Escape from Sunset Grove

by Minna Lindgren

  ‘You never know what sort of condition the apartments are in, but we’re probably not too fussy about the colour of the kitchen cupboards.’

  ‘Goodness, we’d be fine anywhere!’ Irma exclaimed. ‘You’d be hard pressed to find anything worse in this heat than this shrink-wrapped retirement home. Where would you like to move? Töölö? I’d love to die in Töölö.’

  Like everyone who oohed and aahed over Töölö, Irma was referring to inner Töölö. As far as she was concerned, outer Töölö was the sticks. But Siiri knew the flats in inner Töölö were overpriced, there wasn’t much in the way of services, and the lone tram line ran down Runeberginkatu. Her curiosity about Punavuori had been piqued, and since Irma had also praised the neighbourhood’s old buildings, that was what she now suggested.

  ‘There’s a showing at an enormous apartment on Pursimiehenkatu today,’ she said, looking mysterious as she pulled a classified ad out of her handbag.

  ‘“Traditional floorplan for demanding tastes or a larger family”,’ Irma read, and shook her head. ‘This sounds fishy to me. What does “demanding tastes” mean? Are you thinking you plus me makes a larger family? Do we have to bring Margit along so our family will be large enough? She’s so gloomy these days. Or were you planning on starting to entertain and to throw tea and Tupperware parties?’

  Siiri sighed. Irma’s momentary enthusiasm had got her hopes up. The classified ads were full of codes you needed to know how to decipher. A larger family meant that the apartment had lots of bedrooms, just like they needed. A traditional floorplan indicated a big living room and hall or other common spaces, which would come in handy if the bedrooms were small.

  ‘Open house Sunday two to four p.m. by owner. That means there’s no agency involved.’

  ‘Hm. Well – what are we waiting for?’ Irma said, licking the lingonberry jam from her plate. ‘What tram do we take to get there? Or should we hop in a cab?’

  They took the number 4 to the National Museum, where they switched to a number 10 and rumbled on. They walked down Merimiehenkatu, past the old boys’ grammar school to the intersection known as Five Points. There they came to an old building, from the late 1800s, with arched windows on two storeys and a tower at the end. Siiri opened the heavy door to the dark stairwell. The first thing she noticed was that there was no elevator.

  ‘At least we’ll get a little exercise.’

  ‘They could have mentioned it in the ad,’ Irma panted, as they caught their breath on the second-storey landing. ‘There must be some code for “no elevator”, too.’

  ‘I think the code is not saying anything about it. Generally, they mention an elevator if there is one in the building.’

  A pair of gorgeous wooden double doors was open to the corridor, and Irma and Siiri stepped through, out of breath. The flat’s entry hall was tall and spacious, and Irma crowed out a passage from the Queen of the Night’s aria to test the acoustics. Just then, a heavily made-up woman stepped into the hall in red high heels, a tight sheath dress, and peroxided hair.

  ‘Linda af Nyborg-Jussila,’ she said by way of introduction, eyeing Irma and Siiri in distaste. Perhaps she hadn’t anticipated two old women being interested in a traditionally laid-out home for demanding tastes. ‘If you don’t mind slipping covers over your shoes,’ she said, pointing at a heap of blue plastic slippers in the corner. Siiri and Irma bent down to pick up the covers and spun around in confusion, looking for something to sit on while they slipped into their indoor galoshes. Madam af Nyborg-Jussila glanced around nervously and fetched a stool from somewhere.

  ‘Please have a seat.’

  Pulling the shower caps over their shoes was hard work, but to their astonishment Linda af Nyborg-Jussila squatted down to help them, and managed to do so without her dress splitting at the seams, no matter how uncomfortable the crouched position seemed. When this operation was complete, Siiri held out her hand.

  ‘Siiri Kettunen, hello, and this here is my friend Irma Lännenleimu. We’re looking for a temporary rental and saw your advertisement in the newspaper. Are you the owner?’ Siiri asked, but Irma was so enthusiastic that she interjected before the woman could answer.

