Bobo is trying to knot his tie; he’s never really managed to learn how to, it always seems to end up either too long or too short. One attempt fails so badly that his little brother and sister start to laugh. Today, of all days, he manages to make them laugh. Ann-Katrin would have been proud of him for that.
They’re so different, her three children. Bobo has never really figured how three siblings can end up like that. The same genes, the same upbringing, the same home. Yet still utterly different people. He wonders if his mom thought the same or if she saw equal amounts of herself in each of the children. There are so many things Bobo ought to have asked her. Death does that to us, it’s like a phone call, you always remember exactly what you should have said the moment you hang up. Now there’s just an answering machine full of memories at the other end, fragments of a voice that are getting weaker and weaker.
Hog comes into the room and tries to help Bobo with his tie, but it doesn’t end up much better. It was always Ann-Katrin who knotted their ties, both her husband’s and her son’s, whenever the family had to go to a funeral. So Bobo ties it around his head like a headband instead, and his brother and sister burst out laughing. He wears it like that all the way to the funeral, just because it makes them laugh.
The priest talks; no one in the family really hears what’s being said, even though they’re sitting at the front, as close to one another as they can get. Ann-Katrin always liked that, the fact that her family was a little flock that sought warmth from each other. She used to say, “A bigger house? Why would we want a bigger house? We’re always all in the same room anyway!”
People come up to Hog afterward, trying to sum her up. It’s impossible, she was too many things: a talented nurse at the hospital, a much-loved colleague who was always willing to help, a loyal and cherished friend. The great love of one man’s life and the only mother three very different children will ever have.
There’s only one person being buried, but she was many more women than that for those left behind.
All the people in the church wish they had asked her more questions. Death does that to us.
* * *
It’s as if Peter and Kira are living in parallel now rather than together. After the funeral they walk out of the church side by side, but there’s a distance between them, just enough to prevent their hands accidentally brushing against each other. They get into separate cars, but neither of them puts the key into the ignition. They’re both falling apart, at opposite ends of the parking lot.
It’s terrible being dependent on other people, the pair of them have always known that. One summer night a few years ago, they were sitting on the steps in front of the house; there’d been a news report of a road accident in which two young children had died, and it had brought their own grief back to them. You never stop losing a child. Kira whispered to Peter, “God . . . it was so painful, darling . . . when Isak died, if I’d had to deal with that much pain alone . . . I’d have killed myself.” Perhaps she and Peter have managed to stick together through everything because they didn’t trust themselves to cope alone. So they were constantly on the hunt for other things to live for: each other, the children, a job with a purpose, a hockey club, a town.
Peter looks through the windshield and sees Kira sitting in her car. So he gets out and walks over to her, opens the passenger door, and says tentatively, “We should go back to their house, darling. To Hog and the children.”
Kira nods slowly and wipes eyeliner from the small lines in the skin around her eyes. When Isak died, Hog and Peter’s other childhood friend, Tails, traveled all the way to Canada as soon as they could. They knew Peter and Kira would be in shock, so Tails helped with the practical arrangements, papers and documents and insurance. To start with, Hog mostly sat on the steps in front of the house, unsure of what to do. He’d never even been abroad before. But he noticed that the handrail of their living room stairs was broken, and handrails in Canada are much the same as they are in Beartown, so Hog fetched some tools and mended it. Then he went on mending things for the next few days.
“Your car or mine?” Peter whispers now.
“Mine,” Kira says, moving her purse from the passenger seat.
She drives to Hog and the children’s house. Halfway there she cautiously reaches across. Peter takes her hand and holds it tight.
* * *
Fatima, Amat’s mother, is already there. She’s standing in the kitchen making food, and Kira helps her. Amat is there, too, he goes to get Bobo and his brother and sister and says the only thing a teenage boy can think of to say to a friend who’s just lost his mother: “Do you want to play hockey?”
They fetch sticks and a puck. Bobo wraps his tie around his head again, holds the younger children’s hands, and sets off toward the lake. It’s frozen over, the world is white, and they play as if nothing else matters.
* * *
Peter finds Hog in the garage, he’s already gone back to work. His hands need to be busy to stop his heart from breaking even further.
“Is there anything I can do?” Peter asks.
Hog is sweaty and distracted when he replies, “The roof got damaged in the storm, can you take a look at it?”
Grief can do that to a person—he’s forgotten that his friend is all thumbs and couldn’t even mend his own handrail in Canada. But Peter loves Hog, the way children love their best friends, so he fetches a ladder and clambers up onto the roof.
While he’s sitting up there, without the faintest idea of where to start, he sees a cavalcade of cars approaching through the forest. At first Peter thinks it’s Hog’s family, but when the cars stop, a group of young men get out.
Teemu and Vidar are first, followed by Spider and Woody, then another dozen men in black jackets. They usually get their cars and snowmobiles fixed here, as do their parents. If a snowblower or piece of forestry machinery or even a kettle breaks around here, people bring them to Hog. So they’re here now, now that he’s broken. Teemu walks into the garage, shakes the mechanic’s oil-smeared hand, and says, “We’re sorry for your loss, Hog. What do you need help with?”
Hog wipes the sweat and dirt from his face. “What have you got?”
“A carpenter, an electrician, a few guys who are just strong, and some who aren’t much use at all,” Teemu says.
Hog gives him a weak smile.
* * *
Peter is still sitting on the roof when Woody and Spider climb up. They look at each other, and Peter takes a deep breath and admits, “I don’t know anything about roofs. I don’t even know where to start . . .”
Woody doesn’t say anything. He just shows Peter what to do. Then the three of them spend several hours working together. When they finally climb back down, they may well be enemies again, but they’ve taken a breather up on the roof. Death can do that to us, too.
* * *
Teemu goes into the kitchen. He stops abruptly when he catches sight of Kira. Her jaw muscles tense and her fists clench, so quickly that Fatima instinctively stands between them without knowing who’s in greater danger. But Teemu takes a step back, his shoulders sink, and he lowers his head, making himself as small as possible. “I just want to help,” he says.
Because sometimes it’s easier to do something rather than say something. So Fatima and Kira glance at each other. Kira gives a curt nod and Fatima asks, “Can you cook?”
Teemu nods. Fatima knows who his mother is, she realizes that the boy had to learn to prepare meals at an early age. She asks him to chop vegetables, and he does it without protest. Kira washes up afterward. Teemu dries. They don’t make peace, but they take a break. The complicated thing about good and bad people alike is that most of us can be both at the same time.
* * *
It’s so easy to place your hope in people. To think that the world can change overnight. We demonstrate after an attack, we donate money after a disaster, we lay our hearts bare online. But for every step forward we take, we take an almost equally large step back. Seen over time, every change is so slow that it’s barely visible when it’s happening.
* * *