Besides, I’ve never been one to kiss and tell. The girls will—usually followed by the words, “that fuckface” or something similar, but I just smile and move on.
Still. I can’t help it. I haven’t seen Astrid in weeks and it wouldn’t be very sibling-like if I didn’t knock her down a peg.
“You’re one to talk,” I tell her. “How many French men do you have lined up after hours?”
“Anders,” Per chides me.
“What?” I exclaim, palms raised. “That’s not fair that she can make a jab at me but I can’t make one at her. Where’s the equality in that?”
Meanwhile, Lise is laughing softly to herself and Astrid is giving me the stink-eye. She’s frighteningly good at it and I know growing up that she was using it on all the men in town. That’s why my comment is more funny than anything.
“I’m a burlesque dancer, not a whore,” Astrid says, raising her chin in a haughty manner. “And even if I was, so what?”
“I’m not a whore either,” I remind her.
She keeps on glaring until I finally look away. She wins again.
Astrid was always a handful growing up. After my mother left our family for America and got married to a damn New Yorker, she left me, the oldest, in charge of my sisters. With Uncle Per busy with the farm and my father always away fishing, all the responsibility fell on me.
And at the time, responsibility was poison to my soul.
Astrid was the one getting into the most trouble, not exactly with the boys, but with her group of girlfriends who seemed to run amok in this town. Because we are only two years apart, she didn’t take any orders from me, or anyone else. Lise and Tove weren’t even teenagers at the time and were so distraught by our mother’s departure—as we all were—they were a lot easier to manage.
I guess it came as no surprise that when Astrid turned eighteen, she moved to Oslo. Then to Copenhagen. Then Amsterdam. And now Paris, where she’s been living for a few years and working as a burlesque dancer. Naturally, being her brother, I’ve never seen any of her shows and have absolutely no desire to, though Lise and Tove tell me she’s good at what she does.
I don’t have a problem with it—whatever makes her happy. But I have to admit, sometimes I envy her greatly. It’s a strange feeling to be jealous of your sibling, like it goes against the grain, but the feeling is there. Astrid is doing what she wants to be doing with her life. She’s doing what she wants—period. I don’t have that luxury and, to be honest, I wouldn’t even deserve it if I did.
With the spat between me and Astrid over, she and Lise start arguing over some book they both read. Sitting in the kitchen that I grew up in, I can still smell the waffles that my mother used to make every morning, the loads of freshly made jam and cream from the cows. My mother was never very nurturing, but she did know her way around the kitchen. As usual, my gut bubbles up with toxic nostalgia.
I take a long gulp of my beer then ask Uncle Per how the lambs have been doing. He offers up a few words, letting me know what I’ll be helping out with over the next month—spring is busy—before I’m off to sea again, though he can’t hide his grimace when he adjusts in his chair. Uncle Per’s health has never been the best. “Too much butter, too much Scotch,” my father used to say, and they’ve been slowly catching up with him throughout the years, now delivering their blow. He’s been going to the doctor and so far everything seems fine, but he’s an old and unhappy man, and I fear the latter may be the true death of him someday.
My uncle never married. Astrid once told me that he had fallen in love with a woman when he was very young and they were engaged to be married, but she died in a car accident. I guess he swore off love—and at least women—after that. I’ve never really known anything different. I grew up in this farmhouse with my parent’s room at one end of the long upstairs hall and my uncle down at the other. I know both of them inherited the farm from my grandparents and they made a go of it, working together. We were one big, somewhat happy, family.
Then, when times got tough and the farm took a hit, my father became a fisherman to supplement the income.
To say I’ve become my father’s son terrifies me in its accuracy.
“What do you think?” Astrid says, and I realize she’s speaking to me.
I raise my brows. “Don’t tell me this is about a girl again.”