The Tricking of Freya (33 page)

The new Betel. Of course. I remembered now, Stefan telling me about
it in his Christmas card last year.

"Are you here for a visit then? We do love visitors."

"To see Sigga Petursson. Do you know her?"

"Know Sigga? Of course I know Sigga! I just happen to be one of her
very dearest friends, Mrs. Halldora Bjarnason. And who might you be?"

"I'm Freya. Her granddaughter." We'd reached the entrance by this time
and I held the glass door open for the old woman, though I had no doubt she was strong enough to do it herself. But Halldora didn't move, just stood
on the front step staring at me through thick-lensed glasses that magnified
her eyes into wobbling brown marbles.

"Sigga's been waiting for you," she said finally. Crossly?

"Well, my flight got in late last night, and then I overslept a bit this
morning-

"Years!" Halldora interrupted. Then marched into Betel with a loud rap
of her cane.

Living in New York these past eight years, I'd come to think of myself as
brave. Hadn't I arrived as an orphan in a city of strangers, then reinvented
myself as a skilled black-and-white printer and aspiring photographer?
Each day I braved the crowded subways, lecherous men on street corners,
my bossy boss, toxic darkroom chemicals, and on top of it all spent hours
taking and developing my own photographs in my spare time. True, I rarely
showed them to anyone, not, I told myself, because I was afraid to but because I was waiting until I was good enough.

But there is a difference between being tough and being brave. I see that
now. Standing in the doorway to Betel was far more terrifying than a nerveracking wait at a deserted three a.m. subway station. If I were truly brave, I
would have returned to Gimli long before. No, I was nothing but a toughskinned chicken two chicken steps from fleeing town in a disgrace of feathers and fear.

Once, twice I circled the block, rebuilding my confidence with cigarettes and desperate attempts at reason. If Sigga hated me, she would not
have invited me to her party. Simple as that. If other people despised me,
well, that was their business. If the old ladies of Betel wanted to think of
me as an ungrateful, coldhearted, kin-denying, selfish American of a granddaughter, let them. They were probably right.

Hesitantly I opened Betel's front door and entered the foyer.

Dr. Brandur Gudmundsson was the first Icelander to obtain a medical
degree in North America, a revered leader among the Winnipeg Icelanders,
and the founder of the Betel retirement home. So read the plaque under his
oil portrait hanging prominently in Betel's entryway. It was the same painting that had hung in the entrance to the old Betel. Bless that man for his
good Works, Mama used to say each time she passed it. Good old Dr. Gudmundsson, father of Mama's dear friend Vera. Would Vera be at the party?
Of course she would. In the portrait Dr. G had a sweeping handlebar mustache. Birdie liked to call him a pompous patriarch, claimed it was actually
the hardworking women of the Ladies Aid who were the driving force behind Betel. She herself would never end up in Betel, Birdie claimed. Betel
was for good Lutherans, and she was nothing of the sort. Right she was.

The entry area over which Dr. G presided smelled faintly of Lysol with
an undercurrent of the sickly-sweetish odor emitted by the extremely aged.
The room itself was empty, but around the corner I found an administrator
sitting behind a desk.

"Can we help you?" The woman was alone, the plural institutional. She
wore a pantsuit, and her hair was cut neatly at the shoulders.

"I'm here to see Sigga Petursson."

"Are you a relative?"

"Yes." I took a breath, then forged ahead with the awful truth. "I'm her
granddaughter."

"Ah yes. We've heard you were coming." She seemed genuinely pleased,
unlike cranky Halldora. She took my hand. "I'm Sylvia Johnson, Director of
Care. The party starts this evening. Downstairs here in the reception room,
six o'clock."

"I'll be there," I promised. "But I was hoping for a visit beforehand."

"I'm sorry, dear. But no visitors for Sigga today. Big day ahead. Needs her
rest. I'm afraid you'll have to wait to see her at the party, along with everyone else."

