The Family Clause Read online

  She stares at him. He has taken a carton of ice cream out of the freezer. He struggles to scoop any out, the spoon bends, he bends it back. Dad came by, too. He says it as though it isn’t a big deal. That’s great, she says. Did you get a chance to talk? I tried. But it’s so hard with him. The minute I stop driving the conversation, he stops talking. She nods. They don’t speak. She wonders how much of his father is in him, how much of her mother is in her. I brought up the father clause, he says. Ouch, she says. I told him this was the last time he could stay at the office. Really? He nods. I’m going to take the keys back before he leaves.

  They are standing in the kitchen they share. The tea is going to get cold. The ice cream is going to melt. The wooden floor is covered in dried-on traces of the one-year-old: spongy segments of mandarin and soggy pieces of sweetcorn. The father suddenly looks so small. She looks at him and sees a thirteen-year-old boy, coming into the youth centre with new headphones and grades that are slightly too high, fighting desperately to hide his fear of the older boys at the billiards table. She sees a nineteen-year-old who hasn’t spoken to his father in several years and who decides to study economics in the hope that his father won’t be disappointed if and when they re-establish contact. She sees a twenty-nine-year-old hunched over his computer with his phone to his ear, following his father’s instructions to transfer money between different accounts, never asking why the father doesn’t call him on his birthday. She sees a thirty-three-year-old standing in the maternity ward the day after their daughter was born, scrolling through all of the numbers for his father that he has saved on his phone, not knowing which one to message, which is the most recent, which he is most likely to get a response from.

  Shall we sit down? she asks. He nods. They go into the living room and sit on the sofa. He takes a sip of tea. You haven’t done anything wrong, she says. You give him somewhere to stay whenever he comes to Sweden, you take care of his post. And banking. And you book his flights. But I’m the eldest son, he says. What difference does that make? she asks. I’m the eldest son, he repeats. And I got to take over the lease on the small flat. But wasn’t he moving abroad? she says. He left the country, didn’t he? Yeah, the son says, clearing his throat. But he still came back at least twice a year. And then he took the bed and I slept on the sofa bed. But you paid the rent? Of course. And it was you who bought the place when it became part of a cooperative? He nods. Why didn’t he buy it? He refused. He didn’t want a mortgage. He was convinced that the whole thing was a swindle. When he found out that the place would cost over a million, he said that the banks were out to cheat ordinary, honourable people out of their money. He said that anyone who went along with buying their flat would be in debt for life. So how were you able to buy it? she asks. Dad signed a document that enabled the sale to go through, he says. And then the years passed. I lived there other than when he came to visit, when he stayed there instead. Then I sold it when we were moving here. And he’s stayed at the office ever since. Well, that’s been pretty painless, hasn’t it? she asks. Absolutely, he says. Like a dream. No problems at all. They smile at one another. They both know what kind of state the office is usually in after the father leaves. She had once tried to go over there to help him clean, but he refused to let her in. I don’t want you to see this, he said. Instead, they went down to the Indian restaurant in the square and ate lunch. It almost feels like he’s deliberately trying to destroy everything I have, said the son. Imagine if that’s what he’s doing, said the girlfriend.

  Many years later, they are sitting side by side in the living room that they share. The children have been sleeping solidly for an hour. She strokes his face. He twists her hair around his fingers. Without noticing, they move closer. Want to watch something? she says. He nods. They put on a documentary. They are lying side by side. They have trouble focusing on the documentary. She turns off the lights, he fetches condoms. They have sex on the sofa. The one-year-old wakes up, but manages to doze off again on his own. They look at one another and smile. Maybe this is a turning point. From now on, maybe the children will start going to sleep on their own, and they can find their way back to one another.

  Afterwards, he says: do you know what I’m doing on Wednesday? A big shop ahead of the birthday party? she says. Almost. I’m going to try out stand-up. Pardon? she says. Stand-up comedy, he says with a smile. I’m going to try out stand-up. There’s a bar in Söder that has an open mic night on Wednesdays. She takes a deep breath. They’ve been here before. Every time a difficult client sends in a plastic bag of unsorted receipts, he comes home muttering about how he is meant to be doing something else with his life. But what? That’s the question.

