When the Night Comes (20 page)

I looked at my brother.

“I nearly got hit by a car when I got off the bus,” he said.

I opened my mouth to speak but he kept talking.

“It wasn't today. It was before. I got off and I walked behind the bus and a car came around really fast and hit the edge of my schoolbag. I ran home but no one was here, and there was no bread or anything to eat and I thought about all the coins because at the shop near the bus stop the hot dogs only cost ninety-five cents.”

He stopped talking then, bit his bottom lip.

Fifty-three coins.

Nine left.

That was twenty-two hot dogs.

I wondered what he'd done with all the five-cent pieces. They added up to enough for another hot dog.

Twenty-three hot dogs.

“I couldn't stop thinking about them,” he said.

He told me that the woman at the shop thought it was strange that he was suddenly buying hot dogs after school when we never had any money, but she served him anyway. He said she watched him when he left, out of the window, so he always hid around the corner and ate really fast.

“I don't remember taking so many,” he said.

He blinked his eyes.

“I just get really hungry.”

I couldn't argue with that. I got hungry too.

I looked at the coins in the box and I picked a few up. The 1966 one wasn't there anymore. I shut the lid.

“What are we going to do?” my brother asked.

I didn't know what time Mum was getting home. She was at uni, maybe at the library. Sometimes she didn't get home until late.

“Maybe she won't notice,” I said.

Mum used to look through her change every day for collectible fifty-cent pieces, like the 1982 Commonwealth Games one, or the 1981 Royal Wedding, but she hadn't done that for ages. I went into Mum's room and shoved the box under a pile of sheets and pillowcases at the bottom of the wardrobe.

“We just won't say anything,” I said.

I told my brother that he couldn't have any more hot dogs but I would show him how to make two-minute noodles by using the water boiled in the kettle if he couldn't wait for me to get home. That way he wouldn't have to worry about using the hot plate.

“What if Mum looks in the box?” he said. “What if she goes away?”

Sometimes Mum would get
fed up
with us, if we'd left the door open so all the heat got out, or if we were arguing about what TV show to watch, or who got to eat the crusts of the white bread when we had toasted sandwiches, because they were the best and went all crispy in the grill. She'd grab her keys, slam the door and drive off. I don't know where she would go, and sometimes she'd be gone for a long time. My brother would ask me over and over if she was coming home.

“Do you think she'll come back?” He couldn't sleep until he heard her keys in the door. Then he'd get up and go out to the sunroom and say sorry—sorry for fighting or sorry for leaving the washing on the line, sorry for whatever it was that we had done wrong.

I'd hear him out there, hear him speak in a small voice, and Mum
would say, “That's okay, love,” and maybe she'd pat his hair and he'd sit by her for a while before she'd tell him to go back to sleep.

I'd stay in my bed and look out at the cold night, and I'd think that we shouldn't have to be sorry for any of it. We should never have to be sorry.

“What if she finds out I spent the coins?”

But Mum never said anything. Maybe she stopped collecting fifty-cent pieces—or maybe she just forgot about the box. The hot dogs became a memory, a story we shared, but chose to forget.

Bornholm

June 1987

My home

No fences

One side the forest, the other—the sea

The deer in the garden

Eat my grandmother's roses

Eat the snowdrop berries

Rest down beneath the bushes

I try to get close

To reach out and touch them

But they see me

They run

My home

No fences

The forest and the sea

There is lots to do now, suddenly. To get done.

I hurry to pull the rowboat up onto the beach. It feels heavy on my own in the wet sand and it takes time. The paint is starting to flake away.
I will need to sand it back and repaint, but there is not time now. No time. It will have to wait.

Orange and sky blue. Orange for me, and blue for my father. The colors it has always been.

I am small. I don't know how old but it's time—the end of summer.

My father and I pull the rowboat up the beach.
He
pulls it. I think that I am helping, my small hands trying to grip on tightly, my feet moving one foot after another in the heavy sand. I can hear my father breathing. He is strong and it is easy for him—but still I can hear how he strains ever so slightly.

We get the boat to its safe place—high away from the water where the tough sharp grass begins. The sand is dry here, loose and soft as dust. I watch my father turn the boat over—its dark slick bottom still good. It will last the winter and we will not have to tar this year.

