IT WAS A rowdy afternoon by the East Gate in Visby. Some lads were being loud and the police had been by several times to try and make them see reason. They rarely detained anyone—the gang that hung out there by the benches was mostly harmless. But sometimes things got heated, and this was one of those occasions.
Jeanette was having one of her worse days. The anxiety was like a cancer in her stomach, and she knew that she had been irresponsible to mix sedatives with alcohol. Now she was dizzy and felt bad. She sat swaying on the bench with her hands over her ears. She simply hoped the racket would stop so that they could all have some peace and quiet in the spring sunshine.
It seemed she was the only one who thought that. The two at loggerheads with each other—about a negligible sum of money, which was what it was almost always about—had their fists clenched, ready to fight. The others—two women and around ten men—were trying to talk sense into them and keep them apart. Jeanette kept to herself, and didn’t have the energy to engage with them—she didn’t really feel that she belonged there.
Yet it was here she had ended up, here that she spent much of her long, meaningless days. She had come down a long way in the world, and it had happened so quickly. After living a well-ordered life with financial security, one day she had dropped it all to indulge in various chemical substances on a full-time basis. One thing led to another, and one day the benches frequented by the lushes by the East Gate had simply seemed like a better place to waste her life than the solitude of a one-bedroom flat in Gråbo.
They were almost coming to blows, and the profanities were coming thick and fast. Everyone was involved in some way, except for Jeanette. Curious passersby stopped to see how it would pan out, while the police were conspicuous by their absence at the very moment they were most needed. The volume was becoming unbearable and Jeanette decided to go. Not far, just towards the Money Box and Dalman Gate tower, where she would be able to slump down on the grassy slope until everything had calmed down.
The very moment she got up, she was floored by an elbow gone astray. When she came to, she was lying on her back on the asphalt path, her nose bleeding. The dispute had ceased and everyone’s attention was directed at Jeanette.
Both combatants were repentant and helped to move her into a semi-upright position on the bench. One of them, Lubbi, sat down with his arm around her neck and tilted her head back.
“Nanna is fetching ice from the Indian corner shop,” he said. “Sorry. We really didn’t mean it.”
“I know,” said Jeanette. “But there’s no bloody need to carry on like that at all.”
“Want some refreshment?” Lubbi asked in a transparent ploy to change the subject.
“Aren’t there lots of people standing around watching?”
“Who cares? Anyway, they’ve gone. The ambulance is on the way.”
“You’re joking?”
“I’m joking,” Lubbi confirmed with a hearty roar of laughter. “Here you go.”
Then he gently lifted her head and gave her a slug of vodka straight from the bottle. It might not have been exactly what she needed, but she didn’t decline it. It felt good to be fussed over; for once she was the focus of everyone’s attention. She leaned back again to stop the flow of blood.
“Here she comes, our very own Barbamama,” said Lubbi.
Nanna sat down on the bench on her other side. She had managed to procure a plastic bag of ice that she now applied to Jeanette’s nose.
“How does it feel?” she asked. “Does it hurt?”
“It’s working,” said Jeanette.
“Thank you for making peace between those two tearaways.”
“Did I?”
“You must have noticed,” said Nanna with a sneer at Lubbi. “Now they’re being nothing but doves of peace.”
Yet another guffaw from Lubbi. Jeanette laughed too and straightened herself on the bench.
“I think it’s stopped bleeding,” she said putting the ice pack down on the ground in front of her.
She looked around. Everything was back to normal. On the other benches they were sneaking swigs while bickering with each other. The spring flowers in the planters between the benches were resplendent in the hot sunshine. The birds sang and the air was finally warm. The perfect conditions for the life she was now leading.
People walked by with deliberate steps and airs of importance. Just a few years ago she had been one of them, someone who went to work every morning and came home with a bag of groceries in the evening. Someone who went to the gym and yoga, who took care of her health, her appearance, and other things like makeup and accessories. The bathroom tiles.
The anxiety that had temporarily left her in conjunction with the blow to her face returned. It couldn’t be cured, but there were two ways to deal with it in the short-term: tablets and alcohol. Both options were devastating in the long run. Her stomach was turning, her head spinning. She couldn’t take more right now; she would have to withstand the pain some other way.
“How are you, babe?” said Lubbi, putting a hand on her knee. “You’re ghastly pale.”
“I’m fine,” Jeanette lied.
“Perhaps we should have called an ambulance? You might have a concussion.”
“It’s not that, I promise. I’m just having a really shit day. In here,” she added, gesturing at her head.
And then the tears came. She felt stupid crying in front of all these people who really didn’t have it good either. But the tears welling up inside her couldn’t be stopped. It wasn’t a dramatic show, no sobbing, just a small and silent trickle of tears running down her cheeks.
But Lubbi saw. He put his arm around Jeanette again and pulled her close.