  Early on in their relationship, she used to make suggestions. Why don’t you take up climbing again? she said. No chance, he said. That’s a closed chapter. Then how about music? she suggested. I’m almost thirty, he said. What are my chances of breaking through as a producer now? Writing, then. Why don’t you give writing a chance, once and for all? He didn’t reply. I’m serious, she said. Is there anything that makes you happier than reading a good book? Eh, that was just an embarrassing teenage dream, he said.

  The next weekend, they went to a military-themed art exhibition on Skeppsholmen. Camouflaged soldiers hidden in the crowns of the trees, dramatically illuminated white cubes containing transparent weapons along the quay. Maybe I should do an evening class in the history of art, he said on the way home. It would be fun to curate exhibitions. Do it, she said. Can’t hurt to try. A few weeks later, he helped a friend design a website. That evening, he decided that he could expand his business to offer clients both accountancy and great value web design. Good idea, she said. Go for it. Over the summer, he bought a starter set for brewing beer at home. He filled the bathroom with fermentation buckets, pans, thermometers and beer kits. He spent several weeks brainstorming names to write on the homemade labels. Then she came home one day to find the buckets and pans gone. She never asked what had happened to them. Just like she never criticised his enthusiasm. She wanted nothing more than for him to find his passion in life, because she knew how painful it was to wander around in a body that lacked focus.

  But stand-up? Why stand-up? I’ve listened to a lot of stand-up while I’ve been on paternity leave, he says. It’s such pure storytelling. I know exactly what my persona’s going to be on stage. I’m going to borrow so-and-so’s intensity and so-and-so’s political points. Then I’m going to sprinkle it with so-and-so’s words of wisdom and so-and-so’s meta-levels. He mentions the names of comedians she has never even heard of. She stares at him like he is speaking in tongues. Does this have something to do with your dad? she asks. Not at all, he says. It really doesn’t. Not everything is about him, you know.

  She wonders who the person lying naked next to her is. It’s going to be fun to try out some new material on Wednesday, he says. New material? she asks. Do you even have any old material? And don’t we normally do a big shop on Wednesdays? I’ll do it afterwards, he says. The aim is to get a laugh every tenth second. Set-up. Punchline. Set-up. Punchline. I’m going to open with a joke about cars. Everyone can relate to cars, they’re a bit like families. He wraps an arm around her. But you don’t need to turn down new clients to try out stand-up, you know, she whispers. I know, he says. But being on paternity leave has made me re-evaluate what’s important in life.

  She gets up from the sofa. Don’t you think I’ve got what it takes? he asks. Of course you have, she says. I’m just worried that you’re running away from what you should be doing. Which is? he asks. Rather than answering, she heads into the bathroom. The one-year-old’s dirty nappies have been stacked in a pile so high that the lid of the pedal bin is raised. The bin bag inside has slipped down. Before long, someone will have to reach down among the cold, damp, pee-soaked nappies and try to coax the bag back up. Someone will have to close off their throat with their tongue to avoid throwing up, someone will then have to tiptoe out into the sta
irwell and throw the bag straight down the rubbish chute. She has a strong suspicion this someone will be her. But not now. She turns around and heads for the bigger bathroom instead.

  She pees and takes out her contact lenses. May as well do it now. So she doesn’t have to do it next to him. The man sitting out there, waiting to tell her more about the content of his first ‘tight five’, which is apparently the name of a five-minute stand-up routine. This is a phase, she tells her reflection in the mirror. You’ll both soon be laughing about this. You’ll look back at your message history from these years and realise that you were crazy from the lack of sleep, that you couldn’t see clearly, and you’ll be grateful you didn’t ruin what had started so beautifully.

