Elina joined in on the chorus, and we rolled along on the slushy roads, filling the chilly cab with song.
It was a good thing Elina was with us because she didn’t seem to have difficulty with the cab driver’s accent. She interpreted for Penny how much we owed the driver when we arrived at the hotel.
Penny checked us in at the front desk without needing to employ any of her PR techniques. We were pleased with our large room. I flopped on a bed. Elina opened the drapes and looked out on a large grassy area surrounded by trees.
“I have an idea,” Penny announced. “Where’s the phone?”
Without filling us in, Penny dialed the front desk and asked to be connected to the spa services. Before Elina or I could protest (not that we would have), Penny had scheduled all three of us for a manicure, a pedicure, and a facial.
“Our dinner reservations are for eight,” Penny announced. “That gives us four hours to get gorgeous. Come on, the spa awaits us.”
“Penny,” Elina protested, “you don’t have to do this.”
“I know,” she said.
“If you want to go with Sharon, I don’t mind waiting here in the room for you.”
“No way! We’re going to do this together.”
“This is too extravagant,” Elina said solemnly.
“Think of it this way: Multiply two dollars and ninety-five cents, plus international postage, by forty-some years. That’s what I would have spent on birthday cards for you over the years. Consider this as nothing more than a belated birthday card from your long-lost cousin.”
“A very luxurious, belated birthday card,” Elina said.
“It’s like I always say,” Penny added with a flip of her hair. “If you’re going to be late, at least be luxuriously late.”
Elina and I laughed and followed the fabulous, flashy Penny out the door and downstairs to the spa. We entered the fresh-looking salon, and two young women greeted us. It appeared we were their only clients.
Again, the quick, clipped accent made it challenging for me to understand their English. Elina took over as our spokesperson. We had to decide who wanted which service first.
Penny opted for the pedicure first, saying that was her favorite form of pampering lately. I’d never had a pedicure or a facial. Kaylee had given me several manicures, but this was my first professional pampering.
Elina’s experiences were more in line with mine than with Penny’s. She told the young women she was new at this and asked their advice. The thinner of the two spa specialists suggested Elina have a manicure first.
At least I think that’s what she said.
It didn’t matter. We were all treated like queens. Who cared about the order of the pampering?
I was shown to a reclining chair where a cape was draped over me and fastened around my neck. Soft, thin paper was tucked around the cape’s neck. A warm, white towel was wrapped around my head, and my flyaway hair was tucked under the towel’s edges. The chair slowly reclined. My feet were elevated. Soothing music like wind chimes seemed to float down from the ceiling. The overhead lights were dimmed. Rows of tiny fairy lights twinkled.
“I’ve never been given such an extravagant gift,” I heard Elina say from a few feet away at the manicure station. “Thanks, Penny. Thanks for showing up in my life yesterday and doing all this. I honestly thought I was going to lose my mind yesterday, and now …” Elina choked up. “Now I feel as if I could take on the world.”
“Wait until you have your pedicure.” Penny was directly across from me with her feet soaking in a little foot tub that made a contented bubbling sound. “Once your toenails are painted, you will be able to take on the world. Barefoot, no less!”
I couldn’t stop smiling. Oh, Penny Girl, look what you’ve done. You’ve sprinkled your cousin with your wonder dust, and she will never be the same.
Eighteen
The spa salon was small enough and cozy enough that the three of us could chat without having to raise our voices. The two beauticians worked inconspicuously as a silent team, moving between the three of us to keep our beautification treatments in sync.
“Sharon,” Penny said when I was halfway through my facial. “Let me see your face. Sit up a little.”
I had no idea how ridiculous I looked, but I could guess. My cleansed face had been covered with a fragrant, thick cream that had a light blue tinge to it. Two thin slices of cucumber covered my eyes. I pulled myself up slowly like the Bride of Frankenstein emerging from the operating table.
I heard a snap and saw a faint flash.
“Did you just take a picture?”
Penny giggled. “Maybe.”
“With my camera?”
“Maybe.”
“Leave my camera out,” I said. “Your turn for the facial will come soon enough, you know.”
I leaned back and listened to Penny tease Elina and snap her picture.
“Did you hear about our experience in the sauna at Anni’s house?” Penny asked Elina.
“No. Did my mother take you to Anni’s?”
“Yes!” Penny laughed. “Your father drove us there in the Mackerel Mobile.”
With plenty of exaggeration, Penny launched into the legend of the night she and I joined the flabby chicks in the Finnish sauna.
I only half listened. In my memory I was reliving the moment when I lay naked and not ashamed in the fresh, white snow. That was the moment when God blew away just enough clouds to open the canopy of this fallen planet. Then, just for me, He uncurled His fingers and held out a single star.
Penny spun a fantastic tale of our sauna night, complete with how “those little grannies” locked us out in the snow. Elina loved it. If laughter is good medicine, then I believe Elina could have been cured of her hormone imbalances and her crazy-making mood swings by the time Penny finished releasing all those healing endorphins through her storytelling abilities.
