Sisterchicks on the Loose (14 page)

I’m not sure I fully grasped what Penny was saying through her tears. But I agreed. “You know what, Penny? You’re absolutely right. This is a miracle. All of it. The lost luggage, Tuija, and her husband. Tomorrow you’re going to meet your aunt.”

“I know!”

“I think this calls for something extra special for dinner. We need to celebrate!”

“What did you have in mind?” Penny ran a finger under each eye and blinked away her final tears.

“I’m not sure yet.” I scanned the menu.

“Here it is!” Penny said. “Reindeer.”

I closed my menu with a dramatic sigh. “How will I ever explain to my Joshie that I ate one of Santa’s helpers?”

Penny gave me an odd look, and then, catching on to my silly joke, she burst out laughing. “That has to be the dumbest joke you’ve ever told! Besides, it’s reindeer, not elves. We’re not going to eat Santa’s little helpers!”

I laughed way too loud for a forty-one-year-old woman who was dining in a nice restaurant. An impolite snort followed my guffaw.

Penny looked at me with both eyebrows raised and then laughed. It was a mixture of nervous laughter and light-headed giddiness. She covered her mouth in an effort to quiet herself, but it didn’t help. The laughter leaked out. She couldn’t stop.

All during dinner we kept laughing. Penny would cover her mouth with her napkin, try hard to restrain herself for a few minutes, and then
boom
, the laughter bomb would explode all over again. Her shoulders shook, and the tears tumbled to the table.

I gave up trying to appear sophisticated and hold in my companion laughter. I allowed one shoulder-flinching chuckle to leak out, and it was all over. I couldn’t stop laughing either. Everything was funny. Funny and miraculous and sparkling.

I suppose the reindeer meat was good. I was too busy trying not to choke from our laughter to notice how it tasted. If I remember correctly, it was a little tough. I liked the mashed potatoes and the lingonberry sauce that came with the specialty dinner.

Penny said her reindeer tasted like a wild Canadian moose and that got me laughing because I was sure she had an equally wild Canadian story to explain why she knew what moose tasted like.

“No,” Penny protested. “I’ve never tasted moose steak. Just moose jerky. However, I have smelled a wild Canadian moose from rather close up, and this meat tastes the same as that moose smelled.”

I attempted to say, “Oh, Penny, you and your bionic nose.” What came out was “Oh, Benny, you and your myopic toes.” That sent us over the edge. I thought Penny was going to fall off her chair.

I’m sure the few other guests in the restaurant that evening
were convinced we were drunk. All we were drinking was mineral water. Penny said some giggle enzyme in the reindeer meat must have got us going.

I felt younger and freer than I’d felt even when I was young and free. Laughter, being a powerful elixir, can cloud one’s reasoning. I secretly—very secretly—hoped Penny would bring up the taxi driver’s suggested disco because the way I felt right then, I think I would have agreed to go with her.

However, Penny wasn’t thinking of discos. She was thinking of Marketta and kept saying things like, “I can’t believe she’s alive!”

We returned to our room and pulled out the tour book to see how far it was to Marketta’s town of Porvoo. Only twenty miles. Our trip tomorrow would be shorter than we first imagined.

While Penny organized her outfit for the morning, I called airport baggage claim again. Still no word on my luggage.

I asked about filling out the paperwork to be reimbursed for my loss. The clerk told me I had completed all the necessary paperwork, but they had one more day of checking for the luggage before they could file the claim. If the suitcase never appeared, the compensation check would be sent to my permanent address.

Donning the hotel robe as I climbed into bed, I settled in for a cozy night’s sleep. My jaw hurt from laughing. I kept stretching my mouth open and closed.

“What do you think Marketta will be like?” Penny had scooped up her thick, cocoa hair in a clip so that her tresses appeared to spout out of the top of her head like a little fountain.

“She will be wonderful, I’m sure,” I said. “What do you know about her?”

“Not much. She sent me handmade birthday cards when I was little, and she sent Dave and me a small painting of a mountain lake as a wedding present. You know the picture I’m talking about? When we were in the yellow house it hung on the wall on the left side as you walked in the front door.”

“Oh yes, I remember. It had a frame made out of birch.”

“Yes. That was from Marketta. I have two photographs of her. I should have brought them with me, I suppose. The first one is of my mom and Marketta holding up a fish. I think my mom was about twelve.”

“I’ve seen that one. Didn’t you used to have it on the dresser in your bedroom?”

“Yep. The other one of Marketta you probably never saw. It’s a family photo that came with her Christmas card the year after Dave and I married. She looked so much like my mom in that picture. I was going to frame it, but I never did.”

“Just think.” I propped myself up in bed with the pillows under my elbow. “Tomorrow you’re going to meet her face-to-face.”

“I know. I didn’t think this actually would happen.”

“You really didn’t?”

“No, I really didn’t.”

“Even on the airplane when you were so lighthearted about everything and telling Monique that it was all going to work out? Didn’t you believe your own prophecy?”

Penny slowly shook her head. “I wanted to hope, but this whole trip and finding my aunt is much bigger than what I thought God would do for us.”

“What did you think God would do? I mean, why did you still want to come to Finland after Marketta’s letter came back
undelivered? What did you think we would do while we were here?”

“See things. Smell things. Eat things. Pretty much everything we’ve been doing. I wanted to be in the land of my mother’s birth to see her world.”

Penny gave her answer with such feeling, it sounded as if it were a line from a play. A line she had practiced enough to deliver it on cue with finesse.

“Well, it’s a good thing we came now because Marketta might not have been around if we waited until all our kids graduated from high school.”

“Exactly. And who’s to say that both of us will still be around eight or ten years from now?”

“We will be,” I said confidently.

