Into a Star, page 3
The others had already come in. I hadn’t noticed them. It was too late, but there was still so much to say and do before they switched off the machines.
He has to hear Elmer’s voice one last time, I pleaded, to no objections.
I couldn’t bear the thought that he and the kids would never have the chance to say goodbye. It was my family, my responsibility.
I had some videos of Elmer on my phone, but my battery was long dead. I panicked, struggled to catch my breath.
What do we do now?
There was a computer in the corner of the room. Hans logged into Facebook and found a video Lasse had posted a month ago.
We couldn’t figure out how to turn the volume up. It was hopeless.
The hospital priest had arrived and stood waiting, Bible in hand.
Lasse’s nose kept up its watery trickle of blood. The nurses tried to locate the sound settings on the computer, but it was no use, we’d just have to keep quiet.
Trip, trap, trip, trap, trip, trap.
Elmer’s bright little voice sounded low compared to the beeping of the machines. He was sitting at our dining table in his highchair, enthusiastically retelling the story of the three billy goats Gruff. We’d just eaten and his face shone with mashed potato and beetroot.
One billy goat after another went trip-trapping over the bridge. Trip, trap, they said as they went. There was Elmer Billy Goat, Cousin Neo Billy Goat, Grandma Billy Goat and Uncle Asbjørn Billy Goat. Elmer made it up to ten billy goats, the troll growling at every one of them:
Who’s that! Trip-trapping! Bridge!
He was trembling in excitement, gleefully punching the air with clenched fists as he spoke.
The film panned over to me. Lasse was filming, watching me through the lens. I was smiling, August-tanned and round with pregnancy, my chin resting in my hands, elbows on the table.
What about Dad Billy Goat? asked Lasse.
We laughed.
Lasse’s hand appeared on screen from the right; he patted Elmer on the shoulder.
Thanks for the story, Elmer.
Elmer grinned in delight.
Cut, said Lasse.
Cut, said Elmer.
They turned the computer off.
The hospital priest opened a window so that Lasse’s soul could fly out.
I lay down next to him on the bed and clung to his legs through the sheet, as the others began to sing:
We thank him now with joyful song / For all that he has given / For fields that grew all summer long / For word and life from heaven.
It was beautiful, intimate, remote. Voices wobbling, rising and falling, breaking, the priest the only one of us able to hold the tune.
Then it was time. To switch off the machines. They turned so many dials and pushed so many buttons I couldn’t figure out which were the deciding ones.
But it didn’t matter. Everything that had ever been Lasse was already gone.
III
It was Lasse’s first half-marathon. Elmer and I stood cheering from the pavement around the five-kilometre mark, surrounded by flags and shouting go, go, go and you can do it with all the other spectators.
The front runners flew by in their skin-tight shorts and breathable T-shirts, their feet a drumroll on the asphalt.
Lasse ended up somewhere in the thronging middle, coming into sight at the end of the road in his new running shoes, his shorts flapping about his thighs, his eyes scanning the crowd until they found us and lit up.
There’s Dad! Hi Dad! I yelled. Lasse waved, then he’d passed us.
Elmer wriggled down from my hip, tried to run after him.
Elmer run with Dad! he cried, stomping so enthusiastically I had to squat down to keep hold of him in the crowd.
Sorry, Elmer, you can’t. Dad’s running very fast, and he’s got a long way to go, a long, long way up and down lots of hills and around a lake. It’s too far for you.
There were tears welling up in my eyes, but I wiped them away before anyone saw. Put them down to pregnancy, oversensitivity, all the people, Lasse’s pride, Elmer’s devotion to his dad.
Pernille stood a few metres behind us, and when I turned around, she grinned and raised her phone in the air to say she’d taken the photo. I gave her a thumbs-up with my free hand, Elmer hanging on to the other.
A day and a half later I took his hand again, led him into his bedroom and closed the door behind us. I’d just come home from the crisis counsellor’s and our apartment was still teeming with people.