I am glad. I am better at painting. We paint the boat at the beginning of summer—orange and sky blue. The same two colors it has always been, the colors it will always be.

I paint the stripe at the top orange, my father paints the rest sky blue. “A fresh coat of paint makes the boat so happy. See how she smiles? Brand-new again.”

We mark the coming of summer and are ready.

“Go and get the oars,” my father says, and I run down to the waterline. I pick up the solid wooden oars, ones that my grandfather made with his hands. His initials are carved in the wood, above where your hands grip on. I run my thumb over the letters: HJ. He was a fisher—a fisherman. I did not know him, but here he is. I carry the oars he made. My grandfather.

I tuck the ends of the oars up under each arm, drag them behind me.
I can hear the lines they are digging in the sand, lines that the tide will soon come and erase—my hard work will not leave a mark.

My father has secured the boat. He is waiting.

“What took you so long?” he asks, but he is smiling. It is just a joke. He takes the oars from me and carries both in the air so they don't drag. He carries them with ease, as if they are just sticks. We walk together to our house, where the woodstove is on and my grandmother will be cooking something good and warm to eat. Maybe it is roast pork and red cabbage, or maybe it is something else. I do not know, but I am hungry now—the day has slipped away.

Tomorrow my father will join his ship and he will be gone.

I look back at our rowboat, upturned, high and far away from the sea. It will be covered with snow soon enough; the dark sky will sit low then—almost touching the earth—the rowboat waiting alone for the summer to come again. Waiting for the long night to be over.

Copenhagen

July 1987

I sit in a bar, a nice place with candlelight and dark wood and people. The night is coming down outside. Feet walk fast above where I sit, the streetlight there—shopping bags, dinner, home.

“Heart of Gold” comes on the stereo.

A group of young men in the corner sing along, happy drunk. It is
their
song. I drink my beer, my heart beats fast. The harmonica plays, the guitar keeps time, keeps strumming, then the chorus starts up again.

When I close my eyes, I can hear Soren sing along too. Loud, out of tune. Heartfelt.

I smoke a cigarette. I get another beer. The song changes. The night moves. People join me, people continue on their way. But it sticks to me, that song. Neil Young. It comes through in my dreams and I wake humming it, wishing I had never heard it.

It stays with me for the four days we are in Copenhagen. It goes round and round while I walk. Waiting to leave. Copenhagen, not Aalborg.

Copenhagen.

It's beautiful here, the streets, and when you look up you can see all the turrets and towers and spires—gold and green dragons up high. The past.

As if in a dream, I walk the streets. I walk the harbor. I walk in big circles around this city.

“The meatpacking district,” he said. “It will be the new place.”

His town. His dream. Now, just me.

My footsteps echo on these old streets. The cobblestones slicked with rain, but I don't mind. I keep on walking, to know that I am here, that I exist.

I keep walking.

Copenhagen.

Nella Dan
is waiting.

You make it home. It's all there is—all that exists.

A bunk—your bunk against the bulkhead. A down duvet, a pillow. A small desk, a chair, a porthole. A cupboard with little wooden coat hangers inside. A home.

You will be warm, you will be snug. You will sleep like a baby. You will be tired and sleep—the sound of the engine loud but constant and warm.

Constant.

When it changes, that sound, you will wake. You will open your eyes and get up. You will look out of your porthole. You might see ice. You will think,
Yes, we have slowed down. We have hit the pack ice
, and the white of the light will be almost blinding. You will blink your eyes, get used to the strangeness of this landscape.

You might watch for a time, mesmerized. You might see a Weddell seal, an Adélie penguin, the black, still water between the ice. You will think,
Okay. Go back to sleep now
. It's 2
AM
. You need to get up soon.
Go back to sleep
.

You will lie down on your bunk—your ship steady, vibrating, humming. You will listen to the engines and the hull cutting through the ice. You will never forget that sound. You will remember it for the whole of your life—the
clink
clink
clink
, the scraping, the sharpness.

You will think,
Good ship. Good girl, you can do it.
You will rest your hand against the bulkhead, her body carrying your body. You will feel safe. You will be warm. You will fall asleep listening to the engine, thinking,
This is home, the only home I need, and I don't ever want to leave.