Escape from Sunset Grove

by Minna Lindgren

  Chapter 12

  ‘I can’t believe this; you must be kidding!’

  Anna-Liisa stood, flabbergasted, in the foyer of the Hakaniemi flat, one hand gripping her cane, a wedding present from her husband, the other said husband’s arm. The others waited with bated breath to hear her sentiments on their new communal home. After eyeing the curved satin walls, Anna-Liisa took a deep breath and advanced into the flat’s interior. She was having difficulty walking, and the Ambassador had to offer a steadying hand as she stepped across the threshold and into the living room, where she stopped to admire the vista opening up beyond the window.

  ‘Well,’ she finally decreed, with a glance at the bar-kitchenette, and then she announced that she was going into the bedroom to have a rest.

  ‘Have a look at the bathroom first. It’s . . . it’s immense!’ Irma said.

  Anna-Liisa paused at the door to their spa and took in the bidets, massaging showerheads and starry sky.

  ‘Whatever will they come up with next,’ she said dully, then she coughed and asked to be allowed to rest. As the Ambassador helped her into their round nuptial bed, Anna-Liisa finally let out a little chuckle. ‘Quite the pornographic lair you’ve found for us, Onni dear.’

  The move had gone surprisingly smoothly, with the Ambassador conjuring up four Estonians from somewhere to move their scant effects from Sunset Grove to Hakaniemi. As the lion’s share of their personal belongings had, at Project Manager Jerry Siilinpää’s orders, been packed away in boxes in June, it hadn’t been much trouble deciding which boxes to take and which to leave behind in the chaos of the retrofit. Irma had brought nearly all her earthly possessions, and now she was having difficulty fitting them into her room, which had neither shelves nor a desk. She arranged her darlings’ photographs on the windowsill and crammed the rest of her unnecessary bric-a-brac into the closet.

  ‘Hopefully, we’ll be back home at Sunset Grove before the weather turns. I only brought my summer clothes.’

  ‘Oh, Irma, we can always buy you a pair of wool trousers. It’s just a hop, skip and a jump to town!’

  Siiri had fewer belongings, but she’d brought a box of books that refused to fit neatly anywhere, so they remained in their box next to her bed. The bed was already made, like at a hotel. Margit had been first to finish unpacking in her green boudoir, and had already barrelled on over to the kitchenette, where she was familiarizing herself with its pots and pans.

  ‘Everything is brand new, barely been touched. Three cupboards full of glasses!’

  The Ambassador collapsed on one of the sofas, shaking his head. All this fussing about was exhausting, and he no longer looked as tanned and rested as when he’d arrived from the ministrations of his former wives at the villa. He was still worried about Anna-Liisa, who had been released from the hospital under the condition that she received regular in-home care.

  ‘The doctor wrote a referral. Does that mean we’ll have to use public in-home care? Which health-care district do we belong to, now that we’re living here?’ he asked the flock of females fluttering around him.

  ‘We’re still in the Western district. That hasn’t changed, because this home is temporary, correct? So either pay through the nose and hire a private nurse or get in at the back of the line for public care,’ Irma replied. ‘And for that you need to have enough points, otherwise you’ll be left high and dry. It’s a little like trying to get into the school of your choice. I was ordered all sorts of involuntary treatment after I was sent home from the hospital last year, do you remember? I gradually rid myself of them, when they realized that I manage perfectly well with assisted living and am wholly capable of making my own coffee in the mornings.’

  ‘Maybe Anna-Liisa will perk up,’ Siiri said hopefully.

  In the doctor’s estimation, Anna-Liisa needed in-home care for just about everything. For assistance with daily routines, the judgement decreed, including washing, dressing, getting about, rehabilitation, and taking her medication.

  ‘I suppose someone needs to cook, too; I’m hopeless in the kitchen. A representative from the municipality will be here to figure all that out within the next seven days.’

  The Ambassador looked a little uncomfortable, and they weren’t sure what he found most disconcerting: confessing his lack of culinary skills, cataloguing Anna-Liisa’s daily difficulties, or preparing himself for home visits from a perfect stranger.

  ‘We needed to talk about meals anyway,’ Margit said, quitting her pot-clattering. ‘It looks like we have most of what we need to cook, and it would be a good idea to agree on kitchen duty. It doesn’t make any sense for everyone to start fending for themselves, does it?’

