The Number 7 Page 9

  I followed the old man whose name I did not know to an old elevator and stepped inside. He seemed friendly and harmless enough. I watched as he pushed the round “B” button. The light on the button was out, and I wondered how long it had been dark. We rode in silence down two floors to the basement.

  We continued into a utility kitchen where the man reached into a cabinet and retrieved a can of coffee and a French press.

  “The first thing you should know about us Swedes is that we take coffee breaks,” the man said.

  “That explains a lot. My dad and I are addicted,” I grinned.

  He took five heaping scoopfuls from the can and dumped them into the glass container. He walked gingerly to a large coffeemaker and pulled down on a red lever, releasing steaming water into the press. “There are three things you need for a successful fikapaus: good coffee, which we have here,” the man held up the French press and handed it to me, “don’t push it down just yet.” He walked farther into the kitchen to a stainless steel refrigerator and struggled to haul open its heavy door. “Cookies . . . or cake,” he pulled out a plate of delicacies: pink cookies, round cinnamon rolls, dark chocolate balls, and fat little tubes of something light green. “Come . . . ” He gestured for me to follow him into another room, flipped on a dim floor lamp, and slowly lowered himself into an oversized armchair. Next to the chair were a small stool and a table where he set the plate. The cinnamon rolls, dotted with large chunks of sugar, looked especially divine. I placed the coffee beside him.

  “Ah, the cups,” he began to pull himself from the chair but I ran back to the kitchen where I searched four cabinets before finally finding a pair of chipped teacups.

  “And the last thing?” I asked him, entering the room again.

  “The last thing is a friend.” He smiled, pushing down the press and enveloping the whole room with the smell of bitter coffee. “So there,” he said, taking a cup from me, filling it with the dark brew, and returning it to my hands. I settled onto the stool next to him as thunder clapped from somewhere above.

  “You would think I work here, but I don’t. I just give them money and they let me come here every week to peruse the library and drink their coffee,” the man chuckled and took his first sip. “I’ve donated half of the library, too. I used to think my children would want my old books, but . . . ” the man set his coffee down and shrugged his shoulders, “some people just don’t care about the past. Either that, or they’re afraid of what they’ll find when they look back.”

  I nodded my head, immediately thinking of Dad. I sipped slowly, careful not to burn my tongue. I reached for the plate of sweets and began to nibble on one of the cinnamon rolls. It tasted as divine as it looked.

  “So, flicka, let me help you solve your mystery. What part of Sweden was your grandfather from?”

  “The south. Trelleborg.” I stared at the way the man’s hands shook. I tried to act nonchalant but I was studying him intently, secretly wishing it were my Grandpa in front of me. I had so many questions for him. So much left unanswered.

  “Skåne,” the man nodded his head, “where the fields are painted yellow. I, too, am from a coastal town. Landskrona. Have you been there?”

  “No. Unfortunately my grandfather died before I knew him.”

  “Skåne used to belong to the Danes, did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “In 1658, Sweden took it back. But to this very day, the people of Skåne still sound Danish. We speak deep in the backs of our throats,” he tilted his head back and tapped his Adam’s apple with his forefinger. “Truthfully, I think we sound a bit like frogs.” The man laughed, a phlegmy cough that made him choke.

  “You’re telling me my grandfather sounded like a frog?”

  “He did, indeed,” the man smiled. “Is he your morfar eller din farfar? Your mother’s father, or your father’s father?”

  “My dad’s dad. Gerhard Magnusson.”

  “And your father? He hasn’t told you much about him?”

  “It’s kind of a long story . . .” I shifted my weight on the stool.

  “All the good ones are,” the old man winked. “How do you like the coffee?”

  “It’s strong but good,” I said truthfully. “Especially on days like today.”

  The man sat quietly for a couple moments, sipping his coffee and smiling.

