steep staircases that are found in many Danish homes.
They carefully moved him to the ground floor and
rolled the gurney to the front door. There they waited for
the van to slowly back into an alignment that would afford
a short, straight movement from the entry to the back of
the vehicle.
While they were waiting, Jannik dashed outside to
the greenhouse and quickly returned with a handful of
Hyacinth. He asked the attendant if she would place it
with Torben. She raised the sheet, quickly unsnapped and
zipped the carrier bag a few centimeters, and laid the
flowers on Torben's chest. Magda and her children then
moved onto the cobblestone drive outside the front door to
stay clear of the workers loading Torben's gurney into the
ambulance. Soon they were off.
Watching the van pull away hit Jannik much
harder than he expected. He kept his eyes focused on the
small motorcade as it made its way down the drive, turned
onto the town road, and eventually left his sight. Then he
faced his mom, hugged her tightly, and cried into her
bosom like a baby.
Chapter 34
knock at Room 222 of the Nyhavn 71 Hotel brought
me to the door. We had just finished episode three
A of the Happy Endings Sleepover reenactment, and I
was grateful that whoever was at the door hadn't come by
ten minutes earlier. Sander was in the shower, and I was
looking on my phone for any cool restaurants we might
want to try tonight.
"Hi. What's up?" I said to the young bellhop.
"This came for you. Your phone was off."
He gave me the note and tipped his little hat, then
headed down the hall.
It was a message from the front desk. Mama
needed me to call her right away. Geeze! Can't a guy suck
your boy's dick without having you interrupt all the fun? I
smiled.
"Hey, Mama, it's Johnnie... Oh... That's too bad... I'll
ask him what he wants to do... He's in the shower; do you
want me to have him call you? ... Okay, I'll tell him, bye."
"Tell me what?" Sander asked, standing buck naked
in the room and drying off his hair and shoulders. I could
see his gunshot wound scar was smaller, and the coloring
of it blended in more with the rest of his skin.
"Uh, that was Mama. Torben passed away this
morning, Pokey. I'm sorry."
Sander sat beside me on the bed, the shock from
the inevitable day that it would happen setting in. His nose
flared a little, and his chin quivered. I noticed his eyes
filling with water.
"Can I hold you?" I asked him. He nodded, and
then turned to me and hugged me. His cries were silent
ones, but I felt his tears against my face. We sat there for
about an hour while he released four years of pain on my
shoulder.
"Why does everything happen like this?" Sander
sobbed. "I'm so tired of everything! I'm tired of people, and
their selfish bullshit!"
"Torben wasn't being selfish, Pokey. He was gonna
go soon, we knew that." I tried to console him.
"I'm not talking about him! I mean me! I'm so sick
of me being the reason shit happens, and I miss Torben,
Johnnie! I miss him, and that's not fair to you! And why
should I even miss him, anyway! He was awful to me, and
I think I'm just a stupid coward!"
"You're not a coward, damn! Pokey, come on! You?
A coward? What the fuck!" I exclaimed, totally
shocked at the whole, stupid thought.
"Oh yeah?! You want me to remind you? First,
when Torben got the whole school against me I didn't do
anything. I was running home! Then, I fix it by throwing a
belt and a jump rope around my cowardly neck!"
"Stop!"
"No! After that, I'm such a coward that it takes me a
fucking year to tell you my feelings for you! And when I
do, and you take me as your boyfriend, I lied to you and
didn't tell you about my fun with the rope!" he cried.
"Pokey, come on! You..."
"And then my brother gets kidnapped by the
fucking Russian asshole, and I just fell apart! You and me
both know that I was a useless rock on that whole fucking
trip! It was you and Marge that got him back, while I sat in
my wet diaper like a fucking loser!"
"Okay, I'm gonna ask you to please stop this talk
right now!" I declared. "I mean it!"
"...And look at me! I'm here crying on our fucking
honeymoon about that piece of shit Torben Petersen, who
wouldn't have cared one shitty bit if I'd succeeded with
that rope, and you know it! I'm such a fucking coward,
Johnnie, and I'm sick of it! Just fucking sick of it!" he cried.
I held him in my arms for another half hour;
enough time passed that I felt I could talk with him, and it
might be heard.
"Oh, Sander Lars Hansen," I began, "if I tell you
something, will you promise me that you'll listen to what I
have to say, and not say anything until I'm done?"
"If I do, it'll be a coward's promise. So I can't
guarantee anything," he replied.
"Even for me? Your ol' ever lovin' man with yellow
hair?" I tickled him a little. He half cried, half laughed.
That got his attention.
"Okay, for you I do."
