The Dark Path: The dark, shocking thriller that everyone is talking about

Sam

Karl and I sat outside while the women finished up the salads in the kitchen. He and his wife, Elsa, are our neighbors from across the field, good solid Swedes, wholesome and hardworking. She’s in adult education; he runs a start-up that converts heating systems into more energy-efficient models. They invited us to their midsummer party last year right after we moved in, and this is how long it’s taken us to have them over.

New baby, I apologized, and Karl shrugged. Of course.

Their daughter, Freja, was sitting on the lawn playing with Conor. Karl and I were talking, and I was trying not to stare at him too intently. It’s hard to look away. His startling blue eyes, the height and spread of him. A full-blooded Viking. He’d brought over a gift of vacuum-sealed elk meat.

You’ll have to join me for a hunt one day, he said. All the Swedes do it.

So, remind me, Karl said, what is it you do.

I shifted. I’m trying to get into film, I said. Documentary film.

You were doing that before?

No, I said. Before, I was an academic. Associate professor of anthropology. Columbia University.

He raised his eyebrows. Interesting. What was your area of study?

I smiled. The transformative masks of ritual and ceremony in West Africa, particularly the Ivory Coast. How’s that for useless information?

It’s very interesting, I’m sure.

It was, actually. The masks are fascinating, I said. The way they enable such fluidity of identity and power in these tribes, the way they depend on masking and performance for their—

I stopped myself from continuing. From remembering what

I missed.

Onward, onward and up.

Anyway, it was time for a change, I said.

I finished the last of the beer in my glass, thought back to the final meeting with that brittle spinster Nicole from Human Resources. Sign here, initial this. A swift and unceremonious dismissal that took almost two decades of work – all the successes and accolades and titles – and vanished it into the ether.

But they haven’t even heard my side, I said.

They know more than enough already, she replied coolly.

So you moved here for a new job, Karl said.

Not exactly, I said. I’m starting out. It’s going to take some time. At the moment, it’s pretty much just meetings and pitches, trying to show my reel to the right people.

I cracked my knuckles, the reassuring click of bones fitting into place. Karl wasn’t letting up.

But why pick Sweden? he asked.

I shrugged. We had the house. We wanted a different kind of life. Americans live so superficially – it’s all distraction and noise. I – well, we – we wanted something more real.

America is not real? Karl smiled. He’d already finished his second beer. I reached into the cooler and handed him a third.

America is a country built on myths, I said. Manifest destiny, American exceptionalism. The idea that we’re better than we really are.

Karl nodded. So what is the verdict? It’s better over here?

Of course, I said. Sweden feels like the best place in the world to be.

Karl laughed. Maybe you’re not looking closely enough. He raised his beer and gave a mock toast. Anyway, he said, let’s hope you’re right.

I looked at Conor on the lawn, bright-eyed and thriving.

Of course this was the place.

Freja came over to show Karl a cut on her finger. He said something to her in Swedish and she nodded and went back to Conor.

So you don’t miss home, Karl said. Being around your own people.

There’s not a damn thing I miss about the USA, I said.

Elsa came out balancing a bowl of coleslaw anda green salad. Merry followed with a pile of plates and cutlery. She looked tired. She’d been up since early, preparing for the guests. Next to Elsa, she seemed vaguely off-putting, her hair unwashed and pulled back into a messy bun.

No time, she’d said earlier when I asked.

There’s always time, I said, just not always good time management.

What about you, Merry, Karl asked. Do you miss being in the States?

Merry glanced over at me and shrugged. What’s there to miss?

We sat to eat, passed around bowls of food and saltshakers. Merry had overdressed the salad, but I said nothing.

It’s very good, Elsa said.

I noticed she hardly ate a thing.

Merry brought out a bowl with Conor’s baby food, and Freja asked if she might feed him. She took a spoon and made an airplane, flying mush into his mouth.

Look at that. I smiled. She’s a real natural.

Yes, Karl said, she can’t wait for a baby brother or sister to play with.

Elsa put down her knife and fork. Karl took a sip of his beer and gave me a knowing smile. In the meantime, he said, we have bought her a cat.

Elsa looked over at Conor and patted his arm. He is a wonderful baby, she said. Very sweet.

Sure is, I said, wondering how it was possible Karl didn’t crack her in half every time he lay on top of her.

Merry stood up to clear the dishes, scraping and stacking, refusing Elsa’s offer to help. When she came back out, she carried a cake for dessert; summer berries piled in the middle and drizzled in cream.

My domestic goddess, I said. What have we got here?

Merry passed around glass plates and silver cake forks. I recognized them from her mother’s silverware set.

Merry, Karl said, you haven’t told us what you do.

I pointed to the cake. She does this, I said, and we all laughed.

I used to work as a set designer, Merry said, almost inaudibly.

