“Could you get your parents’ bedroom ready for Eeva and Jarmo and put the spare mattresses out in the living room? We’ll put Helena and Petri out there. What did your advisor say?”
“He wants me to stay through the spring to teach a seminar on my dissertation topic and then recommended going abroad in the fall.”
I continued chopping onions, and tears filled my eyes. Not until next fall. We would have time to figure out our options.
“Things are starting to look good for Kimmo,” I said, wiping my eyes. “Mallu’s husband can testify that Kimmo wasn’t at Armi’s house anymore at twelve thirty, and we have a couple of other witnesses who saw him on his way home.”
“Have the police found anything else? Because if Kimmo didn’t do it, then who did?”
“They have no idea,” I said as I started in on the black olives. “But they’ll have to start thinking hard about it now that they have to release Kimmo. Of course that means the whole rigmarole is just going to start from the beginning again if I can’t come up with a solution.”
“Kimmo going free isn’t enough for you? Maria, when is it going to sink in—you aren’t a cop anymore. You’re a lawyer. Even though you knew Armi, solving this case isn’t actually your job. Your job is getting your client out of jail and keeping him that way. And I don’t want you taking any more risks.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered at the salad dressing I was mixing. Continuing this discussion with Antti seemed pointless. Feeling mildly panicked, I did one last check of the house and changed my clothes. My sisters’ train was already at the station, and their taxi would be pulling up at any moment. Why did I feel like I had to play the good hostess for them? In our family, I was the one who knew how to hammer, chop wood, and shoot a rifle. Eeva was the housewife type, and Helena was the beauty queen and the baby of the family. We each had a clear role.
Antti had met Eeva and Jarmo when we were cross-country skiing at my parents’ house earlier in the year. I still hadn’t introduced him to Helena and Petri. Maybe he and Petri would hit it off since Petri was a mathematician too—he had just finished his teacher training and was looking for a job. Helena was almost done with her master’s thesis and student teaching in English. I would have to remember to ask her about some of the odd expressions in Sanna’s thesis.
When I saw the taxi pull into the driveway, my anxiety swelled. When I last saw Eeva, earlier in the spring, she was just barely starting to show, and I hadn’t seen Helena since Christmas, when we were all—my sisters, their menfolk, and I—at our parents’ house for the holiday. Antti hadn’t joined me; he was here in Espoo reprising his usual role as Santa Claus for Matti and Mikko, and on Christmas Eve night, we exchanged several melancholy phone calls. Last Christmas wasn’t the first when I was the seventh wheel at my parents’ house, but it was the first when I’d had someone to make those longing calls to.
As I opened the front door, Eeva was just climbing laboriously out of the front seat of the taxi. An inch taller and usually a good ten pounds lighter than me, now she looked puffy everywhere. Her belly was enormous, and her face was swollen. Despite the two years separating us, she now looked older and more regal than I ever did.
Rushing to help carry their luggage, Antti and I did our best to be polite and formal. Eeva and Jarmo especially were people who could handle any social situation. Eeva had been teaching Swedish and German in their local high school for two years now, which might have been the source of the slightly starchy maturity she radiated. Jarmo was a chemical engineer but worked in some sort of PR position, so he dealt with people constantly, and it showed.
First, we gave them a tour of the house, admiring the view out the window of a pair of swans swimming on the bay and laughing at Einstein as he yowled in frustration watching the birds. All the while, I stared furtively at Eeva’s soccer-ball belly under her tunic. This wasn’t the first pregnant woman I’d ever seen, of course, but somehow the fact that she was my own sister made it infinitely more fascinating. Just think how many genes this baby and I would have in common! Maybe even my upturned nose. At first glance, Eeva and I didn’t look anything alike—she resembled our mother, and I took after our father—but if you stopped to really look closer and took time to see them, the common features were there. The line of the eyebrows, the bridge of the nose, the grimace. Helena, on the other hand, was a simplified mixture of both of our parents and looked like a happy medium between us sisters.
