Leona Page 9

  I was five years old. Even though I had been made to stay alone down in the cellar, I remember the warm feeling in my body. Nothing was like when I had just finished my favorite dish, lying under the blankets, able to make out stars in the sky through the little cellar window.

  They were there then.

  The emotions.

  I remember how they filled me up.

  Real emotions that flowed through my whole body. Warmth. Anger. Sometimes mixed together in a single mishmash of indefinable assaults, impossible to control.

  Stefan, my brother, always loved to tease me. He often stared at me from the other side of the dinner table, making faces when Mother and Father weren’t looking. The fork I flung across the table hit Stefan’s eyebrow before it slammed down on the plate in front of him and then fell to the floor. The satisfaction of hitting him made me laugh loudly and uncontrollably. Stefan’s reaction was not long in coming. After a contorted facial expression he was carried away howling by Mother up the stairs to his room. I did not stop laughing until Father struck his fist hard on the table so the porcelain clattered against the tabletop.

  I knew what was coming after that. I looked out the window in the dining room and up toward the sky. It was dark. That was good. Then I could see them. The stars. I talked with them out loud, explaining to them that soon I would be coming down where we could be together. At the same time I watched Father as he went over and unlocked the wooden door down to the cellar.

  “Quiet,” he said to me.

  I kept speaking. Couldn’t stop myself. Instead I was talking even faster, telling the stars that they had to promise not to go out because I had so much to tell them. Father opened the door. Looked at me, shaking his head. I went down the stairs voluntarily. Knew there was no point in making a fuss. I was used to the cold that struck me and the dampness that slid over my body with each step I took. And the smell. A musty smell of dirt and mold.

  I was down there. The cellar I had screamed in so many times, that I had wept and thrown things in, had now become my refuge. My escape from reality. It was there that I could simply be.

  To think.

  To dream.

  Of another life.

  Then it didn’t matter that I had been punished with solitude in a dark stone cellar and that I didn’t get to eat with the family up in the dining room. That water dripped in along the stone wall or that the cellar window was so full of earth and dust that it was barely possible to see out. None of that had any significance as long as I could see the stars. Sometimes they were like white, sparkling contrasts against the dark night sky. Sometimes they were blurry through a rainy, dirty windowpane.

  They could see me too, I knew that. They winked at me. Talked with me. Never corrected me. Never said that I had done wrong and never punished me. I talked with them often. That was why I couldn’t be around people. That was what Mother said to me anyway.

  I was different, she said.

  I talked to myself.

  I explained that I was talking with the stars, but she never understood. She didn’t want to listen. When I stopped doing that and learned to behave, then I would avoid being punished in the cellar, she said.

  It never turned out that way.

  “So Peter isn’t coming tonight at all?”

  Mother adjusted the coral-colored shawl around her neck. Under it hung a small gold cross on a simple gold chain. She looked at the unoccupied table setting and then at me.

  “He’ll be late. He’s in the middle of something at work. Advertising is evidently more important than murder and robbery, which I work with.”

  Father reacted quickly to my sarcasm, lowering his head and looking at me over his reading glasses.

  “Peter has an important job. And it brings in good money.”

  As always. Mother and Father always took the other party’s side ahead of mine. Usually it was my brothers’, but also Peter’s or the children’s.

  “You should be happy you have Peter,” said Father.

  Love. Till death do us part. Peter talked a lot about those words after we got married, repeating them like a mantra. Said that what we had done was the greatest thing that had ever happened in his life. I remember when we were standing there in the church. In that moment, more than at any other time, I wished I could feel like him. Sure, I felt, but in my way. I felt pleasure and satisfaction that I was a major step closer to the life I had decided to live. But love, no.

  “Dinner’s ready, everyone,” Mother said with a smile. “Help yourselves now. You never know when there will be food again.”

  My stomach knotted. I had heard that expression so many times. So many times I had to wait before I was allowed to eat. Anyone incapable of behaving like a civilized human being couldn’t eat with other people, that was the rule at our house. I took a deep breath. Memories fluttering past like images on a screen. Mother’s submissive, nervous smile at Father. Stefan’s and Samuel’s teasing looks. Father getting louder and more dominant the more he drank. For Father, discipline was everything. Without that you got nowhere in the world, he always said. Neither he nor Mother tolerated anyone or anything that deviated from what they considered to be normal. When I made a mistake I was supposed to sit in the cellar and think about how stupid I had been so that I could do it right the next time.

  I understood early on that I was not as important as my brothers. I had often heard my parents’ proud voices when they talked about their two boys. If I was even mentioned it was more likely as the problem child.

  “Watch the glass you’re holding, Bea,” I said.

  Beatrice, who was about to spill the milk she had just been given, heard me and at the last moment managed to balance the glass in her hand and keep it from spilling on the white, embroidered tablecloth.

  I saw Father’s look. Knew that he thought I should be more authoritarian toward the children. Mother looked worriedly at the table to see whether a drop had landed on the cloth. Then she opened the lid of a little bowl that was sitting next to Benjamin’s plate.

