Alfhild

Chosen for the Best Debut Short Stories anthology

33 Minutes Read Time

A Danish coastline, with the sea on the right, then a few sand dunes, then a small cliff with green grass on the top
Photo by Silvan Schuppisser on Unsplash

If her head gets cold, it starts to hurt, so on days when the sun cannot dry her hair on the short walk from the sea to Grandma’s house, Alfhild’s father massages her scalp until her thin, little body stops shivering under the towel. It has become a routine, a ritual almost; Alfhild finishing her late-afternoon swim with a cup of hot chocolate and her father’s warm hands on her head. She stands in the kitchen with her back toward him, the cup of hot chocolate close to her chest, her head slightly bowed, her prescription swim goggles fogging in the rising column of steam. There is at these moments something undeniably otherworldly about her: silent and shaking with cold like a delicate sea creature dripping on a linoleum floor, a petite and taciturn mermaid, doing her best to adapt to life on dry land. The act of massaging her scalp is, to Alfhild’s father, a way to ease the transition. If he finds a ribbon of seaweed in her hair, he plucks it out and shows it to her as if to say: Look, this is no longer part of you, the sea has let go, you are free to be human again. Sometimes, just to upset her expressionless face, he pretends to pluck other, far more improbable things from her hair: an amber-colored pebble, a chewing-gum wrapper, a coin, a car key, a stainless-steel wristwatch. She looks on in absolute silence, and when his performance comes to an end, she puts the cup down and looks him straight in the eye, holding his gaze for a couple of seconds. Then, with a long exhalation of breath, she claps very slowly.

It is hard not to smile when he sees her like that, ironically clapping while shaking with cold, her goggles still foggy, her pale little face upturned and unsmiling. If it makes her engage, it is good, he argues when his wife, Clara, tells him to stop encouraging this type of behavior. He knows it is strange, unnatural even: a five-year-old girl expressing herself with the undisguised contempt of a teen. Yet the gesture is so perfectly executed, so expertly hurtful, that to see it only in terms of antisocial behavior is to miss something that to Alfhild’s father feels almost miraculous.

Intellectually, Alfhild is a precocious child. She passed the admission test for Mathildeskolen’s preschool program in Ebeltoft with a comfortable margin. She reads at a seventh-grade level, and her active vocabulary would put most adolescents to shame. Still, her program instructors report increasingly withdrawn and aggressive behavior, and one day in March the school psychologist calls. It hits his wife hard, on their way home from Ebeltoft. Clara just sits in the passenger seat with a blank look on her face, mumbling to herself, again and again: It’s not fair, first her eyes and now this, it’s not fair. They go to a specialist in Aarhus, who interviews Alfhild and comes to the same conclusion as the school psychologist. The next doctor they see thinks it’s too soon for a conclusive diagnosis, and for a while they allow themselves to believe that Alfhild is simply going through a phase. After a couple of months, however, with no noticeable change in Alfhild’s behavior, they go back to the doctor and insist on having a genetic test done.

Several abnormalities are found in Alfhild’s genes: presence of PVOX and ZALC3F, mutations in the region involved in Götzman-Carr and Tyro syndromes—confirmed by DNA sequencing of the IRNI2 gene, popularly known as the irony gene. The name is unfortunate, the doctor explains, since fewer than five percent of cases stem from mutations in this particular gene. And once more, the doctor reminds them that an accurate diagnosis requires close observation over a number of years and that frequent irony use in early childhood is not necessarily a predictor of adolescent or adult-onset PIPRAD (Pervasive Ironic Pattern Recognition and Appreciation Disorder). In fact, a former patient of his has scored even higher than Alfhild on the Williamson childhood sarcasm scale; she is now in her twenties, still high functioning with minimal medication and no history of concomitant depression or self-destructive behavior. It’s not the end of the world, the doctor assures them, most conditions can be managed; with an attentive support network, even expressive sarcastics can go on to lead long and, for all intents and purposes, happy lives.

