Norma
Norma went through the material left on the machine one more time and quieted the incessant pounding in her head with painkillers. Occasionally she browsed the departures timetable for the airport, while listening for sounds in the stairwell. The doorbell remained silent, and only the sounds of her neighbors came from the stairs. Still, she expected that at any moment someone might appear on her threshold. She had a bread knife in her jacket pocket and another in her bag. They had a calming effect, as did the cigarettes she rolled from her hair. They didn’t make her see visions or hear voices. She didn’t know whether she hoped for that. When she opened her mouth, her own voice came from her throat, not Eva’s American accent with its higher pitch. Helena’s and her mother’s madness hadn’t taken her.
From the vacation camera, she removed nothing, instead copying the contents onto two memory sticks. One of the sticks she hid in her bra, the other in her suitcase, already packed with bundles of hair, her best scissors, and Eva’s pictures hidden in envelopes—Norma didn’t want to look at her face just now.
She was almost ready.
Marion hoped to get a moment to herself before dinner. She needed only one moment, plus a little something from the sauna bar. Norma had called in sick, so the final customers before the Midsummer holiday had fallen to Marion alone. She was tired, and she would have liked to stay at home and sleep through the holiday, but everything had to seem normal. The clan couldn’t suspect anything. That was why she was cleaning Alla’s scalp with firm, professional strokes, then turning off the faucet with a flip of her wrist and grabbing the blow-dryer. She would act when Alla and Lambert returned from Hanoi and would definitely be on Finnish soil. By that time, she would have her own affairs arranged and in the best-case scenario would have succeeded in getting the girl to understand the benefits of her plan.
Just as she was inserting the plug into the wall, Alla turned to her.
“I just have to ask. Have you been having any symptoms like Helena did back then?”
The question came out of nowhere. Alla never spoke about Helena.
“Don’t take this the wrong way. We’re all under a lot of pressure, and that can trigger mental illness.”
Marion’s fingers clenched around the blow-dryer so hard, the plastic creaked like the ice crust on a lake, and for a fleeting moment, she saw herself grabbing the file from the table and jabbing Alla with it, even though she wasn’t Helena and didn’t act like Helena.
“Max can’t stand the idea that you might end up in an institution.”
That was a threat. Marion recognized the Lamberts’ intimidation tactics, and they always worked on her like a stun gun. They wanted her to understand that Lambert could institutionalize her. Not in Finland but somewhere else. That would be her vacation.
“Luckily you don’t have any children. Who knows what would have become of them,” Alla said with a sigh, picking up her guide to Japan, which opened to a picture of cherry blossoms. “I think of you every time we have a client come in who’s afraid of passing on schizophrenia. But let’s not speak of that anymore. I’ve continued conversations with Unno, Mr. Shiguto’s representative. Max also thinks she’s a little strange. Alvar thinks the two of them are only going to put Interpol on our tail. On the other hand, Shiguto’s father is the nineteenth-richest man in Japan.”
Marion’s hands were stiff, and she couldn’t get the plug in the power outlet. She poked at it over and over, then heard Alla stand up and throw the book onto the table. She took the plug out of Marion’s hand and inserted it into the wall. Her lips, swollen with hyaluronic acid, melted into a friendly smile.
“Shiguto has an excellent apartment for the surrogates, a home or residence or whatever you want to call it, and has hired nannies so the girl won’t even have to worry about changing diapers. He’s also promising money, five hundred dollars per month of pregnancy, and all expenses. The girl will get the same treatment as all the others. Plus Lambert has promised to reduce her debt by that amount.”
“And after Shiguto?” Marion asked.
“Shiguto will probably want to keep going. He wants a large family. We’ll just have to see. At least Unno likes the girl’s picture.”
This was the news Alla had been building to. The clan had already decided, and Alvar hadn’t kept his promise. Norma wasn’t sick. She was probably already in the hands of Lambert’s mongrels. Maybe in the same place Anita had been. Marion would never find her. Her lungs hurt as if she were caught out in the cold. Her eyes itched, and she started rubbing them, until Alla grabbed her wrist.
“Max thinks we’ve been neglecting you. What if we go on vacation together when all this is done? Or what if you came with us to Hanoi?”
Marion felt the taste of blood in her mouth. She couldn’t wait anymore. She had to act before the Hanoi trip, as soon as the holiday was over. The Big Bang would sweep Alvar up, but she would send Lasse a message on Sunday that it was time to keep a low profile and get rid of his agency phone.
Fifteen minutes remained until her ride. Norma was early. Over the course of the day, the city had emptied family by family, couple by couple. The man running across the street must have been headed for the liquor store before it closed. In Finland even the Kallio neighborhood emptied on Midsummer, and the Chinese restaurants locked their doors. If everything went well, by the beginning of the week Norma would be on her way to someplace where there would be so many immigrants from every corner of the world that it would be impossible for the whole country to sink into a holiday coma. Her mother’s habit on holidays like this had been to book them foreign vacations to places where the solitude of single women didn’t feel like a stone in the stomach and some store or bar was always open. Norma didn’t remember the last Midsummer she had spent at home.