For movies? Karl asked.

Movies, TV shows, often just TV commercials.

Yes, I said, she was always constructing these little made-up worlds. Kitchens and living rooms, those generic sets you see on all the crappy ads. Disinfectant hand soap or mattresses.

Well, there were some more interesting projects, Merry said.

I had a sudden memory of her coming home one night with a green armchair she’d spent all day tracking down. She’d asked me to help her haul it up to our apartment. I remember how I resented that chair, and her for interrupting me for help with something so silly while I was grading papers. The job was beneath her. Beneath us.

I looked at her now. She had that look she gets from time to time. Pensive. Melancholic. Like she is slipping away. Forgetting herself.

I took another mouthful of cake. God, this is good, isn’t it?

Yes, Karl agreed. It’s a very good cake.

Merry blinked and smiled.

Do you plan to find something similar over here? Elsa asked. There are a lot of shows shot locally, in Stockholm or Gothenburg. It would be very convenient, very close by for you.

I caught Merry’s eye, and she shook her head. No, she said. It’s good to just focus on motherhood for now. That’s really the most important thing.

Before they left, I took Karl inside to show him my collection of African masks. Six carved wooden faces: three from the Ivory Coast, one from Benin, two Igbo fertility masks from my semester in Nigeria.

How exotic, he said.

They are terrifying. Elsa shuddered.

I laughed. Merry feels the same way. She’s been begging me to put them away in a box for years.

Elsa smiled. And still they are on the wall, she said.

After we said our goodbyes, I closed the door and pulled Merry to me.

That was fun, I said.

Yes, she said.

Aren’t they like wax models, those two?

Yes, she said. Elsa is flawless.

I made a mental note to take Karl up on his offer to go hunting, while Merry went to finish the last of the cleaning up, packing dishes into the dishwasher, wiping down the countertops, gathering the crumbs into her hand.

I lifted Conor off the rug and into my arms. He smelled of Elsa’s perfume. And shit.

I handed him over to Merry. Looks like it’s time for a diaper change, I said.

Merry

I watch the baby through the bars of his crib. A little prison, to keep him safely inside. He watches me. He does not smile. I do not bring him joy.

Well. The feeling is mutual.

I look at his face. I watch closely for signs of change. They tell you that they transform all the time. They are supposed to resemble their father first, then their mother, then back again. But he is only me. All me. Too much of me.

His eyes stare, a constant reproach. Accusatory. Remember, they say, remember what you have done. I’m sorry, I whisper, and look away.

My bars are not bars. They are glass and trees. The glass cage that is our house, the huge glass windows all around that Ida’s father installed to maximize light and space. The ancient tall pines that block off the light. My island exile, all escapes closed off, all outside life shut out. Just us.

Sam and me and the baby.

All we need, Sam says.

Is it? I say. Doesn’t it feel like we’re the last three survivors of a plane crash?

Oh … He laughs at my silliness.

He was off in Stockholm or Uppsala today – I forget which – playing his show reel for ad executives and producers. He is trying hard to make this work. He really is doing his best. He always does. Family, he says: nothing matters more. This is why we moved here, a new start, the very best place to raise a family. How he loves the baby. How he adores every part of him and every little thing he does. Once, he looked at me like this, as though I were a wonder of nature, a rare being to worship and adore.

Ba-ba. Ma-ma. Pa-pa.

Everything we say is broken into two syllables.

Bird-ee.

Hors-ee.

Hous-ie.

The baby eats some of the time but not always. Often I make him food and eat it myself, letting him watch as I spoon it into my mouth.

See? No mess.

I offer him the spoon and he shakes his head.

The baby cries a lot but forms no words. He rocks on his belly but does not yet know how to crawl. There are milestones that I am surely supposed to be checking and am not. The copy Sam bought me of The Ultimate Guide to Baby’s First Year lies unopened next to the bed, under a tube of organic rose hand cream that sends five percent of its profits to the preservation of the rain forest.

You read it, right?

Of course, I lie. It was terrifically informative.

The baby. My baby. He has a name, but somehow I can’t bring myself to say it out loud. Conor Jacob Hurley. Naturally, Sam named him. Conor Jacob, he said, Jacob after his best friend from high school who was lost at sea on a round-the-world sailing trip. Conor in deference to Sam’s vaguely Irish roots. Conor Jacob. Conor Jacob Hurley. It was decided, written down on the tag on his tiny wrist. I read it. I mouthed the words of my son’s name. Conor Jacob Hurley.

The balloons next to the hospital bed were baby blue. One had already burst, its deflated remains drifting forlornly among the rest.

Would you like to hold your son? the nurse offered.

If Sam was out of the room, I would shake my head.

He believes I am a good mother, the very best kind. Devoted and all-nurturing and selfless. Without a self. Perhaps he is right about the last part. Sometimes I wonder myself: Where am I? Or: Was there anyone there to begin with?

