You Disappear: A Novel (2 page)

“That’s okay, Frederik. Really.”

“But it might make it hard for me to get all packed.”

“I’ll pack for you too. I’m looking forward to seeing you.”

It was the sort of thing that would have once made me angry and unhappy.
The day we’re going on vacation, and you can’t even …!
But now it’s fine, because our relationship is fundamentally in order—and because Frederik no longer does it every time.

Sometimes it’s hard to be married to an idealist. You feel rejected while at the same time feeling like a huge egotist, just because you think that school kids shouldn’t rob you of your family life.

Fortunately, that’s all behind us. Frederik has made us more of a priority, and the two of us have never had it better.

• • •

Frederik turns off sharply onto one of the small gravel roads, low drystone walls on either side, and we skid in the gravel and scream, strike a stone wall, are flung to the other side of the road, hit that wall too, skid. Stop.

I turn toward Niklas. I want to be beside him in the backseat, clutch his head to my breast to protect him. But the car’s already come to rest. It’s too late.

“Are you okay?”

But I know he hasn’t been hurt. It was only a couple of minor collisions; we’re extremely lucky. I close my eyes for a moment and exhale. My pulse is throbbing in my temples.

“Are you okay?” I repeat.

“Yeah. How about you?”

“I think so.”

I look through the windshield. Frederik is already out front. He kicks the car with a resentful expression, squats to examine something by one of the fenders.

I yell, “Aren’t you even going to see if we’re all right?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Don’t you even care?”

“Well, I can
see
you’re doing fine.”

I jump out of the car. And for the first time in our twenty years together, I hit him so hard that it’s not just a game. He falls to the gravel and I shout, “What the hell, what the fucking hell? Have you gone stark raving mad?”

Sweat drips off of me and my fists are clenched, my pulse still pounding in my temples. He gets up staggering but unconcerned, as if he hasn’t noticed my blow, and takes a few steps.

“I don’t think I can get it to run.”

“
That’s
a stroke of luck, you big idiot. Maybe we won’t die today after all.”

“Mom!” Niklas’s voice calls from inside the car.

I breathe deeply, several times. For my son’s sake, I need to be the reasonable one here. And so I manage to pull myself together.

“What should we do?” I ask in a somewhat calm voice.

Frederik doesn’t answer. He climbs up on the stone wall and stands there, surveying the landscape.

Niklas gets out of the car too. His hair lights up in the sun. It’s lighter than mine, almost white. After cultivating a grunge look all summer, he resembles a sixteen-year-old Kurt Cobain.

“It says in the guide that you should ring 112,” he says.

I glance up at Frederik on the wall.

“What’s
with
you? Why are you doing this?”

“What’s with
me
?” At last he looks me in the eye. “
You’re
the one who’s been after me without a break on this trip! First I drive too fast, then I talk too loud in the restaurant, then I eat too much. Whatever I do, you say I’m doing it wrong!”

I look up at him and it seems he’s swinging his arms too much. The wildness of his gestures feels contrived.

“But I only say those things because you’ve been acting strange,” I say.

“I have
not
! But you’re after me all the time. And then you say I’m happy at the wrong time, and then you say I sleep too late.”

I can see what he means. It’s been a lovely vacation, but I’ve also been oddly irritated. And we’ve argued a lot.

“I promise to stop criticizing you,” I say. “Okay? Will you come down now?”

“It’s that way back home too. And why can’t I stand up here, if that’s what I want?”

“Look. You’ve just driven our car into a wall, so maybe I have a right to—”

“Now you’re doing it again. I can’t stand it! Look at Niklas.
He’s
not riding me the whole time. So it
is
possible.”

“Do we really have to go through all of this now, Frederik?”

“And I love Niklas too. He and I … we’re … he can really …” Frederik begins to cry.

I look over at Niklas, who appears moved. I sense that his sideways glance at me isn’t completely friendly.

I step closer to my husband.

“Are you going to weep now about how much you and Niklas like each other? Do you have heatstroke, or what?”

“And now I’m not even allowed to love our son anymore …”

“Of course you are. It’s just that—”

Frederik starts waving his arms around even more wildly.

“You piece of shit, Mia! You big fat piece of shit!”

