“Here, you know what,” she said, “you boys do it. Something basic.”
“Don’t we need a VCR, too?” Nels said. “For your videos.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “You know, you do it.” She gave the money to Nels, who counted it almost solemnly. “I’ll pull up with the van. Don’t buy anything else. Hurry, äkkiä.”
She turned, and she made her way back through the shelves, through the masses of music and movies, everything trying so hard to catch her eye, all that selling of sex, and she walked past the security guard without smiling, relieved for the door to slide open and for the music to cease as suddenly as it had begun. She hurried to the van, but when she climbed into the driver’s seat the little kids were laughing, pretending each woman coming out the door was Simon’s girlfriend, each man Paula’s boyfriend.
“Don’t do that,” Pirjo said.
Impatient, she looped around the parking lot, past the office supply store, the pet store, the movie theater—poor Leena had once said that she wanted to work there, thinking United Artists was actually somewhere artists made art—and finally Nels emerged, the TV low in his arms, Simon skulking behind him, tossing his bangs to the side, and the little kids clapped and chanted, TV-TV-TV, and Pirjo said if they didn’t quit she would bring it right back inside. On the ride home she turned up NPR so she couldn’t hear them argue among themselves, watching them in the rearview mirror, Nels reaching out a wiry arm to stop the little girls from pinching. Simon just stared steadily out the window, ignoring everything; she wondered if he looked, like she did, at the lakes that were always visible through the windows of the wealthiest houses.
At home it was Nels who set up the TV, moving the old Finnish Bibles to a higher shelf, and they all stood and watched the one channel that came in, some local school channel, which was showing a middle school musical, girls in top hats, brandishing canes and short skirts.
Simon left the family room, came back with a video. “It’s from the breadmaker,” he said, and he put it in, and they sat and watched it, learned which equipment to use for which kind of bread, which flour.
“Do we even know where the breadmaker is?” Pirjo asked. “Has anyone seen it?”
“It still smells like peanut butter,” Leena said. “I saw it in the garage.”
The saleswoman talked, holding each part of the breadmaker up for the camera, with hands meant for rings, hands never meant to scrub half a tub of peanut butter from an expensive Christmas gift your kids had ruined.
“Why is everyone in here?” Pirjo asked. “Go, go, shoo. Go read some Dickens.” By now Uppu had settled in on the floor, her neck bent up to the screen, her thumb hanging idly from her mouth. “Why does no one listen to me when your father isn’t home? I said go. Nyt, nyt.”
She leaned over and searched for the eject button, finally succeeding in pressing it, and at that they all stood and wandered away, except for Uppu, who kept staring, waiting for the image to reappear.
* * *
When Warren came home from his speaking trip out east it was like she had brought home a small tiger, or a bomb. He didn’t yell—Warren never yelled anymore, not since he’d nearly hit Nels and they had gone to parenting classes and he had been inculcated into the doctrine that loving your child was not enough—and now expressed everything, even anger, in disappointment.
He paced about the family room, putting his hand on the shelves he had built, picking books up, putting them back in.
“Waaraniemis have one,” Pirjo said. “Jankkilas, too.”
“We’re not Waaraniemis.”
“We’re not Siltalas either,” Pirjo said, trying to sound conciliatory. She could see the kids listening from the kitchen. She knew they were listening because they were cleaning—Simon was even mopping, but quietly.
“I just—” Warren sighed. “I had dinner with Tiina out east, you know. You should see her dorm room—her roommate has all these posters of rappers.”
“Well,” she said, “it only has a VHS anyway.”
“VCR,” Simon said, from the kitchen.
“VCR,” she said.
“See,” Warren said. He raised an eyebrow.
“It’s just a TV,” Pirjo said. She wanted to laugh, but she didn’t want to make him mad.
“Then why are we still talking about it?”
“Well,” she said.
