Let's Hope for the Best Read online

  LET’S HOPE FOR

  THE BEST

  This book is dedicated to:

  Ivan, for keeping me busy since February 2014 and whose sole existence brings me endless worry and daily laughter. Thank you for showing me how to love unconditionally. Don’t you ever dare move out or turn your back on me in any way whatsoever. No pressure.

  My friends and family. Thanks for sticking with me even though my grief sometimes makes me an egocentric pain in the ass. Good karma will reward you in the end. I hope. Because you sure deserve it.

  All the people who told me to write and to keep writing. Maybe it was something you just said to encourage me, give me something to do during all those dark nights. It doesn’t matter. It changed my life. Thank you.

  CONTENTS

  MAY 2014

  2009–2014

  OCTOBER 2014

  APRIL 2009

  OCTOBER 2014

  MAY 2009

  OCTOBER 2014

  MAY 2009

  OCTOBER 2014

  MAY 2009

  OCTOBER 2014

  JUNE 2009

  OCTOBER 2014

  JUNE 2009

  OCTOBER 2014

  JUNE 2009

  OCTOBER 2014

  NOVEMBER 2009

  OCTOBER 2014

  DECEMBER 2009

  OCTOBER 2014

  JULY 2010

  OCTOBER 2014

  OCTOBER 2010

  OCTOBER 2014

  JULY 2011

  OCTOBER 2014

  MARCH 2012

  OCTOBER 2014

  APRIL 2012

  OCTOBER 2014

  JULY 2012

  NOVEMBER 2014

  MARCH 2013

  NOVEMBER 2014

  JUNE 2013

  NOVEMBER 2014

  AUGUST 2013

  NOVEMBER 2014

  SEPTEMBER 2013

  NOVEMBER 2014

  DECEMBER 2013

  NOVEMBER 2014

  FEBRUARY 2014

  NOVEMBER 2014

  MARCH 2014

  NOVEMBER 2014

  MAY 2014

  NOVEMBER 2014

  JUNE 2014

  NOVEMBER 2014

  AUGUST 2014

  NOVEMBER 2014

  SEPTEMBER 2014

  NOVEMBER 2014

  OCTOBER 2014

  DECEMBER 2014

  OCTOBER 2014

  DECEMBER 2014

  OCTOBER 2014

  DECEMBER 2014

  OCTOBER 2014

  2015–2016

  JANUARY 2015

  FEBRUARY 2015

  APRIL 2015

  MAY 2015

  JUNE 2015

  JULY 2015

  AUGUST 2015

  SEPTEMBER 2015

  OCTOBER 2015

  DECEMBER 2015

  JANUARY 2016

  FEBRUARY 2016

  MARCH 2016

  APRIL 2016

  JUNE 2016

  JULY 2016

  AUGUST 2016

  AUGUST 2016

  SEPTEMBER 2016

  OCTOBER 2016

  A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

  MAY 2014

  I’m nursing on the sofa when your email arrives. Nowadays this is all I do. I nurse, then sit as still as I possibly can while holding a sleeping baby, terrified to wake him, terrified he might start screaming again. Then I nurse again, sit very still again, attempt to put the now-sleeping baby down so I can take a shower or eat; I fail, I go back to the sofa, I nurse. Day in, day out. Ivan is three months old on the day your email arrives. You’ve gone back to work. I have no idea which freelance job you’re at since you rarely tell me about them. An advertising production company or some freelance commercial director has probably hired you for your technical skills. You say your job as an IT technician is so boring that I wouldn’t even want to hear how you spend your days. I used to insist you tell me anyway, but not any more. I let you decide if you want to tell me about your job, or not.

  As for me, I breastfeed. On your way home every day, you text me and ask what you should pick up for dinner. You take care of most of things around the house now. You work, buy groceries, cook, clean, and play with our cat, who’s been neglected since Ivan arrived. You’ve stopped exercising for the time being. I nurse and nurse. And then, on a Thursday in early May, just after one o’clock in the afternoon, I receive an email from you.

