Still Life

LYDIA
CRIMINAL CODE 3:9

It was cold outside. Later, when Lydia read the investigation documents, she would learn that it was twenty-five degrees and skies were clear with a moderate breeze. At the start of the evening, she had been wearing only a T-shirt and a hip-length jacket. Even so, she couldn’t recall feeling chilly. She only remembered his warm hands. How they felt as they stroked hers, the soft dry skin, fingertips with blunt nails, as they took her hand, a steady, sure grip. How he had let go. How empty her hand had felt without his.Lydia Seger was in her third semester of law school at Uppsala University. She was only a half-hearted student, had already had to retake one exam, and she was waiting, without high hopes, to learn the results of the most recent one.
His name was Ted, and he was already a third-year student. He told her so while they were plodding through those obligatory initial questions: What program are you in? Where are you from? When did you start? Where do you live? She had responded evasively, as she usually did, to any questions that didn’t have to do with the here and now. He didn’t seem to notice and told her that he was studying medicine; he made it sound so serious Lydia laughed at him.
“You don’t look like you spend your days with your nose buried in an anatomy book,” she said, even though she actually had no idea what medical students did or what they typically looked like. The only med school students she’d met before were a pair of twins who were members of the choir in her same student union. They were always wearing their university coveralls decked out in fake medals, and they behaved as though they had never spoken to a woman they weren’t related to. Ted was the opposite of those twins. They looked like middle-aged, row-house residing fathers of three. Ted had a small tattoo on his upper arm, almost up on his shoulder; he had dark blue eyes, worn out shoes, and thick, wavy ash-blond hair that was a little long in back. She wanted to stick her hand under his shirt to see if his stomach was as smooth as his arms. She wanted him to press his hand against her skin, between her T-shirt and the waistband of her jeans.
“Are you really going to become a doctor?” she dared to add. By then, Ted had placed his big, wide hand on the back of her neck and leaned in close to whisper in her ear.
“I’m a natural.”
His hot breath made her blush. It felt like her whole body was blossoming with shame or lust or both. She wanted him to undress her and tell her the Latin names of each part of her body. Femur, sternum, clavicle. And explain to her what happened when the blood surged through her veins and made her skin a thousand times more sensitive than normal. But he let go of her and walked away. She didn’t follow.

For all intents and purposes, Lydia was an only child. Sure, she was the youngest of four siblings, with two brothers and a perpetually angry sister who spent more time with animals than she did with other people. But since she was eleven years younger than her next-oldest sibling, she hardly knew any of them. Her sister had lived at home the longest, but she moved out when Lydia was twelve. She didn’t mind being an only child. While her sister still lived at home, the two of them could go days without seeing each other, and they never talked about anything of consequence when they did.
There were thirty-nine, or possibly forty, or maybe just thirty-eight rooms in the house where Lydia grew up. She had tried to count them one especially rainy summer when she got old enough to count that high. But the two top floors were closed off. In the part of the house that was still heated and cleaned regularly—by a dejected full-time maid who looked confusingly similar to the dejected live-in maid whom she had replaced—there were thirty rooms. Lydia’s mother lived in one of them; you would find her father in another. Only occasionally did her parents wake up in the same room.
Lydia’s bedroom was across from her mother’s, and each room had a tile stove and a window seat, a parquet floor, and a large portrait of a horse with beefy legs and a flying mane. Her bed was wider than it was long, and Lydia had been sleeping in it ever since she was old enough to move out of her crib.
She had elected to study law because she thought it seemed like a good option if you had no idea what you wanted to do. Her high-school grades were excellent, among the best in her school, so getting accepted was no problem. At the welcoming assembly, the vice-chancellor, who was also a professor of law, had given a speech.
“Jurisprudence,” he had said, “has been developed by generations of lawyers and politicians in order to address the general public’s demand for revenge, stricter punishment, and the philosophical idea of the value of the individual. Our book of laws is the code we depend on to offer solutions to our very worst human conflicts. You will be tasked with putting this code into practice. Don’t forget that. You must solve the conflicts of others because we are so bad at solving our own.” He paused briefly, then leaned over the podium to gaze at the audience and added, “Perhaps the very best lawyers are those who are most conflict-averse in their private lives.”