Penny grew quiet. She stretched out on top of her bed and lay still with her head on her arm. “You’re changing, Sharon.”

“I am? Why do you say that? How am I changing?”

“Subtle little ways. You’re becoming more sure of yourself, and that’s making you daring and courageous.”

“You mean like buying blue underwear?”

“Yes, that and other things like the way you stuck with this trip even though Ben broke his wrist. You used to be more passive.”

“More of a martyr? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No, I don’t think you ever played the role of Suffering Sue. You spent years graciously stepping back and putting your personal preferences on hold so you could accommodate others. Now you’re getting more adventuresome. I think it’s a good thing.”

“Thanks to you and this trip. If you hadn’t invited me to come with you, I wouldn’t be more adventuresome. I’m sure I
haven’t said it enough yet, but thank you, my friend.”

“You are welcome, my friend. You know what else I think?” Penny sat up and looked directly at me, as if she were bestowing a blessing. “I think the second half of your life will be much fuller than the first half.”

I thought of Penny’s earlier admonition for me to drop my bucket deep into the well of unexplored possibilities and to clothe myself with strength and dignity. Somehow that image linked in my mind with the stained glass picture of Christ’s disciples casting their nets on the other side of the boat.

“What was it you said the other day, Penny, about our lives being full of shimmering bits of glory? I’m sure the second half of life will be rich for both of us.” I was saying this to a woman who had lived a whole lot of life before she even turned twenty. Even so, I believed the future would be bright for the two of us.

Penny sighed, as if she were contemplating my comment. She didn’t respond.

“Can’t you see us on our return trip to Helsinki when we’re eighty?” I painted a picture of a couple of white-haired, feisty chicks in white tennis shoes. “Of course, by then you and I will be wearing hot pink underwear with sparkles because, you know, we’ll need all the help we can get in the glamour department.”

Penny didn’t laugh the way she had at dinner.

“Hey, I thought my joke was pretty funny.”

“It was.”

“Penny, what’s going on with you? Turn this way. I want to see your eyebrows.”

“You don’t need to see my eyebrows. I’m not hiding some surprise up my sleeve. It’s just that …”

“What?”

“I’m forty-six, Sharon.”

“I know,” I said sympathetically. I flashed back to the night of Kaylee’s concert when I realized I was fully forty-one. “Reality hits pretty hard every now and then, doesn’t it?”

Penny sat up straight and with precise words said, “My mother was forty-six years old when her heart suddenly stopped on an otherwise uneventful afternoon.”

We sat for a moment in shared contemplation.

“You’re healthy and strong and very much alive, Penny. I don’t think you should assume that your heart will suddenly stop just because you’re forty-six.”

“Of course you don’t think I should assume that. All your close relatives are still living. Your genetic disposition is full of promises of longevity.”

I thought about my husband, our children, Jeff’s extended family, my extended family, and suddenly I realized how rich I was in people. Penny was right. All of them were still alive. All of them were in my daily life. I never had considered how Penny’s not being connected to any blood relatives could create a hole within her heart.

We talked deep into the night in our extravagantly comfortable hotel room. Penny suggested we pray together.

I fell asleep in the middle of her prayer. My dreams floated right on the surface of my sleep, like water lilies on a pond. The floating dreams were of Marketta. I pictured her as a round, cheerful woman just like Mrs. Coates, my fourth grade teacher, who used to call me “Little Lamb” and put gold stars on all my homework papers.

The Aunt Marketta of my dream lived in a gingerbread cottage and offered sweets to us. Penny was popping the candies into her mouth while I hid mine in my pocket because I
thought I needed to leave a trail so we could find our way home.

I don’t usually remember my dreams, but that one was so close to the surface and so vivid that I woke the next morning feeling as if this hotel room and my adventure with Penny were my real life. Jeff and the kids seemed like a pleasant memory from another time and another place.

While Penny took a shower, I tried to call my family but only got the answering machine. I waited for the beep and said, “Hi. It’s Mom. Everything is fine. Actually, it’s great. We found Penny’s aunt, and we’re going to meet her today. I love you guys. Bye.”

Hanging up, I realized I hadn’t said, “I miss you.”

Do I miss them?

No, I decided that at that moment, I honestly didn’t miss them. Not right then, at least. And I didn’t feel guilty about not missing them, either. I couldn’t remember ever feeling this way. I knew the homesickness with its spiny twinges of responsibility would return eventually, but for now I was a free woman.

Just then the phone beside me rang, and I jumped like a guilty cat. Perhaps I wasn’t as unencumbered as I thought I was.

A
woman’s voice
on the other end of the phone asked, “Is this Penny?”

“No, this is Sharon.”

“I am Marketta, Penny’s aunt.”

“Marketta, hello! Penny is excited about meeting you today.”

“This is why I called. Do you know what time you will be coming?”

I told her we had a bus schedule and had talked about arriving in the early afternoon, if that was convenient for her.

“Yes, that is good. And when will you be leaving?”

“I’m not sure. Before dinner, probably.”

Marketta didn’t respond. Did I say the wrong thing?

“I mean for you to stay with me for all the days of your visit. Not just the afternoon. Is that not your plan?”

“We don’t have much of a plan,” I answered plainly and then cringed at my honesty.

“You must stay with me. I have been making my home
ready. Please tell Penny I say you must do this. You must stay with me.”

“Okay.”

Just then someone from room service knocked on the door with the breakfast Penny had ordered.

“I’ll tell Penny. We’ll come to your home early this afternoon.”

“With your suitcases!” Marketta said firmly before hanging up.

Well, at least with Penny’s suitcases
, I thought as I opened the door and motioned for the young woman to bring in our coffee and croissants. She nodded and left the tray on top of the desk.