  From: Aksel

  To: Carolina

  May 8, 2014, 13:05

  Subject: If I die

  Good to know if I croak.

  My computer password is: ivan2014

  There’s a detailed list in Documents/If I die.rtf

  Let’s hope for the best!

  /Aksel

  I read the email three times in a row. At first I can’t make sense of it, then I read it again and start to feel worried. After the third reading, my worry morphs into annoyance. This is so like you. No one is as blunt, as unsentimental, as compulsively realistic as you are. You, with your bone-dry emails and text messages. You, with your never-ending backups of your computer and phone. You, with your constantly changing passwords, combinations of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers and special characters. You, who don’t want to be buried when you die, just scattered to the wind somewhere no one would feel obliged to visit with flowers and candles. No one but you would send an email like this, in the middle of the day, from work, to his girlfriend at home nursing on the sofa. But you did.

  I don’t respond. Instead, I ask you about it that evening at the dinner table. What’s the deal with this, I say, and you tell me, just as I knew you would, that it was a whim, and besides a person can never be too careful. It’s stuff I should know just in case something happens. I leave it at that. We never mention the email again.

  2009–2014

  OCTOBER 2014

  It’s a Sunday in October. We’re both tired and not particularly kind to each other. I’ve hardly slept, Ivan was at my breast for the whole of yet another night. I still haven’t mastered the trick of falling asleep between feedings, and now that Ivan is eight months old the future doesn’t look particularly bright on that front. So, I’m always tired. Today I’m also annoyed and feeling sorry for myself. You’re stressed out and trying to finish some project. You still haven’t told your clients that next week you’re going part-time, on parental leave. We argue about that a lot. I want you to lighten your workload so you’ll have the time – and energy – for our life, our child, our world. You don’t want to. Or rather, you say that you want to, but that you can’t. Freelancing doesn’t work like that, you tell me. You’ve worked hard to build up your clientele, and if you disappear for six months they’ll find someone new. Replace you.

  You’re tired, too. When you relax, your face looks sad. You don’t have the energy to even think about your imminent paternity leave, mornings with Ivan followed by a full day of work. I’m stressed too. Grumpy. Anxious. This isn’t what I imagined family life would be like. You tell me I knew what I was getting into when I chose to have a child with you. I tell you I was hoping things would be different. We don’t want to make each other sad, but lately that seems almost impossible. Still, we keep trying.

  Three weeks ago we moved – a move we had no time for, but that we pushed through anyway. We packed at night during the brief periods when Ivan was sleeping by himself. We packed in silence, avoiding any conversations that might cause pain or end in an argument. We moved the same way. We’ve almost unpacked everything now. Today we have to take a break because our car has started acting up. We’re going to drive out to your parents’ house and have your dad take a look at it.

  We load Ivan into the car seat in the back, you climb in next to him, and I drive. I can’t help pointing out for the hundredth time, in a cheery tone of voice that’s fooling nobody how handy it would be if you had a driving licence, too. You clench your jaw and tell me you’ll get to it soon. I don’t ask when because I don’t have the energy to argue today. I already feel guilty just mentioning it. We both fall silent. Ivan is in a good mood, and you keep him that way by distracting him with funny sounds and toys. I find it hard to drive when Ivan cries, and no one makes him laugh like you do. Listening to the two of you playing in the back as we get closer and closer to your parents’ house, I think to myself: I love my little family. Things are just a bit tough for us right now.

  At your parents’ place, you work on the car with your dad while I drink tea with your mum. She interrogates me, discreetly and respectfully, about how things are going for us. I answer, less discreetly but still respectfully, that life’s a lot to handle right now. We don’t get much sleep, and you’re stressed out. The move was rough, and Ivan’s having nightmares. He wants to breastfeed all night. We don’t even have time to think about how we feel right now, I say, which is a lie.

