“I’ll call her and I’ll go home if she can’t stay over.” Matti’s brown velvet suit disappeared into the swarm of humanity.
“All he ever does is run around the country doing workshops and going to Artists’ Association meetings. And if he can’t come up with anything better, he’s sitting with Meritta in the Copper Cup planning their arts camp. And then the one time I’m supposed to get to have a good time, he’s like this!” Ella’s face was glowing red, and I got the impression that the root of her irritation was something other than a dispute over whose turn it was to watch their kids. “And then I had to put on this stupid getup because Viivi poured milk on the front of my only party dress.”
“Let’s get some punch. Based on the smell, there must be some sort of food here too. And then let’s do something crazy. Go ask the mayor to dance or something.” I was trying to cheer up both of us.
A few minutes later we were standing on the restaurant terrace, looking down at the crowd below and trying to decide whose head to pour punch on, when I noticed Johnny’s light-brown curls directly below us.
“Think I could hit him…”
I was already tipping my glass when Ella squealed, “Look out, Johnny!”
Johnny looked up and shouted something that didn’t carry over the blare of the music, now a waltz. He looked for the nearest stairs and started to climb up toward us.
“You two look like you’re up to no good.” Although Johnny tried to grin, his face still looked tired.
“Not me. It was Maria. She was going to dump punch on your head.”
“What the hell for?”
“Boring party. We have to spice things up somehow.”
“Let’s go dance.” Without waiting for me to reply, Johnny grabbed my wrist.
“Do I have to pour punch on someone’s head too?” Ella yelled after us.
By the time we made it downstairs, the music had switched to Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” Johnny smelled familiar, and I remembered how at one time just dancing with him had been enough to satisfy me for weeks. As Johnny’s body against mine invited me to press closer, suddenly the party ceased to be so boring. The feelings that had surged in me fifteen years ago rose to the surface, and I had no desire to resist. I had already made myself a laughingstock once because of Johnny, so why not again?
Another slow song came on. Johnny’s hand on my waist was warm and heavy, his expression relaxed. In the crush of people, we collided with Ella and Matti, who appeared to have made peace, and somewhere in the crowd I saw my mother looking at me with a puzzled expression. How was it any of her business who I danced with?
I was annoyed when another quick fox-trot came on. When we left in search of more punch, Johnny kept his arm around my waist. We snuck out of the restaurant the back way to the base of the Tower. A narrow sliver of summer moon hung next to the Tower, the sky the same bluebell color as Johnny’s eyes.
“You look a little tired,” I said probingly.
“I spent all last night with Tuija thrashing out practical stuff about the kids. In theory we have joint custody, but she’s been griping about them staying with me. Tuomas woke up to us screaming at each other and it took an hour to get him calmed down again. I thought Tuija would be here, but I haven’t seen her.”
“She was earlier. So what got between you guys?”
Johnny looked down the hill, his dark-red suit outlined clearly against the sky. Apollo indeed.
“We were too young. We were seventeen when we started dating, and I was a totally different guy then. I want more out of life now than…teaching other people’s brats how to do somersaults. I’ve been doing the same thing for ten years, and I have another thirty ahead of me. I’m going nowhere.”
“Well what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. Something else.” Johnny stripped some leaves from a young birch tree, crushing them with his hand and scattering the green chaff across the copper-colored sand. “I don’t have it in me to be a musician anymore, but I think I could try coaching soccer again or sports reporting or…Now you’re going to laugh for sure…I’d like to study photography. Travel the world taking pictures. The dreams of a thirty-four-year-old man!” Johnny hurled the rest of the birch leaf bits down the hill.
“I’m not laughing. I get it.”
“I don’t think you’ve ever laughed at me.” The look in Johnny’s eyes was hard to bear as his face came closer to mine, our lips almost touching, but then the sound of footsteps behind us made him pull away.
“Am I interrupting?” Kaisa looked just as confused as I was.
