My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(27)

And then she used to talk about the wurses. And Elsa should have understood this from the beginning. She really should have understood everything from the beginning.



Dad turns off the stereo just before she jumps into Audi. Elsa is glad that he does, because Dad always looks very downhearted when she points out to him that he listens to the worst music in the world, and it’s very difficult not pointing it out to him when you have to sit in Audi and listen to the worst music in the world.

“The belt?” Dad asks as she takes a seat.

Elsa’s heart is still thumping in her chest.

“Well, hi there, you old hyena!” she yells at Dad. Because that’s what she would have yelled if Granny had picked her up. And Granny would have bellowed back, “Hello, hello, my beauty!” And then everything would have felt better. Because you can still feel scared while you’re yelling “Well, hi there, you old hyena!” to someone, but it’s almost insane how much more difficult it is.

Dad looks unsure about it. Elsa sighs and straps herself in and tries to slow her pulse by thinking about things she isn’t afraid of. Dad looks even more hesitant.

“Your mum and George are at the hospital again. . . .”

“I know,” says Elsa, as you do when something has not succeeded in allaying your fears.

Dad nods. Elsa throws her backpack between the seats and it lands lying across the backseat. Dad turns around and straightens it up very neatly.

“You want to do something?” he says, sounding slightly anxious when he says “something.”

Elsa shrugs.

“We can do something . . . fun?”

Elsa knows he’s only offering to be nice. Because he has a bad conscience about seeing her so seldom and because he pities Elsa because her granny has died and because this Wednesday thing was rather sudden for him. Elsa knows this because Dad would never usually suggest doing something “fun,” because Dad doesn’t like having fun. Fun things make Dad nervous. One time when they were on holiday when Elsa was small, he went with Elsa and Mum to the beach, and then they had so much fun that Dad had to take two ibuprofen and lie down all afternoon for a rest at the hotel. He had too much fun once, said Mum.

“A fun overdose,” said Elsa, and then Mum laughed for a really long time.

The strange thing about Dad is that no one brings out the fun in Mum as much as he does. It’s as if Mum is always the opposite pole of a battery. No one brings out order and neatness in Mum like Granny, and no one makes her as untidy and whimsical as Dad. Once when Elsa was small and Mum was talking on the phone with Dad, and Elsa kept asking, “Is it Dad? Is it Dad? Can I talk to Dad? Where is he?” Mum finally turned around and sighed dramatically: “No, you can’t talk to Dad because Dad is in heaven now, Elsa!” And when Elsa went absolutely silent and just stared at her mum, Mum grinned. “Good God, I’m only joking, Elsa. He’s at the supermarket.”

She grinned just like Granny used to do.

The morning after, Elsa came into the kitchen with shiny eyes when Mum was drinking coffee with loads of lactose-free milk, and when Mum, looking worried, asked why Elsa was looking so upset, Elsa replied that she had dreamed that Dad was in heaven. And then Mum went out of her mind with guilt and hugged Elsa hard, hard, hard and said sorry over and over and over, and then Elsa waited almost ten minutes before she grinned and said: “Good God, I was only joking. I dreamed he was at the supermarket.”

After that, Mum and Elsa often used to joke with Dad and ask him what it was like in heaven. “Is it cold in heaven? Can one fly in heaven? Is one allowed to meet God in heaven?” asked Mum. “Do you have cheese-graters in heaven?” asked Elsa. And then they laughed until they couldn’t sit straight. Dad used to look really quite hesitant when they did that. Elsa misses it. Misses when Dad was in heaven.

“Is Granny in heaven now?” she says to him and grins, because she means it as a joke, and she imagines he’ll start laughing.

But he doesn’t laugh. He just looks that way, and Elsa feels ashamed of saying something that makes him look that way.

“Oh, never mind,” she mumbles and pats the glove compartment. “We can go home, it’s cool,” she adds quickly.

Dad nods and looks relieved and disappointed.

They see the police car from a distance, in the street outside the house. And Elsa can already hear the barking as they are getting out of Audi. The stairs are full of people. Our Friend’s furious howling from inside its flat is making the whole building shake.

“Do you have . . . a key?” asks Dad.

Elsa nods and gives him a quick hug. Stairwells filled with people make Dad very tentative. He gets back into Audi and Elsa goes inside by herself. And somewhere beyond that ear-splitting noise from Our Friend she hears other things too. Voices.

Dark, composed, and threatening. They have uniforms and they move about outside the flat where the boy with a syndrome and his mother live.

Eyeing Our Friend’s door intently but clearly afraid of getting too close, they press themselves to the wall on the other side. One of the policewomen turns around. Her green eyes meet Elsa’s—it’s the same policewoman she and Granny met at the station that night Granny threw the turds. She nods morosely at Elsa, as if trying to apologize.

Elsa doesn’t nod back, she just pushes past and runs.