We love games and music and a firm routine, and we promise to stay quiet in our rooms at night. In the mornings we’ll ask for breakfast, a bath, some bowel salts, and a little assistance at the end of the process; give us these, and we’ll agree to anything. We don’t expect changes or improvements. We’ll cooperate with anyone who puts us safely to bed when the pines start creaking, heavy with old snow and the silent white foxes that watch our bedroom windows at night. Bring our sleep aids. Pull the blackout shades. Lock us in. We’ll never be tempted out of the building again. We belong in these reliably muffled rooms, and we are happy.
We love repetition. It deadens pain and lifts the responsibilities of other life. And even if Sunny supposedly gets no pleasure from returning she’ll still come back, a repeat of the long voyage upward, backward, and north. Her elevator doors open over a corridor gritty with sand and salt. She hesitates. She can hear the frogs now. She can smell the standing water where mosquito larvae hang, waiting. She doesn’t want to step over, doesn’t want to foul her shoes or slip in the muck. This floor has not been waxed in years and we understand the hesitation, because we bruise easily too, we’ve seen our flesh turn indigo, verdigris, canary. Step carefully. The fires are lit. She surprises us at dinner hour.
We’re happy to see her. We’ve missed her. And we feel at liberty to admit that sometimes, in the beginning, we felt neglected, especially since we did everything we were told: Enjoy your dinner. Go to bed. Put on your dressing gown! Show your vagina. Take your pill. Shake your garments. File your fingernails. Share your candy. Curl up inside, like you were before. Sign your initials. Follow the Finns; they’ll know where it’s safe.
We want to know: will she take better care of us now?
Sunny’s hand goes to the pocket of her apron: a letter came, there was a letter…
Julia gets up to show that everything is practically painless now, even her feet, still swollen, and look: she’ll circle the table, barefoot, warm and quick in her familiar fur. Creating a distraction, yes? Everything the same, yet slightly different than it was.
But Sunny knows there was a letter, she wrote to Mr. Dey and a letter came back from the landlord, she couldn’t read it but the letter said something like kuollut, dead, Mr. Dey is dead. It said something like kesakuu, June, your husband had been dead since June. You must have known that, Julia, didn’t you, before you came to Suvanto?
Don’t press us, Sunny, you have to understand that this is fun, it’s only fun. None of this is serious. Julia is only pretending to be dead. Pearl has thrown her outdoor shoes into the fire; Mrs. Minder touches a teaspoon to the candles, lifting wax like honey. It’s only fun! This is the life you trained for, Sunny, as long as you continue to avoid the other side of the building, a very unpleasant place where men in coats and hats regularly stand outside in the snow, calling up to the windows: some of them say, Come home! Some of them say, Hold up the baby, show me the baby! And then strangers, new women we’ve never known, come to the windows and shift their dressing gowns to reveal the fullness of their breasts, newly voluptuous and pulsing warmly against the glass. But don’t worry, Sunny, as long as you keep everything familiar, as long as you stay safe with us, you won’t have to touch them, any of them. Remember, you came back with the understanding that you’d never have to.
But Sunny says she won’t be staying.
No, we say, you’re wrong, you want to resume your responsibilities, and through them the illusion of control. We’ll allow you to take care of us, and you can feel good about choosing to do so.
But Sunny says it again: she won’t stay. She only came to rectify a regret, a bad feeling. She can’t undo past errors in judgment. But she can at least avoid making another. She’s looking for Laimi.
We’re incredulous: Laimi doesn’t need you! Laimi went over the ice on her skis. Stay, Sunny, stay here, where your life has meaning because you care more about caring for others—even unworthy others—than you do about your own happiness. We’ll confirm this every day. Because it’s true, Sunny. We’re the proof you wanted.
Sunny hears the grating of the elevator and Nurse Todd is suddenly behind her, looming in the doorway. But this is not Nurse Todd. This is Matron now. We all agree she’s Matron now, and she wears Matron’s antiquated cap: starched, complicated, beautiful, and terrifying in its implication of institutional order now reinstated. She wears it with black ribbons, the loose ends hanging low, past Matron’s round, powerful shoulders. Under her uniform are the lineaments of a strict and unyielding corset, lacing her into an upright, all-directional fury of sublimated discomfort. There are blood spots on her fresh white apron, remnants of our blood, her blood, everybody’s old blood mingled through mosquitoes, needles, flea-infested feathers, and many broken brooches. At her collar is a plain white emblem, and beside it a blue cameo, of a classical face in profile, a confiscated, compulsory gift.
Sunny moves quietly aside. We pull out Matron’s chair, because Matron always sits at the head of the table, with Pearl now always at the foot. Another chair is brought for Sunny and we all make room to install her at Matron’s right hand. It’s time for dinner; we already feel some anxiety about the bread being slow to arrive. Matron points at Sunny, and her fingernails are the pink of living bone.
You, says Matron. Sit down now.
Surely it had never been Sunny, on that night?
Canopy of empty birch, creaking pine, ice in the air, falling, a prism, a quick cold sparkling in the throat, inhaling. The rutted path, extending, extending, roads blinking open on both sides, new roads where snow drops soundlessly from branches. And the bay is frozen to the bottom, perfectly safe. Her skates are waiting, and the blades are sharp, but the boots are perfectly broken in. She ties new laces. There are ski tracks on the ice, easy to follow. And gladly, very gladly, Sunny goes.