The Heart Keeper Read online

  *

  I slip into Oliver’s room and sit down at his desk; as I press the space key, the screensaver on his iMac changes from a generic stock image of the Grand Canyon to a picture of him and Amalie in a pool in Spain two years ago. I study the picture carefully. Amalie is wearing a strawberry-patterned sunhat that partially obscures her face and she sits beaming on the side of the pool, next to her older brother. I can’t remember taking the picture, though I must have; Sindre never remembers to take any photos of the kids. I try to isolate that moment in time from every other moment before and after it; the ocean beyond the pool must have shimmered in the sharp sun, all the children’s laughter must have hung on the air, birds must have streaked past in the sky above, feathered smudges of black. I must have said Smile.

  On Google, I type in the name of the girl’s mother – Iselin Berge. Like her daughter, she has bland blue eyes, pale skin and a rounded face, but the two of them don’t actually bear much resemblance to one another. There aren’t many hits for Iselin Berge, but I click on an old article. It’s from Nordlandsposten from October 2006, and shows three young teenagers picking plastic waste from a bleak beach, their faces serious and pleading. Save Nordland’s beaches from plastic waste, reads the headline, and below the picture are the names of the girls. Merethe Hansen, Nora and Iselin Berge. I stare at Iselin’s face, trying to reconcile the fresh, sweet features with her adult face, which strikes me as sullen and somewhat younger than her years. She looks like the kind of girl who might have been a popular teenager: her eyebrows are skillfully plucked into even arches, her eyes are discreetly rimmed with eyeliner, she looks straight into the camera, confident in her conviction that she could save the world by picking straws and scraps of old plastic bags off the local beach. I return to Google and find the article Oliver showed me near the top of the search results. I scroll further down to avoid it but, finding nothing of interest, I return to it and click on the link.

  *

  At Home with Miracle Girl Kaia Berge

  ‘I still can’t believe it,’ says Iselin Berge, gazing lovingly at her daughter, Kaia, who plays busily with dolls on the floor of their cozy flat… ‘I think I’d begun to let her go,’ she whispers. Life for this young single mother has been excessively hard. Some might say nearly impossible, but Iselin has fought relentlessly to give her daughter a chance for survival.

  Se Her magazine has secured an exclusive at-home feature with Norway’s possibly bravest child: seven-year-old Kaia Berge, who has suffered from life-threatening heart disease since she was a baby, and finally received a new heart in July. Only a couple of heart transplants are performed on children in Norway every year, in spite of long waiting lists. Kaia was one of them, and after five years on the list with rapidly deteriorating health, Iselin was beginning to give up hope.

  ‘It is an impossible situation to be in,’ she says, ‘wishing so hard that your child will receive a new heart and a chance at life, while also knowing what that wish entails – that someone has to die for it to happen.’

  We pay this charming mother-and-daughter duo a visit in late November. Their home is a compact basement apartment in a house a few hundred meters from the T-bane station in Østerås. On the day of our visit, a wet, drizzly fog hangs over the Western fringes of Oslo, obscuring both Holmenkollen and Kolsåstoppen from view.

  ‘I go to school now,’ says the frail-looking little girl as she opens the door to us, ushering us into a warm, brightly lit hallway. ‘I love school!’ And then she’s gone, twirling down the narrow hallway plastered with her accomplished drawings. Though she is pale and small for her age, Kaia’s movements are quick and nimble. It’s hard to believe that in the summer, she was at death’s door after being struck down with pneumonia last winter and struggling to fully recover.

  ‘These kids [on the transplant list] just can’t withstand what other children can,’ says Iselin, handing us mugs of milky coffee. ‘More has to be done to draw attention to their plight, that is why we agreed to this feature.’

  I close the browser window, and spin the chair slowly around, staring into the soft blue glow of Oliver’s room. My heart is hammering hard in my chest. I’m a journalist; I’ve built my world around words, but I have no words for this; for what I’m feeling. I close my eyes, but Kaia’s wan, white face is etched into my mind, and underneath her image is Amalie, like a ghostly hologram; shimmering, see-through, gone. I clench and unclench my hands so hard I leave dark purple grooves on my palms, then turn back around to the computer. I need to know more.

