More Bitter Than Death (6 page)

“But I wonder,” Malin continues. “I wonder if some people don’t just have it in them to do something like that to someone, to another living being. Doesn’t that just mean you’re a monster to begin with? I don’t think it had anything to do with drugs. I think he was . . . evil. And then, at the trial, there was a ton of mumbo jumbo about how he had been molested by some kid a few years older than him in Hagsätra in the early nineties, as if it were contagious, as if that were some excuse. Like that would matter to me. They said that’s why he liked rough sex. That’s what he said, you know, that we’d had sex before, and that it had been rough and that I’d liked it, had been into it, had wanted it. Then they used our text messages to prove that we’d had a relationship. And true, there were a few messages where I’d written things that were sort of suggestive, but . . . Anyway, you’ll never believe what happened next. His buddies from Gustavsberg gave him an alibi for that night. They said they’d all been at the movies right when the rape occurred and that, anyway, they knew we were having some kind of relationship, that we were ‘fuck buddies,’ as they say. How could anyone do something like that? How could anyone lie about something like that, protect such a . . . monster? They totally let him off. I see him around town all the time. A few months later we ran into each other at the liquor store downtown. He waved and smiled, like we knew each other, more or less.”

Malin pauses briefly and then adds, “I wish I’d killed him, to stop it from happening, or that he’d killed me.”

“Why do you say that?” Sofie asks, again very softly.

“Because he messed something up inside me, like, in my soul. He took something, something that no one should ever be allowed to take. He . . .” Malin’s voice fades away.

“What did he take from you, do you think?” Sirkka asks, leaning over so that her frizzy red hair glows like a fiery halo in the light from the overhead fixture.

“He took . . .” Malin stops and sniffles, wipes away snot with the back of her hand, and slowly shakes her head. “He took away the child in me. I mean, the child that I was. He took all my trust, all my self-confidence. He took away who I was. And he took away the person I want to be.”

Sirkka sighs deeply. She looks like someone slapped her, both shocked and pissed off at the same time. Timidly and without saying anything, she holds her thin, wrinkly hand out to Malin, touches her hesitantly on the knee.

“Oh, my dear child, I take back what I said before about how I wished I could trade places with you young girls.”

We sit in silence for a long while, no one saying anything. Outside the darkness has settled over Södermalm, in the heart of Stockholm, indifferent to what has just played out in my office.

Markus’s body is on top of mine, hot, hard.

Is it the wrong body?

Stefan.

And yet it still feels so right, as if I’d found my way home in some way, as if this warm body will heal all my wounds.

Heal me.

We argued about it this very afternoon. Markus’s voice like sandpaper, trying to strip away all my armor, get me to open up, the uncomfortable feeling of being a fruit that someone is trying to peel, to inspect the insides of, to devour.

“You never let me in. You . . . let me be with you, next to you, but you do your own thing. It’s as if I weren’t here, as if I were dead, like him, your ex.”

“Markus, honey . . . ,” I say, my voice feeble, pleading.

“Everything is on your terms,” he complains.

I don’t respond. I know he’s right. I know that he knows that I know.

“You and your process . . . ,” he sneers.

My process.

I have tried to explain as gently as possible how Stefan, even though he’s dead, is still strangely present in my life, how I don’t know if I can commit to someone else, because it’s not about what I want.

Or is it?

I could tell by looking at him that that hurt, and I can appreciate that. I don’t want him the way he wants me. He wants the whole package: ring on the finger, white picket fence, snot-nosed kids, parent-teacher conferences at the daycare, mortgage, soccer practice, barbecuing with the neighbors.

I don’t know what I want. My life is like water, reflecting my surroundings, but without any color or flavor of its own. It slips away if you try to catch it.

And yet, he is a grown man. He’s making his own bed.

Well, just leave already if this isn’t working for you!

I haven’t promised him anything. I’m not the one sending text message after text message, night after night. I’m not the one emailing heated declarations
of love. I was just . . . here when he arrived. Every time he arrived. I just let him in.

Open arms. Hungry mouth.

I’ve been clear. He made his bed.

And yet.

His sweaty forehead on my chest. His breath against the nape of my neck, night after night. Those arms, still a little tan from the summer, that hold me close.

How I never want to let him go. I’d better be prepared to pay for this.

Weak.

I think we’re both being weak.

Although in different ways.

*   *   *

Afterward.

Markus lying behind me on the bed, breathing deeply, his finger drawing small circles on my back.

Why do guys do that? Maybe he’s writing something.

“You’re mine.”

I slowly move away, to the other side of the crowded bed.

Carefully.

Afraid that it will be interpreted as a loaded gesture, which it isn’t. I just need to feel the empty space around my body for a while, the absence of his sweaty skin and all his concern, consideration, and expectations.

Outside the rain picks up, grows into a deafening drumming on the roof. Leafless, scraggly branches scrape against the windows in the wind.

I’ve tried to explain things to him, explain my need for integrity, both physical and mental, how even the thought of traditional couplehood with its visits to the in-laws and eating dinner together gives me goose bumps. I could see that he was trying hard to understand but couldn’t. He was looking at me like I was some exotic item on a menu that he really wanted to try but that, truth be told, he didn’t like.

“Hey, you.” Markus murmurs and then crawls over and snuggles up against me, his damp body molding itself into a perfect copy of mine. Snuggling himself up against my skinny back. He wraps his arms around me, owning me with his arms.

“Hmm . . . ,” I mumble.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

Why always these meaningless questions? Am I okay? With what? With our having sex? With him holding me so hard it feels like we belong together, you know, for real? With that feeling not lasting long?

