The green piece of paper was still there on the call box, partly obscuring the name Ekman. One corner of the paper curled outward in the heat. With her fingernail she started to peel the tape up so she could reposition it over the paper but she stopped herself.
The stairwell was dark. Someone in an apartment on the ground floor was playing music very loudly. The volume faded as she climbed the stairs. By the second floor, she could no longer recognize the song.
She set her purse on the kitchen counter. The bottles clinked. Her purse muffled the sound. It was two, according to the oven clock. Martin was at work. That evening he was going out with colleagues to celebrate his retirement. They were taking him to a karaoke bar. She didn’t expect him to be home until late. Martin was retiring early. They didn’t need the money and he was bored with work. She opened one of the bottles of wine and poured herself a glass. Sometimes she worried she was damaging her health. The music was still playing and it seeped clearly into the kitchen. She took her wine to the balcony and sat looking out over the courtyard. The curtains in Barbro Ekman’s apartment were drawn and the apartment was dark. A new song came on, one she recognized. She mouthed along to a few words of the chorus, took a sip of her wine. The wine tasted good and the song reminded her of someplace nice. She couldn’t place the memory exactly, but the song made her think of the outdoors, of a beautiful view. There were trees and snow. Maybe the song had been on the radio frequently during a trip they’d once taken. The stairwell light flickered.
In the apartment just below Barbro Ekman’s place lived a woman named Johanna. Her two sons were grown now. One of them played ice hockey in America, somewhere in the southern states, Louise thought, North Carolina maybe. The other was a lawyer up north in Kiruna. Louise remembered when the family first moved in. Now the boys were grown, though they’d seemed so young when they first arrived. That was right before Louise had gotten pregnant with Jonas. She liked the family. She’d helped the boys plant a small herb garden on her own balcony because it faced east and got good morning sun.
Once, about a month before Jonas was born, Johanna had asked Louise to come sit with the older of her sons. The younger one was very sick, and Johanna hadn’t wanted to take them both to the hospital. Louise wasn’t feeling well herself and didn’t want to get sick with whatever the boy had. So she volunteered Martin to go in her place.
After barely an hour, he came back. She heard his footsteps in the hall outside their apartment. She heard the front door open and Martin’s heavy steps as he walked back to the bedroom. He was tired, he told her, and had forgotten to take a book to read.
“Who’s watching him?” she asked. “Has Johanna come back?” The bed was warm and comfortable, and Martin’s silhouette in the doorway appeared much larger than he actually was.
“I need to find my book,” he said.
“They have books there,” she said. “And a television.”
“I’m tired, Louise,” he said. The shadow of her husband stepped out of the doorway and disappeared into the hall. She heard a door open and close, then another. Then the airy creak of leather as he settled himself down into his chair in the living room.
She got out of bed and wrapped herself in her robe. It had happened many times since, but this was the first time she could remember hating her husband. Over the years that became such a familiar, even comfortable, feeling. It was cold out and she crossed the courtyard as quickly as she could. She was careful to avoid an icy patch where the shadow from a first-floor balcony kept the ground wet even in the warmest part of the day. Before she’d reached the door to the other building, a gust of wind blew and she felt the chill on her bare legs.
She could remember so much about that evening but not what the problem with the boy had been. She couldn’t recall Johanna coming home. But she remembered distinctly waking up on Johanna’s couch, her throat and stomach on fire with heartburn and hatred for Martin. The next time she saw Johanna, she’d ask about that night. We inhabit memories so differently from one another. Or, better, our individual memories of a shared event mean such different things to each of us. It had something to do with identity, she supposed, but she didn’t feel like chasing after the thought any further.
She spent the rest of the afternoon on the balcony or else on the narrow, soft couch in the sitting room, reading. Days passed quickly when she drank. By five o’clock the sun had dipped behind the building to the west and the temperature dropped. Louise had nearly finished the first bottle of wine. When her neighbors started to arrive home after the workday, she went inside and sat at the kitchen island. She was careful about appearances. Sometimes she threw away bottles instead of taking them to the recycling because she didn’t want her neighbors to see how much she drank.
She fixed herself something to eat and opened the second bottle of wine. She watched the news while she ate. Dusk settled over the courtyard and by eight it was dark. She shut the television off and took a thin blanket from the couch and returned to the balcony. She wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. Outside the apartment, she could smell her own inside life distinctly on the blanket. The courtyard was dark. She tried to find a pattern in the lit-up windows on the building opposite. Two dark, one light. Three light, one dark, three light. Windows lit up and darkened and she could never get past a third position in the pattern and soon gave up trying and enjoyed the evening. Occasionally, the building’s front door would open loudly and slam shut. The hall light switched on and then off with every neighbor who came home or left. She heard voices, a television, laughter. Barbro Ekman’s apartment was still dark.
She was the one who’d ended things with Arman. She’d gotten pregnant and the idea that the baby might be his had frightened her. Of course, the timing wasn’t quite right. The last time she’d slept with Arman was weeks before the likely conception date. She’d been relieved to understand this when the midwife circled the estimated due date on the colorful chart she held in front of Louise and Martin in the cramped exam room at the thirteen-week checkup. Louise felt as if she’d risked something great and survived. The chances of that happening twice were small. She hadn’t told Arman she was pregnant. It was better that he didn’t know. Just after the birth, the first time she held Jonas against her chest, she felt the sticky wetness of her own blood on his body, she touched his hair. It was dark, curled wet with blood and amniotic fluid. Until the midwife had washed him and given him back to her, she was terrified that perhaps Jonas was Arman’s after all, that she’d miscalculated some crucial fact.
The heavy front door of the building creaked open. The light in the front hall came on. It sparked out into the courtyard, revealing a chair and the sharp contrasts of shadowed corners. The door slammed shut. She listened to footsteps in the stairwell. Her wine glass was empty and she got up to fill it. In the warmth of the apartment, she felt a chill in her feet. She filled her glass and held the bottle up in front of her to check how much wine was left. Just over half.
She took the bottle with her back to the balcony and sat in the darkness. She was warm and didn’t need the blanket. The lights in Barbro Ekman’s apartment had been turned on. Through the curtains, she saw movement. She watched the windows closely. There were three, spaced evenly from one end of the building to the other. Kitchen, living room, bedroom. There was a bathroom and a small dining room on the other side of the apartment. She knew this because she’d once been inside, years before, to help Barbro Ekman move a painting from the hall to the bedroom. Barbro Ekman had been dead for eight months. She was a young ghost. Louise watched the figure move from window to window, its dark shape heavy in the living room where the light was brightest, faint in the bedroom.