“This is a really nice place; do you intend to stay here for a while?” Helena asked, attempting to conceal the tiny note of envy in her voice. She and Petri lived in a tiny two-bedroom apartment purchased using Petri’s inheritance as a down payment and were now languishing under a mortgage loan that was too large given their income. I was familiar with Helena’s taste in men, so I knew Antti was not particularly handsome by her standards and didn’t dress the right way, but the Sarkelas’ home clearly raised his stature in her eyes.
“It depends on Antti’s parents’ plans,” I said quickly and then led everyone into the kitchen for dinner. They had already declined a turn in the sauna because they would have the opportunity on the cruise ship.
“How are you going to get along in Stockholm with that big belly of yours? Doesn’t carrying it around wear you out?”
“Yes, I get more tired than usual. I’m just going to go sit in a café and let Jarmo run around to all the children’s clothing boutiques. Did Antti bake that, or have you started cooking, Maria?” Eeva asked as I removed the quiche from the oven.
“That must be really rich. I’ll just have salad,” Helena announced.
“Yeah, you should fast now so you can eat more of the cruise food later,” her boyfriend added. Of the three of us, Helena was the most slender but still dieted constantly. I thought bitterly about how pleasant lugging all of the ingredients home from the store had been just to have the food not be good enough for them. Even Jarmo just poked at his food. Maybe he didn’t like blue cheese.
As the men talked soccer, I was surprised to find Antti joining in the conversation. I didn’t even know he read the sports pages. Perhaps he had secretly been preparing for meeting my male relatives.
“Oh, Saku just woke up. Did you like the quiche, sweetie?” A moment passed before I realized Eeva was addressing the baby wriggling around inside her. “Don’t kick so hard! Look, Maria, he’s turning over.”
Something was clearly moving inside Eeva’s belly, the bulge deforming and seeming to swell.
“Go ahead and touch,” Eeva said, laughing as she took my hand and placed it on her stomach. “There’s Saku’s bottom. And that’s his knee. He’s trying to use it to poke his way out. It’s so funny, thinking that someone else is really living inside me.”
“Isn’t it scary?”
“How so? It’s the most natural thing in the world.” Eeva’s smile conveyed clearly a knowledge of something I didn’t have any hope of understanding. And she was right. How did I know what being pregnant was like? When you were healthy, you couldn’t remember what a bad cold felt like, and in the summer, imagining the biting cold of winter was impossible.
“You’re calling the baby Saku? So you’re hoping for a boy?” I asked, looking at Jarmo.
“Just so long as the baby’s healthy; that’s all we care about,” Jarmo replied, giving the expected answer. I didn’t bother arguing, but I thought of my parents, because I knew they longed for a grandson.
“I could take Jarmo and Petri for a beer over at Hemingway’s so you and your sisters can chat in peace,” Antti suggested. I glowered at him angrily. That didn’t fit my script for the evening in the slightest. Besides, I needed a beer too.
“Just one round—I want to get to bed on time,” Eeva said, grimacing as she shoved salad into her mouth. “Of course this salad dressing would have vinegar. Say hello to heartburn.”
“Sorry, I didn’t know,” I said. I was trying to be polite, although in my mind I was thinking that Greek salad dressing usually co
ntained vinegar, and if someone couldn’t eat it, they should take care of themselves. Was I supposed to be an expert on pregnancy diets all of a sudden?
The boys went off on their evening stroll to the pub. I made more tea and sat my sisters down on the sofa set in the living room. Einstein wove through us, first cautiously sniffing at Eeva, followed by Helena, who shrieked, “It bit me!” and shooed the startled cat away.
“He did not. He never bites anyone; he was probably just massaging his gums. You must smell really interesting to him. You didn’t step in dog crap on the way over here, did you?”
I was steamed. My sisters couldn’t have chosen a worse time to visit. What the hell right did they have to just announce that, hey, here we come? At that moment, I wished I had my own apartment where I could hide. Where no one could expect anything of me. I wanted to rip the phone out of the wall, pull the covers over my head, and hide far away from the big bad world…
“You and Antti seem pretty serious,” Eeva said.
