood with his empty plate in his hand. He reached for Karl’s plate and waited for his mother to finish the last bite of her own dessert before picking her plate up as well. He ignored his father as he walked around the counter and put the dishes in the dishwasher. Karl watched as he consulted his watch and said, “I need to get back to the store. Karl, I’ll see you tomorrow. We thought you could take Mom’s car and pick up Caro and Mel. We’ll hook up before dinner so you can follow me to my place. Sound good?”