  “There are books upstairs that we could research,” he pointed to the ceiling. “Find out more about your Gerhard Magnusson.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Why does it take people so long to want to discover more about where they come from? It took me sixty-eight years to begin to wonder. Maybe,” the man scratched his chin, “the closer we get to the end, the more interested we are in the beginning.”

  I took another bite of my cinnamon roll, wishing I had a better idea what I was supposed to do with my discovery, my family secret. Was I supposed to tell Dad or not? When would I know the answer? Or was I supposed to die with the secret like my grandparents did?

  “But you,” he raised his cup to me, “why the curiosity? You’re what? Fifteen?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “My granddaughter’s fifteen and she hasn’t once asked me about Sweden. So I worry. All of this,” he raised a trembling index finger to his aged temple, “all of this will just disappear one day. Gone. Lost forever. And I wonder, are the memories—the stories of my life—worth anything to anyone other than me?”

  “I have to believe so. After all, finding lost stories is what brought me here today, right?”

  The man let out a short “Mmm,” but I didn’t know if he was agreeing.

  “I’ve spent countless hours up there in that little room dwelling on the single irony that the legacy I leave will be the collections of other people’s stories in my donated books. Not one book is about me.”

  “That’s sad,” I sighed. “What I wouldn’t give to find my grandfather’s story in a book somewhere.”

  “Would you read it?” The man looked at me pleadingly, his eyes hopeful.

  “It’s a funny thing, you know. I think I’m reading it now. Being here . . . discovering things about him, discovering things about myself,” I admitted. What was it about this old man that made me able to speak so openly, so honestly? Maybe it was because we seemed to be looking for the same thing—a bridge between our pasts and our futures. Or maybe it was because he was the only one I could talk to. “This mystery, this journey, wouldn’t be possible if I knew where to find the answers. This wouldn’t be the same if I were just reading it in a book. There’s something better in having to look for it, to seek it out.”

  “So should I leave my memories behind?”

  “Of course you must! You must leave them behind! I mean, if that’s how you want to think about it,” I blushed. “But that’s the thing . . . your granddaughter? She’s not ready for them yet. When she’s ready, she’ll find them. As long as you leave them for her. You have to leave them for her, otherwise, you’re right. They’ll be lost.”

  “Thank you,” the old man reached over and tenderly patted my hand. “More coffee?”

  By the end of the afternoon, the old man and I had consumed an entire press of coffee and leafed through six of his large books filled with old newspaper clippings, photographs, and other descriptive historical texts. He’d shown me a Swedish book with gold lettering and a cracked spine, and opened it to a map of Scandinavia during World War II.

  “You see these countries in blue?” He put his thumb on Denmark and then on Norway. “And this one in red?” He crossed over Sweden into Finland. “They were all invaded. Finland by Russia, Norway and Denmark by the Germans.”

  “Why doesn’t Sweden have a color?” I asked with interest, looking over the map. I’d never seen one like it before.

  The old man closed the book and took out a cloth handkerchief. He dabbed his nose and sighed heavily. I couldn’t tell if the pause was intentional.

  “We don’t . . . we don’t li
ke to talk about that,” he folded the cloth and tucked it back into his pocket. “Maybe another time . . . ”

  I didn’t press the issue though I was dying to know more. The old man was visibly uncomfortable, but it seemed unfair of me to ask him to continue. He’d been so helpful already, and stories had to be told at their own pace. I was learning that all too well.

  He pulled out another text and his mood seemed to change. He smiled warmly, seemingly amused with himself. With a botanist’s guide in one hand and an old map in the other, the old man taught me Sweden’s different provinces and their corresponding flowers. He pointed out the city where he grew up and dragged my finger east across the Baltic Sea to the Swedish island Öland.

  “Where you can eat the best potato dumplings,” the man licked his lips longingly. “My grandmother made the best potato dumplings with salted pork in the middle. I can still taste them, just the way she made them.”

  At four o’clock I reluctantly gathered my things together and asked the woman at the front desk to call me a cab.

