Kjersti Skomsvold - The Faster I Walk The Smaller I am

I’VE DECIDED TO GO to the get-together at the senior center, it’s the final thing on my list. I’ll stop at the last station before death, I might be claimed at the Lost and Found, it would kill two birds with one stone. That doesn’t rhyme, though one might think that it should. I try to keep my nerves under control. I eat jam straight from the tube and read the obituaries, but my thoughts are elsewhere.

I drag a chair from the kitchen to the bathroom, climb up on it, and stand looking at myself in the mirror for a long time. I feel like something’s missing besides the seven teeth.

In the bedroom, I feel around in the sheets and finally I find my tiny mole. I use a little spit to glue it to my face and then I clamber back up on the chair in front of the mirror. I’ve always wondered why you call them “moles” when they’re on your back, but “beauty marks” when they’re on your face. Now I know why.

I spray perfume on my body’s pulse points before I go and find my hat. Then I pull on my newly knitted jacket. After thinking about it for a minute, I consciously button it crookedly. I feel sly but don’t know why. That rhymes. I step over the pile of newspapers on the mat.

I stop at the message board in the foyer and read the flier about the get-together one more time, just in case there’s any fine print.

The other old people will probably be young and vivacious, at least compared to me. I might be the oldest of them all. It’s rarely good to be the oldest of them all. At least not in the West.

Åge B. still doesn’t notice my hat or my new jacket, even though I should be visible from Mars. I watch him and wonder how buses can run, how there can be food at the store, how the evening news is always right on time, how the world seems to get by somehow. I brush off my thoughts and carry on. In front of me, I see the old man with the walker, the one I raced a while back, he’s probably on his way to the get-together too. He looks so lonely walking there, much lonelier than me, and much, much smaller, but that might be because he’s so far away. I catch up to him. If I walk right behind him, people will think we’re together. If I’m lucky, the man with the walker will think so too. I almost believe it myself.

When we get to the senior center, I can’t bring myself to open the door for him, there’s a fine line between shyness and rudeness. We enter a hall full of hats and “granny carts,” and from the doorway in front of us I can hear the sound of raised voices — probably trying to drown out the beeping from all those hearing aids. Even though I’m so tired of green carpet and brown wallpaper, I miss them now, at least I know how to act when I’m home, whereas I have no idea how to act in a room full of people. So I close my eyes and follow the man with the walker. “Look, Rolf’s here,” someone says. “Sit with us, Rolf,” someone else calls. I open my eyes again, he looks so different from when it was just him and his walker. I’m about to turn around, I want to go home and plan my death, but then someone in green pants closes the door behind me. “Go ahead and sit down, the show’s starting,” she says. Apparently, there was some fine print after all.

There’s only one table where nobody’s sitting. However, it’s full of crocheted toilet-seat covers, small homemade dresses meant to hide bottles, wooden signs painted with the Mountain Code for hikers. I sit there after draping my jacket over the seat in front of me, so it looks like someone else is sitting here too. I wonder what makes Walker Rolf so special.

The “show” turns out to be five Pakistani girls in colorful outfits. They tell us they’re from the school next door, and then they put on a cassette and dance to strange music, while the old people clap excitedly. I try to be excited and clap too, but fail miserably at both. The music ends and then a woman says: “Let’s give a cheer for the Indians.” But the suggestion falls flat.

I want to get up now, I’ve given it a try and I’ve experienced Pakistan, and what else can one expect, but then green-clad servers start going from table to table with jelly rolls and juice, and jelly rolls aren’t exactly the worst thing in the world. While I sit and wait, I look at the five women at the next table over, they mash their dessert with a fork before putting it in their mouths. If I’d brought the bag full of teeth to lend, I could’ve made myself some friends. Even though they remind me of some housewives I used to know, I would’ve liked to approach them, but they talk so loudly and hear so badly, and I talk so softly and am so far away.

Instead, I practice saying thanks for the dessert. If the server says something I don’t understand, I can just make the sign of the ox, both to seem friendly and to show that deaf people aren’t necessarily dumb. I’ll have to cross my fingers that they don’t understand sign language and ask what color my ox is and whether it has big horns. I try to look hungry, but when someone finally approaches my table, it’s not to give me a piece of cake, but instead to take some plastic containers from underneath the table. “Now it’s time for the raffle!” she says loudly. Things are getting out of control.

The old people pass around the containers full of tickets, and they unfold these pink and yellow and blue pieces of paper, which they lay on their tables in front of them — each person has a territory, and some have even put their handbags between them to protect it. I’m mostly focused on how close I’m sitting to the green, pressed pants of the woman running the show. If I just lean a little to the side, I can smell detergent, and I want nothing more than to press my head against this nice fabric and cry, I don’t know why. That rhymes. But then the woman announces that the draw is about to begin. “We’ve all got to focus now.” I sit up straight again. The woman picks up an embroidered napkin from the table and shows it to the room. “And the lucky winner is. ” she says and draws a piece of paper from a bowl, “Z-35, Zimbabwe 35.” After a few nerve-wracking seconds, a nearly transparent man gives a soft whoop, and I wonder how someone can celebrate winning an embroidered napkin when they’re about to die. “Burkina Faso 45” is called, and so it goes until most of the African continent is covered and all the knickknacks and other useless things have been divvied up. The table in front of me is empty. “Now there’s only one prize left,” the woman says. My cheeks start to burn, because I think she means me. But then she grabs my jacket and holds it up in front of her. “This jacket is rather special,” she says after examining it closely. “It looks like it’s made out of earwarmers.”

I sink down and down, everything is hazy and close around me, and when I finally surface again and draw a breath to say something, it’s already too late. The winning ticket has been claimed. At the same time, a man says that the bathroom door has been locked for half an hour and no one answers when he knocks. “Maybe someone had a heart attack,” the woman with the winning ticket says, stuffing my jacket into a plastic bag, and everyone gets excited.

I cross the bridge with a pang in my heart and in my stomach. Missing a meal is always painful, and so is missing a jacket. I realize that the jacket meant more to me than I knew. Then I see Rolf’s back. Not again, I think, now that his presence reminds me of my own inadequacy. I also can’t help wondering how he’s managed to get ahead of me when I didn’t see him leave the get-together. Maybe he simply had to get away, maybe they were about to raffle off his glasses or something.

My legs move faster. I know this is my last chance.

I come up alongside him and summon every latent social instinct I have. “Excuse me, do you have the time?” I ask, but don’t get any reaction. I know what I have to do. It’s not enough to be Mathea Martinsen. I have to be Einar Lunde, everyone notices Einar Lunde.