True (5 page)

She tilts her head back and lets out a little titter.

“It'll be a death sentence for me,” Anna hears herself say. It makes her smile.

Grandma is unfazed. “Only if your mother finds out.”

Anna puts her bag down. She can let go of her uneasiness, loosen up. Grandma doesn't seem tired.

“We can have a proper talk,” Grandma says. “Woman to woman, you know? Like they do in movies. Talk it all out. Since we have so little time left.”

She takes the bottle and disappears momentarily into the kitchen.

Anna looks at the living room and library, lingers for a moment at the door to her mother's old room.

Molla is in her cradle dreaming endless dreams with one eye closed. When did she lose that eye? Was it torn off?

The dollhouse is in its usual place. It was a stage for hopes and dreams when she was a child. The woman of the house is sitting in front of a teeny tiny piano as if she's about to play it. Somewhere, maybe in the cradle, out of sight, is a baby doll. The larger child is deep asleep in the nursery next to the doll piano room.

The familiar joy of childhood comes over Anna. She would close the door to the world and get down on her knees, imagining a whole new reality. Sometimes when she stayed at her grandma's house she would wake up at night and play with the dolls. Night bent the rules, broke the firm boundaries of day, and the dolls seemed alive.

Maria would be sleeping on the mattress, snuffling, Anna careful not to wake her, wanting to play by herself.

As long as the game was hers and no one knew about it, anything was possible. There was no time. There were no hours. No room, no bed. No rocking horse in the corner. Even she herself wasn't really there. She melted into the shadows of the miniature rooms and was nothing but will, molding itself to fit the life of the dolls. Sometimes she was the mother's voice, sometimes the child's, sometimes the father's.

The only thing that bothered her was that Molla was too big for this little world. But she still brought Molla along to play sometimes. She would look at the life of the little house through the windows with her one eye. The effect was more fearsome than benevolent—Anna understood that even as a child.

She takes Molla from her bed, rocks her in her arms. The doll smiles, an ancient scar on her lip—it got torn at some time during play and was sewn back together. Nevertheless, Molla is happy and trusting:
there's nothing to be afraid of!

“REMEMBER WHEN YOU
stole Molla?” Grandma asks.

Anna gives a start. She didn't hear her come to the door.

“I remember. I hid her for a week. I don't know why I was so attached to her.”

“Who knows? Children get attached to the strangest things.”

Anna realizes she's stroking Molla's head.

“I love this dollhouse. It's stayed the same all these years.”

“You can have it. You can have the whole thing as your inheritance when I die. Your mother might make a fuss about it, so it'd be best to write a will. Let's do that right now, while we have a glass of wine.”

“Don't say that. Don't say you're going to die.”

Anna's voice portends tears, she can hear them before she tastes them in her throat. They stand quietly for a moment.

Let's stay here, Anna thinks. Let's close the door and decide that the illness has been canceled. Let's close the door.

She smells her grandma's familiar fragrance, the same skin cream that Anna used to spread in a thick layer over her face after her bath to make her grandma laugh. There's a hint of something new in the scent, musty and dark. The smell of death.

The horse chestnut trees outside the window, calm and imposing with their brand-new torches of blossom, cast a quivering shadow on the wall. Anna feels a peace which may be an echo from her early childhood. Lying in her baby carriage in the shade taking a nap, that same leafy color drawn on the awning of the carriage. Light, shadow, light.

“Guess what I want to do?” her grandma suddenly says.

“What?”

“Play dress-up. Remember?”

It was one of Anna's favorite games. She was Bianca. She would put on a dress and they would make up a life for the character. Bianca was a fine lady from Italy. When Anna was Bianca, she knew things that she normally had no inkling of. She would find feelings within herself that she didn't know she had.

“Remember how when you were Bianca you liked olives, even though you usually hated them?” her grandma laughs.

“I ate them from a plate, with a knife and fork.”

“And you clomped around in high heels that were too big for you, talking about stock prices and airports and perfume. If you put on the Bianca dress I'll see if I can fit into one I haven't worn since the fifties. That's one good thing about this cancer. I've gotten as thin as I was when I was twenty. Find something that suits you and I'll make us some lunch.”

A WALL OF
dust motes floats dreamily across her grandmother's room. Anna stands in the doorway for a moment. The sun's rays stretch all the way across to the opposite wall. There is no time here.

The closet is full of old coats, dresses, a couple of men's shirts. The Bianca dress is black and white; it dangles from a hanger. She doesn't take it. She wants something different.

She looks through the dresses, runs her hand over each one—decades hung on hangers. She opens the other closet door. It creaks ponderously. The clothes look old, like they've been hanging here forever.

She takes out one she doesn't remember seeing before. A pale dress with a generous skirt, maybe from the
1950
s. A wide waistband, a square neckline that shows the collarbones, the skirt abundant with rustling fabric.

It's easy to imagine the parties: the room buzzing with expectation. Smiles and small talk and an atmosphere that gradually changes from nervous to boisterous. Some people meeting for the first time, some seeing each other with new eyes, or maybe sharing secret and painful memories. A murmur of voices from the living room, but two people, a man and a woman, don't hear it, they're looking at each other, terror and excitement and tenderness knocking around inside them because they know something has begun, they know they can't go back.

She takes off her shirt and jeans; the dress slips on easily. It's a little tight in the bust.

She feels like someone else in this dress. Did her grandma wear it once or twice a year, to the theater with friends, drinking a pink cocktail in a bar after a play, different than she usually was for a little while, glancing at the door through the hazy curtain of smoke and walking home with long strides? Not because that was her nature, but because it was, in some mysterious way,
the nature of the dress
?

