A Modern Family

by Helga Flatland

  Both she and Dad are in good shape, they’re fit and strong, and it would never occur to me to question their cognitive abilities – as Simen once put it long ago, they’ve become amplified versions of themselves, their inward and outward mannerisms have intensified, and both have become more self-centred, I think, though Liv disagrees – she thinks that I consider them more self-centred just because I’m an adult and therefore naturally receive less attention myself, something that would suggest that it’s actually me who’s become more self-centred, or at the very least, self-important. Not one of their other functions has failed them, besides Dad’s bad knee and Mum’s occasionally stiff shoulder. When our own grandparents were the age Mum and Dad are now, they were old; I remember them as hunched over, primed for an elderly existence. Almost all of Mum and Dad’s friends are as fit and well as they are. At a get-together in Tåsen a few years ago, they discussed retirement as a fresh start, filled with opportunities. I’ve always regarded that phenomenon as a defence mechanism, for the most part, a denial of the fact that they’re growing old and approaching death – but when I think about Mum and Dad in concrete terms, I have to acknowledge that I might actually be the one with old-fashioned ideas of what a retiree ought to be.

  I take a taxi up to Ullevål. I feel increasingly certain that it must be something serious given how quickly it’s come on. It might be a major heart attack, or a blood clot, maybe. Acute leukaemia? My guilty conscience intensifies in line with my concern, I’ve been so angry at her, so condemnatory, just because she’s made a decision I don’t support. The taxi creeps onwards in rush-hour traffic, it’s too far to the nearest tram or metro stop, and I’m wearing heels too high to walk in the slippery slush underfoot. I lean back against the headrest, doing my best to relax, letting my gaze follow the people walking along the pavement outside the car window. My thoughts merge together, muddled. I’m surprised to realise that my greatest fear when it comes to the notion of Mum’s death is the realisation that she would never meet my children.

  I spend almost every hour of the day thinking about the fact that I’ll probably never have children of my own. I’m convinced of that fact now, and it makes me feel genuinely despondent, angry and afraid – even so, the thought that I’ll have children is so deep-seated and natural that it is the first and most powerful to occur to me in a crisis. The thought of my unborn children. I wonder if that thought is biological, if I’ll still feel that way when I’m fifty years old.

  I stay behind at the hospital after the others have left. Everyone has been in, Håkon and Liv and Dad and me. We stood around Mum’s bed; she was upset and afraid, embarrassed and tired. The pains in her chest were probably the result of an anxiety attack, the doctor had said, she’d been admitted because they couldn’t rule out a heart attack in A&E. She had been reading at home when all of a sudden she’d had difficulty breathing, and had felt stabbing pains in her chest. Rather than calling for an ambulance, she’d called Dad, who had called an ambulance himself and had dropped everything he was juggling at the time, as he put it without giving any further details, making it to Tåsen at the same time as the ambulance.

  Dad, for his part, seemed in better spirits than he had in a long time, even though he tried to hide it when we were in the hospital, no doubt a combination of relief that nothing more serious was wrong with Mum – I can only imagine the thoughts that had run through his mind on his way to the hospital – and reluctant happiness to finally see some indication that their separation had made an impression on her, as it had on him.

  I read aloud to Mum from the newspaper. She’s being kept in overnight, something she is happy to go along with, and I didn’t have the heart to leave her alone when the others eventually went their separate ways. She looked so old all of a sudden, tiny and frail in her sickbed, afraid. She hasn’t offered any explanation to anyone, other than to say there’s been a lot going on lately, and more than anything she seemed keen to get rid of us when it became clear that her condition wasn’t life-threatening, almost on the verge of tears with embarrassment. As usual, Håkon was the first to pick up on her signals; he knew it was the best thing we could do, to leave her in peace. We said bye to Mum and left, all of us – but I turned back before we reached the exit, telling Liv, Håkon and Dad that I’d left my phone in Mum’s room. I made my way to the shop and bought a newspaper, a bottle of sparkling water and a chocolate bar, her usual picks for any car journey lasting longer than an hour, then returned to her room. She’d been crying, or perhaps still was when I arrived, but she smiled when she saw me. She dabbed at her tears with her sleeve. I took off my winter boots, sat down in the chair beside her and rested my feet on the bed. Have a listen to this, I said, then read her a book review for a novel written by a foreign writer I know she likes.

