The Break-Up Retreat(48)

Pernilla smiles, and it is a terrible thing to behold.

“You’re a tourist.” Pernilla speaks slowly, letting each word linger. “You’re here to dig around in other people’s pain, so you can convince yourself you are more interesting and more intricate than you really are.”

Clara looks around, her eyes locking with mine; and I clear my throat, beginning to speak:

“I don’t know if that’s really—”

Martina holds up her hand at me.

“Isobel, let them speak,” she orders me. “This is important.”

“How is this important?” It flies out of me.

Martina turns to me.

“I’m going to need you to be quiet and let Clara and Pernilla see their conflict through.” Every syllable is a warning.

I bite down, hard enough to hurt, and an iron taste spreads in my mouth.

Be Isobel Anderssen. Isobel Anderssen wouldn’t argue with Martina. Isobel Anderssen wouldn’t try to defend any of her fellow patients. Isobel Anderssen wouldn’t question the method.

But it’s hard, so hard, because on a pure, mammalian level, I want to defend them, want to stand up for them, want to protect them. Want to scream out that this is all wrong.

“But . . .” Clara begins to speak, her voice thin and reedy, and Martina lowers her hand.

“Go on, Pernilla,” she encourages the older woman, not even acknowledging Clara.

“No.” Pernilla, suddenly clamming up. “I shouldn’t. This is neither the time nor the place.”

“I’m telling you,” Martina says, with more force, “that it is. Remember what we talked about yesterday?”

Something seems to pass between the two of them.

“Go on.” Martina sounds oddly breathless. “Tell her what you really think.”

Pernilla swallows. I see the tendons in her slim neck tensing, her pulse fluttering in the vein winding around her temple.

Then she whips her head around, and stares at Clara.

“You disgust me,” she hisses. “You really do. You think of yourself as deep, but you’re shallow, and vapid, and you are deluding yourself. You treat other people and their lives like set dressing. Like they are characters you’re viewing on your phone screen. You throw all these words around as though you know what they mean, and it’s laughable how you think your life has any meaning or any importance.”

“Hey,” Katarina tries to speak up, but Clara cuts her off, her voice now shaking with rage.

“I don’t know what the fuck happened to you in your life to make you this way, but just because you’re a bitter, dried-up old bitch who’s never been happy or sexually satisfied in your life doesn’t mean you have any right to judge me!” she screeches.

“Of course.” Pernilla is laughing, now, with terrible joy. “Even your insults lack imagination.”

“Fuck you,” Clara spits out.

“No, fuck you ,” Pernilla responds, making the curse sound like an elegant condemnation. “Fuck you for being so stupid. Fuck you for seeing the world through such a narrow lens you can’t even conceive of how conceited you really are. Fuck you for being a hollow shell of a person. Fuck you for being so blind to the things you’re doing, and for not seeing things the way they really are, and for not—for not—” Her voice grows rougher for every word, and finally she’s left gasping for air, appearing to choke on her own venom.

“I’ve never done anything to you,” Clara is shrinking back into herself, tears running down her cheeks.

“No.” Pernilla shakes her head. “You’ve never done anything to anyone, have you? There is nothing there. You are not really a person. You have never worked for anything, or achieved anything. You never had to. You have always just been a daughter, and that has been enough, but now it might not be, anymore, and you think, deep down, that you might have nothing else to give. That there might be nothing behind the curtain. No magic trick waiting to happen.

“And you’re scared of that, terrified, and so you are going to keep running from it. You are going to marry some man, just because being a wife is better than being nothing at all, and you are going to have a couple of children, and you are going to tell yourself it makes you happy, even as what little promise you had once is rotting away inside of you. And then, once he’s gone, then what are you going to be? Who are you going to be?” She’s panting, red flames reaching up the sides of her neck.

“No one.” Pernilla’s voice grows faint. “You are no one.”

Clara is wiping tears away, mascara smearing prettily under her eyelashes. Martina gets up from her chair and hands her a tissue, which Clara accepts, her hands shaking.

Then Martina turns to Pernilla.

“How old were you, when you got married?” she asks Pernilla.

“Young,” Pernilla says, a hollow echo of the righteous fury from just a few seconds ago. “Too young.”

“And how long were you married?” Martina asks.

Pernilla draws a shaky breath.

“Thirty-eight years,” she answers. “And four months.”

“He left you,” Martina says.

Pernilla nods.

“How many of those years did you spend wanting to leave?”

Pernilla is staring down at her hands. I’m not sure, but I think she is looking at the thin, white skin at the base of her ring finger.