  “Thanks for entertaining an old man on a rainy afternoon.” He took off his glasses and held out his hand to me. “If you ever need anything, or you desire another fika, you know where to find me. I hope you solve your mystery.”

  “There is one thing,” I suddenly remembered the postcard in the attic and scrolled through the pictures on my phone to find the snapshot. I held up the screen for the old man to see. “Can you tell me what it says?”

  The old man squinted and held his glasses up to his nose. He read the message aloud and it felt good to finally hear the language as it was written. It’s not like I knew how to pronounce the foreign words. And when I’d shown the photo to Dad, he’d only shrugged.

  “It says, ‘I’m thinking of you always. Can you forgive me? You must forget me.’” The old man looked at me quizzically. “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know,” I sighed, clearing the screen and pocketing my phone. “Thank you for today. And I hope you do leave those memories for your granddaughter. I’m beginning to realize that’s exactly what my grandfather did for me in his own way,” I shook his pale hand and thanked him again before turning to go.

  “Hej då, flicka.”

  “Goodbye.”

  In the cab back to the visitors center, I realized how happy I was to have spent the entire day in the Swedish museum. It didn’t matter that my camera had stayed in its case. I was meant to spend the afternoon with that old man. He’d taught me more about Sweden than anyone so far. More than even Grandma.

  Dad and Rosemary were waiting for me when I returned to the visitors center. They were sitting on the steps, holding hands, excitedly bragging about their day. It involved window-shopping at Rittenhouse Row before discovering what they deemed their “favorite sight of the day”: The Dream Garden, a 100,000-piece glass mosaic by Maxfield Parrish and Louis Comfort Tiffany.

  As we climbed into the car to head back to October Hill Road, Dad and Rosemary presented me with a cannoli packed with sweet ricotta cheese. I didn’t have the heart to tell them it wasn’t half as good as the Swedish cinnamon roll I’d eaten during my first fikapaus. I ate the pastry quietly in the backseat, thinking about how strange it was that both Dad and I had spent the afternoon looking at intricate pieces of two very different mosaics. Would he be as interested in mine as I was? Would he want to know how he might be, in fact, the center of it all?

  XV.

  The house was empty when we got home.

  “Did Greta say where she was going?” Dad asked.

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Neither can I.” Dad scratched his graying temple with his knuckle. By ten o’clock, Dad was anxious, but I knew Greta would come waltzing through the front door without offering an explanation. She’d always felt entitled to more privacy than the rest of us. Dad had taught her well.

  “Could you text her?”

  “I already did. Three times.” I scanned through my sent messages.

  Greta, where are you?

  Greta?

  Greta, Dad’s worried about you.

  “Nothing?” He swallowed.

  “Nothing.”

  He spent the entire night sitting at the bottom of the steps staring at the front door. He didn’t call the cops; he knew, as I did, that she’d left of her own free will. She’d been smart about it and had bided her time until Dad and I thought she was okay. We’d believed, perhaps naively, that Greta was transitioning as well as the rest of us. Now she was calling our bluff. It was midnight before I resigned myself that she wouldn’t be back tonight and went to bed. Dad stayed by the door. We didn’t say good night. We didn’t say anything.

  I made coffee Sunday morning in silence, but I banged the pot around a bit more to remind Dad that I was still around. I poured us both mugs of coffee but then tossed his down the drain. I angrily let his mug crash into the sink and didn’t bother to see if it’d broken.

  What made Greta think it was that easy to just leave?

  I’d wanted to run plenty of times: run away from home, from North Carolina, from the hospital, from Mom’s funeral, from everything and everyone. Right after Mom died I once went so far as to print directions to Kill Devil Hills, believing that if I could just get to the beach and put my feet in the cold water I’d wake up from some terrible dream. I didn’t make it past the end of the street before I realized how selfish it seemed. Dad and Greta were just beginning to grieve for Mom; I didn’t want to be responsible for more loss. But deep down I’d wanted to run away.

