Ilka yelled and cursed all the way back to town. The sorrow she’d felt had given way to fury; she didn’t feel cold, even though her clothes were soaked and her legs almost too weak to carry her. She built up a wall of anger against her father. This was his fault—that they had landed in a situation where a calamity of this magnitude could happen. That the fucking insurance policy had disappeared in the pile of blackmail letters and advertisements. Who the hell was so stupid and irresponsible that they didn’t use a bill payment service to automatically handle important bills? Ilka’s cheeks stung with rage as she sped down the highway, screaming her lungs out. It was his fault for going underground. It wasn’t one bit fair that she was solely responsible for the consequences. Or that Artie now had to sell his house.
When she finally reached the funeral home and kicked her wet shoes off in the hallway, she was ready to tear into her father, the stream of bitter words dammed up right behind her lips, ready to gush out. She made a quick search of the house, but to her annoyance she couldn’t find him.
Leslie wasn’t in her room either, but when Ilka neared the reception area, she heard her mother and Jette taking off their coats as they talked about the caustic odor from the prep room. It had been a long time since Artie had worked in there, but the smell still hung in the hallway.
Ilka couldn’t hold back her rage; she erupted at the two women, words gushing out of her in waves as she tried to make them understand, how it was not her fault Artie was lying in the hospital without insurance and might not ever fully recover.
“I tried to help,” she said, over and over again. “But now he knows I couldn’t, I let him down, and he’s not even sure he’ll ever be able to work again.”
The words kept coming, and she barely noticed when her mother helped take off her wet sweatshirt and wrapped her in a blanket before settling her in an easy chair in the reception. Suddenly Ilka noticed how badly she was shaking, and she clutched the blanket and pulled it close around her.
“You need to eat, something nourishing,” Jette said. “Let’s go to the hotel, we’ll have dinner together down there.”
They ordered her up to her room to change into dry clothes, as they debated whether or not to turn out the lights in the funeral home. The hotel was the last place Ilka wanted to go. She tried to wall off her fear, but images kept running through her head: the Rodriguez brothers and Lydia, the empty bag, men throwing the nun into Lake Michigan with a cement block tied around her. Or maybe she was in the trunk of their car, screaming for help.
Later, when they sat down at a table in the hotel restaurant overlooking the harbor, she finally surrendered her worries. Her mother insisted she order a decent meal, something other than burgers and fries. As the waiter was picking up the three bowls of soup they’d decided on as a starter, Jette walked out of the restaurant. A few minutes later she returned and told them she’d asked the reception to add a single bed to their room.
“So you can stay with us tonight,” she said. The waiter brought their chicken and a large bowl of steamed vegetables.
Ilka looked at her in surprise, but instead of protesting, she nodded. Right now, she couldn’t care less where she collapsed for the night, as long as she could get a break from all the thoughts dragging her down.
“But remember,” her mother said, leaning toward her, “it’s only money we’re talking about here. No one has died. Surely we can figure it out.”
“But we don’t have any money, we can’t help him,” Ilka said. “And over here if you don’t have insurance, you need to show them cash.”
“There must be some way,” her mother insisted.
“When the hospital finds out he can’t pay for the treatment he’s already been given, they’ll do everything they can to get their money. That’s why he’s putting his house up for sale.”
Ilka explained that they would send out a debt collector. “And because he owns a house, he’ll be forced to sell it to pay his debt. He’ll have to liquidate all his assets.”
“What about that lovely place in Key West?” her mother asked.
“They’ll take that too, if they have to.” She’d shown her mother a few photographs from the gallery and the main street of the town. “If you have anything of worth that can be sold, they’ll do anything to get their hands on it.”
“But not everyone owns something so valuable,” Jette said.
“Hospitals get rid of those people as soon as they can.”
“But Artie does own property, so everything will be okay,” her mother said. For a second, she looked relieved, even though she’d never met the man.
Ilka shook her head. “No, everything won’t be okay. He might be able to pay for the treatment he needs, but when he gets out, he won’t have a home to go back to.”
Ilka was about to embark on a long harangue about the American system, but her mother interrupted by clapping once and announcing it was time to go to bed.
It was hard to say which of the two women snored the loudest: Jette, who had stood on her head for several minutes as part of her evening yoga ritual, or her mother, who had fallen asleep with a book in her hands.
Ilka’s rollaway bed had been shoved in under the window, where narrow shards of light from outside tattooed the blanket in the dark room. The sounds from Lake Michigan felt like heavy waves lapping over her as she tried to fall asleep.
She thought about the time Flemming had left her. She’d known he was going to; she’d certainly given him reason enough. Back then she’d thought she would never be able to get control over her dark side. Find the strength to fight off the urge to let go. To disappear.
It was the racetrack, again. About a year after she’d lost all the money Flemming had saved up for his son’s confirmation. Late that summer they had planned on vacationing in Nice. They’d been looking forward to it; they’d rented a car and a room in a boardinghouse up in the mountains, at Bargemon. The sun had been shining all day at the racetrack, and it was about to go down when Flemming found her, just as he had back when they’d first met. She’d lost on that day too, and her fragility had attracted him.
But it didn’t the second time. What hurt the most was that he didn’t even really get mad. Only sad, very sad. So much so that Ilka immediately believed their relationship was broken beyond repair.
Fortunately, she’d been wrong. And she had her mother to thank for that. She’d come by to care for Ilka in the days that followed. The first day with food, fresh tulips, milk. The next day she simply sat with Ilka, who refused to get out of bed or even eat. That might have been the day she’d begun reading out loud; Ilka wasn’t sure anymore. It could have been later on. Anyway, her mother had read for her as if she were a small child. The days flowed by as she listened to her mother’s stories, and the intimacy that grew between them during their daily routine had the same effect on her as a poultice, applied at the moment of greatest need. Slowly, Ilka began to heal, and to this day she was convinced that her mother had gone to Flemming and persuaded him to give Ilka one more chance, even though the two of them both insisted it wasn’t true.
The important thing, though, was that Flemming came back to her, and it had been the very last time Ilka had set foot on a racetrack. But lying there in the hotel, with ribbons of light shining in from the marina, remembering how absolutely horrible she’d felt, Ilka realized she was willing to risk that pain and sense of loss if it could somehow free Artie and Lydia.