Steinunn Sigurdardottir - Place of the Heart

If only I knew.

I giggle, just to be on the safe side, but Heiður doesn’t join in. She stares at the road, insecure behind the wheel of her father’s pickup. She knows the truth. The question of my appearance has bothered me so much that it trips me up both day and night.

God, I’m glad I don’t look like you, Mom.

I understand completely, I say.

But your mother’s so beautiful, interjects Heiður.

Heiður will likely end up as a hunchback or at the very least get a slipped disk from taking up the gauntlet for me year after year, from car floors, lawns, kitchen floors.

And this faithful soul is still saving my life, even though I turned thirty-one the day before yesterday, August 29.

I celebrated my thirty-first birthday at the old folks’ home at Grund. Harpa Eir, the youngest birthday girl at Grund, ever.

Took the bus to my dad’s with a cake that kitchenless I, having packed up everything, got to bake and decorate in the realm of Saga Kaaber, Heiður’s mom. The cake didn’t endure the trip intact, but luckily Dad’s sight is very poor now. His roommate, however, gave the poor wretch of a battered cake a highly puzzled look.

My steps were heavy from the Line Six bus to Hringbraut Road, with the sharp August wind in my face — steps I was taking to say good-bye to Dad. I stumbled with my crappy little cake and nearly fell on my head, which would have landed on a fire hydrant if I hadn’t managed to put my hand out. It would have been fitting for the treacherous daughter to be knocked unconscious as she went to abandon her dear old dad for an entire winter, maybe forever.

Why is it necessary to have red lights so early on a Sunday morning? whines Heiður as she stops at the last traffic light in town. There’s no one around.

Are we no one? I say.

I wouldn’t say that, says my mom, out of the blue.

I was talking to Heiður, not you. You’re not coming along on the trip.

You won’t even notice I’m here.

It’s such a long way. You’d smother me.

How do you feel, Harpa? Heiður asks, jerking us into motion, freeing us from the traffic lights.

The bridge over the Elliðaá River is behind us. Rauðavatn Lake and the spruce trees of Heiðmörk are ahead. Soon we leave the outskirts of the city, and the countryside takes over. At our journey’s end are a fjord and its valley, around which turned my dreams. Once upon a time.

I don’t know, I answer Heiður. It’s hard to leave Dad.

Didn’t he take it well?

Of course. You know Dad. Since when has he ever thought about himself?

How I wish that snow could have covered my wretched tracks to the old folks’ home at Grund when I went to tell him the news at the start of summer. How I wish that I could erase the scene when I pretended I’d come to ask for my dad’s advice when I’d already decided to move east for the winter.

THE FALSE DAUGHTER: A narrow two-person room in a rest home. Dad on his bed with the gaudy blanket that Mom crocheted. Me on an uncomfortable chair opposite him. A twenty-year-old radio on the nightstand, a Blaupunkt from my youth, a prop from my former life on Hrísateigur Street resurrected for this absurd drama at Grund. This degradation was never even imaginable when it was a newly purchased state-of-the-art device and center of attention on the homemade teakwood kitchen table. The extra in the play, the deaf roommate, can neither listen to the radio nor our conversation. He’s completely out of touch with the world. He has such a trivial role that he says not a word while other paupers in other plays are at least allowed to croak Good master!

Dad sees immediately that I’m feeling low. He probably also realizes, before I utter a word, that I’ve come to betray him. I’m a female Judas, a false daughter who’s come here just to leave, to leave him, my bleary-eyed sad old dad. The dad who gave me good memories, the dad who read “Hansel and Gretel” and Oh How Strange It Was with incredible dramatic emphasis, modifying his voice and singing in falsetto to amuse his little girl. Dad, the shop teacher himself, who created things day and night, artful little rotary grindstones and puzzles. Dad, who substituted for Jón Pálsson, the master hobbyist and host of National Radio’s Leisure Time Program when Jón’s voice became too hoarse.

Here he sits, red-eyed, in the blue-gray sweater vest with bright-yellow elbow patches that Mom designed. I remember him in the new sweater holding Edda when she was just a few months old. I also remember Mom stitching on the patches after she became sick. I said: Mom, these don’t go together at all. And Mom said: Can’t you see how crazy fun this is? Being one who wants everything to match, I just shook my head. Those indestructible patches are still on his sleeves. They’ll survive me, said Mom. Now it also looks as if they’re going to survive the sweater’s owner, and the sweater itself, for that matter.

I get up from the chair, sit down on the bed, and with extreme sentimentality lay my palm over Dad’s cold hand. I, an archlurker, have come to betray. I should be ashamed of myself; it’s the least I can do. I’m ashamed of myself, Dad. Of course I am.

Clouds shadow the Heiðmörk conservation area. Evergreen trees nourish hungry eyes in the yellow-gray moss-covered lava, summer winter spring and fall. Sun dapples the flower-filled hollows where we sit, drinking cocoa from plastic cups and eating malted bread with cheese.

Dad with his flat cap off, imitating birds. Dad, patient Dad, teaching us to make grass whistles. If someone falls and scrapes himself, and there’s always someone falling, Dad pulls a Band-Aid from his pocket, blows on the cut, and bandages it. As gentle with Heiður as if she were his own daughter, as gentle with me as if I were his own daughter.

She who comes to betray at the start of summer:

Dad, Dýrfinna came.

She visited me, too. She gave me some of her homemade ointment to treat the sore on my foot.

I know. I can’t believe she’s still making it.

I stroke the back of Dad’s hand.

She wants, she wants—

Yes, she spoke to me about it. She thinks it would do Edda Sólveig good to be out east, with Ingólfur and Margrét in Andey.

Exactly…

That’s right, and she said that you could stay in her attic, if you wanted to be close to Edda.

That’s what I was going to talk to you about.

You should hurry and go. It can do nothing but good.

I hate to leave you behind, Dad.

Your brother will look in on me. You have more than enough on your plate, without having to worry about me. All that matters is for little Edda to get back on track. A change of environment could be the way to go.

I don’t even know if there is a way.

It’ll at least be a try, my dear. Even if it fails, you can always say you tried. The worst is to do nothing.

I’m so downcast that I can’t think of anything else to say, and now it’s Dad who pats my hand. His hand is cold, a veiny, gaunt claw, with brown spots and cracked yellow old-man’s nails. The same hand that’s so warm in my childhood memory, the grip firm and trusty.

You won’t be anxious if I go?

To be anxious is the privilege of the young. I don’t know how to be so anymore. Just wait, dear girl, you’ll be surprised when the time comes. How nice it is to be old and expect nothing, to take delight in all the trivial things — little sunbeams that come slanting in through the window to warm you, a gentle voice on the radio, a cup of coffee in the morning. We’ll talk on the phone, my dear Harpa. I’ll be fine here.