Page 14 of The Happiness Blueprint
“Well, thanks. You were closer to it than me,” he says.
I follow him as he steps onto the cobbled street and then immediately swerves when a cyclist speeds past.
“Bloody cyclists think they own this city!” he spits out in some kind of harsh font Microsoft must have dropped in the developmental trial stages. I look down at my feet.
“Wewerewalking in the bike lane,” I explain.
“Bike lane? Shouldn’t even exist. They don’t pay any road tax or contribute to the upkeep of the roads in any way. Plus they just chain their bikes up to the railings and don’t even have to pay a parking fee.”
I don’t understand Mateusz’s anger. The only time bicycles annoy me is when their owners wear those ridiculously tight, distracting pants.
I send a message to Saga when I’m finally released from the grip of Mateusz’s van an hour later, my feet back on my dad’s land to pick up my own van.
Me: If I tell you about my day, can you tell me if I messed up or not?
I check my phone several times. No reply. I would like Saga to tell mewell done. That I did okay. But lately she hasn’t done that. It’s almost as if she treats me like a child who no longer believes in Santa Claus. Why bother pretending? Because I don’t believe in myself, she’s stopped trying to make me.
After work, at 5:03 p.m., I head back to Lund, this time to the hospital. The side roads are full of bikes carrying students swaying tipsily, as they make their way from their flats out for the night. They are a trademark of Lund, a student must-have, if you will, that the city that has more bicycles than cars. The town center looks smaller than I remember as I pass it. But then, doesn’t everything when you’re an adult?
I once considered this a great scene for a weekend night: the tapas bar, the outside terrace on the square, followed by the only club there was, La Fiesta, Spanish by name but not by nature. Every good night finished off with a half-hour bus ride home, alighting by the side of a country lane and walking the last half mile in chilly darkness using the flashlight app on my phone when my calls to rouse Dad from his sleep and drive to pick me up had failed.
The hospital is on the outskirts of town and is a large complex with several buildings. It’s the workplace and main attraction for many foreign residents in the area. I haven’t been here since I was a child, but I still know it by heart.
I am under strict instruction not to enter the oncology ward. “There is no emergency that justifies you barging in. I’m telling you now before you come up with one,” Dad told me before waving me off this morning, leaving me no choice but to disapprovingly grunt a goodbye and accept his order. The roles are reversed. Dad used to be the one waiting in the car outside a party venue, under no circumstances allowed in to collect my teenage driving-licenseless self. I didn’t go because I particularly enjoyed parties, but I enjoyed beinginvited. I used to save the messages on my secondhand Nokia 3310 and would pull them up to reread them when I needed a bit of a boost. To keep being invited I had to sometimes attend. When I would finally stumble out with a mint gum between my teeth to cover up any suspicious alcohol-like odor, I would find Dad reclined in his seat, chin tilted up and mouth slightly open as if he were a bird waiting to have a grain dropped into his mouth. Dad never questioned me when I got into the passenger seat; instead he pulled up at the village’s only fast-food joint, a small shack with a hole in the wall where frozen burgers and sausages with minimal meat content were prepared and served up on paper plates with chips and an additive-filled sauce. I ate the fries, scooping sauce up and trying to avoid dripping it in the car as we drove home. “When she starts drinking alcohol, a carbohydrate snack before bed can help counter the effects on her blood sugar,” the nurse had told us at a checkup. I’m not sure greasy fries was what she had in mind (snacks, according to medical personnel, tend to equal carrot sticks, flat bread with hummus or low-fat yogurt) but I loved Dad for his interpretation.
“Don’t tell Mum,” he said as I, knowing the drill, disposed of the evidence in the garbage can before coming inside the house.
I eat a cheese roll in the cafeteria while I wait for Dad. It’s served Swedish-style, open with each half buttered and with a slice of cheese and cucumber on it, rather than filled and assembled like its English counterpart. I lift the slice of cheese up and see that the butter is spread unevenly: it leans like a ski slope to the left. I wish I had gotten a knife with it so I could fix the asymmetry. I pick up one cucumber slice and use it to shovel the butter off the slope like snow and spread it with the green tip of the cucumber wheel.
The chair is uncomfortable. I wonder who orders the hospital furnishings? The one I’m sitting on is a faded black, as if the paint ran out and the remaining drops were stretched out to cover the chair anyway. It’s pure metal or a cheaper aluminum alternative, and I can feel my seat bones against the hard surface despite the natural padding of my buttocks. I shift on it, and it makes screeching noises against the floor.
The only appealing aspect of the cafeteria is the view of the patient courtyard and an art exhibition on the walls: colorful flower shapes from a humid rainforest on canvas. The artist must have been dreaming themselves away to Brazil or the Philippines.
I wonder if the chairs were the same when my parents used them and what was on the walls then, when I was here, in 2002.
ALEX
Personal Calendar
• NEW TASK:Abstain from writing to Calle
• EDITED TASK:Only write to Calle in the evening
• EDITED TASK:Don’t write to Calle unless there is a full moon
There’s a fucking full moon.
SAVED TO DRAFTS
Hi Calle,
Just realized as I write this that I’ve started saying your name again. My tongue missed it. I’ve been thinking about grief. Some people get tattoos. I could get a C or a date perhaps, which would move further and further away as each day passed until people looked at it and would think, What happened a decade ago that made its way onto this man’s skin, the barrier that sits where the human ends and the world begins?
I have no need to wear my grief, it’s already weeping through my pores like alcohol would during a hangover, its distinct odor over my body like a mist. Active grief needs no reminder. It’s when people start moving forward, or rather away, that they want an anchor, an etching on their physical self. At least, this is what I imagine.
Practicalities: you have a sock subscription, you never mentioned it. Happy Socks, it’s called. I also learned that Tele2 Sweden wants to upgrade your phone, as apparently you are a valued customer.Yes!I want to write them in reply. Valued customer, valued human. But strangers don’t want to listen to who you were to me. They want to close accounts and finish their workdays on time, as they surely have family time, cooking andStrictly Come Dancingwaiting for them at home.
Life goes on, as they say, until it doesn’t.