  In that moment, they realized that a commune wasn’t all fun and games, as they’d imagined in their excitement. Margit was right. Although they were still paying for them, they were going to have to make do without Sunset Grove’s services. And shopping and cooking for five every day was a whole new ball game to heating up a little liver casserole for lunch, despite the fact that Siiri and Irma had both run large households fifty years earlier, in the days before prepackaged meals. They stared about glumly, wondering what might be the most sensible solution to the predicament. In the end, Irma pulled a slip of paper and a pen out of her handbag.

  ‘Oh, you still use those. And here I thought you’d dropped everything old-fashioned in favour of your new tablet,’ Siiri said a little sourly, unsure herself why.

  ‘Let’s make a chart,’ Irma said briskly, and she started drawing lines across the paper. ‘This is going to be our list of chores. It will tell us whose turn it is to do the shopping, cooking, cleaning and laundry. What am I forgetting?’

  ‘I’m too busy to do much. I have to go out to see Eino at the SquirrelsNest every day, not that it does anyone much good. But I have to. I won’t be able to stand myself if I don’t,’ Margit said. ‘What are your views on euthanasia?’

  ‘Anna-Liisa’s out of the game for the meantime,’ Siiri quickly interjected, to keep them focused on the topic at hand. ‘And Onni, I don’t suppose you’re planning on participating in these household chores?’

  The Ambassador seemed to have fallen asleep with his eyes open. When Irma gave him a friendly nudge, he started but didn’t say anything.

  ‘We’ll release the sultan from household responsibilities,’ Irma laughed cheerfully. ‘After all, he’s footing the bill for our little harem here. So that leaves two names on my chart, Siiri. Yours and mine.’

  ‘I see, so you and I are going to do everything? In that case, I don’t suppose we need to assign chores or make any lists.’

  Irma crumpled up the chart and shoved it back into her handbag. She seemed to be looking for something in her bag, but when she couldn’t think what it might be, she walked into the kitchen and started opening the cupboard doors. Margit said she was going to take a nap, the Ambassador was dozing on the couch, and Anna-Liisa was snoring away in her boudoir, at a respectable volume for such a frail convalescent. A faint drumbeat pounded from somewhere, a low, steady thump. Apparently one of the neighbours was listening to rock or some other racket. That was one thing there had been no need to grow acclimatized to at Sunset Grove. Siiri joined Irma in the kitchenette to close all the cupboard doors her friend had just opened.

  ‘So this is going to be our labour camp,’ Irma said casually. ‘Do you have any red wine stashed away? I could use a healthy swig.’

  ‘Didn’t you bring your box of wine with you from Sunset Grove?’

  ‘Not that I remember. Which was silly of me, because, of course, those louts are going to drink it all up. But let’s go and have a look, shall we? Perhaps it’s waiting for me in my bedroom. Do you have a big mirror in your room, too? Isn’t it a little . . . disconcerting? I’m startled every time I see my ugly old face in it. And what about when it’s time for bed and you have to get undressed in front of the mirror!’

  They went to Irma’s room and she rummaged about in her boxes and continued jabb
ering without waiting for Siiri to comment. ‘I’ve been thinking we ought to dig a little deeper into the Sunset Grove retrofit. Something about it strikes me as fishy. All those men in suits skulking around with gym bags, and none of the workers speak Finnish. Did you happen to see Anna-Liisa’s jewellery box while you were packing?’

  Much to her surprise, Siiri had indeed stumbled across Anna-Liisa’s treasure chest among her underclothes. Of course that was where she’d put it: a ninety-five-year-old’s unmentionables were the last thing of interest to a robber. She had added them to her moving load just as they were, so the jewellery box remained in the soft shelter of her bras and panties.

  ‘How droll!’ Irma said. ‘But we won’t tell Anna-Liisa until she’s had a chance to settle in after the move. Have you been wondering where that young consultant, Jerry of the waxed head, suddenly vanished during the renovation? I think that bears looking into as well. Although I don’t suppose we’ll have much time to go out investigating retrofit-related shenanigans, seeing as how we have three lazybones to wait on. Oh, this does remind me of the best years of my life, those days when the house was full of strapping young men who were always starving and leaving their dirty laundry strewn across the floor. That’s what they were like, my darlings, I must say, even though eventually they grew up to be fine, upstanding individuals. But! Some funny instinct is telling me that I packed a box of wine here in my lingerie – and here it is! A completely untouched box of smooth, supple red wine!’

