My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman
“I’ve never spoken much to her. I don’t think anyone in the house wanted to ask too many questions. We let your grandmother handle it. And then . . .”
She sighs, and regret floods her gaze.
“. . . then the years just went by. And we were busy. And now she’s just someone who lives in our house. To be quite honest with you, I’d forgotten that was how she first moved in. You two moved in on the same day. . . .”
Mum turns to Elsa. Tries unsuccessfully to smile.
“Does it make me a terrible person that I’ve forgotten?”
Elsa shakes her head. She was going to say something about The Monster and the wurse, but she doesn’t because she’s worried Mum won’t let her see them anymore if she knows. Mums can have a lot of strange principles when it comes to social interaction between their children and monsters and wurses. Elsa understands that everyone is scared of them, and that it will take a long time to make them all understand that The Monster and the wurse—like the drunk—are not what they seem.
“How often did Granny go away?” she asks instead.
A silver-colored car behind them sounds its horn when she allows a space to develop between her and the car in front. Mum releases the brake and Kia slowly rolls forward.
“It varied. It depended on where she was needed, and for how long.”
“Was that what you meant that time Granny said you became an economist just to spite her?”
The car behind them sounds its horn again.
“What?”
Elsa fiddles with the rubber seal in the door.
“I heard you. Like a mega-long time ago. When Granny said you became an economist because you were in teenage rebellion. And you said, ‘How do you know? You were never here!’ That was what you meant, wasn’t it?”
“I was angry, Elsa. Sometimes it’s hard to control what you say, when you’re angry.”
“Not you. You never lose control.”
Mum tries to smile again.
“With your grandmother it was . . . more difficult.”
“How old were you when Grandfather died?”
“Twelve.”
“And Granny left you?”
“Your grandmother went where she was needed, darling.”
“Didn’t you need her though?”
“Others needed her more.”
“Is that why you were always arguing?”
Mum sighs deeply as only a parent who has just realized that she has strayed considerably further into a story than she was intending is capable of sighing.
“Yes. Yes, sometimes it was probably for that reason we were arguing. But sometimes it was about other things. Your grandmother and I were very . . . different.”
“No. You were just different in different ways.”
“Maybe.”
“What else did you argue about?”
The car behind Kia beeps its horn again. Mum closes her eyes and holds her breath. And only when she finally releases the hand brake and lets Kia roll forward does she release the word from her lips, as if it had to force its way through.
“You. We always argued about you, darling.”
“Why?”
“Because when you love someone very much, it’s difficult to learn to share her with someone else.”
“Like Jean Grey,” Elsa observes, as if it were absolutely obvious.
“Who?”
“A superhero. From X-Men. Wolverine and Cyclops both loved her. So they argued so much about her, it was totally insane.”
“I thought those X-Men were mutants, not superheroes. Isn’t that what you said last time we spoke about them?”
“It’s complicated,” says Elsa, even though it isn’t really, if one has read enough quality literature.
“So what kind of superpower does this Jean Grey have, then?”
“Telepathy.”
“Good superpower.”
“Insane.” Elsa nods in agreement.
She decides not to point out that Jean Grey can also do telekinesis, because she doesn’t want to make things more complicated than necessary for Mum right now. She is pregnant, after all.
So instead, Elsa pulls the rubber seal on the door. Peers down into the gap. She is incredibly tired, as tired as an almost-eight-year-old gets after staying up all night feeling angry. Elsa’s mum never had a mum of her own, because Granny was always somewhere else, to help someone else. Elsa has never thought of Granny in that way.
“Are you angry with me because Granny was so much with me and never with you?” she asks carefully.
Mum shakes her head so quickly and vehemently that Elsa immediately understands whatever she’s about to say will be a lie.
“No, my darling, darling girl. Never. Never!”
Elsa nods and looks down again into the gap in the door.
“I’m angry with her. For not telling the truth.”
“Everyone has secrets, darling.”
“Are you angry with me because Granny and I had secrets?” She thinks about the secret language, which they always spoke so Mum wouldn’t understand. She thinks about the Land-of-Almost-Awake, and wonders if Granny ever took Mum there.
“Never angry . . .” whispers Mum, and reaches across the seat before she adds, in a whisper: “Jealous.”
The feeling of guilt hits Elsa like cold water when you’re least expecting it.
“So that’s what Granny meant,” she states.
“What did she say?” Mum asks.
Elsa snorts.
“She said I’d hate her if I found out who she was before I was born. That’s what she meant. That I’d find out that she was a crappy mum who left her own child—”
Mum turns to her with eyes so shiny that Elsa can see her own reflection in them.
“She didn’t leave me. You mustn’t hate your granny, darling.”
And when Elsa doesn’t answer, Mum puts her hand against Elsa’s cheek and whispers, “All daughters are angry with their mothers about something. But she was a good grandmother, Elsa. She was the most fantastic grandmother anyone could imagine.”
Elsa defiantly pulls at the rubber seal.
