You Disappear: A Novel (35 page)

So this is my family
, Bernard would think as he headed home from yet another parents’ meeting where the other parents had brought up the issue of his sons.
This is what we’ve become
.

He tried to be constructive in their new situation, to come up with something that would improve the boys’ lives, and above all to avoid destroying anything else. Jonathan and Benjamin mustn’t notice how he felt like he’d lost his way, every day, though he still lived with them in the same house on the same peaceful-looking residential street.

On one Saturday, around lunchtime, Bernard came home hauling five bags of groceries for the week ahead. Lærke was waiting in the hall. She always was when he came home, though she never opened the front door, even after a ramp was installed so she could roll herself outside.

“Hello,” he said, but she didn’t answer.

He tried to edge his way around her wheelchair in the narrow hallway.

“Do you think you could back up just a little, so I can get past?”

She backed up.

“Now then, Lærke. This bag has only frozen goods, so I thought you might be able to put it away in the freezer.”

No answer.

“Do you think you could do that?”

“Yes.”

“Great.”

She remained where she was, parked in front of him. Her long golden hair fell across her shoulders. Bernard brushed it every morning, a ritual he genuinely enjoyed. And it seemed to him as if her skin had gotten
smoother and younger after the accident, perhaps because she no longer tensed the skin in her forehead or around her eyes.

“Then you should go out to the kitchen now, over in front of the freezer,” he said.

So that’s what she did.

“Here’s the bag. Look. Try to set the new things farther back in the freezer, so that the open packages are easy to get at. Okay? Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Bernard put away the groceries in the four other bags and then came back to Lærke and the frozen goods. She still had a long way to go, but it was good for her to do it by herself.

He stood behind her and said, “Try to set the open packages on top. Then they’ll be easier to get at.”

“Oh, right.”

“You understand why, don’t you?”

She didn’t answer.

“Look, sweetheart, this package has been opened. If you set it in
front
of the unopened package, then we won’t end up having both of them open at the same time. Does that make sense?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

He remained standing there.

After a little while, he said, “Look, this package isn’t open, while this other one is. Now if you set the new one in back … It’d be great if you did the same thing with all of them.”

“Did what?”

“If you set the
new
packages in back.”

“Yes.”

She did it with the one she had in her hand, but then she forgot to do it with the next one.

“Well, maybe you should just do it the way you want to,” he said. “You’re the one putting the frozen things away, so you should decide where they go.”

She didn’t answer, and he started to perseverate.

“So you should decide where they go, right? When you put them away?”

She looked up at him and said, “First the back ones should go first, because then the first ones … First the new ones should go in back, because then the old ones can first …”

Lærke could usually express herself more clearly, but when she got into a bad rut, she had a hard time getting out again.

She started to scold herself, while at the same time trying to say it correctly. “Not in back—front! By the door! The front ones shouldn’t first … the door.”

He gave her shoulders a little squeeze and said, “Yes, that’s where they should go.”

She didn’t answer.

On Saturdays, Winnie would drive the boys to and from soccer. Ordinarily they were back by noon, and now it was twenty minutes past. Bernard felt a mild unease, which he knew he ought to resist. Otherwise, where would it ever end? But Winnie wasn’t so young anymore; her eyes, the cars, what happens in traffic …

“Did your mother call?”

“I don’t know.”

“But did she call just before I got here?”

“She called.”

“Well, what did she say?”

“I don’t know.”

He went to the phone to see if there was anything on caller ID. Next to the phone was a scratch pad, where they’d tried to get Lærke to write down all the messages.

Winnie
had
called. He called her back and heard from her that practice had been delayed a little, and there was no need to worry.

He began setting the table, with Lærke at his heels, rolling back and forth between kitchen and living room so that she blocked the doorway every time he went back to get something new. Since she was following him anyway, he gave her something to take out to the table.

And then he sat down and waited. And Lærke rolled over to his side.

