Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name (9 page)

There was a long silence, during which Eero observed me sharply. Perhaps he knew he had surprised me with his disclosure. And why was I so stunned by what he was trying to say? He was corroborating what I’d suspected and at some level, knew to be true: that my birth was not a joyous event for my mother.

The sound of the phone startled me. On the third ring, as though just hearing it for the first time, Eero stepped into the hallway—a strange place for a phone—to answer it.

Eero sat on a bench as he talked. I could see his feet. He adjusted his socks so they were snug around his toes. I heard him say “Olivia” and “Clarissa” and “America.”

He came back to the table. “My wife, Kirsi,” he said. “She is home in an hour.”

“Did your wife know my mother?” I asked. “Yes,” he said.

Below my knees, my pants were carpeted with white dog hair. I picked off a few strands.

“Kirsi and your mother are not friends. They don’t like the other.”

Many people didn’t like my mother. But Kirsi had no right to judge her.
Well
,
I don’t like Kirsi
, I wanted to say.

“Kirsi’s husband, Johan, he passes away suddenly—he has

a heart attack. After they are married. I perform the funeral service,” he said. “
Perform
is the right word?”

I nodded, and then second-guessed myself. “That or
pre-

sided over
.”

“I
presided
the funeral service?”

“
Performed
is fine,” I said, changing my mind.

“Kirsi needs much support after Johan’s death, and she comes here every afternoon for coffee. I was typically not here—we have to be at the church. But it is your mother’s duty to be here.”

“Duty?”

“A priest’s wife is to have coffee and keep food for people who visit. She has to be at the house between eight in the morning until four in the evening every day. She is here in case someone visit and need to talk. A widow. Or someone who lose a child. Anyone. She offers them food and warmth and care. She prays for them. It is her duty.”

I stared at him.

“I know you being American think it’s sexism and unfemi-nism, but that’s her job.” He sighed deeply.

“I have a long talk with her before we marry—in the church here in Inari. I tell her the expectations. And she is accepting of it. She says she is willing.”

It was strange if not impossible to picture my mother marrying in a church in Finland. She and Dad were married in a friend’s living room in Rhinebeck. I had seen a picture—my mother in a light blue dress and Dad in a suit, with a salmon-colored tie and tight shoes. He mentioned the discomfort of the shoes when he was looking at the photo, as if they were responsible for what happened to their marriage.

“She knows the life that is going to be hers,” Eero continued. “And she cannot do this. She wants to travel. She wants her life to be bigger.” He gestured broadly, as if conjuring great clouds. “This is why she goes to the protest in Masi.”

I tried to think of what she was missing in her life in Rhinebeck. What had driven her away the second time?

“Are you married?” Eero asked.

“Engaged,” I said, and suddenly felt sick over my behav-ior in Helsinki. I was still engaged, and while Pankaj had kept what he knew about my life a secret, he had not done what I had done.

“So I’m sure that you and your soon husband—what is his name?”

“Pankaj.”

“You have many discussions about the future.”

“Of course,” I said, and then wondered if this were true. “So like you and . . .”

“Pankaj,” I repeated.

“Pankaj. Like you, we talk over everything. I tell her I have my calling when I am twenty-three and she knows how much I work since then. I go to divinity school in Helsinki and then come back up here to be with my people.”

“You mean your town, or the Sami?”

“The Sami. And my town. Almost everyone in this town is Sami.”

Someone passed in front of the house, and the dogs barked like seals.

“When are you marrying?” he asked. “We haven’t set a date yet,” I said.

Eero nodded, and I was sure that he knew.

I excused myself to go to the bathroom. The room had a violet color scheme—violet towels, violet shower curtain, green-and- violet floor mat.

Inside the medicine cabinet were five frosted glass shelves, three of which were filled with remedies for back pain. Some had English translations on the back of the bottle; others had drawings of a spine on fire.

I opened the drawers beneath the sink, searching. I doubted I would discover anything—it had been so long ago—but I wanted to find something my mother had left behind. Something I would recognize. Toothpaste. At home, she had tubes of Colgate, Aim, Tom’s of Maine. It bored her to go to sleep with the same taste in her mouth every night.