  ‘Are you related to Ketty Viitakoski, by chance? She’s a Nyborg by birth, the better side of the family, the counts or what have you, and Ketty was my classmate, but I’m not sure if she’s still alive. She doesn’t generally come to our class reunions. We have a reunion on the first Wednesday of the month, and the only ones left are a few doddering old ladies and me. I seem to remember Ketty being very ill several years ago, and now she’s lying in some konservatorio for the Swedish-speaking elderly, if you understand my little play on words – or are you perhaps a Swedish-speaker yourself? I remember Ketty saying—’

  ‘No relation. Which one of you was thinking about renting the place?’

  ‘Both of us! And we might bring a few friends along, too. There’s a plumbing retrofit at our retirement home at the moment, and although Director Sundström insists that the renovation is dust-free and noiseless and perfectly feasible to live through, we’re gradually starting to lose our patience. The workers are completely unprofessional. Our neighbour’s kitchen ceiling came crashing down yesterday, can you imagine? The plaster hit the floor so suddenly that poor Mr Tauno nearly had a heart attack, which, of course, would have been a happy event, because that’s what we’re all hoping for there, a massive heart attack that will kill us at once, so we don’t have to worry about ending up in the clutches of Alzheimer’s. On top of all that, there’s been damage to the residents’ property and now they’re threatening to turn off the electricity. We’ve already been making do without running water or toilets. We’ve not seen anything of the project manager, Weasel Ears, in weeks, and rumour has it that he’s been given the boot. His real name isn’t Weasel Ears, it’s Jerry Siilinpää, or Hedgehog Head, probably from an old Fennoman family, a Swedish name that’s been transliterated into Finnish, but we call him Weasel Feet because one of our friends, who probably won’t be moving here with us because—’

  ‘Feel free to have a look about. Take your time,’ Linda af Nyborg-Jussila said, slipping into a hallway that evidently led to the kitchen, because a small servant’s room opened off it.

  ‘Isn’t it more normal to say have a look around, not about? I knew Finnish was her second language,’ Irma whispered loudly to Siiri as she peered into the tiny bedroom. ‘This is just like the room our maid Lyyli slept in!’

  They meandered, enchanted, through the flat, which brought back memories of childhood and youth, the bloom of married life and times past, when apartments were big, walls were thick, floorplans convoluted, and ceilings at least ten feet tall. The closets were built into the walls, too, with charming old keys in the locks. They opened doors and tittered in delight. The bathroom was small, which was good. They couldn’t wrap their brains around modern apartments where the bathroom was bigger than the bedroom. Irma claimed that it was the law, in case you had a guest in a wheelchair. It was called accessible design, and it might have been accessible, but it was far from aesthetic.

  ‘This is the way to live!’ Irma said when finally they found Linda af Nyborg-Jussila eating a banana in the enormous, light-filled room they planned on making the dining room. It had lovely double doors that you could open on Christmas Eve once the table was set, the tree trimmed and the candles lit.

  ‘Why don’t you want to live here?’ Siiri asked. ‘It’s such a lovely home.’

  Madam af Nyborg-Jussila jammed the banana peel into a plastic bag and the plastic bag into her crocodile handbag, dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her left pinkie, which bore an impressive ring, and looked out the window. There was a stunning vista over the building opposite. In classified ads, this was called a Parisian view. The sun was shining on the black tin roofs, and the steeple of St John’s Church rose in the distance.

  ‘Divorce,’ she said finally. ‘My husband traded me in for a younger model and took the children wi
th him.’

  ‘Some men are incorrigible, like this acquaintance of ours, even though he’s an ambassador,’ Irma stated serenely, as one does when acknowledging an undeniable fact. ‘What sort of fellow is this Mr Jussila?’

  ‘He’s a consultant . . . a Taurus . . . What exactly do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, how . . . shameless,’ Siiri said, incapable of coming up with anything else. ‘And you’re going to move into a smaller place by yourself? Won’t the children be staying with you from time to time?’

  ‘It’s very important to maintain contact with children during a divorce,’ Irma said. ‘You mustn’t just think about yourself. You’ll be fine. We’re both widows; we know what it’s like living without a husband. It’s not that bad.’

