The Dahl sisters excused themselves to titivate before the ball, or, as Louise put it, “We’ll just go freshen up a bit before the music starts.”
Pix finished her coffee. It was impossible to get a weak cup in Norway, and this should keep her wide-awake for the night’s exploit. Searching their fjord cruiser for drugs or stolen oil-rig plans was not something she wanted to broadcast, however. So instead, she said to Jennifer, “I think I’ll go and see if my mother needs anything, then look in on the dancing. After that, I want to find the sauna. It should be a great one here.” What she really wanted to do was head straight for the sauna, but she wanted to check out who was dancing, and there might be a chance to talk to some of the people she hadn’t been able to talk to yet, or those she wanted to speak to further.
Ursula answered the door. Marit was sitting on the balcony; the flask and two glasses were on a small table. Marit was laughing. Nobody needed anything, especially not Pix. She didn’t even bother to go in.
“
“Don’t forget about getting on board the boat” was Mother’s good night.
As if, Pix thought, her children’s speech patterns having long ago invaded her own.
“I got my thriilll on Blueberry Hiilll.”
The music was blasting from the smoke-filled lounge and dancers crowded the floor. The air was warm and faces glowed, shining from exertion and alcohol. Pix wanted to keep alert and awake, although with all the coffee she’d drunk, she’d have to drink an enormous amount of beer to put a dent in the caffeine. By the end of the trip, her blood type would probably be arabica instead of B-positive. She ordered a Coke and sat down at a small table off to the side, where she was content to observe and not participate as tourists from every corner of the earth twisted and shouted their way through the group’s next spirited number. It was an interesting rendition of the old classic. The female vocalist didn’t sing at all like Chubby Checker and her accent occasionally made the English words sound Norwegian, but when she belted out “like we did last summer,” the dancers went nuts, gyrating even more madly. Thoughts of hip-huggers. Thoughts of blankets at the beach. Thoughts of youth.
Pix was surprised to see Oscar Melling back in good graces, or at least with some of the tour. He was panting away opposite Carol Peterson, who was managing to stay with the beat even as her eyes scanned the room for her wayward daughter-in-law and poor benighted son. Pix
could see Carol intoning the words over cups of coffee stretching endlessly into a future of neighborhood coffee klatches: “He was such a good boy, until he met up with her. Not that I’m criticizing, mind you, but…” Roy senior was talking to Don Brady. It was apparently a very serious subject. Their heads were bent close together and Don, who was speaking at the moment, had locked his fellow Scandie sightseer’s eyes in his own intense gaze. Suddenly, the two burst out laughing. What on earth could they be discussing? Pix tried to think how she could move closer to eavesdrop.
The Hardings and the Golubs were, of course, playing cards, although the table was partially out the door—so they could hear each other. Pix wondered if they played for money. There was no sign of the bachelor farmers. No doubt, they stuck to their routines and had all gone to bed at what would have been sundown, to arise at sunup.
The number ended and Pix was debating whether to have another Coke or not. Skipping it meant a week’s tuition for Samantha at Wellesley, where she was going to be a freshman in the fall. But Pix needed to have some reason for lingering and she had absentmindedly drunk the first small glass down while she was looking about. She ordered another one, wished she was on an expense account, and continued her surveillance.
The group played a slow number. Pix didn’t recognize the song, but she did recognize the tempo. It was make-out music. All those couples in her teen years embracing on the dance floor, rocking from side to side, maybe taking a step to the rear or the front to provide a semblance of motion. “What fun is that?” her mother had asked. “That’s not dancing! Why bother?” Pix, besotted over Sam Miller, two years older and two inches taller, had not explained. There were some things mothers would never get.
“All those dancing-school years with Miss Pat and Miss Nancy,” Ursula had complained. Yes, the adolescents of Aleford had been taught to dance properly. Girls wore
party dresses and white gloves. Boys had to struggle into suits and ties. Pix, with the arrogance of youth, had reminded her mother that people disapproved of the waltz when it was first introduced. “Nice eighteenth-century girls didn’t dance that way.”