The students had laughed at that. Lydia included. But she hardly understood what he meant. Conflict was foreign to her, not something she was ever drawn into. She had never had to resolve disputes, not even between other people. She didn’t have to worry about arguments at home, because there weren’t any. Her siblings were seldom there, and her parents never fought. They were too polite.
Lydia’s most frequent companions when she still lived at home were the family dogs, Nelson and Klerk. They were Labs, one black, one yellow. They were too old and weary to fight, even with each other, and Lydia had never heard them bark unless there was a hunt underway. Klerk had bad hips, but Nelson loved to jump onto her bed, and he would fall asleep stretched out beside her, dreaming wild dreams that made him howl and paddle his feet. She liked to pet the dogs, even though they smelled bad and it made her hands vaguely sticky. Once in a rare while she would take them for a walk; otherwise, they mostly ran loose around the grounds. When her father took his morning walk, they came along; Nelson twenty yards ahead of him and Klerk just behind.
Each morning, Niklas the groundskeeper would drive her to school, twelve miles away. When the school day was over, she took the bus home again. It was about a mile from the bus stop to the house, and if Mom or Dad or one of the staff didn’t pick her up she would walk. Sometimes she brought a friend home; if the friend slept over Mom might come tell ghost stories about ancient relatives who climbed out of the family portraits to rummage through the kitchen cupboards, fry pork until the smell of it spread through the rooms, or overturn a Greek pitcher or Chinese vase in a room no one had set foot in for years.
Lydia lived at home until it was time for high school, and then she went to boarding school. It wasn’t like she didn’t make any friends there, in fact, she always had at least one best friend, sometimes two, but she couldn’t remember ever fighting with them or having a falling-out. Or at least none that were too serious.If Lydia got mad at one of her friends, she would just stop speaking to her for a few days. She got it out of her system by talking behind the back of whoever she was upset with. And after her feelings settled, she would resume the relationship as though nothing had happened.
Beyond being free of conflict, Lydia’s childhood had also been free of ambition. Her family made no demands of her. Her oldest brother was supposed to take over the estate, and her sister would take care of their parents. Her middle brother was like a backup for the eldest brother. No one knew what Lydia’s designated role should be.
Lydia’s oldest brother had always been a stranger. When he came for a visit, it was as though they were entertaining royalty. He joined them for dinner, never asked Lydia any questions, and spoke only if someone asked him a direct question. Their father conversed with him as he did with the groundskeeper; the only difference was that he wore a look of greater concern. When Dad drank too much cognac, he sometimes raised his voice and wanted to pontificate on the dangers of clear-cutting the forest and remind his son never to sell off any land, not even Lillgården, the little manor, which they hadn’t been able to rent out in over twenty years.
“No holes in our cheese,” Dad said. And Lydia’s brother nodded. He never contradicted his father.
Although her middle brother’s only worth was as a spare in case the important, firstborn brother were to up and die before producing an heir, his affairs often attracted attention. This attention was largely negative in nature, given that Lydia’s middle brother devoted himself to the sorts of activities a spare with no intrinsic value tended to pursue: drinking, bad investments, and destructive relationships. But their parents never discussed it, at least not with Lydia. The only reason she knew he was a problem in the first place was that she eavesdropped on her sister when she was telling her boyfriend about it over the phone. Lydia had nothing to prove. It was nice that she got good grades, but it wasn’t important. Her parents came to watch school plays and last-day-of-school ceremonies, but they weren’t the least bit disappointed when she never got a leading role and was never awarded any honors. She didn’t like any particular sport, never developed any special hobby, but this didn’t seem to concern her parents either.
