She calls again. I answer.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hello, my dear girl. Are you on your way to therapy?”
“You know I am,” I say. During my upbringing I learned to suppress any negative feelings. Now it’s as if I’ve lost the ability to pretend. My voice betrays my annoyance.
“You don’t have to be so angry. I’m just asking.”
I control myself. Take a deep breath. “How are things at home, Mom?”
“Quiet. They always are nowadays.”
Here comes the guilt trip. Dad is dead. Mom is alone. I’m a bad daughter.
“Maybe you should try to meet someone,” I say. “Have you been to Grandma’s lately?”
“Your grandmother is busy,” Mom says. “Sewing circles or whatever it is she does now.”
“Do you know anyone else you could visit? You haven’t always lived in Dalarna.”
Silence. A silence that means I’ve wandered into forbidden territory. I know it well, still I go on.
“Where did we live when I was little? You’ve never told me about that. Just that we were somewhere in Denmark before you moved to Borlänge and met Dad.”
“Hans, you mean?”
I’m not allowed to say Dad. She wants to take that away from me, too.
“Who was my real father then?” I say. “Are you ever going to tell me about him?”
It’s been a long time since I dared to push this far.
Mom clears her throat.
“How exactly does this group therapy work?” she says. She sounds friendly and somewhat interested. But I know she just wants to snoop. Beneath the surface she’s angry. And I don’t want to answer. It’s private. Still, I feel obliged to smooth things over. Try to calm her down.
“We go there, sit in a circle. Then you can talk about anything. And the therapist—”
“Stella?”
“Stella is good. She asks questions that make me think. Reflect. I’m able to work on things.”
“What kinds of questions? About us? About me?” Mom’s voice is cold. “Should a therapist really be asking you questions like that? You’re young, you’re grieving. What does she know about our lives? Her questions could do more harm than good. Don’t you see that?”
“They’re not those kinds of questions. You don’t understand.”
But I remember Stella’s blunt questions. How everyone fidgeted in the face of her intensity. She makes me feel unsure sometimes. I don’t know why, but it feels like she’s more interested in me than any of the others.
“What are you telling them? What do you need to process?”
Angry, mocking, patronizing. Mom is just like she’s always been. She roots around in my mind and demands total transparency.
“That’s my business, Mom,” I say. “I have to go now.”
“Well then, I’m sorry.”
And now that hurt tone of voice. She’s misunderstood, but she means well.
“Not all therapists are good, you know,” she says. “They can have a lot of influence. They believe they’re the bearers of the truth; they want to tell other people how to live. For someone vulnerable and sensitive like you, it can end badly.”
“Stella never claimed to know everything,” I say.
Mom sighs. “Sweetie, I’m just worried about you. You’re coming home soon, right? It’s awful to have to talk on the phone like this.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “School is really intense right before exams.”
“But I thought you had a free week before your exams?”
“Yes, but I have to study really hard during it.”
“Isabelle, come home instead. You need it.”
“No, Mom, you need it. I need to be left alone.”
I hang up and turn off the phone.
Arvid: You seem to be in a bad mood, Isabelle?
Me: I screamed at Mom. I can’t believe I did that.
Clara: You seem to be taking it pretty hard. Is it so terrible?
Me: I feel terrible. I haven’t done that since I was little.
I hear Pierre snort.
Pierre: What do you think is going to happen?
I look down at the rug.
Me: I don’t know. I’m not supposed to act like this. She gets hurt. Everything is worse now that Dad is gone.
Stella: Last week, you said it would make more sense if she’d adopted you. What did you mean by that?
I twist my hair between my fingers. A nervous tic of mine. It was hard to have a conflict with Mom, and it’s even harder to talk about it afterward.
Me: I don’t know if I can explain. She’s not like other mothers. She wants us to be best friends. At the same time, she always insists I show her respect, because she’s my mother. She wants me to confide in her, but tries to pull it out of me before I’m ready to tell her. She wants to know everything. Every detail. My most inconsequential thought. Then she uses it against me. I can’t explain. It’s sick. Nothing is easy with her. Everything with her is one long battle.
