Eva looked glumly at the floor.
“I want to see you in a month’s time, to keep an eye on you.”
“Don’t tell Victor.”
~~~
Supper that night was silent between Eva and Victor. So was the evening, which they usually spent in the parlor with the rest of the boarders. Instead, Eva, Victor, and five-year-old Ellen had sat in the back bedroom with the door shut, as per Eva’s wish.
As they lay awake later that night, Victor said sadly and softly, “I’m sorry, Eva.”
“It’s not your fault, Victor,” she said, but she felt the disappointment rush over her like a giant ocean wave.
That night she refused his gentle advances. He didn’t try again for weeks.
~~~
With the discovery of his likely sterility, Victor felt that he failed Eva yet again. First, he betrayed her and had a son with Olga. Second, he made her leave her family when she didn’t want to. And third, he was not able to give her any more children. Slowly but surely Eva will not love me anymore. I cannot stop it. I don’t know how to fix it.
~~~
One night, about two months after the fateful doctor visit, Eva put her hand on Victor as they lay in bed.
“I think we should start again…” she whispered. She had become aware that she was punishing him for something that wasn’t his fault. She took off her nightgown and climbed on top of him.
“You are my love, Eva,” he said, as he seemed to give everything he could in pleasing her while they made love. “Anything you want,” he whispered in her ear.
“You are fine, Victor. You’ve always pleased me.”
“I’ll come inside you, like you’ve always loved.”
She wanted to make sure she would please him by climaxing. Eino suddenly showed up in her mind, and the last time she saw him and how he made her feel. It brought her to a strong finish. She kissed Victor. “It was good,” she whispered in his ear as he caught his breath.
Afterwards, she held him in her arms as he cried into her hair. When she knew he had fallen asleep, she turned away from him and cried herself to sleep.
~~~
“Let’s go to the lake and fish tomorrow morning,” Victor said, mostly to Ellen. “It’s sauna day and I am home, it’s a beautiful summer day.” Although the invitation was just to Ellen, Eva came along with a picnic of cold pancakes, hard boiled eggs, and buttermilk. It was a quiet family time, pleasant enough.
~~~
Later that week Victor said,” There’s a dance at the Finn Hall on Friday night. Come with me, Eva.”
“All right,” she said. “Ellen can go to Little Arvid’s house.” Arvid's grandfather, Matti Huttunen was Saimi’s friend, whose wife had recently passed away. Ellen had met Arvid and his little brother Toivo at Sunday School.
“Good. You and I can go dance, then have the rest of the evening alone,” he said with subdued enthusiasm.
And so, their lives went. It was all right, but for Eva much of the happiness was gone.
Chapter 3
October 1901
In his job at the Mesabi mine, Victor worked his way up, over the first two years, into a well-paying, in-mine supervisory position. Eva was grateful for a good paycheck. Victor was able to start that savings account he had touted. She managed the boarding house with the help of her friend, Saimi, with Victor pitching in on the weekends. Eva was not happy with Victor being gone so much, but there was nothing she could do to change his mind. He was thriving, even though he seemed to be doing so without the rest of his family.
Eva, unknown to Victor, had been seeing Dr. Andersen on a regular basis ever since that first appointment. She confided her feelings about her marriage to the doctor. She felt better after such confidences, but she still had no idea how to change anything, so her melancholy, while less severe, remained.
~~~
“Victor, have you seen Ellen’s note from her teacher? All A’s,” Eva crowed one evening at supper. The report came home just that day. Ellen was eight and a half and already doing work of children a year or two older. “Her teacher, Miss Lehto, is a great support for her.”
“Yes, my Villi Ruusu is quite the student,” Victor crowed, animated. He gave his daughter a silver dollar and a hug.
“Kiitos, Pappa. Can I go buy candy tomorrow vit dis?” Ellen was of the habit to switch between Finnish and English with a strong inflection.
“Of course, you can,” he said enthusiastically.