In Elmer’s bedroom it was quiet.
I asked him to sit with me on the racing-track mat and he flopped down, his nappy making a little puf sound.
On the wall was the giant elephant poster Lasse had made for Elmer: a grid of A4 sheets of paper, printed out and glued together. They’d begun to peel away from each other, so the elephant’s trunk was now swollen and wonky.
Elmer looked up at me with serious eyes.
I asked him if he could remember that Dad was out running and that he had a long way to go?
Yes, he said, expectantly.
Well, Dad had to run really, really far, and he ran so far that he made it all the way up into the sky, so high up that he couldn’t get down again. That’s where he is now. He’s sitting on a star, watching over us. The star is a long, long way from here, which is why we can’t see him, but he can still see us.
Elmer looked and looked and looked at me.
Dad’s moved on to the star, that’s where he lives now. He doesn’t live with us any more, and he won’t be coming home again, little man, not ever, I said, my tears about to strangle me.
The photo of Lasse from the half-marathon was lying face down in my lap, and now I turned it over and waved to Lasse.
Bye-bye, Dad.
Elmer copied me, waved and said bye-bye, and then he patted the photo of the person who until now had constituted half of his very foundation, but who from now on would fade to nothing more than a memory.
There there, Dad, he said, and I pulled him into me and kissed him on the head, my tears falling into his white-blonde hair, wetting it flat.
Then he stood up and turned to face me, so our eyes were level. I tried to decode his expression. He wasn’t crying, just looking at me quizzically.
Mum’s mouth is crying. Elmer wipe mouth, he said.
His face concentrated, he began to dab at my mouth, my cheeks, my eyes.
I had planned for us to sit on the balcony when it got dark, thinking I’d find a nice twinkly star for Lasse and teach Elmer to wave goodnight to him.
But it was cloudy. The stars had betrayed us, and I betrayed Elmer when I tucked him up in his cot and closed the door to his room. I was so exhausted I could barely stand. I needed to be alone.
I woke to the dark of the bedroom in the middle of the night, the apartment finally silent. My big sister lay curled up next to me with Lasse’s duvet pulled over her head. I rolled out of bed, switched on the light and stumbled over to the laundry basket, burrowed down through the layers of dirty clothes in search of something, anything, that still smelled of him; something, anything, that could bring him back, even if just for a moment.
At the bottom of the pile I found a black cotton T-shirt, a hint of his skin in the fibres. I pressed my face into it. Sweet oil, clay and scalp, a whiff of Hugo Boss, but the smell was already waning. I had to find a way to hold on to him.
I pulled the T-shirt over my pillow, turned it into a male torso for me to rest my head on. Nicoline had woken up; she put her arm around me and I pushed her away.
By morning my tears had cleansed the T-shirt of all remaining traces of Lasse. I pressed my nose into the armpits like a desperate truffle pig, but he was gone.
In the bathroom, I splashed my puffy face with cold water. I didn’t want Elmer to see me crying so early in the day, but every time I dried my eyes with the towel, new tears had already begun to form. The lump in my throat felt like an infection.
Nicoline was tiptoeing around the kitchen, trying to find things for breakfast, but I wanted to take care of everything involving Elmer myself. He was my child, my responsibility. I got out the usual bowls, the porridge, raisins, milk, Elmer’s bib – this I could do.
We ate breakfast amid the nauseating stench of lilies.
Lasse had been dead for twenty-four hours and we were already inundated with bouquets. My cafetière was full of lilies, as was the plastic container we used for the blender: we’d run out of vases. All of a sudden I couldn’t stomach the sight of flowers. Soon to decay in foul-smelling water, all those extra trips down to the bins in the backyard.
