“Brutal,” Steve confirmed. He eyed Julia’s bite marks warily and made noises of sympathy. Brita couldn’t stop herself from toying with her hair, but soon the ambulance came and took Julia and her mom away, and the apartment emptied—she thought Steve made eye contact with her before he left—and the landlord apologized halfheartedly, stiffly, clearly at a loss as to what to do about his dog, or this gigantic family camping out in one of his own apartments.
* * *
The landlord came by the next weekend to apologize again. “Anything I can do, let me know,” he said. He spoke slowly, each syllable costing something. “Maybe this fan,” he said, pointing to the noisy tumbling above them. Her mom said the drain was slowed from the oatmeal baths, and he knelt in their bathroom with no shirt on, jamming a plunger with surprising force. His body shook and he made noises that were awkward to hear, and he swore sometimes, and her mother pushed them away from the bathroom door.
Their neighbors sympathized with them. They told stories about Max nipping other kids, even his own granddaughter. Someone brought over cookies. Someone left a box of used markers and crayons at their door.
Brita wondered what Steve thought of them now, if he felt bad for them. She shaved her legs with her cousin’s razor and used her cousin’s concealer stick on her pockmarks, and she borrowed the red-haired lady’s folding chair and sat on the balcony with her feet up on the railing. She made ice water and wore sunglasses and imagined the sun was tanning instead of searing her.
She had chilled her legs twice with the melting ice cubes when Steve came out, walking through the courtyard, not toward his car but toward the landlord’s door, at the corner of the complex. She watched him walk, hands in his pockets. He had a more hangdog air than Jude—more guarded, she decided. He knocked, stepped back, knocked again.
“Yes?” she heard the landlord say, not quite friendly. Brita sat up in her chair and leaned against the railing to watch. Steve had a broad back, a swimmer’s shoulders.
“I was just coming,” Steve said, “because—I’m on the lower floor.” He said something else, and then she heard, “—the baby’s always crying.”
Brita burned. Everything burned, her face, her ears. She tried to get up slowly, but her sweaty skin stuck to the chair and the chair clanged against the cement. She moved to the edge of the wall and tried to pull the chair quietly shut.
“Are you okay?” she heard Steve say. Brita turned back and saw Steve leaning over the fallen form of the landlord. Max was keening, licking his face with perverse exuberance. “Hey,” Steve said, looking up, noticing her, “you guys have a phone, right? Can you call and get help?”
She ran inside and got her mom to call and rushed back downstairs, the little kids following. She’d gotten as close to Steve as she dared, when she saw that the landlord had, all over his face and hands, the familiar scabs of their chicken pox, only heavier, not like a childhood sickness but like a disease. Along one cheek the pox was so thick she couldn’t see the space of skin in between. Other neighbors showed up. The red-haired lady leaned over the landlord and put her hand to his forehead uselessly.
“What’s going on? Is he okay?” her mom said, appearing on the lawn. She chatted anxiously with Steve. Brita saw that her feet were bare, like they always were in summer, and she wished her mom would wear shoes. She saw her mother suddenly as Steve must see her, her face pleasant and round like Finnish faces could be, but devoid of makeup, giving her a harried look, especially with her hair hanging limply in the heat, curling some from an old perm. She looked, Brita realized, tired. She looked her age—she looked like someone with too many kids, someone too busy to wear anything but a black cotton dress.
“We can take him,” her mom said, pointing at Max.
“Are you sure?” Steve said. “Really, it’s okay.”
“Julia just scared him before—it’ll be fine,” she said. “And it’s only fair,” she added, with an ironic smile. Steve shrugged and handed her the leash. “Kids, come,” she said, “up,” and they went, Max slow going up the flight of stairs. From inside the apartment they stood and watched the ambulance arrive, with its lonely whine and beating lights. They watched the paramedics wheel the landlord away, and then Steve make his way back to his apartment.
Julia cried and said she thought Max was going to bite her again.
