The American Girl (48 page)

Carry me, Doris, over troubled water
.

Oh! Who then? You then? Doris-in-her chuckled, full of scorn and derision. And with that it happened. There was no longer any security. PANG the breakdown crashed inside her.

Like a stone in the well and the well that was her, Sandra, dark and bottomless. She quite simply passed out, falling to the floor with a thud. On the bottom floor Birgitta Blumenthal’s mother screamed, a short and suddenly childish cry, she remembered, or her body and head remembered, the bombs falling in the city by the sea and the bomb shelter. “The war is coming,” she thought but in the next moment she realized that this, it was absurd, but her husband was already paying attention to another cry, the kind that only their daughter Birgitta could produce when she was really upset or afraid. And now she was calling for HELP upstairs. And both parents had run up, barely had time to put on their identical light blue, terry cloth robes, and shortly thereafter they found the passed-out girl on the floor of the living room.

“I don’t know what happened,” Birgitta Blumenthal said. “She just passed out. Maybe it’s . . . alcohol poisoning.” And she started confessing to what had been going on up in the living room without any of the adults really listening to her. The parents understood immediately that the alcohol was not the problem. This was something else, maybe something more serious than that.

“She’s warm,” said Mr. Blumenthal who was a pediatrician and was kneeling on the floor next to Sandra Wärn. “Fever. Maybe it’s meningitis.”

So besides: Sandra had in other words been farsighted enough to collapse in good hands.

You could also look at it that way.

Unlike Doris. Doris who had not had any safety nets. Doris who had to look death in the eye for real, absolutely defenseless and on her own.

You could also look at it that way.

• • •

CLOTHING DESIGNER.

Sandra did not know what happened. When she woke up the next time she was in her own bed, and the Islander and two unfamiliar young pucks of the female sex, rather made up and with teased hair and in some way exaggeratedly elflike, were standing next to the bed. At first she thought these strange women’s faces at the Islander’s side were part of an ongoing hallucination and that she, since she certainly recognized the Islander and understood she was lying in her own bed, thus found herself in a state between consciousness, insanity, and illness. But in the next second she understood that everything was for real. There was a realism about all of it and that was the Islander standing there with a Santa Claus hat on. Sandra had happened to collapse at exactly the point in time when a small, playful Christmas party, which the Islander had been looking forward to, had gotten started and these two unfamiliar female faces belonged to two, this you could say first after pediatrician Blumenthal had left the house in the darker part of the woods, erhm.

Two unfamiliar female faces and a pale papa Islander face in the middle. Sandra smiled a faint smile at the whole situation, which was so amusing and in order to assure the Islander she was certainly still alive. Then she drifted off into confusion again. The fever rose to
102
degrees.

Clothing designer. The thought itself became even crazier.

She took one whore elf’s hand and squeezed it for all she was worth.

Because it was Saturday evening and the party had, as said, almost started when the doorbell rang—a shrill buzzer signal (that doorbell was newly installed AFTER Doris’s death)—and Blumenthal the pediatrician almost scared the life out of a groggy Islander with guilty conscience at the ready, if nothing else just
because in the capacity of his profession Blumenthal the pediatrician could inspire in any parent in a giddy party mood, when there were finally no children in the house, a bad conscience.

“I have your passed-out daughter in the backseat. I could use some help.” Blumenthal the pediatrician’s first line had not exactly made the situation any better. And he, Blumenthal, was also known for his rather special, sometimes rather sadistic humor. And his predilection for drama. For example, once a long time ago during the time when Lorelei Lindberg was still there and everything was still different (that is to say, you could venture to be a bit drastic—later on sympathy for the Islander, who was carrying the load himself, so to speak, got the upper hand), in passing he pointed out to Lorelei Lindberg in the food store in the town center that a harelipped child who had been operated on would not always be able to count on a normal life without a division after. Admittedly physiologically, he had said, but maybe not mentally.

