Janne Drangsholt - The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter

He sighed.

“Fine.”

We went upstairs to tell the kids.

“We’re going to go for a quick walk. Could you guys get in bed and just read? We’ll be back soon. Daddy has his cell phone.”

“Can we put on an audiobook?” Jenny asked.

“I don’t want to listen to an audiobook,” Ebba protested.

“Put on the audiobook, but not too loud. You have to be able to hear Alva if she wakes up.”

Jenny nodded seriously, and I stared into her unreadable blue eyes and again felt the thread slowly being pulled through my heart.

We bundled up in our scarves and heavy jackets and walked in silence. I loved the feel of the evening air on my skin. It washed away all the grime the day had stirred up. Made everything smooth and clear again.

I took Bjørnar’s hand and we moved so effortlessly and harmoniously through the world that I almost forgot the purpose of the walk, until he suddenly stopped and pointed.

He was pointing at a house, one that shone so radiantly that it almost took my breath away.

And I knew I’d been right all along.

This was our home.

There couldn’t be any doubt. There sat the house we were going to live in. Not just this year and next year, but when we were so old we couldn’t read the paper without a magnifying glass and had to put our dentures in water before we turned off our reading lights.

“Ours,” I said.

“It’s going to go for way more than the asking price,” Bjørnar said, “and we can’t afford it. But it is a nice house.”

“Ours,” I repeated.

“Not ours,” he corrected me, “but it is nice.”

We stood there in silence for a little while before continuing down the hill.

I saw a woman in the kitchen of the house doing the dishes. A warm light shone behind her. Yet again I had the thought that it was a model home. Something that didn’t exist in this world. Something that was too good to be true.

It was dangerous to want things like that, things that actually don’t belong anywhere other than fiction. Besides, a little voice inside me said it wasn’t wise to rock the boat, reach for too much, fly too close to the sun. But, as so many times before, I didn’t really listen.

In the days leading up to the weekend, my suspicion was confirmed: the house we were living in now wasn’t a proper home.

We had been lying to ourselves this whole time.

And once a fantasy is revealed as fantasy, there’s no going back.

Once you’ve escaped from the chains down in the cave and crawled out into the sunlight, going back in is simply not an option.

The shadows in the cave are just shadows.

Truth and light are in the other direction.

All you have to do is go for it.

There was a knock on the door.

“Yes?”

Ingvill poked her head in, and I rolled my eyes—on the inside.

“Do you have five minutes?” she asked in that plodding way of hers.

“Actually, no,” I mumbled, “but you can have twenty seconds?”

She smiled hesitantly and sat down on the chair I kept for visitors.

“It’s about this course revision,” she began. “I don’t think we should accept them.”

“We don’t really have much choice, do we?”

“I think we do. We’ve set up a committee to oppose it.”

“To oppose what?”

“The course revision.”

“What kind of opposition are we talking about?”

“I can’t tell you today. Our first meeting isn’t until Monday.”

“Who’s going to meet?”

“The committee.”

“Uh-huh. OK.”

“That means anything I tell you now is mere speculation.”

“I see.”

She just sat there and didn’t say anything else.

“Are you here to find out if I want to be on the committee?”

“No.”

“Good. After all, this revision is a departmental matter, so it’s hard to see how a committee would make any difference one way or the other, right?”

“So you say.”

I sighed.

“What’s the point of the committee?”

“To propose countermeasures for the course revision, like I said.”

I regarded her through squinted eyes and tried to see if I could read anything off her sluggish face. Her hair wasn’t in mouse braids today. Instead she had a scarf—in a variety of shades of purple—wrapped around her head. And some dangly beaded earrings, which were also purple. She had obviously put some effort into looking this way. There was something vulnerable and exposed about her attempt, and a little wave of compassion washed over me. Maybe I was being too critical.

“I hear you and Peter are going to Saint Petersburg with Frank,” I said, in a tone meant to signal interest and kindness.

Ingvill jumped with a level of vigor I hadn’t thought she possessed.

“You know,” she said, “I would kindly ask that you refrain from asking me pointed questions and making veiled accusations about conniving!”

“I didn’t say anything about conniving! I was just trying to be nice! Besides, I still don’t even know why you stopped by my office. Why are you here?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Great.”

“Fine!”

As she left she made an attempt to slam my office door, but it had a tendency to stick so it just closed on its own with a petulant humph .

Saturday arrived with autumn sunshine on wet grass, and Bjørnar got up early and made croissants. Late in the morning I sat in the bright sunlight and spread strawberry jam on the freshly baked goods, with the newspaper and a cup of coffee in front of me. The two older kids were lying on the living room floor drawing, and Alva was on the sofa listening to an audiobook.

In this light, our house seemed just fine.

“We can’t do it,” Bjørnar said, as if echoing my thoughts. He set down the section of the paper he had been reading and looked at me. “It’s going to be too expensive, and there could be way too many unwelcome surprises. I’m sure another house will turn up, one that’s newer and in a better location. This one is practically downtown, you know. Alva would have to start at a different elementary school than the other two. We just can’t do it.”

I looked him in the eye and was tempted to tell him I agreed. A new house was risky. It meant being willing to wager everything: the harmony I felt now, the security of everything and everyone being in place, the familiar sounds, knowing the neighbors were pleasant and upstanding people.

The idea of moving was scary. There were no guarantees that it would go well. It could turn out badly, very badly.

What if our family life was all due to our living in this specific house? People often said that remodeling a house could lead to divorce, but what if it was the move itself that ruined things? What if there was something magical about a certain house that allowed a relationship to withstand reality? And if leaving that house meant stepping outside the magical shield?

Besides, Bjørnar was better grounded in reality than I was, and the problems he was pointing out were probably realistic.

But the memory of the house glowing in the darkness was too strong. And I was thinking about how we were going to get old. Not yet, but soon. And then we would need a home. A proper, solid, roomy home.

“Have you noticed how often Ebba sits in the back storage closet?” I asked. “Every afternoon she gets a pillow and squeezes herself down between the shelves in there, with a book or a sketch pad or the iPad. It’s the only place in the house where she can be by herself.”

“But then she has a place for that, right?”

“Yes, a cramped place without any windows and bad lighting. And Jenny never brings anyone over to play anymore, since there’s no room for her and her friends to hang out. That’s the way it is here. We’re together, all together, all the time. Just us.”