The Cold Song (22 page)

Siri opened her mouth and screamed: “I’m angry with you for all of it, Alma! What’s gotten into you?”

And for the third time Jon said that everybody should just calm down and take time to think. At that point Siri whirled around and said Jon was a useless idiot who didn’t see the gravity of the situation and if he uttered the word
think
one more time she would kick him in the face.

Alma hadn’t meant to be uncouth. She had fully intended to be couth. But it had just slipped out of her. Those ice-cream-cone breasts had a life of their own under that thin, white blouse and they had distracted her. Alma hadn’t meant to be cheeky. It had, in her opinion, been a perfectly fair question: Isn’t there some law that obliges women psychologists to cover their breasts so they don’t stick straight out, pointing at people? Isn’t the whole idea of going to a shrink to calm the brain so that it will work better? She was a vulnerable child, for God’s sake. She was easily distracted. But those present had not considered her questions to be exactly
constructive
.

“I don’t see anything constructive coming out of this meeting,” the policewoman said, slipping some papers into a folder and slamming it shut. She looked at Jon and Siri.

“I suggest we meet again in January and that we use the next two months to think about things.” She looked at Alma. “And I would just remind you again, Alma, of how grave this episode at the school was and how seriously we, the police, are taking it. You have violated another human being in the most brutal way, you have committed a serious crime, do you know what that means? It means that if you were older we would have been looking at a sentence of anything up to two years.
We’re talking prison here, Alma. And it’s really disheartening to have you coming here
railing
at everything. I’m disappointed and saddened by the outcome of this meeting.”

Alma didn’t know what
railing
meant. But she liked the word.

The lady psychologist had clammed up completely. Which was why the lady cop had had to step in and be disappointed and saddened and talk about what the correct outcome of constructive meetings ought to be. But the lady psychologist (who had talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked) had been turned princess-silent by Alma’s mention of the ice-cream-cone breasts.

There, now I’ve got you tongue-tied
, Alma thought, but didn’t say.

Alma Ash-lad rails and rails anywhere else but Albury, Australia
.

To tongue-tie means to render speechless, make inarticulate, leave at a loss for words. They had read a folktale in Norwegian class about a princess who was never lost for words until the Ash-lad came along and shut her up, and Eva Lund had opened the dictionary and read out loud the definition of tongue-tie—render speechless, make inarticulate, leave at a loss for words—and Alma thought they were lovely words, even if she didn’t completely understand them, render speechless, make inarticulate, leave at a loss for words. And then Eva Lund had split the class into groups of twos and threes and got them to play a game in which they all had to try to tongue-tie one another.

The story about the scissors incident appeared in the tabloids, it was on TV and all over the Internet. One newspaper,
Dagbladet
, had it splashed across the front page, as part of a series on violence in Norwegian schools:
THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL ATTACKS ENGLISH TEACHER
, it said in huge letters and inside the newspaper it said:

The plait was the 52-year-old teacher’s pride and joy. But the work of a lifetime was cut short when a 13-year-old student attacked her during an English class and hacked off a 42-centimeter chunk of her hair
.

Siri and Jon had gone to the school to collect Alma at the principal’s office. Nothing was said. Alma had noticed that Siri seemed unsure of herself. There was the principal and there was Mama, unsure of herself. Mama, who always knew what to say and do in any situation, who always had a smile for everyone. That was what people said about Siri.

But when Siri and Jon arrived to collect Alma after the scissors incident, Siri had no smiles for anyone. Siri was confused. Alma wasn’t to know that Siri had been inundated
by memories and that when she saw the principal’s lowered brows and Alma’s averted face she recalled Alma’s first day of school.

Siri, Jon, and Alma, who had been six at the time, had been in the school yard, waiting for Alma’s name to be called out. Alma, in a red-and-white gingham dress over blue jeans, with her short dark hair and shining dark eyes, a new schoolbag hanging down her slender, violin-shaped back. Siri remembered Alma’s hand clutching hers. And when Alma’s name was called and it was her turn to cross the school yard and meet her teacher, the child reached for her mother and whispered in her ear: “I can do it, Mama. Let go of my hand.” And she had walked alone, across the school yard over to her teacher, shaken hands politely, and quietly lined up with the other children.

