Page 104 of The Living and the Dead

“Trauma,” the therapist repeated, as though the word were a stone you could hold up to the light and inspect from many angles.

“His best friend died. It was an accident, but—”

“Sander,” the therapist interrupted in his practiced way. “What do you think about what Olivia is saying?”

He was silent for a long time.

“Olivia’s mom—I mean, your mom, Olivia—is a psychologist. Your father is a principal. You come from a family that talks about everything. You have vocabulary for all the ways you feel. That’s one thing I love about you, that it’s so simple for you.”

“It’s not simple.”

“But you have the language. I don’t.”

“You are a Swedish teacher,” Olivia said evenly.

“There are different kinds of languages,” the therapist gently interjected.

“And it’s not easy for me to open up like that. I understand that it’s expected of me both at home and here, in front of both of you. That’s what you two do, Olivia, that’s what we’re supposed to do in this room, I’m not stupid, I know that.” He took a breath. “I just can’t, I think, even if I want to. For you.”

“Forus,” Olivia corrected. “For thekids. So they learn that it’s good to talk about things. God, sometimes I think you don’t even understand that you’re a parent. With everything that entails. It’s like you’re still a teenager, like you got stuck back there.”

But he hadn’t. She was wrong.

He wasn’t stuck, hadn’t been for a long time, and maybe this was what confused him most of all. That it had been possible to move on. You can get used to anything, or endure it for as long as you must.

The words lingered in his mind as he read that page of the newspaper. He recognized the lecturer’s name: Ardelius, now Professor Emeritus. The man from Stockholm.

—

That evening, he holed up in his office and read student papers.

Then he got in the car and went to the college.

The lecture was held in one of the auditoriums he remembered; he’d been here often in the parenthetical era his college years now felt like. Sander felt both very young and much older than he was as he took a seat in the back. True to form, he’d brought a notebook; he opened it to a blank page and clicked his pen. Ardelius was sitting inthe front row, paging through his papers. Sander stared at the back of the old man’s graying head as if he hoped the professor would feelit.

“Well, let’s see if this is worth a listen,” a familiar voice said.

He turned. Indeed, it was him. Older and grayer, of course, just like Sander himself, as though time had brought them closer in more ways than just career-wise.

“Yes, I’ve heard this speaker is an interesting one,” Sander said with a smile.

Lundström laughed. What followed was a silence between them. His former teacher was the first to break it. “So you ended up staying.”

There it was again. This time, it was given as a fact.

“Yes, that’s how it turned out.”

“Does it feel right?”

“For the most part.”

Lundström nodded as if a hunch had been confirmed.

Then they both turned to the retired professor who walked spryly to the podium and adjusted the microphone. The room fell silent.

“Is it true that you became a teacher?” Lundström whispered.

“Yes. Swedish and English.”