During the following days, Alfhild’s father disappears into a hole of obsessive internet research. He climbs out, pale and unshaven, clutching two facts about the disorder. Fact number one: for those who perceive it to its fullest degree, irony is one of the most exquisite patterns in nature. Fact number two: experienced irony must be expressed. According to a recent Scandinavian study, low communicative output lies at the root of all registered cases of PIPRAD-related self-mutilation. If irony is not continually conveyed, it will build up in the sufferer’s mind and eventually trigger a self-harming event. As parents, the best thing they can do for their daughter is to activate her—that is, create an engaging, target-rich environment and encourage every act of expressivity, no matter how hurtful or cruel.

Clara disagrees. The angry specks of red in her cheeks have already spread to the sides of her neck, and she refuses to meet his eyes when she speaks: You’ll make it worse; if you indulge her, you’ll turn her into a monster.

He tries to explain that maybe with time and the right medication, Alfhild’s output might be controlled, but right now their first priority is to point the edged blades in Alfhild’s mind away from herself. In the online forums it’s often referred to as hugging the razor: the act of draining a loved one’s irony buildup by turning yourself into a target. It’s a demanding procedure. You have to lower your guard and just stand there and take it, arms by your side, letting each cutting insight land unimpeded. For Clara, it’s too much to take in. He looks at her face and chooses not to insist. Together they interview several certified PIPRAD therapists in the Djursland area, and Clara decides on a young psychologist in Ålsø who treats all her patients outdoors, sitting cross-legged on a porch in front of a garden of wave-patterned gravel and a small rocky island with a miniature tree.

On the gravel, next to a flat moss-covered stone representing a turtle swimming upstream, lies a single rust-colored leaf. Alfhild’s father gestures toward it. Go on, Affi-Bee, he whispers as Alfhild stomps through the ripple-shaped pebble formations and kicks the upstream turtle into a low bamboo fence. This is the process: once she has expressed her frustration—disrupted the garden’s symmetrical patterns by upending a rock or writing something obscene in the gravel—she is given a rake and asked to restore the illusion of water. The psychologist shows her how to make pebbles into ripples and waves, and Alfhild watches with what appears to be genuine interest.

Clara is elated. Look at her face, she whispers, nudging him with her elbow. Isn’t it priceless? She looks so serene.He takes his wife’s hand and squeezes. So serene, she whispers again.

After only a month of rock-garden therapy, Clara tells him she wants a fresh start for Alfhild. She has found a school here in Grenaa, a small public school with an inclusive environment—no stigmatizing special-needs classes, no PIPRAD response plans, no irony de-escalation schemes. She won’t be popular, I know, but sooner or later she’ll connect with someone. He worries about Alfhild being bullied by classmates, but Clara insists: She’ll make a connection; you’ve seen how she’s grown.

Above her red backpack her ponytail curves like a comma. He watches her go, first from the gate and then—to conceal his post-drop-off lingering—from the car or the other side of the street. If he doesn’t see her enter the building, if she disappears behind the ladybug playhouse or just melts into the crowd of child-shaped blobs that amass by the sandbox, he worries. He imagines the worst, and when one day she comes to the gate—a teacher by her side, a bright purple bruise on her forehead—he immediately starts looking for suspects, scanning each little face in the crowd for indications of guilt and poor moral fiber.

No, nobody pushed her, the teacher insists. She got up on her own and just continued like nothing had happened, isn’t that right, Alfhild?

In the car he hears himself ask: You know how to deal with a bully, don’t you, Affi-Bee? He tells her to look for a weakness and use it. Lisps. Freckles. Receding chins. Personal tragedy. Nothing is off-limits. She looks at him uncertainly, wincing a little as he touches her forehead.

