Chapter Fifty-Nine
FIFTY-NINE
The alarm goes off when they’re about to climb back out through the window. It’s mostly Ted’s fault, Louisa will explain to everyone. They crawl out onto the grass and run to the car, arguing. Christian’s mother drives away like someone who really, really shouldn’t have a driver’s license. The following day the local newspaper writes about the break-in, but it takes several days before anyone discovers that the thieves didn’t actually steal anything, but left something behind instead.
When the story eventually spreads, it gets told on news broadcasts all across the globe, about how the world-famous painting, which was bought at auction by an anonymous buyer just before the artist’s death, has now suddenly appeared in a museum in his hometown. Tourists come from near and far to see it. Journalists try to uncover the true story behind the mystery, they call it “the reverse heist,” and several of them phone the man who owns the auction house that sold Ted the painting.
So one day the man from the auction house calls Ted and says that unfortunately he’s lost Ted’s phone number. Ted doesn’t understand what he means at first, so the man kindly explains that he loves art, he loves it so much that sometimes he loses his mind.
“You tend to forget these things, when you’ve been selling paintings for millions for long enough, that it all started with falling in love. But when I read about The One of the Sea , I was reminded of how much I liked it. I stood for hours just looking at it before we sold it. Not because it’s perfect, but because it isn’t. It’s one of the most human works of art I’ve ever seen. I was pleased to hear that it’s hanging in a museum now. Some works of art shouldn’t be owned by anyone. They should belong to everyone.”
“I agree,” Ted says, whereupon the man repeats:
“So I’m afraid I can’t find your phone number. And I’m afraid all the documents about the sale with your name on them have disappeared. So when reporters call me and ask, I won’t be able to help them.”
Then he hangs up. The painting remains in the museum, and no one ever finds out how it got there. That too becomes a pretty good story.
Ted gets another call as well. It’s the conductor from the train. He still has the box containing the artist’s ashes, he’s been trying to get ahold of Ted since that night when Ted ran off the train. Eventually he got ahold of the mother who had taken Ted’s suitcase and the painting, and she still had Ted’s number on the scrap of paper he had given her on the platform. It’s… a long story.
The conductor promises to send the ashes to Ted, but not by mail, of course, because you can’t rely on the post office. He sends it via conductors. From one train to the next, all the way home.
“Call me sometime, if you like,” the conductor says.
“Yes, of course, I’ll call to let you know it’s arrived!” Ted says, misunderstanding.
The conductor laughs.
“No, I mean… you can call me sometime. If you like.”
Then Ted blushes. He probably isn’t ready to fall in love again yet, but it’s nice to be asked.
“I might even take another trip by train,” he says shyly.
“I’ll keep an eye out for new passengers,” the conductor promises.
Kimkim is buried on a day that feels like the start of summer. The minister reads from the Bible, Christian’s mother reads poetry, Louisa paints small wings on the gravestone. Once the minister has gone, Louisa and Joar slip away and pick up Ali’s stone and move it next to Kimkim’s. Joar has been given permission to attend, even though he’s wearing the ankle monitor, because Ted found out that they make exceptions for funerals. As they stand there covering the graves with adopted flowers, Joar asks very seriously if they could pretend that Ted has died and is getting buried tomorrow? Because Joar would really like to go to the movies.
On their way back from the churchyard they come across some children drawing on the road outside their houses with chalk. Louisa stops and asks if she can join in, then she draws skulls and cockroaches that look so alive that the children’s eyes almost pop out of their heads. When the children’s parents call them home for dinner, one little girl turns around and says: “You can keep the chalk! I’ve got more!”
Louisa takes it and draws on every single wall between the church and the sea. She finally gets to see the pier. The old harbor district is different now, the town has built luxury apartments there, and there are restaurants with complicated names and shops no one can understand what they’re selling, and there are angry people with little dogs everywhere. But when they walk to the end of the pier and sit there dangling their legs over the edge, Louisa sees exactly what the four friends saw twenty-five years ago: an endless sea, a great friendship, a true love story. She hears them giggle. Detects the smell of a fart. All of it.
“Do you think you can learn how to live without Ali and Kimkim?” she asks as they’re slowly walking back to Joar’s place.
Joar just grins and points to a large house.
