I did this: But how?
I did this: But why?
I did this: And I’m sorry.
He says it in English, not Norwegian.
Why English?
Because he’s saying it to Lydia. He was having an epiphany about the consequences of his unintended actions. He is coming to see himself as complicit. And that is not the mental journey of someone who has thrown another person out a window.
All this might be wishful thinking, but it is a worthwhile thought in any case.
In her jail cell, as Irv types away on his computer, Sigrid removes Marcus’s final letter from its envelope and reads it again:
Dear pappa,
It happened again. You told me the first time that I didn’t understand. That I misunderstood everything. Well, I’m a grown man now and it happened a second time and this time I understand it all too well. And more than that. It has forced me to see it all with a line of sight unobstructed by the years and the events and the decisions in between. What I now understand is that it was my fault. It was also yours but you, I forgive.
Your son,
Marcus.
What had Marcus done again? Failed a relationship? He certainly never pushed anyone out a window before.
“Can I use your phone?” Sigrid asks Irv.
Maybe her father will know.
“Dial nine to get an outside line,” he says without turning away from an academic paper of Lydia’s he’s been reading. “It’s a local call?”
“Norway.”
Irv looks up.
“No. You cannot call Norway on our phone. You think I have that kind of power? Budget? Friends in high places? Use Skype like normal people.”
Sigrid calls her father after lunch, during Norway’s bright and early evening. He answers on the third ring.
She explains her question about Marcus. About the word “again.” Her father is not helpful.
“I really don’t know. I’m sorry. It didn’t make any sense to me either. What are you planning to do next?”
Sigrid tells him that she is—for the moment—trying to take the very approach she has asked Irv to take but admits that being patient and waiting for Marcus to show up is not easy. The entire plan is based on soft information anyway. He might not be there at all. He could be in Vegas.
In Norwegian, and therefore incomprehensible to Irv, who is sitting across from her, she describes the files on the hard drive. She asks about depression and whether he might have it. “I’m looking to link the word with Marcus in a way he would have found meaningful.”
“Depression?” repeats her father. “He never mentioned medication. In his letters he always ties up his views in philosophy. He’s a private person, your brother. And after everything you explained about Lydia,” his voice trails off. “It sounds like sadness. Don’t you think there are legitimate reasons for being sad?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Me too. If sadness is normal, it makes no sense to me to treat it with drugs as though the brain is broken. Sadness is normal. Even if it’s permanent.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Sigrid says.
“I’m just thinking about your mother.”
“I know.”
“The problem with arguing ideas with your children,” says her father, “is that you start wondering what the conversation is really about. Your child can talk about Kierkegaard but as a parent you start thinking, ‘This kid needs a hug and a nap.’ The older I get the more I suspect this is true for everyone. It is astonishing the things we think about to keep ourselves from thinking about things.”
“I’ve been going through his files on depression,” says Sigrid. “There are hundreds of them. I can’t read them all. I read English well but very, very slowly.”
“Maybe you need help.”
“Maybe I do.”
By midafternoon Sigrid admits to having Marcus’s hard drive and has Melinda reading through three hundred files on depression. The assignment is affecting Melinda’s mood but not in a way that Sigrid had anticipated. Rather than weighing her down—by the sheer tonnage of material, not to mention the nature of the subject matter—it has instead seemed to fill Melinda with purpose and exuberance. This makes Melinda chatty.
“First of all,” she says, coming to sit by Sigrid at her new desk with a yellow legal pad, “America is mental. I did not know how mental we are. The National Institute of Mental Health says—and I’m quoting here—‘mental health disorders are common throughout the United States.’ How common? About twenty percent of all people. So one in five. One in five!” she repeats. “And that’s conservative. One in five drivers. One in five people who owns a gun, who votes, who raises children. One in five. And . . . check this. One in twenty has a serious mental health problem—serious as in Coocooville—and that number is conservative. And . . . this is interesting . . . almost thirty percent of people didn’t complete the interview during their massive survey and the main reason was that they refused to participate! I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that more nutters chose not to participate than healthy people, so this thing is already conservative in its findings. And in kids? Over twenty percent of children, either currently or at some point during their life—I don’t get that part, because they wouldn’t be children anymore but . . . OK—have had a seriously debilitating mental disorder. Oh, and ten percent have personality disorders! One in ten. Women, apparently, are far more likely to have mental health problems than men—which doesn’t make any sense to me because men are obviously more insane, judging by their behavior—and one in four women is given drugs for a mental health condition, but only fifteen percent of men. And—check this out—almost thirty percent of women are using antidepressants. And women are using twice as many anti-anxiety medications as men, but that one does make sense to me because they’re probably married to unmedicated men, which is why they’re freaking out. What’s happening right now is that drug use is going up and up and up.”
“Melinda?” Sigrid says while Melinda is