“Hmm, it was great,” I murmur.

“I care about you,” he says, and then his mouth kisses the back of my neck, gently, sated now.

“I care about you too,” I say. And it’s not a lie. Because I do care about him, a lot. I just can’t handle this suffocating togetherness between the two of us all the time.

“Thanks,” he mumbles, and yawns.

And yet again I wonder: Thanks for what? For letting you be close to me? For letting you come inside me? Thanks because I haven’t asked you to leave yet?

Outside there’s the thunder of the waves as they break against the rocks, rhythmic, like his pulse.

I have to try.

For the hundredth time I promise myself that I will try to be the normal woman he wants, that he deserves.

That I wish I were.

Patrik holds his big, red hand out. Despite the darkness in the office, I can see what he’s holding. Two small white pills, each no bigger than the fingernail on your pinky, are sitting on his palm.

I wasn’t actually supposed to see Mia and Patrik again until next week, but Patrik called and requested an extra session.

Something had happened.

“I want an answer,” he says, something dark in his eyes, pushing his horn-rimmed glasses up with his free hand. “Are you addicted, or what? My girl, the mother of my children, a drug addict. Is that it, Mia? You know, I could picture you doing a lot of things, but this . . . What the hell were you thinking? Were you, like, ‘Well, life is no fun now and the kids are a pain in the ass, so I’m just going to drug myself instead. Things are just fine here on the couch. I’m sure the kids can handle things on their own’?”

Mia looks down at the floor, her face as devoid of emotion as a blank page. Her hands, with chipped dark-purple nail polish, rest calmly between her strong thighs. Today too, she’s wearing a man’s sweater. It makes her already ample body look even bigger, in an unflattering way.

“Wait a minute,” I interrupt Patrik. “Can you tell me what happened?”

Patrik sighs deeply, scratches his bleached, lightly tousled hair, and straightens his long legs. His jeans are so tight that he does this with difficulty. They extend almost all the way to my feet and I instinctively pull my own legs back under my armchair. Don’t get too close to the patient.

“When I came home yesterday around five, Mia was lying on the couch, sleeping, totally unresponsive. The TV was on, and little Gunnel, oh my God . . . Gunnel had taken some frozen hamburger meat out of the freezer—she can open the freezer now—and she, she was gnawing on it. Do you even get what I’m saying? Mia was . . . high . . . and my hungry daughter was gnawing on a block of frozen hamburger meat. She was kind of . . . her face was all messy with blood around her mouth. It was so unbelievably gross, like the worst horror movie. I mean, I don’t even eat meat. And Lennart . . . Lennart
was asleep on the bathroom floor. He’d taken off his own diaper again, so there was dried poop on the floor. And Mia, the mother of my children, is lying there sleeping in the middle of all this, high as a kite.”

Mia is still sitting unnaturally still in her chair, but I can see fine droplets of sweat beading up on her forehead and starting to trickle down at her temples, and an almost invisible twitch at the corner of her mouth reveals how tense she is. Patrik looks at her in disgust.

“You should be ashamed of yourself.” He spits the words out as if they taste bad.

“Okay, Patrik, why do you think Mia was . . . under the influence of something?”

Patrik gives me a skeptical look, as if he seriously doubts my intelligence, and toys with the snuff tin that’s resting on his knee.

“I found them, the pills, I mean. They were in the kitchen, Serax, a whole pack. You know what that is, right? Benzos, the worst of the illegal drugs. I know exactly what this is about. I’ve seen this before. I’m not planning on letting this affect my family.”

Patrik turns to Mia and suddenly gets up, stands there facing me and her, menacing, like a giant monolith in a field.

“I’m going to protect my kids. Do you hear me? Even if that means you have to move out. I’m going to protect them.” He spits the words out and tiny, invisible drops of saliva hit my cheek.

Mia still hasn’t moved, but I can see big, heavy tears running down her cheeks. A thin strand of snot dangles from her nose. It gets longer and longer, but she still sits there quietly with her head down, as if she were waiting for a blow, or had just been hit by one.

And I think that, actually, that is exactly what just happened.

“How long have you known about this?” I ask Patrik.

“What do you mean ‘known’? You mean, how long has it been like this? Don’t say ‘How long have you known about this?’ because what I know about it isn’t the part that matters. How things really are is what matters. Quit blaming me. I’m here because I’m actually kind of a responsible parent, because I’m trying to make sure my kids are going to have a relatively safe upbringing.”

“Okay,” I say. “How long do you think this has been like this?”

Patrik sighs and exhales, standing in the middle of the room. Suddenly he flails his big fists in front of him as if the question were an irritating insect that he is trying to shoo away.

“I don’t know,” he says. “A long time. Since Lennart was born, I guess.” His voice is lower now and there’s something faltering in it, something resigned. There are months of wakeful nights and colic in it; there’s loneliness and sadness, and a hot, choked-up pain.

“It wasn’t always like this,” Patrik says almost wistfully. “Before Lennart was born, Mia used to hang out with all the other sort of chic, nouveau hippie women. They all bought their clothes from Odd Molly and used to hang out at Nytorget Square guzzling lattes all day. That was better. That was okay. And before that, when we met, we were madly in love for several years. I mean . . . we were so passionate. When I think back to that time, I still get butterflies in my stomach. And Mia was . . . Mia was amazing—outgoing, intellectual, expressive. She was interested in tons of things, was trying to become a partner at the advertising agency where she worked. But then . . . after the kids, Mia got burned out. I don’t know how to explain it . . . It’s like living with a totally different person. It’s like she’s a stranger. It’s not that I dislike her or anything, but I just don’t even know who she is anymore.”