  As she takes off her makeup and brushes her teeth, she thinks back to the first time she saw him, at the climbing centre by Telefonplan. She and her friends had been messing around with safety lines, trying to make it to the top of a beginners’ wall. From the corner of one eye, she saw a shadow-like figure chalking his hands, cracking his neck and racing up a vertical wall. She could hardly believe what she was seeing. It was incomprehensible that someone so spindly could move straight upwards like that, without any ropes whatsoever. When he reached the top, he let go and dropped down to the crash mat below. He walked off to the changing room without meeting her eye.

  The first time they spoke was at a housewarming party. The apartment was cramped, everyone holding their punch glasses in the air to avoid staining their best clothes, a strategy that was only so effective, given that the glasses kept colliding mid-air, staining everyone’s best clothes. Music was blaring from the living room, the kitchen counter was covered in plastic glasses, people had started smoking inside and the floor was sticky with spilled drinks. She found an empty seat in the kitchen and looked up. There he was. On the other side of the table. With precisely as few people around him as her. They nodded to one another. We met at the climbing centre, she shouted. Or I saw you there, anyway. Very possible, he shouted back. But it must’ve been a while ago, because I’ve stopped climbing now. He explained that he had been in a qualification round for a bouldering competition, he had been close to winning, but then he pulled a muscle in his groin and had to drop out. Bad luck, she said. I know, he said. She showed him her scars from handball injuries. And the scar from being bitten by a dog in Spain. He told her that he’d a fish tank of guppies and swordfish when he was little, but they all died one summer, possibly because he had fed them too much (or too little – though he thought it was too much), and, rather than buying new fish, his parents had simply emptied the water from the tank and bought stick insects instead, or what his father claimed were stick insects, but since they moved so little he still suspected that they were actually just ordinary sticks. She told him about the twins at her school who had begged their parents for a cat, but who had been given a micro pig since the mother was allergic. The twins had walked their pig around the yard on a purple lead, and it was small and black and soft and incredibly sweet. But the little pig had an enormous appetite. It grew and grew. It soon turned out that the micro pig was in fact an ordinary pig. The twins walked around the tarmacked yard with a grunting, drooling, 120-kilo sow that terrified the children and ate all the plants. There were rumours it had once attacked an Alsatian. They talked about where they had grown up, how every yard had its own identity, how people who could imagine living in a house rather than an apartment must be crazy, because they didn’t realise that any old stranger could walk straight up and smash a window and climb inside.

  She got up slightly too quickly when her then-boyfriend came into the kitchen. She followed him out to the living room, he plied her with more punch and she took one glass and then another. She downed the first and didn’t touch the second. They danced on the slippery floor. Admit that the punch was good, her boyfriend shouted. When it was time to leave, she went out to the hallway without looking back at the kitchen. Everyone’s coats were in a heap on the bed. They got ready, her boyfriend needed help putting on his coat, they headed towards the stairwell, she didn’t want to look into the kitchen, but the last thing she did was walk in an unnecessary semi-circle to see whether he was still in there. He was. He raised his glass to her and smiled. She smiled back. In the taxi, she tried to tell herself that it was just a perfectly ordinary meeting, that it didn’t mean a thing, that normal people have that kind of conversation with strangers at parties all the time without there being any consequences.

  She wouldn’t get in touch with him. She was happy in her current relationship. She looked at her boyfriend and made a mental list of everything she liked about him. The fact he was so comfortable in his chubby body. The fact he seemed to have no desire whatsoever to learn the lyrics to the songs he sang in the shower. The fact he wasn’t ashamed of having been high up in the Sverok role-play association when he was younger. He didn’t go through life with a constant sense that there should be more to it. He was satisfied. And that wonderful feeling infected her. Being with him was like a respite from herself.

