Page 103 of Hidden in Memories
Tiina is curled up on the sofa in the living room, trying not to cry. Ogge has disappeared; he isn’t answering his phone, and she has no idea where he is.
Zelda comes over and lays her head on Tiina’s knee—she is a clever dog, and knows that something is wrong. Tiina buries her face in Zelda’s soft fur and lets the tears come.
After a long time she gets up and fetches some paper towels to blow her nose. She catches a glimpse of her tearstained face reflected in the refrigerator door. She looks terrible; her eyes are red and swollen.
It’s hardly surprising that Ogge has found someone else.
She stares at the pot of daffodils on the table. Today is Good Friday, the day Jesus died on the cross to redeem the sins of man. Where she grew up it was a day of sorrow; you went to church, spent the time in quiet contemplation. It is many years since she did any of that. Ogge thinks it is nonsense, but Tiina remembers the kindly priest from her home village.
An idea sparks in her mind. She takes out her phone, googles “duty priest,” and discovers that you can call 112 to make contact.
Dare she do it?
Who else is she going to talk to?
She looks around the kitchen, where Ogge’s plate lies unused. He hasn’t even sent her a text.
With trembling fingers she keys in the number and explains why she is calling. A man with a west coast accent answers after a few rings. He introduces himself as Roger, and tells her that he is a priest in Gothenburg.
Tiina bites the inside of her cheek in order to keep control.
“I’m happy to listen if you want to share whatever is troubling you,” Roger says.
He sounds nice. Tiina takes courage and tells him about Ogge, how strangely he has been behaving recently. How his difficult background seems to be making him feel worse and worse, yet he refuses to seek help even though she has begged him to talk to someone.
It’s hardly surprising that he feels bad. His mother took her own life in a long-drawn-out way, drinking herself to death before he turned twelve. He was placed in foster care, and life became sheer hell. On his eighteenth birthday, his foster parents threw him out on the street and told him to make his own way in life.
On many occasions when Tiina has been disappointed and has despaired of their relationship, she has thought about how wretched that must have been.
A young boy, left all alone in the world.
The priest listens, now and again he tentatively asks a brief question. Soon an hour has passed. Everything Tiina has been carrying inside her comes pouring out. The fact that Ogge came home long after midnight two days ago. She thinks he is cheating on her with another woman; he is bitter and nasty all the time. She talks about the way his drinking is escalating, how aggressive he becomes when he drinks.
It is as if he can’t get over what happened to him during his childhood, as if all those horrible memories are coming to the surface again. He sits in front of the TV, making scornful comments onanything to do with father-and-son relationships. Shows about adopted children seeking their birth parents make him snort with derision.
“What can I do to make him feel better?” Tiina asks the priest.
She has seen the scars on his back from the worst beatings; she understands that this is a lifelong trauma. He also carries a huge burden of guilt over his mother’s death, as if that were his fault too.
It has made him hard.
It also made him reach a decision: never to become a father himself.
Tiina would have loved to have a child with him; she often dreamed of it at the beginning, but Ogge made it very clear early on that he was never going to change his mind.
With hindsight she has often thought that she should have insisted. If Ogge had had a child of his own, then maybe he would have been able to leave his damaged upbringing behind. It would have been a fresh start, a chance to focus on the future instead of being trapped in the past.
Old mistakes don’t have to be repeated.
Tiina lets out a sob; it’s all so hopeless. She loves him, but she can’t get through to him. And now it’s too late. Ogge is in the process of leaving her for someone else.
“He’s had such a difficult life,” she tells Roger.
Of course Ogge is unpleasant sometimes,she thinks. He has had so many terrible experiences. Maybe that’s why he’s started seeing another woman—the angst has to come out somehow.
“This might be difficult to accept, Tiina, but I wonder if you’re familiar with the termcodependency?”
“What do you mean?”