“What’s weighing heavy on your heart?” he asked pompously in an attempt to play down the situation.
“I miss home,” said Jeanette. “Miss everything I used to have before I became like this.”
“Like this?” said Lubbi. “You’re a good-looking girl, Jen. There’s nothing that needs changing about you.”
“I miss my daughter and my husband and our home and all our stuff. Not so much my job and . . .”
“Daughter?” Nanna interrupted. “You have a daughter?”
“You’ve never mentioned it before,” Lubbi agreed.
“Had,” said Jeanette in despair. “She died.”
“That’s shit,” said Nanna, putting her hand on Jeanette’s.
“I’m sorry,” said Lubbi.
He was quiet for a while before returning to the subject.
“I don’t want to dig around and open old wounds and all that, but if you want to talk then you’re welcome to. You might feel better?”
Jeanette wanted to talk, but hadn’t touched on the subject for a long time. She didn’t quite know where to start.
“She was called Charlotte,” she said simply.
“Beautiful,” said Nanna. “Beautiful name.”
“How old . . . was she?” Lubbi asked.
“She was four when it was diagnosed,” said Jeanette, wiping her nose with her sleeve. “Acute myelogenous leukaemia.”
“Leukaemia,” Lubbi repeated. “Fuck.”
“She was in pain, had bruises everywhere, infections that never went away, and she was always tired. She had treatment for almost two years. Chemotherapy. And then she had a bone marrow transplant. Nothing helped. Her kidneys stopped working and eventually she couldn’t cope any longer. She was six when she gave up. Almost nine years ago. She would have turned fifteen this year.”
No one said anything for a while. Lubbi held her tight and Nanna squeezed her hand. It felt a little better now that someone actually cared. It didn’t change what had happened, but in that moment she felt warmth from these people, of a kind she rarely experienced any longer.
“She suffered so much during those years,” said Jeanette when she had collected herself. “We suffered too—my husband and I. It was horrible standing by and being unable to do anything except be there for Charlotte. And eventually having to part from our child, to bury her . . . It’s indescribable.”
“How did he take it?” Nanna asked. “Your husband?”
“While Charlotte was still alive, we were strong together. Incomprehensibly strong, on reflection. One or both of us were always with her. We were united against the rest of the world, against disinterested healthcare workers and unsympathetic authorities. But when we lost Charlotte, everything that had kept us together vanished.”
“You got divorced?” said Lubbi.
“Not at once. We wore each other down for another five years. He struggled on, pretending everything was normal. I became increasingly blasé, got tired of our empty lives and our boring conversations. I long for those now. But at least we shared our grief after Charlotte died. We could have talked about it. I wanted to, but he kept all that difficult stuff at arm’s length and wanted to move on with his life, as he said. He was probably right—I’m a much weaker person.”
The tears began to flow more heavily. Jeanette snuffled and wiped the tears on the arm of her jacket. Lubbi and Nanna sat quietly, waiting for more.
“I met a guy at work,” Jeanette continued. “He was married with kids, but we started having an affair. We used to sneak off in his car in the afternoons. For a rendezvous. It felt grubby and deceitful, but you have to start somewhere. You can’t leave your old relationship headlong before you’ve at least tasted the new one.”
Lubbi opened a can of beer and passed it to Jeanette. She knew she shouldn’t, but she still drank from it. She offered it to Nanna too, but she declined, so Jeanette handed the can back to Lubbi and carried on with her tale.
“We talked about a future together. I was head over heels in love with him, ready to give up everything I still had. It didn’t seem like much then, but looking back . . . And it went to hell with the new guy. A complete disaster. I got depressed and had panic attacks. I was on sick leave and started taking tranquilisers. Drinking box wine. I stopped working out, stopped socialising with people, stopped talking to my husband. He didn’t know about the affair, but after six months or so he’d had enough of me and the awful state I was in. Completely understandable, but I didn’t care. To begin with. Until reality caught up and I saw this worn-out, skinny pisshead looking back at me in the bathroom mirror. It didn’t exactly relieve the fear of going back to work and normal everyday life.”
Both Nanna and Lubbi cast their gazes down, probably because they associated that more with their own dreadful existences than with hers. Neither of them disagreed, so they were backing her up in a way.
“What did I do then?” said Jeanette. “Did I pull myself together and stop using? No, I sank even lower. I’m useless and my life is one huge fiasco.”
The conversation was over. The others came over and the mood was broken, perhaps partly because Jeanette’s final words could be taken to apply to any one of them. Lubbi and Nanna were free to ignore their own failures, so what was it that drove Jeanette to brandish the truth in their faces? Did she feel deep down that she was superior to them?
She decided to express herself differently in future. Not to say disparaging things about herself that essentially encompassed the whole wretched gang on the benches by the East Gate.