“Did you get Aniliina calmed down?” Johnny had turned to stare down the hill again.
“She didn’t calm down; she just went for one of her crazy long runs. She’s been getting worse again since she’s out of school and her therapist is on vacation. I almost think they should send her back to the hospital…”
“So her anorexia is really that bad?”
“Isn’t it obvious!” Johnny snorted. “She’s nothing but skin and bones.”
“Where does that strange name—Aniliina—come from?”
“Aniliina Violetta, in fact. Apparently she was completely purple when she was born,” Kaisa said.
A dark silhouette appeared from behind the Tower.
Suddenly Tuija reappeared out of nowhere and motioned for Johnny to come with her. “Here you are, Johnny. I have something I need to talk to you about.” Without a word, Johnny left. Kaisa turned to watch Johnny go, and I couldn’t quite interpret her expression. Was that anger I was seeing?
My arms had goose bumps. “I think I’ll go inside. It’s getting a bit cold out here,” I said, and Kaisa followed me in. Inside I bumped into Ella and Matti again and a host of other acquaintances. As I exchanged news with approximately half the town, I succeeded in limiting myself to only one more glass of punch. The program included a relatively tame fireworks display around midnight, after which the party really began to die down, and no after-party seemed in the offing. As Ella and Matti were leaving to finally let her mom go home to bed, I walked with them down the hill. The moon had risen above the Tower, casting a frosty glow onto the dark-gray stone as if tiny lights were shining all along its walls.
“Phosphorus,” Matti explained. “The rock was quarried from the top of the hill. The glow of the phosphorus was what made people believe trolls lived under the hill.”
I snorted. “I still believe that,” I said, thinking of the odd feeling I had been experiencing most of the night.
I left Matti and Ella in front of the church and continued walking down the street toward the taxi station. Downtown was quiet and dark, the sole light shining from the police station. A muffled thumping came from the dance floor at the hotel restaurant. When I reached the bookstore, I heard a bicycle bell behind me. Johnny was coasting down the street on an old yellow Jopo. With its high handlebars and diminutive wheels, the one-speed bicycle looked ridiculous under him.
“Hi, Maria. Where did you disappear to?” Johnny jumped off his bike to walk beside me.
“Did I disappear? And, by the way, you need a bike light on that piece of junk.”
“Oh yeah, you’re the sheriff. I promise to walk it the rest of the way. It’s my dad’s. I haven’t picked up mine from Tuija’s place yet.”
“Are you going to your parents’ house tonight?”
“Yeah, we’re starting the roofing project in the morning. Are you going to your mom and dad’s place too?”
“I thought I’d take a cab out to the farm, but it doesn’t look like there are any at the station.” The city’s three taxis must have been out on other runs. That wasn’t any surprise, of course, with it being Friday, the night of the Old Mine gala, and closing time at the bars. No buses ran after six p.m.
“I can wait with you.” The shadows under Johnny’s eyes had deepened even further, and I could tell what the look on his face meant. He wanted someone to talk to—not about his problems, just about s
omething insignificant to help him calm down.
So we talked music again. And photography, which I didn’t know the first thing about. When no taxi showed up after fifteen minutes, I decided to try Plan B.
“I think I’ll walk to my parents’ house and grab my bike. It’s only six kilometers out to the farm.”
“I’ll come with you. It’s almost on the way.”
That was a familiar line. Back before Johnny had a driver’s license, we had spent many hours after soccer practice leaning on our bikes on the corner down the street from my house. Of course only when Johnny wasn’t going to Tuija’s house. After he got his license, sometimes he dropped me off at home in his dad’s car. But I still anticipated the nights when he didn’t have the car and had to bike.
Johnny tried to talk me into riding on his luggage rack, teasing me for being overzealous, which only got worse after I told him about the idling incident that morning.
