Before the Frost (25 page)

It was with him that Linda started a serious investigation into all that went under the rubric of love. They were slowly approaching the moment of truth, although Linda equivocated. One day, when they were sprawled half-naked on her bed, the door opened. It was Mona. She had had a fight with her boss and left work early. Linda still broke out into a sweat when she remembered the shock she
had felt. At the time she had started laughing hysterically. Since she had buried her face in her hands she didn't know exactly how Torbjörn had reacted, but he must have pulled his clothes on and left the apartment soon afterward.

Mona hadn't lingered in the doorway. She had simply shot her a look that Linda could never quite describe. There had been everything in that look from despair to a kind of smug triumph in finally having her worst fears about her daughter's nature confirmed. When Linda eventually went out into the living room, they had had a shouting match. Linda could still recall Mona's repeated war cry:
I don't give a shit what you do as long as you don't get pregnant
. Linda could also hear echoes of her own shouts—their sound, not the words. She remembered the embarrassment, the fury, and the sense of humiliation.

 

All these thoughts ran through her head as she stared at the nude older woman by the refrigerator. It also occurred to her that she hadn't seen her mother naked since she was a little girl. Mona had gained a lot of weight, the extra flesh spilling out in unappealing bulges. Linda's face registered disgust, a brief unconscious expression but distinct enough for Mona to see it and snap out of her initial shock. She slammed the bottle down on the counter and pulled the refrigerator door open as a kind of shield for her body. Linda couldn't help giggling at the sight of her mother's head sticking up over the door.

“What do you mean by sneaking in like this? Why can't you ring the doorbell?”

“I wanted to surprise you.”

“But you can't just barge into a person's house!”

“How else would I find out that my mother spends her days getting pissed?”

Mona slammed the refrigerator door shut.

“I am not a drunk!” she screamed.

“You were swigging vodka straight from the bottle, Mom.”

“It's water. I chill it before I drink it.”

They both lunged for the bottle at the same time, Mona to hide the truth, Linda to uncover it. Linda got there first and sniffed it.

“This is pure, undiluted vodka. Go and put something on. Have you taken a look at yourself recently? Soon you'll be as big as Dad. But you're all blubber, he's just heavy.”

Mona grabbed the bottle out of her hands. Linda didn't fight her. She turned her back to Mona.

“Mom, put your clothes on.”

“I can be naked in my own house if I want to.”

“It's not yours, it's the banker's house.”

“His name is Olof and he happens to be my husband. We own this house together.”

“You do not. You have a prenuptial agreement. If you get divorced he keeps the house.”

“Who told you that?”

“Grandpa.”

“That old bastard. What did he know?”

Linda turned and slapped her in the face.

“Don't say that about him.”

Mona took a step back, unbalanced more by the alcohol than the slap.

“You're just like your dad. He hit me too.”

“Put some clothes on, for God's sake.”

Linda watched as her naked mother took one more long swallow from the bottle.
This isn't happening,
she thought.
Why did I stop by? Why didn't I go straight to Copenhagen?

Mona tripped and fell. Linda wanted to help her up but got pushed aside. Mona finally pulled herself up into a chair.

Linda went into the bathroom and got a robe, but Mona refused to put it on. Linda started to feel sick to her stomach.

“Can't you put anything on?”

“All my clothes feel too tight.”

“Then I'm leaving.”

“Can't you at least stay for a cup of coffee?”

“Only if you put something on.”

“Olof likes to see me naked. We always walk around naked in the house.”

Now I'm becoming a mother to my mother,
Linda thought, firmly guiding her mother into the robe. Mona put up no resistance. When she reached for the bottle, Linda moved it away. Then she started
to make coffee. Mona followed her movements with dull eyes.

“How is Kurt?”

“He's fine.”

“That man has never been fine in his entire life.”

“Right now he is. He's never been better.”

“Then it must be because he's rid of his old man—who hated him.”

Linda held her hand up as if to strike and Mona shut up. She lifted her palms in apology.

“You have no idea how much he misses him. No idea,” Linda said.

Mona got up from the chair, swaying but staying on her feet. She disappeared into the bathroom. Linda pressed her ear against the door. She heard a faucet running, but no bottles being taken from a secret stash.

When Mona reappeared she had combed her hair and washed her face. She looked around for the vodka that Linda had poured down the drain, then served the coffee. Linda suddenly felt a wave of pity for her.
I never want to be like her,
she thought. Never this snooping, nervous, clingy woman who never really wanted to leave Dad but was so insecure that she ended up doing the very things she didn't want.

“I'm not usually like this,” Mona said.

“Just now I thought you said you and Olof always walk around naked.”

“I don't drink as much as you think.”

“Mom, you used to drink next to nothing. Now I catch you stark naked in your kitchen, tossing back vodka in the middle of the day.”

“I'm not well.”

“You mean you're sick?”

Mona started to cry, to Linda's dismay. When had she last seen her mother cry? She would sometimes fall into a nervous, almost restless sobbing if a meal didn't turn out well or if she had forgotten something, and she had cried when she had fought with Linda's father. But these tears were different. Linda decided to wait them out. The sobbing stopped as suddenly as it had started. Mona blew her nose and drank her coffee.

“I'm sorry.”

