by Ann Yost
“Yes,” Aunt Ianthe chimed in. “My shawl will be for Liisa so that she will know she was loved.”
I blinked hard at the kind sentiment. And because I could not help noticing that the warm arm and thigh next to me had moved away. I felt abandoned. Again. This time, though, I did not intend to take it lying down.
“I’m going to take Larry for a walk,” I said, turning to Jace, “would you like to come with me?”
Thirty-Six
The storm had finally blown itself out. The air was fresh and clear, the stars visible in the night sky. The plowed snow, mounded in piles along Calumet Street, obliterated the curbs and sidewalks and forced us to walk in the middle of the road.
Since there was literally no traffic at all, it wasn’t a problem.
“Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?”
He glanced down at me.
“You mean aside from the fact that you were nearly poisoned by a murderer?”
I ignored that.
“Everything changed when my folks arrived home.”
“Sure. The focus was off you.”
I ignored that, too.
“You don’t like my folks and there’s no reason for it. You met them for the first time half an hour ago. What gives?”
“Your mother is very nice. Your sister looks just like her. I wonder if you take after your father.”
“My father?” I studied him. “Is this about my birth father?”
“Of course not. It’s nothing. Listen, I’m going to take Reid back to D.C. with me. He needs something to do and he’s expressed an interest in working for the law firm. If he decides to go to law school, I’ll help him out.”
“You won’t force him to take the hard road you did by enlisting in the marines first?”
Jace shrugged. “I want him to have a chance.”
The old, familiar feeling of helplessness burned inside me and I gathered my Sisu. Whatever he said would hurt me less than another year or more of silence and wondering.
“You want a chance for Reid. What about a chance for us?”
An obstinate look appeared on his face and his lips pressed into a straight line.
I grabbed his arm and stopped in the middle of the street and we faced each other in the moonlight.
“No more stonewalling. If you want a divorce, I’ll give you a divorce. Heck, I may even initiate a divorce. But first I want to know what this big issue is. I want to know why you appear to be fond of me but are bound and determined to break up this marriage.”
“Don’t ask me, Hatti.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have found myself to be very weak around you. If we were to get back together, we would both come to grief.”
Jace was and is an excellent orator and I’d heard him speak passionately about a number of things, including the rights of Native Americans. I’d never heard him speak with this kind of hopelessness.
“Tell me.”
He looked down at me for a long minute and then, suddenly, he put his arms around me and pulled me against him and then he kissed me. I should have broken it off right away but by the time I’d figured that out, I was going down for the third time. When it was over he put his hands on my shoulders and held my gaze.
“I can’t ask you to choose between your family and me.”
“Why would you have to?”
He sighed and dropped his hands.
“Last year, when I stopped off at the reservation on my way back from South Dakota, I found a box of my mother’s papers. They included my real birth certificate. The one I’d used before, provided by my mom, had been a false one. This was the first time I’d seen the name of my natural father.”
“Wow,” I said, but there was a cold sensation behind my nose and I sensed a mountain of pain around the next corner. “Are you going to tell me who it was?”
“It was Carl Lehtinen.”
“Pops?”
“Pops to you. The devil incarnate to me.”
I understood. Without any further explanation, I understood why Jace had felt so gobsmacked by the name on the birth certificate. I understood why he wanted to sever all ties with me. The man who had made my childhood enchanting had made Jace’s life, and Reid’s and even Miriam’s a soulless misery.
Just for a second, my heart felt like a boulder and then I looked up at the stark grief in his face.
“It’s not true.”
He shook his head, slightly. “Denial won’t help.”
“He isn’t your father, Jace. He couldn’t be. There’s no way Pops could skip out on a teenaged girl and gone off to marry another woman and become a father to her children.”
“He undoubtedly didn’t know my mother was pregnant.”
I shook my head. “He’s not like that. Careless, I mean. He doesn’t leave loose ends, especially not with people. Look at the way he befriended your brother instead of arresting him. There are certain things a person can do and certain things he can’t do. Pops would never have abandoned you. But don’t take my word for it. Let’s go talk to him.”
Thirty-Seven
My folks were just hanging out in the kitchen, enjoying being home for the first time in a month. Pops was on the mend but he was changed. The man who had always seemed larger than life to me had lost weight during his six weeks in traction. There were more lines in his face and even his shock of white hair seemed duller. The blue eyes, though, still twinkled and he still radiated the calm strength and the deep kindness that I’d always known.
I felt Jace’s hand jerk in mine when I asked if we could talk to him in the study.
Pops had a knack of finding the right thing to say in any situation and I half expected him to welcome Jace into the family but he remained silent, a thoughtful look on his wrinkled face.
When Jace got up from the old sofa where he and I were seated and started to pace the room, the tension ratcheted up.
“Hatti,” Pops said, softly. “What is this then, eh?”
“Jace believes you are his natural father,” I said, unable to come up with a more subtle way of introducing the topic. “Your name is on the birth certificate he found among Miriam Night Wind’s possessions.”
