Marion extended her coffee cup to her brother to buy time to think, but Alvar simply said yes. Apparently Anita hadn’t mentioned getting fired or her new job at Shear Magic. That wasn’t unusual; people were always ashamed to lose their jobs, even these days, and Anita definitely wouldn’t have wanted to explain her new work to this crowd. The speeches during the reception all recounted memories of summers at the old house in the country and other such drivel. They had little to do with Anita’s real life. Marion felt the irritation smoldering in her breast flare again. People who didn’t know Anita shouldn’t be seeing her off. Anita would have hated an event like this. She would have wanted wine and dancing and ABBA. And Helena, not Lambert. As the priest spoke at the grave, Lambert had whispered to Marion that they’d worried for nothing, everything was going fine. No one brought up Helena, and no one seemed to remember Lambert, let alone his children, Marion and Alvar. Time had done its work.
“We had no way to know that Anita was dealing with anything like this,” Margit continued.
“Depression can be treacherous,” Alvar agreed.
“You didn’t notice anything either?”
“Maybe Anita was a bit more withdrawn lately,” Alvar said, turning to Marion for confirmation. She would have to say something. But she couldn’t. She fumbled in her pockets for a tissue but couldn’t find any unused. Alvar handed her a napkin. Marion pressed it to her eyes.
“Anita was never very social,” Margit said. “I should have called more often. I should have made her tell me how she was doing.”
“How is Norma holding up?” Alvar asked. “This must be hardest on her.”
“Norma is so much like her mother. She keeps things to herself.”
“If there’s any way we can help…”
“Thank you. I’ll remember that,” Margit said. “I’d like to talk to some of Anita’s other co-workers, but I just don’t recognize any of them.” She then reported how she’d called the switchboard at the post office to ask them to let everyone know about Anita’s funeral, but the woman who answered the phone hadn’t known Anita.
“The post office has so much turnover these days,” Alvar said.
The conversation was beginning to move in a bothersome direction. Marion would let her brother handle the rest. She edged away, and Alvar gave a small nod as he continued to pour coffee. Margit seemed to have forgotten all about looking for Anita’s co-workers by the time they reached the second guest with an empty cup. The coffeepot had been a cunning move on Alvar’s part, allowing him to circulate naturally through the entire group.
The men of the family still stood around as they had in the cemetery, stiff and uncomfortable in their suits, hands clasped behind their backs. Lambert had done the same. It was a masculine way to express piety. But it didn’t fit Lambert, least of all at Anita’s funeral. It seemed false. As Marion moved among the guests, words flitted by her that expressed shock and confusion, lamentation that no one had sensed anything—as if any of them could have, given how few people had even seen Anita since she moved to Helsinki. Marion didn’t understand why this crowd had shown up. Perhaps to assuage their guilt at having lost touch or in order to be able to gossip to the other people in the village about the tragedy that had befallen the Naakka family. People’s reaction to violent death was always the same. They were hypocritical but full of curiosity, and the rumors would continue for decades, especially if the death couldn’t be explained with rationality but rather its lack. Marion would still try to reach the girl, but then this charade would be over and she would leave.
Norma climbed out of the car, ripping the scopolamine patches from behind her ears and inside her elbows, and lit a cigarette. She would throw these clothes with their cemetery smell into the backyard trash bin, cut away the sorrow of the day, and open the bottle of red wine she’d stashed in the kitchen cupboard to make waiting for tomorrow morning more bearable. She just had to open the gate and enter. Over the past few weeks, that step had become the most difficult.
Twelve years before, everything had been different. The same gate had welcomed her and her mother, opening as if by itself—their move to the city had felt like the best decision ever. Norma had just received her graduation cap when they left behind the Naakka home and the oppressive village community surrounding it. They’d found perfect apartments in the same building, considering it such a stroke of luck that they celebrated by riding from one end of the metro line to the other and back again.
Twelve years later that symbol of urban life had ridden right over Norma’s mother, one day after she returned from a vacation to Thailand. Norma couldn’t help wondering whether she could have stopped it. Would she have picked up on some sign of her mother’s mental state if she’d called that night? If she’d climbed those few extra stairs to her apartment?
Instead she’d spent her evening out with an occasional lover. During those hours her mother had sent one final message to Norma: Dinner tomorrow? I have presents! Norma hadn’t read it until the morning. Even if her mother had called, she wouldn’t have answered. She’d needed to forget the mood at work after spending the last week watching the expressions of the managers and the executives as they slipped down the stairwell. The janitor, who was always in the know, had begun avoiding the smoking spot, which was a sign that the negotiations were not going well. The thought of having to rehash all that with her mother as soon as she returned home made Norma anxious. Instead she had focused on her glass, a forgettable man, and emptying her mind. She would see her mother the next day.
—
When Norma received the call at work, she thought it had something to do with the labor negotiations and hurried to the conference room, ready to show off her best qualities. But what she found was a pair of police officers. The female officer’s hair smelled of birch shampoo, healthy living, and high doses of vitamin C. Norma’s locks curled tighter, and the thought flashed through her mind that she was going to survive the cutbacks—no one would fire a person who had just lost her mother in a tragic accident. Later this embarrassed her. In that moment she should have been thinking anything else.