  Irma rose laboriously from her haunches and proudly presented the box of wine to Siiri as if it were the rarest of treasures. Just then, the doorbell rang.

  ‘What was that?’ Irma cried shrilly.

  They didn’t realize that the nasal warble was an indication that someone was at the door. They looked for a phone, but when they found it on the bar, they discovered it wasn’t ringing. They wandered about the kitchenette, wondering what device could produce such an alarm, until they had the sense to roam into the entryway. The demanding warble burst out again, growing unpleasantly louder.

  ‘You answer it,’ Irma said to Siiri, nearly squashing her flat against the door. Siiri opened it warily, as if it were safer to crack the door open an inch at a time instead of opening it all at once. The corridor was dark, and she couldn’t make out who was standing on the threshold. For a moment, everything was still; the only sound was the thump of the drumming from upstairs, louder than before.

  ‘Hasan here?’ asked the low voice of a man dressed in a well-cut suit from the midriff down. Then the voice took half a step backwards, which meant that not even that much remained visible; all Siiri saw was a gold tie-pin glittering in the darkness.

  ‘Did you say Hasan? Is that a name? If so, there’s no one here with that name. But we just moved in today.’ Siiri studied the man curiously. He seemed agitated; he kept shifting his weight and jingling the coins in his pocket. He was wearing expensive-looking, polished dress shoes.

  ‘My name is Siiri Kettunen. How do you do?’

  The man did not take Siiri’s hand, nor did he offer his own name. His right hand waved restlessly, and Siiri caught the bright gleam of a trio of fat gold rings. Irma crept up timidly behind Siiri, and even she wasn’t able to get a word out.

  ‘My mistake. Sorry to be a bother,’ the voice eventually said, as the click of dress shoes receded into the darkness.

  They never did see his face.

  Chapter 13

  Now that the plumbing retrofit wasn’t waking them up at 6 a.m., they quickly settled back into their usual rhythms. The Ambassador and Anna-Liisa lounged in bed for hours, Irma slept like a baby thanks to her pills, and Siiri generally woke at nine. But Margit was an early bird and started flitting about the flat in her tattered nightshirt well before eight. She cursed loudly as she battled with the gas burner, finally got it to light, and made herself coffee and an egg. Then she hunted for the paper, wondered why there were four identical copies, took one, lowered her bulk into the enveloping sofa, and ate her breakfast as she lazily flipped through the news. After an hour of this, she grew bored and tried to turn on the TV. A protracted struggle with the five remotes ensued, culminating in her activating the television, much to her fright: the device bellowed, and the gargantuan screen showed a music video dripping with sex and gore.

  ‘God save us. Help! How do I turn this off!’ Margit squawked, jabbing remote after remote in a panic. This musical interlude was more effective than any diamond-drill cacophony at rousing the entire household. Only Anna-Liisa remained in her bed as the others stumbled into the living room in horror.

  ‘Is that . . . why that’s a breast,’ Irma said, narrowing her eyes as she tried to make out what was happening on the wall-sized flat screen. ‘And it has a gold loop with a ruby in it!’

  ‘I doubt it’s genuine,’ the Ambassador said in a serious voice, as if he were an expert on piercings. ‘Just a bit of glass. And definitely not gold.’

  ‘This . . . this doesn’t look like the Morning Show,’ Siiri choked out. She tried to help Margit change the channel or at least mute the sound. The appalling screeching, drum-thrashing, and electric-guitar wails continued as a tiger appeared and started licking the woman. ‘Oh dear, oh dear! This is just terrible . . . don’t any of these remotes work? Do you suppose we should draw the curtains?’

  They didn’t know how to work the blinds or the television. Margit couldn’t remember how she had turned it on, nor was there a power button on the device itself. The Ambassador tried to follow the power cable to tug it out of the wall, but it led into a tube along with a tangle of other wires, and it was impossible to say which one was the television cord. Irma and Siiri couldn’t find any controls from where to pull or twist the blackout curtains.

  ‘The curtains are on their own remote, of course,’ Siiri said, giving up. ‘But I don’t suppose anyone is spying on us, trying to figure out what we’re up to.’

