Copper Heart (6 page)

“Oh come on. I’m not blind. Never mind, I see the bitch now.”

With that, Aniliina strode off toward the exit, where Meritta was caught up in the crowd. We couldn’t hear their exact exchange over the buzz of conversation, but it was clearly angry.

“Johnny, are you in a relationship with Meritta?” Kaisa asked suddenly, intensely, as if her life depended on his answer.

“Come off it, Kaisa. Of course not. I just—”

A high-pitched scream from Aniliina cut off Johnny’s sentence. “Eat shit, bitch!”

When we turned to look, we saw her with two fists full of Meritta’s hair, pulling as hard as she could. Aniliina’s shirt was stained with punch, as if Meritta had emptied her glass on her daughter. The chatter in the restaurant had ceased, and people stared in bewilderment at the Flöjt domestic dispute, which to a law enforcement officer looked out of hand. Forcefully pushing my way through the crowd, I shook Aniliina free of her mother. The girl was alarmingly light—she couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds.

“Get the fuck off me. I’m gonna kill that bitch,” she snarled at me.

“I’m not giving you the keys unless you bring them back,” Meritta hissed.

“Borrow one from one of your man-whores! And you let me go, goddamn it. Who do you think you are?”

“She’s a cop,” Kaisa said surprisingly loudly from just behind me. “Why won’t you bring the keys back, Aniliina?”

“I want to go for a walk in the woods.”

“I’ve got my bike. I’ll take you and I can bring the keys back to Meritta. OK?” Kaisa asked.

“If this pig will let go of me.”

With that I released Aniliina, who was still dripping punch. She put out her hand to receive the keys from her mother, then loped down the stairs with Kaisa trailing after. With a snort, Meritta shrugged, making the heart-shaped copper earring hanging from her left ear bounce, and continued her conversation with the mayor as if nothing had happened.

Suddenly feeling like I didn’t belong, I walked out onto the terrace. The tailing field at the base of the hill glowed an intense copper color in the light of the setting sun, and the small pond in the center sparkled like sweet red wine. The colors were right out
of a surrealist painting. Comparatively, the natural colors of the birch trees on the slopes of the hill where the mine buildings stood looked as if they had escaped from another piece of art entirely.

I wondered whether there was anything to what Aniliina said, whether there really was something between Meritta and Johnny. And what if there was? I wasn’t going to be jealous of a crush I had fifteen years ago, was I?

I wondered how much Meritta would charge for the paintings of Johnny. And what Antti would say if I hung one on my wall. Then I started thinking about which wall would be best. Suddenly my old bandmate Jaska appeared at my side.

“Can I offer the sheriff a drink?” he asked, pulling a bottle of cheap vodka out of his antediluvian leather jacket.

“Why not.” Tipping the bottle back, I took a good swig, wondering how many bottles of vodka just like this we had emptied together. “Table vodka”—the absolute cheapest, strongest liquor the state store sold—had always been his drink of choice.

“So, Uncle Jaska, can you tell me why Meritta and Aniliina aren’t getting along?”

Jaska took a gulp from the bottle and wiped his mouth before answering.

“Hard to say which one of them is crazier. Aniliina has that eating disorder, anorexia, I guess. And Meritta has always been horrible. If only she would have stayed in Helsinki.”

Jaska hadn’t bothered putting his party clothes on. His perennial punk rocker uniform—tight, worn-out jeans, leather jacket, and dirty sneakers—had to do for every occasion. With his dark hair now significantly receded and his beer belly hanging over his waistband, Jaska’s skinny legs made him look insect-like. When we had first seen each other again, his face was the
thing that frightened me most. It was so badly swollen that his previously cute brown eyes appeared to sink deep under folds of skin. My old classmate looked at least forty.

“What are you annoyed with her for? Didn’t your sister get you a job here?”

“Why does she always have to stick her nose in my business! Yeah, she got me a job working for nothing, wearing a tie, sitting in a little box tearing people’s tickets. I’m stuck there for at least six months since I lost my unemployment. And I haven’t been able to book any gigs lately.”

“Oh, what band are you with now?”

