A Modern Family

by Helga Flatland

  The air between the buildings is calm and still for a few lovely days in early October. Finally, a hint of summer, I say to Simen one morning as we sat on the balcony eating breakfast while the sun warmed our faces. I buy a new summer dress, tight-fitting over my stomach, clickclack home in a pair of Prada shoes with such narrow, high heels that there’s not a pregnant woman around who could bear to even look at them, I sit on the balcony with friends until long into the night enjoying dry white wine and cheese and cured meats. The gynaecologist told me to carry on with life as normal, I tell Simen, defending myself before he attacks, which he doesn’t, for what it’s worth – he could have countered my statement by stating that nothing I’m doing is normal for me, that I’m going over the top, over-compensating, but instead he says nothing.

  I’ve had blood taken for testing, and Simen is being tested for low sperm count, something he suggested himself after I returned from my first appointment with the doctor even before I had the chance to explain that we both ought to be tested. But I can’t imagine there’s anything wrong with me, he said, before reluctantly explaining that his high school girlfriend had fallen pregnant with his baby back in the day. She had an abortion, there was no talk of keeping the baby, we were only sixteen and halfway through breaking up anyway, he said. Why haven’t you mentioned it before now? I asked. I don’t know, it’s not important, and I was scared of hurting you when we can’t … when we’re still trying, he replied, an unbearably pitying look on his face. It’s just a fact, you haven’t done anything wrong, I said, and I felt the walls close in around us.

  I spent the next few weeks feeling embarrassed about the fact that I’d hoped to lay the blame at his door, against all expectations for a man of his age. His test results were fine; so good, in fact, that he only just managed to refrain from showing off, the boastful comments on the tip of his tongue as he relayed them to me – as if it were a result that made him a worthy winner of some sort. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s people boasting about being graced with good genes, I told a friend that evening, it’s like bragging about finding money on the ground, it’s nothing but luck, when it comes down to it. The only people who fail to understand that are the less intelligent among us, I said, pouring us both more wine. Ellen, you and Simen aren’t in competition, she said.

  Even so, I feel all the more delighted when my own test also fails to highlight any issues and we remain on an equal footing, even though I know that can’t be the case – there’s a much greater chance that the problem lies with me, that this is my fault. I’m the one who needs to undergo further tests, be submitted to various alternatives, there are several things I can try, and all while Simen sits there with his sky-high sperm count, twiddling his thumbs, as I put it to my friend. I know that he doesn’t think that way, of course, I’m projecting, but I feel like a machine with a fault so severe that it’s unable to fulfil its intended function. And despite the fact that Simen, a machine functioning beyond all expectation, is still showing no sign of it, I sense that it won’t be long before he loses interest and decides to scrap the contraption that is failing to deliver or to live up to his standards.

  I was sitting in the chair in the medical laboratory with a butterfly needle in my arm when I received a text message from Mum, who’s in Sicily, wondering if anyone was at the house. Is it OK if I check my phone? I asked the nurse when it pinged in my handbag on the floor beside me. No, you need to sit still for now, he said in a resigned manner. I’d warned him in advance that my veins were difficult to locate, my parents have always been relieved to know I’d make such a bad junkie, I joked. He smiled indulgently at the patient who knew so much better than he did, a smile that had faded by the time he was midway through his fifth attempt to insert the needle, missing the vein hidden far below the surface of skin, and which had disappeared completely by the time he was forced to resort to using a child’s needle inserted into my forearm instead. I wasn’t able to check my phone until half an hour later, on my way out of the building, late for a meeting, nervous about the results of the test, and I registered only the fact that Mum had been wondering if someone was at the house, and that Liv had replied that it was her.