When she falls again a few months later, Clara takes her to an ophthalmologist who gives her a pair of bifocals and some atropine eye drops to relax her good eye. This, according to Clara, will improve her depth perception and stop her from falling and bumping into things. Alfhild hates the new glasses. On weekends at Grandma’s, when they come back from the beach, Alfhild keeps her prescription swim goggles on for as long as she can. Like a little explorer from the deep blue sea, she sits at the table and stares at her food, her goggles so close to the bowl that the tips of her bangs dip into the soup. Clara gets up. But I’m a seahorse, Alfhild protests, squirming in her chair as her forehead is testily dabbed with a napkin.

Grandma leans forward. Sweetie, she says, making eye contact across the table, seahorses use their mouths to eat.

Alfhild stops moving. No, Grandma. Her voice is low but assertive. A seahorse eats with its hair, just like a jellyfish.

Grandma’s face tightens into a puzzled expression. He tries to explain: She’s right, Mom, a seahorse’s mouth is vestigial. They stun and digest their prey with the long gastric filaments growing out of their backs.

She nods in her who-would-have-thought-it kind of way, and Alfhild adds: A seahorse filament can eat through a clamshell and damage the bottom of a small wooden boat.

This is their ritual, their father-daughter routine: make Grandma believe something odd and amusing and completely made-up. It’s a collaborative effort, both of them adding to each other’s statements, neatly arranging their made-up facts into a tall and teetering structure, building it higher and higher until either it collapses on its own or Clara intervenes, toppling their little cathedral of lies with a simple statement of fact: No, Lily, the gravitational pull of the moon does not cause iron to accumulate in the brain—no, Lily, the front porch is not speaking to the trees in the garden through fungal networks—and no, Lily, seahorses do not sink ships in the Kattegat Sea.

His mother’s reaction is always the same: hand-over-mouth surprise followed by a laugh at her own gullibility. She looks at them both, smiling and shaking her head, then she turns to Clara and touches her arm: Thank you, honey. I’m so glad you’re on my side. Just look at those two, can you imagine what they would get up to if you weren’t here?


Sometime after her eleventh birthday Alfhild starts to withdraw from the world. She loses interest in classmates and stops interacting with neighborhood children. Even so, the doctor is hesitant to discuss medication, advising them instead to focus on eye-contact exercises and active-listening training, since when PIPRAD progresses, interpersonal skills tend to decline. They continue the training. They role-play schoolyard and birthday-party scenarios. They schedule peer interactions every weekend. And still, in spite of these efforts, Alfhild makes no real attempt to connect. In desperation, Alfhild’s father tries to provoke her. He engages the razor-edged blades in her mind, and with dad jokes and close-up conjuring tricks, he invites her to use them on him.

At first, he gets only eye rolls and a few cutting remarks, but from there it develops into sustained tirades and cathartic eruptions of finely honed insults. It becomes a routine, a ritual almost. In the car every morning, he takes her abuse, absorbs it in silence as he stares at the road. To show he is listening, he nods every now and again and winces a little whenever she says something truly upsetting. Outside the school, he turns off the engine and waits for his daughter to finish her diatribe. This is the challenge: to contain the emotional outpour, to keep it within the private space of the car. He gives her the time she needs to conclude, and if someone walks by and looks into the car, he returns the stare, half-smiling and shrugging as if to say: Hey, what can you do? It’s just one of those days.

One late afternoon when he comes home from work, Clara is waiting for him in the driveway. The school called earlier today. As she closes her eyes and exhales, he senses something rigid and sharp being stretched to its limit, a tiny steel wire singing with tension. They didn’t tell me who, but some boy, some older boy was picking on Alfhild. She pauses, waits for a reaction, and adds: I know the other kid started it, but once Alfhild got going . . . Her voice trails off, and in his mind, Alfhild’s father pictures the would-be bully on the floor, hands clasped around his knees, silently rocking back and forth. They had to call his parents to come pick him up. He makes a sound with his nose—half snorting laugh, half sigh of relief—then he feels Clara’s stare and closes his eyes and clears his throat and tries to look open to whatever she might suggest next.