“We aren’t without them. Kimkim lives over there. And sometimes he lives there. And Ali lives there, I see her every day when she’s taking the trash out.”
Ted points at other houses and tells stories and fantasies. Their humans are playing hide-and-seek.
“I think Fish lives there today,” Louisa eventually decides.
“Yeah, that’s a good house. One of my favorites,” Joar nods happily.
They walk close to each other and see their friends everywhere all day long. Winks from Heaven.
“Have you decided yet?” Louisa asks, looking at Ted.
“About what?”
“About what you’re going to do with your life.”
The corners of his mouth twitch nervously. He starts hesitantly, but then the words just pour out of him:
“I found out what happened to the boy who attacked me. He’s in prison. They have schools, in prison. They have… teachers. I thought I might be good at that. It’s a stupid idea.”
Louisa shakes her head.
“It isn’t stupid.”
“It’s a bit stupid,” Joar interjects, nodding to the leg where Ted got stabbed.
But as they walk they notice that Ted is actually moving better and better, less and less uncomfortably. Getting stabbed with a knife is a trauma for the whole body, his leg was probably the part that healed quickest, it was other parts of Ted that were limping. Slowly, slowly he’s daring to be a person again. One day, not long from now, Joar will even take him out for a bicycle ride again. Dear God, how they will argue then.
“You’ll be a really good teacher in a prison,” Louisa says encouragingly, and adds: “Plus, it’s a bonus that there are armed guards to protect you, because obviously you need that.”
Joar roars with laughter, and then Louisa turns around and asks quickly:
“So what are you going to do, then?”
“What the hell do you mean?” Joar snaps back.
“With the rest of your life?”
“What the hell kind of question is that?”
“Look, I know you’re old, but you’re not that old. You can still do something.”
Joar looks like he’s never thought about that. After a long while he says sullenly:
“I might try to set up a damn business repairing engines. I might start a damn workshop in my fucking backyard.”
“I can paint you a sign,” she smiles.
Joar thinks for a long time. Then he grunts, with the most irritating declaration of love a person like him can give:
“As long as you don’t stay.”
She promises.
The next day Christian’s mother calls a certain principal she knows. He sighs that he’s only doing this as a favor to her, but she insists that she’s the one doing the school a favor. One day she is proved right, again. Ted and Joar empty their bank accounts to make sure Louisa has everything she needs when she goes. Well, it’s mostly Ted who funds it. But Joar makes coffee while Ted goes to the bank, and that counts too, if you were to ask Joar.
So Louisa gets to go to art school. She almost completely manages to avoid learning anything at all from the teachers, it has to be said, but she makes friends. Some are classmates, but most of them are men and women who have been dead for hundreds of years. She goes to art galleries, she cries, she finds out how hard her heart can beat. She grows up, she paints every day, she tries to learn to be a human being. One morning she packs a bag and sets off, traveling by train and boat and even airplane, all the things she has only seen in movies. She sees the world, then the world sees her. Her art becomes famous. She becomes someone else’s postcard.
One day she will be riding in a big black car in a bustling city far away, and suddenly she will yell at the chauffeur to stop. At the far end of an alleyway a teenager wearing a hoodie will be painting the wall of a building. Louisa will approach cautiously with her hands raised, with paint stains all over her fingertips, to show what she is. The teenager will back away warily, but won’t run. Louisa will stand close to the wall, breathing in the painting, in the middle of an explosion of storm and longing, and then she will know.
Ted stays in the town by the sea. He becomes a teacher again. He lives an ordinary life, it goes slowly, but perhaps he’s getting ready to fall in love again. He rents a small house on the same street where he grew up, from his bedroom window he can see the crossroads where he always called out “tomorrow” to his best humans. The four rocks that they wrote their names on are still buried in the grass there. On weekends he goes by train to a town an hour away, his big brother has a job there and their mom has moved into his basement. Ted sits in the kitchen and plays cards with her. Before he leaves, he says good night, first to her, then to all the ghosts.
He has a good relationship with his brother, apart from the fact that his brother keeps dogs, they don’t like Ted and the feeling is definitely mutual. But his brother’s wife is a loud, funny woman who likes cold grilled cheese sandwiches, flat Coca-Cola, and stale cheese puffs. They never have children, but there are kids in the next house, and one afternoon one of them knocks on the door and asks if Ted’s brother perhaps gives piano lessons. Because they have all heard him playing through the walls. That’s a really good day.
