“Sometimes I think he’s homesick,” she said. “For Belgium, I mean.”
Erik knew the story. David’s parents had died in a car accident when he was eleven, leaving him with only elderly grandparents who could not care for him. His mother’s sister, Helen, had flown from the States to Brussels and collected her nephew, bringing him to her home in New York and becoming his legal guardian.
“He wears his father’s wedding band,” she said. “On his index finger. Funny. It just occurred to me you’re both fatherless.”
And we both want you, Erik thought. He flipped his pencil around a few times, and then tried to sound nonchalant as he asked, “Is Will really bisexual?”
Daisy put her tea down and leaned toward him a little. “I don’t know,” she mouthed, as if confessing.
“You don’t know?” he mouthed back with exaggeration.
Her smile was infectious. “I certainly couldn’t go to court with anything on him but it would not surprise me. At all.”
“Huh,” Erik said thoughtfully, staring at the faint lipstick mark on the rim of Daisy’s cup. She was staring at his cup as well, which was bothersome because he already took a lot of shit for drinking tea. Apparently it wasn’t the manly thing to do. But he had never liked coffee and tea had sentimental roots in his heart. His mother brewed tea every night, making cups for her sons while they did homework. Erik’s first independent act in the kitchen was learning to light the burner under the kettle. And he liked how it tasted, especially when it was brewed strong. He used two bags and barely any sugar.
Daisy said nothing about his beverage of choice, though, and opened her book again. Erik went back to work, and a pleasant interlude passed where he was busy and she was reading, yet the space they shared was companionable. The silence between them shimmered warm and inviting, like a campfire. He settled into it contentedly. A cat on the hearth.
“I like your necklace,” she said.
“This?”
“Can I see?”
He put his pencil down, reached behind his neck and unclasped it. He put it in a coiled heap in her waiting palm. She stretched it carefully across her long fingers. It was a gold chain with squared, faceted links. The squares gave it a unique, masculine silhouette, heavy but streamlined. Off the chain hung three small charms. Erik watched as Daisy examined each one: a boat, a fish and a saint’s medal, which was also square.
“Who is this?”
“Birgitta. She’s the patron saint of Sweden.”
Her fingers, with their unpolished oval nails, played with the charms which, like the chain, were old gold, weathered. They had a dull, wise brightness. Many fingers had rubbed, contemplated and worried over them.
“This is beautiful,” Daisy said. “Actually it’s handsome. I don’t want to say macho, but it’s strong-looking.”
“I like the weight of it,” he said. “It’s solid.”
“Is it old?”
He reached and turned the medal over, to show her the engraving on the back: B.K.E.F. 1865.
“Bjorn Kennet Erik Fiskare. My great-great-great-grandfather.”
“Wow. This is like your history right here.”
“I’m told the boat and the fish are even older but nobody knows really. See. Here.” Erik turned the boat over and showed her Fiskare engraved into its bottom. “Fiskare means fisherman in Swedish.”
She looked at him sheepishly. “I thought it meant scissors. You know, the ones with the orange handles.”
He laughed. “I get that all the time.”
“Do you know the word for scissors?”
“No idea.”
“You’re Swedish but your eyes are brown,” she said, gazing intently at him.
“You’re French but your eyes are impossible.”
“I get that all the time.”
He looked away. “My mother’s Italian. So I get blond hair and brown eyes. Makes for a weird combination.”