The American Girl (43 page)

“It’s always like there’s a stranger in this house.”

And she walked with Inget Herrman over the cliffs on the Second Cape, one last time.

“What do you do if you’re carrying a terrible secret?” she asked Inget Herrman. They stood by the sea, on the veranda of the boathouse, laughing.

“Throw yourself in the sea with it. Then you sink. A terrible secret tends to be heavy to carry.”

“Seriously,” Doris said impatiently.

“Sorry,” said Inget Herrman, suddenly serious because she also saw Doris’s need. “But I can’t give any abstract advice. I need to know more essentially. Otherwise I’ll just say like somebody said:
Poor people who must suffer so terribly.”

Feel akin to Inget Herrman
. But they had walked out on one of the longest jetties on the Second Cape, in the wild wind of fall.

“Here everyone thinks that it’s just sea and horizon,” Inget Herrman said. “That there isn’t any land on the other side. That nothing happens on the other side. But there are: places, locations, other countries. And when the weather is clear then you can almost see it from here.”

“Walk on the water, then,” Doris said abrasively.

“Now the young lady was clever clever.” Inget Herrman laughed.

But Doris had not laughed.

She turned around and started walking back.

“Oh! I’m sorry, Doris,” Inget Herrman said. “Sometimes—well, it’s so hopeless.” And her thoughts had gotten stuck on the Islander who left the house in the darker part of the woods in anger during a fight they had a few hours earlier. “I’m going to tell you, Doris Flinkenberg, never grow up. Be as you are NOW, and always. When you grow up . . . then you have to have relationships and
scenes from a marriage
and things like that.”

“Hmm,” said Doris Flinkenberg. She melted because of those words, she liked Inget Herrman so much, of course, also when Inget Herrman talked like that. Inget Herrman who said the kinds of things no other grown-up said.

And of course all of it was not Inget Herrman’s fault. And she had thought that maybe, maybe she would be able to tell Inget Herrman now, how it was, ask her if she knew.

But she did not. And they went their separate ways. Everything was strange. She decided then already.

Never be a grown-up, Doris Flinkenberg.

• • •

Dearest dearest, what is happening? We were supposed to be together!

“Where are you going, Doris Flinkenberg?”

“Out,” Doris Flinkenberg replied. “I’m going out.”

And the fall had advanced to the month of November when Doris Flinkenberg took Rita’s pistol and set out in the darkness on an early Saturday evening. Went to Bule Marsh and shot herself there.

“The devil take you Sandra Wärn,” Doris Flinkenberg stood and screamed in the pool without water, when Sandra had pulled up the ladder once so that Doris could not get out. That had been during the summer, during a game.

And when she came back she had the pistol with her.

Sandra, in the middle of the summer, stood and pointed at her with the pistol
.

“Are you scared?”

“Of course not.”

SOMEONE ELSE WHO LEFT EVERYTHING AND THE ENTIRE DISTRICT
was Rita. The evening after Doris’s funeral Rita left under sensational circumstances—even if the attention itself came later. First Rita crashed Solveig’s car, the red Mini Cooper that Järpe had fixed up. She rammed it against a tree in Bäckström’s field north of the town center. Possibly on purpose. Highly likely, but there would be no opportunity to talk about these possible opinions, not for Solveig’s part anyway, not for a long time. Thereafter Rita had, muddy and furious, wandered up to the main country road where she positioned herself to catch a lift in the direction of the city by the sea. Anders Bäckström and Sabrita-Lill Lindholm from the neighboring county (Sabrita-Lill, that is, Anders was the son in the house on Bäckström’s farm, the soon to be only farmers who farmed the earth in the District out of tradition and custom) who happened to come driving in Anders Bäckström’s father’s rather new BMW had stopped and driven Rita into the city by the sea. It was their statements you had to turn to if you were Solveig and you wanted to know where your sister had gone. And at that point, just after Doris’s death, there was chaos in the cousin’s house, the cousin’s mama was out of her mind with grief and powerlessness, there was no one other than Solveig who even had the energy to worry about where Rita had gone. “Don’t you care about any of this?” Solveig asked Torpe Torpeson, her own boyfriend Järpe’s brother, whom Rita had been together with, but Torpe had truly shaken his head and shrugged his shoulders; he was mostly relieved after everything. Rita had a screw loose and it was best when Rita was so far away that farther away did not exist.