“Where'd you find that?”

Grandma is standing in the doorway.

“It was in this closet. This isn't your
1950
s dress, is it?”

Grandma gives the dress a long look.

“Take it.”

“What?”

“I don't need it. Take it with you. You can wear it to parties and things. What about the Bianca dress? Why didn't you put that one on? Grab that one instead.”

“Is it all right if I wear this one?”

Grandma shrugs. “If you like,” she says, as if she wanted to dissociate herself from the whole thing.

Then she goes to the closet and immediately finds what she's looking for. She takes off her skirt and blouse. For a moment she's standing in the middle of the room pale-skinned, looking slightly helpless. Anna looks at the path of her spine, clearly defined, and keeps her shock at arm's length. She's so thin! She helps with the zipper, gently, gently. The dress is ridiculously loose, at least two sizes too big. Anna considerately makes no mention of this.

Her grandma looks satisfied.

“Right, then. Everything's ready. I even have onion pie,” she says proudly. “I baked it yesterday when I got tired of having cancer.”

THEY PACK A
basket with a baguette and brie and onion pie and two small bottles of mineral water, plus some grapes, fruit salad, and the olive focaccia that Anna brought. They take along a quilt and head out like parisiennes. Grandma ties a scarf over her wisp of hair and puts on her old Chanel sunglasses.

They sit in the swing under the chestnut tree. Anna pours the wine while her grandma opens wrappers.

“Always did like the sound of wine being poured. When I was young I was afraid that I might well become an alcoholic, I liked it so much. But then I realized that I was more fond of the anticipation of festivity than I was of the wine itself.”

Her gaze takes in the fluffy clouds, the boundless May sky, the nightingale on a branch of the tree, on silent watch before spending its evening song.

“I wouldn't hold it against you if you got a little drunk,” Grandma says, sipping from her glass.

Anna tastes her wine. Grandma pats her encouragingly on the leg.

“So. Woman to woman, as we planned. Tell me about Matias. He's a sharp boy—and pretty. But I can see that there's a rub. Is it sex? Is that the trouble? Shy balls? A stiff pelvis? Or is it that the choreography's clumsy? Sex is often better if you think of it as a dance. Men don't always understand that, although I never would have thought Matias had poor rhythm.”

Anna gets some wine in her nose. “Shy balls?”

Grandma pops a grape in her mouth as if she's talking about a rise in the price of milk. “Why sugarcoat it? Sometimes sensitive men are dull in bed.” She sighs as if this was an unfortunate fact. “Let's just say there are men who like to turn the light out before they get going. It's usually shy balls. It's often associated with a high level of education and problems of attachment in childhood.”

“I hope this isn't one of the great insights of your career.”

“What if it is?”

“Then I should call
Ilta Sanomat
and give them a headline.”

Grandma laughs. Anna can see her pink tongue. A person's tongue is the same from childhood to old age, the same tongue fumbling for the breast and later on for other food, the same tongue forming words, professions of love, and commands and scientific debates and more professions of love and requests and thanks for the care and attention.

“I'm just teasing. Besides, I gave them a good one last year.”

“Oh, yeah. The nuclear family. That was a good headline. ‘Researcher Denounces the Nuclear Family'!”

Grandma laughs again.

“I didn't even say that. I just said that the ideal of the nuclear family should be looked at critically. Has the ideal strayed too far from reality, since people nowadays are faced with every imaginable family configuration and are forced to adjust to it, and live quite happily? The world always comes between people, in every kind of family, which is how it should be. No one can deny their origins, their circumstances. Everyone has to survive their childhood and change the circumstances into something else. It's the only way to get through it, to become happy.”

She laughs, gentleness in her eyes, as if the world is a clumsy thing with flaws that she forgives out of sheer tenderheartedness.

The interview had been purposely confrontational. The photograph was an old one, with grandma looking proudly straight into the camera. The summary insert made her sound like a radical in her day, a trailblazer in the jungles of academia. She snorted after she read it: I wasn't a radical. They'll believe anything. I just wanted to do research and help people in the process and keep my wits about me. If they want to call practicality and love for humanity radicalism, then fine, I guess I fit the criteria.

The nightingale on the branch hears them but doesn't say anything. Its eye is a shining black point in the universe. The bird is watching over them, mute and knowing, waiting until evening to disclose its counsel in a clear song.

Grandma cuts a thick slice of brie and spreads it on a piece of bread.

Anna can't help but think about the growth lurking somewhere among her cells. It's devouring her whole life, the same life that gave birth to Anna's mother and, in a way, Anna, too. A ghoulishly rational and coherent thought pierces Anna: life gives birth to life and life gives birth to death.

Grandma doesn't know Anna's thoughts. Suddenly, without warning, she says, “I've been thinking about you. What's going on in your life? Or what was going on last year, the year before? We didn't see each other much. But your mother was worried.”

Anna turns her head. It's easy to turn her head and look at the apple blossoms, the climbing rose on the side of the house. Soon it, too, will push out buds and everything will start at the beginning again.

Grandma doesn't give up. “What exactly happened? What was going on?”

Anna reaches for the cheese too quickly. The knife falls to the ground with a clink.

She's spilled wine on the dress. One drop runs between her thumb and forefinger as if it knows the way. The stain begins to spread over the dress. If she doesn't put salt on it quickly it will never come out. It will never leave, no matter how much you wash it. It's already growing.