Tired, he stared into the air, and tired, she stared into the air. But at some point he had sat still long enough, and he turned his face to her. She didn’t turn hers.

He said, “What I wouldn’t give to know what’s going on in your head.”

She made no reply.

“Lærke, what are you thinking right now?”

She still didn’t answer.

He grabbed her hand so that she turned to face him. He looked her in the eye and asked again, “What are you thinking, sweetheart?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re not thinking of anything?”

“No.”

“Your mind’s a complete blank?”

She continued looking wordlessly in front of her.

But he couldn’t let the riddle rest. “Do you see images, or is there something that’s making you sad, or happy? Something we could do differently? Are you excited about physical therapy on Monday? Are you remembering something we’ve done together?”

“Yes, it’s completely blank,” she said. “Completely.”

• • •

As any family member of someone with brain damage knows, the hard part isn’t the initial shock. The hard part comes when the adrenaline recedes and you have to set out down the endless grey corridor of disheartening days, days that look like they’ll last the rest of your life.

The daily grind in which companionship is lacking. Where you find yourself more alone than you thought humanly possible; where you grieve so much, you just want to stay in bed for months. And where you force yourself to get up anyway for your kids’ sake—and because your spouse isn’t actually dead.

Yet there are joys, too. During the first year after the accident, Lærke became better at remembering, speaking, moving—and she began to get her feelings back. Just seeing the boys could once more make her happy.

And then one day when Bernard was sitting at home, working in what used to be his home office but was now furnished as a bedroom for his in-laws, she came in to him beaming with pleasure.

“I was daydreaming! I lay on the bed, and then I imagined being on
vacation with the three of you. Imagined it! There were palms there, and a beach. I just imagined it and it showed up, completely on its own!”

Could anything be more momentous than the return of your inner life? Bernard and Lærke celebrated. And the boys did too. They understood what a big day it was for their mother to imagine things once more.

I press my bare chest against Bernard’s as he tells me this, and it’s as if my body thinks it’s me he’s crying for. Rationally, I know that’s not true, but my arms squeeze him tighter, and I feel the urge to say,
But I’m here, really. I’m not dead, don’t cry. I’m right here
.

And I try to be a little bit Lærke, and it’s almost as if he’s my old Frederik. And I wish I could just wrap my arms around Niklas like this—with my clothes on, of course—just hold him and weep with him for the real husband and father who now is dead.

For a second, it’s Frederik who lies in my arms. We’re at Trørød Elementary. We’re young again and I’m a student teacher, he the committee chair for teachers of Danish. We’re starting our lives all over again. Bernard met me when I was an au pair in Paris, and he followed me here to Denmark. I am his young healthy wife.

“Whenever water appears in dreams or fantasies, it symbolizes feelings—particularly feelings of grief and depression. And I must say, Mia, that never in my life have I seen such a huge collection of water photos. I have absolutely no doubt that Niklas is one deeply unhappy young man.”

My mother-in-law’s on the phone, all worked up. Yesterday she joined Facebook, and since then she’s been going through the photo albums Niklas posted.

Since Frederik’s well enough to be left home by himself now, his parents no longer come over as often. Yet every day when Vibeke’s name shows up on my phone display, I can’t help but groan a little before I take the call.

“It’s an art project he did last winter with Mathias,” I say.

“But why did he pick water as the theme for the project?”

“It wasn’t him who—”

“Or if he wasn’t the one who picked the theme, why did he take on this particular project, when other people had decided it’d be about water?”

“Can’t you just look at the pictures as some beautiful photos where he’s simply practicing how—”

“Mia, you’re going to have to trust me on this one. It’s no coincidence that he threw himself into a project that happens to involve water. Young people today have thousands of other options. There’s a reason for everything—even if you may not want to admit it. I’m actually studying for a certificate in this, you know.”

I stare down at the pension papers I was about to dig into. What are the rules for withdrawing some of your pension funds before they mature? The tax consequences?