  ‘And perhaps we’ll get used to what’s coming from the television, just like we did with the racket from the renovation!’ Irma said, going into the kitchenette to make her breakfast. She’d been too startled even to pull on a dressing gown.

  ‘That’s a pretty shade of toenail polish,’ the Ambassador said politely.

  Siiri rushed off to fetch her slippers before Onni started commenting on her craggy old toes. She decided to have her morning shower and dress while she was at it. It didn’t feel appropriate to be traipsing about the commune half-naked, although both Margit and Irma seemed perfectly comfortable doing so. Thankfully, the Ambassador had donned ironed blue pyjamas and a stylish burgundy robe.

  When Siiri stepped into their spa, the lights came on without her doing a thing. She looked at the tub, the shape of a stretched-out egg with a peculiar hollow in the middle, and decided to do her washing at the sink instead. But the tap had no visible method for releasing the flow of water. She tried pressing it, pulling it, and suddenly the water gushed out. When she moved her hand away, the water stopped.

  ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake,’ she muttered to herself, testing the technology. Hands under the tap, water. Hands out from under the tap, no water. Very economical and efficient, to be sure. She didn’t dare try the shower, but it appeared to work by a similar sort of mysterious logic and automatically knew when you wanted water. Suddenly Margit was standing behind her.

  ‘Good grief, you gave me a fright! What are you doing in here? Can’t you see I’m bathing, Margit?’ Siiri cried, equal parts alarm and annoyance.

  ‘I want to bathe, too,’ Margit said, stripping off her threadbare pyjamas and dropping them to the heated floor, then removing her hearing aid and slapping it down at the edge of Siiri’s sink before marching into the shower as if mysterious, mind-reading robots were nothing new. Siiri found the sight of Margit standing before her in all of her unclothed, corpulent glory disconcerting. She modestly wrapped herself in her dressing gown and snuck off.

  Outside the living room, she ran into a woman she had never seen bef
ore. This stranger, an adult, had bangs that were chopped far too short, like Siiri’s children in their school photos from the 1950s, when she used to cut their hair herself. The woman had packed her thick thighs into a pair of geometrically patterned stockings and topped off the ensemble with a loosely knit sweater.

  ‘And here’s another one. How many of you live here?’ the woman asked, without looking at Siiri.

  ‘Five,’ replied the Ambassador, who appeared to know who the woman was. The television was still spewing music videos. Just now, a man with a long beard was using a chainsaw to chop a dog in two on the roof of a car, while three topless women swayed and panted English-language sentiments into their microphones.

  ‘I’m Siiri Kettunen, hello.’

  ‘Jemina Koutamo-Navaglotu from the municipality, hello. I’m the Temporary Part-Time Director for Western Health-Care District In-Home Care; the director is on job alternation leave.’

  ‘She’s here for Anna-Liisa. As you already know, Anneli has been ordered to receive in-home care,’ the Ambassador explained, knotting the belt of his silk bathrobe more tightly. They were still a little shell-shocked after their rude awakening, and none of them had imagined in-home care was so efficient. Why, Anna-Liisa had just been released from the hospital, and people were already showing up on their doorstep at the crack of dawn.

  ‘Would you care for coffee and a sandwich? I made us breakfast,’ Irma said amiably, setting out slices of bread on a plate. They were covered with thick slabs of real butter and generous sprinklings of finger-salt. ‘Or is that why you’re here, to make us breakfast?’

  ‘No, thank you. And no. This is an assessment visit. The idea is to evaluate the need for in-home care and support services with the client and those responsible for her well-being. Which one of you is the client, and who answers for her well-being?’

  ‘Oh, we’re all clients, depending on the situation,’ Irma said, pouring coffee into cups. ‘Or was it consumers? Isn’t that what you call people these days, consumers? And we’re all responsible for each other’s well-being, in a way. Do you take milk or sugar? Unfortunately, I don’t have any cream to offer you. We’ve just moved here to Hakaniemi; we’re quite the refugees since a tribe of Huns attacked our retirement home. We call them crooks because they look like they’re up to no good, and all sorts of things have happened there. Things go missing, the project manager disappeared, there are pockets of water damage here and there, the ceiling collapsed in one unit, and an enormous hole appeared in our wall, the wall I share with Siiri Kettunen here, and no one has bothered to repair it. They just taped some plastic over it. It all seems very illicit to me. Do you take sugar? Did I already ask?’