Everything I Don't Remember (26 page)

*

Suddenly she snorts and wakes up, her eyes are wide open and she’s flailing her hands.

“No no no no. There will be none of that. How many times do I have to tell you? Let me go, let me go, I don’t want to, do you hear me, I don’t want to, let me out of
here.”

People are looking up from their phones, the security guards over by the information desk take a few steps in our direction. I meet their gazes, I try to calm her down, I take the photos out of
the plastic bag, graduation parties, family reunions, weddings, funerals. I remind her where we are, I say my name, I say her name, I say Mom’s name, I say her sons’ names. When she
finally calms down, she says:

“I want to go home now.”

*

The day after the fire, Samuel’s phone rang nonstop. After he put it on silent, the apartment kept buzzing with vibrations.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“Guess,” said Samuel.

But I didn’t have to guess, because soon the answer was standing in our stairwell. Samuel’s mom rang the doorbell and banged on the door and when I opened it she walked straight in
without removing her red down coat with the logo of the preschool where she worked.

Before I could respond she had walked into Samuel’s room and started chewing him out for making her worry needlessly. I stayed in the hall; her voice, which was usually shy and gentle as a
whisper, had taken on a new harshness. She said that the police had investigated what they were calling “the crime scene.”

“And apparently there were signs of a break-in,” she said. “It seems that someone, or several someones, got into Mom’s house and were living there. And according to the
neighbors it’s been going on for quite some time. Do you know anything about this, Samuel? It’s very, very important that you answer me honestly.”

Silence. If Samuel said anything in reply I didn’t hear what it was. Samuel’s mom went on.

“They say it’s going to cost around a million kronor to restore the house—that is, not renovate it, just to clean it up enough to sell it. I don’t know where we’re
going to get that kind of money from, I suppose we’ll have to try to take out another loan on the house. If that’s even possible. Svante might have some money saved up, but Kjell is
Kjell . . .”

Without knowing how Kjell was, I understood that these were her two brothers. Samuel walked into the kitchen, and his mom followed.

“What’s going to happen, my God, what are we supposed to do?”

As Samuel’s mom spoke, she walked around and around our apartment, sometimes she stopped to fold a T-shirt that was hanging on a chair or to throw away an apple core that had fallen onto
the kitchen floor. She did it without thinking, like a robot who had been performing certain motions for so many years that it couldn’t stop.

“We just have to cross our fingers that the homeowners’ insurance will cover something like this, do you think it will? Does this count as a break-in or something else?”

Samuel shrugged.

“If anyone from the insurance company calls it’s very important to make it clear that you didn’t know anything about this. Because you didn’t, right, Samuel? Tell me you
didn’t know anything about what was going on at Grandma’s house?”

And I watched as Samuel—who usually couldn’t lie without scratching his earlobe while he picked at his upper lip—looked his mom in the eye.

“I had no idea whatsoever.”

They looked at each other. Mother and son. For a long time. And it was like his mom understood something her son couldn’t put into words. She nodded. Samuel nodded. Then she left, and
Samuel said:

“Money, money, money, that’s all anyone thinks about.”

The coin doesn’t fall far from the vault, I thought.

*

We are sitting in the car. According to the parking receipt, the time is three minutes past three.

“Drive me home,” Grandma says.

“Your house is still there, just as you left it.”

“Please drive me home. That’s all I want.”

I start the engine and drive out of the parking lot.

“Are we going home now?”

“Mmhmm. Home to the home,” I say, putting on the Lars Roos CD. As we drive onto the highway I reach for the plastic bag in the back seat and take out the pink candy bowl that is
sometimes an antique and sometimes a project I made in school.

“Thanks,” she says, petting the bowl like a cat. “Where’s the lid?”

“You can have that next time.”

Grandma looks out the car window. A darkening sky, the faint silhouettes of a few birds.

“You have to understand that I don’t like it at the home. The windows are far too small. The bathroom is too close to the hall. The kitchen is an unpleasant color. The balcony makes
me dizzy. But still, the worst thing of all is the bed. It’s far too soft. I can hardly sleep in it.”

“But Grandma,” I say. “You brought the bed from home. It’s the same bed you used back in your house, isn’t it?”

“It’s still too soft.”

