“Let’s go to Warrington,” Penny said decidedly.
“Do you think that’s going to be okay?” I asked.
“What, leaving? I think they’ll be glad to have us gone. Except for William. He said it was ‘jolly good’ of me to hold his chicken.”
“But what about connecting with your cousin? Our time went so fast in Finland. If we leave in the morning, you won’t have had much time with Elina at all. That’s what you wanted out of this trip, isn’t it?”
“Bonding with relatives appears to be more of a two-way street than I realized,” Penny said. “It doesn’t appear that Elina and I are driving down the same side of the road, so to speak.”
“That could change.”
“Or not.”
I sighed. “Penny, I just want to be sure you take advantage of every opportunity to accomplish what you wanted from this trip. I want you to go home knowing that you tried your best to bond and all that.”
“Thanks, Sharon. I know what you’re saying, and you’re right. I should try harder to connect. I have an in with William. Maybe I could start there and work my way to a closer connection with Elina. Like you said, this is my only chance.”
Just then we heard footsteps coming up the stairs.
“Hallo!” William appeared at our open door with a chicken feather in his hand. “Would you like to keep this? It’s one of Miss Molly’s prettiest feathers.”
“Why, thank you.” Penny took the spiny quill and gave Will one of her best PR smiles. “Be sure to tell Miss Molly I appreciate it.”
William beamed. “Mummy said to let you know we’re ready to eat.”
“What are we having for dinner?” Penny tapped William on the nose with her feather. “Not chicken, I suppose.”
William looked up at Penny, startled. “No, not chicken.”
“That was a little joke, William.”
His lower lip quivered. He pulled away from Penny and took off down the stairs yelling, “Mummy! Mummy!”
Penny and I looked at each other.
“I’ll go call Monique,” she said.
“Good idea.”
Sixteen
Sweet William seemed to recover quickly from Penny’s jest about having chicken for dinner. Elina had prepared a one-dish meal she called shepherd’s pie. Although Penny and I both said we had heard of it, neither of us had eaten it before. The bottom layer was ground beef, which Elina called “mince.” The beef was mixed in a thick gravy with carrots and peas and then covered with mashed potatoes and sprinkled with cheese on top.
The meal was simple, but the conversation around the table was complex. Cammy said she liked shepherd’s pie better when her mum used real mashed potatoes and not the instant kind she had used tonight. Tara argued with her mother about a party she wanted to go to over the weekend. Tara seemed to have waited strategically until we, the guests, were present before she brought up the topic. I recognized the typical teenage ploy to get Mom to say yes.
Elina was a stronger mother than I. She remained firm in her “no” despite Tara’s persuasive attempts.
William kept interrupting and was asked repeatedly to wait his turn. When Cammy stood to clear her plate, she said she had homework to do and then reminded her mom that she needed her blouse ironed for school in the morning because they had a special reciting program.
“I can’t iron it,” Cammy said, “because I still have to work on my piece for the program. I haven’t memorized it yet.”
Elina looked at her watch. “I have to make several phone calls before it gets too late. William, when you finish, clear the table. Tara, I need you to wash the dishes.”
“I can’t. I have homework, too,” Tara protested.
“Then why were you watching television this afternoon?”
“That was part of my homework. We have to write a paper on a current event in the news.”
“She wasn’t watching the news. She was watching cartoons,” Cammy said.
“So were you,” Tara spat. “And you were supposed to be memorizing your speech.”
“I wasn’t watching the telly,” William announced proudly. “I was in my room the whole time you were gone.”
Elina’s face kept growing deeper shades of red. I thought she was going to blow a fuse. I felt awful for dropping ourselves into her life the way we had. Penny and I were on vacation whereas Elina was obviously on duty. Double duty, since her husband wasn’t around.
Elina drew in a deep breath. “All of you go upstairs and do what you need to do. Just go. William, don’t forget to take a bath.”
“I’m still eating, Mummy.” William nibbled off a small bit of carrot from his fork.
“Are you going to iron my blouse then, Mum?” Cammy asked.
I jumped in. “I can iron your blouse, Cammy. I love to iron.”
Everyone looked at me.
“I really do.” I sheepishly shrugged.
“She does,” Penny vouched. “I know. It’s kind of strange, but Sharon loves ironing. And I’m an expert on clearing the table and washing dishes. Point us in the right direction, Elina, and we’ll cover the bases down here.”
Elina was slow to respond. She finally said, “Okay, but don’t ever tell my mother I put you to work. I’ll only be on the phone for a few minutes.”
The liberated ducklings scattered with record speed. Penny and I were alone, playing the roles of the downstairs maids. I didn’t mind. I felt it was the least we could do.
We worked swiftly and silently. I don’t know what Penny thought about as she worked, but I loved the feeling of doing what was familiar. Rushing through airports was beginning to grow on me, but this—a kitchen, an ironing board, the sound of bathwater running upstairs—this I knew. My thoughts were of my family. I missed them down in a place so deep in my heart that I don’t think I’d ever gone there before. My love for them never had been tested like this, and I felt an unfamiliar euphoria over having a husband and children to love. I would never view those relationships as ordinary again.
