Caroline Eriksson - The Watcher

“When Peter got in touch with me,” I continue instead, “I realized that he wanted to get back together. That’s when the text became something different. I thought that if I wrote down what happened, if I did that as ruthlessly and honestly as possible, maybe that could be a way of understanding and forgiving Peter. But most of all, of understanding and forgiving myself. That’s the only way we could have any chance of continuing our relationship.”

My sister picks up my plate and holds it out to me. I stuff a little strip of prosciutto into my mouth. The hunger is there somewhere, but I can’t taste the food.

“Mama always said that work was the best medicine. You said the same thing, not too long ago.”

She takes a bite of cracker.

“Yeah, I haven’t forgotten. Plus that writing advice I reminded you about—to dig where you stand.”

“That’s literally what I did this time.”

We sit in silence for a while before I go on.

“Ever since Mama died, I’ve been afraid something would happen, that I would wind up in some extreme situation of some kind. I’ve been worried about how I’d react if that happened. I’ve worried that maybe I would lose it again, not be able to rely on myself. Then this stuff with Peter happened, and I wavered, definitely, but when it came down to it, I did nothing… nothing that Mama wouldn’t have been proud of.”

I poke at one of the tea lights and watch its flame flicker.

“It was such a relief, the awareness that I would never again do anything like what I had done, what I was about to do when I was young. That I was able to cope, thanks to Mama, but also that I could cope without her.”

My sister has taken my hand in hers, and she’s carefully stroking it. I shiver. A black shadow hangs over the kitchen table.

“But what happened afterward…”

My voice fails me, and I cautiously pull my hand back, take hold of my water glass again and empty it.

There was someplace she needed to go. There was someone she needed to visit. After that everything would be over. Order would be restored. The filth that had been would be erased once and for all.

My sister’s hand is still resting on the table, but I pretend not to see it, can’t permit myself any signs of affection as I describe what happened afterward, as I describe the day I went to see Anna.

Someone calls me. I don’t know who. A girlfriend—that’s how she introduces herself. She’s not crying, not to begin with, but her voice is muted. She says Anna’s name and asks if we were very close. I’m completely at a loss for what to say.

“I’m sorry?”

“Your number is in her contacts list on her phone, so I’m just wondering how you knew each other.”

There’s no suspicion or insinuation in her voice. Even so, I’m flummoxed. Eventually I manage to say that we’ve met each other a few times through work. Then it hits me.

Were very close. Knew. Why is she using the past tense?

“We’re helping contact all her acquaintances,” the woman continues. “Her family asked us to do that.”

I freeze.

“There was an accident. It happened quickly. They say she probably didn’t suffer.”

She says that she’s a friend of Anna’s from her book club. They were supposed to get together that night, and it was Anna’s turn to host. But when the first women arrived at her place, they realized right away that something was wrong. The door was unlocked, and the fire alarm was going off inside. The charred remnants of the pie Anna was presumably planning to serve were in the oven. The table hadn’t been set yet. Apparently she hadn’t gotten to that. There was no way to be sure of what she’d gone down to the basement to get. Napkins, maybe, or even more likely, a couple of bottles of wine.

They found her at the bottom of the basement stairs, a steep, precipitous, treacherous fall. She was lying on the floor with one leg at an unnatural angle, her eyes staring blankly. One of the women screamed. Another had the presence of mind to call for an ambulance. When the EMTs arrived, they determined that Anna had broken her neck, probably in a couple of places and probably as the result of an accident, a “slip and fall.” She was wearing high-heeled shoes. She really loved heels. And apparently she’d gone up and down those stairs many times before, but it’s so easy for an accident to happen.

“A terrible, tragic accident, as I said.”

By this point, the woman on the other end of the line is quietly crying, the woman who had been tasked with calling to notify me. Then she pulls herself together and blows her nose. She says nothing can bring Anna back to life, but that it’s important to the family for everyone who knew her to be notified as soon as possible.

“We’ve all gathered over here now, those of us who were closest to her, at her place with her family. We think this is what she would have wanted.”

I mumble in agreement, and she wishes me well. I thank her, and we hang up. Afterward I sit for a long time with the phone in my hand, staring into space. When did I last see Anna? Or talk to her on the phone? Actually maybe it wasn’t that long ago, but it still feels that way. It feels like an eternity.

The distance between us grew quickly after we lay there in the bed and Anna said that stuff about my wife: She doesn’t seem normal. Afterward, I realized that something important happened at that moment, that it was as if an invisible force changed directions then and there, from having brought us closer to each other the whole time to now starting to pull us apart. What once appeared unabashedly obvious between us vanished and was replaced by Anna’s discomfort and anxious thoughts.

I started letting more time go by between phone calls. I canceled a date we had planned and then another one. Anna didn’t object, so I assumed we both felt the same way. We had filled some kind of emptiness in each other’s lives for a while, and now that was over. Our relationship was fading away on its own. That’s what I thought, but that’s not what happened. The end came in a completely different way, quickly and decisively.

A terrible, tragic accident.

I get up from the armchair on wobbly legs. The silence bounces between the walls while I survey what should have felt safe and familiar but didn’t at all. At one time, not very long ago, I viewed this as a home. Since the separation, it’s been reduced to a residence.

We’ve all gathered over here now, those of us who were closest to her, at her place with her family.

Anna had her family and her friends, people I don’t know, women and men I’ve never met. When they got together after her death, no one asked about me. And that was as it should have been.

I walk over to the window and peer out. I’m struck by an acute desire to call my wife, while at the same time realizing that this is out of the question. We weren’t supposed to have any contact at all for three months. That was our agreement, and I can’t break our silence for this, just to tell her that the woman I cheated on her with is dead.

The only thing that would give me the right to get in touch is if I’ve made a decision about how I want to proceed, by getting divorced or staying together as a couple. I close my eyes. When will I know? Then I look up again.

Maybe deep down inside I actually already do know?

I didn’t want to know anything about her, the other woman. I made that very clear to Peter, several times.

And yet I couldn’t help it. I had to find out who she was. With the help of his phone history and a few keystrokes on the computer, I learned her name and where she lived. When I decided to separate from Peter, I knew I wouldn’t be able to move forward without talking to Anna. I needed to ask her some questions and assess the look on her face when she talked about him. This way, I convinced myself, I would find out if there was any chance of our marriage having a future.