“Who’s going to meet?”
“The committee.”
“Uh-huh. OK.”
“That means anything I tell you now is mere speculation.”
“I see.”
She just sat there and didn’t say anything else.
“Are you here to find out if I want to be on the committee?”
“No.”
“Good. After all, this revision is a departmental matter, so it’s hard to see how a committee would make any difference one way or the other, right?”
“So you say.”
I sighed.
“What’s the point of the committee?”
“To propose countermeasures for the course revision, like I said.”
I regarded her through squinted eyes and tried to see if I could read anything off her sluggish face. Her hair wasn’t in mouse braids today. Instead she had a scarf—in a variety of shades of purple—wrapped around her head. And some dangly beaded earrings, which were also purple. She had obviously put some effort into looking this way. There was something vulnerable and exposed about her attempt, and a little wave of compassion washed over me. Maybe I was being too critical.
“I hear you and Peter are going to Saint Petersburg with Frank,” I said, in a tone meant to signal interest and kindness.
Ingvill jumped with a level of vigor I hadn’t thought she possessed.
“You know,” she said, “I would kindly ask that you refrain from asking me pointed questions and making veiled accusations about conniving!”
“I didn’t say anything about conniving! I was just trying to be nice! Besides, I still don’t even know why you stopped by my office. Why are you here?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“Great.”
“Fine!”
As she left she made an attempt to slam my office door, but it had a tendency to stick so it just closed on its own with a petulant humph.
9
Saturday arrived with autumn sunshine on wet grass, and Bj?rnar got up early and made croissants. Late in the morning I sat in the bright sunlight and spread strawberry jam on the freshly baked goods, with the newspaper and a cup of coffee in front of me. The two older kids were lying on the living room floor drawing, and Alva was on the sofa listening to an audiobook.
In this light, our house seemed just fine.
“We can’t do it,” Bj?rnar said, as if echoing my thoughts. He set down the section of the paper he had been reading and looked at me. “It’s going to be too expensive, and there could be way too many unwelcome surprises. I’m sure another house will turn up, one that’s newer and in a better location. This one is practically downtown, you know. Alva would have to start at a different elementary school than the other two. We just can’t do it.”
I looked him in the eye and was tempted to tell him I agreed. A new house was risky. It meant being willing to wager everything: the harmony I felt now, the security of everything and everyone being in place, the familiar sounds, knowing the neighbors were pleasant and upstanding people.
The idea of moving was scary. There were no guarantees that it would go well. It could turn out badly, very badly.
What if our family life was all due to our living in this specific house? People often said that remodeling a house could lead to divorce, but what if it was the move itself that ruined things? What if there was something magical about a certain house that allowed a relationship to withstand reality? And if leaving that house meant stepping outside the magical shield?
Besides, Bj?rnar was better grounded in reality than I was, and the problems he was pointing out were probably realistic.
But the memory of the house glowing in the darkness was too strong. And I was thinking about how we were going to get old. Not yet, but soon. And then we would need a home. A proper, solid, roomy home.
“Have you noticed how often Ebba sits in the back storage closet?” I asked. “Every afternoon she gets a pillow and squeezes herself down between the shelves in there, with a book or a sketch pad or the iPad. It’s the only place in the house where she can be by herself.”
“But then she has a place for that, right?”
“Yes, a cramped place without any windows and bad lighting. And Jenny never brings anyone over to play anymore, since there’s no room for her and her friends to hang out. That’s the way it is here. We’re together, all together, all the time. Just us.”
“We like being together.”
“But it’s nice to be able to choose.”
He sighed and picked up the newspaper again.
“Fine. But you can go on your own, right? I don’t like open houses. You know that.”
“We can’t make an offer on a house that only I’ve seen! We’re going together. It won’t take long, and it’s a nice walk. Look at how nice the weather is. We can ride our bikes.”
He sighed again, but we ended up taking Alva and biking over to the open house. The two older girls made it clear they didn’t want to see any lame house and went off to go hang out with some friends.
As we approached, I started to get butterflies in my stomach. There it sat on the slope, so inviting it almost sparkled. And although I tried not to, I immediately started planning huge Christmas parties that began with the guests stomping snow off their shoes on the steps and walking inside to the aroma of slowly roasted goose and bubbling gravy and juniper and all kinds of other exotic scents and domestic wizardry.