But here, there was nothing.

I was furious at Kirsi’s ex-husband for dying. Kirsi wasn’t my stepmother, nor had she robbed my mother of a husband, but she had made my mother’s presence here invisible. Richard had done the same thing when my mother left home. Aside from her card catalog and a few of her books, Richard had stored everything in a rented unit in Poughkeepsie. When she hadn’t returned, he stopped paying the bills; her belongings were lost. And now, no trace of her was to be found here, either. She was gone from every corner of the world, every storage unit and bathroom.

The dogs were waiting for me when I got out of the bathroom, and they followed me to my seat. Eero had cleared the table, leaving the coffee. I tried not to think about how many trips it had taken him to transport everything back to the cupboards, the refrigerator, the sink. He was now in the adjoining room, on his knees, opening and closing drawers. High drawers meant valuable things. Low drawers meant the past.

“Here are some pictures of her,” he said, returning to the table with a large envelope. “You can keep them.”

Instead of handing the envelope to me, he placed it on the table. It was as if he didn’t want to be responsible for what I might find, for forcing the photos into my life.

I picked up the envelope. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome,” he said. “I am thinking I take you back to where you stay. Tomorrow, you can come here again, if you like. I go to Ivalo in morning, but I am back in afternoon. You can meet Kirsi.”

I nodded. I was thirsty from the reindeer meat, so, I helped myself to a glass of water, drank it all, and then put on my jacket and followed him out to the Volvo. We passed two cars on the road, one of which winked its lights at Eero. He honked in return.

“Maybe you see the fires when you are here,” Eero said. “The fires?”

“The fires,” he said, pointing to the sky. “The north lights.” “I hope so,” I said.

“We believe they are our ancestors.” “Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say.

We turned in to the complex of cabins where I was staying. “It was lovely meeting you, finally,” I said. And then, impul-sively, I leaned into him and hugged him. He stiffened with surprise. Perhaps he thought my mother would have spoken ill of him, when the truth was much sadder: she had never

spoken of him at all.

I took the photos in my hand and opened the car door. I turned and leaned down before closing it. “See you tomorrow,” I said.

“Sleep well, my child,” he said.

As his headlights faded, I walked back to my cabin, repeating his words.
My child
,
my child
,
my child.

In my cabin, I sat at the table and opened the envelope. It was fastened with a black string around a red wheel. The wheel showed no sign of age. Eero had not opened this envelope often.

There were five photos, fewer than I expected. The top one was facedown. My first thought upon turning it over was that Eero had given me the wrong file. The woman looked nothing like the mother I had known.

But a second look revealed that it was her, younger and less restless—a woman who looked straight into the camera and whose eyes squinted with a smile. In another photo, her front teeth were biting down on her lower lip, as though to keep her from laughing aloud. From her ears hung the gold hoop earrings she had given me.

She looked the same in all the photos—which is to say, she looked different. Three pictures appeared to have been taken inside Eero’s house. The other two on his porch, in the summer. In one, in color, she was petting a dog. A husky. Her brow was unfurrowed, and she was looking out into the distance, as though a bird or a sound had caught her attention in the moment before the click.

She seemed more comfortable being observed, being admired, than the mother who raised me. I slid the photos back into the envelope and wound the string around the red wheel so many times that the string’s tail was no longer visible. Seeing the pictures was like spotting a former teacher swimming at a pool, or seeing a cop barking directions from the back of a taxi. Beyond the realm of Richard, Jeremy, and me, my mother was acting out of character; she was undamaged and blithe.

I slept fitfully. When I woke, my mind felt blanketed, and I stayed in bed for much of the morning, calculating how few hours I had slept in the past week. Hunger finally roused me, and I dressed and walked to town. Inside the store that sold reindeer horns, I ate an overly sweet pastry and drank a cup of pale tea.

At the tourist information center, I bought a map and post-cards of the town. I didn’t plan on sending them to anyone, but I wanted to have proof that this place existed
.

