Page 5 of A Curse for the Homesick

HEDDA’S

2013

I woke up the day after Midsummer and found I couldn’t move.

I stared up at the ceiling of my narrow room and briefly wondered if I was dead. Sun lit the pale space, undeterred by my gauzy curtains. My bed was exactly the length of the room. In the remaining space, there was a chest of drawers with a mirror on top, and at the uppermost point of the mirror, a relief carving of Haakon the Old, king of Norway in god knew when. The only thing I had on my wall was a Renaissance-era portrait of a noblewoman who looked prepared to murder her painter if he made her sit there a moment longer. Across it, Kitty had painted the words: I don’t have anything nice to say. She’d given it to me for my fifteenth birthday.

Again, I tried to move. This time, I managed to shift my foot under the covers, and I exhaled slowly. I wriggled my toes and fingers, creating an inventory of my body. When I finally forced myself onto an elbow, a stabbing pain radiated through my shoulder, and I had to pause to catch my breath.

I got to my feet inelegantly. Before I’d gone to bed, I’d cleaned the blood off my shoulder and dabbed antiseptic on the worst of it. I smeared on another layer of antiseptic now, wincing.

Over my footboard, I had draped a towel, still damp, and Soren’s red sweater. I had the uncomfortable urge to wear it. I tugged on one of my own instead, plus leggings. When I passed the mirror, I looked at my reflection carefully, as I did every morning, looking for three long claw marks across my skin. There was nothing. Just my normal face and my salt-crusted hair and a spot on the side of my nose.

My phone said it was eight. Practice started at nine, once the wave of very young and very old swimmers had cleared out of the pool. I told myself my shoulder would loosen as I swam, and I stuffed my damp towel and a swimsuit into my bag.

In the kitchen, my dad was making French toast. His phone, which sat on the counter, was playing Lady Gaga. My dad listened almost exclusively to female pop stars; for Christmas, Linnea had bought him a Taylor Swift keychain.

“How was Midsummer?” he asked, nudging a plate in my direction.

I took it. The butter was melting into the syrup; everything smelled sweet and cinnamony. “Youthful.”

“You got back late. Did you walk?”

“Kitty drove me.”

We ate in peaceable silence. My dad’s knife clicked against his plate as he divided his toast into a tiny grid of equilateral pieces. I considered telling him about my shoulder, but decided not to; if I didn’t say it out loud, then it couldn’t be that bad.

“Do you need the car this morning?” I asked.

“Not until tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“I have something vaguely reminiscent of a date.”

I raised my eyebrows and speared the last of my toast. “With?”

“Anna? From the hospital?” My dad kept his head ducked to his plate. Beneath his scruff—three days of pale stubble—his cheeks were going pink. “Figured. You know. Get back out there.”

My dad had really only dated one person since my mother, and that was my kindergarten teacher. They’d been together for two years, and I had wanted to be supportive because it had meant a lot to my dad, but I knew I hadn’t been. I resolved myself to regard Anna, from the hospital, with less suspicion.

“That’s great,” I said.

My dad nodded once and fished the car keys out of his pocket. I caught them by the keychain.

“Oh,” he said with the air of someone saying something offhand that they had been trying to figure out how to say offhandedly for some time now, “by the way. Your mum called.”

“Ah.” I checked my phone. 8:51. I had to go.

“She said you haven’t answered any of her emails.”

“Been busy.”

Quietly, my dad said, “I just hope it’s not on my account.”

He wasn’t looking at me. My dad had never been good with eye contact; he fixed his gaze on the thin pond of berry syrup on his plate.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He nodded once, and that was that—the end of the conversation. I got into the car at 8:53 and drove to the pool. The whole time, I drummed my fingers on the wheel and tried not to think of my mother’s emails. When they arrived, I marked them as read and archived them unopened. I was fairly sure my mum knew I did this, so she’d been making the subject lines increasingly like clickbait. You’ll never believe what I found out about your grandfather! And: FYI, I ran into an old friend of yours… And: Check this essay I wrote about you for errors?

I parked in my usual spot at the far corner of the lot. My dad drove a 1996 Toyota Camry, gray. We called it the Ship of Theseus after the old thought experiment—if you swap every piece of a ship one by one, is it a new ship?

Getting out of the car sent another stab of pain through my left side, and with every step I took toward the pool, my faith in my ability to swim this off decreased. Usually, I said a few words to whoever was working at the front desk and to my teammates before getting in the pool. That day, I kept my head down. Scanned my pass, changed into my swimsuit, and slid into the pool silently.

