Helsinki Noir

by James Thompson

  Of course!

  She’s still clasping the blanket in her fist and staring at the sheet. Then she parts her legs. Her thighs are covered with sticky, dark-brown blood and her panties are soaked. She breathes more calmly.

  Typical . . . this would never happen to Carin.

  Carin has a menstruation chart. Her ovulation is never off. It’s never irregular nor a few weeks late the way Celestine’s can be. Carin would never have any shocking surprises.

  At least not yet, Celestine thinks, when she gets out of bed and walks to the bathroom to shower.

  * * *

  That afternoon she decides to call her mother. The thoughts that have circled around Otto for the last few weeks drive her to the cell phone, which she usually puts away on a shelf as soon as she gets home from business college and hardly touches again. She picks up the phone and opens the cover. A missed call. From her mom.

  She wets her lips, quickly pushes the buttons. Her mother only calls when something is seriously wrong. Usually most things are wrong, but not so terribly seriously that it warrants a phone conversation.

  Come on, come on, Celestine has time to whisper while the call goes through. A scratchy pause and then Harriet’s squeaky, disoriented voice:

  —Hallo? Through a cloud of psychopharmacology.

  —Mom? It’s me! Celestine!

  —Celestine? Is it you?

  —Yes!

  —Why are you calling? Has something happened?

  Harriet is slurring her words. Celestine can picture her. She’s lying on the couch dressed in her dark-green winter coat, orange-knitted scarf, a felt hat, the henna-dyed curly hair in a tangle over the couch pillows, the hem of her skirt dragging on the floor, and still with her knee-high, dark-brown boots on her feet. She has collapsed in that condition onto the couch and then sailed through the night, more unconscious than sleeping, high on pills, low on alcohol, empty of joy. But whatever she is, Celestine understands her. For, in spite of everything, it was unforgivable. Celestine’s betrayal.

  It was your job to watch over him!

  The cry rings through her head so suddenly that she thinks it’s Harriet who’s saying the words. She flinches, swallows, and pulls herself together.

  —I should be asking you that! It was you who called me, says Celestine.

  —I did? That’s funny, I could have sworn my phone started beeping and then I answered it, and it was you. How strange . . .

  —No, not just now. I called you because you called me earlier, says Celestine.

  The receiver grows silent. Celestine checks the screen to see if the connection has been broken, but then she hears Harriet clear her throat.

  —Yes, oh, right . . . now I remember. I called you . . . It’s the anniversary of the funeral tomorrow.

  He would have turned eighteen a week ago.

  Celestine pinches her trembling lips together. Her eyes are stinging. Harriet’s voice sounds like an old woman’s. Brittle, sharp, and lonely. Celestine presses her thumb and forefinger against her eyelids but can’t prevent the tears from coming. She sniffles and tries to make her voice as light and cheerful as she can.

  —Yes, Mom, that’s right, she says, but can’t get out any more.

  —Celestine. I want you to know that I never blamed you. Whatever I said back then.

  —I know.

  —Celestine . . .

  —I have to go now. Anders is calling. He’s cooked up the most wonderful brunch with whole grain bread. He’s saying that my macchiato is getting cold. You really should come and visit us. Gabriel would be so happy. He was just a newborn in the pictures I sent you.

  —Wait, don’t go . . . Harriet pleads.

  —I have to check on Gabriel. He’s sleeping in his carriage outside. I think he’s crying. Oy, now I really have to run. Bye, Mom. Take care of yourself.

