Anxious People: Chapter 56 Summary & Analysis

Estelle thinks about death. She remembers Peter Pan saying that “To die will be an awfully big adventure.” That may be so, but not when you’re the person who’s left behind. She misses making Knut laugh so hard he spit his breakfast out, and she tells Julia and Anna-Lena that Knut is dead. But he always dropped her close to their destinations while he parked. Anna-Lena asks if Estelle is really looking for an apartment for her daughter, and Estelle says she isn’t. Her daughter lives with her teenage grandkids, and they like it when Estelle calls on their birthdays, but they don’t really care about her. Estelle says she goes to viewings to listen to people dream, and she describes how Knut spent his last years in a care home. She’d go and read to him. At the end, she’d read to herself.

Anna-Lena says that “working life” goes so fast, and when Julia asks, she says she was a senior analyst for an industrial company. Julia’s surprised look doesn’t offend her, and she explains that she didn’t want to be in charge. However, her boss said it’s best to lead by letting other people do what they’re capable of, so Anna-Lena tried to be a teacher. Lots of her subordinates didn’t know she was their boss until she retired, and she liked that. Julia observes that Anna-Lena is full of surprises. Then, suddenly sad, Anna-Lena says that people assume she’s lived life in Roger’s shadow, but he turned down promotions since her job was going so well. It was always supposed to be his turn soon, but his turn never came.

Estelle opens the chest again and pulls out cigarettes. Anna-Lena scoffs about what kind of people live here, and Julia patiently explains that she doesn’t smoke. Estelle says you used to just cut down when you got pregnant, but parents today are so concerned about affecting their children—they think everything their child does wrong is their fault. Julia suggests they probably make different versions of older generations’ mistakes. Then, Estelle says she used to smoke on the balcony, but about 10 years ago a man jumped off the bridge. It happened while she abandoned her cigarette outside to look at something on the news.

Julia says it’s not Estelle’s fault that the man jumped, but Anna-Lena says it wasn’t the bridge’s fault, either. She explains that Roger found the incident upsetting, because he was an engineer who built bridges. News coverage of the man’s suicide seemed to blame the bridge, but Roger believes that bridges exist to bring people together. Julia finds this both odd and romantic, and because she’s hungry and tired, she blurts that she and her fiancée went to Australia a few years ago to bungee jump off a bridge. That fiancée, she explains, wasn’t Ro. As Julia says this, Jim is on his way up the stairs.