They managed to deliver little Elise before your grandmother Agnes died. In childbed, as they said at the time; something went dreadfully wrong. Just like that, she was gone. And we were left with a tiny little bundle that never stopped screaming. As if she knew she had been robbed of her mother’s love.
I held your mother in my arms every day, almost constantly. Soothed her and tried to learn how to love her. We fed her ordinary cow’s milk, heated to body temperature, but it gave her such stomachaches that she cried and cried. I remember that when I laid my hand on that small stomach of hers, I could feel it bubbling away as though something was alive inside. Kristina took over from me sometimes, tried to heal and comfort us both, but she was old and tired.
Carl couldn’t bear all the weeping and grief. He started leaving the house earlier and coming home later. Only when he managed to find a wet-nurse, a woman with a baby who was willing to share some of her milk with another child, did calm return to the little house.
Life slowly returned to normal. Elise grew and gave us her first gurgling laugh. I missed Agnes so much, but tried to control my feelings for the sake of the little girl.
One day, I left the house. A short walk, that was all I had planned, to buy meat and vegetables. But my feet carried me to the post office, somewhere I hadn’t been in a long time. I was curious to see whether Gösta had written to me. He hadn’t, but there was another letter, addressed poste restante to me. From France.
Doris,
Words cannot describe how much I miss you. The war is terrible. More terrible than you could ever imagine. I pray every day that I will survive. That I shall see you again. I have a picture of you here. In my pocket. You look like the beautiful rose I met in Paris. The important things seem so obvious here. I keep your image close to my heart and hope you can feel my love on the other side of the Atlantic.
Yours for eternity,
Allan
There I was. In New York, where he should have been. Where we finally should have been together. But he was in France. I spent the next few weeks in a daze, unable to think of anything but Allan.
Every night, when I put Elise to bed and watched as she slept deeply, she tore me from my thoughts of leaving the country. She was so helpless, so small and sweet. She needed me. And yet I started to stash away some of the money Carl gave me for food.
Eventually I couldn’t do it any longer. I packed a bag and just went on my way. I didn’t say goodbye to Kristina, though she saw me leave. I didn’t leave a note for Carl. Didn’t kiss Elise; I never could have managed that. I closed my eyes for a few seconds after shutting the door and then headed straight for the harbor. I was done with America. I was going back to Europe. I needed to be where Allan was. Love drove me toward him.
18
The doctor’s eyes are fixed on the stack of papers in the dark-blue plastic document holder.
“Your stats look better.” He leafs through the first three sheets, reading chart notes and test results. Eventually he takes off his glasses, pushes them into the chest pocket of his white coat, and looks her in the eye for the first time since he entered the room.
“How are you feeling?”
She shakes her head slightly.
“Tired. Heavy,” she whispers.
“Yes, heart trouble does take it out of us. But I don’t think you’re going to need a bigger operation. You’re still strong, and the angioplasty worked well. You’ll survive this.” He reaches out and pats her on the head, as though she were a child. Doris shakes his hand away.
“Strong? Do I look strong to you right now?” She slowly raises the hand with the IV. A bruise has bloomed beneath the bandage, and her skin strains around the needle when she moves.
“Yes, for your age, definitely. Your stats are good for your age. You just need a little rest, that’s all.” With that, he turns and leaves.
Not a second too soon.
She shivers, pulls the blanket up to her chin. Her fingers are cold and stiff, and she holds them close to her mouth, breathing on them. The faint stream of warm air heats them. Out in the corridor, she can hear the doctor talking to one of the nurses. He is whispering, but not quietly enough.
“Take her back up to the ward, she doesn’t need to stay here.”
“But can she really cope with that? Is she stable enough?”
“She’s ninety-six. Sadly, she’s not going to live for all that much longer, and she definitely wouldn’t survive another operation.”
Not going to live for all that much longer, wouldn’t survive another operation. When the nurse comes in to pack up Doris’s things, Doris bites her tongue as a cold wave works its way down her limbs.