  She’s been prescribed sedatives, and by the time I’ve skim-read the newspaper, making the occasional comment to Mum, she’s drifted off. I wait for a while, until I’m certain that she’s not going to wake up again, and then I tuck the sheets around her, cocooning her, as Liv and I used to call it when we were little. Mummy, cocoon us, we’d say, meaning that we wanted her to tuck the duvet tight around us, as if we were in a little pupa of our own. She looks like a little child; I stroke her forehead gently, it’s damp and warm.

  I sit on a bench outside the hospital after leaving Mum. I don’t want to go home to Simen, and it strikes me that I haven’t even called him to tell him what’s going on, where I am. In truth I feel lighter, my head and my body weightless in a way they haven’t been in a long time, I’ve been freed from the repetitive pattern of thinking about myself and Simen and our childless future for a few hours now, absorbed by what’s been going on, entirely preoccupied with it, and it leads me to a sort of liberating realisation, a recognition of just how self-centred I’ve been – it’s like discovering all over again that there are other people in the world with problems. I picture Dad’s face when he caught sight of us in the hospital corridor earlier today, his obvious relief at more than just the fact that Mum wasn’t seriously ill, and Mum’s shame at the same thing, at having exposed a fear she’d done her best to conceal. Of course she’s afraid, I think to myself, and of course he’s concerned about her, concerned that she’s been affected the way she has. It’s not that the child in me is happy to see it confirmed that they care for one another, I’m not holding out any hope for anything on that count, but I’m filled with sympathy for the two of them. I try to imagine Simen and me in thirty years’ time. I’ve always thought there would be too much going on in our lives, too much to talk about, too much to engage ourselves in, so much so that we wouldn’t ever become a mere habit for one another. Now I picture us sitting at the breakfast table in silence, only ever repeating ourselves if we do happen to say anything at all. That would be a bigger loss for me than if he were to drop down dead in the middle of a conversation, I think to myself now, losing our connection and one another in that way.

  For the first time I don’t feel angry, bitter or upset about the divorce for my own sake, but I’m sad for Mum and Dad’s loss, and it’s a melancholy experience, witnessing the ambivalence they feel, the sorrow of leaving one another and the simultaneous – and stronger – desire for something else, something more.

  The entire festive season disappears in a hormonal merry-go-round. I’m furious, quick to laugh, despondent and filled with such affection that I don’t know what to do with myself. The hormones I’m taking every day to manipulate my dysfunctional body play havoc with my every cell and brainwave, there is no in-between. I am aware of it and yet it remains beyond my command, I’ve lost control. Even so, it’s liberating, in a way, simply letting go.

  State healthcare entitles you to three attempts, the doctor told Simen and me around Christmas time. We were sitting in his office, both of us together, and Simen was silent as the doctor explained the process of assisted fertilisation. I could sense his aversion, and it all seemed equally absurd to me, sitting here and listening as so
meone explained what ought to be the perfectly natural, private process of creating our own child in purely mechanical terms. There is no longer any sense of hope, our child is to be conceived in a plastic cup in a laboratory. I’ve googled it, pulled up images, the exact opposite to warm bodies in a warm bed filled with a warm sense of hope: face masks, plastic gloves and syringes. At the same time, this is our eleventh hour, we just have to go for it, I said to Simen afterwards, my statement almost taking the form of a question. Simen nodded. I suppose you’re right, he replied, before checking himself, of course we have to do it, he said. It’s worse for you, what with all the side effects. Well, you’re the one who has to put up with them, I replied.