The days Sam isn’t home always feel like a vacation. The baby and I have no audience to impress. Usually, I don’t shower. I don’t change out of my nightgown. I sit on the couch watching reality TV, my dirty little habit (one of many, I should add). I cannot get enough. Plastic women devouring each other, housewives and teen mothers. How they play at being real, when really it’s all for the cameras. Still, everyone pretends not to know. The conspiracy is a success.

Most days, I eat wedges of butter to stave off my sugar cravings and keep my weight down, but when Sam’s away, I unpack my hidden stash from the barrel of the washing machine and indulge in whole bags of crisps and cookies, which I smuggle home from the grocery store under packs of diapers and organic detergent. I am vile. Terrifically unladylike. I pick at my toenails and squeeze out the ingrown hairs from my legs. Sam would shudder if ever he saw me like this. Sometimes I shudder myself, at this version of me. Well, she will need to be banished once Frank arrives. There will be no such escapes for a while.

Some days, I think it would be nice to go out, to leave our little island territory, but of course Sam has the car. It’s an hour on foot to get anywhere from here, and forty minutes’ walk to the nearest bus station. Sam bought himself a mountain bike for the trails, but it’s been ruled out for me. Too dangerous, he said, with a baby.

That leaves us stuck. Just us. Mother and child, with nothing to do but revel in domestic duties. I suspect Sam likes it. No, I know he does. My lack of distraction. My utter focus. Actually, it surprises me how encouraging he’s being about Frank’s visit. In New York, I was always hearing complaints about any outside interests or distractions. The parts of me that weren’t entirely consumed with Sam. Sam’s favorite music, Sam’s current reading list, Sam’s teaching materials, his new eating habits, or his latest workout. Sam’s everything. And now Sam’s baby.

The baby. The baby we made. The baby we let into the world. I remember how I felt that day, standing in the pokey beige bathroom of our apartment which always smelled of the deep fryer from the Indian restaurant downstairs, looking at the two lines faint on the stick, the lines of life, imminent and incontrovertible. It was the second test. Whoopsie daisy. A whoopsie baby.

The door burst open, Sam home early and unexpectedly.

Is that? he asked, looking at me, caught red-handed. I did not miss a beat. Yes, Sam, I cried. Isn’t it the very best news.

The origin of the word suffer is “to bear.” You are not supposed to overcome it. You are only supposed to endure. I am free to leave, this is what anyone would say to me, but the question is how, and with what, and to where. These have never been questions I could answer. They have never seemed like my decisions to make. In this world, I have no one but Sam. He knows this. It is surely part of the allure. That and how I am no good on my own. I would not know where to begin.

There are sleepless nights and nights that don’t end. I wake sometimes and find the baby in my arms, yet I have no recollection of fetching him. He screams himself awake and I go to his crib, watching him turn red and fuming, tears streaming down his face, cries catching violently in his throat. Feral, raging changeling from the wild. I am reluctant to pick him up, loath to offer him comfort, even though this is all he wants from me, all he asks. I cannot give it. I can only stand and watch, silent and unmoving, until he is all cried out and too exhausted for more.

Sleep training, I’ll explain to Sam, if he complains about the crying. I’ll quote a reputable pediatric authority, because I like to show him how seriously I take our child’s development. Still, he’ll find things to point out that I am doing wrong. He’ll offer wisdom and advice – minor improvements, he calls them, and there’s always room for these. Yes. He does love to educate me. He is very good at it. Filling in the blanks. I think perhaps he considers me to be one of the blanks, too, and slowly he is filling me in. Do this, wear that. Now you should quit your job. Now we should marry. Now we should breed.

Over the years he has shown me what to appreciate and what to disavow. Italian opera, classical Russian pianists. Experimental jazz. Korean food. French wine.

Is it Dvořák? I ask him, as though I don’t know. As though I wasn’t the one raised in the oceanfront house in Santa Monica, lavished with education and private lessons beyond anything I wanted or deserved.

Husband. Hūsbonda. Master of the house.

I suppose he only tells me things I don’t know myself. What I need. What I want. Who I am. And in return for this, I give it my all. I give Sam the exact woman he wants me to be. A faultless performance. Nothing else would do.

The men before Sam wanted to rescue me, kiss away the boo-boos. Sam wanted to make me over from scratch. And I hate to disappoint him, because disappointing Sam is the worst feeling in the world. It is the end of the world, actually, and the return of the hopeless, relentless, gnawing vacancy inside.

You’ll be a terrific mother, Merry, he told me all through the pregnancy, through the nausea and the discomfort and that feeling of hostile, unstoppable invasion. He couldn’t take his eyes off me, or his hands off my swollen belly. He was mesmerized with what he imagined was his singular achievement.