“You have to get back on the horse,” her mom said firmly. “When I was little, I was maybe Brita’s age, I fell off Big Red and he bit my arm, and even while my arm was bleeding my dad put me back on the horse.” Tiina and Brita looked at each other and rolled their eyes. She always told this story.
Max roamed unhappily around the apartment. They put out a bowl of water for him, but he wouldn’t touch it. “No one try to pet him,” her mom said. She kept the baby strapped into the car seat on the counter. The baby cried and Brita tried to amuse her by hanging things in front of her face, keys, measuring spoons, her hair, but she was too old for that now. Finally Brita lifted her and walked her around the apartment, trying not to think of Steve and what he had said about them, trying to keep the baby from crying.
Her dad came back from looking at vans. “No seat belts in the back bench,” he said, sighing. He saw the dog. “Why do we have this?” he asked.
“The landlord has the chicken pox,” Brita told him, “from us.”
“From who?” he said, as if he hadn’t heard.
Her mom made them clean. Brita was sure this was because she was worried someone would come to pick up the dog, and she wanted the place to seem neat. Brita wiped the counter and rolled up the sleeping bags. Tiina found the vacuum cleaner and went at the carpet. The little kids threw all the toys in a cardboard box and tried to stack the books but they kept falling, and they gave up.
But no one came. Finally they unrolled the sleeping bags and turned out the lights. Her dad put Max in the bathroom with a towel on the floor and a bowl of cut-up hot dogs from the fridge. For a few minutes Max whimpered, and then he was quiet.
* * *
All the next day no one came. No one called. All day Brita stayed inside. She did not want to see Steve. She did not want to think of Steve. She hated that she had gone so quickly from trying to not think about Jude to trying to not think about Steve. The little kids held races around the balcony and she yelled at them to run more quietly.
“Nels is cheating,” Simon whined. “He keeps pulling my shirt.”
“Cheat more quietly,” Brita said.
Her mom sent Brita down to try the landlord’s door and Brita moved hurriedly, in case of Steve, but she didn’t see him, or his car in the parking lot. She knocked hard, trying to peek through the plastic slats of curtains, but the apartment was dark and silent.
Her mom called the hospital, but they wouldn’t put her through. “Can you put his family on?” she said, tense, annoyed. His family wasn’t there, the nurse said.
The little kids crabbed and her mom snapped and yelled at them and then broke down, crying. Her dad came home and saw her crying and yelled, and the little kids ran into the bathroom to hide from him.
“Let’s just leave,” her mom said, her face and voice taut with tears.
“You think I want to be here?” her dad said. “You think I think this is fun?” he yelled, and then he turned around and left, and they all went quiet but he wasn’t there to hear it. They all made their own sandwiches and poured their own milk and sat and read quietly, and the boys didn’t even fight about wanting to read the same comic, and they spread it out on the floor and dripped jelly onto its pages together. They were in this tableau, the mood mild, almost serene, when her dad came in, carrying milk shakes and fries, cheerful as a form of penitence. “Serve it up,” her mom sang, “nice and hot, maybe things aren’t as bad as you thought.” Fries fell to the floor and Max sniffed them but didn’t eat them.
One more week, Brita thought, one more week.
* * *
The heat eased. By the end of the week it was only the midday
hours that were unbearable, and in the shade of the balcony it was even enjoyable to be outside, but Brita kept inside. She napped and she sulked, and when someone asked her a question she gave the shortest possible answer. Often she simply sat and petted Max, but he hardly stirred. He didn’t want his belly rubbed. She liked how he embodied her own depression. She thought she understood him, how he wanted to quit. If only, she thought, she could be like him and understand how little everything mattered. Everything bothered her. The little kids pinched each other and her dad eyed them moodily but said nothing. Tiina talked too loudly, all the time. Simon whined, about everything. Her T-shirts were all sweaty, so she took one of Tiina’s and Tiina slapped her arm.
“Don’t touch me,” Brita said.
“Wash your own clothes,” Tiina said.
“You’re a little shit,” she hissed at Tiina.
“Where did you hear that?” her mom said, dismayed.
