Deep Sea (13 page)

Auntie Alma complains to Aunt Märta about Nellie becoming so wild.

“I hardly recognize her. She’s always been so nice and neat.”

“You’ve spoiled her, Alma,” Aunt Märta says firmly.
“And that always has a price. Speaking of which, you spoil your own children as well.”

“How can you say that?” Auntie Alma asks, bewildered. “In any case, Nellie’s changed completely. She’s suddenly a different girl.”

“This, too, shall pass,” Aunt Märta comforts her. “She’ll settle down again; you’ll see.”

But Stephie has her doubts. There’s something strange about Nellie this summer. Something abrupt and fierce. Stephie hardly recognizes her, either. There’s a glare in her eye when she looks at Stephie. Is she still angry about having been slapped, even though Stephie apologized and Nellie accepted her apology? Or is it something else?

Could her own sister hate her?

Every morning, Stephie goes upstairs to see Miss Björk for her private lessons. They’ve settled on nine to eleven as their study hours.

They focus on math, physics, and chemistry. It’s hard work but fun, especially the math. Every day, Stephie comes back downstairs with homework for the afternoon. In the evenings, she has novels to read for the Swedish literature course. She has a few hours off in the middle of the day to go for a swim.

On Wednesday mornings, Janice gives Stephie an English lesson, which allows Miss Björk to sleep in.
Stephie loves it. She loves reading the poems and short stories by English authors that Janice gives her, and then discussing them in English. Janice teaches Stephie English songs, and sometimes she finds the BBC, an English radio station, when she turns the dial.

Together they listen to news of the war, but it’s difficult to get a clear picture of what’s going on. The Allied victories in Italy and North Africa seem to have halted. One day, the newscaster informs them in his dry voice that Goebbels, Germany’s minister of propaganda, has declared Berlin “free from Jews.” When she hears that, Janice turns off the radio.

Janice doesn’t give Stephie any homework.

“I’m not a schoolmistress, you know,” she says, giving Hedvig Björk a knowing wink.

“Whatever you say,” says Miss Björk. “As long as Stephie passes her entrance exam in English. If she doesn’t, I’ll hold you to blame. And you know what that would mean.”

There’s a special tone to the conversation between Miss Björk and Janice. Slightly playful but with a serious undertone.
As if everything they say means more than just what the words are telling
, Stephie thinks.
They must be very close friends, in spite of being so different
. Kind of like her and May.

Stephie misses May. She can talk to her about everything. May always listens and understands. She can be serious when necessary, and make a joke at just the
right moment. And she would never, ever, betray a confidence.

Vera’s different. Although it happened long ago, Stephie remembers how Vera let her down that first year on the island, joining in with the other girls when they bullied Stephie. She’ll never trust Vera completely.

It’s true that, in Vera’s company, Stephie’s never bored. Vera laughs and jokes and is full of ideas. But she’s kind of different this summer. Sometimes, when she thinks no one’s watching, a shadow of fatigue crosses her features. She sometimes goes quiet right in the middle of a conversation, as if she has lost track of the world around her. It’s as if there were a second Vera under the bright, happy one. A grown-up Vera Stephie doesn’t know.

One day when Vera has the day off and she and Stephie are at the beach, she suddenly gets sick to her stomach. Stephie’s just poured their coffee from the thermos. Vera takes her cup, but before she has even a single sip, she puts it down. One hand over her mouth, she rushes into the bushes. Stephie watches her bend over double, vomiting.

“Are you ill?” Stephie asks with concern when Vera returns.

“It’s nothing,” says Vera. “Probably something I ate. I’m fine now.”

M
idsummer’s Eve is the longest day of the year. The sun is high in the sky and stays up longer than any other day.

Since they don’t have a globe, Miss Björk uses an old rubber ball to demonstrate to Stephie how the angle of the Earth’s axis causes the seasons to change. She runs one of Aunt Märta’s knitting needles through the ball and shows Stephie how it rotates around its own axis. At the same time, she orbits it in a wide circle around the lamp that hangs over the table.

“It’s like a dance,” Miss Björk explains. “Everything is in motion. The whole universe. If it stopped, that would mean death. Movement is life.”

But when they step outside after their studies, the
sun isn’t even visible. This Midsummer’s Eve is a gray day, with rain hanging in the air. Stephie can see there are already showers over the mainland.

“Do you know why it’s often not rainy out in the archipelago even when it’s raining on the mainland?” Miss Björk asks Stephie.

“No.”

“We’ll work on that tomorrow, then,” her teacher says. “A little meteorology, the study of the weather. Now it’s holiday time, so we’ll take the rest of the day off.”

Janice is sitting outside reading, as she almost always does while Hedvig is teaching Stephie. If the sun is shining, she wears her wide-brimmed straw hat to protect her sensitive skin.

“What a lazy woman!” Aunt Märta mutters. “All she does is read. She could at least do some embroidery.”

In Aunt Märta’s world, reading isn’t for grown-ups. Children read their schoolbooks and the occasional story, while Aunt Märta reads only the newspaper, and a chapter from the Bible every Sunday. That’s it.

Janice sets her book in her lap when she hears their voices.