For two euros, said a sign, I could check my e-mail on the

tourist center’s computer. I paid. In my inbox were nine e-mails from Pankaj, two from Virginia, eight from various coworkers, and two from a film company in Hong Kong, a sister company to Soutitre. I didn’t open any of the messages from Pankaj, or Virginia, or any of my coworkers. Instead, I read the e-mails

from Hong Kong, as well as those from people whom I hadn’t been in touch with recently, people who were unlikely to have heard about Dad’s death or my sudden departure. I told three people I was writing from Bulgaria. When I tired of that, I said I was in Sydney, that the Opera House was atrocious but the steak was good. I told the Hong Kong company I would consider their job offer. It seemed true enough—there was nothing I wasn’t contemplating.

In the late afternoon, when I surmised my father would be home from his trip to Ivalo, I walked by his house. In some respects, it wasn’t much different from our house in Rhinebeck—both had three steps leading up to the front door, a small porch, a neatly stacked supply of firewood.

I rang the doorbell. Did people here ring doorbells? It seemed like a town where you would knock. A woman in her late fifties opened the door. She said something in Finnish.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Clarissa.”

She stared at my mouth. Was she reading my lips? Did they resemble Eero’s? Her eyes were dense black buttons, her hair the shade of lint. She invited me in.

I had been picturing Kirsi as the age my mother had been when she left. But Kirsi was older. She was large, ungainly, wearing a dress over corduroy pants.

Kirsi offered me coffee, and I settled for tea. She directed me toward the living room, which I hadn’t seen the night before. While she was in the kitchen, I looked around the room. A large animal horn—a musical instrument of some

kind—hung on the wall. I stroked its edges with my fingers. It had the texture of a tooth. In the corner stood a simple piano. A well-worn music book had been left open on the stand, and the seat bench was pulled out, as though the player had just gotten up.

Kirsi entered the living room with a tray. She poured me a cup of tea, and I thanked her. I tried to avoid looking at her cold eyes. What did Eero see in her?

“So you are a long way from home,” she said.� “Yes,” I said. “But I was born here.”�

She responded with a stare. What did she know?� “And you play the piano?” I asked, to be polite.�

“Yes,” she said. “For many years. I play in the church.”�

I nodded. This was going to be a long wait. I busied myself �

sampling the cookies she had put out.

When enough time had passed that I felt she was deliberately trying to make me uncomfortable, I cleared my throat. “What time will my father be home?” I don’t know why I said this. I wanted, I suppose, to remind her that I had a right to be there.

“Your father?” she said. She put down her cup on the table as if the weight or the heat of it was suddenly too much.

“Yes,” I said. “I know he said he was going to Ivalo today.” “Yes, this is true, but—” She slowed her sentence to a halt.

“Excuse me,” she said.

She moved into the hallway. Her walk was wide-stanced, but not as absurd as I had imagined. I heard her pick up the

phone and say my name. When she hung up, she went to the bathroom and ran the water. I finished my tea and scratched Pia’s ears
.
Could he really not have told her that he and Olivia had had a daughter?

Eero was home in minutes. With two long strides, he was in the living room. He pulled a chair close to me, sat down, and rested his clasped hands on the table. He looked distressed.

“Oh, child,” he said. “What does your mother tell you about your father? Who does she say he is?”

I told him that she had told me Richard, her second husband, was my father. But my birth certificate had disclosed the truth: that it was he, Eero.

He said something to himself in his own language. And then he looked at me. “Come with me to the church.”

We walked out the door without saying good-bye to Kirsi, who, I gathered, was still in the bathroom. I started to ask Eero a question, but he looked out of sorts, mumbling something. He was, I realized, praying.

We sat in the front pew, and he told me a story, a nasty fairy tale with no moral. In the story, an American woman traveled to Kautokeino, near the town of Masi, to protest the building of a dam that would destroy a Sami village. It was winter and dark, and late one afternoon, while the woman was crossing the frozen Alta River, she was raped.