But Ursula had the last word. “Someday you’ll be glad you learned to dance.” Many weddings, bar mitzvahs, and fund-raisers later, Pix was indeed glad she had.
The French cousins were dancing together. They had the air of professionals—impersonal smiles, eyes ahead, perfectly coordinated steps. They acknowledged her by dipping slightly as they passed.
Carol Peterson was still dancing with Oscar Melling, who was grasping her so tightly, Pix was sure the buttons on his sports shirt were embossing her flesh. She had changed from the brightly colored polyester pants suits she favored during the day to a wide-skirted floral-print cocktail dress—cruise wear. It was accessorized by matching beads, earrings, and several bangle bracelets. A white Orlon cardigan with plastic pearl buttons fluttered from her shoulders like a tiny cape, the gold-plated sweater guard threatening to choke her. She was chattering feverishly and Pix thought she heard her say, “You naughty man, you,” as they, too, passed by. Her hair, uniformly light brown, was styled in what Pix vaguely recalled as an “artichoke” cut from her youth. Carol’s leaves were all firmly lacquered in place, down to the wispy ones over her brow.
Pix noted again that jogging and whatever else Jennifer Olsen did to stay in shape had paid off. She was wearing a cotton-knit dress that clung to her body. It was very short and Pix remembered the equally provocative night wear Jennifer favored. Her dancing style fit these fashions. She was twisting, but not grinding gears to the floor and jumping up again, as the jack-in-the-boxes surrounding her were. Instead, her whole body seemed to shimmy and slither seductively, pulsating with the rhythm. Pix didn’t recognize her partner from the tour. She must have met
him at the hotel. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her—and the slight smile on her lips clearly stated she knew it. More power to her, thought Pix. Over fifty didn’t mean Ovaltine and early to bed these days. Well, maybe it meant early to bed, but not Ovaltine. Clearly, Jennifer was a boomer and proud of it.
Pix was beginning to feel as if she was watching a film, Fellini by way of Oslo. From the look of the crowd, intent on wresting every last drop of pleasure from their tour—they’d paid for it, after all—it would be many hours before she could count on slipping out of the hotel to search the boat.
And what if she did find something? Something Kari and Erik had also found out about. Something with which they confronted someone. Pix shuddered as she thought of the repercussions of such knowledge. If it concerned oil secrets, that meant big money, and the lives of two young Norwegians wouldn’t count for much.
What a strange tour this was, though—secret compartment or no secret compartment. Kari and Erik’s disappearance. Erik’s death. Then after Pix’s arrival, there had been the man on Jennifer’s balcony and the swastika on the lawn at Stalheim. That reminded her of Marit’s revelation. Did the war have anything to do with all this? She stared hard at the dancers, the Scandie Sights members in particular. There weren’t any young people on the tour, with the exception of Roy junior and Lynette Peterson. Then came Pix. She hadn’t been at this end of the age range for years. The check marks she’d been making on questionnaires were getting alarmingly higher and higher: 20-30, 30-40, 40-50!
So, a large number of the tour members would have been the newlyweds’ age during the war, young people whose youth was clouded by fear and deprivation. The swastika had been meant as a reminder, a reminder of the war and the
there been memories of the war that were so bad, they had driven someone to deface the lawn—and maybe to something else? Something Kari and Erik had discovered? Pix thought of Jennifer. She was certainly bitter, and with ample cause. Had she come to Norway to seek revenge for her father, her grandmother, and now in memory of her mother? Her mother, who had always been homesick but had never come back? There were many Norwegians during the war who had stood by and done nothing. And there were those who hadn’t been content to stand by, but who actively collaborated. Still, she hadn’t mentioned anything about Stalheim, and it had been Pix’s impression that Jennifer’s family came from the east coast. But then the woman hadn’t been explicit.