Blumenthal the pediatrician was standing on the steps to the house in the darker part of the woods and during a fraction of a second he enjoyed the effect of his words, and then, when it slowly started taking effect, donned his objective doctor’s role again:

“Presumably a fever. Nothing worse. Possibly as a result of mental exhaustion. The girl has been through a lot lately. And she has shown great bravery. Maybe too great. Now she has to rest and become well again at her very own pace.”

With these words Sandra had been handed over to her own home, in her own bed, the great marital one, and in the middle of the party besides.

The sudden interruption caused the party to stop abruptly. It did not end because of a command, but ebbed out. In any case right there, in the house in the darker part of the woods, maybe to continue somewhere else. Just before midnight a long line of taxis left the house in the darker part. Those were all the guests, with the exception of two women who stayed.

She sat on the edge of the bed and held Sandra’s hand, with tears in her eyes. Who dried Sandra’s hot forehead with cool tissues that the other woman brought to the room. She also boiled tea, made sandwiches, lined up gingersnaps on a small plate, and brought everything in on a tray.

Sandra did not eat or drink anything, she just squeezed a hand. A hand. She longed so terribly. Missed. And in that dazed state she found herself in, the longing was shaped into a name that just came out of her time and time and time again.

“Bombshell. Pinky. Pink.”

The women, who unfortunately did not know the Bombshell, of course did not even understand what she was talking about but did their best to calm her down.

The Islander had locked himself in the rec room. He was in a bad mood. The party would have to continue and culminate without him. Not just the party. Everything else too.

The next day, however, early on Sunday morning, he got up and started cleaning. He sent the women home of course because when Sandra woke up in the middle of the day the house was clean and empty. He also called Inget Herrman and asked her to come. As an exception Inget Herrman stayed in the house the following days also, even though it was the middle of the week.

Sandra went through the house and searched—yes, for what? The party? It was melancholic in a way. Then she went to bed again. Lay there. Lost herself in lethargy. Did not get up for ages. Slept, slept, slept. For a thousand years.

The fever came back, it rose and fell. Then suddenly, a few days later, it was gone. Days passed. Sandra had recovered physically but she stayed in bed regardless.

No one said anything.

“Rest,” pediatrician Blumenthal had said. “Become well. At your own pace.”

• • •

Sandra had personally made a decision. She would get up when there was a point to getting up. She had not thought about taking her own life. She thought about just remaining in bed and in the worst case dying, just by itself. But as long as she did not find a reason to get up she would not get up. All the voices in her were gone.

But what looked like extreme passivity and monotony still were not. In any case not directly. Thoughts floated in and out of her head. A transistor played at night at the slightest disturbance in the air and the radio waves could reproduce themselves freely all the way to Luxembourg or wherever that radio station was where the kind of music that was like pouring rain rushing in and through her head played.

“I’m
not in love. It’s just a crazy phase I’m going through now.”

Longing, Pinky, it had been one word. A formula, a memory, an association. Now others came. “Just because I’m looking you up, don’t misunderstand me, don’t think it’s sorted now. I’m not in love, it’s only because—”

It was the Boy. The longing that ran in that direction, again. Because he was there. The boy who was not a boy any longer. He was Bengt.

She was not surprised to discover him outside the house. Not really. For the most part he stood on or near the jetty, which you could see well through the tree trunks now when the leaves had fallen and there was snow on the ground. He looked up at her room. She understood he wanted something from her.

And she—

She sat at the end of the large marital bed in the darkness in her room and stared out into the darkness. Looked straight at him, whom she discerned as a shadow there.

Sometimes he stood unmoving and she had the idea they were looking at each other without seeing, but for the most part he moved nervously, like someone who is waiting and waiting and soon has been waiting too long usually does.

“Who is that?” One day right before spring break when Birgitta Blumenthal had forced her way into Sandra’s sickroom she happened to catch sight of him, a shadow that was moving at the edge of the ice in the twilight.

