I tried to look like I cared. This was probably a simple trick, getting personal. She was trying to make me want to trust her.
“What does all this have to do with me?” I asked. “Did you have to come get me at work for this?”
“Sorry about that, but it really was necessary.”
She was scrutinizing me. I felt a snakelike ribbon of worry wind through my belly. My nausea had turned to something else: a threatening omen; icy, biting fear.
“What is this all about?” I asked.
“Can you tell me what you did yesterday?” asked Agnes Thelin.
“I worked. I worked up until closing. Then we went up to Stortorget to eat. We had some wine and talked.”
“We who?”
“Me and some colleagues.”
She clicked her pen and made a note.
“What time was this?”
“We close at seven and work until quarter past.”
Agnes Thelin wondered how long we had stayed at Stortorget.
“I don’t know how long the others stuck around, but I was there for a few hours. I think it was about ten thirty when I headed out.”
“Then what did you do?” she asked, resting her pen.
“I … I took my bike.” I tried to recall exactly what had happened. “First I biked up to Tegnérs. I know I drank a cider at the bar there, but I didn’t see any familiar faces. Then I was at … Inferno for a little bit, or whatever that place is called. It’s kitty-corner from the library.”
“Inferno? That’s another bar?”
“Yes.”
“How much did you have to drink?”
Agnes Thelin sounded like my dad. She had that same typical-parent look. When they claim to be worried, but they just look super fucking annoyed.
“Not that much. I had to get up and work.”
She looked at me as if I was lying, which I found offensive.
“It’s true. Alcohol isn’t my thing.”
I happened to think of something Dad likes to say. He maintains it’s hard to lie, that most people suck at it. For a long time I thought he was mistaken. Time and again, I proved him wrong. I didn’t have any trouble lying at all. In general, people were gullible as shit, I thought.
Until I realized that it might actually be the other way around. That Dad was right. Maybe it wasn’t that people will fall for anything. Maybe, in fact, I was exceptionally awesome at lying.
Now I know it’s true.
44
When I was little, Dad was my hero. One time, at preschool, Hat-Nisse made fun of my dad. We called him Hat-Nisse because he wore a hat year-round. He laughed at me and told everyone how weird it was to have a pastor for a dad.
I shoved Hat-Nisse backward into a shelf and he cut his head. Dad chewed me out when he heard about it. Of course no one mentioned how it all started, only that I had a fit and pushed Hat-Nisse so hard that he had to go to the ER. And I didn’t say anything either.
I’ve always hoped that Dad would just understand. It seems important that I shouldn’t have to explain myself. Maybe there’s something wrong with me, something other people don’t experience the same way, but I’ve always felt ashamed to be held accountable for who I am.
Each time Dad didn’t understand, I felt disappointed and we drifted further and further apart.
It’s awfully ironic that the sides of me that bother Dad most are the things I inherited from him.
There’s something to sink your teeth into, Shirine!
I have a theory that the psychologists loved our family. A pastor, a lawyer, and a maladjusted teen. We could serve as textbook examples in their manuals.
One time in school my whole class got bawled out by Bim, our advisor, because we had too many opinions. Typical millennials, she yelled. Always having so many ideas about everything!
I guess lots of stuff was simpler before, when kids just shut their mouths and obeyed. I’ve never been that way, and I never will be. I don’t think it would matter if I were a teenager in the eighties or now.
When I think back on all those therapist appointments, some of those shrinks sure did display a certain amount of smug schadenfreude. There must be something special about getting a behind-the-scenes peek at an apparently successful family, a lawyer who was on TV sometimes, and a pastor, ohmygod a pastor. Just imagine getting to peer into the filthiest corners of our perfect family. Maybe that’s what it takes to endure one’s own tragic existence at a sad county-run psych clinic.
But I wonder about Shirine … she doesn’t look at all like them, not the way I remember them.