“In two days.”
“That’ll be nice, won’t it.”
“Yes, it will.”
Dad snatched a glance at himself in the mirror. His face was calm, but there was a visible shadow of displeasure in his eyes, they seemed cold and apathetic. He took a step toward Grandma, who turned to climb the stairs, lightly and nimbly. Dad followed, heavy-limbed, and I brought up the rear, eyes fixed on the thick, black hair at the back of his neck.
“Well, I’ll be darned!” Grandad said as we entered the kitchen. He was sitting on a chair by the table, leaning back with legs apart, black suspenders over a white shirt buttoned up to the neck. Over his face hung a lock of hair that he pushed back into place with his hand. From his mouth hung an unlit cigarette.
“How were the roads?” he asked. “Icy?”
“They weren’t so bad,” Dad said. “Worse on New Year’s Eve. And there was no traffic to speak of either.”
“Sit yourselves down,” Grandma said.
“No, then there’s no room for you,” Dad said.
“I’ll stand,” she said. “I have to heat your food up anyway. I sit all day, I do, you know. Come on, sit down!”
Grandad held a lighter to his cigarette and lit up. Puffed a few times, blew smoke into the room.
Grandma switched on the burners, drummed her fingers on the counter and whistled softly, as was her wont.
In a way Dad was too big to sit at the kitchen table, I thought. Not physically, there was plenty of room for him, it was more that he looked out of place. There was something about him, or whatever he radiated, that distanced itself from this table.
He took out a cigarette and lit it.
Would he have fit better in the living room? If we had been eating in there?
Yes, he would. That would have been better.
“So it’s 1985,” I said to break the silence that had already lasted seconds.
“Yes, s’pose it is, my boy,” Grandma said.
“What have you done with your brother?” Grandad said. “Is he back in Bergen?”
“No, he’s still in Arendal,” I said.
“Ah yes,” Grandad said. “He’s become a real Arendal boy, he has.”
“Yes, he doesn’t come by here so often any more,” Grandma said. “We had such fun when he was small.”
She looked at me.
“But you come though.”
“What is it he’s studying now?” Grandad asked.
“Isn’t it political science?” Dad wondered, looking at me.
“No, he’s just started media studies,” I said.
“Don’t you know what your own son’s studying?” Grandad smiled.
“Yes, I do. I know very well,” Dad said. He stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray and turned to Grandma. “I think it’ll be ready now, Mother. It doesn’t have to be scalding hot. It must be hot enough by now, don’t you think?”
“Probably,” Grandma said, and fetched two plates from a cupboard, placed them before us, took cutlery from a drawer and put it beside the plates.
“I’ll do it this way today,” she said, picking up Dad’s plate and filling it with potatoes, creamed peas, rissoles, and gravy.
“That looks good,” Dad said as she put his plate down in front of him and took mine.
The only two people I knew who ate as fast as me were Yngve and Dad. Our plates had hardly been put in front of us before they were picked clean. Dad leaned back and lit another cigarette, Grandma poured a cup of coffee and handed it to him, I got up and went into the living room, looked across the town with all its glittering lights, the gray, almost black, snow piled up against the walls of the warehouses along the quay. The harbor lights rippled across the shiny, pitch-black surface of the water.
For a moment I was filled with the sensation of white snow against black water. The way the whiteness erases all the detail around a lake or a river in the forest so that the difference between land and water is absolute, and the water lies there as a deeply alien entity, a black hole in the world.
I turned. The second living room was two steps higher than the one I was in and separated by a sliding door. The door was half-open and I went up, not for any particular reason, I was simply restless. This was the fancy room, they used it only for special occasions, we had never been allowed in there alone.
A piano stood adjacent to one wall, above it hung two paintings with Old Testament motifs. On the piano were three graduation photographs of the sons. Dad, Erling, and Gunnar. It was always strange to see Dad without a beard. He was smiling with the black graduation cap perched jauntily at the back of his head. His eyes shone with pleasure.
In the middle of the floor there were two sofas, one on either side of a table. In the corner at the very back of the room, which was dominated by two black leather sofas and an antique rose-painted corner cabinet, there was a white fireplace.
“Karl Ove?” Dad shouted from the kitchen.
I quickly took the four paces to the everyday living room and answered.
“Are we going?”
“Yes.”
When I entered the kitchen he was already on his feet.
“Take care,” I said. “Bye.”
“You take care,” Grandad said. As always, Grandma came down with us.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Dad said when we were in the hall putting on our coats and scarves. “I’ve got something for you.”
He went out, opened and closed the car door, and then returned carrying a parcel which he passed to her.
“Many happy returns, Mother,” he said.
“Oh, you shouldn’t have!” Grandma said. “Goodness me. You shouldn’t buy presents for me, dear!”
“Yes, I should,” Dad said. “Come on. Open it!”
I didn’t know where to look. There was something intimate about all this, which I had not witnessed before and had no idea existed.
Grandma stood with a tablecloth in her hand.
“My, how beautiful!” she exclaimed.
“I thought it would match the wallpaper upstairs,” Dad said. “Can you see that?”
“Lovely,” Grandma said.
“Well,” Dad said in a tone that precluded any further embellishments, “we’ll be off now.”
We got into the car, Dad started the engine, and a cascade of light struck the garage door. Grandma waved goodbye from the steps as we reversed down the little slope. As always, she closed the door behind her when we were turning, and by the time we drove onto the main road she was gone.
In the next days I occasionally thought about the little episode in the hall, and my feeling was the same every time: I had seen something I shouldn’t have seen. But it passed quickly; I wasn’t exactly concerned with Dad and Grandma, so much else was happening during those weeks. In the first lesson of the new school year Siv handed out an invitation to everyone, she was going to have a class party the following Saturday, and this was good news, a class party was something I was entitled to attend, where no one could accuse me of trying to gate-crash, and where familiarity with the others could be extended into the wider world, which in class enabled me to come quite close to behaving in ways consistent with the person I really was. In short, I would be able to drink, dance, laugh, and perhaps pin someone against a wall somewhere. On the other hand, class parties had lower status precisely for that reason, it wasn’t the kind of party you were invited to because of who you were but rather where you were, in this case class 1B. However, I didn’t allow that to sour my pleasure. A party was not just a party, even if it was that too. The problem of acquiring alcohol was the same as before New Year’s Eve, and I considered whether to call Tom again, but decided it was best to risk it myself. I may have been only sixteen but I looked older, and if I acted normally no one would even think of refusing me. If they did, it would be embarrassing, but that was all and I would still be able to ask Tom to organize it. So, on the Wednesday I went to the supermarket, put twelve lagers in my cart, with bread and tomatoes as alibis, queued up, put them on the conveyor belt, handed the checkout-girl the money, she took it without so much as a glance at me, and I hurried excitedly home with a clinking plastic bag in each hand.