More Bitter Than Death (23 page)

“If you ask me, that’s a bunch of bullshit,” Patrik says, staring at me blankly from across the little table cluttered with a water pitcher, glasses, and Kleenex.

He’s leaning back now, with his soft, black leather jacket still on. It’s as if he doesn’t really want to admit that we’re actually going to spend an hour together, keeping his jacket on to emphasize that he’s going to be going soon, very soon.

“Patrik”—I hesitate for a second, thinking about how to word what I want to say—“you’re often angry when we meet. And you seem really angry at Mia. I am wondering what’s triggering all this anger.”

“But that’s obvious, isn’t it?” Patrik asks.

“Is it?”

“You can’t just do what Mia’s doing. It’s such a goddamn . . . sellout for . . . for . . . the kids. If you bring a child into this world, you have a certain responsibility. Don’t you agree?”

“In what way, exactly, do you think Mia is letting you down?”

Patrik sighs again, for the tenth time in our conversation.

“How clear do I have to be? She’s addicted to some kind of antianxiety pills. That’s just the . . . the ultimate cop-out. I mean, you can’t hurt the people you love more than that. She picked the pills over us, simple as that.”

“So you feel rejected?” I ask.

“Well, there’s rejected and then there’s rejected. It’s not about me, is it? It’s about the kids and about the fact that she chose this herself. How can you choose a package of pills over your own kids? I mean, a child is totally dependent on its mother, right? It just kills me.”

We sit in silence for a bit. He taps his shoe on the floor.

Impatiently. Unhappily.

“Patrik, I wonder if you’ve ever experienced something like this before in your life? Someone who neglected you, perhaps? Maybe when you were a child?”

Patrik freezes, midmotion, suddenly blinks several times, and I realize that
I’ve hit a nerve, so I lean forward and look him in the eyes, give the lanky, angry man across from me my full therapist attentiveness.

“What does that have to do with any of this?” Patrik asks.

“We don’t know yet. Or do we? So, have you ever experienced anything like this before?”

“Maybe.”

“What does that mean?”

He starts tapping his foot again, sighs, and buries his face in his hands.

“My mom . . . she drank a lot.”

“So your mom was an alcoholic? How old were you when she started having trouble with alcohol?” I ask.

“Dunno. I think she always had a problem. But maybe I realized it when I was about six or seven.”

“And how did her problem affect your relationship with her?”

“Oh, she wasn’t really out of it or anything. Social services never swooped in on us, if you know what I mean, but she could be really moody. Sometimes she didn’t feed us. I almost always ate at friends’ houses after school. Everyone helped out. I grew up in Domarö, out in the Stockholm archipelago. It’s a small town. People stick together. People . . . don’t gossip about each other. They obviously knew that Mom drank, so everyone pitched in as best they could. But no one . . . said anything. And, well, sometimes she hit us or just yelled. I don’t know which was worse. I used to take care of my little brother.”

“How long did this go on?”

“I moved out when I was sixteen. Then Mom died the year I turned eighteen. It was a car accident, so it didn’t have anything to do with the alcohol. I think.”

“And what do you feel when you think about your mother?”

“I don’t think about her.” His answer came fast, and suddenly he looked at me without breaking eye contact.

“Obviously you do. Come on. Try to put words to your feelings.”

“I’m . . . I guess I’m . . . pissed off, actually,” he says, and then hesitates for a moment before he continues. “Ha, I didn’t think I actually cared. It’s been so long since I’ve thought about it. But there it is. I’m pissed off. Period.”

“And what is it that makes you so angry?”

“Well, that she neglected us. Prioritized her addiction over her own children.”

I lean toward him. “Just like Mia, you mean?”

Patrik studies me in silence, his hands trembling. Suddenly his eyes go moist and his face looks childish despite his black stubble. His eyes are pleading.

I don’t say anything, just nod quietly.

Rain again.

Hard drops clatter against the windshield of my car. The windshield wipers try to keep up. The rhythm of the wiper blades is hypnotic and somehow safe.

I took today off. Rescheduled the sessions I was supposed to have and freed myself up. Now I’m on my way into the city, passing black bays and summer cottages that look lonely and abandoned on these gray fall days. In the summer, the roads into town are all sparkling water, sailboats, and crowds of people out sightseeing. Now the landscape is deserted and the highway is almost empty. Every now and then I encounter another car, whose yellow lights reflect off the wet roadway, and at Baggensstäket Strait a local bus splashes my little car with rainwater from the street as it passes by. Otherwise nothing.

The isolation leaves me plenty of room to think. What I had long tried to dismiss as an impossibility is now a fact. Evidenced by a faint blue plus on a plastic stick.

A baby.

I try to figure out when this happened. I’m a grown-up. I know how you make a baby and how you prevent it from happening. Still, I have absolutely no idea when this might have occurred, how this might have occurred. I can’t grasp it. Only the nausea that has taken over my body makes it real. Because this is exactly how it was last time.

Back then, with Stefan.

The baby that was going to be ours, the baby that never came to be. And now, a new baby. Such a surprise, strange, inconceivable. And I think about Markus, his genuine joy about the pregnancy and pain over my lackluster response. For a brief instant I’m ashamed. I feel shame churning in my stomach because I’m unable to love Markus the way he loves me. I can’t, don’t dare to, don’t want to. I’m not sure why. I just know that something inside me doesn’t dare let go.