“I play with Johnny and those guys sometimes. And this band in Liperi wants me to join them. They play some kind of heavy metal…”

As long as I could remember, Jaska had always been in some band or another, each better than the last, and once he had almost landed a recording deal. But nothing ever came of it. Jaska’s greatest achievement seemed to be a blurry picture in the bottom-left corner of a free calendar of summer concerts that came with a subscription to
Sound
magazine.

“Johnny said you guys were talking about getting together for a jam session.” Jaska pushed the bottle at me again, but I shook my head. I was pretty sure the town’s unwritten code of conduct did not include female sheriffs appearing drunk in public. Jaska, on the other hand, drained about a quarter of the bottle, which went down without so much as a burp.

“And I sure as shit don’t want to be working for my sister’s lover even if the rest of town thinks he’s some sort of miracle man. This mine business is bullshit—I can feel it in my bones.”

“You mean that Meritta and this Kivinen guy…” For some reason this revelation delighted me.

“Have you seen his old lady? It ain’t no wonder he’s screwing around. And you know Meritta…”

“What about me?” Meritta’s orange dress appeared next to me, and I turned to see Seppo Kivinen standing behind her in his copper-hued suit. Without a word, Jaska suddenly took off running. Meritta’s derisive laughter seemed to propel him even faster down the hill.

“How drunk is he?” Meritta asked.

“How often is he sober nowadays?” I asked in return. I didn’t like Meritta laughing at him.

“Never, as far as I know. By the way, have you two met yet? Seppo Kivinen—Maria Kallio, our summer sheriff.”

Kivinen’s handshake was cold and firm. His eyes locked into mine in an attempt to appear interested. He clearly chose his topic of conversation according to his company, which in my case was the security arrangements at the mine. Before long the governor and mayor came over and I was able to escape.

I would have liked to climb back up the Tower, but the door was locked. The iron surface of the heavy door handle felt cold to the touch. A lighthearted, old-fashioned fox-trot was playing inside the restaurant, which seemed to clash with the threatening rock wall of the Tower and the unreal yellow of the hill’s gravel. I wondered about Jaska, Aniliina’s bizarre behavior, and Johnny’s tired face. I didn’t feel in a very festive mood anymore. But I marched back inside, finding Ella and Matti near the door. They seemed to be arguing over which of them should go relieve Ella’s mother from babysitting at home.

“They’re leaving tomorrow morning to drive to Tampere, and you promised I could stay for the party,” Ella said, clearly furious.

“Couldn’t she sleep at our place just as easily? I don’t want to leave yet either—”

“Well, you can call and ask!” she said before turning her attention toward me. “Maria, think carefully before you get yourself a man and have kids. Everything has to be so damn complicated!” Ella angrily fingered the brooch on her folk costume. “Men are always trying to wriggle out of promises…”

“I’ll call her and I’ll go home if she can’t stay over.” Matti’s brown velvet suit disappeared into the swarm of humanity.

“All he ever does is run around the country doing workshops and going to Artists’ Association meetings. And if he can’t come up with anything better, he’s sitting with Meritta in the Copper Cup planning their arts camp. And then the one time I’m supposed to get to have a good time, he’s like this!” Ella’s face was glowing red, and I got the impression that the root of her irritation was something other than a dispute over whose turn it was to watch their kids. “And then I had to put on this stupid getup because Viivi poured milk on the front of my only party dress.”

“Let’s get some punch. Based on the smell, there must be some sort of food here too. And then let’s do something crazy. Go ask the mayor to dance or something.” I was trying to cheer up both of us.

A few minutes later we were standing on the restaurant terrace, looking down at the crowd below and trying to decide whose head to pour punch on, when I noticed Johnny’s light-brown curls directly below us.

“Think I could hit him…”

I was already tipping my glass when Ella squealed, “Look out, Johnny!”

Johnny looked up and shouted something that didn’t carry over the blare of the music, now a waltz. He looked for the nearest stairs and started to climb up toward us.

“You two look like you’re up to no good.” Although Johnny tried to grin, his face still looked tired.

“Not me. It was Maria. She was going to dump punch on your head.”

“What the hell for?”

“Boring party. We have to spice things up somehow.”

“Let’s go dance.” Without waiting for me to reply, Johnny grabbed my wrist.

“Do I have to pour punch on someone’s head too?” Ella yelled after us.