She peered into her handbag. Eva looked satisfied, and her pouting lips were just opening as if she wanted to say something. Norma snapped the purse shut. She now knew everything she needed to, yet something she couldn’t figure out rattled around in the back of her head. She knew her mother’s reason for her stupid plan, and she understood the selling of the hair. Her mother must have gotten caught, and that was why she jumped in front of the metro train. She had been no match for the clan’s professionals. She had known she would never escape their clutches.
“I have no intention of going to Bangkok.”
The words just slipped out. Norma glanced around. The neighbors were packing boxes of beer and bags of charcoal into their car. No one had noticed her talking to herself. She tried her voice again. It was still her own, not Eva’s. Norma glanced into her bag again. Eva’s round eyes looked back at her as if she were a fool. As if Eva were saying that surely no one could be so silly as to let some bush doctor operate on her, no matter what her mother thought.
Time passed slowly. Norma didn’t dare roll a third cigarette, despite the urge. She didn’t want to investigate what her hair could do anymore. She wanted to be done with the visions. The heat swelled her legs, and her nervous pacing chafed her toes just as a vague idea nagged her mind. She checked the time—ten minutes to eight—then realized what she’d overlooked. She went running for the metro station, hurrying down to the deserted platform and standing next to the bench where her mother had jumped. It was the same bench she stopped in front of every day on her way to work at ten to eight. After the labor negotiations, she’d been later and later, and on her mother’s last morning, Norma had been off with her one-night stand and her alarm hadn’t woken her. Otherwise she always waited for the metro in the same place because the train car that stopped here also stopped right in front of the escalator at the other end of the line. Her mother could have run into her that morning. Had she come there to tell Norma everything? Why then? Why not some other time? Why hadn’t she picked up the phone? Had she tried to find Norma at home? Had she rung the bell? Could Norma have prevented it all if she’d slept in her own bed that night, if she’d arrived on the metro platform at the right time that morning? But why was Norma s
till trying to find sense in her mother’s random reasoning? Hadn’t she just decided to leave all this behind?
Norma pulled a lighter out of her handbag. As the metro rushed up to the platform, she threw Eva’s photo onto the tracks and saw her smile arc through the air before the flame burned the face from the picture.
—
Norma sat on the bench to recover from the shock. No smoke alarms had gone off—the flare lasted only a moment. But it had still managed to catch a few wisps of hair at her temples, and the stench was obvious. Two guards who had arrived on the platform regarded her from a distance. She began to rewrap her turban and tried to seem normal. The illusion was still vivid. In the flames, she had seen a smile like one in a photograph taken on a sunny day. Her mother’s cheeks had burned with light, her skin had smelled of lemon, and her silhouette had melted into the mandarin color of the platform wall panels. Norma had heard her panting as if after a run. Her mother had tried to steady her breathing and said she made it at the last second. She had guessed she would find Norma here. She was in a hurry. She had to leave, and fast. The sound of the approaching metro was already audible, and people gathered closer to the tracks. Her mother was having an increasingly hard time maintaining her smile, the smile all mothers used to calm their frightened children, and she glanced at the clock on the information display. The air current grabbed her hair, and her mother wasn’t alone after all. The curls waving in the air were Eva’s. Eva was next to her, with Norma’s mother’s purse on her shoulder and wearing her mother’s shirt, and they looked at Norma as if wanting to confirm that she understood they couldn’t delay. Someone was running toward them through the crowd, and her mother’s breathing quickened again. Eva kicked the shoes off her feet and said they had to run fast. Everything depended on not being caught. Just as the metro arrived, her mother lost her balance—clattering and brakes and cries and Eva’s hand hanging in the air. Eva’s sigh: What a tragedy. But you’ll always have me, and we’ll always have each other. I will always save you.
—
As she climbed into the taxi, Norma wondered whether she was making a mistake. Her brain tried to make the conversation ahead of her easier, to reassure her that she wasn’t on her way to negotiate with the person responsible for her mother’s murder. But the vision made sense—it fit with her mother’s crazy world. Eva had pushed her mother onto the tracks. Eva, who had just spoken to her.
The driver didn’t reply when Norma asked where they were going. Norma leaned back and tried to calm down. Maybe smoking wasn’t for her either. According to Eva, it had been easier with Helena than with Norma’s mother, who was stronger-willed and had stopped listening to Eva when she said Grigori was a con artist and that the woman who had supposedly been cured of hypertrichosis had never been like them. Her mother had forced herself to believe that Grigori was the one. She was sure time was running short and she would be found out soon. She had so desperately wanted to be right.
Marion stopped to lean on the shopping cart. Her purse rested on boxes of beer, and the metal box was inside the purse. She kept it with her all the time. Marion began pushing the cart again and continued collecting the items on Alla’s shopping list, heading between the freezer islands toward the dairy section. The pudding cups were the same ones Alvar used to steal from the corner store as a child. Right now Alvar was probably torturing information out of Norma, and he would receive a nice reward if he succeeded. Otherwise he wouldn’t be skipping the family party—he’d have left the dirty work to the mongrels.