Eva was well aware that the reason for Victor’s animated state was a stop at the tavern on his way home. He had started doing this a while ago, coming home drunk and smelling of tobacco smoke and beer. It was repulsive to her, yet she kept quiet about it.
She had watched his behavior change since he’d gotten the Mesabi job. It began to change even more dramatically after he got the supervisor position. He started to stay out later and later Friday nights at the tavern. At least, that’s where Eva assumed he’d been. He began to stumble in around dawn on Saturday mornings.
~~~
It was early Saturday morning, mid-October. The weather had been chilly but had just turned colder in the North Country. Eva was startled awake by a bang on the back porch. She looked at the empty side of the bed. Victor is not back yet? She listened again and heard someone call.
“Eva come help me.”
That’s Victor’s voice, coming from the back porch.
Eva slipped on her robe and walked past Ellen’s room off the kitchen. At least Ellen is not awake because I do not know what I will find when I go out.
At the back door, she put on her boots and went outside.
“Victor, what are you doing? Where are your trousers?” she asked in a high-pitched voice. She prayed no one else would see her husband lying flat on his stomach, barely conscious, drunk. Suddenly, he threw up.
“Oh, my God,” she hissed. “You are a disgrace. You better hope your daughter never sees you.” She wanted to cry.
“Then help me up and into bed, God damn it,” Victor slurred.
She did just that.
Victor slept all day. He got up later as if nothing had happened. Nothing was ever said.
~~~
Victor’s increasing degeneration wore heavily on Eva, who grew even more homesick and depressed. Sometimes she was barely able to get herself composed enough to take care of Ellen, especially on Saturday mornings when Victor would come home in such a mess. Eva felt bad that Ellen seemed to sit in constant vigil of her. The two had developed a close relationship, with Ellen, much of the time, the stronger one.
~~~
One afternoon, Ellen headed home from her friend Katia’s house. Coming from town, down Main Street, she spotted her father going into the Widow Johnson’s gate. The Widow was a woman of whispered rumor and ill repute who lived five houses up from the boarding house. Ellen saw her father look up and down the street before entering. Pappa did not see me, she thought. Why would he go to see that lady who people talk about? I will follow and see.
A half-minute later, Ellen quietly lifted the wrought iron latch of the Widow’s front gate and slipped through. She tiptoed onto the porch, treading carefully because of the ice, and peered in the corner of a bay window. She saw her father disappear from the front hallway into a side room. Still curious, she crept off the porch and around to a window on the side of the house. She noticed how unkempt the yard was, with shabby lawn furniture strewn under the first thin layers of sleet. She dragged a nearby bench over and placed it under the window. Then she climbed up onto it so she could see. And she saw plenty. Her father was half naked. A woman was on the bed on her hands and knees. Her dress was up to her waist. Her father’s penis was stiff and he was moving to put it into the woman’s behind.
Shocked, Ellen scrambled to get away. In her panic, she slipped off the bench and landed hard on her knees, cutting them on the rough ice. She cried out, scrambled to her feet, and limped out the gate.
~~~
When Ellen ente
red the kitchen in hysterics, with Victor not far behind her, Eva was dumbfounded. Blood was dripping from her daughter's knees and palms. Snapping to, she tended to Ellen’s cuts at the kitchen table, murmuring softly to comfort her. Victor skulked past holding his boots in his hand coming in from the outdoors, and went into their bedroom without saying anything. Eva looked at him as he walked by. He avoided her eyes. Saimi came into the kitchen.
“Saimi,” Eva whispered, “can you make Ellen some hot chocolate and get a plate of supper for her?”
“Yes, I can. Are you all right, Eva?” Saimi asked.
Eva didn’t answer Saimi’s question. But she spoke to Ellen. “I will come back in just a little while.”
She went into the bedroom to face Victor, shutting the door. She found him sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Did she say anything?” he asked, looking like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. They both spoke in their native language.
Eva was seething. “Don’t you care if Ellen is all right?”
“Damn it, Eva, of course I do,” he snapped.