  Your older brother pulls into the driveway. His visit is unexpected, and through the kitchen window I see how surprised you both are to find the other one there. You laugh as you hug each other. He thumps you on your back, you are engulfed by his arms. He’s always been much bigger than you. Shorter, but wider and stronger. You light up, laughing at something he says, as the two of you head into the house. Your step is quick on the stairs, you’re in a hurry to get to the kitchen and show off Ivan. Your big brother has only met Ivan once before. Not for lack of interest, but everyone’s just been so busy lately. Your brother coos over Ivan, says he’s grown so tall, that he looks just like you. He calls you ‘little bro’. He slu
rps down his coffee in big gulps. You drink a glass of Coke. Then you both go back out to the car, and I follow with Ivan strapped to my waist in his carrier. I take out my phone and snap a picture of all three of you standing by the car trying to figure out what’s wrong with the wipers, not yet able to fix them. In the picture your backs are towards the camera, one of you is scratching his head. You are two brothers and a father who will never again meet in this life, but nobody knows that yet.

  APRIL 2009

  It’s Walpurgis Night, and I’m headed to a former schoolhouse on the island of Adelsö. Friends of mine have rented it and transformed the old building into a summer paradise. They always throw amazing parties. They invite hundreds of people, tickets go fast, and the lucky ones end up with a seat on a chartered bus before it sells out. Inside the school’s pine-scented assembly hall, with its high ceilings and creaky floors, there’s cheap wine and beer for sale. The hosts are musicians and creative types, so there are usually live performances by bands I like. This is the fourth or fifth time I’ve been to one of these parties, and I’m pumped.

  I’m thirty, and my love life is a mess. I just broke up with a guy from the north of Sweden a few days ago. For a moment I thought he might be the one, but a short affair was enough to realise I was wrong. I reacted in my usual way. I twisted myself out of the whole thing through writing; blasted off an email telling him it wasn’t his fault, it’s me, I’m not in the right place in my life right now. I don’t know why I always find it so hard to reject people. The thought of hurting someone gives me tremendous anxiety. I imagine them destroyed for days or weeks, their self-esteem damaged, their will to live gone. Ending a relationship makes me feel so guilty – even when I need to, in order to escape something that makes me anxious – that I have often stayed much longer than I should. Since I’ve made a promise to both myself and my therapist to break that pattern, these days I end things more quickly than before. But I still have just as much anxiety. It’s always been like this. And now it’s happened again.

  It went fairly well this time. Probably because we’d only been seeing each other for a few weeks and maybe because he wasn’t particularly into me either. In fact, the break-up went so smoothly that he decided to keep his ticket to this party, which I’d insisted he buy, and attend anyway. With a friend. As a friend.

  I feel self-conscious when I see him on the bus but say hello and hug him. Pretend everything is normal. Like I don’t have a hint of guilt. I’m just a liberated woman who happens to know what she wants in her life. The truth, of course, is that I have no idea what I want. I haven’t for a long time. A vague desire to stop messing around and find the right person hasn’t proved sufficient motivation to actually make things right. My love life has been messy for a few years now. But the Northerner doesn’t need to know that. We’re not going to spend our lives together anyway. And now, on the bus, with every glass of wine I drink and every mile I put between myself and Stockholm, I feel better. After all, things are pretty much as they should be.

  I dance and dance and my feet never want to stop moving. My throat never wants to stop swallowing wine. I climb up into a deep window casement in the old school’s assembly hall and dance there all by myself, enjoying the feeling of being unreachable, people’s eyes on me. I’m notorious among my friends for climbing up onto furniture or bars or chairs or speakers or stages or window frames in order to dance. Preferably by myself. It’s sort of a tradition. So I do it again tonight. I switch between the dance floor, the window and bellowing with my friends who are DJ’ing. I go outside to pee in the woods when the line for the bathroom is too long. Every now and then I see the Northerner in the crowd and every time he stares straight back at me. He nods a greeting but his eyes are sad. My friend starts calling him Sad Puppy Eyes. I laugh. We’re being mean, but I don’t care. I’m going to dance and get drunk and everything is as it should be.

