“I haven’t thought about this place for years,” she murmured.
She was entering into the photo for real. Brand saw a large, two-storied house, painted with the traditional falu red sealant. Its corner moldings were trimmed with white, carrying over the white of the wood-framed peaked windows, the attic roofline. Beyond the main house stood another smaller but nearly identical residence. Further back were several barns, also painted falu red. Small square windows ran along their exterior walls.
The haze of wind-blown snow appeared pink in the headlights of the Tesla. A dozen vehicles parked alongside the lane in front of the house. “Pull in there,” Lukas told her, directing Brand to an open spot. His eyes brightened with anticipation. She herself experienced speed jitters. The drug rode on top of her exhaustion, not quite canceling it out. She suddenly wished to be elsewhere.
They emerged from the warm, well-lit interior of the car into the frozen dark. Early evening. As she stepped out, the snow crunched beneath Brand’s boots. The passing storm had scattered the clouds overhead. Numberless stars spangled the sky. She stood staring upward. Her breath formed frosty clouds in the night air. When they approached the front door, it swung open as if on its own, throwing out a rectangular spill of yellow light.
“Hej, hello, hello!”
A chorus of welcome greeted Brand as she entered. She had heard of the older group of Dalgren siblings but was not prepared for the complex web of cross-generational relations that was now assembled in her honor. There was no doubt she belonged to this tribe; even to a person as pale as she, they appeared white as snow. A woman she recognized as Sanna Dalgren stepped forward from among the foreign relatives and took both Brand’s hands in hers. Sanna hugged her.
“Det här är vår berömda kusin från Amerika!” she announced to the crowd. Lukas, entering the room behind Brand, translated. “She calls you our famous American cousin!”
The greetings were general and enthusiastic. “Here is my brother, Folke,” Sanna said in accented English. She brought forward a slouch-shouldered man who wore a bashful expression on his face.
“You are tall!” Folke exclaimed. His English was likewise inflected with a Swedish lilt.
Brand remembered her grandmother’s attempts to teach her the native tongue, instruction which she fiercely resisted. She had a first-generation mother and immigrant grandparents, but she herself wanted only American English, American expressions, everything American. Still she could not escape the sounds of those three, Klara, Gustav and Alice, at the kitchen table late at night, balancing saucers of coffee in their palms, sipping the tepid liquid in the most un-American way. A peculiar tradition for cooling coffee to the perfect temperature that had never translated beyond the first generation. The rise and fall of the Swedish language sounded like singing. Even the raves and shouts of Gustav were rhythmic.
“I tell her I don't recognize her without her long-flowing hair,” Sanna gushed. “So striking!”
“Oh, hardly,” Brand responded.
Sanna’s brother Folke clumsily half knelt in front of Brand, before dropping something at her feet. Brand drew back sharply, almost losing her footing.
“Nej, nej,” he mumbled. No, no. Brand realized he had only been trying to give her a pair of embroidered wool slippers, to get her to remove her wet boots and put the slippers on.
“This is how we do it in Sweden,” he said in English, sweeping his hands in a low gesture at the rest of the feet that stood around her.
She removed her boots and stepped into the slippers. They looked to be handmade. Sanna took charge, guiding her in among the assembled relatives. Brand confronted a room full of people, most of them sitting in a variety of chairs that looked as though they had been specially brought in for the occasion.
The word skål sounded like a bell. Every glass in the room rose. Brand had as yet no glass to answer with, so she simply gestured awkwardly. As a newcomer, she was expected to introduce herself. She lost herself amid a flurry of names and faces.
“Enn-why-pee-dee Blue!” exclaimed an older man named Jörgen, the husband of a Dalgren cousin. Brand understood him to mean NYPD Blue, the classic American TV program. He grabbed her hand and shook it vigorously. “I am a large fan! Large fan!”
“Everyone!” Lukas called out. “Our dear cousin Veronika is not familiar with our customs. And she knows not any Swedish, so we will have a good opportunity to try out our language skills.”
“I apologize,” Brand said. “With my grandparents, I should have …” She trailed off, uncertain what she meant to say.
“When I finish loading the luggage at Arlanda,” Lukas announced, “lo and behold Veronika climbs directly into the driver’s seat of my Tesla!”
Murmurs rose from his audience.
“Naturally, I objected,” Lukas continued. “But ‘I have to drive,’ she says. ‘I make it a practice never to ride as a passenger.’”
“I’m sorry,” the star of the anecdote interjected. “It’s simply that I tend to get carsick if I am not behind the wheel.”
“Oh, she is an American!” a voice exclaimed. “They must always be in the driver’s seat.”
Eventually, Brand managed to edge away from Sanna and duck the seemingly endless introductions. She took a moment for herself, leaning against the warm brick of the expansive fireplace. The heat emanating from an invisible source had no means of escape, turning the old family homestead into a shield against the wind howling on the other side of the walls.
Once more Brand felt herself transported back in time. She recalled the chill on certain childhood mornings, when she would wake under a mountain of blankets in the farmhouse in upstate New York. She loved the cozy sense of lying in bed, watching her exhalations turn to cloudy vapors. Her austere grandmother, Klara Dalgren, would try and extract her
