The American Girl (32 page)

She let herself be cared for. And she was a robot. Or actually, there was a very definite image she had of herself in her head: the girl in the moon boots, on a snowy field in the Alps, in the middle of a painting that was so beautiful it could have been the motif for a puzzle of several thousand pieces.

But there was no satisfaction, either abnormal or ordinary, in these fantasies now, nothing to wallow in.

Therefore, strictly speaking, there were no real fantasies either, or even thoughts, just dizziness and sentences and words that hung in the air or showed up in her memory like billboards on a high-rise building where it was dark in all of the windows, nighttime.

And she was a doll, a harelipped one. Not a reserved, mainland girl, which you had a habit of saying about her when she was there on Åland, when she came to visit what, “the aunt,” the relatives. If you stayed here a while you’d become normal again. That undertone. She had not bothered about it then, but then there was Doris Flinkenberg. But also now, it hit her with such force where she was lying bedridden and crying (though the crying, it showed even less on her; it could not be seen at all), she did not bother about it now either, maybe even more, now when Doris was . . . no longer alive.

She was the Michelin girl, the one in the moon boots, who was so precious and fragile that she stumbled about, fumbled about like a drunk Bengt at the scene of the death. Was missing all feeling for the ground or what it was now called in her absolutely photo-friendly footwear, her absolutely impossible-to-walk-in boots. This was the planet without Doris, namely. And it might as well have been the moon.

Voices in her surroundings.

“It’s a pity about her. Her good friend—”

“These melodramatic kids. If they could just understand that there is a tomorrow.”

A cool hand on her forehead, “little, little silk dog.”

But the clock was ticking, time was passing, the swelling in her cheeks and in her throat lessened, though too slowly. And then it finally turned out that Doris Flinkenberg’s funeral and the memorial afterward in the fellowship hall up in the town center, during which the pop version of “Around the Beggar from Luossa,” one of Doris Flinkenberg’s favorite songs, played on Doris Flinkenberg’s Poppy radio cassette player one last time so that everyone heard, took place without Sandra Wärn, her only friend, her best friend, being present.

Click
, Solveig turned it on and off, and there was not a dry eye anywhere.

But that, that was in the month of November when all hope was gone. Now it was still July half a year before, while all possibilities still remained. And there came Doris Flinkenberg now. Walking through the woods in the direction of the house in the darker part. Doris with her small, light blue bag, with her traveling purse, also in light blue with a picture of a bunny’s head with long front teeth, Doris with her passport and part of her traveling money in the beige-colored bag with a string around her neck (the rest of the money she had sewn into different places in the hem of her pants and under her right sock), also with a light blue bunny on it. It was, she later stood and explained to Sandra filled with excitement, the first thing she did when she came inside the door, a
set
, and that she purchased with the money she had earned by raking the cemetery in the town center as a summer job up until now.

Doris pulled out the neck pouch also and started demonstrating it and its different compartments and everything that fit into
them, all of the zippers and so on, and she did this with an enthusiasm that absorbed her to the point that quite some time had passed before she realized Sandra still had her pajamas on.

“Aren’t you going to put on YOUR traveling clothes?” Doris Flinkenberg stopped what she was doing, not abruptly, more like taking a pause.

“Doris,” Sandra started seriously. She was forced to begin with the same seriousness a few times before Doris was properly paying attention, which made the whole thing even more awkwardly drawn out. “There isn’t going to be any trip. Heintz-Gurt called. Lorelei Lindberg. She’s gone to New York.”

“And then,” Doris objected impatiently as if what Sandra had said was only a few words standing in the way, an almost technical obstruction to the dream still living inside her, which she was living on, floating around in like hanging in a wonderful blue helium balloon, so delightful, that she had butterflies in her stomach—in an instant, and it was gone. “She’ll come later,” Doris added. “And if she isn’t there when we get there then someone else in the family can meet us at the airport!”