“Ah,” Pops said. “I see.”
I looked at this man who had reared me and felt all the impossibility of the charge.
“It isn’t true, is it? You wouldn’t have abandoned a teen-aged girl.”
My stepfather passed a hand over his face, as if to shake off memory or fatigue, and he sighed.
“I will tell you what I think and what I know,” he said. “It is many years now and time for the truth.” He looked directly at Jace, his eyes filled with compassion. “I knew your mama, for sure. The summer after college, I was one of those hired through a federal grant to work on the reservation to put in sewer and water lines. We had only three months to do the work and it was decided that, in order to make the most of the daylight hours, we would stay with families on the rez rather than drive back and forth to our homes in Red Jacket and Hancock and down in Gogebic County.”
Jace had stopped pacing but the deep furrow between his eyebrows revealed his reluctance to take Pops at his word. Pops didn’t respond to the anger.
“We worked all the time, but on Saturday nights there was always a bonfire and picnic and the workers mixed with the teenagers and young adults on the rez. It was summer and we were young and, naturally, some of us fell in love. Or, at least,” he added, “thought we did. Your mama, Miriam, was the prettiest, liveliest girl on the rez. All the boys liked her and, forgive me for saying this, Jace, she was a bit wild.”
That wasn’t news. Jace had told me, back in the early days of our acquaintance, that his grandparents hadn’t known what to do with their willful, impulsive daughter.
Jace had propped himself against Pops’s desk. Now his lip curled and he spoke for the first time.
“So you decided to take advantage of her.”
Pops didn’t take offense.
“He kissed her,” Jace said, looking at me. “You, of all people, know where that leads.”
Pops smiled at me.
“In this case, Miriam and me, it led nowhere. I explained that I was too old for her, that we must be friends only.”
I heard a low moan and knew it had come from me. If I knew anything about teen-age girls, the “friends-only” talk would have just made Miriam more determined.
“She asked me more times to talk but I was careful not to be alone with her.” He threw an apologetic look at Jace. “I’m sorry to speak like that of your mama.”
“Never mind that,” Jace said, anger in his voice, “how do you explain the pregnancy?”
Pops hesitated.
“What did not work with me, was successful with someone else. As far as I know, it was just the one time and the other man, who was only seventeen at the time, was very repentant. I believe it did not occur to him that there might be a baby. At least, not then. I don’t think he knows, even now. We have never spoken of it in thirty years.”
My jaw dropped. I’d expected Pops to say he knew nothing about Miriam Night Wind.
“You know Jace’s father?”
“Joo." Yes.
My husband wasn’t ready for that information. He had been nursing his grudge against Pops for a long time.
“Why is your name on my birth certificate?”
“That I can only guess,” Pops said. “I left the Keweenaw in the autumn of that year, to work as an engineer in the copper mines in Minnesota and I didn’t have any family, except Aunt Ianthe, left in this area. Perhaps Miriam reasoned that she would get less hassle from her family if she named someone who was out of reach. She may have wanted to protect the man in question or,” again he looked apologetic, “she may have wanted some revenge on me for the rejection. I’m sorry, Jace. I did not know I was on your birth certificate. For the record, I would be proud to be your papa.”
Anger still smoldered in Jace’s silver eyes but it was damped down, like a dying campfire.
“Pops?”
He nodded to me as if acknowledging the unspoken question. Then he turned back to Jace.
“I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive him.”
Suddenly I knew who it was. I think I had known during the entire story. I felt a tidal wave of sympathy for the man who never knew he was a father and for the son who had never known any father at all.
“It’s Arvo, isn’t it?”
Pops nodded.
“He is my oldest friend,” he said. “And I know him well enough to know he will be overjoyed if he finds out about this. Overjoyed and full of guilt.”
“Will you tell him?” I asked. Pops shook his head.
“That is for his son to decide.”
It wasn’t until Pops had left us and we’d been alone, without words, for some time, that either of us spoke.
“Do you believe him?”
He nodded. “There’s no reason to lie at this point.”
“The birth certificate is why you broke up with me, isn’t it? You believed that the man who had abandoned you and your mom was the stepdad I kept raving about.”
“That’s probably part of it. My memories of my mother, drunk, sick, prostituted, derided, have made it difficult for me to forgive. I didn’t think I could bear to be near the man who had destroyed my mother’s life and I did not want to make you choose between your family and me.”
“Do you still think that? That Arvo destroyed Miriam Night Wind’s life?”
He got a funny look on his face.
“Not entirely. She was in a tough situation but she could have gotten help from her own parents if she’d stayed on the Copper Eagle.” He stared out the window at the snow. “I should have helped her more when I was old enough. I should have stuck around here while Reid was growing up. I don’t know that I can be a good husband to you, Hatti.”
The highs and lows of the last few days, including the relief at discovering the reason for the break-up, and the regret that I wasn’t going to get the fairytale ending, after all, converged on me. I excused myself and shot up to my room where I buried my face in my pillow and cried.