"Do you value my opinion at all?" I asked him.
"Seriously. Does what I have to say to you carry any worth
at all?"
"Stupid question."
"I'll take that as a yes," I said, rising from the bed
and sitting on a chair so I could look him straight in those
beautiful—if a bit wet—blue eyes.
"Yes," he agreed.
"Then listen to every word I'm going to say. Deal?"
"Yes, yes..."
"You are the most courageous person I have ever
known in my life. You are strong, Sander. You are the one
who makes me want to get up and face the day, every
day," I told him.
"See? Now you're sounding like my mother..."
"I asked you to keep quiet, didn't I?"
"Yes, but that's the kind of thing people say when
they just want you to feel good. But I know the truth about
me," he said.
"It's clear to me that you don't. So I'm gonna crush
that idiotic theory right here, right now," I told him. "Let's
go back nine months and there's a knock at the door. On
the other side of that door is the man who treated you the
worst of any human being on this planet. Worse than the
guy who stole Jannik! I'm telling you that if it was me, I
would have smashed in his fucking face and thrown him
into the cow pond!"
"You wouldn't," he said.
"The fuck I wouldn't! But guess what? A
courageous man I know not only took him in, but made
him feel like he was part of our family. That's how you
sent him off from this world. You were courageous
enough to not only forgive him, but to actually do what
fuckers like my mom only talk about!"
I wasn't finished with him. Not by a long shot.
"And how about that trip to hell we took to
Belgium? Ring a bell? Who never lost faith that we could
do it? Who's the one who overheard the whole damned
plot and kept me from delivering that asshole into the
waiting arms of those fuckers who wanted to hurt my
country?" I reminded him. "Courage? Or not?"
He shrugged his shoulders like a middle-schooler
in the headmaster's office being questioned about who
spiked the punch at the dance.
"Continuing, who had the courage to deal with—
and forgive—that rascal brother of yours when he invaded
our personal space in the worst way? What brother in all
mankind would have dealt with it like you did?" I asked
him. "That's why it makes me fucking angry when you say
this about yourself."
"I don't know, Johnnie. Maybe you're right, but you
can't see what's inside of me!" Sander said. He wasn't
giving it up easily.
"And finally who, in this very room that we're in
right now, had the courage to declare his love for
someone? Who had the courage to say 'Fuck it, it's now or
never?'"
"Yeah, I know..."
"Yeah, so do I. And it wasn't me. If it wasn't for
your courage, Pokey Hansen, you and I would not be
sitting here together, and we sure as hell wouldn't be
married. So this is what I'll say, and then it's up to you
from here..."
"Okay, tell me." He said.
"If you are a coward, then where do I sign up?
Because if the whole world was as cowardly as you are,
it'd be a fucking paradise. And I'm not being cute here,
Pokey. I fucking mean it! I wanna be a coward, just like
you!"
That brought a smile to his face. Maybe I'd gotten
through after all.
"Now call your mother!"
TORBEN'S MEMORIAL SERVICE took place at the
hospital conference room. He'd known many of the nurses
and doctors there, and more importantly, they
remembered him.
The only family that came was Torben's mother, his
sister from Greenland, and the mother's current boyfriend.
To their credit they had done their best to dress as well as
they could. The portly man wore an ill-fitting suit, and the
mom dressed in a black skirt and blouse.
The sister was a little clueless, but she'd dressed
well and it was clear that she was upset about the loss of
her brother. She'd never really grown up with Torben, as
she had a different father. And when he and Torben's
mom broke up, she went with him, eventually winding up
in Greenland.
But she loved her brother very much, that much
was clear.
The service was conducted by the hospital
chaplain, and he did a good job. Sander was at peace with
it all, and Jannik seemed interested in what a dead guy
looked like all dressed up and ready to go. He told us that
Torben definitely looked better than the last time he'd seen
him.
"Hi, Sander. Do you remember me?" Torben's mom
asked him after the service. She smelled of beer and
cigarettes, but at least she wasn't drunk.
"Yes, of course I do, Lena. How could you ask
that?" Sander smiled. "I'm very sorry about Torben," he
said.
"Yes, he really was a good boy, you know. He was
always very thoughtful and kind to everyone," she told
him. Oh, really, lady? Are we talking about the same guy?
I thought. Of course Sander, courage-a-plenty, said
nothing to contradict her. He just smiled, and offered his
hand in condolence.
"That young boy said that Torben was staying with
you. Is that true?" she asked.
"Yes it is. That's my brother, Jan. He held Torben's
hand when he passed," Sander said. "He just went to sleep
as he smiled, and Jan held his hand until my mother and
sister got there."