“But don’t you understand? She’s not there. She’s never ever going to come back. She’s left him. Taken her stuff and left. Early yesterday morning. Didn’t even leave a note behind for him. There won’t—”

Sandra had to stop herself here and prepare herself again in order to finish her last sentence.

“—be a trip, Doris Flinkenberg.”

Doris remained standing a few seconds, unmoving as if she had been struck by lightning.

The balloon filled with gas burst. That is what happened with that mystery: to fly and float freely. It still ended in one and the same way. Crashing to the ground.

“And you’re saying that just now!” Doris yelled then, at first more angry than disappointed, but it was still as though her body already understood what her head did not. Her hands fell to her
sides, the traveling purse that had obtrusively been hanging in the crook of Doris’s arm during the demonstration of the neck pouch fell to the floor with a tumble.

“I only found out last night. Heintz-Gurt couldn’t know either that she had been thinking about leaving him right now. He was completely crushed—”

But Doris was for the moment not in the mood for any Heintz-Gurt stories.

“I’m not starting!” Doris yelled shrilly like a child or a wounded animal. It was disgusting to hear her like that, utterly heart-wrenching. Her face became red, her bottom lip quivered. Doris crumpled down onto the beige wall-to-wall carpet in the narrow hall, legs spread out in each direction, head hanging.

“I never get to,” Doris whispered while she fought against the tears and the anger slowly growing inside her. Quite simply Damn! Damn all of it! “I nevernevernever get to!” And then, it could not be stopped, the tears came. They gushed forth, in floods. Not ordinary teenager tears either because now they were gushing like springs from Doris Flinkenberg.

Sandra did not know what she should do. She had never seen Doris Flinkenberg like this before. So pitiful, so helpless, so heartbreaking. A real crybaby, and it affected her badly, it did. It embarrassed her as well, and for a brief moment Sandra did not have any trouble at all holding back the big and happy smile that had been growing inside her in the silence of the previous hours and minutes, the entire morning all the way up till now. Ever since the Islander and Inget Herrman early that same morning had stowed their things in the Islander’s jeep and
finally
driven off. “Toward unknown adventures!” Inget Herrman had intended and in that moment Sandra had in her own mind truly been able to agree with her. And hopefully prolonged ones, had been her own ill-bred addition in the silence.
Don’t talk to me anymore now
. She really was not interested in where they were going (they were going to go over
the seven seas
, as Inget
Herrman termed the voyage that would last for weeks, down to Gotland, Öland, and so on. And, one could hope, even farther, Sandra had thought in the cheeky and expectant moment that preceded the Islander and Inget Herrman’s departure that never seemed to happen.
Leave now already)
.

Because now she would get to be alone in the house in the darker part. Alone with Doris Flinkenberg, for an almost infinite period of time. Two whole weeks, fourteen d-a-y-s. That with Heintz-Gurt and Lorelei Lindberg, the Alps, all of that, it was so peripheral in comparison with this, it had been cast into the back of her head and hidden there long ago.

So why was Doris carrying on like that now?

When Sandra witnessed Doris’s outbreak, which did not look like it had an end in sight, she finally could not hold back an indignant yell, “But my God, Doris!” And while she yelled the energy came back, the joy burst in her like a flower blooming. “It’s not that bad! Stop sulking! I’ve had my hands full trying to get rid of the Islander and Inget Herrman anyway! I’ve had to do everything in order to get them and the whole world to understand that we can take care of ourselves! Just the two of us! Here in the house! We aren’t kids anymore!”

But Doris still was not listening; instead she remained sitting on the floor with both legs spread out, moaning slowly as if she had pain in her body. Or, perhaps, a schizophrenic like Sybil who had seventeen different personalities living side by side in the same body which, to say the least, made life unmanageable; Sandra and Doris had read a really good book about it once. A schizophrenic named Sybil on the border between personalities, different lives; in one of her more incommunicable states in that dark area bordering on insanity and unconsciousness.

