Britt-Marie Was Here (2 page)

The girl offers her a pen and says something to the effect of, “Actually I don’t have time tomorrow,” but Britt-Marie is too busy peering at the pen to hear what she’s saying.

“Surely we can’t write lists in
ink
?” she bursts out.

“That’s all I’ve got.” The girl says this with some finality. “Is there anything else I can help you with today, Britt-Marie?”

“Ha,” Britt-Marie responds after a moment.

Britt-Marie often says that. “Ha.” Not as in “ha-ha” but as in “aha,” spoken in a particularly disappointed tone. Like when you find a wet towel thrown on the bathroom floor.

“Ha.” Immediately after saying this, Britt-Marie always firmly closes her mouth, to emphasize this is the last thing she intends to say on the subject. Although it rarely is the last thing.

The girl hesitates. Britt-Marie grasps the pen as if it’s sticky. Looks at the list marked “Tuesday” in her notebook, and, at the top, above “Cleaning” and “Shopping,” she writes “Unemployment office to contact me.”

She hands back the pen.

“It was very nice to meet you,” says the girl robotically. “We’ll be in touch!”

“Ha,” says Britt-Marie with a nod.

Britt-Marie leaves the unemployment office. The girl is obviously under the impression that this is the last time they’ll meet, because she’s unaware of how scrupulously Britt-Marie sticks to her lists. Clearly the girl has never seen Britt-Marie’s balcony.

It’s an astonishingly, astonishingly presentable balcony.

It’s January outside, a winter chill in the air but no snow on the ground—below freezing without any evidence of it being so. The very worst time of year for balcony plants.

After leaving the unemployment office, Britt-Marie goes to a supermarket that is not her usual supermarket, where she buys everything on her list. She doesn’t like shopping on her own, because she doesn’t like pushing the shopping cart. Kent always pushes the shopping cart while Britt-Marie walks at his side and holds on to a corner of it. Not because she’s trying to steer, only that she likes holding on to things while he is also holding on to them. For the sake of that feeling they are going somewhere at the same time.

She eats her dinner cold at exactly six o’clock. She’s used to sitting up all night waiting for Kent, so she tries to put his portion in the fridge. But the only fridge here is full of very small bottles of alcohol. She lowers herself onto a bed that isn’t hers, while rubbing her ring finger, a habit she falls into when she’s nervous.

A few days ago she was sitting on her own bed, spinning her wedding ring, after cleaning the mattress extra carefully with baking soda. Now she’s rubbing the white mark on her skin where the ring used to be.

The building has an address, but it’s certainly neither a place to live nor a home. On the floor are two rectangular plastic boxes for balcony flowers, but the hostel room doesn’t have a balcony. Britt-Marie has no one to sit up all night waiting for.

But she sits up anyway.

T
he unemployment office opens at 9:00. Britt-Marie waits until 9:02 before going in, because she doesn’t want to seem pigheaded.

“You were supposed to contact me today,” she announces, not at all pigheadedly, when the girl opens her office door.

“What?” the girl exclaims, her face entirely liberated from any kind of positive emotion. She is surrounded by similarly dressed people clutching plastic mugs. “Erm, look, we’re just about to begin a meeting. . . .”

“Oh, right. I suppose it’s important?” says Britt-Marie, adjusting a crease in her skirt that only she can see.

“Well, yes . . .”

“And I’m not important, of course.”

The girl contorts herself as if her clothes have suddenly changed size.

“You know, I told you yesterday I’d be in touch if something turned up. I never said it would be tod—”

“But I’ve put it on the list,” says Britt-Marie, producing her notebook and pointing at it determinedly. “I wouldn’t have put it on the list if you hadn’t said it, you must understand that. And you made me write it in ink!”

The girl takes a deep breath. “Look, I’m very sorry if there’s been a misunderstanding, but I have to go back to my meeting.”

“Maybe you’d have more time to find people jobs if you didn’t spend your days in meetings?” observes Britt-Marie as the girl shuts the door.

Britt-Marie is left on her own in the corridor. She notes there are two stickers on the girl’s door, just under the handle. At a height where a child would put them. Both have soccer balls on them. This reminds her of Kent, because Kent loves soccer. He loves soccer in a way that nothing else in his life can live up to. He loves soccer even more than he loves telling everyone how much something costs after he’s bought it.

During the big soccer championships, the crossword supplements are replaced by special soccer sections, and after that it’s hardly possible to get a sensible word out of Kent. If Britt-Marie asks what he wants for dinner, he just mumbles that it doesn’t matter, without even taking his eyes off the page.

Britt-Marie has never forgiven soccer for that. For taking Kent away from her, and for depriving her of her crossword supplement.