I sat on the floor in the hall with Elmer on my lap, unable to dress him while standing because of my stomach. He tried to break free when I pulled the anorak Lasse’s mum had made for him over his head. I crawled over to the shoes and wiggled them on to his feet, pulling my own shoes on as he ran back into the apartment. I rolled on to my hands and knees and pushed myself up from the floor, caught Elmer and carried him down the stairs to where the pushchair was waiting for us. It bumped against the door frame as I tried to manoeuvre it out of the building, down the stone steps and on to the pavement, the door hitting my elbow as it slammed shut behind us.
Sunglasses on to conceal my raw eyes, I set off in a hurry, pushing the pushchair mechanically in front of me.
Elmer was pointing at all the cars driving by.
Beep beep! he cried in delight, as if every car was the first he’d ever seen.
Mmm, beep beep, I replied, my jaw clenched. I just had to make it to nursery without falling apart.
I parked the pushchair outside, unstrapped Elmer and took his hand. We were heading for the cloakroom when one of the other mothers came towards us, smiling her big white teeth.
Big day today!
I frowned, causing my eyebrows to rub against the frame of my sunglasses. In the silence that followed, she persisted, still smiling:
Oh, my bad, isn’t it today he turns two?
I’d forgotten.
I couldn’t hold back the tears back any longer. I tore my sunglasses off and stood helplessly with them in one hand and the birthday boy in the other. He didn’t say a word.
That evening we held a sombre party. Helle brought a cake, poked two candles in it and lit them at the dining table, where Elmer sat in his highchair.
I’d only invited family, but a seemingly endless stream of mine and Lasse’s friends trickled into the apartment bearing enormous presents for Elmer and even more flowers. He was a toddler surrounded by a mob of sympathetic faces. There were cups of coffee and napkins everywhere. Our guests took turns locking themselves in the bathroom and patting each other on the back when they emerged again.
I sat on a chair next to Elmer and helped him with the cake.
Someone asked me if we had more teaspoons. Forks, then?
Did I want another cup of coffee?
What I wanted was to leap to my feet and scream at them to get the fuck out of my home. I wanted to be alone with Elmer on the racing-track mat beneath the elephant poster.
How about we sing a birthday song for Elmer? my dad suggested to the living room, and it annoyed me that he always had to take charge, even now.
‘Today It Is Elmer’s Birthday’ – what about that one? he asked Elmer, who looked excitedly from guest to guest as they put their teaspoons back down on their plates, wiped their mouths and cleared their throats.
Today it is Elmer’s birthday, we began. So far so good. But when we got to Mum and Dad are waiting at home, we avoided making eye contact with each other.
At May Elmer live forever more and get everything he wishes for, I had to give up.
The doctor had said that no one could understand how an otherwise fit and healthy twenty-seven-year-old man could go into heart failure just like that, or why they hadn’t been able to restart his heart afterwards. It would take months for the autopsy to reveal whether Lasse had suffered from a heart condition he might have passed on to our children.
The song finished and I chimed in with an unconvincing hurrah.
Life is full of windows that you pass without seeing until, all of a sudden, you’re standing in front of one and it’s meant for you. I must have walked by the undertaker’s on the way to Elmer’s nursery every morning and afternoon for the past year or so, but I’d barely registered its existence. Lasse probably hadn’t either.
The carpet was dark green, and the same photo of a watering can filled with wild flowers hung in the reception area and the meeting room to the side.
I shook the undertaker’s hand and unzipped my raincoat. I could still just about close it over my stomach. It had been raining heavily all night and morning, and when I hung my coat up, a little puddle began to form on the floor beneath it.
Lasse’s family were already there, sitting at a round table in silence, waiting for me.
The undertaker brought out two enormous ring binders full of photos of flowers, urns and coffins. We were to decide which were ‘most Lasse’.
A bizarre decision to make on his behalf. Lasse was an architect. Unlike me, he had an eye for aesthetics, and I knew it would actually matter to him what his coffin looked like. If it had been me in his place, you could have put me a plain wooden box with a dandelion on top for all I cared.