“Water can also represent trauma,” she continues. “A sense of entrapment while experiencing volatile emotions, for instance hate or feelings of inadequacy. Quite often, water symbols can be traced back to a parent who makes it impossible for a child to express his feelings.”

“Vibeke. Can’t you ever let it rest?”

“There might be some primordial situation, perhaps several years in the past, in which the child was overpowered by the parents. He felt surrounded—as if it was water threatening to drown him. A new crisis could actualize the repressed emotions.”

“So just to be perfectly clear: you think I’m to blame for this.”

“Oh, not at all, Mia! I’m only saying how one
usually …
”

• • •

After the conversation’s over, I gaze out of our big new windows at the apartment block opposite. Beyond it’s the sky and more apartment blocks, while behind me looms the large earthwork that’s supposed to dampen the freeway’s continual drone.

Though I completely disagreed with my mother-in-law on the phone, and though I still consider her psychological “expertise” an utter fraud, her description of my relation to Niklas couldn’t be more accurate. He feels I suffocate him—exactly like water that’s drowning him. And he feels that way no matter how much distance I keep, how much room I give him. I retreat farther and farther, making hardly any demands on him with respect to his father’s illness, and still he feels stifled. Where will it end? Do I have to disappear completely before he can feel free?

For almost four years now, without naming it directly, Vibeke’s been circling around the night I had a breakdown after throwing Frederik out. The night that I was sure I was embarking on a happy new life, but that instead made it clear I couldn’t manage without him.

I remember how Niklas was then. It’s only a few years ago, but he wasn’t that big, just thirteen. He was wearing his orange hip-hop hoodie when he came to see me in the hospital. Frederik was there too. Who
was
I that night? Niklas’s thin fair hand in mine, his pale face. How could I have? That wasn’t me, was it? Hardly the “real” Mia. Was it because Frederik and I have always been “meant for each other,” like he said? Was it because, dream as I might about slipping free from his grasp, in truth I’m nothing without my unfaithful, criminal, brain-damaged husband?

I struggle to concentrate on the documents in front of me, deciding as I do that tonight I’ll google the combination of
water, symbol
, and
psychoanalysis
, perhaps
neurology
too.

Someone opens the front door of the apartment. Just a few months ago, I could distinguish between Frederik’s and Niklas’s footsteps, but lately they’ve started to sound the same.

“Niklas, is that you?”

No reply. Small steps, small heavy steps; he’s lugging something large into the apartment, my stifled unhappy son.

“Niklas?”

Frederik enters the living room. He’s bearing an enormous wooden box and smiling broadly. “See what I got from Sergei?”

“What?”

“Rabbits!”

“Rabbits?”

“Sergei and Tonya raise rabbits in their apartment. They breed them and sell them. They earn more than seven hundred crowns a month. And he’s given me five rabbits because we’ve gotten to be such good friends. So then we can also—”

“You want to breed rabbits, here in the apartment?”

“Sergei says it’s easy and fun, and I’d really like to start pulling my weight around here. Abdul and Nasira from down on the third floor, they’ve got an allotment garden and raise almost all their own vegetables. One can really save a great deal of money.”

“I
don’t
want you keeping rabbits here, not under
any
circumstances.”

“But Sergei and Tonya—”

“I don’t want it! Period! End. Of. Story. There’s no need to discuss it.”

“You can’t just—”

“It’s not going to happen!”

“You can’t just decide! I’m allowed to have rabbits if I want!”

“It doesn’t help to yell.”

“But how can you—”

“Frederik, here I was thinking that soon you could have the car keys again, and the password to go online, maybe even a credit card. But you’re certainly not as well as I was hoping.”

“I’m not—”

“Frederik.”

“Everyone else is raising something! Why can’t I? We don’t have any money!”

I let myself fall against the back of my chair and shut my eyes. “I’m just going to have to let go of this,” I say. “I really thought you’d made more progress.”