  I go on Facebook for the first time in a long while. I used to check it numerous times a day, loving the ease of communicating with old friends scattered across the globe. Presumably she, too, will be here, and I will know even more. I type in Iselin Berge and she’s easy to find – just one match.

  Only her profile picture is available to me, but Iselin Berge appears even younger than in the magazine feature, no older than twenty-five, I’d imagine. She has a pretty face with a soft jawline thanks to a few extra pounds. Kaia is in the picture too, standing behind her mother and resting her head on her shoulder. The child’s skin tone is a strange gray, like the underbelly of a fish, all the more noticeable next to her mother’s pink, healthy color, and I notice that it was posted last May, three months before she received the new heart.

  Only eleven people have liked the photo, and I look at Iselin’s friend list. Seventy-two friends, no mutual friends, unsurprisingly. She’s most likely almost twenty years younger than me, and I don’t know many people in Norway, even after eight years here. It doesn’t seem like Iselin knows that many people, either, so perhaps we have that in common. I move on to her cover photo, a skillfully drawn anatomical heart in soft charcoal pencil, accentuated in slashes of neon yellow, and I wonder if she drew it herself. Somehow, I doubt it; she looks more like a receptionist or a shop girl, but who am I to judge? I don’t think anyone who could see me now, wearing my too-big old Levi’s and Sindre’s maroon cashmere sweater, my hair scraped back into my usual tight bun, would imagine that I once wrote for some of the world’s biggest publications or traveled the globe on my own. Above the heart is a quote in accomplished calligraphy: Hearts are wild creatures, that’s why our ribs are cages. Underneath, someone called Anton Mehus has commented, ‘Gorgeous, Iselin!’ Someone else, a DJ Noa, has written, ‘Bravo, my <3.’

  I try to look for more pictures, but there is nothing – like me, she must have strict privacy settings. I’m about to shut Facebook down, but notice that her profile picture was uploaded from Instagram. I take my phone from my pocket and open the app. I’ve never posted on Instagram much, though I will scroll through from time to time. I realize that the last picture I posted, a selfie of Amalie and me two weeks before she died, has now had over five hundred likes and countless comments. But I’m not going there, not now.

  I search for @IsbergArt and, as I hoped, her profile is open. She may be private on Facebook, but she’s open to anyone on Instagram: she has posted over eight hundred times, and is followed by 1,311 people. I scroll down her feed, which is mostly her drawings – so the heart picture was hers? – with occasional food pictures and pictures of Kaia. I open a recent one, taken two weeks ago of Kaia standing in front of a brown, single-storey building with a pyramid-shaped red climbing frame in front of it. She’s grinning widely, forehead and ears obscured by a fluffy purple hat, arms spread out in a typical pose, her face almost as white as the winter sky and the snow on the trees. On the side of the building in the background, I can make out the words ‘Elvely Skole’.

  ‘My bubba loves school sooo much’, reads the caption, followed by a long series of emojis, mostly hearts. Perhaps not so strange, considering Iselin looks very young. Elvely Skole. I know it – it’s just down the road from the stables where we keep Amalie’s pony. To think that I’ve driven past that building time and again, when all the while inside was the little girl with a very special heart. Maybe… Maybe I could make a little detour
next time? All I need is to see her, just once, from afar.

  ‘Hey, what are you doing?’

  I jump in my chair, blinking at the sudden slash of light from the open doorway. Sindre is silhouetted in it; huge, his shoulders nearly touching the sides of the doorway.

  ‘I… Uh, Oliver’s computer was left on… I was just shutting it down.’ I quickly close the Facebook browser window, and slip my phone back into my jeans pocket.

