Фредрик Бакман - Anxious People

There the bank robber and Roger were sitting at either end of a bench. Throughout her marriage Ro had always been told that she needed to “understand people’s boundaries!” but hadn’t quite understood them yet, so she squidged herself in between them on the bench. “Squidged” might not be a real word, but that’s what Ro’s dad calls it. He suffers from inadequate boundary perception as well. And Ro’s dad has taught her all she knows, for good and ill.

The bank robber glanced awkwardly at her from one end, Roger glanced irritably at her from the other, both of them now squidged so far that they each had one buttock hanging off the end of the bench.

“Lime?” Ro offered. They shook their heads. Ro looked apologetically at Roger and added: “Sorry my wife called you an emotionally challenged old fart of a husband earlier.”

“What did she call me?”

“Maybe you didn’t hear? In that case it was nothing.”

“What does that mean? What the hell is ‘emotionally challenged’?”

“Don’t take it personally, because most people don’t really understand Jules’s insults, she just says them in a way that makes people understand that they’re not nice. It’s quite a talent. And I’m sure that you and Anna-Lena aren’t heading for divorce.”

Roger’s eyes opened so wide that they ended up bigger than his ears: “Who said anything about divorce ?”

The rind of the lime was making Ro cough. Somewhere inside the part of the brain that controls logic and rational thinking, a thousand tiny nerve endings were jumping up and down and shouting Stop talking now . Even so, Ro heard herself say: “No one, no one’s said anything about divorce! Look, I’m sure it will all work out. But if it doesn’t work out, it’s actually really romantic when older couples get divorced. It always makes me happy, because it’s so great when pensioners still think they’re going to find someone new to fall in love with.”

Roger folded his arms. His mouth barely opened when he said: “Thanks for that, you’re a real tonic. You’re like a self-help book, only in reverse.”

The nerve impulses in Ro’s brain finally got control of her tongue, so she nodded, swallowed hard, and apologized: “Sorry. I talk too much. Jules is always saying that. She says I’m so positive that it makes people depressed. That I always think the glass is half full when there’s just enough to drown yourself in, and—”

“I can’t think how she got that idea,” Roger snorted.

Ro replied dejectedly: “Well, she used to say that, that I was too positive. Since she got pregnant everything’s become so serious, because parents are always serious and I suppose we’re trying to fit in. Sometimes I don’t think I’m ready for the responsibility—I mean, I think my phone is asking too much of me when it wants me to install an update, and I find myself yelling: ‘You’re suffocating me.’ You can’t shout that at a child. And children have to be updated all the time, because they can kill themselves just crossing the street or eating a peanut! I’ve mislaid my phone three times already today, I don’t know if I’m ready for a human being.”

The bank robber looked up sympathetically: “How pregnant is she? Julia?”

Ro lit up at once.

“Like, really pregnant! It could happen any day now!”

Roger’s eyebrows were twitching badly. Then he said, almost sympathetically: “Oh. Well, if you don’t want to buy this apartment, I’d advise you not to risk letting her give birth here. Then it will have sentimental value to her. That would push the price up really badly.”

Perhaps Ro should have been angry, but she actually looked more sad.

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

The bank robber let out a sigh at the other end of the bench, then groaned disconsolately. “Maybe I’ve done something good today after all. A hostage drama might actually lower the price?”

Roger snorted.

“Quite the reverse. That idiot real estate agent will probably add ‘as seen on TV’ in the next advertisement, which would make it even more desirable.”

“Sorry,” the bank robber murmured.

Ro leaned back against the wall, chewing on her lime, rind and all. The bank robber looked on in fascination.

“I’ve never seen anyone eat a lime like that, the whole thing. Is it nice?”

“Not really,” Ro admitted.

“It’s good for preventing scurvy. Sailors used to be given lime on board ships,” Roger said informatively.

“Did you used to be a sailor?” Ro wondered.

“No. But I watch a lot of television,” Roger replied.

Ro nodded thoughtfully, possibly waiting for someone to ask her something, but when no one did she said instead: “To be honest, I don’t want to buy this apartment. Not before my dad’s had a look at it and decided if it’s okay. He always looks at anything I want to buy to see if it’s okay before I take any decisions. He knows all about everything, my dad.”

“When’s he coming?” Roger asked suspiciously, taking out a pad and pencil with the name IKEA stamped on it and starting to do calculations according to various different prices per square foot. He had already listed the factors that might raise the price: giving birth, murder (if it was covered on television), Stockholmers. In another list he had written the things that ought to lower the price: damp, mold, need for renovations.

“He’s not coming,” Ro said, then went on with more air than actual words: “He’s ill. Dementia. He’s in a home now. I hate the way that sounds, in a home, rather than living there. And he wouldn’t have liked the home, because everything’s broken there, the taps drip and the ventilation makes a noise and the window catches are loose, and no one fixes them. Dad used to be able to fix anything. He always had an answer. I couldn’t even buy a carton of eggs with a short best-before date without calling and asking him if they were okay.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” the bank robber said.

“Thanks,” Ro whispered. “But it’s okay. Eggs last a lot longer than you think, according to Dad.”

Roger wrote dementia in his pad, then felt sad when he realized it didn’t make him happy. It didn’t really matter who their competitors for the apartment were, Roger still had Anna-Lena. So he put the pad back in his pocket again, and muttered: “That’s true. It’s the politicians, manipulating the market so we eat eggs quicker.”

He’d seen that in a documentary on television, broadcast right after one about sharks. Roger wasn’t particularly interested in eggs, but sometimes he sat up late in the evening after Anna-Lena had nodded off, because he didn’t want to wake her and have her move her head from his shoulder.

Ro rubbed her fingertips together, she’s the sort of person who has her emotions there, and said: “He wouldn’t have liked the radiators in the home, either. They’re those modern ones that adjust the temperature indoors according to what the temperature is outside, so you can’t decide for yourself.”

“Urgh!” Roger exclaimed, because he was the sort of man who thought a man should be able to decide the temperature of his home for himself.

Ro smiled weakly.

“But Dad loves Jules, like you wouldn’t believe. He was so proud when I married her, he said she had her head screwed on…,” then she suddenly blurted out: “I’m going to be a terrible parent.”

“No you’re not,” the bank robber said consolingly.

But Ro persisted: “Yes I am. I don’t know anything about children. I babysat my cousin’s kid once, and he didn’t want to eat anything and kept saying ‘it hurts’ the whole time. So I told him it only hurt because his wings were about to grow out, because all kids who don’t eat their food turn into butterflies.”