trying to work up the courage to hand over the twins she cannot bear.
Pretend women, playing at being mothers.
Sam emerged from the studio and I quickly exited the page. He came up behind me and pressed his hands into my shoulders, kissing the top of my head.
Who’s Christopher? he said, as an email popped onto the screen.
Just an old client, I said. He probably doesn’t know I’ve left the States.
Better tell him, Sam said, and walked off.
I read the email and then deleted it. I had an overwhelming need suddenly to get out of the house. I pulled on running gear and went to find Sam. I’m going for a hike, I announced.
He was taken aback, but thrilled. Fantastic, he said. Should I watch Con?
Oh no, I said, I really want to have some mommy-son time.
Strange, how the words come so easily, how the untruths roll off the tongue while the rest stays locked away.
You’re such a great mom, Sam said.
I nodded. I’m doing my best.
And I am, I am! I must be, because why else would it all feel this torturous – as though I were day and night on stage, under the harsh lights, face melting, body corseted into an ill-fitting borrowed costume. The same show, again and again, enter stage left, deliver the lines you have rehearsed. And into the crowd, looking out at a sea of faces, searching, hoping – desperately needing to hear the sounds of applause. Or even just a single clap. I see you. You exist.
I settled the baby in his stroller and pulled the door shut behind me. We walked down the path in the direction of the lake, then veered left onto the dirt road that leads to the forest trails. It was a fair climb up the first hill, to the flattish clearing of forest with views of the south side of the lake.
In the last months of my pregnancy, I would wake some nights and find myself here, having wandered through the house in the half darkness, out the door and through the garden and down to the gate, a trance that took me inexplicably all the way to the start of the hiking trails, and out to this clearing. I’d cut my feet on gravel and stones and the pain would make me wince and cramp and cry out. I was weighted down with the life inside, an awkward shape, clunky and dense in the darkened forest, knocking into trees and branches as I lumbered along. There were noises and movements in the night but none of them scared me as much as what was inside. Sometimes in the mornings, Sam would find a thin trail of blood leading from the front door to my side of the bed; nocturnal Odette turned back into the cursed swan. How did I get here, how did I get here? I could not understand it.
It was good to be outside in the cool and the quiet, just the trees and the soft calls of insects at work. I looked around. There was not another soul about. A cabin nearby was boarded up, the windows shut, wooden beams nailed across them. A gingerbread house, I thought, and perhaps inside, a cannibal witch.
I looked into the stroller. The baby had fallen asleep. In the soft dappled sunlight, he looked almost painterly, the goldenhaloed child of devotional art. I touched a finger to his nose. He stirred but did not wake. I considered the stroller. I remembered the salesman in Stockholm describing state-ofthe-art suspension, a fixed front wheel, pneumatic tires. Mountain Jogger, it says on the handlebar. Built for this terrain.
I breathed in the morning air, fresh and warm; held out my arms as though awaiting some divine benediction. Then I began to run. Harder, faster, farther and farther into the trees. Around me, the pines loomed tall and ancient and indifferent; the ground underfoot crunched with fallen leaves and weeds and thick-growing lichen, everything alive and wild, a world unto its own.
I did not look back. I ran and ran, as though running for my life. I ran and ran, until everything ached and stung – heart and lungs and head. I wondered briefly if the baby would be all right, out here in the woods, exposed to all the elements. But surely it could only do us good. Hearty exertion, fresh forest air. I pushed on. The sweat poured off me in sheets. I pushed, I pushed; I ran. I thought: I may never stop. I imagined how easy it would be to keep going, to keep running, pushing farther and farther north, to Uppsala, then Gävle, then Sundsvall. And farther still. All the way to the far north, to Kiruna and across into Finland, to Kilpisjärvi. From there you keep going, Alta, then Nordkapp; I’ve looked on the map, nothing but space and sky, the water and the ice. Svalbard. Greenland. Land so barren you would surely feel like the first person to set foot on earth. Or the last.
All those voyages north, the polar expeditions into nothingness and white. Searching for the unknown, for places to name and land to call one’s own. Or maybe it was just blankness they were after, a world made new.
I ran and ran, stumbling occasionally over uneven ground and unfamiliar terrain; rocks and roots and the stumps of felled trees. I ran until I could no longer breathe, until my legs could no longer move me forward or support my weight. I collapsed to the ground. I gasped air into my shocked lungs; I gulped at it like it was water. More, more, pounding heart, ready to burst right out of its fragile cage of bone. I held my hand over it. It would not quieten. It was the feeling of death. Or maybe of being alive.
I lay in the soil, leaves at my back, millions upon millions of subterranean creatures busy belowground with secret endeavors. A discarded husk of snail shell I held and then crushed, the sharp points digging into my fingers. My breath was steadying slowly.
And still, my heart raced. The feeling of being free. Here where I am no one and everyone, a mass of cells and atoms like everything else that lives and breathes and is of this earth. It all came flooding in, the noise of the silence and the stillness and the smell of life uninterrupted. I tried to inhale it, to steal some for myself.
I don’t know how long I lay on the ground.
Before the baby and I made our way back home, I paused to take a photograph on my phone. Something about the light and the colors compelled me. Perhaps I would send it to Frank. A taste of what’s in store.
Wasn’t that fun, I said to the baby, who had woken. Wasn’t that a fun adventure for us.
He gifted me with a smile, and I was reassured. His cheeks were a little flush, his hair matted to his skull from all the movement. I made a note to double-check the safety of the forest, to rule out any encounters with wild animals. But I shouldn’t think there’s anything sinister in these parts.
Did you have a nice bonding session? Sam asked as we walked through the door.
I smiled. I felt genuinely happy. It was just what we needed, I said.
We had a visitor today. Sam was in Oslo; he took a flight late last night. Before he left, he paused a moment at the door, his new blazer buttoned up, his new sneakers blinding white on his feet. I suppose he is trying to fit in.
I’m sorry, he said. I know it’s a lot of travel. I know you’re alone a lot – too much, probably.
It’s unlike him, to apologize for something. I was caught off-guard. I didn’t know what to say.
It’s all right, I replied eventually. It’s just until you’ve established yourself, isn’t it. You’re doing it all for us.
He looked like he might say more, but instead he kissed my cheek, chaste and strange.
I slept soundly, all alone in the big bed. I spread out, I rolled over onto Sam’s side, smelled him in the sheets. There was a stain, the dried markings of our reproductive quest. Well, his. I’m not sure how much longer I can hold the wolf from the door, how much more time he’ll allow to pass before he sends me off to the doctor to be examined and explored for faults and flaws.
It seemed to happen so quickly before, he said.
It’s different every time, I assured him.
I dreamed of Frank, a dream or a memory, I don’t quite know. The two of us were in my childhood home, that