Look at this, he marveled. We made this life; we made this living being inside of you.

The miracle of it, he said.

It felt like the very farthest thing. But Sam had already carried us away on a dream and a plan: Sweden. A brand-new life. Shed the old skin and slip into another. There was something enticing about the idea of it, of leaving New York with its many secrets and shames. Some of them Sam’s, the biggest one belonging to me.

The baby, the baby. Sam loves him with such ferocity, it can sometimes make it hard for me to breathe. And now there will be Frank to think of. Frank in my house. Frank in my life. So close. Perhaps too close. We are childhood friends, that most dangerous kind. Bonded over memories and sleepovers and secrets; over betrayals and jealousies and cruelties big and small. She has always been in my life somehow, a lingering presence. Even when we are far apart, separated by cities or continents, it is Frank I think of most. It is Frank I crave. I imagine her reacting to what I do and say, to how I live, to whom I love. I imagine Frank taking it all in. I imagine what it feels like for her, to see my life and hold it up against her own. We need each other like this. We always have.

I remember when she first moved to New York – snapped up after her MBA by one of the top consulting firms. Suddenly she was a different Frank. Jet-setting between cities, dating hedgefund managers, living in a penthouse apartment with a Russian art dealer for a roommate. Well, I packed my things and moved there myself a few months later. My father paid my rent.

But what are you doing here? Frank asked when I arrived on her doorstep one Saturday morning with two cream cheese bagels.

I’ve always planned to live here, I said, I told you.

Yes. We need each other. Without the other, how would either of us exist?

It was nine o’clock when Sam returned home, much earlier than he’d said. The baby was in his crib, newly asleep with the help of a teaspoon or two of cough syrup. I do this occasionally, on the more difficult days. It’s meant to be harmless. Mother’s little helper, is all.

Other things I do too. Like put pillows too close to the baby’s head. Or set him down to nap just a touch too near the edge of the bed. I don’t know why. I don’t know what it is that compels me. I only know I cannot stop it. Often I weep. Other times, all is numb, whole parts of me dead and blackened like a gangrenous limb. Immune to life.

I was on the sofa when I heard Sam’s car on the gravel. I startled. I’d been watching a show about women who compete with their best friends to see who can throw the better wedding. I hadn’t yet cleaned myself up. I quickly snapped shut the laptop and opened a book on early childhood development.

Hello, wife, Sam said, kissing me on the mouth.

His breath was stale, the smell of rotting meat. My stomach turned.

How did it go today? I asked.

He ignored the question, sat down next to me, and cupped my swollen breasts, weighed them like a medieval merchant.

Our Merry’s in musk, it seems, he said, laughing. I know what you’ll be wanting, he said, a finger burrowing inside my jeans. I was unwashed; I could smell myself on his fingers.

Have you been using the thermometer? he asked. You have to do it every day so we get the dates right.

A few weeks ago, he bought me a basal thermometer. I am supposed to take my temperature every morning and track the stages of my ovulation. Follicular phase, luteal phase, cycle length, everything recorded and set to a graph that displays on an app on my phone. Conception made science. When I am at my most fertile, the phone beeps frantically and a red circle appears on the screen. It’s a red day, it declares. A reminder. A warning.

I’m using it, I said. But it takes a while to work out your cycle.

He is impatient with me. He wants me pregnant again. Insisted we start trying when the baby was barely two months old.

It’s too soon, I begged. Everything hurts.

Nonsense, he said. The doctor said six weeks.

I would bleed afterward, shocked pink blood on the sheets and in my underwear the next day. Several pairs I deposited straight into the trash, the blood stiff and dried brown, smelling strongly of rust and decay.

Come, Sam said. He led me to the bedroom, set me down gently, with purpose.

I lay there and pretended to enthuse. Oh, yes. More. Please. He likes it when I beg. When I say thank you afterward, like he has given me a gift.

Some days it is harder than others to remember gratitude. To acknowledge my awful good luck. Sam went slow, stopping to look into my eyes. He repulses me sometimes. A physical reaction to his smell and his touch; the way he breathes through his mouth with his tongue lifted up, the way the hairs on his shoulders sprout in odd patches of wiry black strands.

Something inside me heaves and shudders to have him close.

I suppose that’s normal.

I love you, Merry, he said, and then I did feel it. Grateful. Loved. Or at least I think it’s what I felt. Sometimes it’s hard to know for sure.

Sam on top, inside, he clutched at me with both hands and breathed into my ear.

Let’s make a baby, he said, right before he came.

Sam

I was up early this morning, shaved, dressed, half out the door. Merry was setting Conor down in his high chair.

Where are you going?

Uppsala again, I said. I told you a few days ago.

You didn’t, she said.

It’s okay, I said, giving them each a quick kiss. You probably just forgot. You know how bad your memory can be.