“You’re going back up to the ward now, that’s good news, isn’t it? Let me just remove these electrodes.” The nurse gently pushes back Doris’s shirt and pulls the sticky disks free. The bare skin makes her shiver, which causes a jolt of pain.
“You poor thing, are you cold? Just a minute, I’ll get you another blanket.” The nurse disappears, but quickly returns with a thick green-and-white-striped blanket, which she spreads across the bed. Doris smiles gratefully.
“I’d like my computer too.”
“Did you have a laptop? I haven’t seen one; it must still be up on the ward. We’ll check when we get up there. You’ll have it back soon, don’t you worry.”
“Thank you. Do you think my great-niece would be able to talk to the doctor? I know she wanted to.”
“I’m sure we can arrange that. I’ll talk to the doctor on your ward. Right, let’s go, are you ready?” The bed jolts as the nurse releases the brake and wheels it out of the room. She swings it into position, and they move slowly down the empty corridor to the elevator. The nurse is chatting away, but Doris isn’t listening. The doctor’s words are still echoing through her mind, drowning out her own thoughts. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. Be strong. The beep of the elevator is the last thing she hears.
“Is there anyone we can call, Doris? Any family? Any close friends?” A new nurse is sitting on a chair by her bed. She’s back on the ward. A new room, surrounded by new fellow patients. Her black laptop bag is on the bedside table.
“Yes. Jenny, my great-niece. She wanted to talk to the doctor. What time is it?” she asks.
“It’s already five in the evening. You’ve been sleeping since you got back.”
“Perfect,” she says, pointing to the computer. “Please, could you pass me that? I’ll call Jenny. I have a program that I use.”
The nurse pulls the laptop out of the bag and hands it to her. Doris brings up Jenny’s name on Skype, but the icon shows that she isn’t connected, and no one answers when, despite the red symbol, she attempts to call. Strange. It’s morning in California, and she’s usually online. She hopes that nothing has happened to her. That she doesn’t die before she gets to say goodbye to Jenny. She pushes the computer to one side but leaves the Skype window open.
“Let me know if there’s anyone else I can call. It might be nice for you to have a friend here?”
Doris nods and allows her head to slump to one side. The pillow feels like cement when she presses her cheek against it, and the blankets are heavy.
“Could you pull back the covers a little?” she whispers, but the nurse has already disappeared. She twists so that the blanket lifts slightly, letting in some air. The computer screen is now right in front of her, and she stares at Jenny’s icon, waiting for it to turn green. Eventually, her eyelids droop and she falls asleep.
19
For years Jenny has carried it on a frog keychain made of green metal. DORIS, it says, scrawled in marker on the frog’s smooth back. One lonely silver key. On the plane she holds it up, letting Tyra play with it. The little girl hits it with her chubby hands, making it spin. Over and over again. And then she laughs, loudly and gleefully. They have just woken up after several fretful and uncomfortable hours of sleep. From her seat by the window, Jenny can see the dense forests like dar
k green fields as the plane descends. She lifts up Tyra so that she too can see.
“Look, Tyra, Sverige! Sweden. Look.” She points downward, but the girl is more interested in the frog. She stretches to reach for it and whines loudly when she can’t. The long journey and lack of sleep have made her more irritable than usual. Jenny hands her the frog and then hushes her firmly. Tyra shoves it straight into her mouth.
“Not in your mouth, Tyra, dangerous.” The girl yells when Jenny takes the keychain from her, and the passengers in the next row flash them an exasperated look. Jenny rifles through her bag and manages to find a box of jelly beans. She gives them to Tyra one after another and the child settles down, sucking happily on the candy until the plane lands with a thud. They are finally on Swedish soil. As they walk through the arrivals hall, Jenny absorbs the Swedish being spoken around her. She can speak and understand the language, but she almost never hears it.