Lydia had understood from a young age that this family hierarchy, with her at the bottom, was good for her. That it made her free, and not just the most ignored. She supposed the only problem was that she couldn’t figure out what to do with this kind of freedom. She didn’t want to become an artist or an actor; she didn’t want to write a book. Music was something you danced to or listened to when you wanted to avoid talking to strangers on the bus. There was nothing she wanted to create, no intellectual pursuit that awakened her soul. She didn’t long to get away or discover the world. Lydia didn’t want to keep every door open; that would only make it drafty. To put it simply, she didn’t quite get life. But not even that caused her any notable concern.

The second time she talked to Ted, he walked into the kitchen of the club with a beer in hand and sat down on the floor next to the dishwasher where she was working. Ted wasn’t a member of her same student union, but each Thursday since the first time they’d met he had shown up there. She had seen him. They had acknowledged each other, but only from a distance. Stockholm’s Nation was the student union everyone went to on Thursday nights. Even him.
On this evening she had started to look for him as soon as they opened. It wasn’t clear whether what she did here could be called a job, because she didn’t get paid for it. She had signed up to be one of the Nation’s club workers during her second semester, but at the time all the spots had been filled. Now she was finally part of the crew in charge of Thursday nights, who took care of everything from cooking to—yes—dishwashing.
She spotted Ted at a distance a few times that evening, but he didn’t come say hello until after closing time. Then he waited while she bent over the wide sink and washed up, soaping and rinsing both face and hands.
She wanted to get rid of the food smell; that seemed more urgent than preserving what little makeup she still had on. Besides, she felt brave, letting him watch from just a few yards away as she cleaned up. The water trickled down her face and got the neck of her T-shirt wet. She felt sexier than all the times she had stripped, more embarrassed than seductive, for guys she liked; she felt boundless, as if anything was possible now. When she was done, she looked him straight in the eyes while she dried off with a clean kitchen towel, her hair, down her neck, under her T-shirt. She could see exactly what it did to him. In that moment, she thought she knew how this night would end. In that moment, she longed for it.
And then they walked out into the winter night. It wasn’t just the two of them at first; there was a big group leaving the Nation all at once. But to her it felt like they were alone. He was the only one she was looking at, speaking to.
He looked more at her friends than at her, talked more with the others than with her, but it was an active sort of avoidance. She couldn’t have explained how she knew this, but each time he ignored her or laughed at someone else’s joke, the magnetic field between them grew stronger. When he replied to everyone else, he was actually addressing her. When she was quiet, it was because she wanted him to have to listen more carefully. Everything that was happening was between the two of them; everyone else in their group was just an extra.
The plan was to go to someone’s place and keep the party going there. They were presumably heading to Studentvägen; there was always some corridor in the student apartment complex with loud music and beer on offer. They walked alongside the group for a while. No one seemed to notice the sparks flying between them, the feeling they would give in to soon, very soon. After a couple hundred yards he bumped her arm. A few minutes after that he took her hand, just for a second, as if to say we’re heading this way. He only touched her, no one else. Each time he brushed against her she wanted to laugh, she had to force herself not to giggle hysterically. She was usually tired after a Thursday night at the Nation, but this time she was more energetic than she had been in months. His skin tickled, the thought of his skin tickled, his gaze, his scent, the back of his neck. As they approached Studentvägen, Ted stopped to let the rest of the group go ahead of him. He didn’t have to ask her to stay, it was the only thing to do. No one seemed to notice that they lingered outside.Lydia remained at a slight distance. She locked her eyes on his as their friends disappeared, and they didn’t move until they were all alone. Then Ted took two steps toward her, intertwined his fingers with hers, and they began to stroll back into town, away from the rowdy corridors full of students, back toward the cathedral. When they reached the cemetery, he kissed her. Just once, a quick peck. Then he took her hand and started running. After a moment she made him stop, pulled him close, kissed him again, in the light of the full moon, longer this time. He cupped his hand around the back of her neck; she slipped hers under his shirt. When they parted, they were out of breath, him more so. She giggled when she saw the way he was looking at her. Then they walked on.