Janne Drangsholt - The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter

The marimba ringtone was not to be ignored. I tried mental calisthenics for a couple of minutes to see if I could block out the noise with brainpower, but I fairly quickly conceded. I opened my eyes and tried to figure out what day it was. It felt like Wednesday, a little too far into the week and still too far to go until the weekend.

I rolled onto my side.

“Are you going to shower first?”

“No,” I said.

“Why not?”

“I’m going for a run.”

“You are?”

Pause.

“No.”

I hung my nightgown on the already overcrowded hook on the back of the door, climbed into the tub, and just managed to back away from the spray of cold water. The original floor plans had included a shower enclosure across from the tub, but we had nixed that.

“We want to put the shower in the tub,” I had explained to the plumber at the planning meeting, “to save space.”

“Are you sure?” he’d asked me.

“Yup.”

“Well, you should at least put in the underlay for the shower stall,” the plumber had objected, “in case you ever sell the place and the future buyers want a shower. It’s smart to think down the road a little bit.”

I remember I’d considered calling Bjørnar to see what he thought, but he had already made it quite clear that he was too busy to attend these meetings. So I had carte blanche to do as I pleased.

And I knew what I wanted. Our future was in this house. This was the end of the line. We were building a home right where we wanted to live, one with the perfect number of bedrooms and living rooms and a small yard where we could grow rhubarb and plant roses and a cherry tree.

So I’d smiled at the plumber a little condescendingly and reiterated in a decisive voice that we wanted the shower in the tub. With no underlay for a future shower stall. Period.

Then a year after we moved in, Alva was born. Suddenly the house felt crowded and loud, as if we were all up in each other’s business all the time. This feeling was reinforced when Jenny had to give up her room and move in with Ebba when Alva turned one. There had been arguments every night since then. Should the window be open or closed? Did they want the light on or off? Were they going to read or not? Who was the quietest sleeper?

“Ebba breathes too loud when she sleeps,” Jenny complained. “It’s gross!”

“Well, Jenny farts! Yuck!”

Plus it was impossible to get the rhubarb to grow big and luscious. No matter how much I fertilized it, there were only a few tough, skinny stalks that no one ever ate. And I couldn’t get the roses to bloom. We never even got around to buying the cherry tree.

And exactly two weeks after we moved in, Bjørnar brought up that business about the shower stall.

“A shower stall,” he said. “We should have put one of those in. Why didn’t we think of that?”

I stood there staring at him, but didn’t say anything.

“A shower stall,” I finally repeated.

“Yeah, that would have made sense. Did you know the neighbors have one? They said it was included in the original floor plans. Did we veto it or something?”

“No.”

“It wasn’t in the plans?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm, well, it should have been. I don’t like showering in the tub.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t like it, standing in the tub. It’s not… pleasurable. Plus you have more arm room in a shower stall.”

“Really? But what about all the room we have now? I mean, now we could fit a cabinet or some shelves in here. We wouldn’t be able to add those if we had a shower stall.”

“We should’ve put in a shower stall.”

As this grew in scale from a mere disagreement into a full-blown argument, the way these things do, I started to doubt that this house really was the end of the line for us. Maybe it wasn’t the home we were going to grow old in.

In the beginning I only checked “Houses for Sale” once a week, but soon the online real estate listings became the first thing I clicked on in the mornings and the last thing I looked at at night.

Not that it made any difference. It was always the same houses in the same neighborhoods at the same prices.

We agreed that the lack of selection wasn’t a problem and that we had plenty of time, but secretly I was starting to worry it was already too late, that we’d passed too many restaurants and now we were going to end up at McDonald’s.

The warm water ran down my body. Some of it formed puddles around the outside of the tub. I closed my eyes and tried to empty my head as I walked my fingers over my breasts to check for lumps. As usual it was impossible to tell what was normal mammary tissue and what wasn’t.

Bjørnar came into the bathroom.

“You should mop up that water!” he said. “I don’t know what we were thinking. Why didn’t we put in a shower stall?”

“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “It really should have been included in the floor plans.”

“Anyway, we’re late,” he said. “Are you going to wake up the kids?”

“Could you feel this one breast? I wonder if there’s a lump in here. Kind of over here, right by the armpit.”

“No way! Now go get the kids up.”

I shook the two eldest awake and carried a half-asleep Alva, who still smelled like a babyish mixture of milk and rubber, downstairs.

Inexplicably, Bjørnar had already had time to set the table, put out an assortment of fruit, and place slices of bread on each of the plates.

“TV,” Alva mumbled, her pacifier still in her mouth.

“No TV now, honey. We’re eating breakfast.”

“I’m not honey.”

“I know that, sweetie. But you have to eat up now, because we’re going to preschool soon.”

“Is it Monday?”

“No, it’s Wednesday.”

“Thursday,” Bjørnar corrected me.

“Thursday. And tomorrow is Friday, and then it’ll be the weekend.”

“When’s tomorrow?” Alva asked.

“After today.”

“Tomorrow is after today?”

“Yes.”

“Huh. Can I use the iPad?”

“OK.”

She zoned out, focusing intently on the screen while raising spoonfuls of Cheerios to her mouth with one hand and holding the other under her chin to catch any dribbles. Jenny stared blearily out the window. Ebba was putting cherry tomatoes into her lunch box one by one. Bjørnar was reading the paper across the table from me and wrinkling his nose at the fair-trade coffee. It did taste like muddy water.

I drank them in with my eyes.

This was it.

Right now, when everyone was relatively content and no one was screaming because they had to put on their jacket or shoes. Right now, when everyone was present and no one had remembered they had PE or swimming yet. This moment of harmony and peace. Of security. I wanted this to go on and on, to last.

But then I started thinking that someone actually did have PE or swimming today. And then I noticed Bjørnar glance at the time and I knew the moment was already over.

The way it’s always already over.

It turned out there was at least a glass of Barolo left in the wine bottle that I had added to the bag to return for the deposit, and when I hoisted the bag into the car, the deep-red liquid drenched my jacket sleeve.