Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Last Rituals

Hannes sat up. "Agreed, let's try to keep calmthis isn't easy for any of us."

The woman snorted again.

"Well, anyway," Hannes continued solemnly. "Maybe I should begin by saying how saddened I am and on behalf of my family I want to apologize for our son's behavior and the pain he's caused you."

Thora took a deep breath, wanting to digest Hannes's words before killing him. She turned to him, perfectly calm. "For a start, just to set the record straight, we're not a family. My son and daughter and I are a family. You're a cheap excuse for a weekend father, but unlike most of them you can't even take your own son's side when you need to." When she looked away from Hannes she noticed the others were staring at her. Her son was watching her proudly. She repeated for emphasis: "Just to set the record straight."

Hannes took a sharp breath, but Sigga's mother beat him to a reply. "How appropriate. I want to take this opportunity to point out that your darling princethat son of yours"this family's talent for drama knew no bounds. She gave a grandiose emphasis to her words with an exaggerated sweep of the hand"will soon be the same 'cheap excuse for a weekend father' as your ex-husband."

"No!" The shout came from Gylfi. Proudly he went on: "II mean we. We. We're going to stay together. We'll rent an apartment and look after the baby."

Thora suddenly wanted to laugh out loud. Gylfi renting an apartment! He didn't even realize that everything he took for grantedheating, electricity, television, water, garbage collectionall cost money. But she kept her thoughts to herself for fear of discouraging her son. If he believed he was going to rent an apartment, so be it.

"Yes!" cried Sigga. "We can do itI'm almost sixteen."

"Rape!" shouted her mother. "Of course. She's not even sixteen! It's rape!" She glared at Gylfi and shrieked: "Rapist!"

Thora did not quite understand how this was supposed to improve the situation. She turned to Sigga. "How many months, dear?"

"I don't know. Maybe three. I haven't had a period for three months anyway." Her father blushed to the roots of his hair.

Gylfi had turned sixteen a month and a half before. Not that it made any difference. "Let me point out that the age of consent in such a case is fourteen, not sixteen. Besides, my son wasn't sixteen himself when the child was conceived and the law makes no exemption for either gender in cases of sexual harassment, as it's called."

"Nonsense." The father snorted. "As if a woman could rape a man? To say nothing of a child, as in my daughter's case."

"And my son's," replied Thora with a victorious smirk.

"May I point out that your son's at secondary grammar school while my daughter's still in basic school. That must carry some weight with the law," the man said arrogantly.

"None whatsoever," Thora replied. "There's no mention of educational level, I can assure you."

He frowned. "Those fucking queers in parliament."

"You're crazy!" yelled Sigga. "It's my child. I'm the one who has to carry it around and get a huge belly and ugly breasts and can't ever go to the prom." A fresh bout of tears prevented her from continuing.

Gylfi tried to offer what he must have felt was romantic consolation. In an emotional voice he declared to all present: "I don't careyou can get a really fat belly and horrible breasts. I won't leave you and I won't invite anyone else to the prom. I'll just go by myself. You're the girl I love."

Sigga cried even harder while the adults all stared at Gylfi, openmouthed. Somehow this ridiculous confession of love drove home the truth that Mother Nature had made an appalling error of judgmentthese were children having a child, and identifying the culprit was not necessarily the point.

Only Hannes spoke after this collective realization. He turned to Thora, his features distorted by rage. "It's all your fault. You live a wild life and sleep with anyone who shows you the slightest interest. The boy did nothing like that while I lived therehe's imitating the only role model he knows."

Thora was too taken aback to answer. Wild life? One session of sexadmittedly two, if you counted the replayin two years. That was hardly a wild life. Even her eighty-eight-year-old grandfather had urged her to go out and have more funto say nothing of her girlfriend Laufey, although she could hardly be called a preacher of morals.

"I knew it, you're a slut!" the mother screeched, piercing all their eardrums. "A sex addictand it runs in the family." She stared at Thora triumphantly.

Thora found an unexpected ally when Sigga's father joined the fray. "Well, honey, rejoice in the fact that at least your daughter's not frigid like her mother!"

Suddenly Thora could take it no longer. She had heard more about her son's prospective in-laws than she cared to know. Ahead of them lay a baptism, a string of birthdays, confirmation, and God knows what else. Thora had no desire to recall these people's most intimate secrets on such occasions. She stood up. "You know whatI don't know whose bright idea it was to meet here in the first place." She pointed at Hannes. "Feel free to talk to Gylfi's father, all night if need be. But I've had enough." She spun around to leave but was forced to return to the gathering when she realized she wanted to take her son with her. "Gylfi, come on." Her departing words were for poor Sigga, who was still weeping with bowed head. "Sigga, the baby will always be welcome in my houseas will both of you if you want to live there together. Good-bye to you all."

She walked out with Gylfi at her heels. She was completely drained. They slammed the front door behind them and went over to Matthew's Jeep, which fortunately was still in its place. Without saying a word, Thora sat in the passenger seat and Gylfi in the rear beside his sister. "Hannes-ar-dottir," Soley said emphatically, teaching Matthew to pronounce her last name.

"Let's go," said Thora, clutching her head in her hands. She looked at Matthewrelieved that her son had only a fleeting grasp of German and her daughter none at all. "Guess what? I've been devalued. You've just slept with a granny."

To her surprise, Matthew roared with laughter. "I must say that Icelandic grannies are rather different from German ones." He darted a glance toward the backseat, where Gylfi sat immersed in doubts about his future. The only straw he could clutch at now was his mother, who had flown into a rage, largely because she was still half hungover. "Hello, son of Thora. I'm Matthew." He winked at Thora. She looked back at him, too, ready to repay his honesty. Now she would tell her son that Matthew was more than a friend and colleague. Noticing the iPod still dangling from the lad's neck, she decided not to.

"Gylfi. This is Matthew, who's working with me. I invited him round for dinner. We'll talk things over quietly together when he's gone." She swallowed a lump that suddenly appeared in her throat. She was going to be a grandmother, thirty-six years old. Jesus, Mary, the Holy Ghost, and the other one from the Trinity whose name escaped hermay the child be healthy and its parents' lives a bed of roses in spite of this mistake. She fought back the tears that pressed forth uninvited. She was swamped with old signals she should have figured out. It's no fun being alone with Gylfihe's always jumping on the bed and howling

"Thora." Matthew pulled her out of her thoughts. "I had a phone call from the museum of sorcery just now. It seems there's an explanation for the state Harald's body was in."

Thora was determined not to cancel the dinner invitation. As if in a trance she threw some food from the refrigerator and freezer into a pot, not paying much attention to the outcome.

"Dinner is served," she called, trying to sound cheerful. Matthew sat down at the kitchen table straightaway and watched wide-eyed as a succession of bowls appeared. When the table was set, the meal consisted of peas, chips, rice, couscous, soup, jam, and traditional Icelandic flatbread.