  ‘I’d rather be a widow than divorced! I wouldn’t have to watch his blossoming happiness,’ Madam af Nyborg-Jussila snapped. She looked back out across the rooftops and stood up straighter, as if the steeple lent her strength. ‘Well, are you going to take it? The rent is five thousand euros a month; I don’t think it was mentioned in the ad. It includes water and attic and cellar storage, but no parking space. The deposit is six months’ rent, paid at signing.’

  ‘Jumping Jehoshaphat!’ shrieked Irma. ‘Do you think we’ve got that kind of money? That would be two thousand five hundred euros apiece! And here I thought it was impossible to find a more expensive place to live in in Finland than a retirement home.’

  ‘It’s the current market price. I hadn’t planned on turning this into an old folks’ home.’

  ‘Is it normal to have to pay six months in advance?’ Siiri asked, shocked. It looked as if her dreams of a commune had been lunacy. In addition to the apartment, they had to pay their rent at Sunset Grove, and the sums were ballooning to such astronomical levels that Siiri thought she would faint. ‘I don’t know these things; I’ve never rented before. Except at Sunset Grove, that is, and that’s a slightly different thing.’

  Then the sound of giggling and commotion could be heard coming from the entryway. Five girls and one boy were pulling shower caps over their shoes, losing their balance, falling, and unable to stop laughing. Linda af Nyborg-Jussila rushed out and was even more horrified than when she’d seen Siiri and Irma in her traditional home for demanding tastes.

  ‘Jasso, hmm . . . you’re interested in a large apartment for a family?’

  ‘Hey, what’s up, yeah, we’re looking for a place to share,’ said the first one to pull on her slippers, a perfectly nice-looking girl. She was dressed in a pink baby romper that was far too big for her.

  ‘It’s a one-piece jump-in. Cool, huh?’ she said to Irma, allowing her to finger the onesie.

  ‘You look like a darling little piglet,’ Irma said, and everyone burst out laughing.

  The young people scattered around the apartment, slid across the parquet in their shower-capped feet, and cried out in delight every time they found a new room or hallway. Linda af Nyborg-Jussila held back her tears in the entryway of her traditional home for demanding tastes and looked so miserable that Siiri gave her a hug.

  ‘It’s going to be just fine, believe me. I’m ninety-five years old, I turn ninety-six in September, and I’ve survived more than one desperate situation. I can guarantee things have a way of sorting themselves out, sooner or later. I’m sure you deserve a better husband than that worthless scoundrel who left you. There’s no point crying over him. And once you scrub Mr Jussila out of your life, you can also lose that silly hyphenated name; just think how nice that will be. I think these good-natured young people are decent students and you should let the flat to them. There’s no way Irma and I could dream of an apartment this grand, even though when we were your age, we also had big flats in old buildings on the tram lines. If you saw how we lived now, in tiny studios and one-bedrooms with low ceilings and plasterboard walls, the whole cheap mess wrapped in plastic just in time for the summer heatwave, and refugees tramping in and out wielding sledgehammers, you’d be so shocked that you’d feel better instantly, because then you’d understand how good you have it, after all.’

  Linda af Nyborg-Jussila gaped at the white-haired old lady who had wrapped her arms around her and talked to her as if they were childhood friends. She thought about her real friends, all those who had vanished into thin air when Pekka had left her for their Peruvian nanny. The unanticipated divorce had driven old friends into a state of such profound consternation that they had dropped her and left her to struggle with her self-esteem alone, imagining that if you owned two hundred square metres in downtown Helsinki, life couldn’t be too bad.

  ‘It’s so unfair . . . and that’s why it feels good, you comforting me and reminding me that I can keep living my life without Pekka. I agree, I think he’s a real shit, too . . .’

  Irma and Siiri patted the teary apartment owner until she pulled a small bottle out of her crocodile handbag and sprayed a cloud of sweet-smelling mist on her face.

  ‘I’m going to move abroad. To Spain,’ she said resolutely, straightening her sheath dress at the side seams. For a moment, Irma and Siiri thought the Swedish-speaking divorcée would head to the airport then and there. But then the boisterous herd of good-natured students appeared in the entryway, giggling and wobbling as they stripped off the shoe protectors, which brightened the mood. The sole boy, a broad-shouldered lad with a bun on top of his head, got down on all fours, and two girls helped Siiri and Irma pull the shower caps off their feet as they took turns sitting on this makeshift bench.