Our club had four lanes. I’d been in the fourth (the fastest) since I’d been fourteen. I led the lane unless we were swimming breaststroke, at which point I would cede lead to Thomas St. Clair. The others had already started warming up, and when they saw me waiting at the bulkhead, they paused to let me go. Thomas said something to me, possibly about Midsummer. I couldn’t remember if he’d been there or not. I also couldn’t totally process what he was saying because the feeling of the chlorine on my shoulder blade was akin to how I imagined it would feel to be splattered with acid.

I swam one hundred meters. My tumble turn, at the halfway point, hurt so badly I did not breathe for the whole fifty meters back. Thomas poked my feet the whole time, indicating not that he wanted to go by, necessarily, but that I should probably speed up. When I got back to the bulkhead, my coach was squatting by the water bottles and staring at me.

I pushed my goggles onto my forehead and looked up at him.

His name was Dan. He’d swum for UCLA, and he’d been helping me contact US university coaches.

“What’s wrong with your shoulder?” Dan said.

“Could you tell from my stroke?”

“I could tell from the obvious wound.”

I put a hand to the space between the straps of my swimsuit. It felt raw there, the skin uneven. “I hit a rock.”

Dan’s dark eyes fixed on me. “You went cliff diving.”

“I didn’t.”

“You know how I feel about that. The kind of risk—”

“I was pulling someone out of the water,” I said. “At Midsummer.”

I wasn’t sure Dan believed me—his mouth was still flattened into a fine line—but he nodded anyway.

“Get out of the water,” he said.

“Am I in trouble?”

“Only if you’ve actually hurt yourself.”

I clung to the edge of the bulkhead. “I think I just need a bandage.”

“Really?” he said. “Because I could also tell from your stroke.” He picked up my gear bag, pull buoy, and fins and tossed them toward my backpack, which was sitting on one of the benches against the wall. When I still didn’t move, he grabbed my water bottle and threw it with the rest. “Go see a doctor,” he said.

We kept staring at each other.

“Don’t tell me you can’t get out of the pool.”

“Remains to be seen,” I said.

“Jesus Christ, Tess.”

I felt a hot, burning shame as I ducked under the lane lines, passing through lane three, two, one, until I reached the ladder. Even that, hauling myself out on the ladder’s silver arms, made my body shake. I tore off my cap and goggles. Yanked my hair out of its bun.

“A doctor soon, please,” Dan called after me.

As the other swimmers came in, I could feel their eyes on me. I wouldn’t look back at any of them. This wasn’t serious, I told myself. It couldn’t be. Because I could not go to university in Stenland and I did not have money to go elsewhere and swimming was the way I was going to get a scholarship to the US; I already had coaches emailing me. Swimming was how I got out of Stenland. I did not have a backup plan.

* * *

There was no one available to look at my shoulder for a week. I made the appointment sitting in the Ship of Theseus, watching people with flip-flops and big backpacks come and go through the pool’s double doors. I briefly considered asking my dad’s hot date, Anna-from-the-hospital, if she knew anything about shoulder injuries.

My dad respected my drive to leave Stenland, which meant that he also respected my swimming. He came to every meet, paid every fee, and bought every new swimsuit. It was an investment, we told ourselves—some money now, free university later. Assuming I was fast enough. Assuming coaches were interested. Assuming I didn’t get injured.

I didn’t want to get home so soon after I’d left, which I knew would stress him out, so I sat in the parking lot googling scapular fractures for an hour. It was neither reassuring nor helpful.

When I did get home—around the same time practice normally ended—I got a call from Linnea. As a rule, Linnea never texted and Kitty never called. Sometimes I ended up coordinating their plans to hang out when I wasn’t even going to be there.

“Hey.”

“Are you done with practice yet?” Linnea asked.

“No. Currently swimming. Glub, glub, glub.”

“Oh,” she said. “Yeah, right, of course, because how else would you pick up the phone? Anyway, I have a preposition for you.”

In the background, Kitty yelled, “Proposition.”

“No,” Linnea said. “My preposition is with . As in, I’m going on a date, and will you please come with?”

I threw my bag onto the couch and the keys onto the counter. Linnea going on a date was not particularly unusual. She’d been going on dates for years now and had already had two seriousish relationships, which we defined as one that lasted more than six months. She had lapped both Kitty and me; neither of us had dated anyone. In my case, it was because I didn’t want to date anyone Stennish. In Kitty’s case, it was because she was in love with Linnea.