“You Americans!” Elina said after Penny spooned out the final details of the story like hot fudge on a sundae. “You are so self-conscious of your bodies. We all grow old. Accept it; go with it. You think you are only cool if you look like you’re eighteen. Look at my mother! She’s cool, and she’s in her seventies.”
“Your mother is cool,” I agreed, rising from the chair. My face felt like it was singing all the high notes. My skin had never tingled before.
“The coolest,” Penny agreed.
The three of us traded stations. I moved to the pedicure chair. As soon as I slipped my bare feet into the warm water, I understood why Penny loved pedicures.
“I don’t mind if I don’t look like I’m eighteen,” I said. “But I wish I could always feel like I’m eighteen!”
Penny laughed. “Agreed!” She pulled off her rings and plunged her hands into the soaking bowls for her manicure.
“Your mother couldn’t have been much more than nineteen when she left Finland,” Elina said. “You knew that, didn’t you?”
“Yes, when she left with Hank the Pirate.”
“Did my mum actually say that?” Elina asked. “Did she call your father a pirate?”
“Yep.”
“I’m surprised she was so blunt with you.”
“Hey, we’re family,” Penny said. “No secrets.”
“Did my mum also tell you they suspected Hank of selling secrets from the U.S. government?”
“Yes, I wonder if any hint of that is in the letters Mom wrote to your mother.”
“That should be interesting. You will let me translate the letters now, won’t you?” Elina reclined in the chair as the specialist covered her face with a warm, wet washcloth.
“Yes, I brought them with me. The sooner you want to work on translating them the better.”
Elina said something, but we couldn’t understand because the washcloth muffled her words. When her mouth was free she said, “It’s amazing that your mum lived as long as she did, Penny.”
“Why do you say that? My mother died when she was forty-six.”
> “I know. But Grandpa and Grandma were always so worried about her heart.”
“Her heart?” Penny repeated. “What do you mean?”
I remembered Marketta saying the same thing in the sauna about the concern over Elsa’s heart. I thought at the time that every mother shares that sort of concern for her children. Elina seemed to allude to a bigger issue.
“You know,” Elina said. “The problem your mother had.”
“What problem?”
“With her heart.”
“Her heart?” Penny pulled her soaking fingers from the dish and stood up. “My mother had a problem with her heart? A health problem?”
“Yes, of course a health problem. You know, the hole.” Elina sat up and pulled away from the skillful hands of the cosmetician. “Your mother had a hole in her heart.”
Penny didn’t answer.
“You didn’t know that?”
Penny shook her head.
“Why did everyone keep that from you?” Elina asked. “Why didn’t your mother tell you?”
Penny seemed to be taking in the information.
“I’m sorry, Penny. I thought you knew. I grew up hearing stories of how your mother was supposed to only live to be ten years old and how she shocked everyone by getting pregnant and marrying your father in such a hurry. No one wanted her to leave Finland, but …”
“… but she had an independent streak in her,” Penny said.
“Yes. That’s the way I heard it. No one expected your mother to live as long as she did. They couldn’t believe she was willing to put such a strain on her weak heart and to risk her life to have a baby.”
Penny’s face turned pale. “My mother risked her life to have me …”
The room went silent.
I pulled my feet out of the bubble bath and hopped over to Penny. Without a word I put my arm around her shoulders.
Penny tipped up her chin. I could see the reflection of the twinkling fairy lights in her eyes. In a low, steady tone, she said, “I never knew that. Now it makes more sense why she never looked back. She never looked ahead, either. My mother just lived each day as if it might be her last.”
“I can’t believe she never told you,” Elina said. “I feel bad, being the one to spill all this out. I think it would have been better if I hadn’t brought up this difficult topic.”
“No!” Penny looked at Elina. “Are you kidding? You have given me the truth, and I’m telling you, this truth is going to set me free.”
Two tears raced down Penny’s cheeks. In barely a whisper, she said, “I have been waiting to die.”
Elina glanced at me, as if I could interpret Penny’s declaration.
I could not.
The spa specialist had stepped away from the manicure table and pulled the other cosmetologist to the side. They were talking in hushed tones. Elina stood up, her head still wrapped in a towel, and came to Penny’s other side.
Penny stared at her hands. “I got it into my head that I would drop dead one day, just like my mother. I thought I would make it to the age of forty-six and that would be it. That’s why I had to go somewhere, Sharon. Remember? In the church nursery when our kids were babies? I told myself then that I had to go somewhere before I died. I always felt that my mother carried this unrequited love for Finland. I wanted to come in her stead and see what it was that made her get that far-off look in her eye whenever Finland was mentioned. I had to come before I died. It sounds ridiculous now when I say it aloud, but I thought for sure I only had a few more months or maybe another year before my life would be over. That’s why seeing Finland wasn’t enough. I craved it all. The whole world! Years and years of life.”
I suddenly understood so much.
Elina stroked Penny’s hair and dabbed her tears with a tissue. I could tell that Penny was drinking in the womanly touches. Elina and I were the spa specialists ministering to Penny at that moment while the two paid women slipped out of the salon. They seemed to be taking advantage of our “moment” to take a break.
“Why do you suppose my mother never told me about her heart?”
“Would you have treated her differently?” Elina asked.
“Yes.”