  “There is some extra good special spaghetti just for you in here, Benjamin,” she said, starting to ladle pasta onto Benji’s plate.

  “I want special spaghetti too,” said Bea, pointing at the bowl.

  “We’ve talked about this, Bea,” I said. “You know that Benji has to eat special food. You get the same as the rest of us.”

  Beatrice let out a loud howl but fell abruptly silent as she was drowned out by my father pronouncing her name in his deep rumbling voice.

  I felt a vibration in my pocket and took out my phone, excusing myself as I got up from the table. A journalist on the other end asked whether he could ask a few questions about the robbery. I said no firmly and referred him to our public relations officer.

  “Are you having a rough time at work too, Leona?” said Mother when I sat down again.

  “It’s the bank robbery at SEB with the little —”

  “We’re eating now, if you were thinking about bringing up a lot of unpleasant cop stories,” my brother Stefan interrupted me.

  As long as I could remember the two of us had disagreed about everything. Since he had started working as a stockbroker he had become completely insufferable. A conceited ass in a shirt and jacket who refused to take off his tie, even at our parents’ house. Mother and Father were extremely proud of his choice of occupation.

  “I neither can nor want to talk about such things, especially not to weak, sensitive people like you, Stefan. You’ll have to hear it on the news instead.”

  Stefan snorted at me and took a sip from the wineglass in front of him.

  “If it’s a problem to listen to something that has to do with me, perhaps these dinners don’t suit your distinguished persona,” I said quietly.

  “Mommy, what does ‘stinguished persona’ mean?” asked Bea.

  “It means that a person is completely full of himself and looks down on other people, dear.”

  Mother cleared her throat.

>   “Leona, will you please pass the salad?”

  She reached out her arm toward the salad bowl. I glimpsed a thick Bismark chain along with the gold watch around her wrist.

  “Your brother is just worried about you. And I agree that it’s not good to work with robberies and ghastly things like that. Especially not when you have small children. What if something were to happen to you?”

  For all these years Mother had tried to get me to change occupations. For my own safety and for the children’s sake, she said. In reality it was about something completely different. It wasn’t acceptable among their fine college-educated friends to have a child who was a police officer. Especially not a daughter.

  “I can’t bear to discuss this again, Mother.”

  The piercing sound of the doorbell interrupted me. It was the sound I had heard so many times from the cellar, and longed for.

  Hoping that someone would come.

  That someone would discover what was going on.

  “Oh, how nice! Now he’s here,” said Mother, walking quickly out toward the hall.

  When she left there was silence at the dinner table. I glared at Stefan. He responded with a shrug. He didn’t seem to think it was worth even opening his mouth when Mother wasn’t around. Samuel sat occupied with his phone, uninterested in communicating. The two of them behaved exactly like when we were kids. Father finished his third glass of wine and got up to get more.

  We could hear Mother’s voice in the hall.

  “Peter, how nice that you could get away from work after all. Oh, you didn’t have to buy flowers.”

  Flowers for Mother. Pathetic. My parents were pushovers. They probably realized that Peter was only showing off, but that was how you were supposed to behave when you visited the family for dinner. Then you were welcome in the Lindberg family home.

  “Nice to see all of you. Sorry I’m a little late.”

  A little? An hour and thirteen minutes had passed. Peter had evidently had time to go to the hair salon, anyway. His dark, wavy hair was trimmed at the neck and shorter than this morning.

  “No problem, Peter,” said Father, who came from the kitchen with the wine bottle in hand. “Leona told us that it’s stressful for you at work. It’s tough being the family breadwinner.”

  Father set down the bottle and shook hands with Peter as if they were best friends. It was true that Peter earned more than I did, but he was hardly the sole family provider. In contrast to the men I had previously been involved with, Peter was relatively uninterested in money. Ever since we had moved in together I had been the one responsible for our joint finances. As long as he knew there was enough money when we needed to buy something, he was happy.

  “Wine?” Father asked, reaching toward Peter’s glass. “Thanks, but I’m driving, so if there’s something else…”

  “How nice that you had time to get a haircut,” I said.

  Peter walked around the table and over to me.

  “I went to the drop-in salon on the way. Wanted to look good for my darling,” he said, giving me a light kiss on the cheek. “Nice that you could pick up the kids.”

  “Of course she could,” said Mother, pouring mineral water in Peter’s glass. “Picking up the children at day care is marvelous. I remember when we used to pick up the boys at —”

  “Mother, please, knock it off,” I said.

  She fell silent and looked down at the table. She was good at playing the martyr. I was tired of the stories about when my brothers and I were little. Stories that always ended with me having done something stupid that everyone laughed at. Peter tried to salvage the situation.

  “Yes, of course, it’s sweet. I love picking them up. Have you told that we’re thinking about having…”

  He stopped when I stared at him.

  “Oh,” said Mother, lighting up. “Are you thinking about an addition to the family? How nice!”

  Peter avoided my gaze. Mother seemed to have understood what was going on.

