“So I guess it doesn’t matter?” Nels said.
“What doesn’t matter?” Clayton said, and they left it at that.
Fine, Nels decided, he would put it from his mind—it was just one night, one thing, he thought. At some point he would bring it up to someone, have it forgiven—not Clayton; a believer could not forgive sins committed with another believer—but he put it off in his mind, an unpleasant duty, a task for another time. For a few weeks he did his life, and he went to his classes, and he passed exams, and from time to time he would almost forget, but he would be falling asleep at night, turning, and he would think, What is it, what am I forgetting? And he would remember about the drinking. During the sermons he almost wished the ministers would talk about drinking, mention it as a direct sin, so he could feel that specific remorse, but when they talked about sin he had the feeling they were referencing sins much smaller than his own. He felt he was being allowed to get away with it.
“Each sin brings about a hardening of the heart,” Buddy Laho said. “Each sin hardens your heart a little more, until one day it feels nothing at all, one day you sin and then—it doesn’t even bother you.” Nels felt this was probably true. It was probably why he could sit there and think about the drinking and still do nothing about it.
For weeks he felt slightly anxious. He skipped lectures. He and Bernie still went out for coffee sometimes but he felt embarrassed, and he stopped picking up her calls. He got moved down a chair in orchestra. When his mom made her occasional calls he didn’t answer those, either. He thought of who he could call—he didn’t want to call his parents, who would worry it would happen again and who would make him transfer to a Michigan school. He didn’t want to call Brita, who only talked about being pregnant. He didn’t want to call Tiina, who everyone knew was going off her own deep end, dating an unbeliever and acting like she wasn’t. He didn’t want to call Paula, who had probably never had a sinful thought in her life. He didn’t want to call Simon, whom he had never had a serious conversation with in his life. The little kids were still little kids—he didn’t want them to know that these sins even existed.
“What’s the matter with you?” Clayton said. He was gone from the apartment more now. Nels heard him come in late at night, sometimes, but he didn’t ask.
“I don’t know,” Nels said. He was moody.
He borrowed Clayton’s truck and drove out to Tricia’s. At the door her dad let him in, shook his hand. He had to say hello and God’s Peace to each of their little kids. There was something protracted and painful about this farce. Tricia was in her bedroom, reading. He stood at the door to her room, aware that everyone was listening. He had never seen her bedroom; there were two sets of bunk beds. She sat on the bottom of one of the bunks. On the walls behind her bed she had taped up pictures of actors, neatly cut out from magazines. She saw where he was looking.
“I’ve never seen any of their movies,” she said hastily. “They’re just cute.” Her face was red.
They walked around her neighborhood. The homes were all split-level ranches. It was chilly, but there was the smell of dirt again, and the snow had melted except in a few spots.
They walked to a nearby park, sat on the swings. Around them parents with only two children monitored their kids’ every move, hanging behind them as they climbed rope ladders, reaching toward them as they slid down poles. One mom kept following her son with a tissue, wiping his nose.
“These poor kids,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said appreciatively. They agreed that there was something sad about families that small, where the parents foisted all their hopes onto one or two kids.
From the swings he told her things. When he talked he looked out at the houses and not at her. He told the very worst of it, the very worst of himself. He told her about lying to her before, he told her about kissing Bernie, dredging up feelings he was only newly remembering. He didn’t even have to ask for the forgiveness; she put her hand out and from the swings they held hands. She gave him the forgiveness and he didn’t cry. They walked more, around and around. They talked about houses, about whether they wanted to live in a brick house with the bricks painted white. They both wanted a garden. They both wanted a dog, and no cats. He wanted a big dog; she wanted a little dog. Two dogs.
He wanted to kiss her but it didn’t seem appropriate.
* * *
It was months before he realized how hard Clayton was drinking. Nels might never have realized it, except he went in to borrow a T-shirt and he smelled it, that strange fermented stench. He picked up Clayton’s laundry from the floor and began sniffing it, and it was only when he opened the window to let in air that he saw the bottles, a half-drained fifth of vodka, a six-pack, an unopened pint of whiskey.
For a few weeks he didn’t mention it, just kept his eye on Clayton, paying attention to when Clayton disappeared into the bedroom and when he came home at night. When he finally brought it up, Clayton shrugged.
“I’ll straighten out,” he said. “I’m going into the army, anyway.” But he didn’t straighten out. He was drinking now just to fall asleep. He was keeping all the booze openly out on the counter, and in the fridge.
“I should leave,” Nels told Tricia. It’s not good for my faith, he wanted to say, but he didn’t want to admit that.
“He’s family,” Tricia said, so he lived with Clayton for another year, but when he and Tricia decided to get married he did not ask Clayton to stand for him, and by the fall of the wedding, they were hardly speaking.
“I thought it wasn’t a big deal,” he said once to Clayton.
Clayton shifted his heavy shoulders and said nothing.