“I don’t want this shit in the house,” he said, and she could see he didn’t really mean to say shit, that it had just spilled out, but still she could feel the heat on her face, like the time he’d found her dabbing foundation under her eyes. Do you need to wear that? he’d said, and she’d soaped and soaped the makeup off, feeling like Lady Macbeth, but somehow worse for the very smallness of her sin. And she’d hated throwing it out, the expensive foundation, which she only had because it was part of the package with the skin cream at the mall, and she’d wanted to tell him that, to exonerate herself, but she didn’t want to make it seem important. He turned and went into the kitchen, the bone of his bad knee cracking faintly as he walked.
“Jeez, Dad,” Simon said.
“What?”
“Just, calm down,” he said, working at a bit of scum on the floor, picking at it with his nail.
“Yeah?” Warren said, his voice edged with warning.
“I’m just saying.” Simon stood and tossed his bangs away from his eyes, back over his cheek.
“Simon,” Pirjo said.
“No, I’m saying. I say.” Warren opened the fridge and ate a grape. The door of the fridge stayed open as he ate each grape, one by one. Everyone was quiet now—everyone had stopped moving, like it was choreographed, the five or six bodies in the kitchen all still.
“Just get out of my house,” Warren said then, calmly.
Simon shrugged, his eyes rolling slightly, and set the mop almost tenderly against the counter. He strolled out past Warren, through the kitchen and through the family room, fighting with the sticking back door, and went out into the backyard. He walked out to the playhouse Warren had built for the little girls and knelt and crawled inside.
“That kid,” Warren said.
“He’s sixteen,” Pirjo said, “we have to”—she paused, she didn’t want to sound like she was lecturing him—“we have to show more love.” She could see that Simon was smoking now, the smoke rising through the window of the playhouse, something Simon always did to anger him. But she understood the smoking—so many of the church kids smoked because it was finally something they were allowed to do. She had a sudden vision of Simon when he’d been little, his hair a thick shock of dirty blond, wandering about the house in his diaper, eyes always upward, always peaked. He’d had a doll then—she’d insisted that all the kids have dolls, and not just white girls in pink bonnets—and Simon was forever misplacing Sugar in the sandbox, and he would walk around, full of adult worry, “Where’s my Sugar? Where’s my Sugar?” She and Warren would just roar, and poor Simon was hurt more by the laughter, and he would collapse and wail until someone fetched Sugar, and even then he would still look sad, only less lonely, as if glad that he had Sugar to share his sadness with. “Maybe you should go and talk to him,” she said.
Warren turned and walked upstairs to their bedroom, slowly, but his heavy feet fell hard on the soft middles of the stairs. She wondered if Simon was cold outside—the weather looked nicer than it felt, the air still residually winter—and she hoped he would give up soon and come back in. She wanted to bring him a jacket, but she knew he wouldn’t wear it. She finished his mopping, hoping he would come inside and see that she had done his chore, but he was as good as his father at winning by waiting.
* * *
At night now she watched the math videos with the family room door closed, pen and pencil in hand. The videos, she was pretty sure, were almost useless, the teacher an obvious actor, someone who looked good turning his back to the camera. After she had taken notes, redoing his problems again and trying to forget how he had reached the an
swer, she hid the remote behind the Finnish Bibles, like Warren wanted her to. She didn’t like hiding it but it was a small enough concession, and she had only caught Julia looking for it the one time, and Julia had done an okay job of pretending to be searching for a book for class. Pirjo almost believed her.
A week passed this way, a week of Warren coming in from time to time to watch over her shoulder. She would take notes furiously, and Warren wouldn’t say anything, leaving after a minute. He stopped talking about the TV entirely, until late one night when he said he was sure she would be a good teacher, and she said she already had been a great teacher, and then they both waited each other out until someone fell asleep first, maybe her.
But at one or maybe two in the morning she thought she heard Uppu at the door—they had never been good at getting the kids to sleep alone—and she waited for the hurt of light from the hallway in her eyes, Uppu’s sleepy story about Hevonen jumping off a cliff, but no further noise came and Pirjo rose, like she always did when she wasn’t sure, because there was nothing worse than being a parent and not being sure.
