Fredrik Backman - Britt-Marie Was Here [Britt-Marie var här]

“Everyone likes wine, Britt!”

“My name is Britt-Marie. Only my sister calls me Britt.”

“Sister, huh? There’s, what’s-it-called? Another one of you? Nice for the world!”

Somebody grins as if this is a joke. At Britt-Marie’s expense, Britt-Marie assumes.

“My sister died when we were small,” she informs Somebody, without taking her eyes off the wine box.

“Ah… what the hell… I… what’s-it-called? Condole,” says Somebody sadly.

Britt-Marie curls up her toes tightly in her shoes.

“Ha. That’s nice of you,” she says quietly.

“The wine is good but a bit, what’s-it-called? Muddy! You have to strain it a few times with a coffee filter, huh, everything okay then!” she explains expertly, before looking at Britt-Marie’s bag and Britt-Marie’s balcony boxes on the floor. Her smile grows.

“I wanted to give to you, you know, as your congratulations-for-new-job present. But now I can see it’s more like a, what’s-it-called? Moving-in present!”

Offended, Britt-Marie holds the box of wine in front of her as if it’s making a ticking sound.

“I’d like to point out to you that I don’t live here.”

“Where did you sleep last night, then?”

“I didn’t sleep,” says Britt-Marie, looking as if she’d like to toss the wine box out of the door and cover her ears.

“There’s one of them hotels, you know,” says Somebody.

“Ha, I suppose you also have a hotel on your premises. I could imagine you do. Pizzeria and car workshop and post office and grocer’s shop and a hotel? Must be nice for you, never having to make up your mind.”

Somebody’s face collapses with undisguised surprise.

“Hotel? Why would I have one of those? No, no, no, Britt-Marie. I keep to my, what’s-it-called? Core activity!”

Britt-Marie shifts her weight from left foot to right, and finally goes to the refrigerator and puts the wine box inside.

“I don’t like hotels,” she announces and closes the door firmly.

“No, damn it! Don’t put wine in fridge, you get lumps in it!” yells Somebody.

Britt-Marie glares at her.

“Is it really necessary to swear all the time, as if we were a horde of barbarians?”

Somebody propels her chair forward and tugs at the kitchen drawers until she finds the coffee filters.

“Shit, Britt-Marie! I show. You must filter. It’s okay. Or, you know, mix with Fanta. I have cheap Fanta, if you want. From China!”

She stops herself when she notices the coffee percolator. The remains of it, at least. Britt-Marie, filled with discomfort, clasps her hands together over her stomach and looks as if she’d like to brush some invisible specks of dust from the opening of a black hole, and then sink into it herself.

“What… happened?” asks Somebody, eyeing first the mop and then the mop-sized dents in the coffee percolator. Britt-Marie stands in silence, with flaming cheeks. She may quite possibly be thinking about Kent. Finally she clears her throat, straightens her back and looks Somebody right in the eye as she answers:

“Hit by a flying stone.”

Somebody looks at her. Looks at the coffee machine. Looks at the mop.

Then she starts laughing. Loudly. Then coughing. Then laughing even louder. Britt-Marie is deeply offended. It wasn’t meant to be funny. At least Britt-Marie doesn’t think it was; she hasn’t said anything that was supposed to be funny in years, as far as she can remember. So she’s offended by the laughter, because she assumes it’s at her expense and not because of the actual joke. It’s the sort of thing you assume if you’ve spent a sufficient amount of time with a husband who is constantly trying to be funny. There was not space in their relationship for more hilarity than his. Kent was funny and Britt-Marie went into the kitchen and took care of the washing-up. That was how they divided up their responsibilities.

But now Somebody sits here laughing so much that her wheelchair almost topples over. This makes Britt-Marie insecure, and her natural reaction to insecurity is irritation. She goes to the vacuum cleaner in a very demonstrative way — to attack the sofa covers, which are covered in baking soda.

Somebody’s laughter slowly turns into a titter, and then into general mumbling about flying stones. “That’s bloody funny, you know. Hey, you know there’s a bloody big package in your car, huh?”

As if this would in any way be a surprise to Britt-Marie. Britt-Marie can still hear a trace of tittering in her voice.

“I’m well aware of that,” she says tersely. She can hear Somebody rolling her wheelchair towards the front door.

“You want, you know, some help carrying it inside?”

Britt-Marie turns on the vacuum cleaner by way of an answer. Somebody yells to make herself heard:

“It’s no trouble, Britt-Marie!”

Britt-Marie rubs the nozzle as hard as she can over the sofa cushions.

Repeatedly, until Somebody gives up and yells: “Well, you know, have Fanta like I said if you want some for wine! And pizza!” Then the door closes. Britt-Marie turns off the vacuum cleaner. She doesn’t want to be unfriendly, but she really doesn’t want any help with the package. Nothing is more important to Britt-Marie right now than her reluctance to be helped with the package.

Because there’s a piece of furniture from IKEA inside.

And Britt-Marie is going to assemble it herself.

From time to time a truck drives through Borg, and whenever this happens, the recreation center shakes violently — as if, Britt-Marie thinks, it was built on the fault line between two continental shelves. Continental shelves are common in crossword puzzles, so it’s the sort of thing she knows about. She also knows that Borg is the kind of place Britt-Marie’s mother used to describe as “the back of beyond,” because that was how Britt-Marie’s mother used to describe the countryside.

Yet another truck thunders past. A green one. The walls shake.

Borg used to be the sort of community trucks came home to, but nowadays they only drive past. The truck makes her think of Ingrid. She remembers that she had time to see it through the back window when she was a child, on the very last day that she can recall thinking of herself as such. It was also green.

Britt-Marie has wondered the same thing an infinite number of times over the years: whether she had time to scream. And whether it would have made a difference. Their mother had told Ingrid to put on her belt, because Ingrid never put her belt on, and for that exact reason Ingrid had not put it on. They were arguing. That’s why they didn’t see it. Britt-Marie saw it because she always put her belt on, because she wanted her mother to notice. Which she obviously never did, because Britt-Marie never had to be noticed, for the simple reason that she always did everything without having to be told.

It came from the right-hand side. Green. That’s one of the few things Britt-Marie remembers. It came from the right and there was glass and blood all over in the backseat of their parents’ car. The last thing Britt-Marie remembered before she passed out was that she wanted to clean it up. Make it nice. And when she woke up at the hospital that is precisely what she did. Clean. Make things nice. When they buried her sister and there were strangers in black clothes drinking coffee in her parents’ home, Britt-Marie put coasters under all the cups and washed all the dishes and cleaned all the windows. When her father began to stay at work for longer and longer and her mother stopped talking altogether, Britt-Marie cleaned. Cleaned, cleaned, and cleaned.