Jens Lapidus - Easy Money

Margareta reached for the salad. “Tell us more, Johan. How are things?”

A few seconds of silence. Her real question was: How are things in Stockholm? The city where our daughter disappeared. Who are you spending time with? You don’t run with a bad crowd, do you? Questions she would never pose directly. The fear of being reminded. The fear of coming too close to the dark scream of reality.

“I’m doing really well, Mom. Passing my exams. The latest one was on macroeconomics. There are over three hundred students in the class. There’s only one lecture hall that’s big enough.”

“Wow. There are so many of you. Does the lecturer use a microphone?”

Bengt, with a chewed gray beef mass in his mouth: “Of course they do, Mother.”

“Yes, they do. It’s kind of funny, ’cause they draw all these graphs and curves. You know, in a perfect market, the price is where the demand curve meets the supply curve. All the students copy every single graph into their notebooks, and since there are so many different curves, everyone’s got those four-colored Bics-you know, the pens with four different colors of ink in them-so they can tell the curves apart. When the lecturer draws a new curve, three hundred students switch colors at the same time. A little clicking sound for each one. It’s like a symphony of clicks in the lecture hall.”

Bengt grinned.

Margareta laughed.

Contact.

They kept talking. JW asked about his old school friends from Robertsfors. Six of the girls were moms. One of the guys was a dad. JW knew that Margareta was wondering if he had a girlfriend. He didn’t bother to share. The truth was, he didn’t even know the answer.

A sort of calm washed over him. Warm, safe grief.

After dinner, Bengt asked JW if he wanted to watch sports with him. JW knew that was his attempt at intimacy. Even so, he declined. Preferred to talk to Mom. Bengt went into the living room by himself. Settled into the La-Z-Boy. JW could see him from the kitchen. He stayed where he was and talked to Margareta.

Camilla’d still not been mentioned. JW didn’t care if the topic was taboo. For him, his parents were the only people with whom he’d ever consider really talking about her.

“Have you heard anything?”

Margareta understood what he was talking about.

“No, nothing new. Do you think the case is still open?”

JW knew that it should be now at least. But he hadn’t heard anything, either.

“I don’t know, Mom. Have you changed anything in Camilla’s room?”

“No, everything is just like it was. We don’t go in there. Dad says he thinks it gives Camilla peace that we don’t intrude.” Margareta smiled.

Bengt and Camilla’d fought furiously the year before Camilla moved to Stockholm. Now JW looked back on it with nostalgia: doors slamming, crying from the bathroom, screaming from Camilla’s room, Bengt on the porch with a cigarette between his fingers-those were the only times he smoked. Maybe Margareta felt the same way. The ominous fights were their last memories of Camilla.

JW helped himself to another slice of blueberry pie. Gazed out at his father in the living room.

“Should we join Dad?”

They watched a movie on TV together: Much Ado About Nothing. Modern interpretation of Shakespeare, using the original language. Difficult to understand. JW almost fell asleep during the first half. During the second half, he calculated the kind of money he was missing out on making this weekend. Shit, the alternative costs for spending time with his parents were high.

Bengt fell asleep.

Margareta woke him up.

They bid JW good night. Went to their room.

JW remained seated, alone. Prepared himself mentally. Soon he’d go up to the room. Her room.

He flipped through the channels. Lingered on MTV for five minutes. A Snoop Doggy Dogg video was playing. Asses shook in time to the song.

He turned it off.

Climbed into the La-Z-Boy.

Settled in.

He felt empty. Scared. But, strangely, not restless.

He turned out the lights.

Sat back down.

The silence was so much deeper than by Tessin Park.

He got up.

Tried to walk silently up the stairs. Remembered almost step by step which stairs creaked and what strategies to employ to avoid them. Foot on the thick inner edge, foot in the middle, step over an entire stair, step on the edge, on the narrow section, and so on-all the way up.

Another two steps’d become creaky since he’d moved away from home.

Maybe he wasn’t waking Bengt. He was definitely waking Margareta.

The door to Camilla’s room was closed.

He waited. Thought Mom might fall back asleep. Pulled the door while simultaneously pushing slowly down on the handle. It didn’t make a sound.

When he flipped the light on, the first thing he saw were the three baseball hats Camilla’d hung on the opposite wall: a dark blue Yankees hat, a Red Sox hat, and a hat from her junior high graduation. The text on it: We rocked and rolled in black lettering on a white background. Camilla liked baseball hats like a fat kid likes cake. Uncomplicated. If there was one, she wanted it.

The untouched room of a seventeen-year-old. To JW, it was almost more childish than that.

There was a window in the middle of one of the room’s short ends. The bed was opposite the window. Camilla’d begged for a whole year to get a double bed to replace her twin. Pink coverlet with flouncy edges. Different-colored throw pillows, some with hearts on them, were spread at the foot of the bed. Margareta’d sewn them. Camilla used to kick the pillows to the floor before going to bed.

A young girl’s room.

Every object was a memory.

Every item a chip in JW’s armor.

More baseball hats were arranged in a bookcase. On top of the bookcase were framed photographs: the family on a ski vacation, JW as a baby, three friends from school-wearking makeup, smiling, full of expectation.

The rest of the shelves were filled with baseball hats.

Above the bed was pinned a poster of Madonna. A strong, successful woman with a mind of her own. Camilla’d been given it by a guy she’d dated in eighth grade. He was four years older, a secret she kept from Mom and Dad.

JW’d thought about how after the disappearance, when he was still living at home, he’d never gone into the room. It’d been empty for so many years, and the effect of the stored and reinforced memories hit him like a punch in the face.

Camilla at her junior high graduation. Hair in an up do. White dress. Later that night: wearing a camo-colored baseball hat. The stories JW’d heard about her behavior at the graduation party. Next memory: Camilla and JW in a fight over the last glob of Nutella. JW: pulled into the room and beaten up, smeared with his own sandwich-with an extra-thick layer of Nutella. Later: Camilla next to JW on the bed, when they were friends again. She showed him her CDs: Madonna, Alanis Morissette, Robyn.

Read the text on the inserts. Said she was definitely going to leave, go to Stockholm.

Enjoyed hanging out together.

There was a built-in bookshelf and two mirrored closet doors on the left wall.

Unread YA books and CDs were lined up on the shelves, but only the ones she hadn’t taken with her to Stockholm. A Sony stereo-a gift on the day of her confirmation. Camilla liked music better than reading.

JW opened the closet doors.

Clothes: skinny jeans, miniskirts, pastel-colored midriff baring tops, a jean jacket. A black corduroy coat. JW remembered when Camilla’d brought it home. She’d bought it herself at H &M in Robertsfors for 490 kronor. Too expensive, Mom thought.

Next to the folded tops was a storage box with reinforced metal corners. JW’d never seen it before. Stiff gray cardboard. JW recognized the type; he’d seen similar ones at container stores in Stockholm.