  * * *

  Bit by bit, Celestine has stolen Carin’s life. Little by little, she has recreated it in her conversations with Harriet, in the e-mails to her girlfriends, Tuula and Hanna, who have both moved abroad to study. When she sometimes gets together with them, she’s careful to meet them only in the center of town. In a café somewhere. And then she dresses just like she knows Carin would dress for a quick latte with a girlfriend. In a sensible, knee-length, dark-blue Fjällräven parka-deluxe with a faux-fur hood that matches her bleached-blond hair perfectly, beige velvet leggings and ankle-high dark-brown leather boots with low rubber-soled heals. She’s left the baby with Anders, she tells them, and then chatters on about baby swimming and exercise classes, diaper rash and car seats. But it’s not enough. Soon both Tuula and Hanna are going to want to see Gabriel. So far she’s been able to make excuses because he’s so little. But now he’s already six months old. She shows them the photos on her phone and they say ooh and aah, but they both hint in asides and looks that it’s about time she shows them the real thing, the real, live, bouncing baby. The tips of her fingers are sweating and her skin is tingling when she slips the cell phone into her pocket. The jacket was way too expensive. She’ll have to take it back. She’s made sure to hide the price tag underneath the carefully tied brown scarf, which doesn’t really match the leather bag she got at the flea market in Lovisa where her mom sometimes even manages to find real Prada.

  * * *

  That night she sees his face as she lies in bed twisting and turning with insomnia. She blinks, and his face flickers before her.

  It’s March. She blows on his forehead and he closes his eyes. Throws his head back and laughs with sharp white baby teeth. His mouth, tongue, throat, everything is so clean. His breath has no smell. It just is.

  The living room is lit by spring sunshine. Slowly the world is melting around them, running down the dirty window panes. She’s thinking of spring cleaning, washing the windows, and looks at the piles of clothes on the floor. He’s always complaining that he can’t play with his Legos when there’s so much stuff everywhere. Empty boxes. Pieces of paper. Beer bottles. So she picks up and cleans, but it never ends. His skin is pale with tiny blue veins, downy and completely smooth.

  He opens his eyes and looks straight into hers. The glittering of his baby-boy blues fills her chest and she draws one last deep breath, as if she were diving into a still summer bay, before she falls asleep.

  IV

  Just what do you know about loss? she asks Carin’s back in an army-green, long down jacket. It’s the morning of the burial and she’s standing on her balcony with a steaming cup of coffee in her hand.

  The closest you ever get to a really dramatic situation is in the war zone of the supermarket when you grab the last of the discounted coffee boxes right from under the nose of some poor retiree. You have never looked into eyes which just hours before were laughing, and realized they will never laugh again.

  Celestine gets increasingly agitated as she watches Carin’s blond hair, pulled back in a thin ponytail. She is skinny in just the right way. Her pants are saggy in the back because they are empty. She’s an exclamation point against the snowdrifts by the car, and now she walks back inside again, leaving the trunk open, and Anders shuts it. He laughs and shakes his head. Carin comes back out with two overfilled bags in her hands and laughs toward Anders. They stand by the closed trunk, babbling and laughing at each other before he reopens the trunk and Carin throws in the bags.

  Celestine wonders where they are going. She feels uneasy. Carin has not mentioned any trip on her blog, but it’s Thursday. Thursdays occasionally mean long weekend visits at Carin’s parents. Sometimes they’ll have been preceded by a few glasses of wine behind drawn shades the night before. And Carin sitting alone, sulking by the kitchen table gesturing angrily toward the living room. Then the brake lights when Anders drives off into nowhere late at night. The next day the car is packed with overnight bags, a foldable cot, and baby Gabriel. But Celestine has not seen any quarrel. Not sensed any new developments on Carin’s blog.

  Carin and Anders kiss each other lightly on the mouth and
exchange a meaningful look. Celestine glances away quickly. When she looks back up again, Carin is waving her hand and climbing in behind the wheel. Gabriel is already strapped into the baby seat. Anders stays by the driveway as Carin pulls the car out. He raises his hand in a belated wave. Then he turns around and stares straight at Celestine where she stands on her balcony.

  She quickly pulls back. Her heart is beating wildly and her eyes are wandering. She shakes her head. No, how would he know?

  But why today and not any of the hundreds of times she’s stood watching him in his gray jogging pants washing his car, or flipping burgers on the little round garden barbeque, or raking the leaves on the small patch of grass in front of the building? He’s never seen her. Never so much as given her a single glance. But what if he’s been watching her too? Completely unnoticed? Her chest is pinching and tingling and her hands are shaking when she sees him cross the street with decisive steps.