“Bastugatan 25, please.” She makes an effort to mask her American accent when she speaks Swedish to the taxi driver, but she can hear that her pronunciation is far from perfect. Still, what difference does it make? The driver has an accent too.
“Did you have good journey?” he asks, and Jenny nods. Secretly pleased that she can spot his grammatical mistakes. The car drives through a rainy landscape. The windscreen wipers are working flat out, and they screech when the window suddenly gets dry.
She makes small talk to pass the time. “What horrible weather.” She forgets the Swedish word for weather and has to say it in English instead. The driver nods in reply, but by the time they reach their destination he has decided to speak only in English. She pays by card and then climbs out onto the street with Tyra in her arms. She glances up at the windows of Doris’s apartment and sees that the curtains are drawn. The driver kindly lifts the stroller and her two suitcases from the trunk, but the minute he steps back into the car he tears off, spraying puddle water onto Jenny’s trousers.
“Stockholm’s just like New York, everyone’s in a hurry,” she mutters to herself, trying to unfold the stroller while holding Tyra on her hip. The rain makes the little one raise her hands, eagerly trying to catch the drops.
“Keep still, Tyra, still. Mommy needs to unfold the stroller.” She lowers her knee against the catch and eventually manages to get the stroller steady. Tyra doesn’t protest when she sits her down in it. Jenny buckles her in and tries to push the stroller with her hip as she pulls the two suitcases behind her. It doesn’t work. The wheels on the stroller are off kilter, pointing in different directions. She drops the bags and quickly carries the stroller up the stairs into the building. She puts Tyra down, hushes her, runs back out, and grabs the bags. By the time she makes it up to the apartment with the luggage, the stroller, and the baby, Jenny’s T-shirt is damp with sweat.
A stale smell hits her as she opens the door. She feels for the light switch in the dark before pulling the stroller inside. Tyra tries to stand up, eager to get to her feet, and coughs loudly with the effort. Jenny holds her palm to the girl’s forehead, but it’s cool; she’s just tired and has a slight cold. She places Tyra on the kitchen floor and then opens all of the curtains and windows. As daylight floods the apartment, she realizes that Tyra is sitting right next to a dark stain on the pale wooden floor. She squats as Tyra gently pats the stain. It must be blood. From the fall. Doris’s blood. She quickly grabs Tyra’s hand and pulls her up. They go into the living room. It looks just like she remembers it. The dark-purple velvet sofa, the grayish-blue and brown cushions, the teak table from the sixties, a desk against one wall, angels. Doris has been collecting angels for as long as Jenny can remember. She counts them. Eight small porcelain angels in the living room alone. Two of them were gifts from Jenny. She’ll take a few of them to the hospital tomorrow, so that Doris has them with her. She picks up the one closest to her, a pretty figurine made from golden ceramic, and holds it to her cheek.
“Oh Doris, you and your angels,” she whispers as her eyes well up. She gently places the figure back on the desk. Her eyes land on a stack of paper. She picks up the top sheet and starts to read.
20
A car horn sounds down on the street. It’s the taxi Jenny has called. Worried about Doris, she feels that she must go straight to the hospital, that it can’t wait until tomorrow. She places the stack of paper back on the desk and strokes it gently with her hand. Doris has written so much. Jenny picks up the top few sheets, folds them in half, and pushes them into her handbag. She has read only a handful of paragraphs so far, and she’s eager to read more.
She is soon in the taxi on the way to the hospital, with Tyra in her arms. It’s evening now, and darkness has fallen. She yawns, wearily pulls out her phone.
“Hey. I’m here now, everything was fine.” Jenny holds the device slightly away from her ear, prepared for the roar from the other side of the Atlantic. Instead, she is met by silence. She hears the rustle of the receiver changing hands. Jack speaks first.
“How could you just leave, Mom? Without telling me? Who’s going to make my lunch now? When are you coming home?”
“Doris needs me here. She doesn’t have anyone. No friends, no family. No one wants to die alone. And no one should have to.”
