Read A summer with Kim Novak for Free Online Page B

course I knew better. The idea was that Edmund and I would cycle the twenty-five kilometres there on Sunday and join them. Henry could’ve given us a lift, of course, but leaving our bikes behind was out of the question. There were plenty of interesting places to explore in the forests around Möckeln. Without our bikes, we’d be like cowboys without their trusty steeds; that’s what Edmund and I both thought.
    On the Saturday night my father and I visited the hospital again, me in my graduation outfit, Dad in a blazer, shirt and tie. He never wore a tie at work or around the house, but when he went to the hospital, he dressed up. Even though he rode the bus there more or less every day. I wondered why, but I never wanted to ask. I didn’t want to that day either.
    My mother lay in the same bed in the same room and seemed mostly unchanged. Her hair was newly washed and looked a bit better. Like a halo on her pillow.
    We’d brought a bag of fresh grapes and a bar of chocolate, but after an hour with her, as we were leaving, she foisted the chocolate on me.
    ‘Take it, Erik,’ she said. ‘You need to put some meat on your bones.’
    I didn’t want it, but I took it anyway.
    ‘I hope you have a good time at Gennesaret,’ said my mother.
    ‘You know I will,’ I said. ‘Take care.’
    ‘Send my regards to Henry and Emmy,’ she said.
    ‘I will,’ I said.
    On the bus home, my dad talked a lot about what we could and couldn’t do at Gennesaret. What we should try to bear in mind and what we absolutely mustn’t forget. The propane, among other things. He was trying to hide the note that he was holding in his hand. Presumably it was something my mother had written and had given to him during our visit while I was in the bathroom. I could tell by his tone that he didn’t really care about the advice he was giving. He trusted Henry and Emmy. He rambled on out of duty and empathy with Mum. I felt sorry for him.
    I think he trusted me, too, actually.
    ‘I might pop by some time,’ he said. ‘And you’ll come to town every now and then, won’t you?’
    I nodded, knowing that these were mostly just things you say to make yourself feel better.
    ‘But I’m working three more weeks. And I’ll want to visit her at the weekends.’
    It was strange that he said ‘her’ instead of ‘Ellen’ or ‘your mother’, as he usually did.
    ‘It is what it is,’ I said. ‘We’ll be fine.’
    I took out the chocolate bar—a Tarragona—the one that had been for my mother, but that she’d given back to me. I handed it to my dad.
    ‘Do you want some?’ I said.
    He shook his head.
    ‘You take it. I don’t fancy it.’
    I put it back in the inner pocket of my jacket. We sat in silence as we passed through Mosås, past the peat-moss bog where Henry had worked for a couple of summers before he went to sea; I tried to picture Ewa Kaludis’s face, but I couldn’t quite.
    ‘If you find the time, tar the boat,’ said my father when we turned toward town at the junction. ‘It couldn’t hurt.’
    ‘Sure,’ I said.
    ‘The jetty isn’t up to much, I suppose.’
    ‘We’ll fix that, too.’
    ‘If you have the time,’ said my father and tucked away the paper my mother had given him. ‘And then the rest is up to you.’
    ‘Only time will tell,’ I said.
    ‘Keep your chin up, and your feet on the ground,’ said my father.
    When we got off the bus at Mossbanegatan, I furtively tossed the Tarragona into the rubbish bin that hung on the bus stop post.
    I regretted it all the way home to Idrottsgatan, but I didn’t go back to get it.
    A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, I thought.
    It alternated between sunshine and clouds on the Sunday as Edmund and I left town. A gentle headwind. When we pedalled through Hallsberg it started to rain and so we went into Lampa’s bakery outside the station and each had a Pommac and a cinnamon bun. Edmund tossed a krona into the jukebox. While we sat and drank our Pommacs and