By the time we made it downstairs, the music had switched to Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” Johnny smelled familiar, and I remembered how at one time just dancing with him had been enough to satisfy me for weeks. As Johnny’s body against mine invited me to press closer, suddenly the party ceased to be so boring. The feelings that had surged in me fifteen years ago rose to the surface, and I had no desire to resist. I had already made myself a laughingstock once because of Johnny, so why not again?

Another slow song came on. Johnny’s hand on my waist was warm and heavy, his expression relaxed. In the crush of people, we collided with Ella and Matti, who appeared to have made peace, and somewhere in the crowd I saw my mother looking at me with a puzzled expression. How was it any of her business who I danced with?

I was annoyed when another quick fox-trot came on. When we left in search of more punch, Johnny kept his arm around my waist. We snuck out of the restaurant the back way to the base of the Tower. A narrow sliver of summer moon hung next to the Tower, the sky the same bluebell color as Johnny’s eyes.

“You look a little tired,” I said probingly.

“I spent all last night with Tuija thrashing out practical stuff about the kids. In theory we have joint custody, but she’s been griping about them staying with me. Tuomas woke up to us screaming at each other and it took an hour to get him calmed down again. I thought Tuija would be here, but I haven’t seen her.”

“She was earlier. So what got between you guys?”

Johnny looked down the hill, his dark-red suit outlined clearly against the sky. Apollo indeed.

“We were too young. We were seventeen when we started dating, and I was a totally different guy then. I want more out of life now than…teaching other people’s brats how to do somersaults. I’ve been doing the same thing for ten years, and I have another thirty ahead of me. I’m going nowhere.”

“Well what do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. Something else.” Johnny stripped some leaves from a young birch tree, crushing them with his hand and scattering the green chaff across the copper-colored sand. “I don’t have it in me to be a musician anymore, but I think I could try coaching soccer again or sports reporting or…Now you’re going to laugh for sure…I’d like to study photography. Travel the world taking pictures. The dreams of a thirty-four-year-old man!” Johnny hurled the rest of the birch leaf bits down the hill.

“I’m not laughing. I get it.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever laughed at me.” The look in Johnny’s eyes was hard to bear as his face came closer to mine, our lips almost touching, but then the sound of footsteps behind us made him pull away.

“Am I interrupting?” Kaisa looked just as confused as I was.

“Did you get Aniliina calmed down?” Johnny had turned to stare down the hill again.

“She didn’t calm down; she just went for one of her crazy long runs. She’s been getting worse again since she’s out of school and her therapist is on vacation. I almost think they should send her back to the hospital…”

“So her anorexia is really that bad?”

“Isn’t it obvious!” Johnny snorted. “She’s nothing but skin and bones.”

“Where does that strange name—Aniliina—come from?”

“Aniliina Violetta, in fact. Apparently she was completely purple when she was born,” Kaisa said.

A dark silhouette appeared from behind the Tower.

Suddenly Tuija reappeared out of nowhere and motioned for Johnny to come with her. “Here you are, Johnny. I have something I need to talk to you about.” Without a word, Johnny left. Kaisa turned to watch Johnny go, and I couldn’t quite interpret her expression. Was that anger I was seeing?

My arms had goose bumps. “I think I’ll go inside. It’s getting a bit cold out here,” I said, and Kaisa followed me in. Inside I bumped into Ella and Matti again and a host of other acquaintances. As I exchanged news with approximately half the town, I succeeded in limiting myself to only one more glass of punch. The program included a relatively tame fireworks display around midnight, after which the party really began to die down, and no after-party seemed in the offing. As Ella and Matti were leaving to finally let her mom go home to bed, I walked with them down the hill. The moon had risen above the Tower, casting a frosty glow onto the dark-gray stone as if tiny lights were shining all along its walls.

“Phosphorus,” Matti explained. “The rock was quarried from the top of the hill. The glow of the phosphorus was what made people believe trolls lived under the hill.”

I snorted. “I still believe that,” I said, thinking of the odd feeling I had been experiencing most of the night.

I left Matti and Ella in front of the church and continued walking down the street toward the taxi station. Downtown was quiet and dark, the sole light shining from the police station. A muffled thumping came from the dance floor at the hotel restaurant. When I reached the bookstore, I heard a bicycle bell behind me. Johnny was coasting down the street on an old yellow Jopo. With its high handlebars and diminutive wheels, the one-speed bicycle looked ridiculous under him.