The American Girl (35 page)

In other words at Doris. And it was only Doris, not Sandra, who was also a surprise. You had thought it would be the other way around.

Because what was actually happening was that Doris was growing up. Sandra also, but Doris more strikingly. So very striking it could not be ignored. So that you had to, in order to maintain the balance between the two of them, do something about it.

If nothing else than to reinforce, clarify.

The baby fat was falling off Doris Flinkenberg. Doris grew thin. She did not become skinny, but her body developed curves like a Coca-Cola bottle. Doris’s dust-colored hair, which bleached by the sun had shone over the cemetery where she had raked and planted plants, it showed no signs of returning to its normal color.

Despite the fact that the girls kept themselves inside for the most part, except for the very end.

After the sexual awakening
it seemed as though the blondness would be Doris-as-a-woman color. Long and soft too, the light hair fell over her shoulders and down when it grew and grew. Impossible to ignore. Sandra, at the bottom of the pool, combed and brushed and played with it.

The telephone rang. Sandra did not answer.

“It could be Lorelei Lindberg,” said Doris. “Aren’t you going to answer?”

“Not now,” Sandra replied stiffly from the middle of the game. “Now I want to play.”

“Oh,” said Doris Flinkenberg, gradually growing impatient at the bottom of the pool. “This is boring. Can’t we DO something instead?”

“Activities of the night belong to the night,” Sandra whispered, full of secrecy.

“I mean actually DO,” said Doris Flinkenberg. “Even if we love each other I’m not some rabbit who wants to copulate all the time. GO OUT. Why don’t we go out?”

“Well, we can go out, then. To the store. But wait. We’ll make you the Marsh Queen first. The Marsh Queen goes to the store.”

The Marsh Queen goes to the store
. Doris was allowed to put on the glitter clothes that Sandra had actually sewn for another occasion, that which would soon take place, the American girl’s funeral in other words. And Pinky’s shoes, the forgotten silver shoes with the foot-high heels that glittered too.

It was a game. They went to another store this time. Not to the store located most centrally, up in the town center, rather a country store Doris knew, toward the north above the marsh
where the marsh people had carried on earlier (the area that would now in other words become the recreational area for the town’s inhabitants).

The return of the Marsh Queen, Sandra Wärn said to Doris Flinkenberg and they marched away.

“What kind of movie star is that?” asked the lady in the store when they came in—she was alone there.

“It’s the Marsh Queen,” Sandra said softly. And Doris smiled and the lady smiled. She understood games, so far so good.

“And what do you girls want?”

And Sandra started calling out everything on her list and Doris, the Marsh Queen in the glitter clothes that Sandra had sewn for her, filled in when needed.

That was when the door opened and she stepped into the store, Liz Maalamaa.

Grunting and groaning in the summer heat.

“It was so hot there in Florida you had to take your inner Turk away.”

“We have guests from far away,” said the lady in the store. “A real lottery winner.”

The world in a small rectangle, 4. The trespasser/the Marsh Queen in the pool
. Another time, when Doris was the expectant Marsh Queen, Sandra climbed out of the pool and pulled the ladder up after her so Doris did not have a chance of getting out on her own.

“Stop it now,” Doris suddenly complained in the pool. “Throw down the ladder. I don’t have the energy to play anymore. I want to come out now.”

But Sandra pretended not to hear. She disappeared up onto the top floor and when she came back she had the pistol with her.

Sandra was standing at the edge of the pool like once a long time ago, with her hand raised, aiming the pistol at Doris.
“Pang pang
, you’re dead.”

It was after all not the first time so Doris had not become very frightened. Besides, even at this stage she would never have thought she should be afraid of Sandra who was a part of herself.

But it was the last minutes of innocence,

Because at the same time something odd happened. The game became serious, and for both of them—

“I said stop.”

And Sandra, there was a strange simultaneousness in everything, she suddenly remembered something from a long time ago, eons back in time, when Lorelei Lindberg was still there.