The hallway was empty, and there were the right number of lumps in the right beds, but still she walked downstairs, careful to step on the edges so they made no sound, the foyer light still on, and the living room light, too. She turned the corner into the kitchen and she saw Simon rising from an armchair pushed unusually close to the TV. The TV was still on, there was a low voice, a low thread of violins, a mountain moving across the screen. He eyed her, still standing.
“Is that the Lewis and Clark?”
“Yeah.” He looked nervous still, but he sat back down.
“Is it any good?”
“They just made it to Shoshone territory.” He leaned back a little. “Now they can get horses,” he said. She came and stood behind the armchair, and the screen walked slowly over a sudden hill, back around it, twice, three times. She was cold—she was in only a long pink T-shirt that fell to her knees. Still she stood and watched, Simon’s hand over the remote, at the ready, and she knew he was listening for the sound of Warren’s bad knee. She stood until she had to sit, and then she pulled the computer chair over and she found some socks in the sock basket in the kitchen and she sat, arms wrapped around herself, until Lewis and Clark reached Fort Clatsop and the snow fell.
She didn’t know how long it had been—her limbs were cold to the touch—and she rose and they moved the chairs back. They turned off the TV, and Simon took the video and she hid the remote back behind the Bibles. On his way out, Simon stopped and stood in the doorway. “Good night, chunk,” she said. She wanted to hug him, but whenever she tried he always stood stiffly and waited for it to be over.
“Can I get a new nickname at least,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t mean that—you aren’t even chunky anymore,” she said, but he turned and stalked away, too tall, the thin hunch of male adolescence, she supposed. She was used to Brita’s vanity, Tiina’s slyness, Paula always saying the right thing but making you worry anyway, Nels hiding his feelings behind his silence—but Simon, with his variations on sarcasm and silence, was new to her. And he was so tall, so uncomfortable with himself still, and it was as if in growing he had surpassed her ability to reach him in any way—what was she to do with this thin, weedy thing that had somehow come from her and grown into this bitterness? She turned off the lights in the family room, and she closed the peanut butter jar in the kitchen, and wrapped up the bread, and put the milk back in the fridge, and turned out every light until at last the house was dark, like the rest of the street, like other houses.
* * *
When she awoke Warren was in one of his moods, marching in a circle around the house, with a pot on his head, Leena and Uppu and Anni marching behind him. Puuroa, stump-ah, they were chanting. On the stove Warren was cooking actual puuroa, and bacon.
When Warren was cheerful everyone became cheerful. The kids woke earlier than usual, and they were all at the table, reading the comics, waiting for food, knowing Warren would come with a big ladle to scoop the puuroa into everyone’s bowl, knowing he would pour the milk with his arm raised up high, the milk falling three feet into the bowls, splashing out onto the table, silent Warren at last unsilent: open, Saturday Warren.
Pirjo had a concrete happiness, seeing the kids all at the table for once, almost everyone in the house at the same time, and Warren with his old puuroa routine, Simon joining the march as if he were little again. She wished Brita and Tiina hadn’t gone away for school, Brita to Minnesota, where—Pirjo feared—she was just going to marry that Jimmy boy too fast, and Tiina out east, where church kids never went, but Tiina had begged. You can lose your faith anywhere, Tiina had said, which was obviously true. Movies and music and alcohol were everywhere—you had to trust your kids. She trusted her kids. They were good kids. She always felt that when she talked with the next-door neighbors—they had just put in a whole new security system that told them if their son tried to pull out of the driveway—and even when she talked to other church moms, whose girls got pregnant and married after tearful confessions, whose boys rode about town knocking down mailboxes, robbing convenience stores, making meth. Pirjo’s kids led the choirs and the music camps, they asked forgiveness from each other, late at night—she had heard them.