“Dad,” Brita said. The baby set off on a cry. She wailed, the rattle of a one-year-old, defiant, inconsolable. Brita picked her up and pressed her to her chest. “It’s okay,” she sang, “it’s okay,” but her tone was too angry.
Her dad sat at the table with his hand to his forehead. Nels picked up the recorder and began to play.
Her mom began to cry.
“Not you, too,” her dad said.
“What?” her mom asked. “You think this is fun for me?”
“It’s my fault,” her dad said, yelling now, “that’s right, it’s all my fault. Blame it on me.”
“Well,” her mom said, “if you would let us stay at a hotel—”
“You think I don’t want to be at a hotel? You think this is about being cheap?”
“No, I know,” her mom said, suddenly contrite. “I know.”
“Yeah, me, I’m a cheapskate.”
“Dad,” Tiina said, “Dad, stop.”
“Warren,” her mom said.
Suddenly he fell quiet. Brita turned and saw Steve at the door. He had a baseball cap on, highlighting his wholesome nature. His scar seemed laminated in the light from the living room.
“Hey,” he said, “some people are trying to live here.”
“Oh no,” her mom said, “we’re sorry, we’re so sorry. The heat,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “It’s okay, I get it.”
“We’re almost out of here,” she said. “Two more days.”
“Uh—did you need me to take the dog then, or what are you doing with him?”
“Well, we didn’t want to bring him to a kennel while we were waiting, but we don’t know what to do, he’s not even eating.” She was talking too fast.
“You didn’t hear?” Steve said.
“Hear what?”
“Oh,” he said. “Maybe I shouldn’t say it, in front of the kids.”
“What?” her mom said. “Is everything okay?” Brita felt something crawl around in her throat.
“Maybe there was already something wrong with him before,” he said.
“Are you saying—”
There was a terrible pause. Steve lifted his cap and reset it on his head.
“Sorry,” he said. “Yeah.”
“How awful, how completely awful, I don’t believe it.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Is there—will there be a service for him?” She asked this somehow utterly calmly and politely. Brita looked around the room. The little girls seemed confused, but Simon was searching about himself, no doubt for the doll he was too old to be carrying around.
“I don’t know anything about it,” Steve said. “Sorry.” When he walked away Brita stood at the door and watched him go. It felt like the end of the movies she wasn’t supposed to have seen, the way he was walking off along the balcony, his body backlit by the balcony lights, and for a second she thought of Jude.
“Steve,” Brita said. He stopped. “Sorry about”—she paused—“the noise.”
“Yeah.”
“Um, I’ll keep the little kids quiet.”
“Yeah, could you?”
“Yeah. And, you know, I know we seem crazy and everything but really—you know. We’re not.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Really,” she said, “we’re not.”
“Sure,” he said, but she could tell he just wanted her to leave him alone.
She went inside and closed the door behind herself. She leaned against the door and fell to the floor. She knew she was being dramatic, but it seemed like the only possible way to be.
“What is it?” her mom said.
She smiled her mother’s bitter smile.
“What?” her mom asked.
Her dad picked up a garbage bag and began filling it. “Let’s go,” he said, shaking his head.
“Lähetään,” her mom agreed quietly. It took twelve garbage bags to fit everything, but they packed rapidly. They shoved sleeping bags under the van’s seats, they threw toys and books and half-empty shampoo bottles anywhere they would go. They didn’t clean the dishes, and they left the newspapers unfolded on the floor.
“What about the dog?” her mom asked as they did a final check of the apartment.
Her parents looked at each other for a long minute, then her mom took the leash and they walked Max out to the van. At the van door he brayed, and her dad picked him up and set him inside the van. He curled up in between the seats and did not stir.
When they finally pulled away, her dad rolled the van windows down. Brita stuck her fingers out in the air. Her mom put a tape on, and the bright, easy concerto suggested an easier world than the apartment they had left. Tiina and Paula had fallen asleep leaning against each other, their foreheads slick with sweat. Simon’s head lay heavily against her shoulder, but Brita didn’t move him.