Lorelei Lindberg in the pool. Looking for a ruby the size of a tablespoon. The Islander somewhere else, but not for long. Could come at any time. He had taken the ladder away in order to keep her there, for safekeeping. It had been a game, the kind where you made up after, but now it was not like that anymore. “Sandra! Get the ladder!” Lorelei Lindberg hissed. “The ladder, Sandra! Please! Hurry!” and Sandra Slowly, sleepwalker
. . .

Walked past. Heard nothing. Though she did hear
.

And the Islander was back. He had the rifle with him then
.

Shots, I think I hear shots
.

But no
.

Sandra walked in her sleep, as said, at that time
.

It was strange, in other words, what happened. Sandra had never, never been so close to telling Doris Flinkenberg everything everything. So close . . .

And yet she had raised her hand, still aimed at Doris in the pool. Or the Marsh Queen. Then. Or whatever she should be called.

“Help. Don’t shoot. Mercy. Have pity.”

Who was it? Certainly not Doris. No. It was Lorelei Lindberg in the pool. And there was no question she was afraid of the Islander. For her life. Scared to death
.

It’s a game with high stakes, the Black Sheep had said in Little Bombay. And we haven’t seen the end yet
.

MMMMMMMMMMMouse
.

“WHAT ARE YOU GIRLS DOING?”

Suddenly the cousin’s mama was standing there, inside the door.

Because while everything was happening in the pool section the cousin’s mama had shown up on the other side of the outside door down there, “the catering entrance,” the door with the glass mirror on top. She had pounded on the door and yelled.

“Open up right now! Right now!”

And when no one had opened she had taken out her key and opened the door and now she was standing there on the inside, for a moment a bit speechless in the face of everything.

“What?” Sandra said with an indifferent, provoked expression, so to speak completely unsympathetic.

“YOU DON’T AIM A PISTOL AT ANOTHER LIVING

HUMAN BEING!”

The cousin’s mama screamed again, almost hysterically. But then she caught sight of Doris in the pool. So to speak anew.

Doris, very much alive and so pretty, so beautiful . . . so princesslike among all the things. One moment, two: the cousin’s mama’s look rested a bit too long on Doris Flinkenberg because in the meantime Sandra was able to put the pistol away.

“What pistol?” Sandra said as calm as could be.

“I SAW!” the cousin’s mama continued, but now more viciously as if to convince herself.

“What?” Sandra asked again, calm and nonchalant. And turned toward Doris and asked, as if the cousin’s mama was not there, in the third-person singular, “What is she talking

about?”

•••

Doris between two fires. Sandra. The cousin’s mama. She realized, on the one hand, it would be difficult to love Sandra.

But on the other hand: WHAT THE HELL WAS LOVE

FOR? If not for: belonging.
You love something in someone that brings you to life
, Inget Herrman had said. You and me against the world.

And there were not always fun things (and my God how many songs Doris had in her cassette collection on that topic).

So it was an easy choice, but not without difficulty.

The cousin’s mama’s presence had also given everything a splash of reality again. Reality.
That Sandra would
. . . My God, Doris Flinkenberg, Doris said to herself, now it’s running away with you.

The cousin’s mama then asked a highly normal question. “Incidentally, what are you doing here? Weren’t you going to . . . leave?”

A completely and totally normal question that it really was about time someone asked. Doris Flinkenberg had also really wondered, and actually, she had not gotten a proper and exhaustive answer to that question. Not an answer you could believe in any case.

Lorelei Lindberg was in New York. Really. When a working number in Austria, in the old home, was also missing.

It was another part of her that had crept around in the house, when Sandra had been somewhere else or busy or been sleeping, and been checking and finding out about a few things. It was that part which could be called the twin detective, which had been in operation earlier, during the solving of the Mystery with the American Girl, but without a twin now.

She had called Heintz-Gurt’s telephone number in Austria. She had gotten nowhere.

In fact the number did not exist. That was the laconic message that had been stated on the line over and over again.

•••

And, the red raincoat. On Lorelei Lindberg in the photograph in front of Little Bombay on a rainy day. That was almost the worst thing of all. So terrible she did not even want to think about it and did everything she could in order to force it out of her consciousness.

But . . . on the other hand . . . Sandra, beloved.

