Steinunn Sigurdardottir - Place of the Heart

Your Edda wasn’t a lazy kid.

We wave at the girls, and my rascal of a daughter waves back, as if she’s always been the best child.

Don’t be long, I say. Heiður and I are leaving soon.

It doesn’t matter if we’re not back, says Edda.

I want to say good-bye to you.

We won’t be that far apart.

Okay, Edda. Bye for now.

There’s a sudden downpour, so Ingólfur and I run to the house.

The girls will be drenched, I say.

It won’t do them any harm. It’s like in the old days when kids didn’t have extra clothes to change into. They had to hang around in their room all day if they fell in a stream or got caught in the rain.

Margrét’s brows are knitted in concern as she opens the door between the kitchen and hallway at the moment we come dashing in. Both of us are dripping, and I’m holding limp rhubarb.

God Almighty, she says. Look at the state you’re in, Harpa. I told you, you should have put on rain gear.

No harm done, says Ingólfur, smiling somewhat mischievously. He looks amused to see his wife’s look of intense concern over such a small thing.

Margrét says nothing, but gives her husband a slightly accusatory glance, as if he’s completely irresponsible.

You’ll have to change clothes, Harpa. This won’t do at all.

You’re right. I’ll go out to the car to get some dry clothes, I say.

When I open the door and hop back out into the rain, a startled lamb skitters away and vanishes around the corner — one of the cossets that have sought shelter right up next to the front door. All that draws breath is under protective wings at Andey. Sometimes I’ve suspected the couple of taking in more pets than necessary, just because they want to provide shelter to every living thing.

I change my clothes in the laundry room, among filled-up hampers, a battery of shoes, flowerpots with new cuttings, a rock saw, a rock tumbler, and glistening sawed-apart rocks in hues of bottle green, rust brown, and pink. Some resemble satellite images of Earth, others of sea-green and reddish northern lights, as I told the wandering Frenchman last night.

As I take off my pants and put on new ones, I notice that my thigh muscles still ache from the previous night’s romp.

With rain-matted hair, worn jeans, and a shapeless, nearly colorless fisherman’s sweater, this particular gal has lost all her city cool. As she was supposed to. That’s why I came east. It’s complete.

The kitchen’s unoccupied. On the table are clean and dirty cups and a half-eaten, freshly baked rhubarb-jam tart.

I saunter into the living room, where Heiður’s standing in a light trance, looking at the photo of Martin, the ship’s doctor, with my mom and her sisters, out in front of the old farm. Martin’s expression is slightly strained. He’s wearing a uniform and a braided hat, standing with Mom, Dýrfinna, and Bettý. Martin, Mom’s lifesaver, was not the handsome man Mom made him out to be. His eyes are small and closely set, his nose long and sinking downward at the tip over his thin lips. But his peaked cap gives him an authoritative air, a man of an entirely different world from the turf abodes and the girls in the photo.

The sisters are about six, eight, and ten years old. Mom is blonde while the others are dark-haired. Mom is a small girl in her Sunday finest with a white bodice. All of them have spindly legs, yet Mom is pigeon-toed and Dýrfinna duckfooted. Both are wearing straw hats and have stout braids down to their chests, while Bettý has tangles of hair that must have been utterly hopeless to keep under control, with or without a hat. Even at that age, Mom was funny to see, with her turned-up nose and one deep dimple. She’d put Cosette’s head beneath her cheek as if she were going to crush it, stretching her hands in a stranglehold around the doll. Dýrfinna, soft and Madonna-esque, is holding a tabby kitten, guarding it lightly at her chest.

In the photo Dýrfinna looks like a reduced image of her daughter-in-law, Margrét, as she stood in the doorway when we arrived. They say that men marry women who look like younger versions of their mothers. Life’s chain of love is strong and subtle, and is either entirely invisible, or invisible at times.

But I must tell the truth. Bettý does look like me in photos from when I was a kid. Perhaps I shouldn’t give up all hope that I come from my own family. It would please no one as much as me if I were really the daughter of Axel and Eva Sólgerður.

You sure did take long, says Heiður, a bit piqued, as if there’d been a minor accident.

I tried to turn to stone, but it didn’t work.

You don’t have to turn to stone. The matter’s settled.

THE WOMAN WHO DIDN’T TURN TO STONE. That’s me.

Rósa sticks her head through the living-room door and says: My mom says you should come have coffee.

I recommend the rhubarb-jam tart, says Heiður.

Call the girls, too, Rósa, and tell them to come in for a snack, says Margrét.

Let them stay outside as long as they want, I say, so glad to be free of my problem.

They’re probably starving, says Margrét. That won’t do.

I’m sure they’ll find their way home before they die of starvation, says Ingólfur.

Heiður takes a bite of a fresh slice of tart and chews loudly. I find it hard to bear when people eat noisily, and Dietrich Bacon feels the same. I’ve sometimes seen lines of pain around his courteous song-mouth as his girlfriend’s jaw makes smacking noises at the table.

Lordy, it’s really coming down, says Heiður.

This isn’t what we call rain, says Ingólfur. From our perspective, it hasn’t rained at all, damn it. Not like it used to. In the past, it was common to be stuck inside for a whole week because of the weather. It rained and blew so hard that you couldn’t even let the dog out. It’s hardly ever like that anymore.

So you mean the weather’s changed for the better? asks Heiður.

That’s not what I said. These days it doesn’t start warming up until much later in the spring.

Really?

Plus, the moon is closer to Earth now, says Margrét. It’s awful to see it sort of dangling just over the tops of the hills.

I think Edda’s an ugly girl, says Rósa.

Rósa, if you can’t say nice things, you can’t stay at the table, says Margrét.

Edda’s having a bit of a tough time, explains Ingólfur. She has friends who are mean to her.

I might pack my clothes and leave. She’s so boring.

You don’t have to do that, says Ingólfur. It’ll all be fine.

Rósa frowns obstinately at her father and knits her brows.

I’m wrecking things, I think. I’m spoiling the lives of these good people who want to build up mine.

Let me fly to you, Jói, my good angel. It’s the only place for me.

The only place. Wherever he is. Since I didn’t turn to stone by the Andá River.

Rósa, Edda’s actually a bit ill, says Margrét.

There’s nothing wrong with her, Rósa hisses. She’s just a naughty brat.

Well, she may change.

I don’t want to be in the same house as her.

She won’t be around you so much. She’ll be going to school in the village every day.

The director general of the journey east stands up, obviously irritated.

Shouldn’t we be going? says Heiður.

I guess we should, I say. Give my daughter our good-byes.

We’ll be in touch, says Margrét. Have a good rest now, and don’t worry about a thing.

I’m afraid I’ll fall apart if I stop worrying, I say.

Margrét doesn’t know how to take this. She’s kind and has a golden soul, but no sense of humor. That could be her downfall as Edda Sólveig’s mentor. No one survives in Edda’s vicinity without viewing her nonsense from a distance now and then and laughing silently.