Tasks completed, Penny sat at the table and we discussed our departure options. As soon as Elina was off the phone, Penny would call Monique.
I joined her, still feeling mushy about my family, and said that our experiences already had surpassed my wildest expectations. I was satisfied. I didn’t need any more adventures. “We could take an earlier flight home,” I suggested. Aside from my desire to somehow get Penny to Penny Lane, I had no other reason to stay on this side of the world.
Penny, however, seemed addicted to new experiences and sat across from me, growing wild-eyed, looking for her next fix. “We have to go and see all we can while we can,” Penny said in a tight voice. “This is our only chance. Life is too short. Don’t you get it?”
“Yes, I get it, and I’m content to do whatever you want to do. So you decide. What’s next?”
“I want to call Monique.”
“Okay. Call Monique, and we’ll visit her and then see what happens.”
Penny’s amber-flecked eyes glazed over. “I also want to go to Scotland. Actually, I really want to go to Switzerland. And Greece. Not necessarily in that order. I always wanted to go to Greece. Have you seen pictures of the Aegean Sea? It’s so blue. Can you imagine what it would be like to go swimming in water like that? Or the Nile River. I always wanted to float down the Nile like Cleopatra.”
“Penny,” I interrupted her stream of crazy travel lore. “Are you listening to yourself? You’re not making a whole lot of sense right now.”
Penny looked at me with a shadow of sadness veiling her cocoa brown eyes. “I want to do everything, Sharon. I want to see it all. It’s like that song back when we were in high school. Remember that song about sailing around the world? I listened to it for weeks after I left Wolf and went home from San Francisco. Remember? Look for gold and dive for pearls?” Penny began to hum and then sang one of the lines about knowing that she would never get to sail around the world.
Elina entered the room and of
fered to make a pot of tea.
“Sorry to leave you with the dishes,” she said. “There’s a lot going on right now.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Penny stood up, leaving her song at the table along with her invisible pile of high school memories and travel wishes. “I’m the one who should apologize to you for dropping in the way we did. We plan to leave in the morning because we have someone else to visit. If you wouldn’t mind, may I use your phone to give her a call? I’m going to charge it to my phone card, so it won’t cost you anything.”
“Oh. Certainly.” Elina pointed to the phone attached to the kitchen wall. “If you would prefer privacy, you may use the phone upstairs in my bedroom.”
“This phone is fine.” Penny pulled Monique’s number from her pocket and borrowed a piece of paper and a pen.
I could tell by the way Penny spoke into the phone that she had reached Monique’s answering system and was leaving a message.
Elina placed three cups on the table. Mine had a bit of dried food or something on the bottom. I tried to scratch at it without being obvious. Elina noticed.
“Sorry,” she said, reaching for my cup. “Here, this one looks clean. And I must apologize for the tea. Or should I say the absence of real tea. Loose tea. I didn’t get to the market today, and I’m down to my emergency stash of tea bags.”
“No need to apologize. I use tea bags at home all the time.”
“Do you really?”
Penny hung up the phone. “Monique wasn’t home, but we’ll still head up that way tomorrow. We can try her again once we get there.”
“Where are you going?” Elina asked.
“Scotland,” Penny said confidently.
I looked down at my cup and deliberately drowned the teabag, so I didn’t catch the exchange of expressions between the cousins. I also didn’t want Penny or Elina to notice the inevitable splash of disapproval that was washing across my face. I reminded myself this was Penny’s adventure. I was along for the ride. Blazing comets answered to no one.
“Are you taking the train?” Elina asked.
“Yes,” Penny said. “Definitely. We’ll do better on a train than we would with a rental car.”
“I can drive you to the train station,” Elina offered.
“That’s okay,” Penny said briskly. “We’ll take a taxi.”
Elina shifted in her seat, wrapping her hands around her teacup. We all sank into a pocket of awkward silence.
Rescuing my limp tea bag, I placed it in the hollow of my spoon, the way Elina had, and took a sip of the dark brew. I wished we could politely excuse ourselves, go upstairs, eke out a decent night’s sleep, and slip out at first light.
“My mother mentioned that you had some letters you wanted me to translate.”
“Actually,” Penny said slowly, “I thought I’d take them to someone in San Francisco.”
“Do you know a Finnish translator in San Francisco?”
“No, but I thought I could find someone through the university.”
“Look.” Elina set aside her cup. “I don’t think this has been a very good start for us. You and I have gone all these years without knowing each other as cousins.”
Penny seemed to flinch at the word cousins.
Elina reached across the table and took Penny’s hand in hers. “Why don’t we start over and try to be friends. Would that not be a better place to begin?”
Penny withdrew her hand but kept her gaze fixed on Elina. “But you see, that’s the thing, Elina. We aren’t friends. We’re cousins. I have enough friends. But I have no other cousins. I have no other relatives that I know of. Only you, your brother, your mother, and your father. That’s all. You are one of four people on this huge planet with whom I share the same blood. We don’t have to be friends, Elina. But whether we want to be or not, we always will be cousins.”
I was stunned at Penny’s directness. I was even more stunned at Elina’s response. She cried. Not the kind of crying that comes with tidy streams of polite tears down the cheeks. She sobbed with her hands covering her face.