“All done for today?” she asks.

“Yes,” Hedvig answers. “Come on. Time for our Midsummer celebrations!”

No one who lives on the island makes much of a fuss about Midsummer. On Easter Eve, there’s a bonfire up on the cliffs, but Midsummer has a bad reputation. It’s known as a holiday with a lot of drunken rowdiness, and nobody who lives on the island drinks, at least not when anyone else is looking.

But the summer guests always raise a maypole in the meadow above the beach. Stephie goes along with Miss Björk and Janice.

People have already gathered leaves and branches. Maypoles are usually decorated with birch, but there isn’t much birch on the island, so ash and bird cherry are also used.

“The main thing is that it’s green,” says the cheerful woman who has taken charge of the project.

Stephie recognizes her—she’s Maud’s mother. Theirs is the family renting from Auntie Alma. So Nellie and Maud are probably around, too. Stephie looks for her, but she can’t see her.

Maud’s mother assigns Stephie and Miss Björk to be flower pickers. They find mostly buttercups, red clover, and a few daisies.

“Where I grew up,” says Miss Björk, “we decorated the maypole with daisies, cornflowers, and poppies.”

She sounds a bit homesick, and Stephie wonders why she isn’t spending her summer up north in Värmland, where her family lives. She certainly hopes Miss Björk hasn’t come to the island just for her sake.
No, Janice loves the sea
, Stephie tells herself.

They take their flowers back to the maypole, where they are given one of the wreaths to decorate. Stephie and Miss Björk make little bouquets, and Janice attaches them. They fill the spaces with leaves, since they haven’t found enough flowers to cover the entire wreath.

Maud’s mother is busy with the other wreath. Suddenly Maud and Nellie appear, at a run. They’re disheveled and excited. Maud tears off some leaves from a nearby tree and showers them down over her mother, who just laughs.

“Nellie,” Stephie calls. “Come here!”

Nellie comes over to them.

“What is it?”

Her voice sounds sullen, and the gleam in her eye has vanished.

“This is my teacher,” says Stephie, “Miss Björk. And her friend Janice. They’re our summer tenants, you know.” To Miss Björk and Janice, she says, “And this is my younger sister, Nellie.”

Nellie shakes hands quite politely.

“Hello, Nellie,” says Miss Björk. “When do I get to have you at grammar school? Are you coming in the autumn? Or do you have another year to go?”

“You’ll never see me there,” Nellie replies. “I’m not going on after sixth grade.”

“What about your friend, then?” asks Miss Björk. “Is she not going to grammar school, either?”

“Maud?” Nellie asks. “That’s a different story. She lives in town. She’s starting this fall, though she doesn’t
really want to. She’s thinking about running away to work on a farm as a stable hand. She’s wild about horses.”

When Nellie talks about Maud, her whole face lights up. Her eyes gleam, and a lock of hair falls across her forehead. When she shakes her head, she actually looks like an impatient little pony with a black mane.

“I’ve got to go now,” she says. “Maud’s waiting. We just came to tell her mamma Auntie Alma made us sandwiches, so she needn’t come home to give us lunch.”

She curtsies quickly in the direction of Miss Björk and Janice, and runs off.

“What a great little sister,” Janice says to Stephie. “So lively and energetic!”

“I wouldn’t worry,” says Miss Björk. “She’s sure to change her mind about school. She just needs some time to mature.”

If only that were true
, Stephie thinks.
And if only my sole worry about her had to do with her education
.

But she doesn’t talk to Miss Björk and Janice about it. She can’t share her worries about Nellie with anyone. It’s no one’s business but her own, and Mamma’s and Papa’s.

Oh, how she wishes she could talk to Mamma and Papa! Just for a couple of hours, to unburden herself and tell them how heavily her sense of responsibility for Nellie weighs on her. If only she dared to write to them
about how things really are, and if only they could write a real letter back, not just thirty words.

There are so many things she wishes she could talk with them about, especially with Mamma. She remembers their long afternoon chats when she used to come home from school. They talked about her day, her teachers, her classmates, about birthday parties and outings. Now that Stephie’s older, they would talk about different things, of course. About love, and growing up, and the important things in life.

She has Aunt Märta, Auntie Tyra, and Miss Björk. But none of them knows her the way Mamma does. None of them read bedtime stories to Stephie and sat with her when she couldn’t fall asleep. None of them nursed her through the measles or held her hand on the first day of school. They mean a great deal to her, each in her own way, and she knows they care for her.

But they can never replace her mamma.

T
hat afternoon, they dance around the maypole to accordion music and sing. In the circle, Stephie grasps Miss Björk’s hand in her right one, and with her left, she holds onto the little daughter of one of the summer guests. She joins in the singing as best she can.

Bewildered, she watches as everyone quickly picks a partner. Miss Björk and Janice laugh and hug. The little
girl finds her mother and runs into her arms. Stephie’s the last one out, all alone.

Suddenly, Miss Björk takes Stephie by the hand and pulls her in. They make a little circle of three—Stephie, Miss Björk, and Janice.

“It’s a silly game,” Hedvig Björk whispers. “Nobody should ever be left out.”