Other episodes follow. A series of dumb kids at school think they can pick on his daughter and invariably end up setting her off. In the aftermath of each incident, he is quick to express his concern for the other, the instigator, the aggressor, acknowledging the overwhelming effect of Alfhild’s words: It’s a terrible thing to say, of course, but Alfhild has been bullied before, and she sometimes overreacts when she’s feeling threatened or being provoked. It works for a while. The principal sympathizes with their situation, and she does what she can to smooth things over. But one morning in class, seemingly without any provocation at all, Alfhild attacks her math teacher, Mrs. Jespersen, describing her face as a Group 1 carcinogen—that is, a substance or circumstance not just suspected but known to cause cancer in humans. It is cruel, even for Alfhild, especially given the recent bereavement suffered by Mrs. Jespersen. Still, in the principal’s office, he hears himself say: My mother’s sick, she’s been sick for some time, and I think Alfhild is still trying to process that. There is a moment of silence. Clara takes out her phone and stabs at the screen with her finger.

The principal looks at them both: As you know, I think the world of your daughter. She grabs a box of tissues and offers it to Clara. I know there’s no malice in her, but Alfhild needs a specialized environment, and we simply don’t have the resources or the required expertise. She pauses and adds: I’m sorry about your mother.

They find a new school, and as soon as Alfhild has settled into her new routines, Clara moves out. They commit to maintaining a shared diagnostic log and immediately notifying each other about any upcoming change that might affect Alfhild. For months, during the drop-off debriefs, he conscientiously updates Clara on everything that is going on in his life. She, however, gives him no information at all, until she casually mentions that her new boyfriend, Bo, a much younger man, is not only living with her but interacting with Alfhild on a regular basis: And he’s teaching her to meditate, every day after school. I’ve never seen her so dedicated.

He clings to his anger, his indignation over the clear breach of protocol and the rash decision to expose their daughter to a new, significant stressor. Also, he wonders why Alfhild never said anything about a new boyfriend moving in.

Oh, it’s not really meditation, Dad, she explains when he builds up the courage to ask her. It’s just breathing exercises and saying out loud that you’re grateful for things, Bo’s not . . . She pauses, looks up from her book, and exhales. Bo wears his hair in a ponytail and practices spinning back kicks in front of a mirror. She holds his gaze for a moment and then starts piling it on, riffing on Bo’s general ignorance, Bo’s functional illiteracy, Bo’s nunchuck collection, while he, with a look of absolute seriousness, eggs her on with nods and clarifying questions. At breakfast the next morning, he asks her if it’s true that Bo never graduated high school. It is crude. He hears it himself, now that the question hangs in the air. He expects an eye roll, a snort followed by silence, but to his surprise, Alfhild nods and begins to work with his prompt. It becomes a routine, a recurring game of invention: Alfhild extemporizing between sips of tea, gradually turning the small flat stone of his question into a temple of multiple tiers, a golden pagoda of playful disdain. He is grateful but also aware of the danger; he knows that once she goes back to her mother, all it will take is one opportune moment, one irresistibly ironic alignment of attitude or behavior, and she will tell.

The scene is easy to picture: Bo strutting into the living room, full of cosmic benevolence from having just meditated, interrupting Clara as she tries to vent her frustrations with her unreasonable ex, Breathe, honey, slow down, don’t be so hard on him, he’s hurting now, yes, but he’s doing his best, he’s a good man, everything taken into account, a good father too. This is the point, he imagines, where Alfhild will put her book down and tell them about the Bo-themed game that she and her dad play every morning. He pictures Clara, fingertips pressed against her forehead, a profusion of red furious specks cascading down the sides of her neck.

Then his phone rings. Usually Clara never calls him at work, so he assumes there will be urgent, open hostility—perhaps even shouting. He lowers the volume and takes the call.

There is a rasp of static and a sound of boots on pavement, sharp clicks on the verge of breaking into a run. Her voice comes through the crackle: Is she with you? He answers No and adds somewhat forlornly: This week is your week. He is moving now, past the cubicles and the printer room.

