Stepping (15 page)

Well, hooray for that, I thought.

We talked some more about Adelaide and the girls. Charlie thought that if Adelaide did anything else so dramatically unpleasant he would get a court order to take custody of the girls. But he thought that with the help of the Ascrofts and Adelaide’s mother things would improve. Adelaide had been living in Hadley for over a year now, and the Ascrofts had said that she had been still feeling so shy and bitter toward men in general and toward women because they married men that she hadn’t made friends or even dated. She had insisted on the Ascroft family spending Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, Easter Sunday, the Fourth of July, and so on and so on, with her. She had fixed marvelous meals. It was as if those holidays with their ritual food had provided the only sense of stability and community that she had. The Ascrofts had felt guilty, Charlie said, because for the past few months they had been trying to pull away from Adelaide. She had spent too many Saturdays and Sundays at their house, had invited them too often to hers; they had lost a feeling of family and had wanted more privacy. And Adelaide had become redundant, boring; too quick to find fault with men; bitter, so acidly bitter that they had turned away from her to keep from being singed. Now they realized that she needed help, really needed help, and they were going to do all they could. Mrs. Fowler was going to do all she could. The psychologist was going to do all he could, one hour a week for eighteen weeks. Charlie had signed an agreement to pay for that many sessions. Surely Adelaide would perk up, especially since she cared for her daughters so much.

I was nearly sick myself when I heard how much Charlie would have to pay the psychologist. It meant that our lives—Charlie’s and mine—would be dreadfully austere
for the next four months.

“You don’t
have
to pay for her treatment,” I said, and I worked hard to put the question pleasantly and reasonably instead of in one big wail. “Why are you doing it?”

“For the girls,” Charlie said. “They are
girls
. And they love their mother and need her there, healthy and stable, to give them love and a good model of a woman. It wouldn’t help if I dragged them away from her. They need their mother first. The only way I can help Caroline and Cathy is to help Adelaide. To try to give her back to them since I’ve taken myself away.”

“I see now,” I said, and I did. I admired Charlie for it. I thought he was a good man. I knew I was not a good woman; a selfish beast within kept screaming, Get Adelaide out of my life! I can’t take this anymore!

It was wonderful when the plane trip ended. Once we set foot in Kansas City,
our
territory, I felt myself expand. For four months we would be poor, but we would be
alone
, Charlie and I, and he would teach and write and I would teach and study and we would have books and each other and still a few trips to the farm. We would be in our own world again, and I knew I would survive the phone calls about Adelaide and her health. When I saw my beautiful city again, and our small lovely house, and my books and papers, and the bed I shared with Charlie, I knew I could survive anything if I could just have those.

* * *

Today was a lovely, bright, sunny fall day here in Helsinki. An unusual day. For the past two weeks we have had rain, gloom, heavy gray skies, and then, oddly enough, clear starlit nights. I usually stand on our tiny balcony after Adam and Lucy are asleep and look out at the cold clear sky and hiss, “For crying out loud, why can’t you get it right! Be clear in the
day
and cloudy at
night
!” Actually, I think the Finns may prefer the gray sky; it goes better with their color scheme. Things—coats, dresses, boots, scarves, bags—are of an excellent quality here, but drab. The Finns wear black, gray, dark brown, dark blue. I feel like a freak as I hurry along to the grocery store in my pale blue ski parka with its red embroidery and white furry trimmed hood.

What is it about Finland that makes the Finns so dreadfully dull? The polite word is shy, but it’s something more. It seems a philosophical choice. Three families we’ve been with now, and all the adults have been pleasant and interesting, but all the children seem neurotically reserved. They cry if Adam or Lucy accidentally touches his or her knee as we ride, four abreast, stuffed in the back of a Volvo. They stand almost motionless next to the security of their mother for two hours at a time while my children, tired of trying to get a response, play with the Finnish child’s toys. Perhaps Finnish children are so shy because Finns don’t like children. Finns like things nice and quiet and clean and tidy, and God knows children are anything but that. Also, children, young babies, indicate that people have been engaging in sexual acts. People have been making love. People have been screwing … fucking. I think screwing is still frowned upon here in this Lutheran society. Oh ye sinners. Heavy, heavy. The other night at a party, where only adults were gathered, Charlie asked, “Where is the red-light district in Helsinki? Is it worth seeing?” And all of the people in the room, six other intelligent, sophisticated, grown-up Finns, stopped talking and stared at Charlie with a mixture of embarrassed amusement and serious, reproving shock.

