10
Fight the feeling, leave it alone.
Cause if it ain’t love, it just ain’t enough to leave
a happy home.
Pussycat Dolls, ‘Don’t Cha’, 2005
Vera felt strangely nervous. It was only Adam she was going to see – her husband, who loved her. Yet since the spring, he had also become a hurtful stranger. This duality tore at her, and when she met his eagerly searching eyes at the Arlanda airport arrivals gate, she was immediately forced to look away, to redirect her gaze to the floor.
This is where it can all fall apart, she thought as she looked at the tracks of thousands of travellers’ feet. Feet that were hurrying home to where they belonged. For her, it wasn’t that easy. She observed the distance to the floor, how far she would fall if she collapsed, and felt an inner trembling in her chest. He had reached her now and gave her a hug. Passively, she lifted her arms and lightly touched his back, recognized his familiar scent.
He was the same as ever: dark and slender. A restrained way of moving. But he looked older, more haggard and worried. Had he lost weight? His shoulders were more angular than usual. He had let his stubble grow, so his beard was no longer rough, but felt soft against her cheek. He was still strikingly handsome, with his dark hair, clear blue eyes and fine features. And the beard suited him, she thought. Yet he was no longer her Adam.
He had stopped asking for forgiveness. He talked about the weather. After a couple of hours at their favorite pub on Söder, the atmosphere was better and there were glimpses of how they used to be. In those moments, Adam’s face lit up like a 100-watt bulb. When they talked about her knee, he agreed that it sounded like something wasn’t right.
‘Unfortunately, it’s probably the cruciate ligament. I’m also guessing there is a meniscus splinter stuck here.’ With practised fingers, he pushed carefully on Vera’s joint.
‘I think so too, I’ve said so, but…’
‘You have very little thigh muscle left to stabilize it.’ He felt her left leg without embarrassment and looked concerned, ‘You are being really careful, aren’t you? You can easily twist it so it rips even more. It wouldn’t take much external force at this point.’
‘I know. I have a doctor’s appointment again in a month, so they’ll have to come up with a solution then.’ Vera shifted position, uncomfortable with Adam’s touching her.
‘Västerbotten County government,’ sighed Adam and removed his hands. ‘Pity I’m not an orthopaedic surgeon. I would have gone in and fixed it right away.’
‘Yes, you would have,’ Vera admitted.
‘And we would have done the ears too,’ smiled Adam as he stroked one of Vera’s ears.
It had been a standing joke between them, that he would remove some of the cartilage that made her ears stick out unusually far from her head. And she usually joked back that it would have been a good idea, if it wasn’t such a waste of resources. Because seriously, although it was tiresome that the priest at their confirmation classes had called her ‘You there, with the ears’, there was nothing really wrong with them. They didn’t hurt and her hearing was good. There were lots of people with real problems who didn’t get the surgical help they needed. Like her knee right now. Or the people with burn injuries in Colombia whom Adam could have given new faces, if only he had been there. But this time she couldn’t make jokes about her protruding ears. It was like something was stuck in her throat.
They sat close together on the bus home to the apartment on Liljeholmen, trapped in the moisture and heat with strangers who politely avoided each other’s eyes by looking out at the city, which was cloaked in a grey drizzle. Vera realized that she felt terribly lonely sitting beside her husband and all these people. When the radio station blaring forth from the driver’s seat switched pop songs, it hit Vera all at once. As soon as she heard ‘I know you want it, it’s easy to see,’ her breathing became uneven and she realized helplessly that it was going to get worse. She stared at the floor of the bus, at the black and yellow striped tape warning passengers to be cautious. She tried in vain to get her lungs to work normally.
Pitiful. That is what she had become. She – who used to dare to do everything she wanted to do. She had dared to work at a field hospital, in the midst of communicable diseases, mere kilometers from the war. But now she couldn’t even deal with the sound of a little dance music. Vera felt a rising pressure in her chest and her hands tingled and started to go numb. In the end, she made a decision. Panic-stricken, she pushed the stop button, got up and stumbled off the bus as soon as it stopped. Full of questions, Adam grabbed her backpack and followed her.
‘I feel sick,’ was all Vera managed to say as she hobbled anxiously along the edge of the park, looking for an undisturbed corner. There was no tree cover, no dense vegetation, no big rocks. At last, in desperation, she lifted the lid of a dog-waste bin. There was a pile of black plastic bags inside, and the stench overwhelmed her. She vomited on the disgusting pile of plastic and closed the lid. Her delicious lunch – thrown up on the park’s collected dog shit. She dried her mouth on a wet hazel leaf that nature had kindly provided. Weakly, she sank down on a wet park bench. Adam dried off a patch of the bench with his gloves and, pale, sat down beside her. Awkwardly, he put his arm on her shoulder.
‘Darling Vera… I’ll call a taxi.’ He got out his mobile phone and began pressing buttons.
Ominous thoughts came into Vera’s head. ‘Darling Vera’? What do you mean by that? Unspoken questions filled her whole world. She noticed that he was worriedly seeking eye contact with her, but she continued to watch the rain hitting the grass. All she could think was, you have to stop saying that!
‘How do you feel?’ he asked when he opened the door of the taxi for her.
She was wet; she was shivering, but at least the empty, hard knot that was her stomach felt calmer. ‘Better, I guess.’
He stroked her hand as, in silence, they travelled the short distance to the three-room apartment that they had renovated together.
‘Maybe you’d like to take a warm bath?’ he asked in the elevator, and tears formed in her eyes at the familiarity of his thoughtfulness.
‘Maybe,’ she managed to say before turning to face the corner and pretending to look for something in her backpack so he wouldn’t see her tears. She shuddered in the face of what she now knew. If I just go inside it will be better, she promised herself. Come home? Come… in.
But the metallic click of the key in the lock released a seeping anxiety. Adam went straight into the bathroom and began to fill the bathtub. Vera stepped hesitantly into what had been her home. She went into the half-renovated kitchen and ran her hand over the tiling that they had chosen together. She was listening to the second hand moving with precision around the face of the kitchen clock when she caught sight of something in the dish drainer – my cup! At least it’s washed now. Was that what he had planned to do with himself too… And then just act like normal again, clinically correct, as if nothing had happened? The sound of running water stopped.
‘I did the laundry; I’ll just run down and get it so you have clean towels.’
She heard Adam’s happy voice disappear out into the stairwell. His light steps on the stairs were a cruel contrast to what was going on inside her.
She