“Oh hell,” Torpe swore in the District language, “she’s not really really right in the head,” and had in other words spoken about Rita but shrewdly smiled at her sister Solveig who looked pretty much the same of course, was just a little plumper, a bit softer in the face, which was actually also an advantage, and little by little nature would take its course and it would “become” Torpe and Solveig, and Järpe would have to look around for a new “chick” and he would find one of those and many more. But that Mini Cooper, Järpe would grieve it deeply. He would be furious for a while, kick rocks in every direction so that they scattered in every direction at just the thought.

What a pity it would also be for Solveig. So much life to maintain, all on her own. Everything that fell to bits. The cousin’s mama who after she was released from the mental hospital in any case would never return to the cousin’s house.

Solveig who would try and take care of all of that. But she had a child in her stomach. For a long time it was her own knowledge. A secret. And her only hope.

But the evening when Rita left
. She had been drunk but not at all impaired when she got into Anders’s father’s car, Sabrita-Lill in other words explained to Solveig on the telephone. Dirty, as if she had waded through a few hundred feet of swamp at least, in other words no on-the-side-of-the-road spray on her clothes. You could certainly see something had happened in the fields there. You had not been able to ask about it then because she had not exactly been in the mood to answer any questions. This, in other words, according to Sabrita-Lill Lindholm on the telephone. And she had been absolutely determined. She was going to go to the city by the sea. And there had not, for either Sabrita-Lill or Anders Bäckström, been any reason to doubt the seriousness of it.

They had not seen any other option than to do as she wanted and drive her all the way. That is to say they could not just leave
her like that, to fend for herself. Certainly not in the shape she was in, not very drunk, in other words, but certainly out of it. And both Anders and Sabrita-Lill were known as youths with a sense of responsibility, no hooligans like Rita and the Rats and those, a little bit better than the marsh pack at some point in time, but not in any considerable way—

You could trust them, in other words. They drove Rita into the city by the sea where they left her on the street by the beach in the exclusive part of the city where the Backmansson family’s residence was. The houses on that stretch of beach were beautiful and calmly inspired respect, substantial stone houses that radiated constancy and an obvious peace that can be purchased only with money. That kind of self-evident money, quiet money. So self-evident it was not something you spread the word about. You lived at the sea in other words because you “couldn’t” live anywhere else; you had high ceilings in your apartments because you got headaches in other ones. You were now once and for all normal in that way.

It had been around two-three o’clock in the morning and otherwise quiet in that part of the city. But people were standing on a balcony farther down the street and it looked like there was a party going on in that apartment. Not a youth party, but a more dignified and adult—though certainly merry—gathering: The balcony doors were thrown open in the dark night and the clear sky twinkled with stars the whole fantastic fall night; those were the very last days before winter would start.

And that was where Rita was headed. Toward just that balcony, that party. Toward just that bright light, whether she was invited or not. She had gotten out of the car without so much as a thank-you to the remaining occupants, in muddy clothes, in an easing intoxication, with only a red-and-blue plastic bag in her hand.

That was how Rita Rat finally arrived at the Backmansson family in the city by the sea.

“Get out of here!” she yelled to Anders Bäckström and Sabrita-Lill Lindholm in the BMW so they would drive off immediately after she got out. They had not been thinking about staying to spy on her either, Sabrita-Lill Lindholm explained to Solveig. They were just thinking about waiting to see how everything turned out: maybe Rita would not be let in, maybe she would stand there all alone afterward and need help. And when it looked like her command would not work, Rita finally kicked the side of the car rather hard.

That was the last straw for the couple in the car. Then they left Rita to her fate and drove off. You do not kick someone else’s BMW.