“Why do you want me on your date?” I asked.

“I don’t want it to be too romantic. You have to feel things out, you know? Establish a rapport. And then, if it’s good, we can have a romantic date next.”

“Who is ‘we,’ exactly?”

“Oh, Henrik! He was so sweet last night. We just sat on the beach for hours after you and Kitty left, and he made me laugh and said all sorts of kind things about how much he liked talking to me.”

Kitty made a loud vomiting noise.

“Kitty is less sure of him,” Linnea added.

“Will Kitty also be coming on this date that will not be too romantic?” I asked.

“Kitty will not be in attendance!” she called.

“That would be too unromantic,” Linnea clarified. “Because he’s her cousin and all.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “What about Kitty’s cousin?”

“Oh, that’s right—Soren will be there.”

I had been in the middle of inspecting the fridge for snacks, but when Linnea said that, I stopped moving and stood in the refrigerated glow. “No,” I said.

“Why not?”

“You know why not.”

“Yes,” Linnea said, “I do hear you, but this was actually Henrik’s idea, and Soren is his best friend, so if Henrik thinks it’s a good idea, then who are we to disagree? So it’s a double date, and we’re meeting at at six after my shift, so I’ll see you there—okay, bye!”

Linnea ended the call.

I looked down at my phone.

I thought of the way my skin had felt when Soren had touched me. Yes, I had been somewhat delirious from pain, but also, even now, thinking of his fingers running over my neck and his breath against the back of my head, I could feel my pulse in my stomach. I had always imagined that boys didn’t talk to each other about feelings, but now I had the idea in my head of Soren telling Henrik that he liked me and Henrik telling Linnea and the pair of them constructing this double-date scenario to contrive us together. And I liked the thought of it: Soren and Henrik driving down the road together in Soren’s banged-up white truck on the way to Midsummer; Soren admitting that he hoped I would be there. But then I thought of my mother, she of the many unanswered emails. I almost texted Linnea to tell her I wasn’t interested, but then I went into my bedroom and saw Soren’s red sweater hanging over my footboard.

I smoothed down the wool, picturing Soren handing it to me without letting his fingers touch mine. The sweater had to get back to him somehow; maybe if tonight was awful, I could pretend that I’d just wanted to return it. That I had not been particularly interested in his presence. That it did not drive me to distraction that of all the people on this island my mother might have killed, it had been the Fells.

* * *

My dad was just about to leave for his date when I left for mine. He was sporting a pale blue button-up and a vaguely nauseated expression. When he saw me, he squinted at my outfit and said, “Where are you going?”

I looked down at myself and wished I had time to change again. I was wearing black high-waisted jeans and a gray crop top, plus a massive sherpa jacket that had belonged to my dad in high school. When Linnea had said we were meeting at , the downtown café/diner/post office where Linnea had worked since we’d been fifteen, I hadn’t been sure if she’d meant we were staying at or just picking her up and going elsewhere. If we were eating at , the crop top was a bit much. If we were going to a party, the sherpa jacket was a bit stained with motor oil. I could’ve called Linnea and asked for clarification, but that would have revealed that I cared, and I was studiously trying to convince myself I didn’t.

“I have no idea,” I said.

“Well,” my dad said, still looking puzzled, “I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

* * *

I walked into town with my hands shoved into the pockets of my dad’s coat. I had Soren’s sweater, freshly washed, tucked under one arm. Lundwall, the capital of Stenland and the only town that occasionally tried to call itself a city, had been built on the side of a hill. All the roads sloped downward toward the harbor like the island wanted to drain us into the ocean. There was no footpath, so when I heard a car behind me, I had to step into the wet grass or onto the nearest stone fence until it passed. That time of year, everything was lush—the lawns and the roofs and those mossy stone fences—and not yet windswept to death.

was there along the ocean, the first thing you saw climbing off the ferry. Next door, the pub’s parking lot was already full of battered thirty-year-old ?kodas and Vauxhalls. Just beyond, an imposing cement church glowered down at the town. It had been built over top of a five-hundred-year-old stave church by some notable brutalist in the 1960s, and it was regularly featured on worst-of architectural lists. Behind it, just within view on the black-green hillside, there was a graveyard full of statues that had not been carved or cast but born.