Stella: You’ve lived with her your whole life?
Me: Yes, but I remember very little from my childhood. And I’ve never felt comfortable in her house. It’s been such a huge relief to move away from home. Scary, too.
Stella: Go on.
Me: The more she wants to be close with me, the more demanding she becomes. She gets disappointed and sad. She gets angry, and I’ve learned how to keep her in a good mood. I’ve learned to be who she wants me to be. To think what she wants me to think. Every time I try to take my own path, I feel guilty. I’ve even hated her, sworn I’d never forgive her. I’ve wished she were dead. Some days, that’s all I think about. How much I hate her. I almost feel like killing her. It’s sick, I know. There’s something wrong with me.
Tears run down my face; I’m sobbing now. I feel both relief and embarrassment, crying like this in front of the others. I wonder if I’ve said too much. Maybe I exaggerated. Because I’m angry. No matter what I do it’s wrong.
Stella: But has she been kind to you? Comforted you when you were sad? Has she ever hit you?
Now she seems so intense again. Several of the others seem nervous. Is something wrong?
Me: Hit me? She would never do that. And comforting me is what she does best.
Maybe I’ve gone too far. Maybe I’ve said too much.
Me: We’ve had our good times, too. And she hasn’t had an easy life. When I was little, she was often left alone with me. Dad had to travel far away for work, and I was sick a lot. She had a lot on her plate.
I have to clear my throat. It feels like something’s stuck there.
Me: And she almost died when I was born. She’s Rh-negative, and I’m Rh-positive. Our blood mixed, and she ended up with blood poisoning. So she means it when she says she’d give her life for me.
Clara: That’s not how blood poisoning works. And if the blood were to mix, it’s the infant that gets sick, not the mother.
Me: Are you sure?
Clara: Yes.
Me: Weird. She must have told me that story a hundred times. I must have misunderstood something.
The room falls silent. I feel stupid. It feels like I’m the only one talking today. And Stella.
Me: I’ve often wondered if she was jealous of Dad for some reason. Maybe it’s because we had an easier relationship. Better than what she and I have ever had.
Stella leans forward, gripping her knees.
She asks: Has it always been like that?
Has it always been like that? I suppose so. We’ve had our good times, too, we definitely have. But basically it’s always been like that. I don’t know why, though, I really tried. I’ve tried to be a good daughter, haven’t I?
Stella: Alice?
Pierre: Who’s Alice?
Stella
A distant, fluctuating noise streams in from the street. I pull the curtains and sit down at my desk. The muscles in my back and neck have cramped up, and it doesn’t help to massage them. It’s like kneading a rock. The pain behind my eyes is so intense I feel nauseous. I search my purse for the painkillers Mom gave me. I swallow one and close my eyes.
The blankness in her eyes when I said her name.
Alice. Her real name.
It means nothing to her. She doesn’t know who I am. I could be anyone to her. I’m a stranger.
She hasn’t been searching for me. She hasn’t tracked me down. She hasn’t thought about me. She hasn’t been waiting or longing for me. She doesn’t miss me. She doesn’t know I felt her grow inside me. That she’s my daughter, and I carried her for nine months. That I spent a never-ending night enduring the worst pain of my life for her. She doesn’t know I fed her at my breast, gazed into her eyes, that she slept in my arms.
I don’t exist to my own child. What was it Eva said in Kronobergs Park? I can let this be.
I can go on like before. Maybe I shouldn’t meet Isabelle again. Maybe I should let her go.
Never.
It’s impossible.
How could I possibly live like I did before when I know Alice is alive? There is nothing that can tear me away from her again.
I have to continue. I need to find out what happened to her, need to get to know her. It will turn our lives upside down, it already has, but I’m prepared for anything.
Whatever I choose to do, there will be serious consequences. That’s inevitable.
Can Isabelle handle the truth? She’s already found out that her dad was not her biological father. And now neither is her so-called mother. I’m going to cause even more problems for her. Her entire life will be destroyed.