I only started to cry when I was by myself again. That’s how it always happened.
I lay there in my bed in Henrietta’s house, and felt wave upon wave of weeping washing through me. The waves began like a tickling in the stomach, and they continued in a rolling cramp that pressed the air out of my lungs and up through my throat. There was nothing I could do to hold back the tears, but I could at least stay quiet. I was always able to do that.
I think I inherited my silent crying from Dad. On quite a few occasions I walked into Henrietta’s room and saw him sitting with his face buried in the duvet and her hand in his. There was no sound, but you could tell from his back that he was crying. I always went before he saw me.
When the tears finally dried up I was no longer sleepy. The house was quiet all around me, so the others had probably gone to bed. I wrapped the duvet like a mantle round my shoulders, got up and walked to the window.
It was a clear night, with a full moon and lots of stars in the sky. A man with a dog was passing by, and he stopped by the garden gate. Both the dog and the man lifted their heads towards the house with the dark windows. I often saw people doing that, and every time I wondered what they saw. How much did they really know about those of us who lived in Henrietta’s house?
Some things were known to everyone in the neighbourhood, of course. The house had been here for over a century, and our family had owned it all this time. Dad said that we used to be rich, when Granddad was little. And almost everyone knew who Henrietta was. Or at least that she used to be a famous actress and that she would soon be dead. People who regularly walked past the house probably knew that her family was here to look after her, and that we came and went, taking turns to look after her. A large, wealthy family where everyone takes care of everyone else and no one has to be alone.
If only they knew.
Uncle Daniel still had some kind of a job at the university, but Mum said that was just because they couldn’t get rid of him. Erland was seriously wrong in the head, and Signe seemed afraid of almost everything. Kajsa and her husband Kjell were always busy with their advertising agency. They’d go shopping, and take Wilma out, but it was as if they were never really part of what was going on around them. Wilma said that Kjell drank wine every day, and that Kajsa probably did too but she was better at hiding it. And Wilma ate too much and Kajsa hardly anything at all.
Not that Dad and I were much better. We had been here for months now, and with every day that passed it was as if things were slipping a bit further away from us.
The world out there, and Mum too. Although she had been drifting away for a long time now, ever since Martin died.
I don’t know how we ended up like this. We were a normal family once, but without anyone noticing we started falling apart. Like when the nuts are shaken loose on a bike.
When I was little, Mum, Dad and I used to do everything together. There was a kitchen table where I used to sit with my crayons and paper and do drawings for Mum. Dad used to sit opposite, writing. Once, in the library, I found books that he had written. There were several of them listed in the catalogue and I had never even heard him mention them before.
I didn’t dare take Dad’s books out of the library, so over the course of several weeks I went there every afternoon to read them. They were good, actually. No wizards, no murders; just stories about ordinary people living their everyday lives. The kind of stuff that I thought I would write about myself, if I could.
Dad no longer wrote. He only looked after Henrietta and me. Mum didn’t want to be looked after, so he rarely saw her. They weren’t divorced or anything like that, but Mum lived in our flat and Dad and I lived at Henrietta’s. It felt as if it had been carrying on like this for a very long time.
Would it have been better if I had moved in with Mum?
The very thought made me panic. I couldn’t leave Dad, although I didn’t actually think that he needed me. And what could I do for him, anyway? I couldn’t save him. Not alone.
Please help us, I thought, closing my eyes. Make us into something different than we are. Something better.
When I looked up again the man with the dog had vanished. It was cold by the window, so I lay back down on the bed again. My body felt empty and calm and I knew that there’d be no more crying that night.
I looked up at the ceiling and wondered why it was that Mum never cried and I cried so seldom. Why Dad only cried when he thought no one was watching.
I sometimes wondered why the whole world wasn’t crying all the time.