Hell Fire

23 January 2005

The holiday passed all too quickly, and in January, Bonnie had to go back to work and Simon had to go back to daycare. He was slow and uncooperative in the mornings. He banged the table with his little fists and shouted that he didn’t want to go. Bonnie gritted her teeth; she half carried, half dragged him out to the car with an aching heart.

Then, one morning in the middle of January, she woke up with him calling her. She leaped out of bed and ran into his room. She turned on the light and asked if he’d had a bad dream as she stroked his hair. Then she noticed something strange on his face: several big blisters. She pulled his pajamas off in a panic to have a look. His whole body was covered in blisters, and she was terrified. She had never seen anything like it and couldn’t imagine what it was. She got him out of bed and into some clothes, and then she called the office to say that she had to take her son to the doctor, but that she would be at Erna’s as soon as she could.

“Will I need any shots?” Simon asked from the back seat, once they were in the car.

“I don’t know,” Bonnie said. “You might just get some medicine. Pills or some cream. We’ll have to wait and see what the doctor says.”

“Will I have to go to daycare after?”

“No, not as long as you’ve got those spots. I’ll call Granny, so she can look after you while I’m at work.” When they got to the doctor’s, she was relieved to see that there weren’t many people sitting in the waiting room. There were only two others in front of them in line, and she did everything she could to calm Simon, who was frightened. As they waited, her mind was racing and she thought that perhaps it was some kind of allergy. Even though Simon had never been bothered by anything like that before, and nor had she. When they went in to see the doctor, she took off his clothes, and the doctor ran his fingers over the angry rash.

“It came up overnight?”

“Yes.”

“Has he had it before?”

“No.”

“Will I need to have a shot?” Simon whispered.

“No, no,” the doctor said reassuringly. “You won’t need a shot, little man. This is quite harmless and easy to treat.”

“But what is it?” Bonnie asked.

“Hives,” the doctor explained. “I’ll give you some prednisolone, and that should make it disappear fairly quickly.”

He patted Simon on the head and wrote out a prescription. “Do you think he might be suffering from stress?” he asked.

Bonnie felt like she’d been punched. “I guess he might be. It’s just the two of us — Simon and me — and he’s not very happy at daycare. But we don’t have any choice.”

She took the prescription and thanked the doctor. Then she and Simon walked down the corridor to the hospital entrance, where there was a pharmacy. They got the medicine and then drove to Bonnie’s mother’s, who met them at the door. Simon had no objections to staying there, and finally Bonnie was free to drive to Erna’s.

“It’s about time,” the old woman said grumpily. “I’ve been waiting for an hour and a half. Punctuality is a virtue, you know. You won’t have time to do anything now.”

Bonnie stood quietly and took a deep breath. “But you did get a message from Ragnhild to say that I needed to take Simon to the doctor?”

“Yes, I got the message. In my opinion, single mothers with small children shouldn’t actually work at all; they have to take so much time off.”

Bonnie went into the bedroom as usual and picked up the basket of socks. She put the socks on the legs of all the chairs and tables, while Erna sat in her chair and watched her like a hawk. As she worked, Bonnie thought about Simon. Of course he was stressed, just like the doctor said. And she should do something about it, only she didn’t know what. Of course it wasn’t good that he had practically no contact with his father. She had robbed him of that. She often regretted it, but she was so proud. And Olav had a daughter now. He was happy with Kathrine, and every time she thought about it, she boiled with rage. She washed the floor and vacuumed as well as she could. Then she did the bedroom, changing the bed and, as usual, looking up at the photograph of Erna as a young girl. It was hard to imagine that the radiant girl in the picture had become the flinty woman out in the living room. What does life do to us? she thought. When she was finally finished, she went to say goodbye, and Erna followed her to the door so she could lock it.

“And next time, I expect you to be punctual” was her parting shot.

Over Christmas, Ingemar had finally been given a place at Hallingstad nursing home, so Bonnie went to visit him later on in January.

He was sitting in a chair by the window, but there were no horses to be seen outside — only a parking lot with long rows of cars. There was a box of chocolates on the table, still wrapped in cellophane. No doubt from his family. Bonnie thought to herself that the chocolates were an insult to a man who only wanted soured milk, sausage, and cod liver oil straight from the bottle.

“It’s Bonnie,” she said as she went over to him. “How are you?”

He turned his head and looked at her. He definitely recognized her, but he did not give her a smile. He turned his gaze back to the cars outside the window, his bushy gray eyebrows knitted.

“You don’t need to speak so loudly,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with my hearing.”

Bonnie looked at his large white ear, and thought suddenly that it reminded her of a beautiful conch shell. She wondered, if she put her ear to his, whether she would hear the sound of his long life. Which was over now. The memory of life in his old house with the horses outside the window was all that he had left. Ahead there was nothing.

Then she did something she had never done before. She gave his cheek a gentle stroke. And that teased out a little smile.

When she was in the car driving home again, she thought to herself that she never wanted to be old. She couldn’t face the deterioration, the helplessness. She didn’t want her hair to go gray and her jowls to sag. She thought about her father; he was like a child now. His life was over too, even though he was only seventy-five. He was in another world, but he was in good physical health and might live for years yet with serious dementia. She had seen an Alzheimer brain on TV once, and it was as full of holes as Swiss cheese.

That evening she sat on the sofa with Simon and looked through a photo album. She had to point out and explain who was who all the time.

“That’s Granny and Grandpa,” she said, “on their wedding day. Isn’t Granny lovely?”

Simon agreed. There wasn’t a picture like that of his mother and father because they never got married.

“Look, that’s me,” she pointed and laughed. “I was just a baby there, and I was pretty fat. And there I’m ten; we’re at the beach. I remember that swimsuit because I had it for a long time.”

“And that’s me and Daddy,” Simon said as he looked up at her. “And I’ve got a sister.”

“A half-sister,” Bonnie corrected him. “It’s not quite the same.”

She helped him brush his teeth, tucked him into bed, and switched off the light. She felt utterly exhausted and went back into the living room and sank down in an armchair. She tried to find something to watch on television. Where was her life going? What was going to happen? Sometimes, like now, she felt that something was close, something she couldn’t articulate.