And then he falls.

We run over to the wall. See him tumble down the mountainside, strike his head against a tree, and stop, caught lifeless at its foot, five yards away.

“Frederik! Frederik!”

“Dad!”

But he doesn’t move.

The mountain drops away just past the tree. We call 112, stare down at him, wait. And worry that he’ll start stirring and roll free.

I bat my tennis racket against the black chair leg in front of me in the emergency room at the Hospital Universitario in Palma de Mallorca. Eight hours, and Frederik still hasn’t regained consciousness. Then I bat it against the other leg. Maybe he’ll end up in a wheelchair. Could he continue as headmaster then?

I see before me the last day of school at Saxtorph. The headmaster rolls his wheelchair up a ramp to the podium. He’s clad in an elegant suit, the students and teachers prouder of him than ever. A triumphant look lights up his face. I feel proud too; he’s a hero. But then other images arise. At home: Do I change his diaper? Do I lift him into bed? Do we … sex?

And then maybe not. Early retirement. What if he’s not well enough to stay on as headmaster? He sits in his wheelchair while I spoon him soup. I am his nurse and wife three years from now, in ten and twenty, thirty. I am the old woman who drives around the suburban streets of Farum with a paralyzed husband. Thus our marriage; thus our life. I press my face against his loose hanging jowls and we weep, rubbing noses and foreheads and cheeks together. That’s what we’ll be doing in three years, in ten and twenty, thirty.

There are tennis courts in the mountains of Majorca. An odd notion, bringing my racket in the car. Of course I’d never use it. What was I thinking? I bat the racket against the first chair leg again. Look at the clock. It’s now eleven.

The emergency room isn’t like Danish emergency rooms. Cheap metal chairs with vinyl seats arranged in long rows. There’s room for at least
seventy people to wait for their number to appear on the big red LED over the receptionist’s glass cage. Like the waiting room in a rundown bus station abroad.

We were supposed to fly home the day after tomorrow. Now I see Frederik’s funeral. His parents, his friends, all of us in black. Hundreds of bouquets and wreaths from school parents and teachers. I see how broken up I am. My hero, my beloved, my husband. The casket is lifted into the hearse. Niklas is a pallbearer, dignified and pale.

I’ll get on Niklas’s nerves soon if I don’t stop batting my racket against the chair. Thock, thock, thock. In a minute he’ll say,
Stop it! It’s driving me crazy
. I know. I hit the chair legs again, harder, harder.

I raise my head and glance at him. Thock, thock, thock. Isn’t he going to tell me to stop? No, he’s playing some game on his cell phone. He has the earphones in and doesn’t hear a thing.

I poke his leg.

“What?” He pauses his game.

“Don’t you think it’s getting cold?”

It’s dark outside. He’s in shorts and a T-shirt, while I wear a cream-colored top with lace trim and a pair of army shorts.

“Yeah.”

“Should I ask if they have a couple blankets we can borrow?”

He mutters something to express indifference and starts his game again.

“I think I’ll ask for some blankets. Or perhaps a couple sweaters from the lost and found,” I say. He can’t hear me. “Or some pants. If we can fit them.”

Thock, thock, thock: the sound drives
me
up the wall. I set down the racket.

“Pants or sweaters,” I say. “Maybe both.”

The funeral reception, our weeping friends, the neighbors who come to the burial—just like when the woman across the street got breast cancer. Would her husband find a new wife and move on? That’s what we all wondered then.

No, he’s grown strange. Keeps to himself, acts aggressive. A tragedy. He isn’t recovering.

Me. Niklas. I see myself six months from now, making him elderberry cordial and baking him rolls. It’s evening, and we’re still living in Farum.
We’re going to try to get our lives together
, I’ll say.
You know I’ll always be there for you and support you any way I can
. We’ll sit on the sofa and talk, cry, sip the hot cordial.

But that’s not the way it’ll be. Niklas doesn’t want to sit on the sofa with me. Other images: I shop alone, let myself into a cold dark house, go up the stairs knowing that Frederik will never go up the stairs with me; I lie on the bedspread of our bed, entertaining a desperate desire to see his ghost.

