Into a Star, page 5
And the photo of him, now crumpled from having accompanied me everywhere – I sat gazing at it in the hope that I might provoke something, anything, a moment in which his face would come alive again, miraculously wink at me from the afterlife, say: You know I’m breaking ALL the rules by doing this, right? And that alone would be enough to sustain me for the rest of my life.
Our kitchen was empty. I had scoured the fridge and cupboards, hoping for a little bit of pasta or leftover sausage I could scrape together into some semblance of dinner, a loud bang for every cupboard door I slammed shut.
I took a deep breath through my nose, puffed up my cheeks and blew slowly out of my mouth. I was exhausted and there was still so much evening to get through before I could collapse on the sofa.
I called for Elmer, who was already in his pyjamas, and said we had to go to Kvickly.
Wellies and a woollen jumper over the top would have to do. We walked hand in hand through the mild evening togethers. I looked down at him and thought: I could be happy if I wasn’t so unhappy. His steps were so tiny compared to mine. He chatted away as we walked and my heart went out to him.
In the shop I picked Elmer up so he could see down into the freezer. Hawaiian pizza it was, and he wanted to carry the box to the till himself. He bore it proudly through the aisles and the cashier smiled first at him, then at me, as he stood on his tiptoes and pushed the box on to the belt. I returned her smile with a lump in my throat. Wished I could see him the way she did, wished I could treasure our alone time now that we were so rarely just the two of us, wished I could buy a pizza without guilt, wished his bedtime would hurry up and arrive.
One morning I sat on the living-room floor scratching my thighs, my fingers moving quickly and of their own accord. I wondered if I could dig so deep I’d be able to reach my feelings, and scratch a hole in them so they could spill out too.
I laid off.
Knew that if my skin became infected, it would stand little chance of healing while I was pregnant and fluid-swollen. Knew it could harm the baby.
Fuck! I wailed, clenching my nails into my fists and beating them against my thighs, still at a reasonable distance from my stomach so I wouldn’t risk hitting it. I could feel my thigh bones under my skin – the fluids, the flesh, they shook, the pain felt good, but what if the baby felt it too?
I stopped myself mid-punch, let out a final despairing wail and lay myself carefully down on one side, cradling my stomach in both hands.
If I could just stay still, here, like this, nothing could harm us.
I wanted to forget everything, wanted to drink myself out of my mind, delete Lasse and responsibility and pregnancy and disappear to India without my phone, take acid on a beach until it rained and the rain washed the wet sand into my mouth, my nostrils, my eyes, turning to quicksand and sinking me with it, swallowing me whole. I thought about suicide. I didn’t think I wanted to kill myself, but what if thinking it was the first step on the way to doing it? And what about the kids?
I wept over my own undoing, its inescapability – every escape attempt thwarted before it even got going, because, deep down, I knew there was no way I was ever going to trade my shitty life for anything else.
Despite our youth, Lasse and I had spoken a lot about death, about what we’d do if one of us died before it was time. I was usually the one who brought it up. I had a thing for existential discussions; I loved the thrill of hovering over the abyss, toes sticking out over the edge as I peered into its depths, Lasse holding my hand all the while.
A few years before the half-marathon, I’d read a heartbreaking story in a magazine about messengers from the afterlife, about a woman convinced her recently deceased husband had returned to her as a sparrow. She’d entered her living room one day to find the bird, sitting there unperturbed and seemingly at home. She’d spoken to it and shed a few tears before opening the window to let it fly away.
There was a photo of her gazing out of the window, dressed in a crocheted top, her hair loose and chestnut brown. More photos of her with a set of pink crystals. At the time I remember thinking if you were the kind of person who believed in crystals, it probably increased the chances of your husband turning into a sparrow. But still the idea stuck with me.
I told Lasse about it and suggested we make a pact: if it turned out to be possible to send a message from the great beyond, then the one who died would do everything within their power to do so. And the one left behind would mobilize all their senses to receive the message in whatever form it might take. A heart-shaped cloud, a bird, a butterfly – ideally, a ghost in human form, but if that turned out not to be possible …
Lasse thought I was silly and cute, and we shook on it.
In the wake of his death, I searched high and low for signs. Midway through washing up I caught myself staring absent-mindedly out of the window at a gull, studying its every movement – if only I could crack the code, figure out what it was trying to say, if it was trying to say I miss you too. But when it flew down to the bins in the backyard, instead of over to my windowsill, I came to my senses, ashamed to find myself hands-deep in soapy water thinking that a black-headed gull might have been able to repair my broken heart.
The day we interred Lasse’s ashes, there was a bee.
We buried the urn on an unusually beautiful day in late September. Finally, a break in the rain, the air fresh in our lungs, the sky clear blue, the windflowers around the gravestones swaying in the breeze and the heart-shaped leaves of the katsura trees aflame.
I’d invited a few close friends and family to the ceremony. Elmer was at nursery. The plan was to meet at the chapel to collect the urn, then walk together down to the burial plot at the end of the avenue.