News spread instantly through the building, and her purse filled with crisis hotline cards. Her closest co-worker whispered about an article she’d read in the paper, according to which the metro hired only drivers who could survive seeing someone throw herself on the tracks, because it always happened sooner or later. This reminded Norma that the train operator had been the last person to see her mother alive. Her mother’s last second, last step, last breath. Probably everything had happened so quickly that the driver hadn’t registered any of it. But that person should have been Norma, not a train operator, not the perfect strangers on the platform.
—
When the old woman’s gaze came to rest on Marion, Marion realized she had made a mistake. Confusion parted like a curtain as the old woman stood up with surprising agility and attempted to spit at her. The priest standing nearby jumped, and heads turned toward Elli Naakka. After a moment of silence, everyone began covering up the embarrassing incident with the clinking of coffee cups, spooning more food onto their plates.
“Maybe she thought you were Helena,” Alvar said.
Her brother had appeared unobserved at her side and began leading Marion, who stood frozen in place, toward the door of the restaurant.
Marion’s mouth was dry, and her hands trembled. This was exactly why she didn’t want to see anyone who remembered Helena. “I don’t look that much like her,” she whispered.
“Of course not, and no one else here would connect you to her.” Alvar brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Put it out of your mind. Anita’s mother has dementia.”
But Elli Naakka’s gaze was sharp and full of accusation. She did understand she was at her daughter’s funeral; she blamed Helena and wanted to say that this never would have happened if not for Helena’s deranged presence in Anita’s life. No, Marion knew she was letting her imagination run away with her. Elli Naakka di
dn’t understand what had happened. Marion had approached the old woman only so she could tell Lambert that she’d tried at least. She’d been sure she couldn’t get anything out of Elli Naakka, that the old woman wouldn’t even recognize her.
“Try to calm down. Remember why we came here. Is there anyone you remember seeing with Anita?” Alvar asked.
Marion shook her head. They were spying on Anita’s funeral, and that was sick. Marion glanced at her brother’s pupils. Normal. Only the slightest tension in the wrinkles around his eyes revealed that her brother must have recognized someone he’d fought with as a child, maybe someone who’d chanted Crazy Helena. And yet he was still able to be here sober and converse with these people politely. After Marion left, Alvar would join the ring of smokers outside, passing around the flask in his pocket and creating a natural connection with the men of the family. He would probably be able to find out everything they needed. Lambert would be pleased and give his son another bonus. Marion never got those, unless you counted having her own salon.
Alvar noticed his sister’s fingers tearing a napkin and took the shreds from her. The floor looked as if a molting chicken had been walking around.
“Do you need anything?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Give your own eulogy for Anita later at home. I’ll tell Lambert you did your best here.”
The window was open: street dust covered the sill and had blown onto the clothes lying on the couch. Margit’s shirts covered the pile of Norma’s mother’s dresses. The dishes on the counter were Margit’s, not Norma’s mother’s. The disk in the CD player was Suvi Teräsniska, one of Margit’s. The smell of Shalimar had been replaced by an imitation scent. The apartment no longer felt like her mother’s home, and Norma began to sense that she’d made a mistake allowing her aunt to ensconce herself here and handle all the funeral arrangements. She had accepted the offered help, because after one attempt she hadn’t even been able to go into the apartment. The sight she met on the threshold was unbearable: the apartment looked as if her mother were simply out running an errand and would be back at any moment. That was why she’d let her aunt find her mother’s favorite dress, let her remove the ABBA concert ticket attached to the edge of the mirror, let her take the Shalimar off the dressing table. Margit collected all the things her sister would have wanted in her casket, even though she didn’t know anything about her.
Only Norma knew why the Shalimar should go with her mother. In the hospital after Norma’s birth, her mother had awoken to the smells of bergamot and lemon and had suddenly been utterly, completely sure that everything would be fine. They would survive, despite it all. They would survive together, just the two of them, and they wouldn’t need Reijo or anyone else. Later her mother had recognized the scent in the village drugstore and purchased the perfume, ignoring the cost. This was the smell of the greatest turning point in her life. Norma lit a cigarette. She alone had let her aunt foul the scene of the crime—when she noticed herself thinking of her mother’s home as a crime scene, she was startled and swept her hair aside as if wanting to brush the thought away. As she tried desperately to find a rational reason for her mother’s actions, she strained to see mystery where there was none. Max Lambert’s appearance probably had a perfectly natural explanation.
Norma lifted the lid of her mother’s laptop, then closed it again. The computer wouldn’t contain anything from her mother’s youth, which was where the hunt had to go. All the photos from when she was younger were in an album in the closet, but now that shelf was empty. Finally the photo album turned up on the nightstand, blank spots on its previously full pages. Margit had made it here first, too. According to her aunt, Norma’s mother hadn’t left her a letter, and Norma had trusted Margit, but now she didn’t know why she had. Her mother hadn’t even told Margit about being fired, let alone about her new job. Margit didn’t know Norma’s mother, not as Norma did. She wouldn’t have known where to look, and it was beginning to seem that Norma’s laziness might have led her aunt to destroy some piece of evidence connected to Lambert. Norma nearly called Margit to press her about the photographs. She even took out her phone but then threw it back in her purse. Her anger was unreasonable. Margit had a right to a few pictures. She had gone to so much trouble, taking care of the funeral and handling the rent for June and July so there wouldn’t be any rush clearing out the apartment and she would have a place to sleep if Norma needed her support a little longer.