A bell rings. I look up at the red number: it’s ours. My throat is dry.

I want to poke Niklas, but he’s already packing up his earphones; he wasn’t so lost in his own world after all.

My legs are numb when I stand. From the counter, a nurse brings us to a small room with bare pastel-green walls. A dark young man in a smock is waiting for us. Under his eyes the skin is almost black. I’m freezing, I should have asked for a sweater after all. And something about the fluorescent lights in here hurts my eyes.

We sit down on plastic seats. Dr. González, it says on the man’s name tag, and he addresses us in English.

“Frederik has been scanned. I am very sorry to say …”

Blood drains from my head. I feel faint and grab my son’s hand. “Oh no. A skull fracture?”

“Yes. He has a brain tumor. I am very sorry.”

“The fracture, will it paralyze him? Will he be able to talk? Will he die?”

“The fracture?” The doctor looks at me curiously.

“Yes, he fell … The fracture.”

“There is no fracture.”

“You just said …”

“He has a brain tumor. It has been exerting pressure, and it triggered an epileptic seizure. Fortunately, there was no serious blow to the head.”

“You said there was a fracture!” I find myself shouting. “You said, ‘Yes.’ I heard you!”

I know my behavior is totally inappropriate. I’m going to stop. I hold my tongue and lean back in the flimsy chair with such force that it almost falls over.

“Sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

Niklas takes over, with a tone that is the complete opposite of mine. “He’s got a tumor?”

“Yes.” The doctor adopts a mournful air and nods his head a little too much. “Unfortunately, I cannot say much more. We are transferring him to the neurological ward. The experts there will examine him tomorrow morning.”

I grasp my seat with both hands. “Is it cancer?”

“We cannot say. The neurologists will examine him tomorrow morning.”

“But then it
isn’t
cancer?”

“Unfortunately, we cannot say that yet.”

“But it’s
probable
that it isn’t cancer?”

“The neurologists will be able to say a great deal more tomorrow.”

The peculiar light in here is getting to me: cloudy as pus, sharp as the scalpel that cuts an inflamed area away.

“What is it if it isn’t cancer? Would it also—”

“It is much too soon to say anything. But the neurologists tomorrow will—”

“Can you do something about this light? It hurts my eyes.”

“In the neurological department I am sure they will do everything they can.”

Niklas and I hold hands as we walk slowly back to the waiting room. We are quiet. He doesn’t play any more games on his cell, and I no longer fumble with my racket.

Just quiet.

I have no idea what time it is when a nurse comes out to us. “You’re free to go home now. Nothing else is going to happen tonight. And then you’ll be more rested tomorrow when you go to the neurological department.”

From the taxi windows we look out on the streets: rose-pink houses with green shutters, palm trees and narrow lanes, small idyllic plazas with ice-cream stands and oversize parasols. Everything is dark and abandoned. And meanwhile I know I need to be the rock that Niklas can lean upon. I can hardly make my voice heard in the taxi. “He’s going to make it, Niklas. Dad is so strong.”

We drive down an avenue of tall palms, toward the hotel strip along
the beach. A little while later Niklas tells me the same thing. And I repeat it back to him.

“He’s going to make it. Dad is so strong.”

• • •

I met Frederik twenty years ago, and soon I knew he’d be the love of my life.

I was twenty-two and a student at Blaagaard Teachers’ Training College, majoring in math and PE. In my second year, I started my student teaching at Trørød Elementary in Søllerød, where Frederik was a teacher. There were more than sixty teachers at the school, and in the beginning there was no reason for me to speak to him. But I knew who he was because people talked about him.

During a meeting with my supervisor in a corner of the teachers’ library, she mentioned that Frederik had no doubt set his sights on becoming a headmaster, just like his father, who led the conservative, well-respected North Coast Private Grammar School. Frederik was only twenty-eight and had already been elected chair of our school’s Danish committee. He’d also organized a joint project with three other schools to develop a continuing-ed course for Danish teachers in creative writing for children.

At the time, it didn’t occur to me that my supervisor might’ve easily been annoyed by such an untried teacher trying to outshine her. Instead, she spoke with gentleness and pride, and only later did I learn that that was typical of the way people around Frederik reacted to him.