  * * *

  By the time he rings her bell, and in the exact time needed to climb forty-six steps to her front door, Celestine has undergone a total transformation. She’s smoothed down her hair and her eyes are no longer flickering. Her hands are dry and fingers still. The front of her blouse is uncreased and spotless and she gives him a smile that makes it all the way to her eyes. She crinkles her brow quizzically and shakes her head.

  —Hi? Is there anything I can do for you? she says in Finnish.

  He quickly checks the name on her door and then fires off a smile toward her. She blinks, startled. He reaches out his hand and says:

  —I assume you speak Swedish?

  His hand is warm and firm, precisely as she has always thought it would be. She swiftly nods and shows her teeth when she smiles. His eyes twinkle.

  —Of course.

  —Very good. I’m Anders Johansson.

  —Stine, she says.

  She learned a long time ago that it’s better not to be too conspicuous. For someone like her, it’s better not to draw too much attention to yourself. It’s already enough with the last name.

  —Vårvik, he says.

  —Yes, she answers.

  —It’s a lovely and unusual name.

  She stands with her hand on the door and a questioning smile; he’s losing his thread. Is just staring at her. She turns her face away and wipes her hands against the back of her pants.

  —I’m sorry. I’m standing here staring like a fool. Perhaps you know us. Carin, my wife, is often out with my son Gabriel, we live right across . . .

  He babbles on and she feels it coming over her, that thing that always comes over her when someone gets too close, when someone touches the purulent surface that will never heal. Something shuts down inside of her. A gear changes. She’s running on empty and switches to autopilot. The feeling engulfs her whole body while she nods and laughs and plays along. Her psychologist has a fancy name for it. “Detachment.” According to him, Celestine suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. Just like a war victim. Like a child soldier.

  He’s gotten to the end of his speech and now he’s serving up the final line.

  —But actually, the reason I’m here is that I’m running for office in the local elections and I wanted to tell you a little bit about my election program. A bit of . . . propaganda, you might say, he says, and laughs nervously.

  She feels her upper lip tightening against her teeth when she laughs. With decisive steps, he has made the necessary leap across to the other side in order to fish for a few random votes in unexpected places. Perhaps he could mobilize some of the couch potatoes who usually don’t bother going to the voting booths. He’s chosen to live a little dangerously, and as a reward he gets to have her for a little while. He thinks she’s nice. She can tell from his look. The smooth, even skin, the round, large breasts under the soft, rose-colored blouse. He’s sweating. She wants to shut the door in his face but is forced to invite him inside to sit down, and later she has to make coffee and nod silently while he talks on about county borders and tax burdens and playgrounds full of heroin syringes, while she thinks that he’s not the one she wants to get at. Not him. It’s Carin.

  * * *

  In another life she could have been Carin.

  Celestine sits in the darkening room by the balcony and waits for the Subaru. Waits for it to turn into the yard.

  In another life she could have been Carin, if people like Carin had not messed it all up for her. Those terrific mothers. The all-seeing, all-hearing, powerful neighbors in their orthopedic shoes and their ears pressed against doors and walls.

  She hears a car coming from the right.

  The people who infected everything with their looks, who picked at every spot with their yellowing fingernails. Those people who would sometimes knock on their door with a well-meaning smile and concerned wrinkled brow, sniffing the air with a crinkled nose.

  —Is your mother home, dear?

  And she would stand silently, staring, always upward, at the downturned faces where the skin had started to sag, hardening their features when they peered down at her.

  Carin’s Subaru turns into the driveway.

  They called social services. Again and again. And the social workers walked into their lives with blue plastic bags covering their shoes so they wouldn’t mess up the floors, floors which Celestine wiped with wet rags and flower-fragranced scouring powder three times a week. But she suspected they wore the plastic bags to prevent her family’s life from soiling the soles of their shoes, not the other way around. That’s precisely how much they were worth to them. Not even the dirt under their feet. The social workers didn’t see the shiny clean stove with never a spot. The well-polished tabletop. The rugs in straight rows on the floor with rubber mats underneath so they wouldn’t slide about. They just saw the holes in the walls that Celestine had tried to cover up with awkwardly placed boy band posters, the cracks in the floor, the lack of ceiling trim, and the beer bottles in the refrigerator. That was enough. Their pant legs flapped as they marched from one room to the next. And the fact that it was Celestine they had to talk to when they came didn’t make things better. Celestine. A ten-year-old in a too-large apron with rubber gloves on her hands.