“Someone.” Sandra had shrugged her shoulders.

“He’s staring this way. He doesn’t look . . . completely well.”

“Mmm. And so?”

“Are you scared?”

Sandra sat up in bed and said:

“Man. Why would I be afraid?”

There had also been a distance, almost a threat, in her reply. She did not want Birgitta Blumenthal to be there. Did not want her pathetic everyday depictions, her pathetic homework assignments, her pathetic dreams (Hasse Horseman!), her pathetic dreams for the future and future prospects. Remember a saying from so long ago:
a matchstick house with matchstick people who live a matchstick life
.

The Black Sheep, in Little Bombay: I wanted to show you what your dream looked like
.

Is this what your dream looked like?

Maybe Birgitta Blumenthal was harmless, but not stupid, either. She certainly understood—everything in her own clever way. She said, right before she left and it was very soon thereafter—Sandra had turned on the television, which was showing skiing competitions that were taking place in the Alps somewhere and Franz Klammer was going downhill precipice by precipice at sixty miles an hour in a fantastically clear, snowy, white Central
European landscape drenched in sunshine, but it did not give her any associations and it would in the future not give her any either; figuratively speaking it would never mean anything else, it would, like skiing, just be a winter sport—that she had actually started believing a little bit that they were right, the ones who said Sandra was not normal. That there was something about her. Something really twisted.

“I’ve started doubting you in some way,” Birgitta Blumenthal said before she left, but certainly so calm and kind.

“What?” said Sandra and could not tear herself away from the TV screen. “I’m not God anyway.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Birgitta Blumenthal answered calmly and patiently. “I mean . . . that I don’t really . . . believe you.”

It came a bit carefully, a bit vaguely. But when it had been said, she added quickly, as if to reassure herself that it was right to say it (ethically right that is—was she allowed to do this, was she allowed to say this to a . . . friend . . . who had gone through so much, had a breakdown after her best friend’s death . . . and everything?):

“That’s how it is. Quite simply.”

“Maybe the others are right.”

She had—Sandra that is, somewhat later, when it was dark and Birgitta Blumenthal dismissed herself and left her hesitant anxiety hanging in the air—sat on her knees by the bed with all of the lights on. Given a sign. Two. Waved.

Then, when she was certain that he had seen it, she started painting her ice skates.

“The ones who say that . . .

“In other words, Sandra, I don’t know if you’re telling the truth.” That was the last thing Birgitta Blumenthal said before
she left the room and the house in the darker part that time which would be the last time she would be accepted into the house.

Sandra decided then that, yes, she would go out and skate. Sewed a green sports suit for herself, suitable for practicing such an outdoor activity in. Took out the paint, the one she had once painted certain nylon T-shirts with, the viscous green. There was still some of it left in the can, and so she took her ice skates and painted them with it.

And later: out into the bright, bright day.

She had gone to him out of real longing.

Game start. And not as Eddie, or anyone else, but as herself.

Princess Stigmata . . . the ice princess, her in the green clothes.

She had gone to him out of real longing, real desire. She wanted to have. Him. Her body had bellowed. And she had been impatient waiting for the right moment. The Monday after spring break when she knew no one else would be there.

“You fall in love with someone who brings something inside you to life.”

Yes, Inget.

And now she was finally ready to meet it.

In Bencku’s barn (where she was lying on a massive water bed and thinking)
. Later, in the future, they would talk about the day she followed him to the barn without saying one word, without either of them saying one word, he would tell her that he had waited for her for such a long time, but that it had taken time for her to discover him. But that he had taken that into consideration. He had been prepared for that, he would say.

He would also say, Sandra fantasized further where she lay rocking on the water bed while he left her alone to go to the
bathroom or something for a while, that he had not forgotten her as she had been two years before, that fall night in the house in the darker part of the woods. When she had come to him in the pool. He would ask her if she remembered it. Did she remember?