“Don’t you bloody let up now, hun. You’re doing it! They’re coming, all you have to do is push.” Dave squeezed my hand, but mine rested feebly in his, disconnected from me, and I powerless to lift a single finger.
“Don’t let up now! Think of Einar. Imagine he’s here.”
That was no hard feat in the state I was in. It was easier than paying attention to the two real men in the room. Because nothing relevant seemed to happen outside of me anymore. And Einar was no longer any more than a part of me, and as such, it was in his power to be close to me when the living could not.
At first, my mind conjured him up in front of me by my splayed feet.
“Hey, trouble.” The apparition smiled at me first.
Then, realising what he had seen, he covered his eyes and exclaimed, “Damn, my girl, did I really need to seethat?!”
I chuckled faintly and closed my eyes, seized by another powerful contraction.
My organs solidified painfully. I turned into a rock. But a wave coursed through me, and I rode it with a mighty exhale of my breath.
The next time I opened my eyes, Einar was leaning over me, his face above mine. Strands of ash and gold hair were in his frosty eyes, their depth oblique and deceptive like the mirror quality of glaciers.
“And not a peep out of you, my brave girl,” he said with an affectionate smile.
“I wish you were here,” I told him, unsure whether only he could hear or whether I had spoken aloud. “Will you take me with you after?” I begged, unresisting as pain seized me anew, crashing through it. “Please ...”
“You know that’s not possible.” He shook his head with a sad smile. “And no, not even if you die or kill yourself,’ he answered my unvoiced question. “Death won’t bring you any closer to me, my love. I now only exist in your mind, in your memories. And to be with me there, you must go on living. Besides, would you abandon them, have them share both our fates and never know either their mother or father?”
“No,” I replied truthfully, even as I tried to formulate a reply to the extent of Dave and Kevin taking care of our sons as they would their own.
I shook with ugly sobs, my face melting, agony twisting me inside out. It seemed to go on forever until, at long last, I felt intense pressure threatening to split me open.
“That’s it, now call out my name!”
“Einar! Einar!” I obeyed, clenching my muscles, pushing hard against the barrier of my torment with all my might.
Not long after, my own screams ceased only to be replaced by those of my sons. It was with an out-of-body detachment that I watched as Dave held them one after the other whilst Kevin cut the umbilical cords. Swaddled in towels, they were so small and insignificant, so weightless the both of them as they were placed in my arms.
There are a few rare moments in life when time stands still, moments which exist outside temporal boundaries altogether, to forever stretch through the fabric of one’s life, connecting all unrelated, small incidents with the purposeful thread of profound meaning. I knew that the birth of my sons was supposed to be one such moment. A moment that I had dreamt of for years, longing for the grand transformation that becominga mother promised. The bottomless sense of awe such as I had never known, love like I couldn’t have imagined, the universe rearranging itself so that it would evermore revolve not around the sun, but around those that warmed my heart fiercer than any distant star ever could.
And yet, as I gazed upon the boys for the first time, their foreheads wrinkled and purple like plums in the folds of the towels, all I experienced was a sense of emptiness and loss. A letdown. Nothing grand whatever had taken place. No transformation. I was still only me. The universe was still dreary, and its inescapable trajectories woefully unchanged. And as for love such as I had never known? Well, as they say, lightning never strikes twice.
I wouldn’t take my eyes off them regardless. Because I knew that affection would come. Yes. And building on its solid foundation, adoration would follow suit. Nothing short of what was their birthright. Because if not given to me freely, I would fight for maternal devotion every single day. I would defeat every doubt and slay any emotion that was undeserving of my children, I would be ruthless and relentless, unceasing in my private crusade, until I would win a love for them that would surpass even that which I would forever hold for their father. My chest swelled with confidence, and I rested my head against the pillow, sure of my impending victory.
After all, this would be very far indeed from the hardest battle that I had ever waged.
When I finally looked up, Einar’s apparition was gone. But I could still feel some residue of him in the atmosphere. Like a smile. Like a kiss that lingered on my lips.
48
LAST RITES
Two and a half years later, one sleepy Saturday afternoon found me reclining in a rocking chair in my Montreux apartment. The air around me smelled of artificial heating from the radiators. Never before the pandemic did I realise that artificial heating gave off any smell, but it did, if somewhat less pleasant than the smell of wood burning in a lit fireplace.
I was watching the first snowfall of the year from the window: a perfect, white flurry of fluffy snowflakes, swirling over the frozen surface of the Montreux Lake like powdered sugar being shaken onto a pie. Alex and Danny were playing with their toy cars on a rug in front of the TV. My rare moment of respite wouldn’t last long. I had half an hour at most before one of them would start demanding my attention, the other following suit shortly.
I felt a smile tug at the corners of my mouth.
Danny had his back to me, but Alex sat facing me, his dear little face all scrunched up in concentration. He glanced up at me absent-mindedly, as if looking from afar. My breath caught in my throat at the familiar gleam in those icy blue eyes, so startling in a toddler and yet so very his, so very belonging tohim, the same way the first blossom of the year is simultaneously expected and surprising on a hawthorn tree.
The twins’ hair was still a few shades too light. But I thought that I could already detect a certain solidness in their shoulders, foretelling perhaps that one day they would grow into giants like their father was. My heart squeezed tightly at the thought. Not just with sorrow, but with a love so fierce that it seemed to me impossible to contain it inside of me, and I felt as if it overflowed, filling up the space the three of us occupied.
As far as I could tell, they didn’t take after me at all. Certainly not in their appearance, but not much in personality either, as far as it was possible to judge so early on. I was glad for that. I wanted them to be all him. I wanted my genes to serve as nothing but scaffolding for the manifestation of his.