“Where are we going?” she called out quietly.
“I wish I knew, Brita-boo,” her dad said. She could not think of the last time he had called her that. He pulled them onto the highway. They drove for ten minutes, fifteen, and he stopped at a motel, parking beneath the overhang, but in a few minutes he came back outside, shaking his head. They stopped again, and again. Her parents dug through the glove box, through her mother’s purse. They clawed for coins at the bottom of the cup holder.
“Forty-four,” her mom whispered in Finnish.
They got back on the highway. They drove steadily, down roads Brita recognized but could not place. Her mom began to laugh.
“What?” her dad said. “It isn’t funny.” She fell silent, and when they finally pulled into the parking lot of the church her mom said, “Well, at least for once we’ll be on time.”
Her dad turned the van off, but the little kids kept sleeping. Brita watched her parents walk to the front of the church and unlock the door. She watched them haul in the sleeping bags. One by one they undid the seat belt of each kid, slipping the strap slowly from their limbs. One by one they carried each in. Max lifted his head each time but did not move.
When she was the last one left, she lay quite still. Usually her dad shook her, so she would wake and walk herself in, but this time he leaned in to lift her. As he carried her she felt him breathing hard and she knew she was too heavy. “It’s okay,” she said, as he struggled. She hobbled down to the ground.
She followed him into the church, up the linoleum steps to the sanctuary. Inside, the little kids were laid atop sleeping bags set out on pews. Brita found the last sleeping bag and lay down. She tried to adjust the end of it to build a pillow. She looked around the room. One of the windows was cracked and she saw the top of a tree, its branches burdened with leaves. At the front of the church, the cross was dark against the white concrete bricks—too small, she realized for the first time, for any man to hang upon its arms.
There was a stirring from the front of the church—her dad was pulling the front door, locking it. She heard the sound of Max’s nails against the foyer floor, and then her dad lifting Max up the stairs. Max came into the sanctuary and found a spot between two
pews and turned, three times.
Her dad crawled into his sleeping bag on the floor, all of his clothes still on. Her mother was already lying on her side on top of her own, the baby asleep against her. Brita realized her stomach looked bigger than she remembered, and she wondered if her mother was pregnant again. Probably, she decided.
“Pirjo,” she heard her dad say as softly as he was able.
“Mm,” her mom said. There was the distant tritone of a train. “Mm,” her mother said again.
“Can I have my sins forgiven,” he said at last. He spoke so quietly that Brita only heard the words because she knew what they were.
“Believe all of your sins and doubts forgiven in Jesus’s name and precious blood,” her mom said, tiredly but earnestly. “Can I too,” she said, and her dad said the words back. There was the sound then of each of them turning. A rustle.
HIS OWN HOUSE
THE SERMON STOPPED.
Warren’s eyes wavered open. Up in the pulpit the minister’s head was bowed, so that Warren could see his flushed scalp beneath the line of a comb. For a moment Warren could not place what was wrong, but then he realized that no babies were crying, no little kids were wandering in and out of the swinging doors. No one whispered. “Dear brothers and sisters in faith—” Howard said, and he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket but did not use it. Warren looked down. Lying on the floor, displaying her diaper, Uppu began to kick at the bottom of the pew, and Warren leaned over and fished for her leg.
“I have—” Howard tried again, “I have been speaking with some of our beloved brothers, and they feel, as I do, that this work of ministry has become too dear to me. I have enjoyed this work too much,” he said. Warren glanced at Pirjo at the other end of the bench and she looked directly at him, her face impassive, which meant she was as shocked as he was. “I know that you will find someone more suited to this mission work, and I ask—dear brothers and sisters—could you forgive even this vanity?” Howard wiped at his cheeks.
After the closing song they mingled, Pirjo chatting and chatting, a storm of socializing, and the little kids raced between the pews, and the big girls loitered in the corners, avoiding adults. Warren stood aside, near Pirjo but not a part of her talking.
We Sinners Page 2