Penny didn’t hesitate. She jumped up and wrapped a comforting arm around her cousin and stroked her hair, murmuring gentle words in Elina’s ear. The scene mirrored what Marketta had done at her kitchen table, only reenacted with Penny playing the role of the comforter.
“You’re right,” Elina said, looking up. “We are cousins.”
“Yes, but why are you crying like this, Elina? I know a few things about tears, and I’m guessing these have been wanting to come out for a long time.”
Elina opened up. The women in Penny’s family certainly shared the same propensity toward bursting into tears and blurting out their feelings. “This morning, my husband, Arnie, received a call that some of the men on his shift might be sacked today.”
“Sacked? You mean drunk?”
Alina looked at me.
“Sacked means laid off, doesn’t it?” I said.
“Yes. He said he might be given the boot after work today. He was very upset when he left. I didn’t want to bring this into your visit, but I’m afraid I haven’t been able to think of anything else. If he loses his job, I don’t know what we’ll do. We’ve been living on so little for so long. I had a job for six years, but I was sacked nine months ago. Or what did you call it? Laid off? I was laid off. Nothing has gotten better for us.”
Penny reached for a paper towel and handed it to Elina since no tissue was in sight.
“Well, I guess we picked a pretty awful day to come for a visit,” Penny said with lighthearted tenderness.
“Yes,” Elina agreed, wiping her eyes and pulling herself together. “It’s been a pretty awful day. A pretty awful year, actually.”
Penny reached for a chair next to Elina and sat down. With calm, steady words, Penny said to her cousin, “Life can be messy sometimes. But it’s okay. You’ll be okay. God will work all this out for you. You’ll see.”
“Mummy?” William, wearing his robe, stood around the corner, peeking into the kitchen.
“Yes, William?”
“I’m ready for bed, Mummy.”
“Okay. Good night, son.”
“Aren’t you going to ask if I brushed my teeth?”
“Did you brush your teeth?”
“Yes, Mummy.”
“Good night, then.”
“Mummy?”
“Yes, William.”
“May I have a kiss?”
“Of course. Come here.”
I watched Elina do what mothers all over the world do. She took her son in her arms, kissed him, and buried her nose in a tuft of his hair. Nothing in the universe smells the same as the head of an eight-year-old boy, fresh from the bath.
I also recognized the pattern of what children everywhere do when they sense tension in the family. William wanted to be close to his “mummy.”
“Good night,” Elina said.
William looked up at her. “Good night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite. If they bite, squeeze them tight, and they’ll not bite another night. Good night!”
With a kiss for Elina and a wave for Penny and me, Brave William was off to bed.
“You are rich in many ways,” Penny said.
“Yes, but …”
William appeared again. “Cammy and Tara are fighting.”
We heard the sound of the front door unlocking and opening.
“That would be Arnie.” Elina shook her head. “This can’t be good, if he’s home already.”
“Daddy!” William took off for the front door.
“How’s my boy?” the deep voice called from the entryway. We could hear William give a full report of household events including his fighting sisters upstairs. “And the ladies are in the kitchen with Mummy having tea.”
“You go on to bed, son.”
“All right, Daddy.”
Penny turned to Elina and said in a low voice, “Sharon and I can leave so you two can talk. I’ll call a cab.”
“No, it’s okay. Please stay. Arnie won’t mind.”
A dark-haired man with glasses and a brown corduroy cap stepped into the kitchen with a grin on his face. “Are you ready for the news, Elina? I’ve been promoted!” He leaned over and gave her a smacking big kiss. Looking up, he gave Penny and me a nod. “Hallo.”
“Promoted?”
“That’s right. I’ve been switched to the morning shift, and because of the change, I have off the next three days. With pay. A three-day weekend. That’s the first in a long time, isn’t it?”
“How did that happen?”
“According to Chester, my number came up for the day shift, and they had an opening. If there hadn’t been an opening, I would have been sacked with the other four men on the night shift.”
“I can’t believe it,” Elina said.
“You better believe it! It’s about time something good happened to us.”
Elina glanced over at Penny. “This is my husband, Arnie. Amie, this is my cousin, Penny, and her friend Sharon.”
Arnie wasn’t a large man. He was rugged in a way that suited a man who had made an honest living stuck in the middle of the working class.
“Nice to meet you both. Elina told me you’ll be staying with us for a few days.”
“Actually, no,” Penny said. “We’re leaving in the morning.”
“The morning? Nonsense! You only arrived this afternoon, did you not? Why don’t you stay and keep Elina company for a few days? She could use a bit of a holiday.”
“They have plans,” Elina said.
“Then you make yourself some plans, love. I’ll take over here for a day or two and give you a break.”
Elina pulled back and scrutinized her husband. “Have you been drinking, Arnie?”
“Only a pint. I had to celebrate with Pete and the boys.”
Elina shook her head. “I can’t believe you were promoted.”
“Believe it.” Arnie pulled up a chair and said to Penny and me, “It’s been a rough time for us lately. Did Elina tell you about the new medication the doctor put her on? Ever since the operation she’s been on a spin.”