He wasn’t in the habit of laughing at me either. That had probably prolonged my infatuation. If he had ever treated me like an irritating little kid instead of a friend, my feelings would have faded much faster. Especially during junior high when I had a fairly hard time making friends. I guess I was a freak. Girls in Arpikylä weren’t supposed to play soccer or play in rock bands. Eventually I did get pushed out of soccer when some of the parents started hinting not so subtly to Johnny that keeping a girl on the team was ridiculous. As the boys grew, they argued that I wasn’t going to be able to take the hits they would be dishing out. And supposedly the other teams would make fun of us for not having enough boys who could play.
What was Johnny—an eighteen-year-old kid—supposed to say? That I could handle anything as well as anyone else on the team? Of course they tackled me harder—fifteen-year-old boys weren’t about to let any opportunity to grope a girl pass by. Penalties were the furthest thing from their minds when they were trying to get the ball from me. I chalked it up to the male superiority instilled in small-town boys. I guess Johnny realized I was turning into a problem for the team. So when I told him I had decided to give up soccer, he didn’t stand in my way. I said I was having difficulty balancing schoolwork with sports, which was about the most see-through excuse I could have used. Even though I never did homework, my GPA was still well over nine out of ten. He did wheedle the real reason out of me eventually though.
“My parents,” I explained at last. They didn’t like me playing soccer either. When I complained to them about people trying to get me kicked off the team, my mother simply said, “It does seem like you’re just trying to get attention. You’d have an easier time making friends if you tried to be more like the other girls. You could play volleyball. We have a perfectly good girls’ team.”
“But I’m better at soccer, Mom!” I yelled, which was followed by the slamming of doors and the sure knowledge that no one in the entire world understood me. Of course, I had hoped Johnny would try to convince me to stay. But all he did was comfort me clumsily, saying that at least he wanted me on the team and that at least we would still see each other at band practice.
And no one was going to get me to quit Rat Poison, even though the message was clear enough that piano and voice lessons were more appropriate than rock bands for girls. If I had been a sexy lead singer or something, people would’ve been more able to understand. But all I did was stand in the back corner strumming my bass guitar. I never even shook my hips, and I sang backup vocals only in emergencies. So I didn’t fit the mold of a music chick either. But Johnny liked me, and that got me pretty far. Although “liking” never turned into anything more.
“Why did you come back?” Johnny asked as we turned onto my old street.
“The job. Money. I don’t know…I just had this feeling that I needed to come here for a while. Maybe it’s a turning-thirty crisis.” One reason undoubtedly was that I wanted to get to know my parents again, which hadn’t occurred to me until just then.
“Turning thirty…What am I having then? A turning-thirty-four crisis?”
“I think it’s good you want to do something different with your life. I, for one, am happy I haven’t gotten stuck in one permanent job yet.”
“And what about this Antti of yours? How permanent is that?”
For a moment I felt like playing Peter and denying all the promises I had made to wait for Antti and all the talk about getting married. But I had learned a little in fifteen years.
“I guess we’re pretty permanent. We’ll make a final decision about whether to get married or not in August when Antti gets back to Finland.”
We walked in silence to the intersection. The Tower behind us still glowed silver in the light of the moon, now high in the sky. A pale Big Dipper struggled to stay visible above it.
“But he isn’t here now,” Johnny said, pulling me to him.
Our first kiss tasted like potato chips. And I guess I really had learned something in fifteen years, because I didn’t faint like I always thought I would. But, after retrieving my bike from my parents’ place, I did sing Beatles songs at the top of my lungs all the way back to the farm.
4
The ringing phone seemed awfully far away. It had to be Antti, who was probably drinking in Chicago on a Friday night and calling me without realizing that, in Finland, it was seven o’clock Saturday morning. My mouth felt gummy as I dragged myself toward Uncle Pena’s old black rotary-dial phone, preparing to rip Antti a new one.
“Morning, Kallio. Antikainen here.”
“Morning. What’s up?” Oh, hell, work. Automatically my free hand started fumbling with the coffeemaker.
“It’s up at the Old Mine. Someone found”—Antikainen paused dramatically—“a body.”