*

I told Samuel that there was a soul club night at East. DJ Taro was playing at Reisen. Tony Zoulias was spinning at Spy. Or should we swing by the pool in Bredäng? Go up to
the top of Kaknäs Tower? Do something, anything? But Samuel didn’t want to. He had a sore throat. He had to get up early. He didn’t have any money. Instead of doing things he went
to see his grandma at the dementia home. It was like the loss of the house reminded him that she existed.

“Is she happy there?” I asked.

“She hates it. More than ever. But she puts so much energy into hating it that I almost think it’s good for her.”

His grandma spent her days writing long, muddled letters to the editor in which the main idea was that she should be allowed to move back home and that her driver’s license ought to be
restored immediately and that school policy needed to be rewritten. Samuel sat beside her, agreeing with her monologues about how everything was wrong with immigration policy and the school system
and the EU. Only when she dissed his dad did Samuel contradict her, and that in itself was strange, because the things she said about his dad (that he had betrayed them, that he ought to be there
for his children, that no real man deserts his family) were things Samuel had said to me any number of times. But his grandma always added, “that’s what happens when you marry a
Muslim,” and Samuel couldn’t get on board with that because his dad was the least Muslim man he had ever met.

*

Out on the highway, Grandma asks how things are going with Vandad.

“Don’t you mean Laide? Laide is fine. She says hello.”

“And how is Vandad?”

“He’s fine too.”

We approach the city, we don’t say anything for a few minutes. Then Grandma turns to me and asks how things are with Vandad. I say that he’s still fine. On the way into town, Grandma
suddenly needs to pee. We stop at “Korv and Go” in Årsta, park the car, Grandma uses their bathroom, we pay five kronor and I stick the receipt in the car door. It’s
twenty-seven minutes past three and I have less than an hour left to live.

“Now where are we going?” Grandma asks.

“We have to go back now,” I say.

“Home?”

“Home. To the home.”

“What a shame.”

“Mmhmm.”

“But do you know what?”

“No.”

“We can do this tomorrow too, can’t we?”

“Mmhmm.”

“And the day after?”

“Mmhmm.”

“And do you know who will drive next time? Me.”

“No.”

“Oh yes. If I can only get the chance to take that test, why, I’ll show them what’s what. Easy as pie, said the baker to the baker’s son.”

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why did the baker say ‘easy as pie’ to his son?”

“How should I know? That’s just something we said when we were little.”

“More and more of them keep turning up.”

“What do?”

“Those expressions.”

“The older I get, the more I remember. That’s just one of the advantages of aging.”

She smiles, there are so many folds in her eyelids that she has to squint to see. As we approach the Liljeholmen bridge I pass three cars on the left.

“Now that’s more like it,” says Grandma.

*

Then there was some liar who thought it was important to tell Samuel about the fuss in Laide’s stairwell. This person changed two tiny shoves into an aggressive robbery.
This person said that it was Laide’s sister who was attacked, not Laide. Samuel came into my room and asked, his jaw tight, if I knew anything about this. I said no. Samuel asked again. I
explained that rumors were lies. I said that I had gone there to talk to Laide and then she pretended not to recognize me and then she attacked me, biting and kicking, and all I did was give her
two fairly puny shoves.

“It’s not my fault she tripped down the stairs.”

Samuel just looked at me. Then he went to his room and started packing his things into moving boxes.

“I just wanted to talk to her,” I said.

He didn’t respond.

“She started it.”

Samuel went to the bathroom to get his toothbrush.

“I don’t know what you heard—but it really wasn’t anything serious.”

Samuel said he’d heard other things as well, like that I had exaggerated my rent to get him to pay more (untrue). And that I had started extorting money from people in the house (also not
entirely true).

“Who told you that?” I said.

“Laide was fucking right,” Samuel mumbled. “You can’t trust anyone.”

When he wanted to leave, I stood in his way. He looked at me. The light in his eyes had gone out. I stepped aside. We parted. Not as enemies, but not as best friends either.

*

I speed up, cross the bridge, and zoom up to the home. All the parking spots are full, so I drive up to the entrance and help Grandma out of the passenger seat.

“You can’t park here,” Grandma says.

“It’s fine. We’ll be quick.”

I empty the plastic bag into her suitcase. The photos and perfume bottles, Grandpa’s fur cap and the Lars Roos CD with the see-through grand piano. Then I follow her to the front door. I
remember the mnemonic and enter the code.

“Did everything go well?” asks an aide I don’t recognize.