We spoke in low voices as we waited for the last guests to arrive. All of us decked out in dark coats and sunglasses, the flowers in our hands the only source of colour. I’d brought Purple Heart calla lilies – the same kind that had filled my bridal bouquet and Lasse’s buttonhole. I gave them to my dad to carry.
When everyone was gathered, I went into the chapel alone. A woman in a suit pushed open the heavy door to the room which held the urn.
Daylight broke into colourful shards through the stained-glass windows. The door closed behind me as I walked a few paces forward with bated breath. On a table up against the far wall: the black urn.
I rested my hands on its cold surface and didn’t know what to feel, other than the knot in my chest that by now had made a permanent home in me. My mouth opened but couldn’t conjure a single word. I knew my voice would only make the situation creepy, or comical, and this was a place of quiet.
I picked up the urn and hugged it to my chest, balanced it on my stomach. Surprisingly heavy.
As I stepped out of the chapel I could hear the hum of a bee close by. If there is such a thing as a friendly bee, this one was it. It circled me calmly, seemingly uninterested in anyone else, even though they were carrying flowers that ought to have enticed it. I kept my gaze trained on the bee and felt a strange allegiance to it, despite being allergic to bee stings.
On our way down the avenue it disappeared.
The urn was a struggle to carry, my stomach tightening as we walked, my feet aching. I was regretting the decision to wear my new heeled boots.
A deep, cylinder-shaped hole had been dug at the burial plot. Two men in overalls stood waiting for us, each leaning on a spade, heads bowed. The woman in the suit tied a white ribbon around the urn so I could lower it into the damp earth.
I crouched down and the bee was back, hovering calmly beside me. It crossed my mind how ridiculous it would be to get stung right there and then, as I solemnly interred my husband’s urn. The bee landed on my thigh and I didn’t bat it away.
We cast flowers into the hole, then the men began to shovel the soil back in, patting it level.
We sang a hymn and the bee stayed until the last line, then took off.
I watched until it vanished into the blue.
Whether a message had been sent or not, it had been received.
Lasse had been running under a tree when he fell.
A man called to fill in the part of the story I’d been missing.
He’d been the first to administer CPR, he told me over the phone, his deep voice breaking as he spoke. He was a paramedic, but that Sunday he’d been out running the half-marathon too, and had spotted Lasse, lying face down on the side of the road close to the twenty-kilometre mark – nearly ran right past him.
You OK, mate?
He’d rolled Lasse on to his back and Lasse had let out a little puh, his eyes closed. The man had immediately begun CPR, and after a few minutes he was joined by another runner, a cardiologist, but they couldn’t get Lasse’s heart to beat by itself. Fuck! the paramedic had shouted.
He shouted it again when he saw the background image on Lasse’s phone – Elmer – and the running app still counting seconds as it lay next to his lifeless body.
I’d hoped for silver linings. There was one.
He hadn’t died alone.
Joy was the hardest thing to bear.
In the weeks following Lasse’s death I’d turned down all the well-meaning invitations to dinners and parties, but in mid October I agreed to go to a surprise birthday party for a friend.
And it was fun. I had fun. I laughed a lot, possibly a bit too hysterically. But when the band started playing and the others dragged me on to the dance floor, I couldn’t make my body dance along. I stood in the midst of it all, my belly full of life, my legs unmoving, watching the lights dance around the people dancing around me.
Their faces glowed purple and red and green and yellow, and I retreated to a fold-up chair by an empty table, told myself I’d only been pretending to be normal. It felt like I’d fucked Lasse’s memory.
Lasse was the first man who really loved me for who I was. All the other guys I met on nights out thought I was too quirky, too silly, too strange, too scantily clad, too childish, too drunk, too high, too much.
But Lasse would lay his forehead against mine. Just think, he’d say, now our brains are only two centimetres of skull apart.
He had a thing for my overbite because it meant he could stick his tongue up under my front teeth, and if my teeth were clenched shut, he’d shift his attention to the body I’d spent my adolescence so ashamed of, kiss the shame away.
Sometimes when we were side by side, he’d take a step back and get me to turn full circle so he could look me up and down, his eyes shining.
Wow! he’d say, pulling me towards him, blushing and giddy with joy, as we tumbled into a heap on his sofa bed.
He sang me love songs, and they were wonderful even though he could barely hit the notes. He drew me when I wasn’t looking, absorbed in a trashy magazine with a double chin, or at the hairdresser’s with my hair full of foil. As time went by, I adopted his gaze. I’d never felt as comfortable in my own skin as I did when I was with him.
And now, when I looked in the mirror, an ordinary face stared back at me. All that remained: my floppy hair, sticky-out teeth, poor posture, small breasts, inflated pregnancy limbs.
Lasse had taught Elmer to say Mum is beautiful, and I wasn’t proud of my narcissism when I found myself asking Elmer if I was beautiful and he dutifully replied yes.
Grief is a language of lack. My longing for intimacy tugged relentlessly at my heart, but I had no one to share it with.
I could tell people I missed him.
I could tell my sisters and my girlfriends: I miss his kiss, I miss his touch.
But I couldn’t seem to get it past my lips that I missed his dick.
