by Ann Yost
“No. There was no one else. She just, well, she just wanted to focus on her singing.”
“I see. Did that make you angry?”
“Some. Mostly it made me sad.” He looked up at me. “It still makes me sad.”
“What about Barb?”
I shouldn’t have asked. It wasn’t relevant to what had happened to Liisa.
“We’re gettin’ married in March. I’m looking forward to the cheese curd festival.”
I felt a pit in my stomach for Diane Hakala’s daughter. She wouldn’t even be first on Matti’s mind during her own honeymoon.
“Do you know whether Liisa had girlfriends?”
“I guess. I mean, I saw her talking to girls, but they were mostly jealous of her. People think it’s lucky to be that beautiful, you know? But there’s a lot of it that’s just a burden.”
I could hear Miss Irene’s voice in my head. “Cast your burden upon the Lord and He will sustain you. Psalms.”
“Matti, what were you doing Friday night?”
He didn’t make the connection at first. I could tell the minute he did.
“I didn’t kill her,” he said. “I didn’t even see her. I was at the parade and I knew she was sick and I knew, if she was sick, Mrs. Maki wouldn’t let her go to the dance. So I didn’t go, either.”
“What did you do instead?”
“Played video games. In the basement. Alone.”
“Was your dad in the house?”
“Yah, sure. He’s always there if he’s not at the gas station. I didn’t see him.”
I thought he was telling the truth. He certainly could have said he’d spent the evening with his dad which would have given him an alibi.
“It was her birthday, you know,” he said, in a broken voice. “I bought her a bracelet.” He pulled a box out of his pocket and opened it to show me a silver chain with an angel charm hanging from it.
“It’s lovely,” I said.
“She wouldn’t have wanted it.”
“I think you’re wrong. Any girl would love it. Will you give it to Barb?”
Again, I wasn’t sure why I’d asked the question. He shook his head.
“Would you like me to see that Liisa gets it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. Suddenly, I felt a hundred years old.
“One last question. Can you think of anyone who would have wanted to hurt Liisa?”
“Not really. But she did seem scared of something. I thought it was her father.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. Something about the way she seemed stuck. Like, whatever it was that was scaring her was something she couldn’t get away from.”
It seemed to me to be a good description of someone resigned to her fate and, again, I was impressed with Matti Murso’s insight. Maybe it was Jalmer Pelonen, after all.
“Can I go now?”
“Sure. And thanks. Oh,” I slapped my forehead, “one more thing. Did you know about the baby?”
Color jumped into Matti’s face and his eyes were like china blue saucers.
“Baby?”
“Liisa was pregnant,” wishing I hadn’t had to tell him, but knowing it was inevitable. “About six weeks. Is there any chance you could have been the father?”
“No.”
The word came quickly but it was quiet and unemphatic. I couldn’t tell whether it was the truth but, for some reason, I didn’t think he’d lie about something like that.
“Matti,” I said, impulsively, “do you think it’s wise to marry Barb so soon?”
“It’ll happen sometime,” he said, wearily, “and she wants it to be now. And I kind of owe her.”
His answer reminded me of The Moomins, a series of adventures about a tiny troll family that Elli and I had read and re-read as children. In one story the main character, Moomintroll summed up his life’s goal saying, “I only want to live in peace and plant potatoes and dream.”
As Matti Murso climbed out of the truck and spoke with Max, I offered a silent prayer for him: Goodbye, Moomintroll. And godspeed.
Dusk had darkened the sky when Max pulled up in front of my parents’ home. I could see the lights inside, and I knew Sofi and Elli and Charlie would be there waiting for me. Even though I was beyond tired and grimy and more than a little discouraged, I felt a comforting sense of belonging. My friends and family had helped me through the worst time in my life, and now they were helping me again—just by being here. I decided that I’d lay the case out for them to get their thoughts, maybe after the older ladies left. I turned to Max, felt a surge of warmth and realized I wanted him to be part of the tribe, too.
“Have you got dinner plans?”