I opened the door to with my boot. A bell jingled. was a blunt and unpretentious place. The tables were sticky and squeezed close together. On the counter, there was a coffee pot, a case of grainy-looking pastries, and a sign advertising postage stamps. It smelled vaguely of fermented fish. Behind the register ( CASH ONLY I MEAN IT ) hung a painting of Madonna and child, but I also knew that out back, Hedda kept an earthen mug of sheep’s bones for the wight that might or might not have lived in the alley. That was the Stennish way: Jesus inside, paganism out back.

Only two of the tables were taken. One by a group of backpackers, twentysomethings, speaking loudly in an assortment of accents. A tall boy had his passport sticking out of the water-bottle pouch on the side of his backpack, right where anyone could grab it. I felt a wave of prickly irritation.

At the other occupied table, a booth, Henrik was studying a menu like it hadn’t been the same for our entire lives. When I approached, his big face broke into a smile.

“Hey,” he said.

I slid into the booth across from him. Was that correct double-date etiquette? Next to your date, not across from them? Too late to move now.

There was an awkward pause. I had been in school with Henrik for as long as I could remember, but he had never been someone I talked to. Actually, I didn’t talk to anyone except for Kitty, Linnea, and other swimmers. I was saved by Linnea, who was hanging her apron on a hook and hurrying toward us. She was wearing a knee-length dress, lacy, which didn’t answer the question of where we were going tonight.

“Formula One,” Linnea said, a little breathless as she slid into the booth beside Henrik.

“Sorry?” he said.

“That’s what you two should talk about. When you’re looking so terribly awkward. You both like Formula One.”

Henrik shot me a nervous look, as if I might contradict this. But I nodded my agreement, and Henrik gave a big, fullbody sigh of relief. “Well, you should’ve said so. Linnea, you and your friends are intimidating.”

“I am not intimidating,” said Linnea, who nonetheless looked delighted. “Tess is, somewhat, but she has a gentle and delicate heart.”

“Do I?” I asked.

“You cried when we watched Titanic .”

“Yes, because Kitty was making hot chocolate and spilled boiling water on my arm.”

Linnea scrunched up her face. “Really?”

The bell on the door jingled, and my face swung toward it with embarrassing speed. It was just Hedda. She regarded us suspiciously. There was little color variation between her skin and brows—pale to the point of invisibility—and her hair was short and feathery. Linnea waved cheerily, and Hedda disappeared into the kitchen.

Hedda had run her café for years before she’d become mayor of Lundwall and then a minister of Stenland, and now she ran her café again. She could’ve been prime minister, but she said bureaucracy was tedious and she preferred yeast. The actual prime minister was a thirty-nine-year-old woman who had studied at Cambridge and now lived by the water with her fisherman husband. Every election, the whole island crammed into and drank strong coffee and gossiped until Hedda finally taped her list of political endorsements on the pastry case, and those were the people who would win.

I felt Henrik’s gaze on me, and I was agonizingly conscious of the Soren-shaped hole in the booth. I wasn’t about to ask where he was, but I also wished Henrik would offer the information.

“So, Linnea,” Henrik said, “you’re the expert. What should I order? What should I definitely not order?”

She giggled, and I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

“Do order: any of the breakfast food, the fish and chips, and the cider. Do not order: the soup of the day, the wine, and anything marked as a local favorite.”

“Do I want to know what’s wrong with those things?” Henrik asked.

“You do not!” Linnea said brightly.

The bells on the door jingled again, and this time, I forced myself not to look up. I studied my menu even though I got the exact same thing every time I came to and she probably wouldn’t even bother asking for my order. Linnea whispered something to Henrik, and I stared at the menu with increased fervor. I didn’t look up until a shadow passed over the table, and there was Soren standing above the booth.

He looked like he’d just showered. His hair was curling slightly and a few shades darker than normal. He was wearing another sweater, this one navy, and dark jeans, clean but worn.

“Soren!” Henrik said. “Sit down. I’m just learning about why the soup of the day may or may not give me food poisoning.”

“It won’t give you food poisoning,” Linnea said. “It’ll just taste like whatever people didn’t order yesterday.”

“Well, that does sound tempting,” he said. “Did people by chance not order pizza yesterday? Because I could go for pizza soup.”

“We don’t serve pizza.”

“Really? Maybe you should.”

Soren hovered at the head of the table. He wasn’t looking at me so determinedly that I didn’t see how it wasn’t on purpose. This embarrassed me, and my embarrassment annoyed me, so I decided to stare at him with as much concentration as he was staring at Henrik. Soren’s mouth was very thin; his eyes I’d always thought of as blue, but they were actually almost gray and set under heavy brows. I thought I could make out a hint of stubble on his jaw, the color of straw, and seeing it made me think of the flash of hair across his stomach when he’d given me his sweater.

