We Sinners

by Hanna Pylväinen

  “Stop seeing it their way. Be selfish already.”

  “The way you’re being selfish. The way you just want me to be free of it all,” she said.

  He finished off his drink. “Everybody wants something,” he said, almost sadly.

  * * *

  They did all of their normal things. They went to movies and went to bars to talk about the movies. They slept in. The sex became less impassioned and more conscientious, where he was a careful lover and she was careful to be appreciative of his conscientiousness. Actually she was sometimes bored, knowing always what they were going to do next. His preferences were too clear and too well formed, and it worried her that she knew his wants so well already when, she felt, so much remained for him to realize about hers. She was of the school of mostly faking it. Her friends said not to do that, but she didn’t believe them when they said they didn’t—what else could you do, in that moment?

  Once the fanatical need for sex had worn itself out some, the objective of leaving the church became paramount. The barrage began. Matthew had long taken it upon himself to initiate her into the art of atheism, but now he threw himself wholeheartedly into convincing her that Laestadianism was, as he put it one afternoon: one, like all religions, entirely man-made and fabricated; two, as religions went, a particularly painful form of emotional abuse; and three, practically speaking, an unlivable lifestyle in the modern-day world.

  It was nothing she hadn’t heard before, but there was an urgency to it. “Did you know,” he said, “Laestadius had more kids than your family—he beat you guys.” They were sitting in his living room, laptops searing their thighs. “Laestadius, twelve; Rovaniemis, nine.”

  “Yeah, well, the prize is poverty,” she said. “I take that back,” she said. “I don’t really mean that.”

  “His poor wife,” he said. He was reading something very carefully. “The poor woman. She had twelve children, but three of them died. I wonder if she knew what she was getting into, following this man as he started this religion.”

  “What if she was in love with him? Do you ever think about that,” she asked, “people in the past marrying for love? What if when she met him she heard bells?” Her mother had said that, once, about her father. It was, in fact, the only thing she had ever said about meeting him. Tiina herself had never heard bells. She and Matthew had been friends, for a few years—she was a flirt, and it was in her nature to have friends who were boys—and it had been so clear he liked her, and it was so powerful, being liked like that, and really his occasional officiousness was justified. He was actually brilliant; his mom had told her his IQ score. And he was endlessly patient about the church, and he came to the Sunday school Christmas program, and Easter, and her sisters liked him, even if they guessed what was going on. Her parents had eyed him warily, and made sure she knew that men and women couldn’t ever be just friends. I know, she’d said, managing not to laugh.

  “You know what my favorite part is?” he said. “It spread because of reindeer. The migrations,” he said. “In the summer, they went to the coast, and in the winter they moved inland. So you have all these Laplander nomads running around with their reindeer spreading this faith. Like a disease.” From where she sat she could see out onto his back patio, where he and his friends had collected six or seven old toilets. They were supposed to be a postmodern commentary on the nature of patio furniture, but to her they looked like too many old toilets in a backyard.

  “Yup,” he said, “Geography is fate. I heard that somewhere.” He typed, quickly. He looked up at her. “Heraclitus,” he said.

  “What?”

  “‘Geography is fate,’” he said. “Heraclitus said it. The interwhatsits told me.”

  “Well,” she said, “the knowledge of the interwhatsits is basically infinite.”

  “Basically the interwhatsits is God,” he agreed.

  “The interwhatsits forgives my sins,” she said.

  “Hey, good for you,” he said, “making a joke about it.”

  That night, upstairs, drowsy from wine—his fingers clambering inarticulately for her bra—she thought about the bells. She wanted to hear them. She wanted to love him, she wanted to know perfectly and completely that this was perfect and complete.

  “What if love is fate,” she said. It felt like the first time she had told him she loved him, when she knew he would say it back.

  “Listen,” he said, “let’s get a lease together.”

  “Of course,” she said. Her heart skipped and skipped.

  “You won’t be in the church.”

  “I won’t be in the church.”

  “We’ll have a—loft apartment. With skylights.”

  “Skylights.”