He looked surprised. “What do you have in mind?”
I nodded at the house. “Elli and Sofi are setting up a little smorgasbord of leftovers from the festival, and we’d love to have you join us. I should warn you that my aunts and Mrs. Moilanen and the Reverend Sorensen and his wife will probably be there, along with Diane Hakala and Ronja Laplander. We’ve got a knitting circle meeting scheduled for right after supper.”
“It sounds nice,” he said.
I thought I understood his hesitation.
“Jace won’t be there. Here, I mean. He’s gone off with Sonya Stillwater.”
“Fine,” he said, but he didn’t smile and I found his face unreadable. “I’d like to contribute something.”
“They’ll have enough food for both armies of the Winter War,” I said. “What we really need is a Christmas tree.”
“Christmas trees I’ve got. Give me an hour.”
Twenty-Two
Max returned an hour later with a freshly cut Frasier pine tree of the perfect shape and size (I was beginning to think that anything Max put his hand to would be the perfect shape and size). Without any direction from me at all, he and Charlie set the tree in the stand and began to decorate while the rest of us ferried food from the kitchen to the dining room table for a family-style smorgasbord.
“You have to string the lights so that no two lights of the same color are too close to each other,” I heard Charlie explain. Sofi and I exchanged an amused glance. “And that angel, the knitted one, goes on the top. Most important, when we get to the tinsel, no clumping!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Max said, in a meek voice.
“They sound like an old married couple,” Elli said, in an undertone, with a little smile. “Or else he’s just really good with teenaged girls.”
“I get the feeling he’s really good with everybody,” Sofi said, shooting me a pointed look. “He’s a keeper.”
I felt a little rush of pleasure and wondered about it. Was I really interested in Max Guthrie? Was he really interested in me? Was it time to cut my losses and move on? I had no answers.
“You have to put the homemade ones up high on the tree,” Charlie said. “I don’t know why.”
“It’s because when he was a puppy, Larry liked to lick the pieces of macaroni,” Sofi said, as she stepped into the parlor. “Listen, Charlie, Max is doing us a big favor with this tree and you sound just the tiniest bit dictatorial.”
“Nonsense,” Max replied, in a mild tone. “I like a woman who knows her mind.”
I smiled to myself. Max would make a great dad. I stepped into the parlor to admire the tree.
“The last thing we need is the snow,” Charlie said.
“Snow?” Max blinked at her. “You’re going to put snow on our beautiful tree?”
“Fake snow,” Charlie said. “Flocking.” She looked at me. “Down in the cellar?” I nodded.
“There are some people,” Max said, with a slow grin, “who might think it odd that you bother to spray the tree with foam when there is an abundance of the real stuff outside the windows.” I laughed.
“Tradition is very big in Red Jacket.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m starting to get that.”
The others had been arriving, bringing with them cold air, frozen crystals in their hai
r, covered dishes, pies and bar cookies for dessert. The Reverend and Mrs. Sorensen, Mrs. Moilanen, Aunt Ianthe and Miss Irene, Diane and Arnold Hakala, Ronja Laplander and the Makis admired the tree, en route to the dining room. After the pastor’s blessing, we tucked into Elli’s special omelets made of eggs, butter, onions, potatoes, Gruyere cheese and Joululimppu, which is a treacly Finnish Christmas bread. There was an awesome assortment of casseroles, molded salads, vegetables and special dishes, including Mrs. Moilanen’s vinegar cabbage. And there was coffee. There was always coffee.
I had set out my mom’s hand-painted wooden candle stand and the warmth of the flames made every face at the table bright and hopeful. Even Pauline and Arvo appeared cheerful and the latter encouraged a series of toasts to family and friends, near and far, hoisting his short glass of egg nog.
The sense of peace might have been due to the magic of the season but it seemed to me it was more about the magic of community and I felt lucky to be a part of it.
