Dependency, fragment

During this period I feel very close to my mother, and I’m not harboring any deep and painful feelings about her anymore. She is two years younger than her son- in- law, and they never talk about anything except how I was as a child. I don’t recognize myself at all in my mother’s early impressions of me; it’s like they’re talking about a different child altogether. When my mother comes to visit, I stuff my novel away in my locked drawer in Viggo F.’s desk. I make coffee and we drink it while we chat. We talk about how good it is that my father has gotten steady work at the Orsted factory, about Edvin’s cough, and about all the alarming symptoms from my mother’s internal organs, which have plagued her ever since Aunt Rosalia’s death. I think my mother is still pretty and youthful. She’s petite and her face is nearly wrinkle- free, just like Viggo F.’s. Her permed hair is thick as a doll’s, and she always sits on the edge of her chair, with a straight back and her hands on the handles of her purse. She sits the same way Aunt Rosalia always did when she only was going to stay ‘a brief moment’, and then didn’t leave until several hours had passed. My mother leaves before Viggo F. comes home from the  re insurance company, because he is usually in a bad mood then and doesn’t like it if anyone is here. He hates his work at the o ce and he hates the people there, too. He has something against everyone, I think, unless they happen to be artists.