  I remember the message now, several days later, on my way to see a colleague who’s been admitted to Ullevål Hospital; she’s hit the wall, they said at the office. I’m not quite sure what that means and I’m nervous about how she’ll be; I’m bad at dealing with ill people. But she’s not ill, they said, just burnt out. Several of them seemed to blame me, assuming perhaps that since I’m the person she reports to, a sort of manager – something I’ve never ever referred to myself as, and that I’ve made clear to others is a prehistoric term, as far as I’m concerned – I ought to have seen this coming. I haven’t seen anything other than the fact she’s been given more work to do as she’s become better at her job. No, it’s that typical good-girl syndrome, Kristin said with a knowing look, Kristin, who calls herself my manager. I couldn’t help but feel annoyed, even though I knew I’d been far too short-tempered for the last six months, at least. Do you realise what an inflammatory expression that is? I asked her. The idea that when a woman works hard, she’s suddenly suffering from a syndrome as soon as she feels tired? I feel sorry for Camilla if she’s having a hard time, but wearing yourself out isn’t part of being a ‘good girl’. If she’d been good, she’d have adjusted her workload in line with her abilities, like the rest of us do. Nobody has worked her too hard, I say, but as I do I realise that I can’t be sure about that, I can’t recall who’s done what over the past year, can’t remember the projects we’ve been working on or the conversations we’ve had. Maybe I have left too much to the others to deal with, I think to myself now. I’d never thought I’d ever feel so indifferent about work, ambivalent towards the thing that had held a position of such utmost importance for so many years.

  I recall Mum’s message, and Mum herself, as I think about recent events. The way she and Dad have always talked about work, the fact that they’ve always plugged away at things and found happiness in their jobs. Conversations in the family have almost always centred on work, or another theme emerging from that topic. The value of hard work has been indisputable, even if it’s been unspoken, and I haven’t considered it in such concrete terms before now, when it’s suddenly no longer the most important thing in my life.

  I make up my mind to pop home to Tåsen on my way back.

  From a distance I can see the light in the kitchen window; Mum must be back from her holiday.

  We haven’t seen each another since we had lunch together at the end of August. I’d just been to see the doctor for the first time at that point, and I can’t recall what we’d talked about or how I’d acted, I just remember sitting there with a burning desire to tell her everything, but knowing that I would only regret it if I did. It’s strange the way she still clutches on to her role as a mother, even after all these years spent declaring that she’s done with the tasks of motherhood now that her children are fully grown. A woman’s work is never done, but never more so than a mother’s, she occasionally remarks.

  When I was in my mid-twenties, I wondered when I’d ever become independent from my parents, as they had clearly done long before they turned thirty. It was then that I realised I probably wouldn’t grow up and drift away from them in the way I had previously believed would be the case, becoming intellectually superior to them, but that in reality it would happen bit by bit, like now: it’s only in exceptional situations that I feel the same need to talk, to seek advice, as I once did. Things are the other way around nowadays, in fact; it’s Mum who confides in me while I hold everything back from her. My life is my own, not simply a function within theirs. I wonder if Håkon and Liv experience things the same way, but I doubt it – they’re still attached to Mum and Dad in a very different way. That might also have something to do with the fact that Mum and Dad have always been less attentive to me than to the others, relying on the fact that I can take care of
myself – within my strict boundaries, that is.

  I sit for a while in the car on the driveway. Remember the way Dad used to play with Liv and me when we were younger and he was getting us out of the car. He would crouch down, out of sight just beneath the windows, tricking us and jumping out somewhere completely different from where he’d ducked down – and I remember how boring it was when Liv got so big that she didn’t want to play along any more, when she got grumpy and wouldn’t even pretend to be scared when Dad jumped up at her window.

  Mum comes into the hallway to find out who’s letting themselves in, her expression so filled with hope that I feel guilty both about the fact that it’s me and that I haven’t come before now. We hug; she smells of Mum the way she always has, always does, and, I wonder if she only smells that way to me, and how I’ll smell to my children – what will they think of when they smell that smell?

  ‘I was just about to eat,’ she says. ‘There’s enough for you too, if you’d like some?’