It was late afternoon by the time the house had calmed down, Warren napping on the living room rug with Uppu rolled at his side, Paula babysitting down the street, Julia babysitting for a church family, Simon and Nels away at haps at Keranens’, and there was the sound of Leena and Anni talking upstairs, playing something, probably trying every body product in the bathroom at once. Pirjo went into the family room, to the math videos. She took out the next in the series—about the quadratic formula—and she was going to sit down to watch it, she had her coffee and notebook and everything, when she thought of the video, the Lewis and Clark, and how all she wanted was to sit and have a quiet afternoon watching them make their way back across the country. Fine, she thought, I will, and she fetched it from the boys’ room—always cleaner than she expected it to be, but dank with basement dew—and she went upstairs and put it in, feeling defiant, or maybe even proud. She wasn’t surprised when the kids slipped in around her, watching the reenactors shoot off rifles and the journal of Meriwether Lewis scroll down the screen. A half hour passed before she felt Warren in the kitchen. He came over and stood behind the group of them.
“Isn’t it crazy,” she said, “to think they made it all that way to the ocean but then they just had to head back again.”
He made an ambiguous noise but stayed to watch. “I like the dog,” he said at last, and he grabbed the chair in front of the computer. He sat by her, and settled into it with his arms folded, and in silence they watched Lewis and Clark pass again by Beaverhead Rock, across the Mississippi, an hour gone like a dream upon waking. No one said anything when the credits began to roll—they all stood and Warren went into the kitchen and began to lay out tortillas for fajitas. He even whistled as he tore the plastic from the meat.
“I didn’t get to see the rest of it,” Simon said later that week. They were folding laundry together at the Ping-Pong table, the clothes stacked as high as her chest, a marathon of a folding session.
“Well, give it a week,” she said. She did not feel like pushing it.
“Why? If Dad thinks it’s okay—”
“If it’s not a big deal, just wait.” She felt a little uneasy about using Warren’s logic, but it rang true.
“Okay,” Simon said, and rolled his eyes.
“What, chunk?” she said.
“Just—okay.”
“Okay,” she said.
The call came the following Saturday night, saying that Simon had not showed up to do coffee lunch after the Youth Discussion at church. In fact, he had not even gone to the Youth Discussion. Jess Kariniemi had called, overly nosy as she was, pretending that she needed Simon to bring more cookies or goodies from home “if he’s coming late” but, Pirjo se
nsed, really trying to find out where Simon was. “Is Simon okay?” Jess asked.
“Is Nels there?” Pirjo asked. “Can you just put him on, please?” For a few minutes Pirjo listened to the sound of the discussion in the background, delayed and broken up as it was by being broadcast from the sanctuary into the basement, and from the basement’s speakers into her phone. “Girls, help us boys get into heaven,” someone said, and then Nels was on. “What,” he said.
“Where’s Simon?” she asked. There was a pause. She wondered if he was eyeing Jess Kariniemi and the other workers in the kitchen. “Well,” she said, “didn’t he go with you?”
“I dropped him off.”
“Really,” she said. “Are you going to tell me where?”
“Mom,” he said.
“You said you wouldn’t tell? What was so important? Nels, honey, lovey, you aren’t in trouble, but I have to know. I have to know where my children are. I have to know that he’s safe.”
“He’s safe,” Nels said, a laugh in his voice. “Okay, he’s fine.”
“Nels,” she said, “you tell me right this minute.”
“Uh,” he said.
“The movies?” She tried to say it quietly, so that any of the little kids at home would not hear.
“I owed him a favor, okay, I’m sorry,” Nels said. “I won’t do it again.”
“We’ll talk when you get home,” she told him briskly, and she hung up before he could say anything else. Her face was flushed. She felt a real and actual anger. She checked the clock—it was seven-twenty—the Youth Discussion had started at seven. It wasn’t late. She stepped into the garage, where Warren had on thick plastic eyeglasses to protect himself from the buzz saw. She realized she didn’t know what he was even building. It was always something. He would come home late from work, always behind on some deadline, and then he would fall asleep with the Bible, and spend his weekends fixing the house, tightening the cupboard doors, tearing out the doorway between the living room and dining room to build in an arch. Just take a day off, she always said, but he didn’t know how.
We Sinners Page 5