And now here we are, Siri thought, glancing over at her daughter, sitting in the wicker chair in the kitchen and refusing to speak to her.
This strange child. When did it happen? When did we lose her?

Jon and Siri circled each other, each of them alone, each on their own planet, so it seemed, both loving that strange child.
And little Liv with her flaxen locks hopped from planet to planet, singing and singing a song she had made up herself.

Siri sat down on the kitchen chair and wept and shouted at her daughter: “Don’t you realize, we can’t send that letter until you show that you’re sorry, and that you really mean it?”

HE TRIED WITH WORDS
.

Jon told Alma she was the apple of his eye, although he didn’t know exactly what that meant,
apple of my eye
, or why he had chosen that particular expression.

Thirteen years old. Small and chubby. Short black hair. It was now the beginning of March, still very cold, and Jon had picked her up at school (yet another school) and taken her to a bakery for hot chocolate and cupcakes. They passed a table where a young woman was drinking coffee, with her baby on her lap. Jon looked at her, but the woman didn’t look at him. He noticed things like that. At another table some young girls giggled and dropped their eyes as he and Alma walked past them.

“This is our new tradition,” he said jauntily. “A father-daughter tradition.”

Alma said nothing.

“Do you know those girls over there?” he asked.

“They’re in my class,” she said.

Two enormous cupcakes sat between them on the table. His voice was a little too loud (oh, how he floundered, but he hadn’t the faintest idea what to talk to her about) and the elderly couple drinking coffee not far from them looked across and the old lady smiled.

“Oh, isn’t that nice, being out with your father,” she said. Alma looked down and the old lady smiled knowingly at Jon. He found this—all of this—annoying. Alma’s sullenness, his own loud, jolly voice, the people looking at them, the old lady’s smile. It wasn’t a damned performance! And then he leaned across the table and uttered those words that he normally never used: “You are the
apple of my eye
you know.”

He spoke them softly. He wanted her to understand that she was loved and seen and that there was nothing to worry about. She reached a hand across the table, twined her still-chubby fingers with his, and said, “You don’t have to make such an effort, Papa.”

He wanted to defend himself.

“No, Alma, I’m doing this because I want to, I’d so like for us to find things to do together and create our own traditions—and you really are the
apple of my eye
.”

Alma took a sip of her hot cocoa and then she said, “You still feel bad about Milla disappearing?”

The question came out of nowhere and he had no idea how to answer it. He looked at her.

“Yes,” he said finally, “I feel bad.”

“It’s been eight months,” she said. “They might never find her.”

“They will,” he said. “Probably … I’m sure they will.”

She fell silent, drew her hand back and picked at the cupcake, got pink frosting on her fingers, and wiped them on a napkin. She looked down. Her short black hair was brushed back and her cowlick was sticking straight up, like a cartoon
character’s, lending a droll touch to her otherwise solemn face. When she was little they had called her Lull.

“I don’t even like cupcakes,” she said, spreading her hands resignedly. “They’re so gloppy.”

He felt like getting up and leaving, or crying, he wasn’t going to be able to fix this, she wanted too much from him, and at the same time he wished that she would understand him,
that she would understand him
, and not just need him all the time, even though he knew, of course, how unreasonable this was, this desire for her to understand him.

Alma was a child, he was the parent.

He said she could have something else if she liked, the glass display case was full of cakes and filled rolls and buns and chocolate tarts, and while he was talking he realized, or maybe he didn’t realize it right then and there but later, that they had reached the point where he couldn’t just tell her that he loved her, because if he did she would drop everything she had in her hands (hot chocolate, cupcake, a glass of lemonade, whatever!) and throw herself into his arms, or onto his lap. Her movements were so fierce that something was always getting knocked over—chairs, tables, piles of paper, glass vases. In her eagerness to hug him she was totally heedless of everything around her.