That would not do. But I knew better than to attempt to sway the forces
of bureaucracy. "Of course," I responded. "I understand." I even managed a
smile. "I used to come here," I added. "Not here, but to the old Betel. When
I was child. My mother and I came every morning to sit with the old ladies
and knit socks."

"Is that so? How good of you. Is this your first time to the new Betel
then?"

I nodded, and the next thing I knew I was getting the grand tour. The
new building had cost $4.7 million to construct, boasted state-of-the-art
medical equipment, offered recreational and social services. Everything
was shiny spanking new: the dining room, the reception room where Sigga's
party would be held, the chapel, the library (a gift from the government of
Iceland), the lounge, the residents' floor. "How wonderful," I exclaimed.
And then, just as I was turning to go, "Is there a bathroom I could use?"

Three minutes later I was sneaking down the residents' hall on the second floor, scanning nameplates outside each door. Mostly Icelandic, a few
Ukrainian and Anglo. Through partly open doors I glimpsed white-haired
heads on pillows. A pair of bare, blue-veined feet sticking out from under a
sheet. A children's cartoon show on a television in an empty room. A cart
stuffed with dirty linens standing outside a washroom door, unattended.

I found Sigga's room at the far end of the hall and knocked on the door,
lightly. Again. Then loudly. Then gave up and opened it. The room, like
everything else at the new Betel, was new. New dresser, new visitors' chairs, new bookcase. Fresh paint. And there on the bed was the one thing notnew, an old woman thin and wrinkled as a wet sheet frozen on the line to
dry. Could that be Sigga?

"Amma?" I whispered. "Amma?" Then, Amma!" But there was no answer, and after a moment I understood there never would be. Sigga's body
was completely still. Eyes closed, mouth set, arms folded neatly on her
chest, which did not rise or fall. Dead and obviously so.

My first response was to laugh, a choked, harsh snort of disdain for the
universe. Tricked! I bit my lower lip at the stupidity of it, hard enough to
taste blood. All this way for nothing! And for Sigga to choose this, the morning of her hundredth birthday, to make her exit. I had no doubt that death
is a choice. Birdie was my first lesson in that, and though my own mother's
death was no suicide, I was certain it was just another means of giving up.
And now here was Sigga, a no-show at her own party, leaving the long-lost
Freya only a corpse's greeting: Sorry, elskan, you waited too long.

And what was I supposed to do now? Call for help? I found a red emergency buzzer hanging from a cord tied to the rail of Sigga's hospital bed and
almost rang it. But what was the rush? The dead have plenty of time. I'd
take a moment alone with her first, then let some efficient nurse come
wheel Sigga away to wherever dead people went.

I lit a cigarette and stood at the edge of the bed smoking, no doubt
breaking yet another one of Betel's rules. I imagined Dr. G glaring down at
me from heaven, in which as a devout Lutheran he surely believed. I myself
am a devout nothing. The only thing I am certain of is that death in no way
prevents the dead from interfering with the living. They're haunters, my
dead, hangers-on. And now Sigga would be joining the pack, before I'd even
had a chance to make some kind of peace with her.

I pulled an orange plastic chair to the edge of Sigga's bed. Except it
wasn't Sigga. Sigga was tall and commanding, a master librarian, roundfaced and spectacled, queen of the vinarterta. Not this stark assemblage of
spindly limbs and sparse wiry hair, a frozen sheet of a human being, the
discarded wrapping of a life. I lit a new cigarette from the tip of the last,
leaned back in the chair, closed my eyes -I couldn't bear to look at Sigga's
body for more than a second at a time and let the tears fly. Head in hands
I wept and wept, raw gulps of sadness and chest-shaking hiccups of grief, years of pent up stuff, humiliating streams of tears and snot. Soon I was
sobbing, sobs rasping and hollow as the yelping of an abandoned mutt-

-and Sigga was finally woken from her midmorning nap. She peered at
me through watery gray eyes, mere slits among the folds of skin.

"Elskan!" she cried out, her voice surprisingly clear. I'd wondered if
Sigga would recognize me, but she showed not even a flicker of doubt
about my identity. Only a tremulous, grandmotherly concern. "Whatever is
the matter?"