During the wedding ceremony, Nels could see Clayton sitting patiently. He’d put on a suit and though he’d gained weight, especially in his face, he looked decent. When Nels went to shake his hand in the receiving line he could not be sure, but he thought he picked up the faint smell of whiskey on Clayton’s breath. At the very end of the receiving line was Bernie. Her curly hair was down and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. She said nice things about the ceremony and his father’s sermon. These were probably lies, he thought, but it was nice of her to say them.
At the reception Bernie and Clayton sat and ate together. He pointed it out to Tricia as they ate their casserole. “While there’s life, there’s hope,” she said. There was another sermon during the reception. His family sang. Her family sang. They ate their wedding cake, and again and again he told himself this was right, this was good.
WE SINNERS
THE KARVONEN BOYS were in town and Tiina didn’t mean to dress carefully, but she did. All of her sisters did, even Brita, who was pregnant again; that was the effect the Karvonens had. Tiina knew it was pathetic to care, but there was not a single church girl who had not imagined marrying a Karvonen boy.
After the service she stood with her sisters in the back, pretending not to look at them. The Karvonens had hair cropped close, and they all wore collared shirts in pale, prudent tones.
“So beautiful,” Julia said.
“Whatever,” Tiina said. “They’re just people.” She checked her phone for messages from Matthew.
“If they’re just people, go talk to them.”
“Fine,” Tiina said. She resisted the impulse to fix her hair. As she walked she was aware that everyone knew she was approaching them, so she walked still more quickly.
“Hey,” she said.
“God’s Peace,” they said, but she couldn’t say it back. She nodded at them. She felt unsure if she should actually shake their hands. She shook their hands and their hands were firm and broad.
“How’s Detroit treating you?” she asked. She didn’t really want to know. She assessed them—they really were grossly good-looking—and she tried to convince herself Matthew was just as good-looking, but this pretense failed.
“I always forget what a small congregation this is,” the least handsome said dully. She adjusted her bag on her shoulder. She checked her
phone again.
They discussed where haps was going for lunch.
“Isn’t that where we went last time?” they said to one another. They didn’t look at her. Was it the one near the freeway exit? Remember that waitress who wanted their picture? When they laughed they denied her the full strength of their teeth, their full powers.
She excused herself from the circle and nearly walked into Arnie Aho. “Trying to catch a Karvonen, eh?” Arnie said. The Karvonens could hear him, she knew. She could have strangled him with his own belt, with the brass buckle, but she smiled.
There’s nothing to be embarrassed of, she thought as she walked out to the front lawn. What do I want with a Karvonen? She would not think of it. It was futile to give the Karvonens, or Arnie, or anyone at church, even an extra minute of thought. But all during the ride to the restaurant she kept thinking about Arnie, with his uncomfortably full mustache and his cowboy boots, talking about her to his wife. If he only knew, she thought—she’d told her family that next week she was going to a conference, when there was really no conference, when really she was flying out to Matthew. In only one week she would leave the church. She felt bad about the lying but lies had to be told, so that truths could be told. This was how Matthew put it. He was the great justifier of her greatest indiscretions.
She half wanted to tell Paula and Julia what she was doing and half never wanted them to know. I’m sorry, she wanted to say preemptively, but she wasn’t sorry. She was glad. She was glad she was going to get out and be done with the Karvonens. Be done with the church, with its sad girls chasing sad boys, its sad fathers and mothers. Be done with Arnie, the carpenter that he was, trying to raise his kids in a trailer, his wife wide in the hips now, wide and weary, with the Farrah Fawcett hair she hadn’t changed since her wedding. Tiina had a vision suddenly of his wife driving her home; Tiina had been babysitting. Beth and Arnie had come home early. The whole ride Beth had chattered—she was always nervous, laughing a little too easily, which made Tiina like her—and when they pulled into the driveway Beth had gone to reach into her purse to pay Tiina. Beth’s hair had spilled into her purse, the Farrah Fawcett hair shaking, and then Tiina had realized Beth was not looking but crying, and Beth had told her she’d had a miscarriage at the restaurant. How did miscarriages happen, Tiina wondered now. Was Beth eating her chicken chimichanga and then she had felt a pain? Did she go to a bathroom and see the bleeding, like a period but heavier, milkier? Did it hurt? But Beth had only said, God giveth and God taketh away, and she’d gone back to searching her purse.
“Poor Beth,” Tiina said aloud.
“What?” Julia said.
“Oh,” Tiina said, “nothing, nothing,” and she sighed as they pulled into the restaurant.
But when the week had passed, and the right lies had been told at the right time, and the conference clothing had been exchanged in the airport bathroom for a revealing top, she felt afraid. She felt no thrills of liberation. She’d painted her fingernails a bright green—tropical tango—and when she walked toward the baggage claim she knew the nails were a puerile rebellion against the church, and when she saw Matthew, his haircut too new so it rode up above his ears, she wanted to crawl back to the plane. When Matthew saw her he was suddenly eager and she was suddenly shy. She saw that they had each thought too hard about what they wore.