“Well, the one in Amsterdam was so gay,” I offered, trying to appeal to their sense of sophistication, wanting somehow to bail Charlie out. And they did stop staring at Charlie, but only to look with bland silent disapproval at me. “The red-light district in Amsterdam is even on the tourist guide maps,” I continued, smiling. There was no response; no one said, “Ah yes, I’ve been there, too.” I felt compelled to make it clear that Charlie and I were not crazy American sex fiends. I had a bright idea; I would mention Charlie’s daughters, who were young and innocent. Then they would understand how unlewd Charlie’s question had been. I wanted the staring Finns to know that we—Charlie and I—all Americans—were
good
people. “I took Charlie’s daughters to the Amsterdam red-light district one afternoon. It was a Sunday, and Charlie had left for a conference in Barcelona, and his daughters were living with us that semester, and I said to them, ‘Where would you like to go? What would you like to see in Amsterdam?’ And they said the red-light district. They had read about it in the tour guides. I was worried about taking them there because Caroline was seventeen and Cathy was fourteen, and Charlie was gone, and I didn’t know if he would approve, and their mother might have
thought I was damaging their innocent minds. So I tried to get out of it. I said, ‘If you cook the dinner and do all the dishes tonight, I’ll take you there.’ You see, they hated cooking and doing dishes so much I thought they’d never agree. Well, they did. And we had great hamburgers and they cleaned the kitchen and I took them to the red-light district. It was a lovely sunny Sunday afternoon. We walked up and down and around the streets, looking in the windows. I must say that the people on the streets stared at us, too; I was seven months pregnant with Adam then, and I am short and dark, while Caroline and Cathy are tall and blond. People always stared at us in Amsterdam. Well, it was fun—there were the Algerian sailors, swarthy little men in dark peacoats with the collars turned up, darting into the ladies’ doors, and the ladies would pull down their heavy shades: occupied for a few minutes. But there were shops selling baby clothes and pastries or fruit and pleasant residences mixed in with the prostitutes’ apartments, and all sorts of people passed us on the streets, old gentlemen with dogs, mommies and children. It was really quite pleasant, even gay.”

I stopped talking, breathless, somehow hopeful. I was exhausted and a bit embarrassed; I could only hope I had made them understand. Everyone stared at me a moment. Then, “I don’t believe Helsinki has a district as such,” one Finnish man replied finally. “This is a port city, there are probably some places where sailors go.” He said it straight-faced, solemnly, then turned away. The others gave me one last somber look, then also turned away. I took a big swig of my drink. Thank God when I looked at Charlie I saw laughter in his eyes.

Perhaps it is just talking about screwing the Finns don’t like. I’m sure they do it and like it; they’re human after all. It’s probably very complicated. The Finns don’t have what one would call a rip-roaring sense of humor, and making love does involve the ridiculous: sweat, grunts, insane gymnastic positions. And it does lead to children; here we are at children again. Yesterday a Finnish mother who had lived four years in the States said to me, “The next time a Finn is rude to me on a bus because I have two small children with me, I am going to say, ‘All right, mister, just wait a few years till your taxes are eighty percent because there won’t be many people in Finland because no one has children because Finns hate them so.’ ” It is true that the Finnish families seem limited to just two children; there are few large families. Social censure must be an effective
contraceptive device.

I wonder why they are this way, reserved, quiet, drab, gray, shy. Is it their climate, so cold, their Lutheran religion, so harsh, their heritage and proximity to Russia? Now and then, on good days, when it isn’t raining, I play Hansel and Gretel outside with Lucy and Adam. First I am the mother and I send my children off to the woods to get nuts and berries, and then I hide behind a tree and become the witch. Hansel/Adam and Gretel/Lucy come walking by giggling in anticipation, and I jump out at them, shrieking, “Hee-hee-hee, such nice plump little children, I’m going to eat you up!” Laughing like a witch, hands curved to indicate long sharp nails, I chase them around the trees and sidewalk and catch them and nibble at their necks while they dissolve with laughter. The children love this game; they want to play it again and again. But the Finns walking by always look on with frowns instead of smiles. It seems to annoy them to see us having such silly fun.