Norma shoved the computer into her bag, along with the bank codes she found on the table. Then she lit another cigarette and began leafing through the album. Her aunt had wanted shots that included herself and Norma’s grandmother, rejecting photos of Helena and Norma’s mother as young women, or of Helena with her children holding cotton candy at an amusement park. In the pictures, Norma recognized Helena’s daughter, Marion, who as a teenager looked like a young Helena. The madness hadn’t taken root in Helena until later. The Helena of the photo album had a direct gaze and a dulcet smile.
Norma turned to the final page and was about to stand up when she noticed a photo of two couples enjoying a jovial summer day: there were her mother and Reijo Ross leaning against each other looking at the camera. Next to them a younger version of the man Norma met today had his arm around Helena. Under the portrait was a Polaroid snapshot. In it a later edition of the same man smiled alongside Marion, holding a baby in his arms. On the back of the photo was an inscription written in a shaky hand. It was signed by Alvar. He had taken the photo himself and asked Norma’s mother to visit soon.
Marion’s phone chimed as a message arrived, but it was a client, not the girl as she had hoped. Marion’s texts, the greeting she’d left on voice mail, and her emails had all met the same fate: the girl remained silent.
“I have a meeting in two hours,” Alla said.
Marion looked away from her phone and grabbed the tape remover. Alla didn’t inquire about the funeral, instead feigning indifference as she had since she stepped through the door of the salon, as if she knew that Marion hadn’t learned anything. It was her way of rubbing salt in the wound, of demonstrating her position and authority.
“I haven’t tried this hair yet in such warm weather. Do you think that will make any difference?”
“It’ll stand up to anything: chlorinated water, diving, Vietnam,” Marion replied. “Not a single client who’s gone to the tropics has complained. Some swimmers have even stopped wearing caps.”
The Hanoi trip was awhile off, and Alla’s hair was in good shape. Still, she had wanted new extensions right now, on the day of Anita’s funeral. It was an obvious attempt to torment Marion, made worse by the way Alla kept chattering about the quality of various weaves and current styling trends.
Of course, Alla had already talked about the funeral with her beloved husband, but if Lambert had extracted anything from the girl, Alla wouldn’t have been so calm. Or maybe Lambert sent Alla to gauge Marion’s behavior, to ensure she was staying on the rails and could still handle her work. Maybe that was it. Maybe it wasn’t intentional harassment, it just felt like it.
“Show me the reservation book,” Alla said.
Marion handed her the book. Alla hummed in approval. Everyone was enthralled with the Ukrainian hair, and even Alla’s girlfriends had switched to Shear Magic to get it. Marion didn’t dare touch their reservations, which made rearranging Anita’s appointments even more difficult. She didn’t want to move reservations related to weddings; Shear Magic was responsible for the success of those celebrations, and they weren’t going to let that slip. But for other clients, she had been forced to find new times, some even months away. Still, they were hard pressed. Tonight the final client would come at nine in the evening, the first tomorrow morning at six. She wasn’t going to survive the wedding season without help.
Alla continued inspecting the reservation book as if she were reading the Bible. For Lambert, the revenue at the salon was small change, so his attention to its profits was purely s
uperficial. They didn’t care about the happiness of the customers as Marion did, and Marion was never going to find another apprentice like Anita, let alone an experienced professional. No one could soothe a woman fretting over her hair as well as Anita could. She had been a born hairdresser with a sixth sense for topics people didn’t want to discuss. Contrary to Marion’s fears, during her first days at work, Anita hadn’t brought up Helena or anything else about the past. She hadn’t even commented on the way fate had brought them back together after nearly thirty years. When Anita stepped through the door of Shear Magic the first time, she didn’t exclaim how much Marion resembled her mother or lay a single word of guilt on Marion for not visiting Helena. Longing stung like a barb in Marion’s chest. No one had understood her like Anita.
Alla flicked the names in the reservation book with her nails, then placed the book in her lap.
“How much more Ukrainian do we have in stock?”
“Enough for a week. Two if we mix it with Russian.”
Alla sighed and glanced at her phone, which was flashing again on silent, angling it so Marion would be sure to see who was trying to reach her. The Japanese woman again. Alla dropped the phone onto the salon cape that covered her lap. Maybe she wanted to emphasize the fact that she didn’t speak with important clients when Marion was listening. Or she wanted to demonstrate her own power: Alla would answer when it suited her, even when it was the Japanese woman.
“What are you planning to offer after that? Max and I were just discussing it. You can have a week. Within one week, you have to fix your mess.”
Marion felt like grabbing the scissors and plunging them into Alla’s neck. The desire was so strong that for a moment Marion had to grab the tool cart and squeeze it tight. Alla had influence over the clan’s business and also over what Marion’s future would look like.