  —How do you manage all this? And homework too?

  They asked, but they didn’t think she could manage all that as well as homework, though she answered in a shaky voice.

  —Yes, I do manage it. At least well enough.

  Enough, they said. Children should not be taking care of children, and certainly not taking care of grown-ups. But the day they came to get them, they were no longer there.

  Carin gets out of her car. She reaches in the backseat and lifts out Gabriel. Celestine gets up and walks to her computer. Fifteen minutes later Carin writes:

  Phew! Gabbe is asleep. Went to bring clothes to the flea market and Emmi said they were great quality. I should think so! Baby Gap and Benetton! From Daddy’s parents, of course. It pays to recycle! Gabbe has almost only shopped secondhand and you all know how good he looks, tee-hee! Anders is at a meeting. He’ll be back late. I’m going to take a lovely, long bath. Have a nice evening, everyone!

  Celestine gets up. She’s got to work fast if she’s going to do it all. Carin in the bath, Anders gone. She hurries to the closet.

  A few minutes later she walks along the driveway up to the baby carriage, dressed in her Carin clothes and with the hood turned up. The bangs she’s had cut the day before fall down and itch her forehead in a way she’s not used to.

  It’s snowing lightly. Her bare knuckles are red when she grips the handle of the baby carriage.

  Late in March they came to get her and Otto. She was blinded by the sun as she ran as fast as she could with her brother’s hand in hers. He stumbled in his big winter boots and she had to stop several times to drag him back up onto his feet. That evening she had listened to Harriet and Markku and had known that it was time. The sound of Harriet’s resigned sobbing and Markku’s attempt to comfort her. But Celestine knew that
it was her responsibility. She and Otto would have to stay away just long enough for it all to pass. She got to the woods and slowed down to a walk. They were surrounded by trees. Protected from all eyes.

  She pushes the carriage in front of her. Leaves the row house area behind her. Her hood is still up, and a neighbor nods and smiles in recognition and she nods back. To the person passing by, she is just a familiar mother taking her baby for a walk.

  When they reached the top of the old garbage dump which had been made into a recreation area with a view of the whole town, Otto cried inconsolably. She had half carried, half dragged him up the kilometer-long hill, and he collapsed onto one of the massive stone piles and refused to move. Tears ran down his cheeks. He wanted to go home. She tried making her voice light when she pointed to the freighters and containers in various colors like big Lego blocks.

  If only we could sneak onboard one of those boats and sail far away. To Namibia, Celestine thought, and blew on her hands to keep them warm.

  She closed her eyes for a moment and imagined the darkness of the inside of a container. They would hide at first, but when the ship had left harbor they would sneak out. What could they do to them? Throw them overboard? Hardly!

  She looked at Otto as he blubbered on the rocks. After a while he stopped. Then he just sat sucking on the worn blue collar of his snowsuit, and stared at his boots. She pointed out across town and took a deep breath of melting-snow air through her nose.

  —You see that, Otto? That’s the cathedral. And there’s the onion-shaped dome. And the radio tower in Böle.

  He stood up next to her. Searching for her hand.

  —There’s the water tower. And the Hertonäs’ jumping hill.

  And far out there, the open sea.

  Gabriel is not crying. He’s sleeping. He’s warm. Celestine puts a finger inside his collar. His neck is sweaty. She aims for the Coffee Quarter. Luxury apartments with ocean views reflect into the oily water. Rich Russians buy up the apartments as soon as they are built. On the other side of the sparse spruce forest, just a stone’s throw away, the houses are a few decades older and more worn down. The population, too, is scrambled together from various places around the world. Windblown. Hapless.