After supper, the non-knitters (Arvo, Max, the reverend, Arnold Hakala and Larry) tidied up the kitchen and the rest took seats in my mother’s parlor. Pauline Maki distributed cloth knitting bags that she had made and filled with the essentials for attacking heirloom lace. She sat in a ladderback chair at the head of what was essentially a horseshoe arrangement and began to talk about the contents of the bags which included a copy of the pattern, size-two needles and single skein of the softer-than-a-baby’s-butt wool that she, Pauline, had already wound into a yarn cake.
“This is the finest, softest yarn I have ever felt,” Aunt Ianthe said, feeling a strand with two fingers.
“It is very special yarn,” Pauline explained. “It comes from the hair under the chin of the musk-ox on the Shetland Island of Unst. There is only so much available every year as the herd is small.”
“It has an aura,” Diane Hakala said, holding hers up to the light. “It seems to glow.”
Pauline nodded.
“True lace weight yarn often carries a halo,” Pauline said. “That adds to the beauty of the finished project.”
“All around him was a glowing rainbow, like a halo shining in the clouds on a rainy day.” Miss Irene quoted. “Ezekiel.”
“On the other hand, it is the so-called glow that presents the difficulty of knitting with the yarn,” Mrs. Moilanen pointed out. The widow habitually indulged her oppositional streak with the justification that she was just “telling it like it is.”
“The halo makes the stitches on the needle appear to run together and it is easy to shred the ply,” Pauline said, nodding. “But we welcome the challenge.”
“Why do we get only one skein,” Ronja Laplander asked. “We can hardly knit an entire shawl with one skein.”
“This is just to start,” Pauline explained. “I have more at home and will hand out fresh yarn cakes at every circle meeting.”
I interpreted that to mean we were to have finished our allotment in the days between meetings. Pauline did not intend to let any grass grow under her feet-or to let any project languish.
“This wool must be expensive,” Mrs. Sorensen said. “You must let each of us pay our share, Pauline.”
“Certainly not.” Pauline smiled at her. “It is our gift—Arvo’s and mine—to the knitting circle and the community as each of you, no doubt, will make a breathtaking cobweb shawl for someone local. Perhaps a young bride.”
“For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. Second Corinthians.” Miss Irene beamed.
I decided we’d had enough comments from the peanut gallery. I clapped my hands.
“All right. Would anyone like more coffee before we start the class? No? Then I think we should let Pauline begin.”
Pauline sat up straight in her chair and favored the assembled women with a smile.
“One of the interesting aspects of the Shetland shawl is its background,” she said. “Centuries ago people had very little money to provide the things they could not grow and some enterprising women found a way to earn money by producing very fine lace to sell. The finer the lace, the more they could charge for it. Color projects fetched even more money.
“The ladies on Unst, a Shetland Island that is inaccessible to the Scottish mainland, created the most delicate of the delicate lace, sometimes called cobweb. The six-foot shawls were so fine they could be drawn through a wedding ring, hence the name. The yarn was two-ply and easily split and difficult to work with and the spinners and knitters tended to be older women whose job it was to knit and spin and to mind the children. They worked during the day when the others were out in the fields, as they needed quiet to follow the intricate patterns.”
“Oh, dear,” Aunt Ianthe said, distressed. “Does this mean we will have to adopt omerta for all our meetings?”
This reference to the mafia’s code of silence drew a muffled giggle from Sofi but the unflappable Pauline took the comment at face value.
“Perhaps at first. These patterns are complicated. This is not your average yarn-over lace.”
Aunt Ianthe, Miss Irene, and Mrs. Sorensen looked properly impressed but Ronja, no doubt, still hugging her grievance about the St. Lucy pick, was quick to strike at Pauline’s all-knowing air.
“This is stupid,” she thundered. “I thought we’d agreed to work on something simple this winter, like socks.”
Pauline gazed at her, a pained look on her face.
“Then I have more bad news for you,” Pauline said, with a barely perceptible tinge of irony, “with a lace project, it is vital to swatch.”