  ‘Okay, I’m off to bed. You coming?’ I nod in the soft darkness, but Sindre’s already gone.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Alison

  At the bottom of the road is a junction and I hesitate there for a long moment, watching flurries of wet snow dropping fast before disintegrating on my windscreen; there is no one behind me. I should turn around, head back home, take a hot bath, catch up on all the life admin neither Sindre nor I have been able to face. I think of the quiet house, the possibility of taking a couple of tranquilizers. I could finally return Karen Fritz’s calls, ask if she would see me again.

  I could find out if Oliver wanted to go for a walk this afternoon even though he’s at Monica’s this week; it might do us both good to breathe in the fresh forest air, to talk more. Or… Or I could take a right and just quickly drive past that school and see if I might just spot her. Kaia.

  It was me who insisted on the donations. I believed, and I still do, that any sane person should be a donor. The idea that healthy organs are routinely buried or cremated while people die on the transplant lists has never sat easily with me. But that was before; before I had to make that decision in a matter of minutes, holding my baby’s cooling hand, deep in shock, just entering the world of ex-mothers. I close my eyes, gripping the steering wheel, consciously drawing breath slowly and deeply.

  Your heart. Amalie, your heart is calling for me.

  A loud noise breaks my thoughts, someone is honking. I sit up straighter and glance in the rearview mirror. It’s a woman in a Chevy Suburban, and behind her are a couple of other cars, waiting, puffs of exhaust rising from them, streaking the white air. I wave in apology and flick my indicator to the right, heading toward the stables, and Kaia’s school, in Østerås. The other cars all turn left, and I’m glad; I’m inching along the road, tears streaming down my face. I think of Misty in her box, waiting.

  The school is brightly lit up, but quiet. I park across the road, on the sidewalk, discreetly concealed by a browning, gravel-studded snow bank made by the snowplows clearing the parking lot directly in front of the playground. I can see the main entrance from here, and most of the playground. It’s a small school and to the left of the building is a bumpy hill, its snow worn thin and icy in patches by little tobogganers. Their sledges and short plastic skis that strap onto winter boots, stumpeskis, are flung about at the bottom of the hill, ready for the next recess. I glance at the clock on the dashboard – it’s 11.14, and I try to guess when the kids might come outside to play.

  I hear a sustained muffled sound and turn toward it – the school bell. As if on cue, children appear in the glass corridor on the right side of the building; messy-haired, pale, tired-looking, smiling, jumping, carrying little boxes, all heading in one direction, and then suddenly, the building seems empty again. I stare at my hands on the steering wheel; veined, blue, dry. I imagine Kaia’s little hands in this exact moment; perhaps unwrapping a sandwich. I wonder what’s in it, what she likes. She might be sitting with a couple of friends; little girls like herself, buzzing with energy in the way only small children can, eyes roaming, smiles quick and wide, laughter loose. Or she might sit alone, chewing slowly and carefully, timidly scanning the room for a potential friend. From the pictures, she strikes me as the latter kind of child.

  Is she consciously aware of the heart inside her, is she noticing its steady beat, the incredible work it does, sluicing her blood around her body, powering her every move? Does she ever think about where it came from? How, really, it belongs to somebody else?

  I close my eyes against this onslaught of thoughts and try to bring my mind to a safe place. Once, it would have been Sindre. I go further back: childhood, home – I was happy then. Stinson Beach, its honey rocks, the wild, surging ocean, the fragrant California air; smoke, cloves, verbena, pine. I open them again and take it all in: the school full of strangers’ children, the parking lot glistening with slushy brown snow, the white sky merging with the gray-white fields behind the school. This is madness. I can end this right now. I need to go home and begin to put some of the pieces back together. I need to get the help I so clearly need; no one sane would come here, looking for someone else’s little girl. My hand is on the key in the ignition when that muffled sound starts up again. 11.30. The corridor becomes a swarming hive of little bodies stepping into snow suits, pulling hats down over heads, shoving soft, pudgy hands into gloves.