And just last week Charlie and I went to see a Finnish opera,
The Last Temptations
. It is about a Finnish minister who lived in the 1800s, and the subtitle of the opera was “despair, doubts, pride and delusions.” The music was overwhelmingly fine and powerful, modern. But the scenery was stark; the costumes, like Finnish everyday dress, were black, gray, dull brown, dark blue; the women’s hair was pulled back in severe buns; and the plot was grim. Paavo, the minister, is in despair. His young son dies. The village turns against Paavo and his second wife, Riitta. Paavo dies. I was wearing a bright red dress and I had a wild desire to jump up onstage and start singing and dancing the cancan.

Of course I didn’t. But I do so miss a sense of gaiety here. Everyone is so restrained and responsible here. Even Charlie. He’s so busy with all his lectures, and sometimes he isn’t home until late, and I am often stuck here, alone, while the gray sky turns black at five, trying to entertain my two children, who have here no television, no friends, and few toys. Perhaps that is why I dream of the past. Perhaps that is why I dream about Stephen and secretly smile as November twenty-ninth grows closer.

Four

It’s almost Halloween. Last night I spent three entire hours making popcorn balls and wrapping them in clear plastic and tying the plastic with orange paper bows. Saturday we are all invited to a Halloween party, and I promised I’d help decorate and bring the popcorn balls. Popcorn balls, what a job! Perhaps especially difficult here in this inefficient apartment, where I have so few pots and pans and utensils and no measuring cups or candy thermometer. It seemed to take hours for the syrup to reach the hard-ball stage and I thought: What on earth am I doing here stirring over a hot stove late at night like a cranky witch? Adam and Lucy are only four and two; they don’t
know
that popcorn balls are a customary Halloween treat. But after all,
I
know, and I like tradition, ritual, ritual food, and it eases the ache of homesickness a bit to celebrate as if we were at home. They don’t have Halloween here in Finland, but a Finnish woman who lived in the States for a few years enjoyed the custom so much that she has decided to hold Halloween in her own home, every year, for friends and their children. So I spent three hours last night making popcorn balls, and actually I enjoyed it. When I was rolling the balls together, hands coated with butter, picking up the hot candied corn, which I had spread out in the three metal baking pans, I even smiled to myself and dreamed a bit. In just a few years, I thought, Adam and Lucy will be able to help me. Last night they were tucked away safely in their beds, out of the way of the possible harm of bubbling hot syrup. But in a few years—a picture came into my mind. An October evening back home. Crisp air and golden leaves. Adam and Lucy and I in the kitchen, working and laughing together, cheating and eating the sweetened popcorn as we worked. Adam would be interested in the candy thermometer, he already likes things like that, and back home I have a candy thermometer. Lucy would be talking—even now she talks incessantly—about school, and the bats and pumpkins and witches her class would make out of orange and black construction paper. We all three would have butter on our hands, we all three would roll up the crackly balls. Perhaps we would be making them for our own party. Somewhere—in the next room, probably, in front of a fire of applewood—a big dog would be sleeping.
After making the popcorn balls we would clean up the kitchen—the children would cheerfully help; it was after all my fantasy—and then go in to sit by the fire. The children would lie next to the dog, stroking his black silky coat (he would be a Newfoundland), and I would tell them a Halloween story, perhaps “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” and we would all drink apple cider.

How funny that I didn’t fantasize a man around somewhere, in an easy chair by the fire, reading the newspaper, or even in the kitchen, joking with us and helping.

Perhaps I didn’t want to spoil my lovely dream by having to decide just which man would be in the chair. Charlie? I don’t know. Stephen? I don’t know. I do know I certainly didn’t imagine Stephen’s children, Carrie and Joe, in the picture.