We Run the Tides(29)

“I don’t know them,” I say.

I expect him to scoff, to say “You don’t know them?” But instead, he removes his headphones from around his neck and places them over my hair. He presses “play” on his Sony Sports Walkman and I hear a raspy British voice singing about swallowing tears and putting on a new face.

I remove the headphones and hand them back to him.

“You don’t like them?”

“No, I do like them. A lot.” I can’t tell him that the reason I’m giving the headphones back to him is because the song has moved me so much, so instantaneously that I’m afraid I’ll start crying right then and there.

“They’re really good,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. There’s an awkward beat. “I guess I’ll mail this now,” I say, holding up the postcard.

*

I’M UP LATE THAT NIGHT reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It’s a scene with a bowler hat—Sabina is naked in her Prague apartment seducing Tomas with her body and the hat. I try to imagine what a bowler hat looks like. I decide I’ll search for one next time I’m thrift-store shopping in the Haight. When I’m thrift-store shopping in the Haight alone, I think. I feel sorry for myself and then I feel sorry about how sorry I feel. To pity oneself is to reach a new low, I think. I write down those very words in my diary. Reading Milan Kundera, I’ve decided, is good for the brain. It’s made me a philosopher.

It’s after 11 p.m. when the front doorbell rings. I sit upright in my bed. The front doorbell rarely rings unless it’s someone selling something. Most of our friends come through the back door.

I walk out into the upstairs hallway and peer down below. My mother is talking in Swedish to a blond woman. I only see the tops of their blond heads, leaning in close but speaking loudly. Something bad has happened. I’ve been around enough of my mother’s friends and through enough Santa Lucia performances to understand a good deal of Swedish, but I’m not fluent. I keep hearing them say the word mjolk, which means “milk,” and milk doesn’t seem to warrant the intensity of their discussion. Or the presence of the two suitcases.

I descend the stairs and theatrically rub my eyes as I step onto the landing, making sure to trip in my fake-slumberous state. Maybe I’m a born actress, I think.

“Oh no, did we wake you?” my father says.

“It’s okay,” I reassure them.

I look up at the blond visitor as though just taking note of her presence. “Hello,” I say. “Who are you?”

“I’m Ewa,” she says. “It’s spelled with a ‘W’ but here you say it like a ‘V.’”

“I’m Eulabee,” I say. “I haven’t yet figured out how to introduce myself so people remember.”

“Oh, I can help you with that,” she says. Her English is fluent, with a slight British accent. She went to good schools. And she’s much younger than I first thought. When I saw her from above she looked round, approaching middle age. But now, standing across from her I see that she must be in her early twenties. She must be . . .

“Ewa is an au pair,” my mother says. I knew it.

“I was an au pair,” Ewa says.

One of my mother’s unofficial duties as part of the Swedish network is being an advisor to au pairs from Sweden. They’re given my mother’s number in case something comes up. In this case, something clearly has come up. My mom and Ewa resume speaking animatedly in Swedish.

My father shifts from one slippered foot to another. He clears his throat. “Excuse me. Does anyone fancy tea?” he asks. My father doesn’t speak any other languages than English, and in the presence of foreigners, which, in our house, usually means Swedes, he subconsciously takes on a British accent and a thing for tea.

“Is it decaffeinated?” Ewa asks. My parents look at each other. It’s clear it’s never before occurred to them to check whether the tea they drink late at night is caffeinated or not.

“I’ll check,” my father says, and goes to the kitchen. He’s often domestic in the presence of beautiful women. Ewa, while not straightforwardly beautiful, is captivating, with her round, wide face and strangely (for San Francisco in winter) tan skin. She’s plump, curvy. She’s wearing the white pants that all Swedes love. In America women with her body type probably wouldn’t wear white pants. Maybe it’s a mind trick, I think. By wearing white pants she’s signaling that she’s not heavy, even though she is. Her eyes are the violet-blue of a flame and her shoulder-length hair is curly. Maybe a perm, I think. My Swedish cousins are all getting perms.

My mother and Ewa talk for a minute and the only words I understand are Damernas V?rld, which is the name of a women’s magazine. I know this because we have old issues stacked in a basket in our bathroom. Whenever Swedes living in America go “home for the summer,” they bring back as many Damernas V?rlds as they can carry.

“Oh, we should speak English with you,” Ewa says, evidently disapproving of the fact that I don’t speak fluent Swedish. Swedes always disapprove of this fact.

“I’m learning Czech,” I say.

My father returns with a tray of tea and we follow him into the front room. I know that my parents have a high regard for Ewa because we never sit in the front room this late at night. It’s cold here, with all its windows.