“But what about us? Don’t you care about us? Aren’t we important? We don’t have anyone to help us either.” He shouts at her with the unflinching egocentrism of a teenager.
“Jack, listen to me now!” She raises her voice, something she does only when she’s really angry. Meets the taxi driver’s eye in the rearview mirror. “I’m sure you can make your own sandwiches for a few weeks. We’re talking about sandwiches here, not your life. Try to think about Doris, not just yourself.”
Jack has handed the phone to Willie without saying a word.
“How could you just leave like that? With only a note as explanation? Didn’t you realize we would be worried? The boys were hysterical. If you’re going to be away for weeks, that takes planning. Planning! We need a babysitter to take care of the boys. How were you going to sort that out?”
“We agreed that I was going to come. And I brought Tyra with me, like I promised. It doesn’t need to be complicated, Willie. They’re big boys. Make them a couple of sandwiches in the morning, put them in the lunchboxes, and make sure the boys take them to school. It’s not rocket science.”
“And who’s going to take care of them when they get home from school? Who’s going to help them with their homework? I have to work, you know that. My God, Jenny, you’re too impulsive!”
“You’re calling this impulsive? Like I’m some dumb teenager? I had to say goodbye to Dossi. Other than you, she’s the only family I’ve got! She took care of me when I was growing up, and now she’s dying! What is it that you don’t get?”
He snorts, mutters a goodbye, and hangs up. Jenny flashes a strained smile at Tyra, who is looking up at her quietly.
“That was Daddy,” she says, pulling her close and kissing her small, round cheeks.
When had things started to go so wrong, she wonders to herself. They had been so tense lately, fighting over money, over chores, and now this. It hadn’t always been that way; Jenny remembered a time when all it took to feel happy was a glance at his face. A time when they would stay up all night eating ice cream in bed, talking for hours on end. Oh, how she missed those years.
Finally, they arrive. She follows the signs from the main entrance of the hospital to the elevators and presses the call button. The wait makes her anxious. What if Doris isn’t how she remembers her? A ping announces an elevator.
She glances around the strange ward. The smell of disinfectant, the sound of patients’ alarms and various machines. A nurse comes to a halt when she spots them.
“Are you looking for someone?”
“Yes, I’m looking for Doris Alm. Is she here?”
“Doris, yes, she’s in there.” The nurse points to a room. “But you’ve missed visiting hours, so I’m afraid you can’t see her right now.”
“I’ve just flown all the way from San Francisco! We landed a few hours ago. Please, you have to let me see her.”
The nurse’s eyes dart around, but then she nods and follows Jenny to the room.
“Just be quiet and don’t stay too long. The others need to sleep.”
Jenny nods. She can make out Doris’s outline beneath the covers. She is thin, and smaller than Jenny remembers. Her eyes are closed. Jenny sits down in the visitor’s chair and pulls the stroller close; Tyra is sleeping too. Finally she can take out the sheets of paper and read all the words Doris has written to her. She wonders what else she has written about, and finds herself immediately drawn into the story of the address book, of Doris’s father, his workshop.
Doris murmurs in her sleep, dragging Jenny back to the present. She stirs, and Jenny stands up and leans over the bed.
“Doris,” she whispers, stroking her hair. “Dossi, I’m here now.”
Doris opens her eyes, blinks over and over again. Studies her for a long while.
“Jenny,” she eventually says. “Oh, Jenny, is that really you?”
“Yes, it’s really me. I’m here now, with you. I can look after you now.”
The Red Address Book
P. PARKER, MIKE
Mike Parker. It’s a long time since his name passed my lips. There are people whose names don’t need to be recorded in an address book to linger forever in your mind. And sadly, my story would not be complete without mention of him. He was the one who taught me that certain children born into this world are not the result of love between a man and a woman. He was the one who taught me that love isn’t a requirement. That the creation of life isn’t necessarily beautiful.
The Red Address Book Page 15