  Three days later, she was at the office, writing a report about the appeal being made against an acquittal in an occupational safety case. A worker had died while carrying out his usual duties on a continuous casting machine in Smedjebacken. The task of ‘changing the starting pin’ was carried out manually, with the worker climbing into the machine as 900-degree steel strands slowly passed overhead. For reasons that remained unclear, the worker, who was carrying out the task alone, became trapped beneath one of the steel strands and died as a result of having been exposed to intense heat. The district court ruled that while the risk assessment that had been carried out was unsatisfactory, the link between this risk assessment and the tragic outcome was not strong enough for a conviction, and honestly, it’s completely insane, the bloody nerve of these bosses, one of their workers dies because they’re too cheap to employ more people and they won’t even consider turning off their 900-degree death machine for long enough for the bloody pin bastard or whatever it’s called to be changed, but whatever: see you in court, bitches! She paused. She deleted everything after ‘conviction’. She finished off the report and sent it to her boss. Then she discovered the email from the man who would become the father of her children. She read his words. She glanced up from the screen to check whether anyone had seen her blush. She read the message again. And again. Before long, she knew it by heart. She decided not to reply. Yes, he could climb a vertical wall. He had kind eyes. He wrote witty emails. They’d had a fun conversation at a noisy housewarming party. But you could have fun conversations with any number of people. She was happy with her systems scientist. She didn’t want to risk anything.

  Three weeks later, she replied. She wrote that she couldn’t see him. She composed the email on her work computer, then she saved it as a draft and sent it from her mobile, to make it look like she had finally found time to reply, like she had been standing on an empty metro platform with nothing better to do, like she had suddenly realised it would be rude not to reply. He wrote back immediately. He asked why they couldn’t meet. She replied that he knew why. He replied. She replied. He replied. She replied. Two weeks later, she was hooked on his messages. She checked her inbox every third minute. She blushed in lifts. She laughed out loud on buses. She read his words and found herself clutching her phone to her chest and smiling in a way that made old women on the metro smile back, as though they understood exactly what was going on but promised not to reveal it to anyone.

  They sent songs, pictures, links. They agreed never to meet, because if they did they would have to get married, and if they got married their uncles would get drunk, their cousins would start knife fights, their paternal grandmothers would moan about the other side of the family’s taste in clothing. And their fathers would, well, what would they do? I’d have to bribe mine with a plane ticket and taxi ride just to get him to turn up, he wrote. Mine would pull up in his Volvo and refuse to leave until the bar was dry and
the food was all gone, she wrote. What the hell is it with fathers from our parents’ generation? he wrote. Seriously. Who broke them? Why is it that no one in my circle of friends has a normal relationship with their father? What is a normal relationship? she wrote. I don’t know anyone who has a normal relationship with anyone, especially not their parents. And how normal is this relationship? he wrote. Normal enough, she replied. Every new email became an opening to something bigger. The feeling of clinging on to an invisible frisbee and casting themselves away from reality. The feeling of coming close to something that transforms a person into a better version of themselves. I’m not really this funny, one of them wrote after two months. Me neither, replied the other. Who wrote what is unimportant, because they had already started to merge together.

  When they finally met, it was too late. They were made for one another. Their parents and parents’ parents and parents’ parents’ parents had begun talking at that student party after that trip to the cinema in that demonstration at that bar over that breakfast table in that park, in order to guarantee, one day, that these two would meet, right there, right then. They met on the rocks by the water in Gröndal. He arrived first, to make sure no one who looked like they could be a friend of her ex was hiding in the bushes. Once the coast was clear, he sent her a message. She spotted him from a distance. He had the sun in his eyes. Expectation in his smile. The breeze in his hair. She had brought sweet things and dressing, he had brought salad. But unfortunately, he explained, he didn’t know how to make salad. He had thought that the best salads were made by throwing together as many ingredients as possible. In the bottom of his canvas bag, beneath the napkins, the metal cutlery, the plates and a thermos of coffee, was the box of salad that had become a barely edible sludge with the density of a brick. He opened it and showed her. It really did contain everything. Red onion and pomegranate, sugar snap peas and beetroot, beans and broccoli. Neither of them touched the salad. Not because it was disgusting, but because they didn’t have time. They had to talk about everything they hadn’t talked about until now.