Anxious People(52)



By now Julia was ready to get up and turn the walk-in closet into a walk-out closet.

“Do you know what, Anna-Lena? I don’t think I want to hear the rest of that story…”

Anna-Lena nodded understandingly, this certainly wasn’t the first time someone had said that about her stories. But she was so used to thinking out loud now that she finished it anyway.

“There were so many cars there that it took the young man twenty minutes to get to the part of the garage where we were parked. Roger refused to move the car until he got there. He had two little children in the back of the car, I hadn’t noticed, but Roger had. When we drove away I told Roger I was proud of him, and he replied that it didn’t mean he’d changed his mind about the economy or fuel taxes or Stockholmers. But then he said that he realized that in that young man’s eyes, Roger must look just like that politician on television, they were the same age, had the same color hair, the same dialect, and everything. And Roger didn’t want the man with the beard to think that meant they were all exactly the same.”

Anna-Lena wiped her nose with the sleeve of one of the suit jackets, and wished it had been Roger’s.



* * *




It’s worth pointing out that Julia was trying to stand up while this anecdote was being related, a maneuver that took a fair amount of time, so it took just as long for her to slump back into a seated position again. Only then did she open her mouth, and at first the only sound that emerged was a breathless cough, before she burst out laughing.

“That’s simultaneously the sweetest and most ridiculous thing I’ve heard in a very long time, Anna-Lena.”

The tip of the other woman’s nose moved up and down in embarrassment.

“We argue a lot about politics, Roger and I, we have very different opinions, but you can always… I think you can understand someone without necessarily agreeing with them, if you see what I mean? And I know people sometimes think Roger’s a bit of an idiot, but he isn’t always an idiot in the way people assume.”

Julia admitted: “Ro and I also vote for different parties.”

She thought of adding that Ro was a deluded hippie when it came to politics, and that you don’t always discover that sort of thing until a couple of months into a relationship, but decided against it. Because it was actually perfectly possible to love each other despite that.

Anna-Lena wiped her whole face on the jacket sleeve.

“I should never have gone behind Roger’s back! He was very good at his job, he should have been one of the bosses, but he never got the chance. And now he gets so upset when he doesn’t… win. I want him to feel like a winner. So I called that ‘No Boundaries Lennart,’ and to start with I told myself it would only be the one time… but it gets easier every time you do it. You tell yourself that… well, of course, you’re young, so it’s hard to believe, but… the lie gets easier each time. I told myself I was doing it for Roger’s sake, but of course it was for my own sake. I’ve decorated so many apartments to make them look just like a home is supposed to look, so that someone can come to the viewing and think ‘Oh, this is where I want to live!’ I just wish that I could be that person one day. Settling somewhere again. Roger and I haven’t lived anywhere properly for such a long time. We’ve just been… passing through.”

“How long have you been together?”

“Since I was nineteen.”

Julia thought about the question for a long time before finally asking: “How do you do it?”

Anna-Lena replied without thinking at all: “You love each other until you can’t live without each other. And even if you stop loving each other for a little while, you can’t… you can’t live without each other.”

Julia says nothing for several minutes. Her own mom lived on her own, but Ro’s parents had been married for forty years. No matter how much Julia loved Ro, that thought occasionally horrified her. Forty years. How can you love someone that long? Gesturing vaguely toward the walls of the closet, she smiled to Anna-Lena: “My wife drives me crazy. She wants to make wine and store cheese in here.”

Anna-Lena poked her tear-streaked face out between two pairs of suit pants made of the same fabric, and replied as if she were revealing an embarrassing secret: “Sometimes Roger drives me crazy, too. He uses our hairdryer to… well, you can guess… he sticks it under his towel. That’s not how you’re supposed to use a hairdryer… not there. That makes me want to scream!”

Julia shuddered.

“Urgh! Ro does exactly the same thing. It’s so disgusting it makes me feel sick.”

Anna-Lena bit her lip.

“I have to admit that I’d never thought of that. That you might have problems like that. I always assumed it would be easier if you lived with a… woman.”

Julia burst out laughing.

“You don’t fall in love with a gender, Anna-Lena. You fall in love with an idiot.”

Anna-Lena started laughing as well, much louder than she usually did. Then they looked at each other. Anna-Lena was twice Julia’s age, but they had a lot in common just then. Both married to idiots who didn’t know the difference between different types of hair. Anna-Lena looked at Julia’s stomach and smiled.

“When’s it due?”

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