Anja

“DO YOU MIND telling me what these are?”

Marita was waving two slips of paper in front of Anja’s face. It took a second before Anja realized what they were. Her goodbye notes. Inexplicably, she had left them on the table. They had been there for a week while newspapers and junk mail piled up on top of them and she had completely forgotten about them. Now Marita had found them.

Anja looked at her sister, whose tone was openly accusatory. She was standing in the kitchen with her shoes and coat still on. The silence was emphatic. The look on Marita’s face was reproachful, with a hint of helplessness behind it. Anja could see her hands shaking. Marita’s hands never shook. She was always calm, her face an even color, her voice melodious. But now she was trembling and her voice was tense.

Anja didn’t say anything. She knew better than to try to explain, or to defend her privacy. Marita thought everything that happened around her was automatically her business.

She had come over unannounced. The harmony of the afternoon was thrown out of balance. She stood in the middle of the kitchen, not saying a word, her whole being projecting a force that had shoved its way into the brittle solidity of Anja’s little world. Anja looked at Marita’s shoes. Expensive, well-chosen shoes. Her sister was the kind of person who thought that expensive shoes were a sign to the world of her attitude, showed that she was serious about her ambitions in life. Shoes and home decor.

Anja sometimes thought about how precarious Marita’s sense of her own life was: her daily routine at work, stopping at the store on the way home, dinner alone, watching television and waiting for her daughter to come home so she could go to bed. When Anja dropped by on one of those evenings, her sister would offer her tea from an expensive teapot and they would watch the evening news or a quiz show without talking, her sister leafing through decorating magazines, lifting her head now and then so Anja could see her gaze fixed on some faraway dream. Longing, sadness, hope were somewhere else, far from this life that had become tedious without her realizing it.

Of course Anja understood that Marita’s interference was purely the dictate of kindness. She wanted to help her, to define the nature of the emergency and come to the rescue. That’s the way it always was. Marita came and put things right. From Marita’s point of view the matter was a simple one: people had to be rescued. From themselves, from the world, from their circumstances.

Anja purposely hesitated over her explanation. She felt like just saying nothing. Her sister had sat down at the table and started to pull herself together.

“Is this how low you’ve sunk?” she asked in a strangled voice.

Anja snorted. She registered the shame bouncing around somewhere in her stomach. She tried to quiet its ruckus with hauteur.

“How low I’ve sunk? Who are you to decide what my situation is? You don’t have the slightest idea what’s been going on.”

“Well, these notes give me a pretty good idea what kind of difficulties you’re in.”

Anja just snorted again. The shame was overwhelming her. Her sister had collected herself, was reprising the attitude she’d had since childhood, redrawing the invisible lines between them that had always defined them: Marita was the one who decided the course of events, the one who knew how to handle things.

“We can’t just drop the matter,” she said crisply. “I have to make sure you get appropriate treatment, therapy …”

“A lot of good therapy is. As if there weren’t enough medical treatment around here already, with my husband under twenty-four-hour care.”

“I’ll make an appointment for you myself,” Marita said through tight lips.

“I won’t go,” Anja said.

“Yes, you will.”

*

AT THE END OF SEPTEMBER the light was already at a slant, ponderous and ripe like an old woman’s wisdom. The bus slowed as it came to an intersection. I have clear boundaries here, Anja thought. I have to keep the fear outside me. Draw the line at my skin. Hope can stay in the pure space within my body. Everything else is dirt, meaningless dross that doesn’t belong inside me.

She got off at the edge of downtown. She watched her feet as they continued along the wet road toward the hospital building across the street.

She stepped through the sliding doors into the building. The broad linoleum horizon of the hospital lobby opened up in front of her. The woman at reception was typing at her keyboard with a tense expression. Anja went to the counter.

“Excuse me. I’m here for an evaluation.”

“Take a number, please!”

The woman didn’t raise her eyes from the computer screen. Anja looked around in confusion. She didn’t see anyone else waiting.

“But,” she said uncertainly, “there’s no line.”

The woman took an inordinate amount of time before looking up from her screen, to make it clear that she was annoyed. She screwed up her mouth with an exasperated air, lowered her chin, and stared at Anja from under her eyebrows. An undisguisedly artificial smile spread across her face, expressing the utmost condescension.