Those are supposed to be nice, and what about those? Helle and I said to each other, flipping through the pages of funeral sprays. I was waiting for the perfect arrangement to jump out from the page, to manifest itself in all its rightness.
The undertaker sat with us. He listened patiently as we, talking over each other, described what had happened; as we launched into anecdotes about Lasse and fell silent as abruptly as we’d started. He kept listening when Helle said her sister had also lost a son far too young. He shook his head kindly when Hans pulled out his credit card, said later. He nodded along as I held my stomach and assured him I was happy I had another child on the way, and I’d make it work, even though I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Words I’d repeated too many times to count in the past twenty-four hours.
Eventually, the undertaker’s face crumpled. He removed his glasses, wiped his forehead and apologized. Sometimes it was difficult to keep a professional distance, he said.
The rain rolled down the window facing out to the street, the steam of our breath making everything outside blurry.
The undertaker asked me to stop by later that day with the clothes Lasse would wear in his coffin. I pulled the hood of my raincoat over my hair and said goodbye to my in-laws. I didn’t hug them.
On the way home the rain flooded my shoes and socks, water squelching out of the small air holes with every step.
My abdomen suddenly jolted, going into a succession of what I hoped were false contractions.
The funeral was planned for Saturday. That was the first thing to get through. Beyond that I couldn’t think.
Out of breath, I climbed the stairs to our apartment on the second floor, not looking at the nameplate with our three names on it as I let myself in. I had barely slept for three days and, in my depleted state, the most basic of movements had me gasping for air.
I slid the wardrobe door open to reveal two dust covers, hanging side by side. I took care not to touch the one containing my wedding dress.
Lasse’s hands had hung up the suit he wore for our wedding; now my hands took it down and unzipped the dust cover, mirroring his movements.
I removed the shirt and trousers, but left the smoking jacket on the hanger. Maybe some day the boys would want to try on their dad’s smartest jacket, feel the span of his shoulders, how handsome he’d felt.
I folded the trousers and shirt neatly and arranged them on top of each other in the nicest paper bag I could find in the kitchen. Then took it all out again and put his leather shoes at the bottom. It wouldn’t do for him to be laid to rest in a white shirt with shoeprints all over it. I placed his light blue bow tie and the watch with the orange strap on top. He loved that watch. We’d spent a long time in the shop in New York choosing it together.
Without knowing exactly what I was looking for, I found his wallet and rifled through it. Tucked between all his cards was a little scrap of paper.
Bra 34A. Knickers 38.
Lasse’s handwriting: his particular way of writing each letter from the bottom up. He must have written it before I got pregnant again.
I felt the muscles in my legs releasing of their own accord, sliding me down on to the floor, the note clutched to my chest.
My man, no more.
He trod hard on my toes with his high-vis running shoes as he leaned in to kiss me goodbye. We were standing in the doorway to our apartment; he was about to leave for his half-marathon.
Oww, for fuck’s sake, I exclaimed.
He pursed his lips and took a deep breath through his nose. Looked at me for a moment, a tiny shake of his head, then disappeared down the stairs, already running late.
We’d had a fight.
The kiss was supposed to make up for it.
Four days later, I got a call from Lasse’s big brother Christian. There was something I ought to know. He took a deep breath.
Lasse was in the papers.
Hans and Helle had contacted a local journalist about what had happened. Then a national tabloid had picked up the tragic story about the twenty-seven-year-old runner who’d mysteriously collapsed and died, and the source close to him who wanted to speak about it. They’d called Helle back.
I hung up and opened my laptop, found the articles.
They’d used a photo of him they must have taken from his Facebook profile; his half-open mouth and lowered gaze made it look like he was mourning. I knew he was looking down at Elmer in his arms, but they’d cropped that out.
The heat rushed to my cheeks as I read. Helle had told them about Lasse, about me and Elmer. She’d given them my name and his, described the pregnant wife at home in the kitchen getting ready for ‘little Elmer’s’ birthday party.