“What are you afraid that she may have said? You had no boots on when you came in. Where were you that you needed to remove your boots to run after Ellen in stocking feet on the ice?”
He sat on the edge of the bed, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “Eva, I don’t know why I went there. It was only the once, just now. Ellen must’ve seen me go in and wondered what I was doing.”
Eva could do or say nothing.
“Are you going to insist I say it?”
“Say what?”
“That I had sex with her. The Widow.”
Eva began to tremble. She could not move. She could do nothing but stand there, looking at him in deep hurt. She began to cry.
“Eva, please don’t cry,” he said. “From now on I will come home every night. I’ll never go to the tavern again. I’ll come home to my family. I’ll be a good husband from now on. Eva, you are the only one I love. It’s always been you that I loved.” He fell to his knees and hugged her legs. “I beg you. Don’t leave. Don’t make me leave. Please. I’m so sorry.”
She stood still. She didn't touch him and she didn't say a word. After a few minutes, he let go and stood on his own.
Eva turned and walked back to the kitchen. She knew she wouldn’t leave, nor make Victor leave. But she knew something in her was irrevocably damaged.
~~~
“Don’t you want to make love to me anymore, Eva?” Victor asked. It was two weeks later, and they were lying in bed one night.
“I don’t know if I can anymore,” Eva said. “Something is gone between us, Victor. Perhaps it’s lost forever.” Her back was to him.
When he tried to comfort her, she pulled away from his touch. He received the brutal message. Once again, as he’d done with Pastor Salmi’s death, Victor knew it had been his fault. In this case, he saw that Eva’s sweet love for him had died by his own doing. It crushed his soul.
Chapter 4
The five o’clock evening train was about twenty minutes out of Virginia. There weren’t that many on board from Duluth that Saturday in late-November, just a handful of people.
Liam had been riding for hours, his drunk wearing off. He had just fallen to the floor between the two seats. “Oh, Christ, I just pissed me trousers,” he yelled. His voice was hoarse with sickness. He had a terrible cough.
The conductor came to him. “Sir, please stop yelling. You’re scaring the other passengers.”
“I don’t give a fuck about any passengers. I want to get off.” He felt awful. He started to cough again.
“We’ll be in Virginia in about ten minutes. Then you can disembark.”
“Virginia? I thought I was headin’ north?”
“We’re in Minnesota, sir.”
“Can ye help me get up?”
“No, sir. If you’ve pissed yourself, I don’t want you to wet the seat.”
It was cold on the floor. With the alcohol wearing off, his misery was returning. How long in God’s name can I keep on doing this, he asked himself. His next thought as he lay helpless, God, can ye help me? It was time.
~~~
Eva sat in her bedroom in the big rocking chair. She had just run out to fire up the sauna. It was a little after four in the afternoon. Victor had told her that morning he would be working late and would not be home until seven-thirty or eight. Instead of drinking now, he’s taken to working six long days a week. She could hear Saimi puttering in the kitchen, pots clanking, the oven door opening. It was such a loud creak. It was a “home” sound, and in a small way, it comforted her. Victor had been true to his word about coming home every night sober, but she wasn’t at all sure he was staying away from other women. She could swear she still smelled them on him. Perhaps the fragrances are coming from the two secretaries at the mine offices, she thought. Or from the ladies serving lunch in the lunch room. He goes to the Finn Hall for coffee and cards on Fridays now, with the old men. I don’t have the heart to fight for him anymore. That last thought was a heart-breaker. I have lost that battle.
She stood up. Her belly was always upset. She heard Ellen’s chipper voice as she came through the front door. Ellen had been dropped off by Arvid and his grandfather after spending the day with them. Eva could hear her talk to Saimi.
“Is Mamma better today?” Ellen asked.
“Why don’t you go in to see her?” Saimi suggested.
With a little burst of sunshine, Ellen opened the bedroom door off the kitchen. She studied her mother's face as she walked toward her. Eva gathered herself and put on the best face she could muster.