  And then, suddenly, there you are. I’ve never seen you before. You couldn’t have been on the same bus as me. Your friend, an acquaintance of mine, says he wants to introduce me to somebody who ‘loves’ me. And suddenly you are standing there. A grin on your face. Tall and lanky with a smile like a horizontal triangle. A cowboy’s smile in an old movie. Crooked and twisted and wide and genuine. It covers your whole face. I can’t help thinking you’d make a really good cartoon, the kind that makes you happy when you look at it. You’re wearing a hoodie. I have to bend my neck back to look up at you. You didn’t hear the words our mutual acquaintance used to introduce you, but I get the feeling it doesn’t matter. You don’t look like someone who would care anyway.

  I have a bad habit of taking command when I’m drunk. As a kind of protection against the possibility of rejection, I take the opportunity immediately when it reveals itself, and this evening that opportunity is you. I have decided that I think you’re attractive. Tall and crooked, and then there’s that smile. Your eyes are huge. You really would be so fun to draw. I take you by the hand; you don’t protest when I do so, and I drag you outside. It’s still light, it can’t be later than nine, but who cares about mundane things right now, not me and not you. In the light, I notice your eyes are almost absurdly blue. I am going to ask you if you’re wearing contacts. But not yet.

  Outside in the yard there’s a hot dog stand set up inside what was once a pigsty. We get in line, you keep a firm grip on my hand. You look like you’d kiss me with the slightest encouragement. I hold back. I ask how old you are, you say twenty-eight. I’m relieved, I thought you were much younger. I ask what you do for work, you say media. I’m preparing to analyse your reaction when I tell you I work in the music industry, planning big concerts, but you don’t ask. You don’t seem to care about my age or my job. You look like you want to kiss me, your smile is infectious, and I decide that’s enough. Enough for me to lead you away from the hot dog queue and out towards the back of the school. We make our way to a birch tree standing in a small meadow. I peed somewhere in the vicinity about an hour ago. The bass line is thumping from the dance floor in the building behind us. I kiss you. Or maybe you kiss me.

  I kiss you, you kiss me, your hands cup my face, and I love it. I love the way you kiss, and I love your hands, and I love how tall you are, and I love that crazy, crooked mouth that never stops grinning, even when we’re kissing. We kiss like teenagers, you pressing yourself against me, me pressed against the birch tree, the back of my shirt covered with bits of bark. If I were more gracefully built, I would have lifted myself from the ground and wrapped my legs around you, but that’s not what happens. Instead we end up pinned against each other and the birch tree like two overeager fourteen-year-olds.

  I tell you we can keep doing this later, but not inside, not around all those people. I tell you there’s a man inside who is sad, and I’m not sure if I’m telling you this to brag or to seem thoughtful or because I actually am thoughtful. Everything is blurry now, driven by impulse. For the rest of the evening we alternate between dancing with our friends and running out to the birch tree to kiss. These sessions become more intense as the night goes on. At one point we exchange phone numbers to make it simpler to set up our meetings by the birch tree.

  At one o’clock the party ends, and two buses transport us all back to Stockholm again. The two of us make sure to sit in the front seats of the bus that Sad Puppy Eyes is not on, and so I give myself full permission to kiss you passionately in the darkness. People are screaming drunkenly in the back. Between kisses, you make me listen to AC/DC in one of your headphones. I say I’m not a fan, and then ever so casually mention that I worked with the band a few times. The information doesn’t seem to impress you, you say, listen here, listen to this, and then you kiss me again. You lift me up and park me across your knees. I love being lifted by you, and I love sitting on your lap. Finally astride you.

  When the bus arrives an hour later I have a red rash from your stubble on my chin and cheeks. It’s been so long since I got together with anyone like this. We get off the bus and you want to come home with me. I won’t allow it. You ask again and get another no. You suggest I go home with you instead. Come on, you say, I just want to sleep next to you. No, I say, I’m sleeping alone tonight. I suppose I want to seem like the kind of person who doesn’t have sex on the first night. If we were to go home together that’s definitely what would happen. I don’t want that to happen. I do want that to happen. But more than that, I want there to be a next time for us.