The school is still looking—most likely Alfhild is no longer there, but the school is still looking.

They hang up before he gets to the car. This is the plan: Bo and Clara will cover every street between her house and the school; he will drive home, then check the beach and his mother’s house. Five or six times he tries Alfhild’s number. By a large rock in the sand, he finds her red jacket folded into a square. He sees something in the waves and sets off at a run. He is slowed by the drag of the water. He is no longer sure what he saw. The sea is opaque, and after a few explorative sweeps with his arms, he is trembling with cold.

Are you okay? A woman in a parka is waving to him from the beach. Do you need help?

He is not sure what to say, so as he comes out of the water, he just smiles and moves past her, shaking his head as though she were trying to pass him a flyer or hand him a pen to sign a petition.

Do you want me to call somebody? Are you sure you’re okay?

The house appears at the end of the path. His trot slows to a walk. The front door is unlocked, and in the kitchen, he finds Alfhild sitting on the floor in a slightly unraveled lotus position. Affi-Bee? She opens her eyes, and for a moment he just stands there and drips, letting the seawater pool on the linoleum floor. It’s cold in here, don’t you think? He drapes her red jacket around her shoulders and puts a small pot of water on the stove to boil. Feeling sad today? He looks at her quickly as he reaches for the cups. Her face is pale and completely impassive. She watches him stir the cocoa mix into the water, then after taking a sip, she grimaces slightly and puts the cup down. You miss Grandma?

She adjusts the position of her legs, moving her heels closer to her abdomen, inhaling slowly through her nose. She closes her eyes and places her hands on her knees, her palms turned upward, and asks: Who?

He watches her breathe, and much later, during a PIPRAD support group meeting in the back of a café above the old pharmacy in Østergade, he describes the movement of her shoulders—the slight rise and fall of her jacket—as a pulse, as a pale red jellyfish undulating in a vast expanse of blue. He looks down at the styrofoam cup in his hands. Even though there are other episodes, more dramatic and far more frightening, especially during her university years, this is the moment he recalls most clearly: It was our first real scare.

The group facilitator asks if that was the experience that pushed them to change her medication. He shakes his head. We switched to MetaSerenalinne after a serious incident a few years ago; we still use it every now and again with a mild over-the-counter inhibitor.

A woman called Lisbeth dabs her nose with a Kleenex and begins to speak: After three months on MetaSerenalinne, my teenage son gained twenty-five pounds and developed breasts. It destroys the libido too; they use it in the prison system to chemically castrate sex offenders.

She pauses to sniffle, and the woman next to her asks: So what if it destroys the libido? You know expressive sarcastics don’t have sex, don’t you?

Lisbeth blows her nose and replies through the Kleenex: Oh, but they do, Ulrikke, they just don’t enjoy it.

There are wry smiles and chuckles, and before the group facilitator can stop it, a discussion erupts about whether expressive sarcastics shrug when they climax or just wrinkle their noses and go: Meh. The laughter is distressing to some, but to most middle-aged parents of PIPRAD children it is all there is left; each ha-ha and tee-hee a hole in an airtight box, a warm dot of light in which you can sit and just close your eyes for a moment.


He goes through Alfhild’s apartment, emptying ashtrays, opening windows, pruning the clutter on the tables and floor, plucking unopened envelopes and mugs furry with mold from nests of paper and plastic detritus. When he is done with the vacuuming and the wiping down, he wraps a towel around Alfhild’s shoulders and washes her hair in the kitchen sink. She closes her eyes as he massages her scalp. Sometimes, when he needs to reassess the effect of the MetaSerenalinne, he very gently provokes her. Today he pretends to pull things out of her hair. A ribbon of seaweed. A dried-up shark’s egg. A flat moss-covered stone.

She tenses and raises her head from the sink. What’s that?

With the tip of his finger, he flattens the shampoo suds that stick to the moss. From the Japanese rock garden? Don’t you remember?