So actually, the cousin’s mama’s question had not sat well in the situation in which it was now being asked, a situation which, considering Sandra’s presence, required taking sides convincingly.

And Doris said, heard herself say, more precisely:

“We’re here, don’t you see? Leave us alone once and for all. Go away,” and when she had gotten started she worked herself up even more. “I said leave. Nothing’s going on here.”

The cousin’s mama remained standing a while, uncertain. But later, she actually turned around and straggled away.

And that time it had been final. She had not, during the entire rest of the time in the house in the darker part of the woods, the world in a small rectangle, come back.

. . . But still at night, they slept together, in the marital bed. They slept among paper, a book on shopping malls,
the future of consumption is consumption
, among all of the fabric. Satin silk, rough silk chiffon, thin habotai, a few old thumbed issues of
True Crimes, Teach Yourself Classical Greek
, . . . and so on.

Bread crumbs, crackers, and marmalade.

And when there was nothing else to talk about anymore, they came back to the American girl, again.

“Maybe she loved him and couldn’t stand the thought that he was in love with someone else,” Sandra whispered to Doris Flinkenberg in the darkness.

“But my God,” Doris Flinkenberg objected, though quite eager, barely daring to breathe because now she felt it and very clearly so, Sandra’s hands on her body. On her naked skin.

“And besides,” Sandra continued and crept closer. Doris felt the breath in her ear and it tickled and those fingers which were playing over her stomach and in her navel, play with me like you play your guitar . . . “Maybe Eddie didn’t have to do anything wicked at all. I mean, toward her. It was enough that she was there. As a motive. Just by existing in comparison to . . . you saw how strange, how faded, abnormal the cousin’s mama was with her will, with what she felt. Desire. She felt unmasked. Undressed. Naked. What does that mean?”

My God, whom was Sandra talking about anyway?

“She was an old lady after all,” Sandra continued. “She had two boys. Half grown . . .” The palm of Sandra’s hand, soft and definite and so familiar over Doris’s chest and legs and there was no doubt over where she was going. Sliding up the blouse. Doris helped, imperceptibly. Suddenly she felt ashamed of her desire. How strong it was, how definite.

And furthermore
had always been
. And to avoid thinking about it, in order to avoid thinking at all, she pressed herself against Sandra and took in the scent, the strange one that was a bit musty and far too spicy, but still fleeting. The one called Little Bombay.

What was it? A fabric store?

Doris in the bed realized there was so much she did not know about Sandra, so much she had not asked. “. . . not even her own children . . .” Who was she talking about anyway?

But at the same time the desire came over Doris Flinkenberg again. And the love.

No one can love like us. No, really.

Afterward:

“Have you thought,” Sandra asked as if bewitched by herself, by her boldness plus the thought she was about to express,
“about everything you don’t know about her? Do you really know her? Really?”

They were talking about the cousin’s mama again, always coming back to it. Then Doris said, she had to admit it:

“Well.”

That is how it was. Both yes and no. And suddenly it made her desperate.

Everything, all of it. Both what Sandra had said, and it was of course true, what did she really know about the cousin’s mama? What did she know about anything or anyone?

What did she know about Sandra, her best friend, her most beloved?

And she had so wanted to ask, but it got caught in her throat. About the red raincoat in the photograph, about the telephone number that was out of service, about everything . . . but she could not bring herself to. She was afraid.

Afraid of knowing, but also afraid of.

Afraid of Sandra. Was that possible?

But it was in and of itself a thought so impossible, so upsetting, so tremendous, she did not have the energy to be someone who was thinking it. She could not go on! She wanted to forget about! Everything!

“But can’t we forget about the American now? Can’t we leave her to her fate?”

Silence.

“Yes,” Sandra said later, “we can. But we have to bury her first.”

The world in a small rectangle, 5
. The American girl’s funeral. Sandra was lying in the pool, at the bottom, on the green tile, she was lying on the fabric, on dull green silk Dupioni and she was wearing the glitter clothes, the ones she had sewn for Doris as the Marsh Queen’s outfit, but they would also have to suffice now. The scarf, it was Eddie’s real one, and the blouse, the one that had once belonged to Sister Night: the Loneliness&Fear shirt.