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Merry

Today my project was jam and baby food. There’s a surplus of produce from the garden and the refrigerator is almost empty of the little pots of food I make for the baby’s meals. Sam and I agreed that he should eat as much organic and homemade food as possible, so we grow most of the vegetables ourselves, and I cook it up and turn it all into puree to bottle and store. It’s not that much more work, really. I suppose nothing is when it comes to your children.

When we arrived last year, everything was wild and overgrown, fifteen years of neglect, of unweeded lawn and trees beset with rot. We pulled down the rotted spruces, heaved out the gnarlrooted bushes and the lawn overrun with chickweed and black grass. We bought books on horticulture and planted rows and rows of seedlings from the nursery. Sam custom-built bricked-in vegetable patches and cold frames for the winter to guard against the frost. There were plagues of snails and fungus, seedlings that refused to sprout, mis-planted produce that we tried and failed to grow in the wrong seasons. Slowly, eventually, we worked out the rhythms of planting and picking, the time it takes to nurture a cabbage, the optimal alkalinity of the soil. We are quite expert now, or at least I am. Like the kitchen, the garden is my domain.

There is no shortage of produce these days. Every morning, I am outside sowing the seeds, removing the weeds, harvesting the vegetables from out of the soil. The smell of earth sits heavy in the air; the smell of something wholesome and good. Back to basics, Sam says. He likes to pretend he can taste the difference; he’ll take a bite of salad and rule it home-grown or market-bought. I usually lie if he guesses wrong. I hate for him to feel silly.

For the baby’s food, I boil the vegetables in pots on the stove, one for carrots, one for broccoli, one for zucchini. I write labels for the jars, as though the baby might be able to read them and choose his own dinner. Sam likes to open the refrigerator and see them all lined up in a row, a little army of food soldiers ready to serve.

Who’s been a busy little wife? he’ll say.

Oh, that would be me, I’ll reply, with a wink. Coy and cute.

I sure am a busy little wife. It is the role I was born for, according to Sam. He cannot get enough of me like this, wifely and domestic and maternal. Perhaps he is right, and I was built for it. I certainly seem to excel at it. A natural, you might say, if you didn’t know how hard I work to pull it all off.

Never mind; it’s worth it, isn’t it? What more could I hope for. What more do I need? The love of a husband, the gift of a child. It is enough – it is everything.

Sometimes this new life makes me feel as though I am living as a quaint eighteenth-century settler wife. Growing things, baking bread, going to the weekly farmer’s market to choose my box of greens: zucchini, kale, celery, whatever I can’t grow in your own garden. Sam marvels at the offerings – the freshness of wild Norwegian salmon, the taste of real farm butter or eggs plucked right out from under a hen.

How did we ever survive in the States? he says.

You’d wonder, I reply.

We do this frequently, compare life before and after; new world and old. Sweden always wins. There is seldom much need for debate. Sweden is Sam’s gift to me, to us. It is the answer to everything, it has been the cure for all that ailed us before. Paradise, he calls it, and waits for me to agree.

I always do. How could I not.

As well as jam and baby food, it was a bathroom and kitchen day, so after finishing with the food, I made my homemade cleaning paste of vinegar and baking soda – the recipe courtesy of a blog Sam found for me. It’s full of household tips, like how to make scented candles and the best ways to remove stubborn mold from the grouting. He subscribed me to the newsletter so I need never miss a single tip.

He’s good like that. Proactive. I admire that quality in a person, the ability to decide and do, to set plans in motion. It has never been something I’m particularly good at. I often wonder what my life might look like if I was.

On my knees in the bathroom, I started with the bath. Scrubbing and shining the taps till I could see myself reflected back, distorted and inverted, pulling our week of collective shed hair out of the drain in a single swampy ball. The toilet next, finicky work, head in the bowl. What would my mother say if she could see me now? In the mirror, I looked at myself. Unkempt, that’s what my mother would say. Or, more likely, hideous. Unwashed, no makeup, skin slicked in oil. A thin trickle of sweat pooling down my T-shirt. I sniffed under my armpits.

Then I smiled into the mirror, dazzling and wide. I opened my arms in a gesture of gracious welcome.

Welcome to our home, I said aloud. Welcome to our lives.

The woman in the mirror looked happy. Convincing.

There was a phone call earlier this morning from Frank. She woke the baby.

I’m coming to Sweden, she said.

What?

I’m coming to visit!

I’ve said it to her again and again in the year we’ve been here, at the end of every email and phone call. You must visit, it’s wonderful; we’d love to have you.

And now she is coming. She will be here in a few weeks.

Your best friend, Sam said when I told him. That’s great news.

Yes, isn’t it, I said, smiling.

I’d emailed her just a few days ago. Another missive about my wonderful Swedish life, with photographs as proof. Something home-baked, a smiling child, a shirtless husband. She replied almost immediately, informing me of her new promotion, a sparkling new penthouse in Battersea. She attached a photograph of herself from a recent break to the Maldives. Frank in a pineapple-print bikini, sun-kissed and oiled, the lapping Indian Ocean in the background, a coconut cocktail in her hand.

I wonder what she’ll make of all this. The picture of my life, when she sees it in the flesh.

I wiped the mirror and opened the windows to air the room of the stench of vinegar. In the kitchen, I moved the dishwasher and cleaned the dirt gathered against the wall. I scoured the oven of fat and grease, climbed up on the ladder to clean the top of the refrigerator. Sometimes I like to carve out messages in the dust. HELP, I wrote this morning, for no particular reason.

The baby woke up and began to cry just as I was halfway through bottling the last of the excess vegetables in brine. Pickling is another of my newfound skills. It’s very rewarding. I went into the baby’s room and stared at him in his crib.

Boiling over, face red with rage at his neglect. Spit foaming out of his mouth as he cried. He saw me and frowned, held out his arms, rocked on his haunches to try to propel himself up and out.

I watched him. With all my heart, I tried to summon it. Please, I thought, please.

Instincts, they call them, but for me they are the very furthest thing. Buried somewhere deep inside under too many layers, or altogether missing.

Please, I urged again, I coaxed, I begged. But inside, like always, there was only emptiness. Cold and hollow. The great void within.

I could do nothing but stand and watch.

The baby’s cries grew more urgent, his face twisted with hot and vicious need. Almost purple. I stood helpless, rooted to the spot. I turned my head away so he would stop appealing to my eyes, imploring me to alleviate his rage. Unable to comprehend that I could not do it.

I looked around his room, filled with books and stuffed toys. A map of the world on the wall, along with stenciled illustrations of Arctic mammals. Polar bear. Moose. Fox. Wolf. I’d done it myself, the last month of pregnancy, balancing a paint box on the mound of my belly. The whole world, just for him. And still it is not enough. I am not enough.

And he is too much.

In the noise, I tried to find my breath, to feel the beating of my heart. It was pounding today, loud with upsets of its own; an angry fist in a cage.

I edged closer to the crib and peered down at the hysterical child. My child. I shook my head.

I’m sorry, I said at last. Mommy is not in the mood.

I left the room and closed the door behind me.