“I’m sorry I didn’t come to see you earlier. For what it’s worth, Lydia sounds like she was a remarkable woman. I wish I’d known her.”
A Misunderstanding
Morten Ødegård’s children haven’t been in his car together in more than thirty years. He can’t help but enjoy it.
Sigrid sits up front with him and Marcus sits in the back, the opposite of how it used to be. Before they arrived, Sigrid had written him a long email—and called to be sure he’d received it—before they boarded the plane in America so that Morten would understand and be prepared for the gravity of the situation they now face as a family. His role, as father, might have been to collect them at the terminal and receive them gravely while transporting them to their childhood home for a period of reflection and reconciliation. But Morten Ødegård is a single parent with his healthy children in his car beside him and he cannot remember the last time he has been so unconditionally happy.
On the E6 they zip along pleasantly at eighty-five kilometers per hour and at one point Morten actually reaches out his hand and places it on Sigrid’s thigh and smiles at her.
Sigrid looks at his hand and his smiling face and assures herself that he is OK and not having a stroke or asking for help. Uncertain of what is happening, however, she manufactures a smile and pats his hand a few times, hoping that will make it go away, but it only seems to make him happier.
Morten can see Marcus in his rearview mirror.
“How do you feel?” Morten asks.
“Like a child again,” Marcus says.
“There was a time when you were very happy as a child.”
“I don’t remember,” Marcus says.
“I do.”
Morten tunes the stereo to NRK Klassisk and fills the car with Ravel.
“Some things have changed since you’ve been gone,” Morten says, turning into the hills.
“I figured,” Marcus says.
“The troll population has surged. They’re issuing hunting permits.”
“Pappa, he’s not in the mood,” Sigrid says.
Marcus is returned to Norway through the language coming through the radio. The temper of the presenters is as lighthearted as their American DJ counterparts, but the production is not as polished, carefully timed, or aggressively commercial. In this way it is comforting. But they show no reverence for the music. In the hourlong drive to their house they pass through two news cycles. Each time, the news presenters switch the music off on the hour no matter what piece is playing. A woman named Rachel Podger was playing Bach’s Sonata no. 1 in B Minor. Bach’s music, passing through her violin, made the world a vivid and memorable place; layered and more possible than it had been only moments earlier, both taking Marcus away from the hills of Norway and yet planting him more firmly in the moment. This is what they end with the casual brutality of a fishmonger wielding a cleaver.
On comes the news. The NRK news sounds authoritative and calming. Norway listens—as Americans once listened in the 1950s—to one voice. And it both unites them and deceives them in equal measures, but the deception is delicious and the unity appreciated.
Outside, on the road, other cars let them merge.
They drive the speed limit and think nothing of it.
In town, on the way to the farm, almost everyone they pass in the street waves to them. They know Morten; they know his car.
Their waves are not grand swings of the arm as if to flag down a spouse or encourage a helicopter to land. They are short and to the point. There is a nod, or an upturned head, an open palm. Marcus is returning to the land of his birth and these are the people who have buried the last five generations of his family. He had forgotten they existed. It feels as though they have not forgotten him.
The driveway to the farm is still gravel and the pebbles pop as the Subaru makes for its port. The sky is as blue as a daydream. The farmhouse is red and the grass around it is still green and all of this surprises Marcus because he thought time would have faded all the colors.
“I stocked up the refrigerator yesterday,” Morten says to his children, leaving their suitcases in the front hall. “I don’t know what you’re eating these days but I took a few guesses beyond the staples. I started with the four Norwegian food groups of brown cheese, waffles, hot dogs, and beer. I then bought a few frozen pizzas, which I remember you kids eating. I also bought some fruit and vegetables, salmon, pasta, juices, and a chicken we can roast in case your tastes have evolved. Marcus, your bedroom remains unchanged and I asked Agatha to dust it when she was here yesterday.”
In America, Marcus did not have a picture of his mother. He did, however, have an excellent memory of her. He also saw her face in his own. Her hair was blond like his. Her eyes were blue and dark like his own. Her neck was long and graceful like Sigrid’s, and she had excellent posture and graceful limbs.
Piano fingers.
She had them too.
There are no pictures of her here, either. There never were. His father was never one for family photos on the walls. He has always preferred landscape art; the occasional Ansel Adams–inspired black-and-white of a forest or a fjord, the bucolic countryside, the flea market art from estates. None has moved from the spots where he left them. The farmhouse is preserved. His father either didn’t want to change anything after Astrid died
