Janne Drangsholt - The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter

“Isn’t it a little early in the year to make gingerbread?” asked Matilda, who wore a ponytail high on her head and always adopted a Disneyesque pose in photos.

“No.”

“Did you make this dough yourself?”

“Yes.”

“When did you do that?”

“Yesterday afternoon.”

“What time is afternoon?”

“Later in the day.”

“How late then?”

“Five o’clock.”

“Do you work?”

“Yes.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m an associate professor of literature.”

“What’s that?”

“That means I work with books. I read books and try to think clever thoughts, and then I write things down, about the books. Read, think, write. That’s what I do.”

“That sounds boring.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Pause.

“Oh, and I also teach. At the university.”

“What do you teach?”

“About books.”

“ Just books?”

“Yes.”

“No math?”

“No.”

“Well, your job doesn’t sound that fun. I’d totally rather work in a pet store.”

“OK. Do you want me to roll out your dough for you?”

It was sticky, way too sticky. I had to add a lot more flour, and I struggled to remember why I hadn’t bought ready-made dough from Ikea. I supposed it was just on principle. Although sometimes I suspected I might have a bit of a masochistic streak.

The other kids quickly tired of waiting for me to finish rolling out the dough, and they started making mountains of flour and rolling dough-clump boulders down the sides, or playing catch with the dough across the table.

“You might not want to split the dough up into such little pieces,” I warned, continuing to roll out my own little slab, “if you want to have big enough sections to cut shapes out of.”

“Are you a dwarf?” Kai asked me out of the blue.

“No,” I said.

“You look like one. My mom is a lot taller than you.”

“Should I put on a movie?” I asked.

“We’re not supposed to have any screen time during friendship group,” Matilda protested. “We’re supposed to play with each other and be social.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s fine, just one short movie until Jenny’s dad gets home. Then we’re going to have a trivia contest!”

“Are there going to be teams?” Kai asked, excited.

“No. It’s going to be every kid for himself.”

“Oh.”

“But everyone gets a prize,” I hurriedly added, “and the prize for the winner is awesome!”

“Yippee!”

Immediately they started guessing what the first place prize might be.

“Maybe an iPad!”

“ Ooh , or a gift card to the indoor fun park?”

“Or candy!”

The rumble in my head gained strength. Did we have anything that could serve as a prize? I was wondering when a gray car pulled in, and I ran to the door to meet Bjørnar.

“This is painful,” I whispered as he stepped inside, “terrible, awful. I hate this! I hate them. You have to help me!”

Bjørnar smiled the way he always did when he came home. As if he were happy. As if nothing could ruin this, the moment when he was finally reunited with his family. It had occurred to me that I ruined this moment almost daily. Because I couldn’t wait to unload about how idiotic my colleagues were or about all the things that had gone wrong during the day or about how impossible Alva had been because she fell asleep in the car and had been a pill ever since or about how insufferable it was to listen to Ebba and Jenny arguing all afternoon.

I tried to police this inclination, but very rarely succeeded.

He knew that.

And still, he came home with a smile.

“Hi!” he exclaimed as Alva ran in and flung her arms around him. “There’s my Alva! You’re so pretty! And so heaaaaavy! Did you guys make gingerbread cookies?”

She nodded seriously.

“Did you make one for me, too?”

She shook her head.

“What, no cookie? Oh, then there’s going to be some tickling!”

She squealed so loud that it distracted the friendship group from their movie and the kids came to check what was going on.

“Can you do that to me, too?” Jenny asked.

“And me!” said Kai.

“No, you guys are too big. Were you watching TV? I thought there was no screen time during friendship group.”

He gave me a look.

“Oh, it was just for a few minutes,” I explained. “Should we eat minipizzas and have our contest now? You did make the contest, right?”

“Oh, I made the contest all right,” Bjørnar replied seriously, “but it’s in written format and the questions are really hard. You guys aren’t going to get any of them right.”

Even Kai got that this was a joke, and with astonishing speed everyone gathered around the kitchen table.

The rest of the time I served minipizzas and tried to stay out of sight so that Bjørnar would handle the contest on his own. I was both envious of and grateful for the good mood he had put everyone in.

It was as if he didn’t find people scary at all. And no one wondered if he was a dwarf.

“Who won?” I asked when the contest was over.

“Jenny actually did.”

Jenny raised her hands over her head in triumph, but immediately received a punch on the arm from Kai, who had only managed to finagle his way to second place.

“Ow,” she complained.

“Oh… but Jenny can’t win the grand prize, because it’s something we already have. Maybe we could give it to Kai since he came in second?”

“ Yes! Give it here!”

I handed him one of Jenny’s books. She crossed her arms in front of her chest and gave me the evil eye.

“A book?” Kai whined. “I don’t want that!”

“What’s my prize?” Alva wondered.

“I don’t have anything for you, honey,” I explained gently. “You’re not actually in the friendship group, you know. These are Jenny’s classmates.”

“You didn’t buy anything for the other kids, either?”

Bjørnar looked at me with his eyebrows raised before taking Alva into his arms and giving Kai clear instructions to stop hitting Markus on the thigh.

“You should bike over to the grocery store and buy prizes,” he instructed. “And a consolation prize for Alva.”

“I don’t want a consternation prize,” she sobbed. “I want a real prize.”

“Yes, yes,” he corrected himself, “a real prize.”

“But what am I going to buy at the grocery store? They don’t have anything. Should I get them candy? That’s not going to go over well with the parents, is it?”

“I guess you’ll find out!”

A few exhausting hours later I was sitting on the edge of Alva’s bed, looking at Alva, who was lying on her side, breathing heavily, her mouth open and a little bit of vomit still on her cheek. The friendship-group kids had left with their candy prizes, which had resulted in a text message from Matilda’s mother letting me know that on principle she was opposed to the practice of handing out candy at events that weren’t birthday parties and that took place on school days.

I wiped Alva’s cheek, tucked her in nicely under her covers, and tiptoed out.

“Can we take a little walk over to that house and then have a glass of wine?” I asked Bjørnar, who was at the sink washing cookie cutters.

“No to the first and yes to the second.”

“Come on! It’s just a quick walk.”

“I’m not up to it.”

“Oh, please. I’ve been thinking about it all day.”

“ You can go for a walk.”

“I don’t want to do it alone. Come on. Just a quick walk to take a look and decide if we want to see the inside. They’re having an open house on Saturday, you know.”