  “Buttercup,” he said.

  “Matthew,” she said.

  * * *

  The next morning she was making coffee in a French press and forgetting to stir the grounds. Matthew was making something he called morning delight. Like her mother, she cooked only when she had to, and he always cooked for them, spaghettis and curries and creative stews. From the garage she could hear his housemate’s guitar, his morning attempt at dissonance.

  “You know,” he said, “today should really be the day. You can’t save it for the end, because then you just have to go home. There could be some, you know, post-traumatic stress.” He set a plate in front of her. The food was salty and fatty, eggs and potatoes and hot sauce. “This reminds me of fund-raising meals,” she said. “Fund-raisers at church.”

  “Today,” he said. He was cheerful, peppy, even. “Did you write it out,” he said, “how you’re going to say everything? How they’ll react, what they might say, what you’ll say in response?” It was something a therapist had told her to do. She hadn’t done it.

  She sighed.

  “Tiina,” he said.

  She scraped her fork idly at the mash.

  “Just three little words,” he said. “That’s it. Right?” He was talking through a mostly chewed mouthful. “Just say it. Say it right now.” She took her plate to the sink and threw the food away in a compost bin. She rinsed her plate. The plate, she realized now, had the face of a fat Santa. “‘I don’t believe.’ Say it. Just think,” he said, still cheerful, “what sky will fall?”

  She walked out of the kitchen and through the sliding glass door. On the patio she sat down on one of the broken toilets. His housemate must have smoked out there sometimes, because there were cigarette butts inside all of the bowls, floating in old rain.

  Matthew followed her. “You okay?” he said. He stood and looked at her in that careful way of his, like he was measuring something to the tenth of an inch. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Say it’s okay,” he said. His voice was soft, like it was late at night, a softness surreal in the bright sunlight, in the backyard of broken toilets.

  “It’s okay,” she said, because that was what you said when someone was sorry, in this other world of forgiveness.

  He went back into the house, into the kitchen. He stood at the counter and ate his morning delight from the pan.

  She thought then about what Matthew had said, about just doing things. People always said that things were easier said than done, but that didn’t make sense if the saying was the doing; if, within the space of a few words, she was about to swiftly and single-handedly dissolve the old and familiar binding of her family, irreparably and inconsolably. She thought about her parents, if she knew them well enough to foresee what their faces would do when they heard the news. She pictured them laughing really hard, how her dad would wheeze, his eyes teary, as if the laughter was too big for him. Her mom’s laugh was free and hearty, like all of her sisters’, and so infectious Tiina would run downstairs just to be a part of it. But she couldn’t picture them when she told them—would her dad just withdraw, would he cry and shake and hold her mom? What does the loss of a child look like on a face? How is it shown?

  But when she looked inside there was Matthew. He was sitting on the couch with his lap
top. He winked. He looked too skinny. He was too skinny. His skin was too white. In the light he looked worse, and the light shone off his legs like off the skin of a fish.

  But when she looked down at her own legs, which were not beautiful, lean gams but just sturdy things—and white, the sun shining off them like off the skin of a fish—she wanted to give him something to say thank you, for the plane ticket and the patience and the years of watching her lie to her parents, as if he didn’t exist at all.

  She went inside and found her phone. She took it out onto the front steps, where it was warm, and where the sound of the guitar was muted. Like always, the phone rang and rang—as if there weren’t people around—and just when she was sure no one would pick up, when her nervousness was becoming disappointment, her mother picked up.

  “Tiina,” she said, right away. Her voice was strained, excited. “Did you talk to Brita?”

  “No,” she said. “Why? What?” She felt shaky—she tried to remember how far along Brita was in her pregnancy—wasn’t it too early? Was everything okay?

  “Oh, I thought Brita might have called you, about Arnie. It’s really just awful—no one can believe it.”

  “What,” she said. “Arnie Aho?” Her hand rose suddenly to her chest—she thought of her cousin who’d fallen from a ladder into a window well. She thought of the Jankkila boy who’d shot his brother with a bow and arrow. “Well?” she said. “What?” In the background, she could hear her mom closing the living room doors, the sound of the little kids muted suddenly.

