A box of candies was slowly making its way around the table, but at the word failure it stopped. I closed my eyes and tried to brace myself for what was about to come.
And what was about to come was a comprehensive list of the pet peeves each individual PTA representative was harboring, everything from how much snow was permissible on the approach to the school before it needed to be shoveled or plowed to how unreasonable it was that the fourth grade was allowed to use the soccer field only once a week. There was so much to discuss that we probably could have kept going for hours and days if the alternate hadn’t finally blown her top and demanded that someone from the administration “take charge of the shoelace issue.”
“But all you need to do is teach him to—” began Per Henrik.
“I’m going to see to it that your refusal to accept responsibility for this situation is recorded in the minutes,” she growled, “and then I demand that someone contact the city!”
“I suppose that’s possible,” Martine said. “Off the top of my head I don’t recall who our liaison with the city is.”
The secretary started flipping back and forth through the minutes until she found the list.
“It’s . . . Winter? Ingrid Winter?” she reported as if asking a question.
“That’s me,” I said. “But I don’t recall being city liaison.”
“Great!” Martine exclaimed, relieved. “Then you’ll take the ball on this.”
“Uh, what ball?”
“The shoelace-tying issue. We’ll put that on the agenda for the next meeting.”
“Perhaps we can just include it under ‘other matters of business,’” Per Henrik suggested tentatively, “because we probably ought to avoid turning it into its own separate issue.”
The alternate snorted and crossed her arms defiantly.
“Hush it up, sure,” she said in a huff.
“No,” protested Per Henrik. “I’m not hushing anything up, but it’s important that—”
“What kind of person are you, anyway?” she interrupted. “And why are you even here to begin with?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is the whole school entitled to be represented at these meetings? I thought this was the parent-teacher executive committee. Not really something for the administration, you see? And you don’t even have any children at this school, do you?”
“No, I’m here in my capacity as—”
“Then I think maybe we ought to take a vote on whether or not we think it’s a good idea to have you sitting here telling us what to do, telling us that the well-being of our children somehow isn’t the responsibility of the PTA.”
“But I didn’t—”
“Can I see a show of hands? All those in favor?”
“I think maybe as president I should—” Martine began, but the alternate stopped her by raising her hand.
“I repeat: all those in favor of parents looking after their children’s interests, raise your hands now.”
Although many of the representatives took this opportunity to stare at the table, just barely a majority were still feeling the uneasiness from the use of the expression admission of failure, which ten seconds later resulted in the alternate watching in triumph as the assistant principal packed up his things and stepped out into the hallway.
“But you can’t go home,” Martine called out as he walked out, “because someone has to let us out the main door when we’re done.”
He nodded without saying anything.
“Great,” said the alternate. “Now we can relax a little.”
This led to the airing of frustrations with the quality of school lunches and how much homework the kids were getting. The alternate also took this opportunity to share her general observations on employment, local government, and the lack of follow-up from the on-site after-school day care program with regard to her own child. The planning for the 17th of May was postponed to the next meeting.
When we emerged into the hallway, Per Henrik was sitting on the floor typing something on his phone. He didn’t look up when we went by.
Biking home, I pedaled so hard I could taste blood in my mouth.
13
“You can’t expect me to deliver this to the doctor’s office,” Bj?rnar said the next morning.
“But I don’t have anything else!”
“You want me to walk into the doctor’s office with a sample of my wife’s urine in a glass that says Taste the Fjords?”
“I sterilized it,” I said tiredly.
He shook his head and picked up Alva’s boots.
“Come on, honey, it’s time for us to go.”
“I’m so stressed out.”
“You’re stressed out? Is it tiring working in the ivory tower?”
“No, it’s all the other stuff.”
“You’re stressed, I’m stressed, everyone is stressed. Say bye-bye to Mommy.”
“Bye-bye, Mommy.”
“Bye-bye, sweetie!”
I stood by the window and watched them drive away. Five minutes later I pushed Ebba and Jenny out the door and watched them disappear down the street as well, before I headed off to work, planning to finish my conference paper. About Tehom. About Tehom as an all-inclusive chaos-cosmos.
Cosmic chaos.
Chaotic cosmicity.
Tehomic cosmic chaosism.
Silent Tehom that comes disguised as a gift, but annihilates everything.
I sat in the car thinking about how one of the signs of imminent doom was that the contrast between Monday morning and Friday afternoon had been erased. Friday afternoon used to be the best part of the week. That was when Bj?rnar and I made pizza and split a beer while we played music and danced and enjoyed ourselves in the kitchen.
Not anymore.