My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(39)

Elsa opens her mouth, but Mum puts her finger over her lips.

“Shush,” whispers Mum again, and keeps her arms tight around her.

Elsa curls up in her arms in the dark, and they see the woman in the black skirt drifting back and forth down there like a flag that’s torn itself free in the wind. Plastic bags lie scattered on the floor of her flat. One of the wine boxes has toppled over. A few last drops of red are dripping onto the parquet floor. Mum makes a gentle movement against Elsa’s hand. They stand up quietly and go back up the stairs.

And that night Elsa’s mum tells Elsa what everyone except Elsa’s parents was talking about on the day Elsa was born. About a wave that broke over a beach five thousand miles away and crushed everything in its path. About two boys who swam out after their father and never came back.

Elsa hears how the drunk starts singing her song. Because not all monsters look like monsters. There are some that carry their monstrosity inside.





14





TIRES


So many hearts broke the day Elsa was born. Shattered with such force by the wave that the shards of glass were dispersed all around the world. Improbable catastrophes produce improbable things in people, improbable sorrow and improbable heroism. More death than human senses can comprehend. Two boys carrying their mother to safety and then turning back for their father. Because a family does not leave anyone behind. And yet, in the end, that is precisely what they did, her boys. Left her alone.

Elsa’s granny lived in another rhythm from other people. She operated in a different way. In the real world, in relation to everything that functioned, she was chaotic. But when the real world crumbles, when everything turns into chaos, then people like Elsa’s granny can sometimes be the only ones who stay functional. That was another of her superpowers. When Granny was headed for some far-off place, you could only be sure of one thing: that it was a place everyone else was trying to get away from. And if anyone asked her why she was doing it, she’d answer, “I’m a doctor, for God’s sake, and ever since I became one I’ve not allowed myself the luxury of choosing whose life I should be saving.”

She wasn’t big on efficiency and economics, Granny, but everyone listened to her when there was chaos. The other doctors wouldn’t be seen dead with her on a good day, but when the world collapsed into pieces they followed her like an army. Because improbable tragedies create improbable superheroes.

Once, late one night when they were on their way to Miamas, Elsa had asked Granny about it, about how it felt to be somewhere when the world crumbles. And how it was being in the Land-of-Almost-Awake during the War-Without-End and what it was like when they saw that wave breaking over the ninety-nine snow-angels. And Granny had answered: “It’s like the very worst thing you could dream up, worked out by the most evil thing you could imagine and multiplied by a figure you can’t even imagine.” Elsa had been very afraid that night, and she had asked Granny what they would do if one day their world crumbled around them.

And then Granny had squeezed her forefingers hard and replied, “Then we do what everyone does, we do everything we can.” Elsa had crept up into her lap and asked: “But what can we do?” And then Granny had kissed her hair and held her hard, hard, hard and whispered: “We pick up as many children as we can carry, and we run as fast as we can.”

“I’m good at running,” Elsa had whispered.

“Me too,” Granny had whispered back.

The day Elsa was born, Granny was far away. In a war. She had been there for months, but was on her way to an aircraft. On her way home. That was when she heard about the wave in another place even farther away, from which everyone was in desperate flight. So she went, because they needed her. She had time to help many children escape death, but not the boys of the woman with the black skirt. So she brought home the woman with the black skirt instead.

“That was your grandmother’s last journey,” says Mum. “She came home after that.”

Elsa and Mum sit in Kia. It’s morning and there’s a traffic jam. Snowflakes as big as pillowcases are falling on the windshield.

Elsa can’t remember the last time she heard Mum tell such a long story. Mum hardly ever tells stories, but this one was so long that Mum fell asleep in the middle of it last night and had to pick it up in the car on the way to school.

“Why was it her last journey?” asks Elsa.

Mum smiles with an emotional combination of melancholy and joy that only she in the entire world has fully mastered.

“She got a new job.”

And then she looks as if she is remembering something unexpected. As if the memory just fell out of a cracked vase.

“You were born prematurely. They were concerned about your heart so we had to stay at the hospital for several weeks with you. Granny came back with her on the same day we came home. . . .”

Elsa realizes that she means the woman in the black skirt. Mum clutches Kia’s steering wheel hard.

“I’ve never spoken much to her. I don’t think anyone in the house wanted to ask too many questions. We let your grandmother handle it. And then . . .”

She sighs, and regret floods her gaze.

“. . . then the years just went by. And we were busy. And now she’s just someone who lives in our house. To be quite honest with you, I’d forgotten that was how she first moved in. You two moved in on the same day. . . .”