  “Well,” her mother said, her voice low now, “he—left Beth. He’s gone. He left Beth with those kids. He put a note on the fridge about how he had all these doubts about the church. Well, of course everyone here is just in shock, and I guess Tim and Kathy are going to take the kids and Beth in for a while. I mean, everyone’s just hoping, you know, that he’ll come back— Hey, out, out,” she said, her voice breaking off. There was the sound of the living room doors opening and closing again.

  Tiina realized as she tried to say something that her hand was over her mouth. “Arnie Aho?” she said again, stupidly.

  “He left this long note, but then Beth comes to find out he’s really going to Hollywood. He has some plans of becoming an actor or something … so you know it was never really about the church, or anything, it’s always the same thing, it’s always something. Probably,” she said, “probably there’s a woman.”

  “Oh,” Tiina said. She realized she was shaking somewhat. She kept seeing Beth, her curls falling into her purse. Her shoulders shaking. Tiina tried to picture Arnie, Arnie Aho, with his mustache, away in Hollywood with some woman.

  Behind her the door opened, and Matthew came out and there was a wave of sound—the guitarist again—and then it quieted as the door closed.

  “What’s that?” her mother said.

  “I’m outside.” Tiina turned to look at him and shook her head, to wave him away.

  Matthew sat down beside her. “Are you okay?” he said softly. She shook her head again.

  “So!” her mother said.

  “Well,” Tiina said, “wow.” She mouthed to Matthew that it was her mother.

  “Anyway. That’s the madness here,” she said. “Paula’s here. She’s making them a casserole as we speak.”

  “Sure, of course.”

  “But how’s the conference?” The memories of this lie waved over Tiina. The things she was supposed to come up with now, my God—she felt a flush of humiliation.

  “It’s good,” she said feebly.

  “Well, your dad and I are worried about you, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Tiina—you know, we … we hope you’re still confessing.” She was talking more carefully now. “Even at the conference, even around all of those strangers,” she said. “I know it’s hard, and probably people are inviting you to do things that you don’t feel comfortable doing, but you have to confess.”

  “I know,” Tiina said. She was taking on a tone of annoyance, but it was partially with her mother and partially with Matthew. She started walking down the street. Matthew followed her, walking beside her. He took her hand.

  “You can do it,” he said quietly.

  “So?” her mother said. “So tell me about the conference.”

  She shook her hand from Matthew’s. They walked past an old man with a perfect halo of hair left, fastidiously at work on his hedges. Inside his house a phone rang and no one picked it up.

  “Well,” her mother said, her voice tense and quiet. “Would it help if—would you like to hear the Word?”

  “Oh,” she said, “sure,” she said, and she would have held the phone away from her ear, but then Matthew would know something was wrong, so instead she had to press it even more tightly to her ear, and she tried not hear her mother—“Believe all of your sins and doubts forgiven”—the words slow and relished in her mouth, much too clear—“in Jesus’s name and precious atoning blood,” and she turned down another street, but there were only more people going about their daily lives. Matthew was still walking next to her. He was walking as if he was enjoying the walk, as if she were merely clarifying with a friend where they should meet up for dinner.

  “Always, always believe. Always, always confess,” her mother said. She was crying now in fat, mothering tears, her voice thick with relief. “I was so afraid to ask you,” she said. “You know,” she said, “sometimes with you I think of when you were little, there was a tornado, and I was rounding you all up in the basement, and I realized you weren’t there, and I was running through the house, just screaming, Where’s my Tiina? Where’s my Tiina? and I finally found you, reading in the bathtub, and sometimes that’s how I feel now, like you’re just hiding away somewhere where you don’t even want to be found.” Tiina was circling the block, heading back toward Matthew’s house. She didn’t want to go there but she didn’t know where else to go. She was outside, she was in another city, but she was trapped—she had no car, she had no keys, she had no way of going anywhere. “And I just worry sometimes, I’m not a good enough mother—”

  “Mom, don’t say that,” she said quietly.