“You going to sit?” Henrik said.

“I didn’t realize it wasn’t just us,” Soren said.

“Well, that’s rude,” I said. He finally glanced over at me, his eyebrows lifting.

“It was kind of rude,” Henrik said apologetically.

Linnea, for her part, looked aghast. “We just thought maybe it would be fun if we did some sort of double—”

Before she could say the word date , Soren’s head swung toward her and the expression of absolute horror on his face might’ve been funny if it wasn’t also humiliating. Soren took a step back from the table. I hated him, truly hated him and his bad haircut and his face that looked squarish from straight on but angular from the side. I wished I was lying at home in bed in a top that wasn’t cropped with an ice pack on my shoulder.

Soren seemed to regain control of his face and smoothed the horror off it. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He said it like he was talking to Linnea and Henrik, but this time he kept his gaze on me.

“Yeah,” I said. “Of course not.” I handed him the sweater. He took it and gave Henrik one last inscrutable glance—some combination of bewilderment and annoyance.

Soren raked his free hand though his hair, making it stand up on end. He paused a minute, and I was sure he was going to say something else, but before he could, he spun, strode quickly through , and shoved outside. Through the glass door, I could see him stop and scrape his hand through his hair again. He took two steps to the left, shook his head, and did an about-face, hurrying off in the opposite direction with his shoulders bent to the wind.

I sat stiffly on my side of the booth. How stupid I was to only realize it now: that I had hoped that if Soren did not hate me for what my mother did, then I no longer had to hate myself for it.

“Well,” Henrik said finally. “That could have gone worse.”

“I thought you said he wanted to go on a date with her,” Linnea said.

“He does!”

“Has he actually said that to you?” she asked. “In words?”

“Words?” Henrik said. “No.”

I pressed my fingers to my temples. “Linnea, please bring me the soup of the day. Extra food poisoning.”

“I feel like you two are angry at me,” Henrik said.

“We’re not angry,” Linnea said. “We’re just embarrassed.”

I liked that she said we , like our feelings were a packaged deal. We grimaced at each other over the table.

“Wait, why would you be embarrassed?” Henrik said. “Are you really? I’m sorry. I figured you knew, or at least mostly knew.”

“Knew what?” I asked.

“That he likes you. Well.” He rubbed the side of his face. “I say he likes you. What I mean is that he has been more or less in love with you since we were twelve.”

Linnea propped her elbows on the table. “Again, has he said that in words?”

“Well, no, but that’s because he’s conflicted. On account of—of his parents.”

“Maybe he’s not interested in dating,” she said. “Or girls.”

“I’m pretty sure he is. I just think he’s only interested in Tess.”

Linnea looked pensive. “Is that the way teenage boys work? Media has told me they’re not particularly specific in their interests.”

Henrik’s cheeks flushed. “I mean, maybe some of them, but Soren’s really… He’s just serious. Look, he talks about her all the time. Tess got a better grade on her essay than me—do you think her mum helped her write it? That sort of thing.”

“My mum doesn’t help me write my essays,” I said.

Henrik raised his hands defensively. “Okay, well, he says other stuff too. Like, he asked me if I thought you were dating Thomas St. Clair.”

“I find myself grateful we’re having this conversation now and not ten minutes before he showed up,” I said. “Imagine how demoralizing that would’ve been.”

“He is in love with you,” Henrik insisted. “I mean, I think he is.”

“You think,” Linnea said.

“There’s also a chance he resents you.” He sounded concerned. “Honestly, I didn’t consider that.”

I stood up. “And on that note, enjoy your date.”

Linnea’s eyes were wide with concern. “Want me to walk you home?”

I looked at her, then at Henrik, so hapless and earnest. Whenever his eyes found Linnea, he blushed like she was the most gorgeous girl in Stenland. Which, for the record, she was; but it was nice to see someone else noticing. I liked him despite myself. I liked him even though he’d architected the shortest double date of all time.

“No,” I said. “I’m fine.”

I was halfway out the door when Henrik called after me, “I still think he’s in love with you! Ninety percent sure!” Then the door closed behind me, swallowing his voice. I dug my hands into my pockets and ducked my head to the wind, and as I walked home alone, I reminded myself that I didn’t want to date a Stenn anyway, much less one who belonged on this island the way the wind belonged on this island, like neither would be alive without the other.