“And what did you mean when you said Antti wasn’t very good-looking?” Helena asked Eeva. “He looks pretty good to me.”
“Oh, he’s just not my type—too tall and skinny. But Maria’s always liked those sorts of chiseled, angular guys,” Eeva continued.
“At least having different tastes means we don’t have to compete,” I said, making an old dig. Back in high school, my sisters had each had a crush on the same boy, and the combat was bloody. But as luck would have it, a third girl scooped him up, and my sisters made a joint resolution to abhor their previous heartthrob forever after.
Once again, I felt like an outsider. Eeva and Helena had so much in common, living in the same town, knowing the same people, visiting our parents on a regular basis. But why did they dislike me so much? And why did they have to come here and torment me?
“So what is your job like?” Eeva asked. “Is it like in L.A. Law? Is the pay good?”
“Well, I don’t spend the day walking around in a snazzy suit defending celebrities, if that’s what you mean. I mostly sit in my office pushing paper. The pay is OK—I get by.” Though I was tempted, I didn’t bother adding that it was better than a newly minted teacher’s salary.
“So you’re starting to settle down now too. You have a steady job and a steady boyfriend. And soon, it will be about time to start thinking about having kids. You’re turning thirty next spring, and you should have some babies before you get too many wrinkles.” Eeva laughed.
I made a face at her. People often mistook me for the youngest of us sisters. Probably because of how I dressed. My little sisters both looked like our middle-aged aunts by the time they turned twenty, while I was still wearing tennis shoes and letting my hair run wild.
“I don’t get you two!” I burst out. “Why have you been in such a damn hurry to settle down? OK, fine, maybe that’s your thing, but it doesn’t mean it has to be mine.”
“Oh, you’ve always known exactly how other people should live their lives,” Helena countered. “Always commenting on what we do and bossing us around, and then getting mad if we don’t do exactly what you recommended. The know-it-all big sister. Being a lawyer is probably perfect for you since you get to argue with people for a living.”
I stared at Helena in amazement. In my mind, I was the one in our family who always had to conform to everyone else’s expectations. “Maria, don’t tease your sisters. They’re smaller than you!” “Give the doll to Eeva, Maria; you’re too old for that now.” “Take those rugs out now since you’re so big and strong.” “No guitar practice now—Eeva and Helena are still doing their homework. They just aren’t as fast as you.”
Something I’d overheard my mother saying to one of her friends one day always stuck in my mind. I was never sure whether she meant for me to hear it: “Eeva and Helena need me. Maria never has; she’s always been so strong and independent.” I guess that was it—mothers loved the children who needed them most.
Still, I wondered what my sisters were supposed to need my mother for so much. They were the ones who were so good and obedient, while I tripped through my teenage years full of angst. But my parents took my leather jacket and rakish tomboy image seriously, without any attempt to look under the surface. They just assumed they knew me without knowing me at all. All they saw in me was what they wanted to see. But was I acting the same way, stubbornly believing that Eki was a libertine who meddled with young women and then murdered them?
“What do you two really think of me?” I asked defiantly. Perhaps finally letting out all the bitterness I harbored against my parents and sisters for ignoring me and shutting me out of their lives was best.
“Don’t get upset, Maria. Helena and I have just been talking about this stuff a lot lately, about when we were kids. I guess these things just come to the surface when you’re pregnant. You start worrying about whether you’re going to make the same mistakes your parents made,” Eeva said calmly.
“We both had a Maria complex growing up. You were so good in school, and you could stand up for yourself. You never came in crying from the playground because the boys were teasing you—”
“Oh, I would have, but I wasn’t allowed,” I said, cutting in. “I envied you—especially you, Helena, because you were always the tiny one who needed taking care of. They just pushed me out the door and told me to fend for myself.”