“God damn it!” Sandra clarified, who was starting to grow tired of watching Doris’s fit. “Don’t you get it? We have the house to ourselves for two weeks! We have your traveling money and we have my traveling money and we have the food
account at the store and we have color television and a stereo system with speakers in every room except the bathroom and we have all the comforts! Bar! Swimming pool! Marital bed! And NO ONE who’s looking for us because they think we’re in the Alps!”

Then, finally, Doris Flinkenberg lifted her head, her fingers still fumbling absentmindedly with her neck pouch, pulled thoughtfully at its strings, and for the last time, maybe for the very last time in Doris’s entire life, scenes where the two girls Sussilull and Sussilo, as they were called in the song, were running over mountains and green valleys, Middle European valleys, and behind them a cheery nun in civilian clothing, with the guitar, had fluttered through Doris’s head.

The hills are alive with the sound of music
. That kind of picture. Which was slowly, slowly growing still now. It froze in the imaginary television screen in her head. Became smaller. And even smaller. Became smaller and smaller and smaller until only a small spot remained. An itty-bitty spot that later, little by little, procreated and became several spots. Spots, spots, spots. Black, gray, marbled. And all of these spots received a life and started moving, dancing eagerly around each other and making noise—one of those irritating noises that you usually heard when the television program was over, after the national anthem. It was a sound you could not be bothered to listen to, it was so irritating. And SNAP you had turned off the set and everything was calm, quiet, and empty again.

The end of that show. That dream—

“In shambles,” mumbled Doris Flinkenberg. “That dream in shambles,” she continued a little louder, maybe mostly only for herself. But still, even in her inimitable Dorisway, in her very own Dorislanguage, a language that Sandra recognized also as her own because it had also become hers during the long, remarkable time it had just been the two of them and no one else. A language that they had already been in the process of
outgrowing for a long time now in this puberty that had just started and that would never lead them back to a fun childhood where there were their own worlds, many lives, many games and personalities. But just the opposite, out into the real world to become grown-ups like the Islander, the cousin’s mama, Lorelei Lindberg, and the Bombshell. And yes, they all had their good sides, but in the grand scheme of things you still had to say, yuck.

The language had mostly become something used in a game. But now, in this situation, it was a good sign in any case. Because one thing was certain: Doris never used that language nowadays unless she was a little bit in the mood.

“But,” she later said, sure enough, brightened up and peered cunningly as only Doris Flinkenberg and no one else could peer, “there are others.”

And in that next moment she got up terribly quickly, with a new energy in her body, her head high again and smiling at Sandra with the smile that had once been so practiced but that now had become an integrated part of her remarkable person, very genuine:
our crafty fiendishness
, while you could almost see how her mind was filled with everything she suddenly realized lay ahead of them now.

All the possibilities
.

And it was the beginning of two weeks with just the two of them in the house in the darker part of the woods. It was a summer when great things happened out in the world. Presidents and regents from all over the world gathered in the city by the sea to sign a historic peace treaty. Now all countries were going to support and help each other instead of fighting with each other and spreading hate and discord among their enemies. Even Anneka Munveg, who was a television news reporter, had a splash of emotion in her otherwise so crass and businesslike voice. But there was something in the mood itself and that it was summer too and quite decent weather. Both presidents from the superpowers
shook hands for the first time in an eternity and then grand closing speeches followed and the historic document was signed. At the very end the carts with the white glasses and the strawberries were rolled in. It was a late, sunny summer day, the day when Liz Maalamaa crushed the windowpane in the outside door of the basement and stepped in and stood there among the shards of glass and, she had in a way surprised the girls in the pool, in a dance. In a strange dance of hate/love, of union/discord, and of very real distress and evident despair.
The dream was over because true love had ceased to exist
. But Liz Maalamaa did not understand that. She stood there and quoted the Bible by heart.

Then she sighed and said that “it was so hot there in Florida you had to take your inner Turk away.”