  I nod. I’m filled with sadness as I enter the kitchen to find that she’s set a single place for herself in her usual spot at the kitchen table, with candles and a glass of wine. And despite the fact that the chairs where Håkon, Liv and I usually sit are empty, only Dad’s place appears so. Mum doesn’t seem to be thinking much about it, and it strikes me that she’s been living like this for several months now. And it was her own choice, so I needn’t pity her; she could have been sitting here with Dad all along if she’d wanted to.

  As we eat, we chitchat about a manuscript she read while in Sicily, an old colleague has sent her the latest work by a new, young author, but Mum isn’t sure about it. She thinks she’s read with generosity, and there’s a lot about it that’s good, she says, but there’s also an awful lot of navel-gazing among so many of these young authors, they’re so self-absorbed, their interest is so often only in self-fulfilment and taking the limelight.

  After dinner we sit in the living room together. It looks so empty and bare, but I can’t quite put my finger on exactly what Dad has taken, what’s missing from the picture.

  ‘It’s like a memory test,’ I mumble to myself.

  ‘What was that?’ Mum asks.

  ‘Nothing. It’s strange being here without Dad,’ I say.

  ‘Yes. It is odd. I think so too,’ she says.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes, obviously it’s unusual to find oneself living alone all of a sudden like this.’

  ‘All of a sudden?’ I repeat. ‘I thought you’d been imagining this for a long time.’

  ‘We have, we did, there’s no need for sarcasm,’ Mum replies.

  Then she shrugs, as if shrugging off the entire conversation.

  ‘But it’s been an education, too,’ she says. ‘Take this, for instance, I’ve installed new skirting along the base of the veranda door, it doesn’t get stuck any more – look,’ she says, placing a hand on the floor. ‘Flush.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ I say, smiling, going along with the change in subject. ‘It’s a good thing you’re so practical.’

  Mum has been complaining about the door that would drag along the floorboards for years now, and I wonder why it took Dad moving out for her to do something about it, since she’s always been good at woodwork. I don’t ask, because the hammer left lying on the windowsill is a reminder that one day she won’t be able to do such things, that she and Dad will both become much more reliant on assistance. It hasn’t ever presented itself as a problem, but now it’s become a more pressing matter with the two of them alone and ageing. And what if something serious were to happen to one of them? Any security in there being two of them around to help, or at least keep an eye on one another, is gone.

  ‘Yes, it’s nice to be able to be independent,’ Mum says.

  I make up my mind to drive over to see Dad as soon as I leave, feeling a pang of guilt for having come to see Mum first.

  ‘Have you spoken to Liv?’ Mum asks after we’ve sat in silence for a while, and I wonder if she’ll ever ask me anything else.

  Seventy-four per cent of all mothers have a favourite child, Simen told me one evening long ago when we still had long conversations about the type of parents we would be. And seventy per cent of all fathers, he continued. According to a survey? I asked in an exaggerated manner, referring to our habit of poking fun at newspapers that would print ‘according to a survey’ based on figures from the communications office that had been thrown together in the same garbled fashion as the stone soup in the folk story, as Simen always put it. Yes, according to a survey, Simen admitted. But this one I believe, he said. More independent children are naturally lavished with less attention, they take care of things by themselves and don’t seek out the same caring instincts in their parents. Attention isn’t the same as love, I reply. No, but it can be difficult to distinguish between the two, Simen says, for parents and children alike.

  ‘No, I haven’t spoken to her for a while,’ I tell Mum. ‘Have you?’ I add.

  ‘No, she never gets in touch,’ Mum says.

  ‘Do you ever get in touch with her?’

  ‘I try, but you know how Liv can be, so closed off and distant.’

  I’ve always felt that Mum does a good job of describing herself when she describes Liv, particularly when it comes to what she perceives to be Liv’s weaknesses. At first, I saw it as a form of projection, seemingly almost intentional, a kind of admission of something through Liv, but in the past few years I’ve come to understand that it reveals nothing more than a lack of self-insight.