  But he doesn’t put up with them. Or with me. He walks out on me at least four times a day, and I can’t keep a single thought to myself. You’ve lost hope, I scream at his back, why are you even bothering with all of this? Nobody’s forcing you to put up with me, can’t you just go out and find someone who can give you what you want? Simen never says anything, nor does he respond to the declarations of love that immediately come tumbling out of my mouth in the wake of my accusations, when my mood lifts and my line of thought shifts in a matter of seconds, when I tell him how patient he is, that I can see how hard this is for him, that I’d never get through this without him. You’re everything to me, I say, you’re really, truly everything, you have to believe me. I suspect that the problem isn’t that Simen doesn’t believe me; quite the opposite, he’s all too aware that over the past year he’s all that I have left to cling to, there is no longer any alternative, and knowing that makes him stressed and restless. I can’t leave her now, I can imagine him telling his friends, what kind of bastard would that make me? And while I try to flatter him into staying, to impress him, I also play the only card I have: I play on his sympathy and his conscience. Because Simen is a nice guy, he’s sincere, and leaving me now because I can’t have children would turn him into the kind of man he has no desire to become, the kind he doesn’t wish to own up to being – the kind he could never bear for others to see him as.

  I send a message to the whole family telling them I’m not well. I stay at home during all the usual family get-togethers that Mum and Dad both carry on with as one unit, at his brother’s or her sister’s, at home in Tåsen; they even spend New Year with a couple they’re friends with. It’s a quasi-divorce, I commented to Simen on Christmas Day, the insightful sympathy I’d felt for them while sitting outside Ullevål Hospital that day now challenged by their conduct, as well as my own mood swings – and I become disproportionately infuriated at the seemingly normal state of affairs. I long for some sense of revolt beyond the confines of my own body, somewhere to aim my explosive emotional outbursts. Perhaps they regret things, perhaps they’ve realised they want to be together after all now that it’s Christmas, Simen suggested. No, it’s the opposite, they want to be divorced while clinging on to tradition, I remarked. Some kind of asexual friends with benefits arrangement, Simen said.

  We always have a buffet on Christmas Eve, a kind of compromise between Mum and Dad, who were brought up on ribs and cod respectively at Christmas time. The dishes on offer have always been the same, and are always laid out in the same way – during one of the first years Olaf joined the family, Mum spent a whole hour trying to work out where to place a dish containing sausages he’d well-meaningly brought along – and each is served with respect to taste, aesthetics and tradition. Mum puts a lot of work into this meal and places a great deal of pride in it, beginning preparations long before Christmas, making her own brawn and pate, fermenting fish – which, in spite of the fact Mum’s only connection to Telemark is a summer cabin, must be baked in a wood oven following a traditional recipe from the region – curing trout and boiling ox tongue. When I was young, the smell of fermented rakfisk, which Dad would bring up from the cellar and place on the kitchen worktop, was synonymous with Christmas mornings. Now it’s coming home, opening the front door and being enveloped by the same smell, overwhelmed by it, that awakens the child-like Christmas spirit within me.

  This year I caught the unmistakeable scent of roasting pork as I stepped into the yard, and I hoped against hope that it was coming from one of the neighbour’s houses right up until the moment I opened the front door. Look, Mum said, pointing at the ribs in the oven as I stepped into the kitchen, the crackling should puff up and become crisp, if everything goes to plan. She’d had her hair re-styled, her cheeks were red and her eyes shone. I thought it might be nice to try something new this year, Mum said casually, and as we both crouched in front of the oven and waited to observe the puffing-up of the pork crackling, I didn’t have the heart to do anything other than play along with enthusiasm.

  These breaches of tradition have been the only kind of change or disturbance on Mum and Dad’s part this Christmas. Tiny but noticeable indications from each of them, all designed to spell out to us that things are different, that this is a new situation and a new era. I sway between acknowledging and challenging this as my hopes of one day having my own family rise and fall.