She rubs the white mark on her ring finger. She remembers the last time the morning newspaper replaced the crossword supplement with a soccer section, because she read the newspaper four times in the hope of finding a small, hidden crossword somewhere. She never found one, but she did find an article about a woman, the same age as Britt-Marie, who had died. Britt-Marie can’t get it out of her head. The article described how the woman had lain dead for several weeks before she was found, after the neighbors made a complaint about a bad smell from her flat. Britt-Marie can’t stop
thinking about that article, can’t stop thinking about how vexatious it would be if the neighbors started complaining about bad smells. It said in the article that the cause of death had been “natural.” A neighbor said that “the woman’s dinner was still on the table when the landlord walked into the flat.”

Britt-Marie had asked Kent what he thought the woman had eaten. She thought it must be awful to die in the middle of your dinner, as if the food was terrible. Kent mumbled that it hardly made any difference, and turned up the volume on the TV.

Britt-Marie fetched his shirt from the bedroom floor and put it in the washing machine, as usual. Then she washed it and reorganized his electric shaver in the bathroom. Kent often maintained that she has “hidden” his shaver, when he stood there in the mornings yelling “Briiitt-Mariiie” because he couldn’t find it, but she’s not hiding it at all. She was reorganizing. There’s a difference. Sometimes she reorganized because it was necessary, and sometimes she did it because she loved hearing him call out her name in the mornings.

After half an hour the door to the girl’s office opens. People emerge; the girl says good-bye and smiles enthusiastically, until she notices Britt-Marie.

“Oh, you’re still here. So, as I said, Britt-Marie, I’m really sorry but I don’t have time for . . .”

Britt-Marie stands up and brushes some invisible crumbs from her skirt.

“You like soccer, I see,” Britt-Marie offers, nodding at the stickers on the door. “That must be nice for you.”

The girl brightens. “Yes. You too?”

“Certainly not.”

“Right . . .” The girl peers at her watch and then at another clock on the wall. She’s quite clearly bent on trying to get Britt-Marie out of there, so Britt-Marie smiles patiently and decides to say something sociable.

“Your hairstyle is different today.”

“What?”

“Different from yesterday. It’s modern, I suppose.”

“What, the hairstyle?”

“Never having to make up your mind.”

Then she adds at once: “Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. In fact it looks very practical.”

In actual fact it mainly looks short and spiky, like when someone has spilled orange juice on a shagpile rug. Kent always used to spill his drink when he was having vodka and orange juice during his soccer matches, until one day Britt-Marie had enough and moved the rug to the guest room. That was thirteen years ago, but she still often thinks about it. Britt-Marie’s rugs and Britt-Marie’s memories have a lot in common in that sense: they are both very difficult to wash.

The girl clears her throat. “Look, I’d love to talk further, but as I keep trying to tell you I just don’t have time at the moment.”

“When do you have time?” Britt-Marie asks, getting out her notebook and methodically going through a list. “Three o’clock?”

“I’m fully booked today—”

“I could also manage four or even five o’clock,” Britt-Marie offers, conferring with herself.

“We close at five today,” says the girl.

“Let’s say five o’clock then.”

“What? No, we close at five—”

“We certainly can’t have a meeting later than five,” Britt-Marie protests.

“What?” says the girl.

Britt-Marie smiles with enormous, enormous patience.

“I don’t want to cause a scene here. Not at all. But my dear girl, civilized people have their dinner at six, so any later than five is surely a bit on the late side for a meeting, wouldn’t you agree? Or are you saying we should have our meeting while we’re eating?”

“No . . . I mean . . . What?”

“Ha. Well, in that case you have to make sure you’re not late. So the potatoes don’t get cold.”

Then she writes “6:00. Dinner” on her list.

The girl calls out something behind Britt-Marie but Britt-Marie has already gone, because she actually doesn’t have time to stand here going on about this all day.

I
t’s 4:55. Britt-Marie is waiting by herself in the street outside the unemployment office, because it would be impolite to go in too early for the meeting. The wind ruffles her hair gently. She misses her balcony so much, it pains her to even think about it—she has to squeeze her eyes shut so tightly that her temples start hurting. She often busies herself on the balcony at night while she’s waiting for Kent. He always says she shouldn’t wait up for him. She always does. She usually notices his car from the balcony, and by the time he steps inside, his food is already on the table. Once he’s fallen asleep in their bed she picks up his shirt from the bedroom floor and puts it in the washing machine. If the collar is dirty she goes over it beforehand with vinegar and baking soda. Early in the morning she wakes and fixes her hair and tidies up the kitchen, sprinkles baking soda in the balcony flower boxes, and polishes all the windows with Faxin.