The American Girl (47 page)

Then it was definitely better with people like Tobias Forsström who just pressed out a sympathy because he so to speak had to (with her that is), or those who said nothing at all, who just looked at her a bit sadly but were visibly relieved when they noticed that she did not look sadly back. Relieved over being allowed to be like before. Like always.

In Doris’s own classroom they put a photograph with flowers and a candle on Doris’s desk at the very front of the center row. In the beginning the candle was lit all the time and the roses stood in warm water in a glass jar; the water was changed regularly, the jar was refilled with new roses. The photograph showed Doris with big red, shimmering hair, the Doris who had actually existed for only a short period of time, the very last months. Doris in a photograph her boyfriend Micke Friberg had taken. The new Doris. Her from Micke’s Folk Band. “Hi. I’m Doris, this is Micke, and we’re Micke’s Folk Band. Now I’m going to sing a happy folk song in our own arrangement—‘I walked out one evening.’ ” Micke Friberg left school shortly after Doris’s death. He had to think. He could not stand it.

From The Return of the Marsh Queen, Chapter 1. Where did the music start?

Micke Friberg: I don’t have a clear memory of her. She used to stand in the schoolyard sometimes, pale in the face. They had identical blouses on. Her and her friend. They said Loneliness&Fear on them.

I mean, a hundred years BEFORE the punk music began.

But her that is, maybe it’s stupid to put it this way, but I don’t have any memory of her. She was my first love. And you know how that can be. She committed suicide later. And if it hadn’t been for the music I probably never would have gotten over it.

From The Return of the Marsh Queen, Chapter 1. Where did the music start?

Ametiste: the rise and rise and rise Ametiste, that was me, before anything at all had started happening. Before I met her who became the Marsh Queen on Coney Island, in one of the record recording stands, there are still some of them left over there.

Debbie had a ’67 Camaro, she inherited it from her mother. To have a car in New York was both luxury and insanity, but it was probably, and Debbie had also said that, what kept us in our right minds, making short, fun trips to Coney Island and the beaches around it.

But the parking in New York was a full-time job. Three mornings a week you had to get up in time to move the car before seven o’clock because if the parking police got there first you would have the car nicely chained until it was transported to the burial site for abandoned cars far outside the city, wherever it was.

That was my job. To park Debbie’s car. To get up early in the morning and then sit in the car on one side of the street and wait for the parking on the other side of the street to go into effect. I used to sleep in the car sometimes. And later when Sandra, the Marsh Queen, came, we were two. We wrote some songs there.

Debbie was busy then. She had broken through and was busy being famous over the entire world. Almost. But then they took her to France and got her to lip-sync dirty words in French and it was “punk” according to the ones selling the records.

Though also for her, earlier: Debbie also said she wrote most of her earlier songs while she was sitting in the car waiting—with the engine on when it was winter—to be able to park the car on the other side of the street.

In other words it was there, among other things, that the music was born. In Debbie’s ’67 Camaro a few blocks from the Bowery where we all lived back then.

A lot of other legendary types were also living there then. For example William Burroughs. I remember him like a ghost. A white ghost.

We lived at the Bowery and William Burroughs haunted the place: it’s fun to remember it like that. It was a fun time.

We hung around Debbie: she was big, the biggest in the world, almost. She became famous in a short period of time, a few years, there were those who were surprised that it was precisely her.

That there was a time, a few months, maybe half a year, when she was the biggest in the world.

Biggest in the world. There’s something in music called a “peak.” That’s when everything culminates.

But I didn’t see much of Debbie later. Almost nothing. She was always on tour.

And when she was at the Bowery she was surrounded. By everyone who suddenly wanted to come into contact with her.

And we left later, me and the Marsh Queen.

Incidentally, I picked her up on Coney Island, in a record recording stand. And she was a crazy girl, you better believe it.

But she could write songs.

The punk music started there in other words.

At the very beginning. In New York. When we waited to park Debbie’s Camaro, in the mornings.

And it snowed.

