John Irving - Until I Find You

There were more rocks inside the church. The organist sat in view of those people on the left side of the congregation. The empty, rounded benches—for the choir—occupied a center-stage position. Choirs were important here. The copper organ pipes were very modern-looking against the darker and lighter woods. The pulpit was surrounded by stone; Jack thought it looked like a drinking fountain.

In the early afternoon, he sat and listened to Hannele and Ritva—Ritva in profile to him, on the organ bench, Hannele facing him with her legs wide apart, straddling her cello. A small audience quietly came and went while the two women practiced. Jack could tell that Hannele had recognized him as soon as he sat down; she must have been expecting him, because she merely smiled and nodded in his direction. Ritva turned once to look at Jack; she smiled and nodded, too. (The lady he’d spoken to at Sibelius Academy must have forewarned Hannele and Ritva that Jack Burns was looking for them.)

It wasn’t all church music—at least not the usual church music. As a former Canadian, Jack recognized Leonard Cohen’s “If It Be Your Will”—not that he was used to hearing it played on organ and cello. As an American, Jack also recognized Van Morrison’s “Whenever God Shines His Light on Me.” Hannele and Ritva were very good; even Jack could tell that their playing together had become second nature. Of course he was predisposed to like them. Jack gave them a lot of credit in advance, just for surviving whatever assault his mom might have made on them as a couple.

Jack also listened to them rehearse two traditional pieces—“Come, Sing the Praise of Jesus” and “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” The latter was an Advent hymn, and both hymns were better known in Scotland than in Finland, Hannele and Ritva told Jack later. But the hymns, they said, had been particular favorites of his father’s.

“William taught us those two,” Ritva said. “We don’t care that it isn’t the month before Christmas.”

They were having tea in Hannele and Ritva’s surprisingly beautiful and spacious apartment in one of those gray, somber buildings encircling the Church in the Rock. Hannele and Ritva had combined two apartments overlooking the dome of Temppeliaukio Church. Like the church, their apartment was very modern-looking—sparsely furnished, with nothing but steel-framed, black-and-white photographs on the walls. The two women, now in their late forties, were good-humored and very friendly. Naturally, they were not as physically intimidating as they’d seemed to Jack at four.

“You were the first woman I ever saw with unshaven armpits,” he told Hannele. The astonishing hair in Hannele’s armpits had been a darker blond than the hair on her head, although Jack didn’t mention this detail—nor the birthmark over Hannele’s navel, like a crumpled top hat the color of a wine stain, the shape of Florida.

Hannele laughed. “Most people remember my birthmark, not my armpits, Jack.”

“I remember the birthmark, too,” he told her.

Ritva was enduringly short and plump, with long hair and a pretty face. She still dressed all in black, like a drama student. “I remember how you fell asleep, Jack—how hard you were trying not to!” Ritva told him.

He explained that he’d thought, at the time, they had come for their half-a-heart tattoos because they’d both slept with his father.

“With William ?” Hannele cried, spilling her tea. Ritva could not stop laughing.

They were the kind of gay women who were so comfortable with each other that they could flirt unselfconsciously with him, or with other young men, because they were confident that they wouldn’t be misunderstood.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” Hannele said. “William told us that your mom was capable of telling you anything, Jack. Ritva and I underestimated how far she would go.”

Hannele explained that her relationship with Ritva was new and still uncommitted when Jack’s mother had first hit on them; the young music students had even discussed sleeping with Alice as a kind of test of their relationship.

“It was 1970, Jack,” Ritva said, “and Hannele and I were young enough to imagine that you could treat any relationship as an experiment.”

William had warned them about Alice; he’d told Hannele and Ritva her history. Yet the girls had imagined that if they both were “unfaithful” with Jack’s mother, they wouldn’t hurt each other.

“It hurt us more than we expected,” Hannele told Jack. “We decided to hurt your mother back. The tattoo we shared was a symbol of how we had hurt each other—a reminder to not be unfaithful to each other again, a reminder of what sleeping with your mom had cost us. And we let her know that we were brave enough to sleep with anybody—even with William.”

“Of course we wouldn’t have slept with William, Jack—not that your father would have slept with either of us,” Ritva said. “But your mom was extremely sensitive about anyone your dad might sleep with, and it wasn’t hard to convince her that Hannele and I were lawless.”

“We even flirted with you, Jack—just to piss her off,” Hannele said.

“Yes, I remember that part,” Jack told them.

Their half-a-heart tattoos had been torn apart vertically; both women were tattooed on their heart-side breasts.

“You have eyelashes to die for, Jack,” Hannele had told him. Under the covers, her long fingers had lifted his pajama top and stroked his stomach. When she was sleeping beside him, he’d almost kissed her.

“Go to sleep, Jack,” his mom had told him.

“Tell me about the ‘Sweet dreams’ part,” Jack asked Hannele and Ritva in their beautiful apartment. It was growing dark outside; the lights shone through the dome of the Church in the Rock like a fire burning windows in an eggshell. (Jack remembered that he’d thought “Sweet dreams” was something his dad probably said to all of his girlfriends.)

“He’s not four anymore,” Ritva said to Hannele, who was shaking her head. “Go on, tell him.”

“It’s what your mom whispered in our ears before she kissed us down there, ” Hannele said, averting her eyes from Jack’s.

“Oh.”

Ritva had said, “Sweet dreams,” to Jack, before she’d kissed him good night. “Isn’t that what you say in English?” she’d asked Alice. “Sweet dreams.”

“Sometimes,” Alice had said, and Hannele’s brave whistling had stopped for a second—as if the pain of the shading needles on her heart-side breast and that side of her rib cage had suddenly become unbearable. But Jack had been sure it was the “Sweet dreams” that had hurt her, not the tattoo. (Talk about a not-around-Jack subject!)

Jack told Hannele and Ritva about his mother’s surprisingly long-lasting relationship with Leslie Oastler—not that Alice hadn’t probably had other, lesser relationships in the same period of time, but her relationship with another woman was the only one that had endured. Were Hannele and Ritva surprised at that? he asked.

The two women looked at each other and shrugged. “There wasn’t anything your mom wouldn’t do, Jack,” Ritva said, “not if she could have an effect—almost any effect—on your dad.”

“After William, I don’t think Alice cared who she slept with,” Hannele told him. “Man, woman, or boy.”

The black-and-white photographs on the walls of the apartment were mostly of Hannele and Ritva—many concert photographs among them. There was one of Ritva on the organ bench in the Johanneksen kirkko, where Jack had gone with his mother—this had been following a heavy snowfall, he remembered. Flanking Ritva on the organ bench were her two teachers—Kari Vaara, the organist with the wild-looking hair, and a handsome, thin-lipped young man whose long hair fell to his shoulders, framing a face as delicate as a girl’s.