In this flickering artificial ambience the vulture was already seated at the center of the table, scowling and ready to attack. Denise was almost knocked out from the stench of her cheap perfume and powder, which no shop with any self-respect would demean itself to sell.
Now her grandmother parted her dry, red, blotchy lips. Maybe the vulture was preparing to smile, but Denise was not so easily fooled. She attempted to count to ten but this time made it to only three before the woman’s verbal abuse began.
“Well! The little princess could finally find time to come down and say hello.”
A dark and disapproving look came over the grandmother’s face after a quick inspection of Denise’s seminude midriff.
“Already plastered with makeup and I don’t know what. No one will miss you coming, because that really would be a catastrophe, wouldn’t it, Dorrit?”
“Would you stop calling me that? It’s almost ten years since I changed my name.”
“Since you ask so politely, yes, as it isn’t something one is accustomed to from you. Then you think that name becomes you better, do you . . . Denise? A little more French. It almost puts one in mind of the suggestively dressed ladies of the night, so, yes, maybe it is more fitting.” She looked her up and down. “Then congratulations with the camouflage work, is all I can say. You’ve prepared yourself for the hunt, I wouldn’t wonder.”
Denise noticed how her mother tried to calm the mood with a slight touch of her hand on her grandmother’s arm, as if that had ever worked. Even in that area her mother had always been weak.
“And what have you been up to, if one might inquire?” continued her grandmother. “There was something about a new course, or was it actually an internship?” She squinted. “Was it a job as a nail technician you wanted to try this time? I almost can’t keep up with all the excitement in your life, so you’ll have to help me. But wait, maybe you’re not actually doing anything at the moment? Could that be it?”
Denise didn’t answer. She just tried to keep her lips sealed. Her grandmother raised her eyebrows. “Oh yes, you’re much too precious for work, aren’t you?”
Why did she bother asking when she had all the answers? Why was she sitting there hiding behind her wiry grey hair in a mask of disgust? It made you want to spit at her. What stopped her from doing it?
“Denise has decided to enroll in a course to learn how to coach people,” interjected her mother bravely.
The metamorphosis was enormous. Her grandmother’s mouth was open, aghast; the wrinkles on her nose disappeared; and after a short pause the change was accompanied by a laugh that came so deep from within her rotten core that it made the hair on Denise’s neck stand on end.
“Oh, that’s what she’s decided, is it? An interesting thought, Denise coaching other people. Just in what, exactly, if I might inquire? Is it actually possible to find anyone in this disturbed world who would want to be coached by someone who can do absolutely nothing besides dolling themselves up? In that case, the world must have come to a complete standstill.”
“Mother—” Denise’s mother attempted to interrupt.
“Be quiet, Birgit. Let me finish.” She turned toward Denise. “I will be direct. I don’t know anyone as lazy, talentless, or with so little sense of reality as you, Denise. Shall we agree that you actually can’t do anything? Isn’t it high time that you tried to get a job to fit your modest talents?” She waited for an answer, but none was forthcoming. She shook her head, leaving Denise in no doubt as to what was coming next.
“I have said it before and I have warned you, Denise. Maybe you think it is acceptable to just lie on your back? It’s downright shocking. You’re not as beautiful as you think, my dear, and certainly won’t be in five years, I’m afraid.”
Denise inhaled deeply through her nose. Two more minutes and she’d be out of here.
Now her grandmother turned to her mother with the same cold, contemptuous expression. “You were the same, Birgit. Thought only of yourself, never doing anything to get on in life. What would you have done without your father and me? If we hadn’t paid for everything while you squandered life away in your self-obsessed megalomania?”
“I have worked, Mother.” Her tone was pitiable. It was years since her ammunition of protests hadn’t fallen on deaf ears.
It was now Denise’s turn again, as her grandmother turned her attention back toward her, shaking her head.
“And as for you! You couldn’t even get a job folding clothes, if that’s what you think.”
Denise turned around and disappeared into the kitchen with the poison from her grandmother trailing behind her.
If it was possible to see what was inside her grandmother, the ingredients could be laid out in equal measure of intense hatred, vengeance, and unending images of how different she thought everything had once been. Denise had heard the same fake nonsense over and over, and it was irritatingly hurtful every time. About what a good family she and her mother came from; about the golden years when her grandfather had had his shoe shop in R?dovre and earned really good money.
All a load of crap! Hadn’t the women in this family always stayed at home and done their duty? Hadn’t they been supported solely by their husbands, been meticulous about their appearance, and looked after the home?
Hell yes!
“Mother! You mustn’t be too hard on her. She—”
“Denise is twenty-seven and is good for exactly nothing, Birgit. Nothing!” shouted the witch. “How do you two propose to survive when I’m not here anymore, can you answer me that? Don’t for one second expect any significant inheritance from me. I have my own needs.”
Something else they had heard a hundred times before. In a moment she would attack Denise’s mother again. She would call her shabby and a failure, before accusing her of passing on all her negative qualities to her granddaughter.
Denise felt disgust and hatred right to the pit of her stomach. She hated the shrill voice, attacks, and demands. Hated her mother for being so weak and for not having been able to keep a man who could look after them all. Hated her grandmother precisely because that was what she had done.
Why wouldn’t she just lie down and die?
“I’m out of here,” said Denise coldly when she stepped back into the dining room.
“Oh, are you, now? Well then, you won’t be having this.” Her grandmother pulled a bundle of notes from her handbag and held it in front of them. One-thousand-kroner notes.