19
John and I get home around two a.m. Mary is in bed asleep. Kate wanders out into the living room in a nightgown. “So what have you two been up to?” She sniffs. Her voice is testy. “Never mind, I can smell what you’ve been up to.”
“Just a Finnish boys’ night out,” I say. “A couple drinks, sauna, some good food.”
John smiles and nods. “I ate liver for the first time since Mom was alive. I even liked it. I got my blood sucked. I haven’t decided if I liked it or not.”
She looks at me. “Blood sucked?”
“Kuppaus,” I say.
Her vexation fades. She laughs. “You really did have a Finnish night out. John, what did you do all day?”
“I’m pretty tired. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”
“Kate, let’s go to bed,” I say, “so John can have peace and quiet on the sofa.”
She hugs her brother good-night. I wash my face and brush my teeth. On the way back, I tell John to invent a lie about what he did today.
He’s already half asleep. He nods. I go to our room and get into bed with Kate. She snuggles up beside me. I wrap an arm around her.
“Did you really have fun?” she asks. “I was afraid you two wouldn’t hit it off.”
“Let’s just say we’re getting to know each other. But yeah, we had a good time. He learned a little about Finnish culture this evening.”
“The baby is kicking,” she says. She takes my hand and rests it on her belly so I can feel it, too. “How is your head?” she asks.
It hurts. I lie. “It’s okay.”
“Our day got off to a strange start,” Kate says. “After you left this morning, John and Mary and I were having breakfast, talking about things that happened when we were kids. After Mom died, and Dad started drinking, we didn’t have much money and moved into a run-down little house. We had a neighbor who was just a regular guy, a nice guy. He lived by himself. Another neighbor drove home drunk and crashed his car through the wall of the nice guy’s house into his living room while he was watching TV. The car went over top of him and crippled him for life. The three of us kids ran over and saw him pinned under this big Buick. The strange thing is that we all have different memories of what Dad did. John remembers that Dad ran into the house to help. Mary remembers that he stood on the porch and watched. I remember that he was drunk, sitting in the kitchen alone, and didn’t even get out of his chair to see what happened. It was an awful thing to see, traumatizing for us.”
“Trauma affects people in strange ways,” I say.
“I was the oldest and I’m sure Dad was dead drunk. Maybe the trauma hurt John and Mary so badly that they invented better memories so they wouldn’t have to think of Dad like that.”
I think of John’s behavior today, and wonder if reliving the ugly memory set him off. “Could be.”
“After cancer got Mom,” Kate says, “I became their mother. I was supposed to protect them. When I went off to college, I thought Mary was old enough to look after John, but they’ve changed. I feel like something is my fault, but I don’t know what it is.”
Kate is a grown woman. I don’t want to treat her like a child, but the miscarriage hurt her in deep places. It can’t happen again. I think of preeclampsia, hypertension, placental abruption-the placental lining separating from her uterus-the child’s death, her death. I want to protect her for just a little while, until our daughter is born. The idea of this visit from her siblings seems worse and worse to me.
“Kate, you were thirteen when your mother passed on, still a child yourself. Your father was the grown-up. He was responsible for all of you. He failed you. Don’t take that failure onto yourself.”
“I can’t help my feelings,” she says.
It’s hard to blame the dead for anything, easier to shoulder their guilt. “But you can try to rationalize them, to maintain perspective.” Pot calling kettle black. I can’t do it, either.
“Enough about that,” she says. “Tell me about your day.”
I tell her about the Filippov murder, the Silver Dollar death, about Arvid Lahtinen, about the accusations against him, and about his connection to Ukki. Again, I lie by omission, and don’t tell her about passing out on Arvid’s floor.
Kate rolls toward me and lays her head on my chest. “You haven’t told me much about Ukki.”
“He was a good man. I loved him. And my grandma, too. They were kind to me.”
“You shouldn’t worry about it then. Mass murderers aren’t kind to children.”
Couldn’t they be? “I just want to know the truth about him, for good or ill.”
“Why? If he was a good grandpa, what difference does it make what he did in wartime?”
A good question. I haven’t asked it of myself. The answer is apparent. “It’s my nature. If he took part in the Holocaust, I won’t love the memory of him less. I just need to know.”
“Yes,” she says, “you’re like that. Life would be easier for you if you weren’t.”
She’s more right than she knows.
“Do you have to get up early tomorrow?” she asks.
“Yeah, to see Jari.”
“Let’s get some sleep then,” she says, and snaps off the light.
20
Rescuing John meant I had to leave my car in the police garage overnight. I get up and leave early to fetch it, then drive to the hospital. In the waiting room of the neurology polyclinic, I browse household cleaning tips in a women’s magazine. The reading selection here leaves much to be desired. The polyclinic radiates sterility, but I stand instead of sit. The last time I took a seat in a public medical facility, when I left, my clothes smelled like piss.
Jari calls me into an examination room. He sees the gunshot scar on my face and flinches, but doesn’t comment on it. The last time we saw each other was three Christmases ago. He’s aged since then. His hair is grayer, he’s thinner. We share a quick brotherly hug, he tells me to sit down. I describe my headaches. He types the symptoms into a computer.
“On a scale of one to ten-one being mild discomfort and ten being the worst screaming pain you can imagine-how would you rate your headache at the moment?” he asks.
The pain is dull but nagging. “About a three.”
“You say that the problem started about a year ago, but that you’ve had a constant headache for three weeks.”
“Yeah.”
“Would you describe the headaches as increasing in severity as well as duration?”
“They’ve gotten a lot worse over time,” I say.
“On that one-to-ten scale, how would you rate the worst episodes?”
I picture all my teeth being drilled through to the roots without anesthetic as ten. “Eight.”
“You’ve always been laconic,” he says. “I think you’ve been through some intense suffering. Why did you wait so long to have this taken care of?”
“I saw a general practitioner six months ago. She gave me extrastrength Tylenol and something she called a pain diffuser. She said they give it to people with chronic problems, for instance, who’ve lost limbs but still feel pain in the missing parts. I took it for three days, and it helped the headaches but made me so stupid that it was hard to speak. I threw it in the trash.”
“Does the Tylenol help?”
“It used to. Not anymore.”
“Are your nerves so bad that you can’t eat or sleep?”
“I’m a little off my feed, but I eat. I can’t sleep.”
Jari has me track his finger back and forth with my eyes, checks my balance and reflexes, a few other things.