They made it back to the house he shared with two friends. His bedroom was too nice for an undergraduate, as if he were prematurely middle-aged, with actual bookshelves and a desk with a matching cherrywood chair. She felt tired and anxious but they had sex, as if sex were the only way to fix those things, even though it didn’t. She tried not to think about the Karvonens, about their bodies. “Trillium,” he said, and he kissed the inside of her palm. He was happy and he wanted her to be happy. In his very countenance was his confidence that her visit was a good idea, that she would not get caught, that she was going to leave the church.
His happiness was contagious; she became happy. They took a shower, and she used his sulfate-free shampoo, and she didn’t let this annoy her, that he was someone who took a stand against shampoos that foamed—he was the one, after all, who had taught her how to open a wine bottle, who’d explained Yoko Ono to her, who knew that when she walked in a movie theater she looked behind her back. He was tall, taller than her dad and her brothers, and from certain angles—when his hair was longer and hid his ears—he had an old-fashioned handsomeness, an actual aquiline nose and widow’s peak. She reached for a towel, but he made her switch. “This one is fluffier,” he said. He wrapped her in it. Downstairs in the garage someone had begun to play a guitar, a slow, steady strum, the chords minor and crass.
And so they spent two days in bed, a bruise forming slowly at the top of the inside of her thighs, and she felt validated, like she had some concrete proof of what her transgressions had bought her. The plane ticket—paid for, when she allowed herself to recall it, by Matthew—faded from her mind. She lived as if she had come from a family that did not have to be explained, like a little kid playing dress-up, playing that she had no past, playing a future loosed from any past. In return, he spoiled her. He felt, she thought, that she had somehow lost out in the fight for attention among all her siblings, and he was almost maniacally trying to make up for her childhood of split candy bars and a teddy bear for a pillow, and he seemed intent, most of all, on proving how great it was to be only two, only the two of them, young, him with big loan money and the audacity to spend it. She couldn’t help but love it; her vanity was finally being coddled, and after years of Finnish modesty and minimalism, his grandiosity was a relief.
By the third night at dinner she had given in entirely to the feeling that this was what life outside the church had to offer her, and it was good. Someone came to talk to them about the wine—the sommelier, as Matthew called him—and she felt very above her family, above believers who only ate out, if they ever did, at an Italian family restaurant where all the grainy photographs of kitchens were mass-produced in Milwaukee. She knew somewhere in her mind that they weren’t so cultured themselves, that Matthew’s pretense at money was just that. True, his parents had come from old money. His grandparents, or maybe great-grandparents, had invested in General Electric before it was General Electric, and had once built themselves houses with whatever useless accoutrements they desired—a greenhouse, a steam room, an elevator—but at some point in his childhood they had made some bad real estate decisions and lost it all. Now he tried to make up for the superiority of their past money with the superiority of his education—he believed in knowledge for knowledge’s sake, he gave her Greek histories, and wrote her cards in epic verse.
Over dessert, for instance, he talked about the problem of translating Isaiah 7:14, how “virgin” had been translated incorrectly in the Septuagint—in the original Hebrew it was really “young woman,” possibly meant euphemistically, but not necessarily so, and look at what had come from that, that one mistranslation. By the time of the Gospels, it was too late! She said she didn’t know what the Septuagint was. He said she should really be studying these things. He said she would feel better about everything, once she saw how many holes there were.
In turn she told him about the theory of performative speech. “So in class,” she said, “she’s explaining what it is, like the idea that there are these kinds of language, pieces of our speech, that aren’t really fact or truth, they’re just statements we make that do a thing.” As she talked about it she had the sensation of being not quite there, an awareness of talking about performative speech just to be the kind of person who talked about performative speech. But she liked when they talked like this, their big world, big theory ways.
“Austin calls it constantive speech,” she went on, “you know, like saying ‘I do’ at a wedding or naming your baby. So of course,” she said, “people are talking about examples of this, and of course, what do I think of—”
“The church,” he said.
“Forgiving sins,�
�� she said, “yeah.”
“Or leaving the church,” he said pointedly.
She set her fork on her plate in the five o’clock position. She gave what she hoped was a wistful smile. “I have what, three, four more days here,” she said. “Not yet.”
“Tiina.” He said her name like an American, like she was an ordinary Tina. She swirled her wine in the glass. She thought she detected, as the sommelier had told them, a buttery finish.
“You want to go downtown tomorrow?” she said at last. “I want to go downtown.”
“Tiina,” he said again.
“Let’s go to the bookstore. Let’s sit an entire day in the store and read a whole book, then we don’t even have to pay for it. Man, we used to do that all the time. Go to the bookstore after church, just sit in the kids’ section on the carpet and read.”
“I’ll buy you books,” he said.
“You’re not buying me books.”
“Why not?” he said.
“I don’t buy you things.”
“Leave the church. You don’t have to buy me anything.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” she said. They were talking quietly, casually, but she felt nervous, like she always did when the church came up. She was suddenly cold.
“Everything works that way. Everyone’s just in it for themselves. Everyone has totally selfish reasons for being in the church, when it comes down to it. Basic, primal reasons, like it means they have safety, or a husband, or whatever.”
“Some people actually believe, you know,” she said. She said this to test if, as she said it, she knew it was true. She knew it was true.
We Sinners Page 8