  I’m not lying when I say I’m not well; I’ve got a headache and I feel sick, I’m so hot and sweaty that I open all the windows in the flat, it’s never cold enough for my liking, at least not with Simen following me around and closing each of them without a word, and I fill the bathtub with cold water and lie there. It’s worth it, I think to myself as I lie in the cold water, which stings my burning skin like the pricking of a thousand needles. I try to convince myself that the powerful side effects I’m experiencing are also a sign that my body is responding, that something is working, and that, therefore, there might be a greater chance that our attempts will be successful.

  Simen accepted an invitation on our behalf what must be six months ago now to celebrate New Year’s Eve at his elder brother’s cabin in Hallingdal. I don’t dare not go; I need to show my face around his family, show them that I’m still here, still important, I need to bond with them and let them bond with me. It’s only two nights, I think to myself as I sit in the car on the way there with my head hanging out of the window like a dog. Simen is in a good mood, he’s wrapped up in his winter coat as I get some air; he laughs at me, occasionally resting his right hand on my thigh, just like he used to do in our early days together.

  Simen’s mother is the opposite of Mum. She’s tall and slim, with dark hair and dark make-up around her brown eyes, and her neck and wrists and fingers are always adorned with expensive pieces of jewellery. I like her, she reminds me of Simen in a lot of ways, but she’s more difficult to bond with. There’s always a certain cool distance in everything she says and does, but that could also be due to the fact I haven’t become properly acquainted with her yet, I haven’t come to know them: I don’t know his dad or his brothers particularly well either, but now, for the first time, I understand the importance of getting to know them – it’s something of a revelation for me to appreciate the tactical side of investing in one’s in-laws, as all of my boyfriends have insisted on doing with my own family.

  Simen’s brother, Magnus, has two children, and they’re expecting their third in March. I greet his wife Synne gushingly. You look amazing, I tell her, gazing at her large stomach in her tight dress; she’s standing in the hallway to meet us upon our arrival, her hands clasped under her bump as if she were holding on to it, cradling it or protecting it. She must be pushing forty.

  ‘When are you due, again?’ I ask as she follows me upstairs to the room Simen and I will be sleeping in, even though I know, of course, that her due date is 14 March; every due date I hear sears itself into my consciousness.

  ‘March,’ she replies with a smile. ‘You can use this bathroom,’ she says, pointing at a door and looking at me, and I can feel pearls of sweat gathering at my temples.

  ‘And it’s a boy, isn’t it?’ I say. I don’t even know why I’m pretending not to know that they’re expecting a girl, why I’m making myself appear indifferent, my plan coming in was the
very opposite.

  ‘No, actually, they tell us it’s going to be a little princess,’ she says.

  It always used to vex me when people used such terms to refer to their unborn babies, prince or princess, sweetpea, it always seemed so put on, but when Synne says it now it sounds soft and lovely, tender and assured. I find myself on the verge of tears, managing to blurt out a few words of thanks before closing the door behind me and letting my tears fall. Simen follows me upstairs, he doesn’t twig that I’m crying – or perhaps he does, but he’s stopped reacting given that it’s as unremarkable as me coughing these days – and he puts down our cases, whistling as he does so.

  ‘What an amazing place,’ he says.

  I can’t see what’s so amazing about it, myself, other than the fact that it’s enormous and everything looks as if it’s part of the backdrop for a photoshoot in an interior design magazine, with sheepskin rugs and brown leather everywhere, the kind of standing lamps you see in glossy magazines with warm slate tiles underfoot in the hallway, imitation timber walls and dimmed lights. Then again, the view from the kitchen window is dominated by a large, yellow digger, which is busy making way for an identical cabin to be constructed just fifty metres away. In other words, it all lacks taste. I don’t say that, of course, nodding instead as I dry my tears.

  ‘Lovely,’ I say, plucking up the courage to hug him.

  He embraces me for a few seconds, his body unfamiliar against my own, his neck, his smell. I start crying again and he chuckles when he feels my tears tickling at the neck of his wool jumper. He frees himself from my embrace and looks at me.

  ‘It’s not that lovely,’ he says, smiling and giving me a friendly nudge. ‘Shall we head back down to the others?’