Heavy flakes fell.

Write like this, I said to the Marsh Queen. That heavy flakes were falling.

Write like this, I said. And the Marsh Queen, she wrote.

Gradually the candles stopped being lit as the first thing you did when you came to school. The flowers withered and no new flowers appeared. The flowers had dried and they were beautiful that way too, so they were allowed to remain. Then someone knocked over the glass jar by mistake and it fell to the floor and went to pieces. Not large, normal shards, but grainy damp splinters that were a pain to sweep up.

In that moment the roses went into the trash can.

“Maybe we should have thought about you,” said Ann Notlund, the music teacher who was also the homeroom teacher for Doris’s class. “Would you have wanted them?”

Before Sandra had time to answer this or that (but these flowers, what would she do with them?), Ann Notlund continued: “Then there is another thing. Her desk. Her things. I’ve understood that her mo . . . her foster mother is not well and can’t be bothered right now.”

“I can,” Sandra said, calm and businesslike. “Of course.”

And she emptied the contents of Doris’s desk into a plastic bag. She took everything Doris had in it home with her, threw nothing away. Did not go through it either. The full plastic bag stayed there in her room in the darker part, under the bed. She thought about taking it to the cousin’s house, but before the breakdown when it was of immediate importance, the cousin’s mama was in the hospital, and after the breakdown, yes, after the breakdown, nothing was of immediate importance anymore. And, to be honest: there was no one else who made a claim on these things either. Schoolbooks, booklets, paper. Paper, paper, paper. And then a scarf that smelled of young-fresh-woman perfume, the new Doris, Micke’s Folk Band Doris.

Sandra had in other words emptied the contents into a plastic bag that she had carried home and taken to her room in the house in the darker part.

The desk had been carried out of the classroom. The spell was broken, life went on.

Out with Doris and in . . .

. . . in with Santa Claus!

Said Doris-in-Sandra and Sandra could not hold back a big smile. Because it was Christmastime, undeniably.

Ann Notlund and some other students from Doris’s class who happened to see her smile looked at her strangely. What was there to laugh about?

No. No one understood. It was incomprehensible.

“Nobody knew my rose of the world but me.”

Said Doris-in-Sandra AND Sandra at the same time, together (though of course no one could hear it).

AND Eddie, the dead girl. Eddie’s raspy voice, on that record. Another voice from the dead.

And anyone could understand from this that the breakdown was close now.

The connections of thought-feeling words were looser in Sandra. What existed instead was, for example, this: music. Strange melodies that played inside her, melodies that sometimes had a counterpart in reality, sometimes not. Melodies that were recognizable, that existed. Sometimes those that were unrecognizable, those that obviously did not exist.

The Marsh Queen: I don’t know if the music is music
.

Sandra hung out with Birgitta Blumenthal, in a normal way. They did their homework together. Birgitta Blumenthal was good in school. Sandra needed quite a lot of help in many subjects, especially math because she had been gone so much earlier in the fall semester.

Birgitta Blumenthal helped her. She was good at explaining things so you understood. Sandra appreciated that. She also appreciated that there was quite a large amount of seriousness at Birgitta Blumenthal’s, that is to say, she did not diverge from the topic more than necessary. If homework was going to be done, homework was done. If it was math, then they would do math.

No monkey business. No “games.” Like with Doris Flinkenberg.

Later there was time for relaxation. What was called
spare time
when you were in school. Sandra understood now, maybe for the
first time, relaxing things. You watched television, read, played games, made puzzles, spoke about “everything between heaven and earth.” Ordinary things, most of all, as if it was the most remarkable thing of all: boys whom you were in some way or another interested in. Birgitta Blumenthal was also completely hypersuperextranormal in that respect. Her secrets on that front were completely ordinary secrets but she still acted as though they were anything but. She admitted under solemn circumstances that she was in love with her riding instructor whose name was Hasse and she could not stand that Tobias Forsström looked at her in “an unhealthy way.” “But you know old men.” Birgitta Blumenthal laughed. And yes, yes. Sandra laughed along, she knew about older men even if she did not have a clue about the details here but that was not important; the important thing was she acknowledged normal behavior when she saw it and acted properly accordingly.

