The Number 7 (20 page)

“Let's do it,” I committed myself enthusiastically.

The ski lift was the first of my struggles. It all happened so fast. One moment, I was standing casually in line making conversation, and the next moment I was being rushed to a line on a platform while a giant chair rotated madly toward me. As my valiant instructor, Gabe took my arm in his, the ski pole dangling from my wrist, and nearly pulled me to the launch spot. And then we were swept off our feet—literally—and scooped into a ski lift chair rising farther and farther from the ground. The first ride up, Gabe leaned back to adjust the safety bar into place on our laps. But I soon learned that moving the safety bar caused the chair to rock unsteadily each time we lowered and lifted it. This generated more panic in me than riding without a safety bar, and I asked Gabe to just “let it be.”

The one thing I liked about the ride up was the complete serenity of being alone. Certainly, we had people in front of us, behind us, and below us, but for the four-minute ride to the top of the mountain, we were able to just enjoy each other and our surroundings. Gabe was right—it was a beautiful day. For the first time in December, it seemed that the sky was without clouds: just a cerulean blue expanse. I looked for its stopping spot on the horizon but couldn't find one. It was endless. And the sun seemed twice as bright with its rays reflecting off the snow. Gabe and I beamed happily at each other through the glare. It was four minutes of complete contentment. And then the chaos began again.

Dismounting the chairlift was probably the action I struggled with the most. Again, everything seemed to happen in three-quarter time. I watched as we approached the top of the mountain, the exit ramp growing closer.

“Okay, now when I count to three,” Gabe instructed, “put your skis on the ground and push off from the chair and just go. Okay?” He turned to face me. I'm sure the look on my face was one of pure terror because he let out a sympathetic laugh.

“And if I can't?” My voice seemed smaller than I remembered.

“If you can't, you ride the chairlift back down the mountain alone. And everyone coming up will know you couldn't get off. Okay? Here we go . . . ”

“No!”

“One . . . ”

“Wait!”

“Two . . . ”

“Gabe!”

“Three!”

He grabbed my arm, and I felt my skis touch ground. Gabe pulled me up from the seat and the chair pushed us off as it swiveled back around the lift station to go back down the mountain. We drifted off the ramp to the gathering at the top of the slope. I wouldn't call my movements skiing, per se, but I
was
moving on snow. And that, I thought, should count for something.

“You did great!”

“You pulled me!”

“Well, you still did great.” Gabe smiled and my nerves faded. “The hard part is over.”

I watched as other skiers exited the lift and immediately flew down the mountain. It was nonstop. Wave after wave and chair after chair, people just kept coming and going. Some, like me, took a moment at the top to analyze the slope, take a breath, and enjoy the moment before taking the plunge.

“Gabe?” I glanced at him sheepishly. “Don't leave me?”

“Are you kidding? I'm staying with you every minute of this thing! You go down, I go down, okay?” His enthusiasm and encouragement made me want to leap out of my skis and kiss him. He was confident in me. I could do this.

“Look.” Gabe motioned behind me.

I turned around to see what he was looking at. There, a young girl who couldn't have been older than eight sat back in her boots, bent her knees, adjusted her snow goggles, and kicked off from the top of the slope. Within moments, she disappeared down the hill.

“If she can do it, you can do it. Let's go.”

Gabe let me take my time on the slope, but by the time we reached the bottom I seemed to have picked up the basic technique well enough. I didn't fall a single time. My skis crossed only once as I attempted to slow down on one of the bends. But above all else, Gabe amazed me. He descended the mountain easily without ever taking his eyes off me. Those fleeting moments when I felt comfortable enough to lift my eyes from the ground of snow in front of me, I met his gaze. He beamed with excitement for me, and it felt good to know he didn't think I looked like a fool. Rather, he seemed unexpectedly impressed with how quickly I caught on.

As we waited in line for a second time to take the lift back up to the top, Gabe admitted his surprise. “You're better than I thought you'd be, Mums.”

I smiled, remembering our first encounter in the flower section of his parents' store, when he had handed me a coffee can filled with blossoming chrysanthemums, so confident I'd return. And I did.