  I’ve started reversing slowly back off the sidewalk when the doors swing open and the kids burst into the playground like a spilled bag of beans. Kaia is one of the first ones to emerge. I recognize her immediately; her serious, pale face and blue eyes are etched on my mind. She is wearing a scruffy-looking purple ski jacket with mismatched turquoise ski pants, and a navy hat with something written across the forehead in gold letters. A couple of strands of hair peek out from underneath the hat and she pushes them away with her gloved hand. She is alone, indeed, and glances around before making her way toward the red pyramid climbing frame. Another little girl approaches and they chat a moment before pulling themselves up onto the lowest rung. They turn around and sit with their backs toward me, looking at the other kids milling around the playground. A boy runs past and chucks a little snowball toward Kaia and her friend.

  Kaia jumps down, leaving her friend on the frame. At the bottom of the little hill, she picks up a red plastic sledge with handlebars on the sides, then joins the line of kids waiting their turn. She jumps up and down, looks around as if for another friend, kicks at the snow with the tip of her boot. When it is her turn she carefully places the tip of the sledge so it points straight ahead, like a plane getting into position on the runway before take-off. Then she throws herself onto the sledge, propelling it forward, laughing and squinting in the sun, which has just come through the layers of white fog. I hold my breath, watching her. There is something about the way she smiles – I can’t look away. Inside her chest, in this exact moment, Amalie’s heart is beating.

  I can’t get out of the car; it would look pretty suspicious if a strange woman stood observing children at play; this is a small school, everybody would know that none of these children are mine. There are two adults sitting on a bench over by the main entrance, wearing reflective vests and occasionally rubbing hard at their arms against the cold, but they most likely can’t see me from where they stand. I wish I could get closer, so close I could see the exact color of Kaia’s eyes, the curve of her lip as she smiles, what is written on her hat – it isn’t enough to just watch her from here, knowing what I know. Again and again she comes down the little hill on the red sledge, laughing carelessly, and I was right, after all; seeing her, knowing her face, even just for a few moments, was the right thing to do. But after this, I will have to let go.

  She’s nearing the top again, bouncing about as excitedly as if it were the first time. Sledge carefully positioned, she sits down on it and is about to nudge it into motion when a big, chunky boy steps forward and pushes her hard on the back, making the sledge lurch off, veering toward the right. A couple of tall trees fringe the hill and Kaia throws her weight to the left, trying to avoid them, but it’s too late and the sledge hits the first one fast, head-on. Kaia soars through the air – a big, pastel bird – before crashing to the ground.

  Two little girls run down the hill toward her, but for a long moment, she doesn’t move. The girls pull her up, and they are facing toward me; Kaia’s features are twisted in a grimace of pain, I can tell she’s screaming, though I can’t hear it, and blood is pouring from a gash above her left eyebro
w. My breath is shallow and strained, as though I, too, am in acute pain. In this exact moment her heart, Amalie’s heart, will be racing, pounding painfully in her chest, and I could run to her and pick her up and hold her close; I’d feel its panicked flutter like a tiny bird’s wings caught in the sliver of space between us.

  My hand rests completely still on the door handle, knuckles white with restraint. How can I not go to her, how could I not try to calm that frightened heart? One of the adults supervising has heard the commotion and runs across the playground to Kaia, scooping her up in his arms, her blood splattering onto his neon yellow vest. As he carries her quickly back across the playground toward the school building, he happens to glance in my direction and his gaze meets mine. His eyes immediately narrow in suspicion – there must be something about the look on my face – and I push my foot hard down on the brake and put the car back into gear before driving off, my eyes streaming, my stomach hot and liquid, my heart booming in my chest.

  *

  At home, I make an excuse to Sindre, saying I caught a chill in the stables and need to lie down. In bed, I go through Iselin’s entire Instagram account, poring over the pictures of Kaia, committing the curve of her jaw, the exact color of her eyes, her tight French braids to memory. Then, an idea appears in my mind as clear and perilous as an iceberg on the horizon. I open my email browser and begin to type.