  ‘Now that I’ve got all the time in the world to look after Agnar and Hedda, I hardly ever see them,’ she continues. ‘It’s quite the paradox.’

  ‘Come on, Mum, be honest. It’s hardly a paradox that you and Dad are getting divorced and Liv wants to protect the children from that,’ I say.

  It’s as if she and Dad have imagined they can continue to be grandparents in the same way as they once were, that the function they perform for Agnar and Hedda and any potential future grandchildren will be the same. They don’t seem to understand that sharing one another’s company and home – and not least actually being at home – is crucial if they want to create the same feeling in their grandchildren that their own parents did in their children.

  ‘It doesn’t affect them! Sverre and I can cooperate when it comes to that, Liv knows that too, but there has to be something to cooperate on,’ Mum says, and before I have a chance to say anything, her phone starts to ring.

  Both Mum and Dad remain affected by the old-fashioned notion that it is both special and expensive to own a mobile phone, so much so that they feel duty-bound to answer, regardless of where and when it rings. It’s as if they haven’t quite understood the self-explanatory concept spelled out in the fact it’s a mobile phone, that they have the option to ring back at a more convenient opportunity, even when the person concerned isn’t at home.

  Instead of ignoring the phone, which is ringing at maximum volume, Mum grabs it, though she’s clearly reluctant to do so. She answers in her most professional tone of voice, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that the speaker is so loud I can hear every word, I might have believed it was someone from the publishing house. I can hear a man’s voice quite clearly; he says her name in a familiar, almost inquisitive tone, as if to ask what’s going on, clearly not used to Mum answering the phone in such a detached manner.

  ‘Ell— my daughter is here with me just now, can I call you back?’ Mum asks, and I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard her postpone a conversation while solely in the company of family.

  She hangs up without waiting for a response. All of a sudden, I feel glad that Håkon and Liv aren’t here. She turns to me, smiles, and offers no explanation as to who has been on the phone, as she usually would: That was just Liv. That was just Anne. That was just my manager. That was just Granny. I remember the way Dad used to call Granny ‘Just Granny’, gently mocking Mum’s habit of referring to her that way after she
phoned.

  Instead, Mum resumes our previous conversation as if we’d never been interrupted:

  ‘I wish Liv would realise she’s making things so much more difficult than they need to be. She’s the architect of the change she so clearly fears,’ Mum says.

  LIV

  I’ve been looking forward to autumn since our holiday at the cabin, but it never seems to come around. It’s October, and the sun is getting its own back on the constant cloud cover that enveloped the country all summer long. That’s an exaggeration, of course, I know it’s been nice in the north, but that doesn’t count. Summer didn’t arrive on the east coast until the middle of September, and it feels all wrong to kick back and relax on the sofa when I get home from work, the sun and its warmth force me out into the garden. I spend the afternoons digging aimlessly in the flowerbeds, mostly to give myself something to do as I wait for the rain and cold to set in. It seems as if everyone is walking around feeling pleasantly surprised that summer has finally come, I tell Olaf. Even Ingrid, and she’s a member of the Green Party, all she does is talk about how lovely it is to finally get a bit of a tan, I say one day when I get home from work and Olaf has just finished mowing the lawn, which is growing with demonstrative speed and unruliness. He laughs, but agrees that there’s something uncomfortable about the abnormal nature of it all, as he puts it.

  I’m embarrassingly unengaged where environmental issues are concerned. I sort my recycling out of a sense of obligation, but I don’t believe it really helps in the slightest that a minority of Norwegian middle-class households scrupulously separate their food waste from their plastic in green or blue bags – or is it the other way around? – particularly not since travelling to Asia for a news story and wading through great heaps of rubbish piled up high in the streets of Kathmandu and New Delhi. I’d never say it aloud, and obviously I sort my waste, it’s a given, every little helps, but this autumn it feels as if the weather is underscoring an all-encompassing, uncomfortable shift; everything is going wrong, nothing makes any difference.