There were things that never arose, which they had done with Doris Flinkenberg, in their world. Things that never swelled over the borders, that never ever became larger than, larger than life, everything. That never burst. Burst. Exploded.

Even if you then, that is, afterward, paid the price for it.

The dream had ended. Real love died. If it could be said like that.

They talked about what they were going to be when they grew up. That is what they were talking about when the breakdown occurred. Birgitta Blumenthal loved animals and dreamed about becoming a doctor for animals. “Not a doctor like Dad though everybody says so,” Birgitta Blumenthal assured her. “This is my very own idea.”

“I don’t know,” Sandra said when it was her turn and the gin and tonic they had found in the bar had started taking effect. “Clothing designer, maybe.”

It rolled out of her, over her tongue, and then it had been said.

A highly normal wish, a totally normal answer to a totally normal question. That was how it was.

“So exciting,” Birgitta Blumenthal said taking part and took a big gulp from her glass and made a face. “Wow. This is strong.” She whispered the latter, so that her parents who were taking their Saturday sauna on the floor below for sure would not hear them.

“You think so?” Sandra said urbanely though she started feeling strange right after she had said it. “In the beginning maybe. But you get used to it.”

“And it doesn’t taste good at all.”

“It’s not supposed to taste good either.” Sandra said this with emphasis because now it was just as well to keep nagging about this one thing until the other—clothing designer—went away. This was normal, now it should be normal. Not like with Doris Flinkenberg in the end, and suddenly she remembered the terrible time too, when everything had flown away beyond rhyme or reason, into their own meanings.
Yet every wave burns like blood and gold
, as it had once played in Doris’s cassette player.
But the night soon will claim what is owed
.

And the summer threw you away.

In truth, it had been, with Doris, the best time. AND the worst. “Cheers.” Birgitta Blumenthal giggled. “It’s rocking, rocking.”

But also for Sandra the floor was rocking properly despite the fact she had only tasted her drink. Rocked, rocked. The breakdown was an assumption anyway, alas alas, it could not be stopped, and it was not dependent on the alcohol rather on two words that had been said: clothing designer. It sang in her head quite cruelly. It was Doris-in-her, Eddie, and all order of other voices.

A cacophony of the unbearable, of everything. Try now to be calm as though nothing had happened and celebrate a totally normal and relaxed Saturday evening.

And this was the last thought that was somewhat normal inside Sandra.

“Oh, now I’m starting to get drunk,” Birgitta Blumenthal whispered. And then she raised her voice, made a face in agreement at Sandra who tried not to look back. Everything was dangerous now, she stared at a seal pup who, with its flippers flapping desperately, was trying to get away from the poachers who were after it on the blue ice on the television screen, a hopeless undertaking.
Living Nature
, was the name of the program and it was on every Saturday evening at the same time.

“So exciting. Wanting to be a clothing designer I mean. Tell me more.” And continued whispering, “It actually feels quite funny! I wonder if I’ll have time to sober up before Mom and Dad come up and it’s time for shrimp sandwiches?”

At the Blumenthals’ they ate shrimp sandwiches every Saturday evening after the sauna; it was a pleasant ritual.

Pang
, the seal pup was shot.

And the little silk dog wagged her tail.

With Birgitta Blumenthal for example . . . one would certainly be able to solve a mystery and it would be the game it was intended to be, neither more nor less. Nothing else.

But Doris, also the most lovely: would one be able to live without it? That which spilled over all banks?

And PANG, unexpectedly it all came together. And it was there. The obvious answer to the question that it was impossible plus a lot of other things about guilt and secrecy and the most terrible of all, which they had come to, both of them together, more than brushed past, touched.

And the consequence of it: Doris’s death.

In light of everything there was no possibility. It was not possible to live without Doris. There was no life after. No other possibility.