Janne Drangsholt - The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter

“Ta-da!” I shouted and flung out my arms. “Then you’ll each get to have your own room. How great is that?”

They looked down at the table.

“We’re not getting a divorce,” I repeated. “That was just a bad joke. Daddy and I love each other very much, right?”

“Right now I love you slightly less than I used to.”

“But we usually love each other.”

“You’re going to have to shape up,” he said, setting down his newspaper. “I have to go.”

“I don’t want to move,” Ebba complained. “I want to stay here.”

“I totally want to move,” Jenny said. “But I don’t get where?”

“We’re going to move to that red house Daddy and Alva and I went to look at last weekend. The one you guys thought was lame. It’ll be wonderful. Right, Alva? Alva?”

“What?” she asked without looking up from the iPad.

“We’re going to live in that house with the M&M’S. Isn’t that great?”

“I like M&M’S.”

“There, you see?” I concluded.

Bjørnar leaned over and gave Ebba a hug.

“I’m sure it will be fine, Ebba, honey. But right now we have to go. I can give you guys a ride. Mama has to drop Alva off at preschool, and then she has to get busy selling the house we live in now. For a lot of money.”

“Someone will snatch it up in a flash. No problemo! ”

I called the real estate agent who had recently sold our neighbor’s house.

“Yeah, a lot of people thought that house was too big, so there may be some interest on the market for your property,” she said.

“Great,” I said. “Maybe you could call some of the people who were interested in the neighbor’s house? We’d actually consider selling our place without listing it. The whole process is so exhausting—the photo shoot, all the open houses, flyers, all that business—we’d actually love to skip all that, save a little money, save ourselves a little stress.”

The real estate agent chuckled softly.

“There’s no way out of it. If you want to sell, you have to take the whole enchilada. But I could come over and take a look—now, actually—and give you an idea of what I think an appealing list price would be and go over my terms. What do you say?”

“Sounds good.”

Twenty minutes later both she and her Mulberry bag arrived at the door.

“I would love to sell this house,” she said. “Should we sign the papers?”

“I have to discuss it with my husband first.”

“Oh, really? I doubt you’ll be more satisfied with anyone else. Look, I already filled out the form for you. All you have to do is sign here and here and here.”

“Hmm,” I said. “We might as well get this ball rolling as soon as possible.”

Two hours later, I had signed a contract with the agent and had an agreement for the photographer and the appraiser, and for the next couple of days, everything that happened fell under the header of Selling the House. It was almost like when I became a mother for the first time and the whole world revolved around spit-up and the color of Ebba’s poop.

Just a tiny bit more hollow and depressing.

It wasn’t until I saw the Filipino au pair sitting at the bus stop that I thought of her and her flood-ravaged family. I made a U-turn and then pulled into the bus stop.

“Hello!” I called out my window. “Would you like a ride?”

She eyed me skeptically, but ultimately nodded. I leaned over to open the passenger door and simultaneously shoveled a few wadded-up facial tissues and cracker crumbs off the seat.

“Did you get in touch with your family?”

The au pair nodded.

“Yes, they’re fine.”

“Great news! I’m so glad!”

And that was actually true. Right at the moment I did feel quite happy. The photographer who took pictures of the house earlier in the day thought our house had been “delightfully styled” and concluded, “Good location, well maintained, nice size, and realistic listing price. It’ll sell in a flash!”

I squirreled those words away, hiding them inside me like a treasure.

And now the au pair said her family was safe. There were good vibes in the universe. This day was the beginning of something good, a portal to happiness, to selling the house, to a magical shield, to Bjørnar loving me again.

All the fear that had amassed was obviously just silliness. Our buying that house wasn’t hubris. Nothing was moving around in the Deep.

The house was a gift.

But when the day of the open house arrived and I hadn’t showered in three days and my whole life had narrowed to considerations of what to move out and what to leave, how the furniture should be arranged to maximize the feng shui, which cleaning and polishing techniques produced the best shine, and how much money we should invest in flowers, it was hard to distinguish gifts from burdens.

Maybe it was because I walked around in a constant state of low blood sugar or because I’d scarcely slept, but a buzzing had settled in my body. Or a trembling. I felt like I was electric, without knowing how to switch off or how to pull out the plug.

Because everything had to be perfect.

Especially since suddenly, in the last few days, so-called experts had showed up on the radio and TV talking about a residential housing bubble that might burst at any moment. I didn’t get where these people came from. But now that they were here, they wouldn’t quit talking.

“The worst thing you could do right now,” they claimed, “is buy before you sell. And it’s going to get worse. I wouldn’t be surprised if prices fall by ten to twenty percent.”

I’d stopped listening to the radio when I was in the car.

“I wonder if I’m coming down with some kind of heart disease,” I’d told my doctor. “I have a lot of chest pain all the time. It’s like an iron hand is squeezing my heart. It’s hard to breathe. And I can’t really stand up straight. I’m sort of hunched over all the time.”

“Your blood pressure is fine,” she’d said, “but you’re low on B12. I’m going to schedule you for injections.”

It still felt like I was having a constant heart attack, though. Even when seven people came to the open house.

Because none of them made an offer.

“Why isn’t anyone making an offer?” I complained to our agent over the phone. “A lot of people said they were interested.”

“The market decides.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“There won’t be any offers unless the market is interested.”

“Is the market interested in other houses?”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“On the market, as I said. It’s selective.”

“A selective market?”

“Right. You just have to be a bit patient. If this keeps up, we might want to consider lowering the asking price.”

I put my head in my hands and sat like that until there was a knock on my office door and Frank poked his head in.

“Doesn’t it say ‘Testing in Progress’ on my door?” I asked, not looking up from the desk.

He closed the door partway to check.

“No. Are you giving an exam right now?”

“No. Come in.”

Over the last few weeks Frank had been growing the kind of beard that made him look like he had been raised by wolves. I hadn’t been up to commenting on it. He insisted it was his new girlfriend’s idea, but no one believed she existed anywhere other than inside his own head.

“I can’t really talk now,” I told my desktop, “because the testing is actually starting soon. I’m administering some exams for the University of Bergen, via VideoLink.”

“I notice that you’ve been proctoring a lot of exams lately, but that’s fine. I’m leaving early today. I’m meeting my girlfriend.”