The supermarket aisles were overflowing with Midsummer holiday favorites: charcoal, sausages, bunches of dill. Other customers’ heaped shopping carts bumped Marion’s, and kids ran into her legs. Families formed tight, coordinated units with one parent corralling the children while the other waited in line. Solo shoppers inspected lists written by spouses and called home occasionally for more specific instructions. Marion would receive a call soon, too. Not from her husband but from Alla, who wanted to get on with curing the salmon and making her herring caviar. Marion had lingered too long and wanted to linger even longer, but she had to keep up her act for just a few more days. She would soldier on, even though Alla might have spent this time waiting for ingredients to arrange drugs from Russia for Alvar to use. Or maybe Alvar would choose amobarbital, something that wouldn’t require a hard approach. They had to keep her face in salable condition. Scopolamine had made Anita babble about Helena’s voices as if they were actual people, so they would hardly choose to use that this time. Even Lambert had discounted Anita’s nonsense, including when she talked about Marion. That had been a stroke of luck for her.
At the fish counter, another happy family waited ahead of Marion. A boy ran around and shoved Marion’s cart, sending the purse falling off the cases of beer. The metal box clanged as it hit the floor. Marion turned her eyes away. She could have screamed when she saw Lambert take Anita at the airport. She could have rushed to get the box and then run straight to the police station with it. She could have exposed the whole clan, and the police would have found Anita alive. But then the authorities would have wanted to know where the information came from. They would have wanted her to testify. The clan would have taken her out before the case ever went to court, and that would happen now, too, if she left her shopping cart and rushed to the police station with the metal box.
Marion took her salmon and roe and went to stand in line at the meat counter. She didn’t have it in her to sacrifice herself for Norma. The clan could wait to get caught until the workweek started. Then the mail would be moving, and she would be safe.
As she searched for bitter almond extract, Marion’s gaze fell on a bag of almonds. Norma was always hauling nuts and seeds around with her and pecking at them like a bird. Memories of Albino haunted her in the same way: after the Colombia trip, the tree frogs would start their tinnitus whenever Alla made margaritas and dumped ice cubes into the blender. Marion shook her head. This was completely different. She’d tried her best—that had to be good enough. Norma would not trouble her eternally as Albino did.
Anita didn’t weigh on her mind either. With Anita, she had done what she could. She had tried to save her.
The lapping of the waves and the unsteadiness of the dock were like something out of a childhood memory of summer, but the mood wasn’t. Norma swayed on the splintering boards. Farther off, a Tallinn-bound ferry glided, full of drowsy migrant workers and drinking tourists. Kulosaari Island with its expensive real estate. Sailboats. The high-rise apartment buildings of Merihaka, the Kallio Church tower. Tomorrow anyone left in the capital would flood to Suomenlinna Island, and the rest of Helsinki would turn into a ghost town.
“Midsummer plans?” Alvar asked.
“No. I don’t care for holidays.”
“I don’t either.”
Norma focused on her goal, which was seeing the next Midsummer. She opened her mouth to get down to business, but instead raised her glass to her lips, keeping her sips small so the wine would last a long time. After emptying it, she would present her proposal. That was why she had come here, yet she hesitated. She hesitated, even though the sea air and the wind calmed her hair, and the world felt freshly painted, the exposed bedrock newly formed. The incessant knocking in the back of her head that had started after she began winnowing the videos had stopped. And the fear associated with this meeting place had faded—its desolateness was lovely, and Alvar’s conviviality was calming. He had been waiting for Norma in front of the sauna on the shore and opened a bottle of wine, which was now half gone.
“If Helena ever gets out, this will be a good home for her,” Alvar said. “At Villa Helena, she can pretend to be a retired singing star.”
Norma had noticed the security cameras and high fence around the building. A safe home for Helena. But she hadn’t expected this expensively restored villa in the middle of a deserted neighborhood filled with ornate mansions from a bygone world. Alvar didn’t seem like a man who pored over renovation man
uals and researched traditional paint colors.
“Perfect. This is perfect,” Norma said.
“Perfect for people who don’t like people. For people like you.”
After the car stopped at the edge of the forest, Norma had been sure this was the end and decided that perhaps dying at the hands of criminals was better after all. Shady characters like these didn’t want paparazzi and police officers swarming over their victims any more than she did. The driver had led her to a forest path with a mat of pine needles that reminded her of her mother’s funeral, and they had passed a crystal-clear pond. For a moment, she considered jumping into it, all by herself, without any help.
“Do you want to hear more about Helena’s madness, or is there some other reason for this meeting?” Alvar asked.
Norma tossed back the rest of her wine, then focused on a northern wheatear hopping around on the rock near the shore. She had rehearsed this conversation many times. She could do this.
“Or maybe you came to say goodbye, because you think you’re going somewhere?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You stopped in at the airport.”
The wheatear disappeared along with Norma’s prepared opening. Alvar refilled Norma’s glass. He acted as if this were a completely normal occasion for drinking wine on the shore. And perhaps it was, for him. Perhaps he held conversations like this in front of his sauna all the time. Norma wasn’t sure whether to be surprised that one of Alvar’s hirelings had kept track of her comings and goings.