Thirty-Eight
With the case solved and Reid out of danger, Jace said he had to get back to D.C. to catch up with his own work. I accepted that along with the long, passionless kiss as the grand finale and with every mail delivery, I expected to receive divorce papers as my Christmas present.
It hadn’t happened. At least, not yet.
In fact, he’d called a few times and we’d talked. Not about anything significant. Fishing. Hockey. What was happening in town, including and especially, with Pauline Maki.
For whatever reason, I began to feel better about things. Don’t get me wrong. I had no idea what he was thinking, but, for the first time, in a very long time, I felt as if we were friends. He said he’d call on New Year’s Eve to talk about where we stood, to settle our future. I wasn’t sure what he would say or even what I would say. The year apart had changed things between us. I’d come back to the Keweenaw in an emotional body bag but I’d come to realize that it was my home. I was beginning to realize that, even though I still loved Jace, I was reluctant to return to D.C.
The prospect of that fateful call was in the back of my mind while we made molasses popcorn balls and drank wine, while we gossiped and worked on our heirloom lace while we watched An Affair to Remember.
By eleven o’clock we were all weeping and Sofi said she was ready to call it a night.
“You can’t,” I said, scandalized. “It isn’t midnight yet. And, besides, we still have to cast tin.”
“And, don’t forget,” Elli added, “we agreed to ring in the new year with a sauna followed by a roll in the snow.”
My sister made a face.
“We’re not six, you guys. We don’t need to tell fortunes and make snow angels.”
I wondered at the edge in her voice. Something had been bothering Sofi for the last few days. Now Charlie was down in Lake Worth, Florida with our folks and Sofi was alone. I was worried about her. That is, I was worried about her in between being worried about myself. Why hadn’t Jace called? It was almost midnight.
“Sofi, are you okay?”
She turned on me. “I’m fine. You’re the one waiting for a call.”
They all knew about the proposed call, of course. I began to wish I’d kept my big mouth shut.
“Do you know what you’re going to say to him, Hatti?” Sonya asked.
“I guess it depends on what he says to me.”
“You can’t expect him to come live in Red Jacket, you know,” Sofi said. “His career is in D.C. Besides, the Keweenaw must remind him of his mother and the trauma of his entire childhood. If you want him, H, you’re going to have to go back East.”
I’d never thought of it that way. Of course he wouldn’t want to come back here. So there would be no compromise. Then I realized I was getting ahead of myself. He might very well call and tell me the whole thing was over. He’d done it before.
“Have you ever noticed,” Sonya said, trying to lighten the mood, “that nothing about men is easy?”
“You wonder why God invented them,” Elli said.
“Probably part of the portfolio of punishment for Eve biting that apple,” I said. “Let’s cast some tin.”
Sofi mentioned a headache and we let her go. Then the rest of us gathered in Elli’s kitchen around our grandmother’s tin basin filled with icy-cold water. There was a pan of boiling water on the burner and the three of us shifted between the two pots as if we were McBeth’s weird sisters whipping up a brew.
When all was ready, Elli threw a horseshoe-shaped metal charm into the hot water. A moment l
ater she lifted it out with a long-handled spoon and transferred it to the cold water. We had already explained the odd custom to Sonya.
“This first one is for Sofi,” Elli said, as she turned off the overhead light and left the room in semi-darkness. “The metal melts and forms a shape and we interpret the shadow of that shape to predict what will happen during the next year.”
I lit a bayberry candle and positioned it to cast a shadow.
We all stared down at the concoction until finally, Sonya yelped.
“It’s a rabbit! As clear as day. See the long ears and the little cottontail?”
“A rabbit? Her future is Easter?”
“Well,” Sonya said, “in Native American mythology the rabbit can be a trickster.”
“That’s all my sister needs,” I said, “more tricks.”
“Isn’t the Easter Bunny a harbinger of spring and new life?” Elli asked.
Sonya and I shared a look.
“New life. Fertility,” I said. “How can that affect Sofi?
We all knew that Sofi and Lars barely spoke to one another and that, even if they ever reconciled, they were unlikely to have another child. They’d spent more than ten years grappling with what’s called secondary infertility.
“I don’t think the tin is working tonight,” I said, finally.
“Let’s keep going,” Elli said. “This one’s for me.” After a moment she shuddered. “It’s a parallelogram. Just what I needed, a reminder of my disastrous year in geometry.”
Geometry had been the tenth grade and, coincidentally, the year she and Grant Aaltonen had decided to marry. The decision had stood for almost three years until he, abruptly, married someone else.
“A parallelogram could also be a diamond,” Sonya said. “Maybe you’re going to be rich. Or married.” She smiled.
“You try it,” Elli said so Sonya cast her own horseshoe charm.
“It looks like a steak knife,” I said. “And that’s odd because you’re a vegetarian.”
“A knife can also symbolize cutting,” Elli piped up. “Separating things or pruning. Like clearing away the dead wood. Do you have dead wood in your life, Sonya?”