“You always interrupt me! Let me talk for once! Do you think learning to be independent has been easy for me after always being the baby? You think I’m brainless, and Eeva thinks I’m a helpless glamour girl who doesn’t even know how to boil water. And then everyone was surprised when I didn’t fail my exams after all and actually got into college. Shocking! I have a brain!”
On the verge of tears, Helena’s mascaraed eyelashes fluttered violently, as did mine.
“I was relieved when you went to the police academy and not to medical school or something,” Eeva said. “You weren’t as special as everybody thought after all. I remember how disappointed Mom and Dad sounded when people asked where you were studying and they had to say you were there. Don’t say anything, Maria. I don’t think parents should get to set expectations like that for their children either, but it was still a relief for Helena and me. My test scores weren’t all that great, but I got into the university on the first try anyway, so they had someone to be proud of—and then Helena got in the next year.”
“But then you had to go to law school, and that’s almost as fancy as medical school,” Helena said, picking up the thread. “A degree in Germanic languages or English isn’t anything compared to that.”
Had it really been like that? I had no idea. “I never wanted to give anyone a complex,” I said. “Don’t I have a right to live my own life? All I want is to be left alone!”
“Do you even want to see us, ever?” Helena asked, growing shrill. “Does having sisters mean anything at all to you?”
I looked past them out onto the bay where a duck, out abnormally late, swam toward the reed beds along the shore now painted the color of plums by the setting sun. The image began to cloud, the reeds becoming a blurry violet mass.
“Why would you ask something like that? You can’t just erase your family. It’s always there, even if you try to forget. I don’t have anything against you. I’ve just always thought that…that you never had any conflict with Mom and Dad. That I was always the cause of the conflict. Because I dressed wrong. Because I had the wrong friends. Because I wasn’t a boy—”
The door opened, and the three men came clomping in. In a moment, the mood changed to one of restrained bonhomie. I started bustling around, getting beds ready, trying to figure out at the same time whether I was irritated or relieved about the interruption of our conversation. What had just come out would take me plenty of sleepless nights to digest.
“I’ll be in and out of the bathroom all night. Hopefully it won’t bother you,” Eeva said from the bedroom door.
“Don’t worry. We can’t hear much from ou
r room. Good thick walls. How is Saku?”
“He’s doing his bedtime gymnastics.”
Suddenly I felt like hugging Eeva. My sister looked so beautiful with her huge belly and swollen nose.
“Can I touch again?” I put my hand on Eeva’s stomach, after a moment feeling a strong churning and bulging.
“Hi, baby. It’s Aunt Maria,” I found myself saying. “Remember to let your mommy sleep a little.”
“I don’t know what you were all uptight about. Your relatives are fine,” Antti said as I flopped down next to him in bed. “Did you gals have a nice time together?”
“Nice isn’t exactly the word. I’d say ‘enlightening.’ Too tired. Let’s talk about it tomorrow,” I said, turning off the lamp.
The room was still bright though, the diffuse summer evening light penetrating the thin curtains and illuminating Einstein as he hopped up onto the foot of the bed below my feet and began preening his coat. He began at his left-rear paw. I pushed my foot down next to his tail and concentrated on listening to the steady lapping sound of his tongue and Antti’s quiet breathing at the base of my left ear. I tried not to think of my sisters, instead concentrating on Armi, Sanna, and Kimmo. Kimmo would be free soon. How had he felt when his sister died? A mixture of sorrow and relief? Did he miss her? Perhaps relating to a brother would have been easier than sisters; perhaps a brother wouldn’t be such a mirror. Or would I have been even more jealous of a younger brother? Probably. Did siblings ever hate each other enough to kill each other?
I thought of Mallu—could I become that obsessed with Helena or Eeva…?
Before falling asleep, I tried desperately to imagine how having a baby rolling around in my own belly would feel.
14
By morning, no traces of the previous night’s emotional storms remained. We were all hurried and reserved but not shouting at each other. It reminded me of those mornings before school when we all lined up for the only bathroom in the house.
“Come see Saku when he comes!” Eeva had called from the taxi window. We promised to come in the middle of July, when I would have a week of summer vacation.
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