“Would you have ever left her?”
“Not the way I did when I was seventeen. Not without feeling guilty every time I walked out the door.”
“I think,” Elina said, “your mother comes from a line of strong women. Perhaps she didn’t want pity. Perhaps she only wanted honest love. It seems to me she loved you enough to let you go rather than force you to stay with her. She didn’t want you to put your life on hold so you could wait for her to finish hers.”
Penny stopped crying. “You’re right.” She breathed deeply. “My mother loved me. She loved me enough to risk everything to give me life. I’ll never believe anything was wrong with her heart. How could such a heart have holes in it?”
Looping an arm around each of us, Penny drew Elina and me close in an awkward group hug. I understood what her hug meant. It was Penny’s way of saying that Elina and I were her women. Penny loved both of us from a strong heart. A heart with no holes.
“Are you okay?” I asked softly.
“Yeah, I’m good. Really, really good.”
I smiled.
Penny added, “I’m sure I’ll think about all this for a long time before I find a place to put all the feelings I have right now. But I’m good.”
“Do you suppose,” Elina said, looking around, “that our beauticians felt left out of our conversation? They seem to have vanished.”
“We probably scared them away,” Penny said.
“What if they don’t come back?” Elina asked. “Do you think we will have to complete the treatments ourselves?”
“Sure. Why not?” Penny said with a definite spring to her voice. “We could work on each other. Come on, Elina. I’ll goop up your face for you.”
“Penny!” I protested, ever the diligent follower of the rules.
“What? We’re paying for these services. Did you happen to notice where they keep the cucumbers?”
“Usually you’ll find cucumbers in the teatime sandwiches,” Elina said with a laugh. She had returned to the facial chair.
“That’s what we need in here. Some teatime sandwiches. Lean back, Elina. I’ve got the goop ready to go. Upward strokes,” Penny said in a high-pitched voice, as if she were teaching a class while she applied the pale blue paste to Elina’s face. “One must always work against gravity.”
Memories of Lisa Bachman’s slumber party loomed before me, that defining night when I decided I was destined to be a facilitator. A fresh tingle tickled my psyche. I didn’t have to spend the second half of my life on the sidelines, watching all the girls celebrate being free spirited. I could be just as cool as they were.
Grabbing my camera, I entered into the craziness of the moment and clicked off shots of Penny dotting her own face with blue spots while she was beautifying her laughing cousin. To each blue spot, Penny stuck a cucumber slice.
“Here,” Penny said. “You need to be dotted.” She touched the middle of my forehead and the end of my nose with a glob of her thick, blue paste. “And cuked,” she added, sticking a cucumber slice to the middle of my forehead.
I laughed as Penny took the camera from me. I struck a pose, and she snapped my picture. Then holding the camera out, she snapped a picture of herself.
Elina sat up. “What are you two laughing about? I can’t see anything with these cucumbers on my eyes. I’m missing all the fun.” She popped out the center of each of her cucumber slices and placed the hollowed-out green rims over her eyes.
Penny busted up and took a bite out of the center of two more cucumber slices, spitting the seeds into the trash can. Then she placed the hollowed green rims over her eyes and posed with Elina so I could take their picture.
“Do I look like you?” Elina asked.
I knew Elina was referring to the look achieved by the green vegetable glasses. Bu
t when I took their picture, cheek to cheek, I realized the similiarities between the two women were striking, even camouflaged by the blue goo.
“Here.” Penny tossed me a cucumber. “For your nose.”
I wasn’t ready to catch the flying vegetable slice, and it fell to the floor.
“Wait. There’s plenty here. Let me toss you another one.”
This time Penny’s throw overshot me, and the cucumber slice flew past my head.
“Again.” Penny tossed four slices at me at once.
I caught one and spontaneously spun it back at her like a mini flying saucer.
Elina picked up a handful. Penny did the same. Without a countdown, the like-minded cousins threw them at the same time. I ducked to avoid the onslaught of flying cucumber slices.
Just then, Penny and Elina stopped all sound and motion. They were looking past me to the door. I slowly turned to see our two young beauticians taking in the spectacle of our cucumber war. They stood speechless for a moment, and then one of them said, “Sorry ’bout steppin’ out like that. But you should know the hotel manager is headin’ this way.”
I pulled the cucumber off my forehead and wiped the tip of my nose. I was imagining the worst. We would be kicked out of the hotel and made to pay for all the wasted cucumbers.
The door opened, and a striking woman entered. Even in the dimmed light I recognized her. “Monique!”
Penny crossed the floor in five giant steps, losing her facial cucumbers on the way. “Monique!”
“Hello, Penny.” Monique said with warm surprise. She looked over at me and Elina. “Hello.”
“This is my cousin, Elina. You remember Sharon.”
“Yes, Sharon. The brave one. How are you?”
“Fine, thank you.”
“You found your relatives, then, Penny?”
“Yes. It’s been amazing. I tried to call you last night.”
“And now here you are.”
“Yes, here we are. We’ve decided to go to Liverpool tomorrow, but if you don’t have plans for the evening, we’d love to have you join us for dinner. We have reservations for the hotel restaurant at eight.”