From time to time Ted goes to see Christian’s mother and talks about poetry, sometimes they read fairy tales, but usually they just sit in silence together in the same room.
The minister at the church eventually realizes that there is one gravestone too many in the churchyard, but he never says anything. Who would it be disturbing? The dead? They’re all busy anyway, playing peekaboo. When the townspeople find out where Kimkim is buried, there’s a line out through the gates to lay flowers there. In the evening Christian’s mother comes and helps the minister pick up the flowers and put them on graves that no one visits.
One damn Saturday Ted knocks on Joar’s damn door. It’s early as hell, Joar points out, but Ted just tells him to hurry up. They need to be there when it opens, before it gets crowded, and on the way out Joar yawns that perhaps being in prison or wearing an ankle monitor wasn’t so bad after all. They take Joar’s dad’s old car, nobody knows how he’s managed to keep the old wreck running, but he’s good at keeping things alive. He gets that from his mom.
He and Ted drink a damn cup of coffee and drive to a damn museum, arriving before it gets damn crowded. They pay for their damn tickets and walk to the very far end, where there’s a damn painting hanging. They stand there looking at it for an hour, but really for a whole summer. Then Ted feels something touch his fingertips, and it takes him several seconds to realize that it’s Joar, holding his hand.
One evening, Ted wakes up in the middle of the night because the phone is ringing. He answers, half asleep, and the voice at the other end starts babbling immediately.
“Louisa?” he mumbles, confused.
“Yes! Of course it’s me!” she yells.
She never says hello when she calls, she always just starts talking, because she knows Ted has two seconds every time where his heart is in free fall otherwise, because he always thinks something terrible must have happened. It’s actually incomprehensible that a man who worries as much as he does hasn’t had a heart attack. Especially considering that he’s so very, very, very old.
“Is everything okay?” he grunts.
“Why do you sound so weird?” she asks.
“It’s the middle of the night,” he informs her.
“Oh! Right, yes, the time difference. It’s evening here!” she replies.
“How nice for you.”
“Were you asleep?”
“In the middle of the night? Yes, most normal people usually are.”
“You’re not normal in any way,” she laughs, making the phone rattle.
“Can we talk tomorrow?” he asks, and closes his eyes.
“No, no, wait! I just want to tell you something!”
“What?”
“I’ve found one.”
“One what?” he mumbles.
“One of us!” she replies confidently.
First she hears a bang, when Ted drops the phone on the floor. Then she hears his voice again, wide awake now.
“Tell me,” he whispers.
So Louisa tells him everything: about a teenager in an alleyway and a painting on the wall of a building. She tells him about the speed a heart can beat at, which no one who’s stopped being young can remember. She talks on and on, and Ted listens, and Heaven leans closer to the roof of the house to hear. Louisa tells him about art so beautiful that just seeing it makes you too big for your body, a sort of happiness so overwhelming that it’s almost unbearable.
“When I was standing in front of that painting, I forgot to be alone, I forgot to be afraid, do you understand?” she says.
Of course Ted understands. If you’ve experienced it once, you never forget it. If not, there probably isn’t any way to explain.
“If that artist is one of us, really one of us, you have to do whatever you can to help,” he says.
“I know,” she says proudly.
And so the next adventure begins.
“You sound happy,” he smiles.
“I am. You sound happy too.”
“Maybe I’m on my way.”
“That’s all anyone can be, Ted. On our way!”
“You sound grown-up.”
“You sound old.”
“I’ve always been old.”
More rattling on the line. Then she asks:
“Can I ask something?”
“Preferably not,” he yawns.
“Well, it isn’t really a question, it’s more of a suggestion.”
He replies with a sigh, and she of course interprets that as enthusiasm, so she goes on:
“I know what you ought to do, Ted, with the rest of your life! You ought to write a book!”
Ted is sitting on the edge of his bed. The sun is on its way up outside the window. He presses his feet gently against the floor, making one of the floorboards creak. Then he laughs quietly.
“What would someone like me write a book about?”