Solveig, who was listening to Sabrita-Lill Lindholm, had not had a hard time imagining Rita at all, her anger, her mood, the drunkenness, the dirty clothes, all of it, the muddiness. And it had affected her badly, of course, like a spot on a terribly visible place, a
stain
as it were, or something. But polite as she was she ended the conversation with Sabrita-Lill Lindholm by offering to clean the interior of the BMW at the cost of the company.

But as soon as she had said it out loud, she had heard herself, how stupid it sounded, how silly.

But at the same time, something in her had not been able to hold back a cold, quiet, and tired smile: Rita. Rat. Her sister. You always had to pick up after her, Rita. You always had to clean up and sweep up the tracks after her. That is how she, Solveig, had been thinking then, but that was before she realized Rita had actually left now. And she would not be coming back either.

(. . . but from the werewolf, one last greeting)
. Brushed dark red nail polish on her nails. Saw herself in the mirror, a bathroom mirror without a frame, which she had placed on the long table in the room, leaned against the cottage window because that was the cottage’s only mirror. Saw herself in the mirror, the book
Werewolf
, thumb marks on the surface of the mirror, they were sharp
and clearly visible, greasy and revealing in the sharp light from the desk lamp that she had aimed toward the table. “Take that picture now.”

“Monkey business,” said Solveig who took the picture because Rita wanted—it was the last night in the cottage together, but Solveig did not know that yet. Solveig took the picture because she was a nice person even if she otherwise thought you should photograph real things, things like nature in its “splendid display of colors” and different kinds of lighting depending on the seasons, like a postcard; or a birthday party, a name day’s party and Christmas party, Ärpe Torpeson as Santa Claus for the unplanned child Allison Torpeson, who believed in Santa Claus even though she had turned twelve and oh my goodness how fun it was to still be “a child at heart.” Real things were also ordinary people. Ärpe Torpeson was in more than one picture in Solveig’s diligently used camera, Ärpe at the cement foundry in the town center, Ärpe next to his wife Viola who loved to drive too fast on the roads in the District in her old Skoda so that the rocks whirled up against other cars’ mudguards and sometimes cracked their windows. If you said anything about it, if you, for example, called Viola Torpeson in order to work things out, she would say “kiss my ass” or something along those lines if she was the one answering the phone and then hang up.

“There is one thing about you, Rita,” Solveig had said the last day when Rita was still in the cottage. “You pretend to be something you’re not.”

“Well,” Rita answered calmly but ice-cold. “tell me then. Since you know. Who am I?”

But Solveig sure enough had not answered. They had drunk wine, it was the last evening, the evening after Doris Flinkenberg’s funeral, and they were going to go to Hästhagen—a dance place—for lack of other places to go, and you could not be at home, certainly not after the funeral, you had to get out.

Long, slender, attractive. Black hair cut in a page. The werewolf who was laughing at the mirror. Looked down at the one taking the picture as if from above.
Snap
. And maybe it was, thought Solveig, due to the mood, due to the fact there were so many pictures that needed to be exorcised from her head: Rita’s face next to Doris’s dead body, Rita’s face, the look, the blood, the expression.

“Take the picture then,” said Rita.

“I
am the seducer,”
said Rita. “The
happy one.”

And then they had sat a while longer and talked and it was during that conversation which had been short and almost natural in its shortness that Rita had understood it was impossible. Everything. Now she had to.

And she had gone to the shower and showered until the warm water was used up and even a few more minutes after that. When she finished she was even colder, almost ice-cold, and clean.

She changed clothes. Put on her black pants, red shirt, brushed her dark hair, pulled it away from her forehead with a black hair tie, and put on her makeup at the dinner table in front of the mirror. “Hurry up now!” she said to Solveig. “Go and get ready now, go and shower, we’re leaving then, I’m waiting.” And Solveig had gone to the bathroom and to the toilet and in the shower and during that time Rita took Solveig’s leather jacket, her car keys, the wine bottle (the unopened one), and the camera and left. A classic scene: a car starts in the yard. Solveig, who heard it from the toilet, knew exactly what had happened. Rita had not kept her word, Solveig had been tricked. And now, now Rita was gone, and the car too—forever.