I stared, brain reeling to accommodate the hard, physical evidence:
Sigga was alive. "I thought, I thought, I thought you were-"

"Now, now, child. You'll have to wait a minute. Can't hear a thing." Sigga
reached for two putty-colored hearing aids on her bedside table, then fumbled them into her ears with swole-knuckled fingers. Tricked again! Sigga
was never dead, just dead asleep. Dead to the world. The coma-like respite
of the near-deaf at the end of a century of life. I laughed -I couldn't help
myself-and this time, Sigga heard me. She tilted her head in bewilderment.

"What's so funny?"

I hesitated only a moment before blurting out the truth. "I didn't know
you were sleeping. I thought you were dead. That's why I was crying."

"Oh my," Sigga said, her wrinkled brow wrinkling even deeper. She
handed me a box of tissues from the bedside table. "I gave you a fright. Is
that what you're riled up about?"

I nodded, then wiped my salt-streaked cheeks, blew my nose. "I'm so
sorry," I began.

"Sorry about what?"

"That I haven't been to visit."

"Now, elskan, I'll have no more of that. With your life the way it is.
You're here now, that's what matters." She reached out and took my hand in
hers. Her skin was papery and dry against my tear-sticky palm. I wondered
what exactly Sigga knew about my life. What had Stefan told her? But it
didn't matter. When Sigga took my hand, a helium lightness swelled inside
me. So this is it. This is what it's like to feel forgiven! It's what I'd come for,
I realized, that moment of blessed absolution, one that seemed to free me
not only of the sin of not visiting but of everything wretched I had ever done, or not done. The light blue walls of the room seemed to glow like the
inside of one of those old Icelandic churches.

"Happy birthday." The words floated like balloons from my newly lightened being.

"Oh yes," Sigga said matter-of-factly. "I suppose it is."

"I came for the party," I reminded her.

"Oh, that. Stefan's behind it, isn't he? Silly, really, a party for an old
woman like me." She paused. "When is this party?"

"It's tonight."

"Of course it is. You'll have to excuse me, I've gotten a bit forgetful. It's
terrible, really. No one should be allowed to get this old."

"I brought some vinarterta for you." I put the bag on the bedside table.

"You always made lovely vinarterta," Sigga said. "But I'm not hungry just
now. We'll have some later."

I was certain I'd never made my own vinarterta, but I easily pardoned
Sigga's lapse. If she wanted to believe I made a lovely vinarterta, it was fine
with me. We sat in silence for a moment, still holding hands, and then
Sigga asked a strange question.

"Where is the baby now?"

"Baby?"

"Oh, I suppose she's not a baby anymore, is she? I lose track of time. But
the little one-are you bringing her to the party? Everybody will want to see
her."

Sigga was looking directly at me, seeing someone else. "I don't know-"
I answered, dropping Sigga's hand. "I don't think you know who-"

"Just for a short time then." Sigga sighed, exasperated, as if we'd had this
conversation many times before. "You ask too little of that child. She's perfectly capable of behaving at a family occasion. It's your sister I'm worried
about."

"My sister?"

"Just keep an eye on her, that's all I ask! Make sure she doesn't drink too
much. Will you do that?"

"I don't think-"

"Please!" Sigga's voice became agitated, high and fluttery. "You know
how wild Birdie gets when she starts drinking."

A chill came over me. The hairs on my arms actually stood on end. Sigga
hadn't forgiven me. She wasn't even talking to me. She was talking to my
mother. Tricked again!

"But, Amma," I began. "I think maybe you're a bit confused, I think-"

"I think Sigga needs her rest, that's what I think."

Standing in the doorway was tiny Halldora, leaning on her cane. "How
did you get in here, anyway? I left strict orders that Sigga was not to have
visitors today." She sniffed the air with her beaked nose. "Have you been
smoking in here? Against the rules, against common sense!" In a brisk moment she'd opened the window, and the scent of harbor wafted in.