“But she left you by yourself. All those times she went off, she left you on your own, didn’t she?”
“I had your grandfather when I was small.”
“Yeah, until he died!”
“When he died I had the neighbors.”
“What neighbors?” Elsa wants to know.
The car behind beeps its horn. Mum makes an apologetic gesture at the back window and Kia rolls forward.
“Britt-Marie,” says Mum at last.
Elsa stops fiddling with the rubber seal in the door.
“What do you mean, Britt-Marie?”
“She took care of me.”
Elsa’s eyebrows sink into a scowling V-shape.
“So why is she such a nightmare to you now, then?”
“Don’t say that, Elsa.”
“But she is!”
Mum sighs through her nose.
“Britt-Marie wasn’t always like that. She’s just . . . lonely.”
“She’s got Kent!”
Mum blinks so slowly that her eyes are closed.
“There are many ways of being alone, darling.”
Elsa goes back to fiddling with the rubber seal on the door.
“She’s still an idiot.”
“People can turn into idiots if they’re alone for long enough,” agrees Mum.
The car behind them beeps its horn again.
“Is that why Granny isn’t in any of the old photos at home?” asks Elsa.
“What?”
“Granny isn’t in any of the photos from before I was born. When I was small I thought it was because she was a vampire, because they can’t be seen in photos, and they can smoke as much as they want without getting a sore throat. But she wasn’t a vampire, was she? She was just never at home.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Yes, until someone explains it
Mum suddenly laughs explosively. Elsa does a mean impersonation of her dad.
“Your dad doesn’t exactly like conflict.” Mum giggles.
“Was Granny a vampire or not?”
“Your granny traveled around the world saving children’s lives, darling. She was a . . .”
Mum looks as if she’s looking for the right word. And once she finds it, she brightens and smiles radiantly.
“A superhero! Your granny was a superhero!”
Elsa stares down into the cavity in the door.
“Superheroes don’t leave their own children.”
Mum is silent.
“All superheroes have to make sacrifices, darling,” she tries at last.
But both she and Elsa know she doesn’t mean it.
The car behind them beeps its horn again. Mum’s hand shoots up apologetically towards the back window, and Kia rolls forward a few yards. Elsa realizes that she’s sitting there hoping Mum will start yelling. Or crying. Or anything. She just wants to see her feel something.
Elsa can’t understand how anyone can be in such a hurry to move five yards in a traffic jam. She looks in the rearview mirror at the man in the car behind them. He seems to think the traffic jam is being caused by Elsa’s mum. Elsa wishes with every fiber of her being that Mum would do what she did when she was pregnant with Elsa, and get out of the car and roar at the guy and tell him enough’s bloody enough.
Elsa’s father told that story. He almost never tells stories, but one Midsummer Eve—at the time when Mum was looking sadder and sadder and going to bed earlier and earlier and Dad sat on his own in the kitchen at night and reorganized the icons on Mum’s computer screen and cried—they were at a party together, all three of them. And then Dad drank three beers and told a story about how Mum, while heavily pregnant with Elsa, got out of the car and went up to a man in a silver car and threatened to “give birth here and now on his sodding hood if he honked at her again!” Everyone laughed a lot at that story. Not Dad, of course, because he’s not a big fan of laughing. But Elsa saw that even he found it funny. He danced with Mum that Midsummer. That was the last time Elsa saw them dancing together. Dad is spectacularly bad at dancing; he looks like a very large bear that has just got up and realizes its foot has gone to sleep. Elsa misses it.
And she misses someone who gets out and shouts at men in silver-colored cars.
The man in the silver-colored car behind them beeps again. Elsa picks up her backpack from the floor, gets out the heaviest book she can find, throws the door open, and jumps out onto the highway. She hears Mum shouting for her to come back, but without turning around she runs towards the silver car and slams the book as hard as she can into its hood. It leaves a big dent. Elsa’s hands are shaking.
The man in the silver car stares at her as if he can’t quite believe what just happened.
“ENOUGH, you muppet!”
When he doesn’t answer right away, she slams the book down again three more times, and points at him menacingly.
“Do you get that my mum is PREGNANT?”
At first, the man looks as if he’s going to open the door. But then he seems to change his mind, and watches in amazement as she pummels the hood with her book.
Elsa hears the click of the doors locking.
“One more peep and my mum comes out and gives birth to Halfie on YOUR BLOODY HOOD!” roars Elsa.
She stays where she is on the highway between the silver car and Kia, hyperventilating, until she gets a headache. She hears Mum yelling, and Elsa is actually on her way back into Kia, she really is. It’s not as if she planned all this. But then she feels a hand on her shoulder and hears a voice, asking:
“Do you need help?”
And when she turns around there’s a policeman standing over her.
“Can we help you?” he says again in a friendly tone of voice.
He looks very young. As if he’s only working as a policeman as a summer job. Even though it’s winter.
“He keeps beeping his horn at us!” Elsa says defensively.