“I'd rather you told me what was bothering you.”

“What would that be?”

“Only you know that, not me. But clearly something's on your mind.”

“I think Olof has met another woman. He denies it, but if there's one thing life has taught me it's to tell when a man is lying. I learned that from your dad.”

Linda immediately felt the need to jump to his defense.

“I don't think he lies more than anyone else. Not any more than I do.”

“You don't know the things I could tell you.”

“And you don't know how little I care about that.”

“Why do you always have to be so mean?”

“I'm just telling you the truth.”

“Right now I could do with some plain old-fashioned kindness.”

Linda's feelings for Mona had always oscillated between pity and anger, but now they seemed to have reached an unprecedented intensity.
I don't like her,
she thought.
My mother asks for a love I'm incapable of giving to her. I need to get out of here
. She put down her cup.

“Are you leaving already?”

“I'm on my way to Copenhagen.”

“What for?”

“I don't have time to go into it.”

“I hate Olof for what he's doing.”

“I'll come back another time when you're sober.”

“Why are you so mean to me?”

“I'm not mean. I'll call you.”

“I can't live like this anymore.”

“Then leave him. You've done it before.”

“You don't need to tell me what I've done.”

Her voice was full of hostility again. Linda turned and walked out. She heard Mona's voice behind her:
stay a little longer
. And then, just as she was about to close the door:
all right then
—
go. But don't you dare show your face here again!

Linda reached the car drenched in sweat.
Bitch,
she thought. She was furious, but she knew that before she was halfway across the Öresund Bridge her anger would flip over into guilt; she should have been a good daughter and stayed with her mother, listening to her troubles.

The guilt had already started to take over as she paid the toll for the bridge, and she wished she were not an only child.
I'm the one who will have to take care of them one day
. She shivered and decided to tell her father what had happened. Maybe he knew if Mona had ever had problems with alcohol in the past, if there was something Linda didn't know about.

She reached Denmark and started to feel better. Her decision to talk to her father made her feel less guilty. Leaving Mona alone was the only thing to she could do until Mona sobered up. If she had stayed, they would only have kept yelling at each other.

Linda drove to a parking lot and got out. She sat down on a bench overlooking the sound, and stared off across the water at the misty outline of Sweden. Over there somewhere were her parents. They had enveloped her whole childhood in a strange mist.
My dad was the worst,
she thought.
The talented but gloomy policeman who had a sense of humor but never let himself laugh. My father who never found a new woman to share his life since he still loves Mona. Baiba tried to explain it to him but he wouldn't listen. Baiba told me he claimed, “Mona belongs to the past.” But he hasn't forgotten her, he never will. She is his one great love. Now I've seen her wandering around naked, drinking hard alcohol in the middle of the day. She's also lost in the gloomy fog. I haven't managed to free myself from it and I'm almost thirty
.

Linda kicked angrily at the gravel, picked up a pebble and threw it at a seagull.
The eleventh commandment is the most important,
she thought,
the one that reads “Thou shalt never become like thy parents.”
She got up and returned to the car. She stopped in Nyhavn and looked at a tourist map, finally locating Nedergade.

 

It was already starting to get dark by the time she found Nedergade. It was a street in a shabby neighborhood with rows of tall, identical apartment buildings. Linda immediately felt unsafe and would have preferred to come back in broad daylight, but the bridge toll was too expensive to waste a trip. She locked the car and stamped her foot on the pavement as a way of rousing her courage. Then she tried to make out the names of the people who lived in the building, although it was difficult to see in the dim light. The front
door opened, and a man with a scar across his brow walked out. He was startled when he saw her. She caught the door and walked in before it closed behind him. Inside there was another notice board with names, but no one by the name of Langaas, or Torgeir, for that matter. A woman, about Linda's age, walked by carrying a bag of trash. She smiled at her.

“Excuse me,” Linda said. “I'm looking for a man by the name of Torgeir Langaas.”

The woman stopped and put the bag down.

“Does he live here?”

“He gave this as his address.”

“What was his name? Torgeir Langaas? Is he Danish?”

“Norwegian.”

She shook her head. It seemed to Linda that she genuinely wanted to help.

“I don't know of any Norwegians around here. We have a couple of Swedes and some people from other countries, but that's all.”

The front door opened and a man walked in, dressed in a hooded sweatshirt. The woman with the garbage bag asked him if he knew of a Torgeir Langaas. He shook his head. The hood was pulled up and Linda couldn't see his face.

“Try Mrs. Andersen on the second floor. She knows everything about everyone in this building. I'm sorry I can't help you myself.”

Linda thanked her for the tip and started walking up the stairs. Somewhere above her a door was pulled open, and loud Latino music reverberated in the stairwell. Outside Mrs. Andersen's door there was a small stool with an orchid. Linda rang the doorbell. Immediately a dog started to bark on the other side of the door. Mrs. Andersen, shrunken and hunched over, was one of the smallest women Linda had ever seen. The dog, barking by her slippered feet, was also one of the smallest dogs Linda had seen. She asked Mrs. Andersen her question. The old lady pointed to her left ear.

Linda shouted out her question again.

“I may hear badly but there's nothing wrong with my memory,” Mrs. Andersen said. “There's no one living here by that name.”