James Thompson: Helsinki Blood

She nodded toward the beer and Koskenkorva. “You’re drinking in the morning,” she said, distress in her voice. “Are you drunk now?”

“I’m not drinking. They’re unfinished leftovers from last night.”

This, of course, gave the impression that I’d passed out in a drunken stupor. She looked at the shattered window. It disturbed me that she hadn’t noticed it as soon as she walked in the door. This spoke of some kind of impairment of her powers of observation. Her tone jumped from distress to alarm. “What have you done? Did you break it while you were drunk? You have cuts. Have you harmed yourself?”

“Clearly,” I said, “I did nothing stupid, or the glass would be outside on the pavement, not here on our floor.”

She didn’t seem to process this obvious truth. Her eyes narrowed, disbelieving, and then she switched topics as if the window was forgotten. “You’re Anu’s father and have a right to see her. This is your visitation time. Are you mobile enough for that?”

“Yes.”

“You look awful.” It was only a statement. I couldn’t read her emotions from her voice.

She didn’t wait for an answer. “You can’t live in here, and it’s not safe for our child.”

“Someone threw a brick through the window. I’m not able to clean well. I’m not mobile enough.”

She took out the vacuum cleaner and made the floor spotless in fifteen minutes, did a far better job than I did in over an hour the night before. She put it away and sat on the stool in front of me.

“What kind of condition are you in?” she asked.

I didn’t understand why she asked me this. I had explained my condition and prognosis to her during previous visits. I repeated them to placate her.

“I’ll recover. My limp will be worse, and I have some nerve damage in my face. It’s impossible to say whether the nerves will heal or how well, if further surgery will be required, and if so, whether it will help. My main problem at the moment is that I’m in a lot of pain. I feel like I’m getting worse instead of better. I think it’s my imagination, just the pain wearing me down.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” She looked like she meant it, but she wasn’t sorry enough to come home and help me when I needed her the most. But I wasn’t worried about myself for the moment. Grave concern about her mental health took precedence.

“Have you been to see Torsten lately?” I asked.

Torsten Holmqvist, her psychotherapist. One of the best in the business. I was also once one of his patients.

“What passes between my therapist and myself isn’t your business.”

“I agree,” I said. “I only asked if you’ve been seeing him.”

“Yes, your crazy fucked-up wife has been a good girl and attended her therapy regularly. Are you satisfied?”

Now sarcasm. She was sprinting through a gamut of emotions so fast that it was impossible for me to keep up with them. I could think of a thousand reasons, but I wanted to know specifically what had caused her feelings toward me to become so harsh, and why it happened so quickly. “Kate, why are you so furious with me? Why won’t you come home?”

She smiled and slowly shook her head, as if I were an idiot and failed to understand the most simple and evident truth. “You’re the detective, why don’t you figure it out?”

I ignored that. “Do you remember the island and the events that led up to you becoming ill?”

“I don’t want to discuss it.”

I didn’t think she remembered, or at best, her memories were fragmented, or she wouldn’t question why I sat with a pistol at hand. I didn’t push it.

“Did I ever tell you how much I hate Finnish windows?” she asked. “What the hell kind of windows are hinged at the side and only open to forty-five-degree angles?”

“The kind where life revolves around winter and you need triple-glazed glass.”

“Except for the one big window,” she said, “which opens wide, but can’t be left open because it sits so low to the floor that someone would tumble out of it.”

“Because it gathers all the light possible in a place where there’s precious little of it much of the year, and if it didn’t open wide, you couldn’t clean it.”

“You have an answer for everything.”

“No. Just for some practicalities.”

“Windows are supposed to open upward and wide, so you can safely air out the goddamned house.”

“I’ll speak to the building commission about it.”

She seemed not to hear me. “I have some errands to run. Are you able to care for Anu for a few hours?”

A sarcastic tone had crept into my voice. I replaced it with an affectionate one. “Yes, darling, I am.”

The use of an endearment threw her off kilter and she didn’t know how to respond. It sometimes seemed she wanted me to be angry, as if she needed my anger to validate her own. But I wasn’t angry, only frightened and sad. She paused to regroup, and when she finally spoke, her tone had changed. Reason, perhaps even some affection, had crept into it. “Please get someone in here to clean the place.”

“I’ll call someone today and have it cleaned so that it’s presentable when you and Anu come back next time. I would like it if I could have regular times with Anu, maybe two or three times a week, instead of this system of you just showing up with her.”

She ignored what I thought a reasonable request. “There are eleven pizza boxes in the kitchen. I didn’t count the beer cans. You have a right to see Anu, but this isn’t a proper environment for a child.”

“I’m doing the best I can.”

“That’s the problem. Your best is bad because of your injuries. I’m concerned that you’re not up to taking care of her.”

“I’m capable,” I say.

“Do I have your word about that?”

“Yes. You have no cause for worry.”

“Let’s try it now and see how things go,” she said. “I’ve brought all her necessities.”

An odd thing to do for a short visit. And, of course, Anu had a lot of things here as well.

I wanted to ask her questions. Do you still love me? Do you want a divorce? I felt, though, that her current emotional state might cause her to answer in the affirmative, and if I waited until she was further along in her therapy, she might feel differently. I wanted to tell her how much I love her and that I wanted her to come home, but thought she might spit the sentiments back in my face. So I let it go and didn’t try to connect with her.

“That’s great,” I said. “Thank you.”

She said nothing. She stood, did an about-face with military precision. Her heels clicked on the floor as she marched out. I got up, went to the balcony to smoke and watch her walk away, down the street toward the tram stop. My intuition told me something was drastically wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Kate loves candles. I lit one, put it on the dining room table and promised myself I would keep one lit until she came home for good. I had an ominous feeling of foreboding, certain that I was going to burn up many more candles before my family situation was resolved. If it ever would be.

I tried to decipher the subtext of our conversation, could think of little else, but I was clueless. I called Torsten to ensure she had told me the truth about attending therapy. He said that she had. Patient-doctor privilege precluded further discussion, but he asked me why I was checking up on her. I said her condition worried me. After a thoughtful silence, he thanked me for calling and rang off.

I was powerless to do more. I had the window replaced and the house cleaned, fretted, and watched Animal Planet with Anu and Katt.

My intuitive fear proved correct. Kate didn’t return for Anu. She, Katt and I slept in my armchair together. I was equally thrilled to be reunited with my daughter and frightened about the well-being of my wife.