  “Leona, that’s not anything to keep secret, is it? You already have two wonderful children, a third will be yet another gift from God. Just like when we had you.”

  Mother smiled. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Peter looking worriedly at me, but I avoided catching his glance. Father did not take long to pick up on Mother’s happy act.

  “Nice to hear, Peter. Oh yes, Marita nagged about a third child until I gave in. And we haven’t regretted it, even if the boys got a little wildcat to share. A real little lion.”

  Father laughed and winked at Peter. I said nothing. Peter accidentally mentioning something that we hadn’t agreed on at all was one thing, but for Mother and Father to try to pretend that they had wanted three children made me mute. They had always treated me differently from my brothers. Even with my name they had marked me as different. Stefan, Samuel, and Leona. “Leona, the little lion,” Father always said. People laughed and thought it was sweet. I knew that he didn’t mean it in a positive sense.

  “Excuse me.”

  I got up and went quickly into the bathroom, locking the door and positioning myself with my back against it. I spoke softly to myself: Breathe. Breathe. My collar felt tight around my neck and I pulled on it, panting. I thought of them sitting there having dinner at the table I had been sent away from so many times as a child. I got a strange impulse to go out and attack them.

  Pay them back.

  For everything.

  I took a few deep breaths. I needed to calm down. Nausea was bubbling up inside me. My face was hot. I went over to the sink and splashed my face with the ice-cold water. The cold calmed me. I sat down on the toilet seat. Took a towel from the hook and held my head in my hands. It wasn’t the first time I experienced these feelings at home with my parents as an adult. The same brief emotional outbursts, just like when I was a child. After a quick look in the mirror I unlocked the door and went out in the hall. I dug out my shoes and started putting them on. Mother came after me.

  “But what…?”

  “I’m not feeling well. I have to go home,” I said.

  “It’s not the food, is it?”

  When I didn’t answer she smiled and looked meaningfully at my belly.

  “Maybe you’re already…?”

  “No,” I answered curtly, rummaging around among the jackets. “I just need to rest.”

  “But dear, Peter hasn’t even finished eating,” said Mother.

  Before I put my shoes on I went into the dining room.

  “Children, you can come home with Daddy. Mommy is tired and has to go home and rest.”

  I did not even look at Father and my brothers. After a glance at Peter I went quickly back to the hall and out the door.

  The cool autumn air that struck me was liberating. My previous fixation with maintaining a normal life, and all that involved, seemed more and more incomprehensible. I walked quickly over the gravel toward the car. I backed out onto the little road that I used to bicycle back and forth on when I was little. Then, casting a final glance toward the house, I took off.

  It was the last time.

  SEVENTEEN

  Neither of us had said a word to each other after the dinner with my parents. Peter put the children to bed while I sat in the guest room in front of the computer for the rest of the evening. But I was too tired to stay up. Peter had just gone to bed. I quickly twisted my hair into a braid and hoped I would be able to slip down under the covers, mumble a “good night,” and turn off the bedside lamp without needing to initiate a conversation. Or any other activity either, for that matter. Since Peter had got it into his brain that we should have more children, he had initiated sex at least a couple of times a week. I ducked and avoided his advances, as well as the harping about more children.

  “I shouldn’t have brought that up at your parents’.”

  I turned off the lamp. The last thing I was in the mood for now was to spend half the night talking about whether it was right or wrong of him to do one thing or the other. I had
learned to be curt so as not to encourage a discussion. I settled down with my back against Peter and pulled the covers up to my chin.

  “It’s okay.”

  I meant it sincerely. The question was whether he would be content with that. There was silence for a moment.

  “I thought we were in agreement about having one more,” he continued, but he did not sound particularly convinced.

  I didn’t intend to fall into the trap and start arguing with him.

  “Mmm.”

  “Weren’t we?” he said.

  When I didn’t answer he continued.

  “It would be so sweet. And when we move to a bigger house it won’t feel as cramped and inconvenient as here. I have several colleagues who have three children and they’re very content with that. You’re a third child yourself. You heard how happy your parents sounded when they talked about the three of you.”

  “Peter, I’m really tired.”

  I didn’t expect Peter to see through my parents’ happy act, but somehow his naïveté irritated me more than usual. I saw their claim to have wanted a third child as a mockery aimed directly at me. Peter knew very little about what it had been like for me as a child.

  I was six years old. I had never heard them say the words before. Not in sequence. It was Father who said them. We had come home after having dinner with Aunt Anna and the cousins. Father was drunk, as usual for a weekend evening. Mother was quiet. My brothers quickly disappeared up to their rooms.

  Like so many times before, I didn’t understand what I had done wrong. I had been having fun. Stefan, Samuel, and I had gone with one of our cousins into his room. He had a remote control car that the others took turns playing with. I wasn’t interested. I thought cars were boring. It was when I was looking around among the things on the bookshelf that I caught sight of it. Far back on one of the shelves was a box. I quietly picked it up and opened it. All the small sticks in the box were lying in the same direction, except one. It was not meant to be with the others, I understood that. I picked it up.