Caroline Eriksson - The Missing

I’m still in Marhem, still in the cabin. I’m lying in bed with my clothes on and the covers pulled up to my chin. In fact, I’ve pulled the duvet from the other side of the bed on top of me. From his side. The man who will never again lie next to me. If you ever come near me again, I swear I’ll kill you. I’m shivering and my teeth are chattering, but I nod emphatically. I really do mean it. It could happen. I have it in me. For all these years, I’ve fended off that thought, the one lurking in the shadows. I’ve tried to convince myself I’m not like that. But to no avail. Now I know.

In spite of the double layer of blankets, my body is shaking with cold. A throbbing headache is making the daylight hurt my eyes. I should get up and pull down the blinds, but I can’t muster the energy. Mama, I think, hurry up . She reacted with such calm when I fell apart on the phone. She asked me where I was. After I’d explained and given her clear directions, she said:

“Stay there. I’ll come and get you.”

“No, you won’t. I waited so long, but you… you never came.”

Thoughts and memories blended together in my agitated state. I saw myself sitting on the floor in my room, saw the uniformed officers come and go, saw Ruth come and go. And I saw the door to what had been Mama and Papa’s bedroom. The door that remained closed for so long.

Mama was silent a second longer than necessary. Then there was something different about her voice. As if the outer layers had been peeled away.

“This time I’m coming. Right now. I promise.”

And I knew she meant what she said. Taking action is my mother’s forte. There has never been any doubt about that.

My eyelids flutter, and I realize I must have dozed off for a while. My joints ache, and my skin feels hot. I’m still in Marhem, alone, sick, and miserable. Tirith is dead. The search for Alex and Smilla is over. There’s no reason for me to stay awake.

Filled with longing, I reach for the release that sleep brings. Allow myself to be swept away once more. I slip into a hazy space, drifting in and out of restless slumber. I dream that I gave my mother the wrong directions, and she’s driving around and around without ever arriving, without ever finding me.

A knock on the front door wakes me. At first I think it’s part of my dream, but then I realize it’s real. I’m suddenly wide awake. Mama! She’s here. Everything’s going to be fine.

I’m still weak, but at least my body obeys when I force myself to get out of bed and head toward the front hall. I have no choice. Mama doesn’t have a key, and in spite of my miserable condition, I was very careful about locking the door when I came in. I remember having a sense of some approaching threat. As I shuffle to the door, I’m frowning. What sort of threat did I imagine? From where? From whom? I can’t recall now. It escapes me.

I’m at the front door. I reach for the lock. I picture the person standing outside. My hands are shaking. Why? Why am I shaking? Because I’m sick, because I have a fever. Why else? I turn the lock and cautiously open the door.

“Mama?”

But it’s not her. It’s… I can hardly believe my eyes. It’s my psychologist. The blond. The woman whose office I left years ago. The woman whose ominous words have been ringing in my ears these past few days. She’s changed her hairstyle, and she’s wearing different clothes, but I recognize her instantly. And I realize that I must be dreaming. This woman can’t be standing here, on the steps to Alex’s cabin. Not for real. The fact that she’s holding an oar makes the whole thing even more absurd and dreamlike.

In a daze, I think there must be a reason for her to seek me out. She must have a message for me. Suddenly, I’m afraid I’ll wake up before the dream version of the psychologist has time to tell me what she needs to say.

“You were right,” I mumble. “Everything you said was right. But what now? What am I supposed to do now?”

She stares at me for a long time, opening her blue eyes wide and then narrowing them again.

“So it’s you? It’s you.”

Then she raises the oar. Maybe this isn’t a dream, I think. Maybe I’m delirious.

Then the psychologist emits a scream, shrill and piercing. Hysterical. I flinch. Because I know that voice, that scream. In a sudden moment of clarity, I’m carried back to the night we arrived in Marhem. The car outside. The one who stayed and the one who left. Smilla and the woman with the scream. Smilla and her mother. Smilla and Alex’s wife.

I take a step back as something dark whistles through the air. It strikes my shoulder and the side of my head. I fall against the wall and throw out my hand, but in vain. I feel my body tumble to the floor. Then everything goes black.

It begins and ends with Mother. To understand me and my story, you first have to understand that. In the beginning, Mother was my everything, and I was hers. I was the light of her life, that’s what she always said. Her voice was as soft as a caress on my face. She used to hold me in her arms, pressing me close to her warm flesh, making me understand that with her I would always be safe. A faint lavender scent rose from her skin when she stroked my hair. She got up with me in the morning and made breakfast, she was there when I came home from school, she tucked me in at night. Every day, every night. She never let work, or her women friends, or any other distractions take her away from my side. I can’t remember a single instance when she wasn’t there when I needed her. Everything she did was for me. Never in my life has anyone loved me like she did.

When the hospital called to say she’d been in a car accident, I was home alone with Smilla. Alex had gone to Marhem on his own to finish a big project. At least, that’s what he told me.

“It’s serious,” said the nurse who called.

At that moment, a chasm opened up under my feet, another inside my chest. Those first years after I’d moved away from home and left Mother’s safe nest, I was a lost wanderer. I discovered that the world was an unpleasant and frightening place. I trained to be a psychologist, thinking that would help me to figure out why I felt like a cat adored in the summertime and then abandoned in the fall. But it was only after Smilla was born that the pieces fell back into place. I had a mission. Motherhood became my calling. And Mother became more than my safe haven. She became my role model, my guiding light.

I gripped the phone, afraid to ask.

“How serious?”

“Come as soon as you can.”

Smilla didn’t want to go anywhere without Tirith and her toys, so I got out the cat carrier and our biggest suitcase and let her pack whatever she liked. The August evening slipped into night, closing its darkening walls around us as we headed for Marhem. I drove much too fast the whole way. I could hardly see because of the tears streaming down my face. Mother’s footprints were about to be washed from the surface of the earth. Her example, which I had unsuccessfully tried to emulate, was about to fade. Who would I be without her? How would I be able to go on or bear what had become of my life?

The car parked in front of the cabin belonged to another woman. I realized that at once. Though I’d previously looked the other way, I couldn’t do it anymore. I hadn’t warned Alex of our arrival. I didn’t call his cell phone until we were already standing in the road outside. Maybe I subconsciously wanted to take him by surprise. When he came out, I screamed at the top of my lungs. Screamed as if I was on the verge of losing my mind. Or as if that had already happened. That’s what Alex would say, of course. It wasn’t like me to behave that way. Not at all like the wife he had molded. The one who knows to yield, accept, look the other way. I don’t remember what I screamed; maybe there were no real words or phrases. Maybe it was just one long primal scream, emanating from my fear that Mother was about to be taken from me. The other woman—you? You really weren’t important. Not then.