Alma had grown up, as all girls do, and she was too big now to sit on his lap, with her rather broad plump behind, her long skinny arms, her long skinny legs, her clumsy hands, the bone-hard bumps under her T-shirt, where her breasts would appear. Her daughter-body no longer had the weight and
warmth of his little girl, his baby, now there was something else, something alien and invasive about her.

“Or we could just leave right now,” he said. “We can make up another tradition.”

He scanned the surrounding tables, caught sight of an attractive woman in a red dress and thought of the scarlet poppies he had seen years before, when he was in Gotland with Siri. He smiled at the woman and she smiled back.

Alma nodded.

“Another father-daughter tradition,” he said.

He had already put on his coat and hat and gloves. She nodded again. The dark eyes under her bangs.

“We could go and look at the sea,” he said. “Not today, but some other day. Soon. We could go and look at the sea and celebrate the coming of spring.”

He couldn’t get out of there quickly enough now, but Alma took forever to put on her mittens, hat, scarf, and down jacket, while Jon stood there breathing and exercising self-control. He mustn’t get impatient. He inhaled.
I will not be impatient. I will not be impatient
. When Alma was younger, about six or seven, her response to Siri’s and Jon’s impatience had been to reserve the right to take exactly as long as she needed to do whatever it was she had to do—whether she was getting dressed in the morning, eating, going to the bathroom, playing with her stuff. Taking forever to put on her clothes, especially her outdoor clothes. Because everything had to be done in a particular way and in a particular sequence. Her clothes had to sit just
so
if she was to feel comfortable in them. Gaps and bumps had to be avoided, her socks had to be pulled well up her calves
so that they sat snugly around the feet of her wool tights, and the cuffs of her mittens had to be tucked into the sleeves of her down jacket. All of this took time and both Siri and Jon knew that there was no point in saying that maybe getting dressed didn’t need to take so long, that maybe it didn’t matter too much whether the mittens went on before or after the down jacket.

When Alma was younger, reproofs of this nature would only result in her taking off all her clothes, stripping completely to then start all over again. And there was no point in nagging at her now either. Siri’s and Jon’s impatience had the same effect on Alma as the mountain troll on the traveling sons of kings—she turned to stone and would not budge.

Alma, you’ll be late for school
.

Alma, everybody’s waiting for you
.

Alma, it doesn’t matter whether your mitten cuffs are inside or outside your jacket
.

Alma brushed some invisible cupcake crumbs off her woolly hat, she wouldn’t put it on until she had brushed away those crumbs, she brushed and brushed, then she shook it, laid it on the table, and brushed it again.

Jon closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He opened his eyes and said as softly and as tenderly as he could: “Do you think you’re about ready, or shall I wait for you outside?”

Alma inspected her hat, ran a hand over it. “Can’t you wait here for me? I want to leave with you!”

The old lady at the other table looked at them. She said, “Are you leaving already? Didn’t you like your cupcakes?”

Jon smiled at her, wondering what benevolent forces prevented him from lunging at her and knocking her off her chair.

ALMA BRUSHED SOME
cupcake crumbs off her hat, you simply could not go around with crumbs on your hat, it was just the sort of thing the girls in her class would comment on and in her mind she saw herself raising her eyes and staring them all to death, and how the whole bakery would be transformed into an inferno of upturned tables and chairs with plates and cutlery and glasses and cupcakes and pastries and sandwiches garnished with little sprigs of parsley strewn all over the floor. The sound of people trying not to make a sound because they were so afraid of what she might do to them—just by staring at them. Standing, crouching, lying down, curled up, and half hidden behind overturned tables or chairs. She pictured her gaze passing from face to face. The woman in the poppy-red dress. The old lady with the coffee cup who wouldn’t leave other people alone. The girls from her class. Papa on his way out.
Can’t be bothered waiting here. I’ll wait for you outside
. The mother with the baby. The tiny baby who didn’t understand what everyone else thought they understood, namely that a deafening silence was their only hope of survival. The baby wailed because it was hungry and because its mother wouldn’t open her blouse and give it the breast. Alma imagined what it would be like to open her mouth and let them
all, the living and the dead, hear her voice. “MAKE THAT FUCKING BABY SHUT UP!”