“You know, I thought you were kind of crazy that first night in Weaver's. Practically forcing your flowers on me,” I admitted.

We were getting closer to the front of the line. My heart rate picked up as I saw the chairs swing around and pick up the anxious skiers. I spotted the eight-year-old picking up a chair alone, her little legs dangling and swinging from the chair mid-air. I envied her courage.

“You were standing over yams!” Gabe rebutted. “Not much a guy can do with that.”

I laughed. Then gulped. One more couple in front of us, and then it was our turn to get picked up.

“Ready?”

“I kind of have to be, don't I?”

“Yep.” He hooked arms with me again and I let him lead me to the proper place. Then, with a jerk, the chair buckled our knees and we were rising.

“I could get used to this,” I smiled, turning to look at my companion. He looked nervous, and I didn't know why. I looked down at his skis: both intact. His poles: one in each hand. “Something wrong?” I furrowed my brow.

“Are you kidding?” Gabe inhaled and leaned in close to me, his lips touching mine.

Our first kiss: suspended above the blue square slope I'd just conquered, floating between a white earth and a pale blue sky. It lasted long enough that we couldn't deny its existence, but short enough that the next part of the ride was spent in an awkward silence. It didn't help that the chair behind us was occupied by three college-aged boys who sent out encouraging jeers. At the top, as we readied ourselves to dismount, I felt completely confident, and I let it get the best of me.

“And then the ski lift stopped—” Gabe gasped for air during the retelling of my fall to his parents on the way back home. His eyes were watering with tears from laughing. “And the attendant walks out of the station and tells Louisa . . . wait, wait. Louisa, you tell it.”

“He says, ‘I haven't seen a fall like that since Niagara,'” I said, unimpressed.

But Gabe's parents fell into hysterics, and even I couldn't fight the laughter any longer. I crossed my arms defiantly and fought a chuckle. Gabe reached behind the seat and put his arm around my shoulders, pulling me closer to him. He kissed me on the forehead before laughing some more and turning back to watch the road. It only took a few minutes before I relaxed under his embrace. The newness of the contact was thrilling, but silently I wondered about Chris. What would he have thought about my day?

On Christmas Eve, I nursed a pretty nasty bruise on the left side of my body where I'd landed during my epic fall. Dad and Greta had both been thoroughly entertained by the story; Rosemary was the only one who expressed any form of sympathy. She offered to make me an herbal muscle rub from menthol, but I graciously declined, deciding to wear my wounds with pride and suck it up.

I spent the day, in preparation for our first Christmas morning in our new house, baking brown bread. Since Mom had passed away, we were used to simple Christmases. I learned early on that Dad had a weakness for dark rye bread, and I used Christmas Eve as an excuse to go through the nearly five-hour process of preparing it. This was my fifth year baking it, and so I appropriately deemed it a tradition. But this year's bread was different.

I'd meant it to be a surprise. While combing through Grandma's albums in the attic, I'd stumbled across her old recipe book. It was stuffed with loose recipes—some clipped from magazines, others handwritten—and on a couple of scraps, she'd written some lines of poetry. Dad had mentioned she'd dabbled as a poet. They were beautiful musings, and I felt lucky to have found them. I don't know why the book was in the attic and not in the kitchen. Was it another memento left behind for me to find? Another breadcrumb on my way to finding her? Inside the book, I'd found a yellowed page of handwritten notes for rye bread. It was eerie reading the directions, written in Grandma's stream of consciousness. Grandma recited the recipe with phrases such as “Don't be afraid to knead the dough good now” and “I usually add a couple scoops of flour, if it needs it.” I brought the recipe down from the attic intent on baking it for Dad. Maybe he'd remember the taste from his childhood. Maybe this would bring him back to her.

Fingering the recipe, carefully making sure the page didn't get splashed with milk or crusted with sugar, I heard my grandma reading the instructions to me. I heard her voice the same way it streamed through her old phone late at night. And I felt so close to her, baking her recipe, in her kitchen, with her bowls. I pressed the fennel and star anise in
her
mortar and pestle, I formed two round loaves on
her
butcher-block countertops, and I baked the loaves in
her
oven. The same oven she used to bake the same bread for my dad years and years ago.