The day I found a shrivelled pink penis ring at the back of the top drawer, I wept. I held it in my open palm and sobbed over everything that was ours alone.
Everything that had now turned to ash, his dick included.
I dialled the number of a grief support group in Aarhus. By the time an elderly woman answered, my heart was racing and my armpits were drenched in sweat. Her voice was calm as she introduced herself as the group’s secretary.
Hi, I’m Puk. Oh God, I’m crying already. Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m calling because my husband died six weeks ago.
That’s not something you should be apologizing for. It sounds like you’re having a rough time of it.
I don’t know what to do, I can’t bear it, it just hurts so much.
The phone was hot on my cheek.
I understand, she said. Maybe you could tell me a bit about yourself and your situation, so I can get to know you a bit better? You sound quite young?
I’m twenty-six, and that’s the thing, I don’t feel old enough for any of this. None of my friends or family have lost anyone like this. They’re trying, but they have no idea what it’s like, they’re kind, but it doesn’t help, that’s why I called, I thought maybe there’d be others who have been through something similar, oh and I forgot to say, we have a two-year-old, and our second child is due in December. My husband died of heart failure, it just happened, out of the blue. Sorry, I’m blabbering, I’m just so confused.
That’s OK. And you’re thinking of joining a support group?
I don’t know. Maybe. I thought you might know another single mum my age who also just lost her husband?
She paused.
Oh, I wish I could help, but most of the people in our groups are quite a bit older than you. I’m sure you could still get a lot out of talking to them though.
Thanks. But really I just wanted to talk with another young woman with small children. It’s the children I’m worried about most. How I’m going to get them through it.
The woman was quiet for a moment.
There is a woman who joined a while ago, she must be in her early thirties. Her husband was in a car accident about half a year ago, something like that. She has kids too, one of them must still be a baby.
Was she also pregnant when he died?
I sounded so excited.
No, I’m afraid she wasn’t … Well, you know what I mean. But her youngest is very young. How about I try to get in touch with her for you? Are you still there?
Yes.
My head felt excessively heavy. It hurt my neck to hold it up.
It’s just that I’m pregnant. I have no idea how I’m supposed to give birth without my husband there. He’ll never get to hold the baby. I’ll never even have a photo of them together. If I could just have that …
I’m so sorry.
No, I’m sorry, I’m not sure what I was hoping for. I’ll think about joining a group, thank you for your time, and for letting me talk to you, I’d better be going now.
I hung up. The phone slid out of my hand and on to the floor.
Elmer and I were in a vast freight yard. It was dark and we were surrounded by abandoned train carriages, their blackened windows like empty eye sockets. Heavy chains hung down from the sky above us, swaying slowly.
I had a torch but the battery was low and it kept flickering out. Something was coming towards us through the dark, that much we knew. Sometimes the torch beam illuminated the backs of three figures, my mum and two of my sisters, but they weren’t really there.
We were looking for something.
In the distance I could see a patch of dull silver, bobbing up and down in mid-air. Then it began to grow, moving towards us. Soon the patch was only a couple of metres away.
It was part of a man. He was dressed in the running gear with reflective strips I’d given Lasse for his last birthday. He wore a loose balaclava and a trilby hat on top of it, but you could still see that he didn’t have eyebrows or hair. His eyes were vacant, his forehead bluish-white. His windproof jacket was slightly open, rust-coloured freckles on waxlike skin.
The man picked Elmer up and started wrapping him in the chains, then he lifted the balaclava away from his face. He was going to bite him. I lunged forward, clawing at the chains, desperately trying to break Elmer free.
My mum and sisters were standing next to us now, their backs still turned. The man loosened his grip on Elmer and turned to me. He pinned my arms behind my back and held them tight. I couldn’t move as he shoved his crotch between my legs and jutted his hairless chin so far forward it almost made contact with mine.
I woke bolt upright in bed, gasping for air. Lasse’s duvet was on the floor.
I was sitting on a chair with a clump of red plasticine in my hand, a sickly-sweet smell. The other mothers were chatting around me, lifting cups of coffee to mouths, slurping and setting them back down again, balanced precariously on flattened strips of plasticine.
The kids had left the table and were busy jumping about on the sofa, giggling away.
All except for Elmer, standing alone in the corner of the living room, turning a wooden toy over in his hands.
Couldn’t he just play with the others for once, I was thinking, when there was a sudden crash. Two of the kids had fallen from the sofa mid-hug, their faces smashing into each other as they hit the wooden floor. Cue screams and parents leaping up to pull the wailing children into their arms. Their distress caused tears to well up in my own eyes, but I swallowed them back – it wasn’t my turn to cry.
Elmer was watching the commotion with a blank expression on his face. Crushing the toy in his hands. Under his breath, in a monotone, he repeated the same words over and over:
Elmer is happy. Elmer is happy. Elmer is happy.
V
Seven weeks into widowhood, I found myself in the home of a woman who designed clothes for children – a semi-detached house in Løgten, just outside of Aarhus. My parents had advised me to resume my internship, get back on the horse and on with life. I’d done as they said.