As she sits up and leans forward, her long graying hair flops over her shoulders and water starts trickling onto the chair. Dark spots spread on her sweatpants and slippers. She looks at the stone in his hand. Okay, Dad, your turn, guess what this is. She shows him the top of her head, parting her hair with her fingers.

I don’t see anything, Alfhild. He fumbles for his glasses. I can’t even see the old scars anymore.

She makes a sound like a game-show buzzer. Wrong, Dad, these are not scars, they’re ballistic striations. He asks her what she means, and with a roll of her eyesshe explains: From being born, Dad, you know, the unique scratch patterns in my scalp from when I shot out of Mom’s rifled birth canal. The game goes on. Other strange analogies are drawn, but none as striking and as viscerally disturbing as the idea of childbirth as the firing of a living, breathing bullet. The image stays with him for weeks. He worries about her mental equilibrium, the inescapable unwholesomeness of self-identifying as a bullet. For several nights, he has dreams about Clara giving birth, about doctors and nurses diving for cover as Alfhild ricochets off the walls, breaking overhead lights and monitor screens—whenever he tries to get in her way, she contorts her trajectory, swerving around him, and so he just stands there, in the flickering dimness of the delivery room, waving his arms and swaying his torso in a futile attempt to intercept her with his chest.

It is not uncommon, he later finds out, for parents of expressive sarcastics to think of their children as dangerous things that fly through the air. In a low, continuous monotone, Lisbeth describes her son as an asteroid, headed straight toward Earth: A world-ending event, that’s how I saw him before the medication and the behavioral therapy. It slowed him down, reduced him, and now, when I close my eyes, instead of a huge fire-rimmed shape in the sky, I see a rock on the ground. She pauses, pressing her lips together.

You sound disappointed, the group facilitator says.

Well, yes, he’s a goddamn rock on the ground.

Ulrikke interjects: So, you prefer the end of the world, is that what you’re saying?

Ignoring the question, Lisbeth turns to Alfhild’s father and smiles: Could we go back to your dream for a moment?

Before he can answer, Ulrikke gets up from her seat and declares that untreated irony is as harmful as smoking eighteen cigarettes a day. Lisbeth responds by describing the side effects of what she refers to as chemically induced perceptual castration.

Bo raises his hand. Without relaxing the straight-backed posture he has quietly maintained for almost an hour, he looks up at Ulrikke and says in a deep, sorrowful voice: Irony is the poisonous plant that you eat every day so you can suffer and die with a smile on your face. Something in Bo’s hazel-gray eyes makes Ulrikke sit down. She smooths her skirt with the palms of her hands. She crosses her legs. Then she blushes ever so slightly.

Lisbeth gives a loud laugh and says that there’s nothing like a good folksy aphorism to make a woman go weak in the knees, to which Bo responds: I teach meditation, Eastern philosophy, and various martial arts.

He shows no signs of discomfort as Lisbeth nods and leans forward, inspecting the flat calloused knuckles of his hands and the contours of his biceps and chest. He even turns his head to one side when she holds up a finger and rotates her wrist. You know, if you’re going to fight him, Ulrikke, you should just grab that thing and pull as hard as you can.

The long grizzled ponytail swivels back, and Bo, exuding an air of imperturbable calm, inhales through his nose and says very softly: Enough about me.

After the meeting, Bo catches up with Alfhild’s father outside. That was a real privilege. Bo places his hand flat on his chest. Thank you, thank you for inviting me and for sharing so openly during the session.

Forcing a smile, Alfhild’s father begins to move forward and says: We’ve shared so much already, so why not this?

Bo nods in solemn agreement. Yes, true, very true.

For a while, they walk down Østergade without speaking—side by side—Alfhild’s father setting the pace. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices Bo turning his head, looking away. There is a sharp intake of air followed by several sobs and a high-pitched whine that fades into sniffles. They stop between a tea shop and a foot-shaped chiropodist’s sign. It’s too . . . every . . . everything is . . . Bo is bawling again, and Alfhild’s father—unable to watch a large, muscular man cry in the street—just stands there, hand on his forehead, eyes fixed on the tips of his shoes.