Somewhere in my mind there’s a superstitious belief: everything I touch is destroyed. Everyone I love dies. If I let go and give in to Markus, then . . .
Well, then what? The thought is irritating and irrational, and I realize that it’s morbid and not the least bit constructive.

I exit and head toward Södermalm, getting closer to my destination. A few people hurry along under big black umbrellas. A flock of schoolkids emerges from the Sofia School, apparently not bothered by the rain. Their clothes are soaked and their hair is plastered to their faces, but they’re totally wrapped up in kicking an old soccer ball and snacking on a bag of barbecue-flavored potato chips that they’re passing back and forth.

A few more blocks and I’m there. Miraculously I find a parking spot just outside the entrance and I run from the car to the glass doorway of the red brick building. Safely inside, balancing on one foot, I put on the ugly blue shoe covers sitting in a basket outside the front door. I follow the signs to the maternity clinic.

There’s no one at the check-in desk, so I sit down on one of the big couches and start flipping through a magazine as I check the place out. A woman with an enormous belly is sitting on another couch, talking on her cell phone. I hear her discussing her blood pressure, admission, and preeclampsia, all as she strokes that gigantic belly again and again, apparently not even aware that she’s doing it.

There is a distant clink of porcelain and muffled laughter. The walls are decorated with art from Ikea, posters about the women’s helpline, and an invitation to participate in a clinical trial about women’s experience of pain during delivery.

Magazines about pregnancy and parenting are everywhere.

Suddenly a door opens and a woman in her fifties peeks out and notices me. She has frizzy hair and is wearing a tunic with flowers embroidered on it. A big bronze pendant is dangling between her breasts. She spots me and cocks her head to the side.

“Are you Siri Bergman?”

I nod dumbly and feel a wave of nausea come over me. Suddenly I’m afraid I’m going to throw up in this tidy waiting room, but then it occurs to me that if you’re going to have an embarrassing morning sickness episode anywhere, this probably isn’t the worst place.

“Hi, Siri. I’m Monica Wall. I’m one of the midwives here. Welcome, welcome.”

She takes my damp hand in her warm, dry one and then leads me into her office, pointing to a chair right in front of a big desk. Hanging on the wall
above the desk are a bunch of pictures of babies and thank-you cards from parents and children. I wonder if a picture of the baby in my belly will end up on this wall, but the thought is so absurd that I let it go.

Monica starts telling me about today’s appointment and what it will include. She mentions something about height and weight, blood pressure, and information pamphlets.

“And where’s the father?”

“The father?” My answer is a hollow echo. Monica looks up and our eyes meet. She has unusually clear blue eyes.

“Or maybe you’re on your own. That’s not at all uncommon. We have groups for mothers who are single parents. Well, we usually call them ‘super’ parents. Super, not single. Just because there’s no partner in the picture doesn’t necessarily make a person lonely or deprived,” Monica says, and smiles encouragingly, and I have to swallow several times to get rid of the sour taste in my mouth.

“There is a father, but he couldn’t come today . . . We’re not living together but we are in a relationship, so—”

“I understand,” Monica says, and then smiles again. “Of course he’s welcome to come along if he wants. After all, he’s going to be having a baby too, and we encourage the fathers to participate. And is this your first child?” She smiles again and I realize that she’s really starting to bug me, this calm, safe, smiling woman who seems to have an answer for everything.

“I had a late abortion before. My baby, the baby . . . the fetus . . . had a defect, so it wasn’t going to be able to survive outside the womb. They determined that during a routine ultrasound exam. But that was five years ago now.”

Monica holds out a box of Kleenex and I realize that I’m crying, which I hadn’t noticed. The hormones, I think. It’s these crazy hormones.

Monica looks unfazed, as if crying mothers were something she encountered every day, and I realize that that must be the case. She keeps asking questions: first day of last period, illnesses, birth control pills. I answer as best I can and she says that an ultrasound is the only way to determine how far along I am since I’ve had menstruation-like spotting despite being pregnant.

“Do you smoke?” She looks up from the computer, where she has now begun filling out a questionnaire about my health.

I hesitate.

“Because if you smoke, you can get help quitting. We cooperate with the health center to offer smoking cessation therapy through hypnosis.”

“I smoke extremely rarely,” I respond instead. “I’m not a regular smoker.”

Monica appears satisfied and writes something down on the questionnaire, and once again I feel a wave of nausea come over me. I know which question is coming next. I just don’t know how I should answer it. The question I dread. The question that puts a name to my anxiety, that brings up thoughts of fetal deformities, defects, tiny fragile nerve cells.

“And how much alcohol do you drink?”

“I just found out I was pregnant, so, well, I did drink alcohol before I knew that I . . . But I don’t drink very much now. Really.” I look into her clear, blue eyes and smile. “As a rule I never drink alcohol, just the occasional glass of wine on festive occasions and things like that.”

Monica beams back at me.

“Well great, then it’s time to weigh you,” she says, pointing to a digital scale in one corner of the room.

Case Notes, Pediatric Health Care Center

Initial appointment

An 11-year-old boy comes in with his parents. The boy is having trouble with aggression at school. His parents explain that the boy is big and strong and often ends up getting in fights since he has a hard time keeping his aggression in check when he gets teased. The boy complains a lot about the other children being naughty and says he would prefer to stay home from school. The parents have a lot of trouble getting him to school.