Swatch, for the unitiated, means the knitter must work a square of material in with the yarn to test for gauge based on needle size and tension. For all that most of us love the process of knitting, it seems that no one likes the process of knitting something just for practice and I have heard all kinds of excuses from knitters anxious to avoid making the practice squares.
I could tell by the belligerent look on Ronja’s face she was about to condemn swatches as a waste of time but Pauline wasn’t fazed. She threw me a quick, amused look, then plunged ahead.
“First we will do a loose cast-on,” Pauline said. “Let’s say forty eight stitches.” She produced a bowl of stitch markers, small metal circles with colorful charms hanging from them. “Then we’ll knit eight stitches, place a marker, knit another eight inches, do the same and so on to the end of the row. Purl back. When everyone has gotten that far, I will read the specific directions to you, as in knit two, yarn over, knit two together, slip one, knit one, pass slip stitch over. I will read the same for each section of six stitches.”
“The markers are simply adorable,” Aunt Ianthe caroled.
“So cunning,” Miss Irene agreed.
“This is more like Morse code than knitting,” Ronja complained.
“No, I’d say it’s more like bingo with Pauline as the caller,” Mrs. Moilanen said.
“No talking,” Pauline said, with a smile. “As soon as you’re finished, purl another row. We are making a cockleshell pattern and it will be extremely difficult to unravel any mistakes, so I would caution you not to talk.”
As no one wanted to be the first to get into the deep water of trying to unravel a mistake, the room was silent except for the clicking of the metal needles.
“I want to introduce you to the concept of lifelines,” Pauline said.
“I thought you said no talking,” Ronja interjected.
The mortician’s wife smiled at her.
“This is a technique you will be glad to know.”
“Are you saying I will screw up?” Ronja’s spine had stiffened lifting her substantial bosom a couple of inches.
“Oh yes,” Pauline said, “we will all make mistakes. If this were easy, everyone in the world would do it. Anyway, a lifeline is created by weaving a contrasting color through every few rows so that if you find a mistake, you don’t have to frog, only tink a limited number of st
itches.”
Frogging, from the terms “rip-it, rip-it” refers to ripping out rows of work to get back to the place where the stitch was dropped or another mistake was made. Tink, which is knit spelled backwards, refers to undoing one stitch at a time for the same purpose. Needless to say, tinking takes much longer than frogging. And, luckily, everyone in the circle already knew the terms.
“Tink and frog,” Mrs. Sorensen said. “I wonder what an alien would think if he could drop in on our knitting circle.”
“I imagine she would be interested in learning heirloom lace knitting,” Aunt Ianthe said. “Pauline, you are doing a wonderful job.”
Tears appeared in Pauline Maki’s eyes and I realized she was using the knitting circle, and her role as instructor, to hold off the pain of her recent loss. I realized, too, that the knitters, church basement ladies, all, were consciously helping in the effort. Even Ronja Laplander.
“Next we will do the fan and feather.”
“Oh, that sounds so romantic. Like something from a fairytale,” Diane Hakala said. “I hope these shawls will bring good luck to the brides who receive them.” I knew she was thinking of Barb and wondered whether that marriage would be successful. Probably. They were so young. Matti would forget his mad passion for Liisa Pelonen and he and Barb would forge a family unit as they matured together. Hopefully.
We worked for another half hour with Pauline calling out the direction like a coxswain in a rowing crew. Finally, we each had what looked like a crumpled bird’s nest dangling from our needles.
“Speaking of fairytales,” Mrs. Moilanen said, holding hers out, “this swatch reminds me of the Ugly Duckling.”
“Ah,” Pauline said. “Just wait until we pin and dress it. It will burst forth into a beautiful swan.”
“I look forward to that,” Mrs. Sorensen said, politely, but she, like everyone else, didn’t seem convinced.
No one seemed ready to go home, so Sofi and Elli and I got out the desserts and made more coffee, while Aunt Ianthe played, Deck the Halls, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear and Silent Night, after which Miss Irene launched into Kaksi kysttilaa, a Finnish favorite about an old lady spending Christmas Day visiting the grave of her beloved.