Page 81 of The Happiness Blueprint
It’s been a week. Suit is thrown back into the wardrobe where I hope I will never see it again. This time I may actually burn it, maybe a ritual like that will send fate a message.Stop messing with Alex. He’s not prepared for it. Hasn’t got the fucking suit!It’s over. Months of searching, pulling my fucking hair out and agonizing is over now. Feel relief. But do not feel like celebrating.
Five missed calls from Klara. She doesn’t like phone calls so she must really need to talk to me. Can’t talk to her. Don’t want to hear her explain anything. Because there is nothing to explain, is there? If I talk to her I may blow up. I’ve sat on the couch for three hours straight and am having flashbacks to two months ago when I was in a very different place to now. Saw her calendar entry, she’s going. Not sure what reaction she’s hoping for and what the point of those five calls were when she’s so clearly moving away. Moving on.
Know what it feels like to have your heart broken now. I have known for two days and five hours. If depression is the lack of feeling, this here is the presence of all negative feelings in one, squeezed together in an elevator, commuter train or other incredibly claustrophobic space. I reckon if you stay with them, you may end up fine: once they starve, they’re shut off there in the elevator. I’m trying to sit with it. Fear, anger andregret?
KLARA
How do you throw a Beat Cancer party?
Google Search I’m Feeling Lucky
We are sitting on metal chairs padded with tired blue patterned fabric, bright lights flickering above our heads. There is no reason to make consultation rooms cheerier, if it’s good news they can look like a junkie’s apartment for all the patient cares, and if it’s bad news beauty will simply sting the eyes. The room is perfect.
We are ready. Mum is quiet on the iPad. We are quiet as well. I have stopped my mindless, nervous babbling after Saga pinched my thigh. My cue to shut the eff up since childhood and still as effective.
“So.” Dr. Singh tenses his lips pursing them gently, getting ready to speak. His eyes move between Dad’s face and his computer screen, stopping at the latter for extended periods of time to read and gather information about my father and his body,his case, which is what he is reduced to in the doctor’s eyes. “I have your MRI back as well as your PET scan images, Peter. It looks as if there is no lymph-node involvement in the nearby regions.” He abandons his screen, breaking into a smile, “Which means that you are cancer-free.”
“Are you kidding?” I blurt out, my body leaving the chair to half stand up.
“I’m not joking. That would be quite a strange joke, wouldn’t it?” Dr. Singh smiles at me.
Mum starts cheering as if we’ve won the lottery, which I guess you could say we have.
“We should totally throw one of those Beat Cancer parties,” Saga says. “Where we make a tumor piñata and bash it to pieces.”
We hug my dad, and as the relief washes over me I feel something else as well, a selfish unexpected feeling that tells me my work here is done, and this means I have to go home. I had come to accept, perhaps even like, that my trip had no end in sight, no return date set.
I wish I could tell Alex. We had been gearing up and hoping for good news together: his trial and my dad’s health. And now we both have the good news that we wanted, but it doesn’t feel quite as wonderful as I imagined.
It has been three months. I can’t quite get my head around it. In a way it feels like I just arrived yesterday, but on the other it must have been years, because I arrived a different Klara than I am now. It was as if a piece of me was missing and, however cheesy it sounds, I found it here.
“You know you are always welcome to stay,” my dad says it with hesitation, as if he worries I will bite his hand off at the suggestion. I would have, the Klara that landed a few months back to start the biggest chore I had ever been given by a parent.
“Maybe one day. I have to go home. I have my life in London.” I have my flat share waiting for me, my belongings, my savings account with what is supposed to be a deposit on a first-buyer home in some London suburb and half of my two friends.If Alex didn’t now hate me, perhaps things would have been different...I push the thought away. I’ve screwed up in every way possible, in every iteration of the verb.I screw up, I screwed up, I’ve screwed up, I’m screwed.
“Will you be okay when I go?” I ask him.
“I will miss you, but I’m ready to jump in again, and I’ve missed my eggs on toast. Stir-fry Tuesday just isn’t the same.”
“I’ve prepared some CVs for you. They’re in a green folder in the office. This time I mentioned that we want to keep the ratio of fifty-percent women-held positions, and my ad wasn’t removed.” This train of thought obviously leads straight to Alex, to when he turned up with his messy hair and Scandi cheekbones.Oh, Alex.If only I were normal. I’ve never wished for it this much before. I would know what to do, what to say to avert the crisis. I could have explained how I felt about him—feelabout him. What was once an unidentifiable feeling is clear to me now. I, Klara Nilsson, have now been in love. I could tell him all this, and perhaps my words would be enough. But they never are. Where poignant words should sit, I havedeficits.That’s what the first part of my assessment, emailed over by Dr. Svensson, called it.Autism is an invisible disability. It doesn’t feel invisible, standing in front of me now, blocking my way to happiness. This is what I say in my head, of course. What I say out loud to Dad is “There are a total of six candidates that I feel would be suitable, and they are the ones in the folder. I am sure the company’s future will be as bright as ever even after my departure.”
“Thank you,” Dad replies, smiling at me. “I’ve decided to try Hanna in your position when you leave. If anything, this has taught me that I’m not the only one that can run this company. It’s time I take a back seat and let your changes work for us. I’m thinking two days off a week won’t harm me.”
I have a thought of my work here having a scent, like a perfume, and that scent will linger in the air after I’ve gone home. I like the thought of something of mine lingering here. Something I can perhaps come back for one day.
“Come, I have something to show you,” Dad says now. “You have to leave this room and come outside, though.”
Dad points toward the toolshed, which holds less tools than random crap, and I follow as he opens the door. A motorcycle, black, blue and shiny stands there, its cover taken off to reveal it in all its metal glory. It smells ofnew.Dad beams with joy.
“My new toy. I thought I deserved it after this ordeal.”
“It’s amazing, Dad! I never knew you liked bikes.”
“A dream I had, but I was always too sensible to follow it. I’m thinking this will keep me busy all spring and summer, the flat endless roads of the south. I’m joining a group of bikers that drive once a week.” I give him a hug. He is getting started on his bucket list, just like me. He will be fine.
“Good on you, Dad. You only live once. Unless you’re a salamander or an amphibian. Then you live twice.”
Later, I think ofyou only live onceand go visit Google because I too do not have the life cycle of a reptile.