Eventually, as the sobbing continues, he pats Bo on the elbow and says: I know, champ. I know.

This is the promise he made to Clara: to attend a support group, and for the first year, at least once every month, to go together with Bo. And try not to be hateful, she whispered, reaching up to take hold of his hand, gripping two of his fingers and the lower half of his palm. Try not to be hateful. Even in extremis, Clara’s expectations of him remained resolutely levelheaded and low.

The day after Clara came back from the hospital, Bo called and said that she wanted to see him—wanted him to be part of the process—and so for almost a week, they took turns sitting with her during the night. Alfhild kept to herself, spending most of her time in her old room upstairs, sleeping and writing. One night, they saw her stand in the corridor, peeking into the bedroom, the frame of the doorway revealing only her shoulder and a part of her face. As Clara tried to speak, Alfhild stepped forward and made finger-gun gestures, firing several shots at them both. Then she went back to her room. She’ll be all right. He squeezed Clara’s hand. She’s stronger now, she’ll be okay.

Clara made a soft broken sound, and in her face, he saw shameful relief, he saw tight, tiny muscles guiltily loosening up at the edge of her eyes and her mouth as she sighed: I’m sorry to do this to you.

All parents with a single PIPRAD child must confront this fact: only one of you will be able to die secure in the knowledge that your clinically unlovable child will not be alone in the world. Though he has never said it out loud or even articulated the thought in his head, Alfhild’s father has always taken for granted that he would be first. With his hypertension, multiple cancer scares, and dots on his brain scans, how could he not? He is not envious of Clara, but there is disappointment, he cannot deny it, a grim sense of missed opportunity. Still, the grief-stricken mind is a smooth, inexorable thing, and soon it slips forward in time—three or four years, probably less—to show him his own freshly dug grave, and there he sees Alfhild, unwashed and forlorn, looking down at his headstone while she claps very slowly: Great job, Dad, way to go.

It pains him, of course, to imagine a future like that, and so after another PIPRAD support group meeting, he tries to be pleasant, nodding and smiling benignly whenever Bo shares his opinions on self-contemplation and dealing with grief. By the end of the year, he is grateful to Clara for her dying wish. He sees Bo’s usefulness; his influence on Alfhild, his role in her world as a comforting presence—large and uncomplaining—like a bridge or a pale, featureless hill. It is snowing as they step outside, but Bo does not seem to notice: Don’t worry, she’s not a disturbance, she just sits in the corner watching the afternoon classes, just, you know, Affi being Affi, meditating and scribbling away in her notebook. I can’t really say I understand her writing, but her imagination is truly ferocious, I’m sure you agree. A woman from the support group makes eye contact as she walks by, and Bo beams back at her, waving his hand.

Well, I wouldn’t know, Alfhild’s father says, she never shows me her writing.

Bo gives him a look. Never?

More attendees come out the door. On the stone steps outside the building, Lisbeth breaks free from a small group of women and crosses the parking lot. She smiles at Alfhild’s father, pulling her coat tighter around her. Then she rubs her gloved hands and looks up at Bo: It’s freezing out here, come on, let’s go, let’s go.

It’s unclear when it started exactly, but in Alfhild’s opinion it started too soon: You don’t know him like I do, Dad, I bet they were already doing it while Mom was dying. She stares at him from behind the small kitchen table.

That’s not possible, Alfhild.

She shakes her head: I’ve been to the dojo, I’ve seen his so-called self-defense classes for women.With a dismissive scoop of the hand, she describes a room full of big-bosomed housewives lying on their backs practicing eye-gouging and fish-hooking and knees to the groin. He’s going from student to student like some ponytailed rooster, and the looks they’re giving him, Dad, it’s fucking grotesque.