That's the moment that the tears began for her.
Until then she had tried to play the part of cheerful hostess
at a going away party for her son. But that tender picture
that Sander had painted let her know that her boy wasn't
alone, and that he was loved.
"Thank you for everything that you did for Torben.
It means everything to me. It really does," she told him.
DRIVING HOME WAS QUIETER than is usual for us.
Jannik went home with Mama, and we'd already
continued our honeymoon when we got in from
Copenhagen last week. We figured that we could dream
up someplace to go together anytime we wished for the
usual honeymoon experience. For now, home just seemed
the best place to be. And to me, every day spent with
Sander was a honeymoon, anyway.
Chapter 35
eeks passed. It was autumn again and the weather
was turning, right along with the leaves.
W Jannik was getting ready to start back to
school, and he had really taken to music. He never acted
very excited about sports—a cardinal sin in Denmark. He
tried sports more to please his dad. But he'd discovered
that music was his passion. So practically every class that
he signed up for that term had something to do with
music.
The next wedding looming on the horizon would
be for Ingrid. So Mama was already dusting off her bridal
books and pulling together the fabric samples. Uncle Ole
and Aunt Bertha Moon sent us a whopper of a check for
our wedding gift—they were on a beach in Spain over the
holidays. Jannik told us that we'd better run it to the bank
before Ole got up to something.
email telling us how much it meant for him to come to the
wedding. He attached a couple of photos of his wife and
their baby. He'd grown up and had started his own good
life. Sander was very happy for him, and we made the
kind of long distance plans to get together that, likely as
not, will never happen. We all just get too damned busy,
and as it is there aren't enough hours in the day for Sander
and me. He had a good idea, though. How about renting a
cabin for a week on Bornholm? That might be a good
second honeymoon, he suggested. Hey, whatever Sander
wants, Sander gets, as far as I'm concerned. So I'll leave it
with him.
The therapy visits for both Sander and Jannik were
reduced to once every three months, more as a check-up
and progress report for them. A way just to touch base
with the doctor so she could be satisfied that all was well.
She did have one request that—the way she kept pressing
it—was more than a request.
"I want you to write down your story. What led
you here? You really need to do this, Sander, so you can
look at your life objectively. So you'll see what you have,
and you'll start to be less hard on yourself," she had told
him—numerous times!
Of course he always offered a non-committal
promise that he'd do it for sure. Yeah, he'd say, I'm
working on i
t. To which she'd reply, When, when, when?
It got to be a private joke between Pokey and me.
As for Jannik the Peeping Tom; well, I was more
than shocked when I learned of it. Sander asked me to join
him and Jannik at the table, where a very upset little
brother did his best to hold it together as he confessed his
misdeeds outside our bedroom door.
It wasn't good. It wasn't healthy for him. I told him
as much, but I admit that it was hard to keep from
laughing at the thought of the little dude pounding his
pud to live Johnnie and Sander Porn. Kids are stupid
sometimes, and he was sorry. Promised he wouldn't do it
again. Faced the embarrassment like a man. So I'm not as
upset as perhaps I should be.
My work assignments were coming more
frequently. Turns out I'd become very good at my job. I'd
even gotten a letter from President Obama thanking me for
my role in Operation Mango. Which is hilarious to me
because I just knew I'd be fired after the first-class mess I'd
made of it.
Married life was treating us well. We quickly fell
into that wonderful pattern where we know what the other
one needs. We'd already been finishing one another's
sentences for almost a year, but there was something about
the commitment of marriage that just makes us bring out
our best game. It's wonderful, I'll tell ya.
"I know something you don't know!" Sander teased
as he plopped down beside me on the romper couch. "Bet
you wanna know, don't you?"
"Nope. Ignorance is bliss." I said
"Sure you do! Ask me!"
"Ask you what?"
"About the thing I know that you don't know!" he
laughed.
"No."
"Do it!"
"What do I get if I do?" I smiled suggestively.
"Not that! Come on! Ask me!"
"Okay. what do you know that I don't know?" I
chuckled. "Tell me."
"I bought something at the store today," he said.
"And you'll never in a million centuries guess what it is!"
"A new hat?"
"Don't be dumb. You're not even trying! Guess for
real!" he demanded with a grin.
"I don't know. Ice cream?"
"No! Better than that!"
"Better than Ice Cream? Damn, this is serious!" I
said. He nodded at me with a Cheshire cat smile plastered
across his cute mug.
"Try again, Johnnie Rocket!"
"Give me a hint!" Hey, this might be shaping up
into something."
"Okay! First, it's a wedding present," he said.