  I clenched the sink until I thought my fingernails would fall off, and I finally allowed myself to feel the thing that I’d tried to convince myself I wouldn’t feel. The emotion of which I was most afraid. We needed to look back. We were incapable of moving forward.

  Greta came back Sunday night while Dad and I were eating dinner and went straight to her room. Dad didn’t go after her like I thought he would. He got up from the table and disappeared. Now it was he who was running. He couldn’t face her. He didn’t want to hear what she had to say, what made her leave. He left me alone to clean up the dishes.

  Was I really the only sane person in the house? The only person who wanted to sit down and actually talk about the state of our family? Even if it would be painful? I threw everything in the trash as noisily as I could before going to bed. The plates crashed the loudest. I wanted them both to hear me. I wanted them both to know I wasn’t running away.

  On Monday morning I was eager for a distraction. But instead of finding a respite, for the first time I found myself in the line of fire of another type of scandal—teenage drama. I became aware of my situation when Allison pulled—or rather, forcefully dragged—me from my locker into the girls’ restroom before first period.

  “You and Gabe Weaver spent Friday night together?” Her tone demanded an answer.

  “Yeah, we made cookies—” I said before she shushed me to silence.

  “I thought I told you he was off-limits?”

  “You said to stay away from him, but you never explained why—”

  “Sssh!” She hushed me again, crouching down to look for feet under the stalls.

  “What? Are you interested in him?”

  “Are you kidding?” she snapped before growing quiet when a toilet flushed. She turned fearfully to see who would open the stall door. I followed her gaze. But when she saw a freshman emerge, Allison continued her distraught rant.

  “Jennifer Adams has been trying to date Gabe since last year! She’s already told every girl in school that he’s going to prom with her. They’re practically together.”

  “So?” I silently remembered seeing a very pretty brunette sitting next to Gabe in the cafeteria.

  “So,” she sarcastically repeated, “you’re dead.”

  I just stared back at her, unable to wrap my head around the idea that one batch of cookies could cause so much trouble.

  “Jenn Adams is one of the most popular girls in school. Maybe
you don’t know that yet because you’re new. So maybe she’ll have mercy on you.”

  I laughed. Allison was obviously hysterical. Before I had to listen to any more of her gross overreaction, I muttered something like, “See you in English,” and pushed my way out the door.

  I thought that was the end of it. But then, in the middle of History, Chris leaned across the aisle to me and whispered, “So, you and Weaver, huh?”

  I felt myself cringe in my seat. I literally must have sunk two inches in my chair.

  “What?” I asked back, defensively.

  “You and Gabriel Weaver? You’re like a thing now?”

  I rolled my eyes, already tired of the gossip—the details of which I didn’t even fully know.

  “Who said?” I zipped up my hoodie and tried to recoil within it.

  “He did. Word around school is he’s telling everyone he spent Friday night with you.”

  “He did not!” I blurted a little too loudly.

  The entire class, including Mr. Duncan, turned to look at me before continuing the lesson. Chris chuckled to himself.

  “He came over my house—” I whispered.

  “And made cookies, I know. That’s all he’s saying, Louisa. I hope you didn’t think I was insinuating . . . ” Chris grinned at me, the whiskers on his chin a rough contrast to his tan skin.

  “So, what’s it to you?” I seethed from a clenched jaw.

  “It’s nothing to me. I just,” he paused in reflection, “I would have pegged you as someone who lived more dangerously than Gabriel Weaver. Then again, you are messing with Jenn Adams’s property, so maybe you’re more daring than I thought.”

  “Christopher and Louisa,” an annoyed Mr. Duncan glowered at us, “is there a problem?”

  “No, sir,” said Chris as I vigorously shook my head, my cheeks burning with embarrassment.

  When the bell rang, the class stood to leave, and I couldn’t help but notice my female classmates glancing at me with curiosity. Were they reading me my last rites? Silently humming a farewell taps?