In her voice, there is a wry invitation to play, and he is tempted, of course, to indulge her, but instead of just egging her on with an insincere statement about Bo not being that bad, he hears himself say: How will you remember me, Alfhild, years from now?

She holds his gaze for a moment, surprised and annoyed by the abrupt change of subject. She wrinkles her nose and looks away. When he asks her again, a slight tremor in his voice makes her upper lip curl. She points at his face. Okay, stop, Dad, that look you’re giving me now, it’s like . . . ugh, like a handwritten note on a door in a restroom. Still pointing, she draws a square in the air with her finger and reads aloud: Out of order, please don’t look. He sputters with laughter at this roundabout way of calling him broken and full of crap, but later, over the following months, the idea of the note begins to perturb him. He sees it whenever he looks at himself in the mirror. He carries it with him, and in the spring when he finds himself in the hallway of Lisbeth’s old timber-framed house, he is aware of being cautiously scrutinized, the note still stuck to his forehead, its small shameful squiggles glued to his skin.

Relax, this is a party. Lisbeth grins and helps him out of his coat. The whole family, together at last.

Bo asks him what he wants to drink, and Lisbeth introduces him to her son, Sofus, a short man with jowls and a pronounced double chin, his expression a blend of bulldog and buddha. The son shakes his hand without a word.

Sofus is thinking about going back to law school next year, Lisbeth explains with a joyous little laugh.

And in the meantime, Bo is teaching him nunchucks,Alfhild chimes in, glancing at Sofus, who refuses to acknowledge her presence. Alfhild turns in her chair. Look, Dad. She gestures at the gold and silver balloons taped to the wall in the shape of a heart. Look what they made me.

Alfhild’s father places a small white envelope on the table in front of her. Happy birthday, Alfhild.

She scrunches her nose. Thanks, Dad. I’ll open it later, okay?

He nods. He reaches for his glass, and whenever he drinks, he feels his old steel watch drop from his wrist to the crook of his elbow. When Alfhild goes outside to smoke, he gets the first tentative question about the procedure. He lies about the probable outcome but leaves most of the facts starkly unaltered. A solemn expression forms on Bo’s face. They talk about Alfhild. Both Bo and Lisbeth make one extravagant promise after the other, and later at the hospital, when Alfhild’s father thinks back on this moment, he remembers Sofus looking up from the game on his phone, his earbuds still leaking faraway gunshots and the faint sounds of a car chase. Then comes his voice, deep and serene: I will watch over her too, old man, for your sake I will love her. It is not real, Alfhild’s father knows this, of course, it is a dream, a chimera of infinite compassion, a nurse had warned him that this might happen, that some of the painkillers might ever so slightly scramble his brain, those were her words, ever so slightly.

He hears the nurse in the hallway, communicating with someone in a secretive whisper. Alfhild enters his room alone. As she stands by the bedside, smelling of smoke, she points at his face and utters her usual deathbed salute: a loud, mocking, singsong-syllable-stretching haw-haw. This has become a routine, a strange little ritual so inherently grim that it feels kind of sacred. With an abusive remark, she pulls up a chair and begins to dissect his countless shortcomings. For as long as he can, he tries to hold on to the sound of her voice. Then his eyes close, and he feels the heat of the sun directly above him. On the path to the beach, he casts no shadow at all. The day is hot, the sand burns his feet as he climbs the last dune, and there, at the water’s edge, he sees her, five years old, the tight rubber band of her prescription swim goggles squashing her hair at the back of her head. A wave washes over her feet. Her shoulders tense. She turns and sends him a look that says: Dad, what should I do? He holds out his hand. Go on in, Affi-Bee, I’ll be here. She looks back at the sea and trembles, rubbing her arms as though she were cold or trying to calm herself down. Another wave reaches her. The water ripples around her ankles. Her toes disappear in the sand. She raises her arm and points at something on the horizon. A dark speck in the water. He is not sure what it is. Alfhild keeps pointing as it moves farther and farther away.


Read more from Issue 20.2.

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