I longed for her never to return, so that I could stay always with Carol, wrapped in her arms, comforted by the sound of her soft southern drawl, safe and warm in the only place that ever felt like a home. My mother always came back for me, and always we regarded each other with that first brief look of disappointment: You again.
In his crib, the baby had turned his attention to Bear. The two of them appeared to be deep in conversation.
I watched. I imagined Frank, seeing my son for the first time, the soft curls starting to collect behind his ears, the gummy smile punctuated with sharp points of new teeth; those sparkling eyes, the fat belly he loves to have tickled. Those pudgy hands that grab and pull at everything in sight. The smell of him newly bathed or sound asleep, the milky sighs and wet open kisses, the tiny arms that reach around your neck to hold you in warm, exquisite embrace.
My child. My son.
I lifted him up into my arms and showered him with all the love I had.
Oh, Samson, you can’t honestly tell me that you’re happy over there.
My mother on the phone, calling from the States.
Samson, I know you.
I’ve told you, Mother, it’s wonderful here. I wish you’d come over and see for yourself.
She won’t, thankfully.
It’s a long flight, she said.
You’ve never even met your grandson.
Even this is not enough to persuade her. She cannot get over the fact that I left. She wants to punish me for it. Or maybe this is the extent to which she loathes Merry. She doesn’t even want to meet our son.
She sighed. That goddamn Ida, she said.
She left me a house, I said. She was a nice woman.
Please, she hissed. It’s thanks to her I’m alone and you’re a million miles away.
You’re being mean-spirited, I said.
Ida was a manipulative bitch, I always said so. Only married my father so she could stay in the country. And then she does this, leaves my son a house so he’ll move to the other side of the world.
Anyway, she said, they’re all the same.
Who? I said.
Women.
The line was quiet.
Samson, she said slowly. I played bridge with Myra last week.
I sucked in my breath.
You remember her daughter. Josie Rushton, from Columbia.
She paused.
It’s just gossip, I said, knowing what was coming.
But she said you were—
Gossip, I said.
That’s not why you left, she said. That’s not what you’re doing there, son, is it? Running away from your problems. I know it wouldn’t be the first one. I know you like your—
I’m going now, Mother, I said, and put down the phone.
I went outside. The calls with my mother usually end like this. Me in a rage. I opened the door to the barn at the edge of the garden. Ida’s boxes still piled up inside. A lawnmower, a canoe that needs to be stripped and painted. The list of things to do is endless. At least the house is livable now, the garden in check.
God, if I think of the day we arrived and saw what a state it was all in. A boarded-up house half falling apart, a garden overgrown, a tangle of thorns and rotting trees and sharp edges waiting to cut you to pieces. Merry pregnant, me circling the property in a daze as though waiting for it all to come into focus. It’s a wonder we didn’t run away.
The house was virtually uninhabitable – the few remaining pieces of Ida’s furniture covered in sheets brown with dust, the windows cracked, the roof tiles falling down. We covered our mouths with scarves and pulled off the sheets one by one, shoved open the windows and the doors and tried to let the fresh Swedish air do its work. I quickly realized how little I’d thought about logistics like beds and towels and kettles. Water, power, blankets for the cold. We had nothing and nowhere to sleep. No food, nowhere to curl up after more than twenty-four hours of airports and flights.
What are we doing here, Sam? Merry said, her eyes shining with tears and fright. I think it was the first time she ever looked at me that way. Like I didn’t have all the answers.
We drove the rental car into town and stopped at three guesthouses before we found somewhere with a vacancy. We left the luggage in the car, found a little café on the main street, and ordered burgers and milk shakes. By two in the afternoon we were back in the room, fast asleep and not to wake until the next evening, even though the jetlag ought to have kept us up through the night.
On the third day, we got up early and drove to the big supermarket on the outskirts of town. We loaded up the car with cleaning products and groceries and candles and a couple of cheap beach towels. We had the water and power set up later that day, and then we went to work with the mops and the window cleaner and the polish, every corner and crevice of the house we scrubbed and shined, every inch of dust we caught and dispensed with, every sign of neglect we reversed and restored. We fitted new light bulbs and tested the old fridge and stove; we ran the taps to clear out the pipes and washed the huge glass windows with soap and water. Together we wrote endless lists of the things we needed to buy for each room, the repairs that needed to be made; every time you looked there was something else.
We bought a car from a dealership in Uppsala and drove to the nearest Ikea, made frequent trips to the hardware store and the garden center. I built the baby’s crib and painted the walls of his room. I moved in one of Ida’s old armchairs, we bought a woven blanket and cushions to make it comfortable. In Stockholm we shopped for strollers and car seats, bath chairs and diaper bags and thermometers and educational rattles. The prices in krona made your eyes water but we loaded up the cart and handed over the card to swipe.
I bought a wheelbarrow and a toolbox, a power drill and a ladder to fix the roof. The sweat dripped off me; I tied a bandanna around my forehead and removed my shirt. I was pure alpha, man on a mission. It was exhilarating.
Outside, I pulled weeds and hacked down waist-high bushes. I measured frames and bricked in vegetable patches and rebuilt fallen walls.
Fixing, making, shaping. Building our new lives one drop of sweat at a time.
You can’t honestly tell me you’re happy over there.
My mother refuses to believe any American can be happy anywhere but America. She sends over care packages from the States, all the things she thinks we’re missing. Boxed macaroni and cheese dinners, triple-chocolate-chip cookies, hot sauce. In the last package, she included an American flag, just in case we needed reminding.
You were all I had, son, and now you’re gone. With that woman.
The