“How was your time at Arvid’s?” Eva asked in Finnish.
“It was good, Mamma,” Ellen answered in English. She only spoke Finnish when Eva asked her to. Ellen was completely immersed in being American, as were all her Finnish school mates.
“Don’t vordy, I won’t forget Finnish,” Ellen said. “I love dat, too.”
“I know you will not.” Eva bent to kiss her daughter’s forehead. “I have to help Saimi with supper. Do you have any homework?”
“No, it’s Saturday.”
“Oh, that’s right. Today is Sauna Day and I just fired the sauna an hour ago.” Eva tried to pass it off as silly forgetfulness, but she knew it was deep sadness about Victor, consuming her mind.
Eva’s days had become the same since that night of discovered infidelity—a kind of drudgery with her going through the motions of mending, cleaning, cooking, and taking care of Ellen, who was not part of the drudgery. Ellen was Eva’s lifeline. She also found herself becoming short with Victor when he pushed her to converse with him.
“Eva, the sauna needs checking,” Saimi called from the kitchen. “It’s nearly five. Everyone will want sauna at six-thirty or seven. It will need more wood.”
“I’ll go with you, Mamma,” Ellen chirped.
They donned their winter coats and hats, and walked out the back door. They traveled carefully as they traversed the short way to the out-building. The ground had stayed icy with the cold wind and air.
“We have to get Pappa to bring some cinders from the boiler to put on the path,” Eva said. They walked into the sauna dressing room and closed the door on the cold outdoors.
“It’s so nice and warm in here,” Ellen said.
“I want to put some wood in the stove, and I think it will be ready by six.”
When Eva was done, they headed for the house.
Eva’s otherwise-distracted mind heard the Five O’clock pull into the station down the road. It was a quiet, clear, and windy evening, and the sound easily traveled the quarter mile from the station.
“I can see my breath, Mamma.”
“Let’s get inside,” Eva said. She shivered as she closed the back door behind her and took her coat off.
~~~
It was just about five thirty when a startling rap came on the front door. Eva and Saimi were in the kitchen, tending to
supper preparation. Eva opened the front door to a cold wind and two train station workers supporting another man between them.
“Good-evening, Mam,” said one of the workers. “This is a man in need of shelter right away. He said he has money, if ye have a room. He seems sick, too. We can stay to help you get him situated. He’s gonna need a bath, bad. If ye have a phone, I can call Doc Andersen for you.”
“Vell den, come in,” Eva said. “Phone on … table … right here.”
Saimi came out to the foyer. “Ve can giff him sauna, if you can help us.”
“We’d be glad to help, Mam.”
“Let’s get door shut, come in den.”
The men helped the ill man into the foyer. He coughed badly.
“He sounds like bad sest,” Saimi said.
“Oh, do you mean a bad chest?” One of them picked up the phone and made the call to the doctor.
“Yes. Maybe not get udder people sick. ‘Course, it sound verdy bad.”
“Eva,” Saimi said in Finnish, “get some night clothes. We are going to put this man up for a few days. He needs a sauna. These men will help.”
Eva spoke in Finnish. “We can put him in Ellen’s room for now. I put clean sheets on her bed this morning. Ellen can sleep with Pappa and me. We can get the cot.”
“Bring him trough kitsen, ve go outside to sauna,” Saimi instructed the two men.
Eva got the things Saimi had asked for. She went into Victor’s drawers for the night-shirt and socks, grabbed his extra boots and coat from the hooks in the kitchen, and then joined Saimi and the two men in the sauna with the much-disheveled, unshaven, smelly, sick man.
~~~
In the dressing room, Liam felt them work to get all his clothes off. By that time, he had made up his mind he was going to cooperate and tried to assist. He was aware enough to know they were helping him.
Completely naked, he was walked into a hot room and lowered to a wooden bench to sit. He heard water being poured into a bucket and felt it being dumped slowly on his now-warming head and body.
Eva and the Irishman Page 36