While baking the rye bread my thoughts took me back to Grandma's storytelling. For two months, I'd been listening to her narratives about Grandpa. Two months and a handful of phone calls, maybe more. I'd lost track of how many times my telephone—
her
telephone—rang. I'd listened enough times that I felt like I knew the family she described to me: Åsa's resolve. Leif's pride. Anna's benevolence. And the twins: Gerhard, Lasse, and their inseparable bond. I knew this family, and yet . . . I didn't feel like I was any closer to the end, no matter what Rosemary said.

As I worked the dough in Grandma's kitchen, I hoped that the next phone call would feature a victory for Lasse. There was so much goodness in him, I could feel it. I needed to hear that he had joy in his life. I needed to know he'd been happy.

That evening, Christmas Eve, I listened to the story I'd been waiting for.

After celebrating the New Year, Gerhard and Lasse read the daily news about Finland's seemingly failing attempts to defend against a ravenous Red Army. Sweden stood firmly on “nonbelligerent” ground, sending relief supplies—but not troops—abroad. The Magnusson family needed a distraction from the destruction to their east, and Gerhard decided to provide it for them. What he didn't anticipate, however, was the secret battle that would ensue within him.

“I'm going to enter the Vasaloppet,” he announced proudly one morning over breakfast.

“Like hell you are!” Lasse snorted and jabbed Gerhard's stomach with his fork. “Look at that paunch! What have the trains done to you? The ferries have been good to me,” Lasse inspected his own impressive bicep, doubled in size since beginning his work with his father. “I should enter the race, if for no other reason than to ensure you don't kill yourself!”

Gerhard smiled. Lasse had taken the bait.

They didn't have much time to train. Sweden's annual cross-country ski race was in three weeks, and Lasse was right. He was in far better physical condition than Gerhard.

Gerhard excelled in all things cerebral; he outwitted his brother with little effort. He excelled in school, and his teachers adored him. He was used to being on top. But he questioned his physical capacity. As the days wore on, he felt the odds stacking up against him, and as much as he had difficulty admitting it, he didn't like it.

The brothers looked at the Vasaloppet as their magnum opus. All of their smaller petty competitions—the intellectual contests, the physical trials—leading to this point seemed juvenile in comparison. Suddenly, the Vasaloppet represented more than just a ski race. Gerhard's attention-grabbing decoy had grown bigger than he expected. He became obsessed. Every waking minute he thought about techniques to quicken his pace, to sustain his endurance, to beat his brother. A week before the race, the church hosted a party for all the Trelleborg skiers; the small coastal city was sending seven of its men to Sälen to compete. Before the party, Gerhard watched as Lasse bent over their washbasin, lathering his thick, blond beard with soap. And Gerhard suddenly realized how much older Lasse looked. He seemed stronger, more handsome. Gerhard reached up to touch his own face and loathed its boyishness.

He was also nervous about the evening's festivities—almost more nervous than he was about the race—because he knew most of Trelleborg's young women would be at the party.

“We'll have fun tonight, yeah, Gerhard?” Lasse asked, buttoning his vest.

“I don't like to dance,” Gerhard confessed, lying on his bed, fiddling with his pocket watch.

“Liar! You don't know how.” Lasse tossed his hand towel at his brother. “It's not that hard. You just do a little of this,” he held one hand to his stomach and the other he suspended in the air, dancing around the room, leading an invisible partner. “And then a little of this,” he spun the partner around. “They like it when you hold them close.” He winked, dipping the woman to an almost impossible depth. Gerhard smiled. For a fleeting moment he wanted to call off the race.

“Just think of women as if they were that watch,” Lasse gestured to the keepsake in Gerhard's palm. “You gotta wind 'em up before they'll work.” Lasse laughed deeply, ducking from the pillow Gerhard threw at him.

There was no forgetting—no escaping—the war even for the night. Gerhard and Lasse both noticed the heavy drapes in the church windows as they approached.