The summer-intern policeman looks at the man in the silver car. The man inside the car is now terrifically busy not looking back. Elsa turns towards Kia, and she really doesn’t mean to say it, it’s almost as if the words accidentally fall out of her mouth.
“My mum’s about to give birth and we’re sort of having a hard day here—”
“Your mother’s in labor?” he asks, visibly tightening.
“I mean, it’s not . . .” Elsa begins.
But of course it’s too late.
The policeman runs up to Kia. Mum has managed to get out with great effort, and is on her way towards them with her hand against Halfie.
“Are you able to drive? Or . . . ?” shouts the policeman so loudly that Elsa irately shoves her fingers in her ears and moves demonstratively to the other side of Kia.
Mum looks slightly as if she’s been caught off balance.
“What? Or what? Of course I can drive. Or what? Is there something wro—”
“I’ll go on ahead!” yells the policeman without listening to the end of the sentence, shoving Mum back into Kia and running back to his patrol car.
Mum thumps back into the seat. Looks at Elsa. Elsa searches the glove compartment for a reason not to have to look back at her.
The patrol car thunders past with its sirens turned on. The summer-intern policeman waves frantically at them to follow behind.
“I think he wants you to follow him,” mumbles Elsa without looking up.
“What’s going on?” whispers Mum while Kia carefully potters along behind the patrol car.
“I guess he’s escorting us to the hospital, because he thinks you’re about to, y’know, give birth,” mumbles Elsa into the glove compartment.
“Why did you tell him I was about to give birth?”
“I didn’t! But no one ever listens to me!”
“Right! And what should I do now, do you think?” hisses Mum back, sounding possibly a bit less self-controlled now.
“Well, we’ve been driving behind him for ages now, so he’ll probably get quite pissed if he finds out you’re not actually going to give birth for real,” Elsa states pedagogically.
“OH, REALLY, YOU THINK SO?!” Mum roars in a way that is neither pedagogical nor especially self-controlled.
Elsa chooses not to enter into a discussion of whether Mum is being sarcastic or ironic there.
They stop outside the hospital’s emergency entrance and Mum attempts to get out of the car and confess everything to the summer-intern policeman. But he pushes her back into the car and yells that he’s going to fetch help. Mum looks mortified. This is her hospital. She’s the boss here.
“This is going to be a nightmare to explain to the staff,” she mumbles and rests her forehead in despair against the steering wheel.
“Maybe you could say it was some sort of exercise?” Elsa suggests.
Mum doesn’t answer. Elsa clears her throat again.
“Granny would have thought this was fun.”
Mum smiles faintly and turns her head so her ear is on the steering wheel. They look at each other for a long time.
“She would have found it bloody funny,” agrees Mum.
“Don’t swear,” says Elsa.
“You’re always swearing!”
“I’m not a mum!”
Mum smiles again.
“Touché.”
Elsa opens and closes the glove compartment a few times. Looks up at the hospital façade. Behind one of those windows, she slept in the same bed as Granny the night Granny went off to Miamas for the last time. It feels like forever ago. Feels like forever since Elsa managed to get to Miamas on her own.
“What job was it?” she asks, mainly so she doesn’t have to think about it.
“You said that thing with the tsunami was Granny’s last journey because she had found a new job. What job was it?”
Mum’s fingertips brush against Elsa’s when she whispers the answer.
“As a grandmother. She got a job as a grandmother. She never went away again.”
Elsa nods slowly. Mum caresses her arm. Elsa opens and closes the glove compartment. Then she looks up as if she’s just thought of something, but mostly because she’d like to change the subject, because she doesn’t want to think about how angry she is with Granny right now.
“Did you and Dad get divorced because you ran out of love?” she asks so quickly that the question actually surprises her.
Mum leans back. Pulls her fingers through her hair and shakes her head.
“Why are you asking?”
Elsa shrugs.
“We have to talk about something while we’re waiting for the policeman to come back with the people you’re the boss of and everything gets mega-embarrassing for you. . . .”
Mum looks unhappy again. Elsa fiddles with the rubber seal. Realizes that it was obviously too early to start making jokes about it.
“Don’t people get married because they’re full of love and then divorced when they run out of it?” she says in a low voice.
“Did you learn that one in school?”
“It’s my own theory.”
Mum laughs very loudly, without any warning. Elsa grins.
“Did Granddad and Granny run low on love as well?” she asks, when Mum has finished laughing.
Mum dabs her eyes.
“They were never married, darling.”
“Why not?”
“Your granny was special, Elsa. She was difficult to live with.”
“How do you mean?”
Mum massages her eyelids.
“It’s difficult to explain. But in those days it can’t have been so common for women to be like her. I mean . . . it can’t have been so common for anyone to be like her. It wasn’t common for women to become doctors in those days, for example. As for surgeons, forget it. The academic world would have been quite different . . . so . . .”
Mum goes quiet. Elsa raises her eyebrows as a way of telling her to get to the point.
“I think if your granny had been a man of her generation rather than a woman, she would have been called a ‘playboy.’ ”