  “No, I know, I know what a poor example I am, and if I was braver I would ask you more, and I would ask about your school and your faith and I’m so afraid, it’s just that I’m so afraid, I’m so poor, and I have to ask you, Tiina, can you forgive me for how poor a mother I’ve been? Can you find it in your heart”—she must have been wiping at her face with her sleeve—“can you find the grace to forgive even me?”

  “Mom,” she said, her voice gentle now, “of course.” She felt her pulse rise, sick and thready, and she couldn’t believe she had to say it. She thought of everything she could say instead—I don’t want to have this conversation right now, for instance. She thought about Matthew, she thought about the sun-filled apartment they were going to have, but she had been trained too long and too hard, and instead she stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and kept her back to him and said, quickly, so the words could be gotten out of her, “Believe all of your sins forgiven in Jesus’s name and precious blood,” skipping the extra bits about doubt, and she did not look at Matthew and she did not look at the stranger driving down the street and she waited, Henny Penny–like, for the sky to fall, but no matter what, it did not fall and it did not fall, and instead there was only Matthew and his housemate’s guitar and her mother on the phone, and no matter what none of it went away at all.

  “I’m sorry,” she said when she hung up. She turned around, and he was standing there. He didn’t hug her and he walked away. The rest of the night they carefully avoided each other. He made dinner and they ate it together, quietly, until at last he said, in between bites, “You know, the best thing about the church is your family, and the worst thing about your family is the church,” to which she said nothing at all, because it was true, and she hated that he knew her better than she knew herself. It was only before they fell asleep that he said, putting his
hand in hers, “This is my favorite part of the day,” like he always did, which was his own kind of forgiveness, and it was only then that she slept, her body crouched inside his, his easy sleep, her uneasy dreams.

  * * *

  The night she cheated on Matthew she had been an unbeliever for almost two years. When the new man rolled from her—James, who only liked reading things that were true—she watched the fan go about and about on the ceiling, and she thought about how she was supposed to want to cling to him but she only wanted him to leave. He was better looking and a better kisser but the sex had been the same, the same sudden stop, the same awkwardness of not having gotten what she had bargained for, what she had paid for.

  Finally she rose and went into the shower, and she lay down flat, hating the way thighs look bigger flat, washing away his semen, and she had the concrete thought that she had become officially a sinner—she was no good in both the church’s world and in the world she had chosen; to all eyes she had sinned. She was freed from nothing, liberated from nothing. It wasn’t about the sinning at all, it was what you did about the sinning, and she had no means of forgiveness about her, and she thought suddenly of Arnie Aho, and she wondered where he was, if he was living off this woman’s money, or maybe he had become a truck driver and listened to Stephen Kings a country long. She wondered if he had shaved his mustache, if now his upper lip hung impotent and white. She wanted to call him, to see if he was okay, if he’d gotten what he wanted from this life, and she had the half thought that she would go and find the church phone book, but she realized that she wasn’t in the phone book anymore and neither was he and anyway there was no phone book for those who had left.

  And she thought about the cat, sleeping inside the vinyl cello case, watching her mother cry when she told her she was leaving the church, that she had left. Her mother had been so content, she had been talking about things they got wrong in Iraq and how to show love to your students, which to her was exactly the same conversation, and then Tiina just destroyed it all, and the cat went back to sleep in the vinyl cello case. She thought then that she had freed herself of the fear of leaving only for Matthew, that she had finally proved to herself that she was leaving for herself. She had decided that there simply wasn’t any such thing as sinning anymore, because it seemed so obvious that green nails weren’t a sin, and if they were wrong about that they were probably wrong about everything, and the cat held all the hope for her, the cat she didn’t like and who had a stupid name, and who could sleep through even this. But in the shower she looked at her nails and she realized they weren’t green and in fact she never painted them green, or red, or anything, like the way she had pierced her ears but she never wore earrings, and every time she wanted to she had to repunch the hole, and she’d feel sick, feeling the skin not want to give but making it give.