“Not too bad,” Grandma says.

“Oh my, what happened?”

“It’s not a big deal,” Grandma says, waving her foot.

“Ingrown nails,” I say.

We hug, I kiss her on the cheek, it’s rough and full of liver spots, she smells like Grandma, she will always smell like Grandma, which is adult diapers and old-lady perfume and Emser
lozenges and a faint hint of Vademecum.

“Thanks for our day,” I say.

“That’s nothing to thank me for.”

I leave. I take the elevator down. Then I discover her suitcase and turn back. When I walk into the TV room she looks at me, throws out her arms, and cries:

“At last! I’ve been waiting so long!”

I hand over her suitcase, stand there for a few seconds. She wrinkles up her face.

“Well? If you’re waiting for a tip you’re wasting your time. I don’t have any change.”

When I get back to the car there’s a parking ticket on the windshield. It was written at five minutes to four. I curse, stuff the ticket into my wallet, and start the car.

*

That was the last time I saw Samuel. Although after the funeral I still saw him. Everywhere. I mean, not people who look like him, but
him
, I saw Samuel. For real. The
real Samuel was walking around the streets of Stockholm. He was sitting at a cafe on Götgatan wearing a turquoise tank top, he was rushing by on an escalator and carrying a large kite, he was
driving a silvery Citroën with rusty back tires as he spoke into one of those old-fashioned Bluetooth headsets that sits on your ear. And if it had been a movie I would have walked up and
discovered that it wasn’t him at all, that it was someone else, an actor with similar features, but here, every time, I noticed that I looked away until the person had disappeared. I had no
choice, it was like my body wanted to let me believe that he was still alive, that he was walking around with kites and driving Citroëns and sitting in cafes in turquoise tank tops.

*

I approach the place where it will happen, I exit the roundabout, I pass the gas station, the superstore, the McDonald’s drive-in. I’m not going terribly fast. I
don’t recklessly try to pass any other cars. No one sees me, no one notices me. None of the oncoming cars have gone past the tree and thought, soon, right here, a car will go flying as if its
driver has decided that the road should keep going straight ahead even though it curves to the left.

*

A few weeks after the funeral I heard Samuel’s voice. I was walking by Medborgarplatsen, I passed the lawn with the drummers and the drunks and the junkies and the
class-cutting students and it’s not a place that has any link to Samuel at all. I had made it to, like, the fountain, and a few Roma were washing their clothes in the water, it was soapy, a
couple of kids were cooling their feet, their mom was trying to get them to come back to their double stroller, the air smelled like grilled eggplant, a dog owner was sitting on a bench eating a
popsicle with its paper peeled down like a banana, it was very normal, nothing was special, and suddenly I heard Samuel call my name. It’s true, I heard his voice, it sounded part happy, part
annoyed, as if he had noticed me ages ago and was grumpy because he thought I had walked right by him, playing blind, as if we had decided to meet in this very spot and I had shown up twenty
minutes late without calling.

*

I stop at the red light, I wait, I rev the engine, I think about Vandad, I think about Laide, I think about the house, I think about Grandma, I try to figure out how I feel, I
tell myself I’m sad, I look at myself in the rear-view mirror, I try to cry, I try to squeeze out a few tears, but all I see is that blank face, that false body that has never felt a genuine
emotion, that has never burst out in rage without considering it first, that has never kissed someone without thinking about how the kiss will look to outsiders, that is still waiting for emotion
to win out over control someday, and when the red light turns green I put the pedal to the metal, I drive far too fast through the intersection, I pass the crosswalk going seventy, I take the first
curve at ninety, whatever’s going to happen it has to happen now, I have to feel something, something has to make it in, it all can’t just keep trickling through, and when the road
curves left I go straight, I didn’t plan it, it just happens, as the road stops and the car approaches the tree I’m still thinking, it’s fine, there’s no problem, my
seatbelt must be good enough, the airbag will fix this, the hood of the car is hard, the tree is skinny, I don’t have any last thoughts, no last wishes, no flood of memories from my
childhood, all I see is Panther putting on a turquoise turban and asking if I can tell it’s a towel, Grandma putting out her right hand and introducing herself, Laide looking up from the
editorial page of
Dagens Nyheter
and roaring, “Have you read this piece of shit?” Vandad eating up the last slice of his two pizzas and asking if I’ve ever been in love
with someone for real.