  ‘This certainly is a nice way to undress,’ Irma said in her tinkling laugh, and she praised the boy’s back muscles, which were massaging her ancient derriere.

  ‘Irma!’ Siiri exclaimed reproachfully, because she was afraid the strangers would find Irma’s lack of decorum offensive, but everyone laughed, even Madam af Nyborg-Jussila. They said goodbye to their new acquaintances, told the young people they hoped they’d enjoy settling into their beautiful new home, and started slowly descending the four flights of stairs. They were disappointed that setting up a commune hadn’t been as easy as they had thought. On the other hand, Helsinki was full of big flats which it would be fun to go see, and the day had turned out to be truly unforgettable.

  Chapter 8

  In July, the canteen at Sunset Grove shut its doors. Director Sundström couldn’t say exactly how long the renovation of the institutional kitchen would last, because Project Manager Jerry Siilinpää was on vacation. Almost all of Sunset Grove’s residents had escaped to the summer cabins of friends and family at Midsummer, and the staff vacations had begun. Siiri and Irma enjoyed the quiet and rode around the city in trams. Helsinki was magnificent in July; they’d never experienced their hometown so deserted and lovely. A handful of lost tourists wandering down Mannerheimintie were the only people they saw. Everything was green, and the sun was shining like in those architectural renderings where it was always summer.

  Home-care service Helping Handz delivered food three times a day to paying customers; breakfast consisted of yogurt and a cup of juice that resembled a urine sample. For lunch, they often served soup and a slice of hard bread, plus a pat of light margarine. Just hearing the words ‘light margarine’ sent Irma into a tizzy, and she refused to use the pat.

  ‘I’ve never let anyone force-feed me anything I don’t want to eat, and I’m not about to start now,’ Irma announced. She and Siiri were in the tram, en route to visit Anna-Liisa at the Meilahti Hospital.

  ‘You can’t exactly compare a pat of light margarine to being force-fed through hoses and tubes.’

  ‘In both cases, it’s a matter of quality of life. And the only thing that fits the bill for me is butter.’

  They had tracked Anna-Liisa down to the Meilahti Hospital, which they called the Hilton because of its towers. The breakthrough didn’t come until Irma and Siiri caught Pro Tem Head of Residents Care Miisa Sievänen sneaking off for a cigarette with a couple of the layabouts from the construction company. Siiri and Irma had laid into the
pro tem head behind the junk heap, and eventually she’d confessed that Anna-Liisa had been shipped off to the hospital due to confusion. Her behaviour had started disturbing the other residents. She claimed Anna-Liisa had been shouting in the middle of the night, which was why Sunset Grove had ordered the non-emergency ambulance that had snatched Anna-Liisa up the day they’d been to lunch at the French restaurant. Irma had asked Ms Sievänen why an old woman’s midnight cries for help were a disturbance while constant drilling and pounding on walls weren’t, but the pro tem head had offered no response.

  Anna-Liisa had been prescribed one drug after another during her stay at the hospital. It had started from Alzheimer’s pills for her confusion and sleep aids for her insomnia, and when Anna-Liisa had refused to swallow them, she’d been prescribed sedatives to counter her aggressiveness. These had made her feel dizzy, and the fourth medication was to treat that. It made her horribly constipated, which was why the doctor had given her a laxative. And one of these pills had triggered nausea as a side effect, and so the whole regimen was topped off by some anti-nausea medication.

  ‘I’m exhausted from all the treatment I’ve been getting,’ Anna-Liisa said in a voice so soft it was barely audible. She had lost weight and looked skeletal, swimming in a faded yellow nightshirt that was far too large for her. ‘I don’t feel one whit healthier than when we were sitting at the restaurant. No one is doing anything about my cough, even though I’ve mentioned it on numerous occasions.’

  Siiri and Irma were standing at Anna-Liisa’s bedside, feeling useless. They were at a loss as to how to cheer up their friend under the circumstances, but then Irma remembered the composting toilets that had been distributed to the residents of Sunset Grove because the sewer pipes were out of use for the foreseeable future.