“What? Where are you?” Suddenly my hand was shaking. Half the coffee grounds spilled onto the floor as I tried to scoop them into the filter.
“In a patrol car outside the mine restaurant. Lasarov is over with the…body. What should we do?”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can. You need to get a doctor. Call the county and they’ll line someone up.” The coffeemaker began its reassuring burbling. “Can you tell who it is? The person who died?”
“The dog walker who found the body already identified her. Orange dress and lots of jewelry. It’s that artist, Meritta—”
“Call the county. I’ll be right there.” After quickly counting how many hours had passed since my last drink, I decided I was good to drive. When I stepped outside, Mikko slipped out after me and took off running toward the edge of the field. I pumped a couple of bucketfuls of deliciously cold water from the well and dumped them over me. So, my hair would get a little wet; now was no time for primping. I acted without thinking, robotically putting on a no-nonsense, comfortable pantsuit, pouring the coffee into Uncle Pena’s hunting thermos, and packing a couple of sandwiches for the road. This was going to be a long Saturday.
Alternately slurping coffee and wolfing down the sandwiches, I began driving slowly along the deserted forest road. With half a quart of coffee in my belly, the world started looking less fuzzy. Still, I didn’t let myself think about the fact that someone I knew had died. Whatever shock was churning my insides, I couldn’t let it take over, not yet. The time for that would be once I was back home, alone.
On the way to the scene of the crime, the only living things I saw were six cows watching the world with relief after their morning milking. The parking lot at the Old Mine was empty. The gates to the museum complex were locked, but I quickly climbed over them and rushed up the stairs toward the main building. At around the thirtieth step, I started feeling the effects of having stayed up too late the previous night, but I kept up my pace all the way to the top, imagining that if I ran fast enough, I could still bring Meritta back to life.
The base of the Tower was quiet. The white-and-bluish-black police van appeared abandoned. I realized I could have driven up the back way too. Then I noticed Antikainen and Lasarov nearer the Tower with something orange at their feet. He
r body strangely twisted, Meritta looked as though she had fallen from the sky.
I looked up the face of the Tower. Nearly a one-hundred-foot drop. The fact that Meritta’s body was so intact, that her face was still recognizable, was a little surprising. Her orange hippy dress was spread around her like a Krishna robe, and I noticed the copper heart that had hung from her left ear was missing.
“Who called it in?”
Antikainen shuffled through his papers.
“Ritva Matikainen. She lives just down the hill. She was out with her German shepherd and the dog found…um…Ms. Flöjt.”
“And where is Ms. Matikainen now?”
“She wanted to go home.” Antikainen looked worried that he might have made a mistake. I nodded to show I understood. I would have wanted to go home after finding a body too.
Just then the sun topped the trees and began streaming into our eyes, igniting a strip of blazing orange on Meritta’s dress. The gravel surrounding the dress looked pale in comparison. I tried to concentrate on how the routine was supposed to unfold, thinking about how the county forensics team would need to go up the Tower to check for any evidence of what might have caused Meritta’s fall. Should we call in some detectives from the county as well? With any luck Koivu would be on duty. I wouldn’t have any turf issues with him. But did we need outsiders involved? Most likely it was just an accident. As I recalled, Meritta had still been at the party when I left.
“What was someone doing walking their dog around here? Aren’t all the gates locked?”
“The north side just has a boom across the road. People walk up here all the time. Kivinen says he’s going to eventually build a fence.”
I sighed. So anyone could have been here. But not many of them would have had keys to the Tower. How did Meritta get up after the tour was over and the doors locked?
As I remembered, the Old Mine was scheduled to open at ten today. With the official opening the day before, plenty of tourists would be showing up before too long. But we had to close part of the area, at least around the Tower. I had to call Kivinen directly. He could decide what would be best for the rest of the attraction. We couldn’t let flocks of curious tourists come gawk at the site of the accident.
Copper Heart Page 5