“It’s not about lines, it’s about order,” she said sharply.

Her smile didn’t curdle. It was like a plastic doll’s smile. It gave Anja the creeps. She let out an off-key laugh to ease the tension, but saw immediately that it was a mistake.

“There’s nothing funny about it. Just take a number,” the woman repeated, like a tape recorder.

“All right. Sorry.”

Anja walked to the other side of the lobby and took a number from the feed. Twenty-six. The woman bent over her computer again and Anja was left standing there with the number in her hand. The digital number display on the wall showed twenty-three. The woman behind the desk pressed the bell. Bing! Anja took a couple of cautious steps toward the counter. The woman raised a forbidding hand and shook her head, her mouth a straight line. Anja retreated dutifully. The woman looked through her with a blank expression on her face. The second hand of the clock on the wall ticked five steps forward. The waiting room was empty. The only sound was the steady pumping of the filter in an aquarium built into the wall. The woman at the reception desk opened her mouth and paused significantly. Anja glanced at the number on her slip — yes, it was definitely twenty-six. The woman pressed the bell again. Bing! The number on the display changed to twenty-five.

The aquarium bubbled. Anja felt the sweat roll down her back. Her heavy coat was too warm. The slip of paper with the number on it trembled in her hand. She had to look at it again. Bing! The number display flashed twenty-six. Anja walked hesitantly to the counter. The woman smiled her plastic smile.

“We have rules, you see,” she said. “We have to wait five seconds between numbers.”

“Right. Rules,” Anja said, defeated.

“What is your reason for coming?”

“It’s, um, psychiatric. I have an appointment at two.”

“And what would the name of the attending doctor be?”

“I don’t … I don’t remember,” Anja sputtered.

She was overcome with dread. Why couldn’t she remember the name? Was it Valtimo? Laskimo? She shouldn’t try to guess, or the receptionist would think she was making a joke at her expense.

“Well?” the woman said.

“I can’t remember,” Anja said unhappily. “But my name is Aropalo, Anja Anneli Aropalo.”

“We can’t be messing around with patients’ names here!” the woman said, with obvious relish. Anja was trapped again, a prisoner of her ignorance.

These people, she thought — people like this woman — rule the world. They’re always throwing the book at someone, always have, even when they were little girls and boys, and then they grow up and become teachers and tax auditors and receptionists and they’re everywhere, throwing the book at people for anything they do, making anyone who opposes them squirm under their thumb and beg them for the right to exist. Where did these rulers of the world come from? Maybe their parents had humiliated them so much when they were growing up that they had to put themselves in charge, to make other people pay for the way they were treated as children. Or maybe there was something in them, some inherently evil element that no manner of exorcism or incantation could uproot. A demon working through them, spreading its perverted fruit.

The receptionist was just getting started.

“Ma’am, how do you think it would be if every Aropalo in town made an appointment at the same time? We would have a hundred Aropalos here, every one with a different problem. You would come with a mental-health problem and be sent to chemotherapy, and some unfortunate cancer sufferer would be given antidepressants! How do you think we would sort out a mess like that? All hell would break loose.”

“Uh-huh. All hell. Right,” Anja said, sinking into a hole in the ground.

“So please give me your social services identification number.”

Anja gave her the number.

“You see?” the receptionist said in a teacherly tone, typing the number into the computer. “Now we’re getting somewhere. You are Anja Anneli Aropalo and you have suicidal thoughts and your sister made an appointment for you. And here’s your doctor’s name. Anna-Liisa Valtimo. Your number tells us your identity and your whole situation.”

“Right,” was all Anja could say.

“So, you’ll be down that hallway. The door on the end. Go in there and wait until your name is called.”

“Thank you.”

Anja trudged toward the double doors. She felt outside of herself as she walked. She went through the door and found another waiting area. The walls of the room had the same bands of light as the day room at the nursing home. It was quiet. The door of one room was ajar. Restless, Anja stood up and examined the door. Should she just wait here until she was called? She heard quiet voices from a distance, and the low gurgle of a coffee maker. There were fluorescent lights set into the ceiling, shaded by thin, pastel-colored fabric. They reminded her of stage props, like a scrim. Anja felt anxiety rising. She looked at the door again. Her appointment was for two o’clock, and it was already five minutes past.

She got up and walked warily toward the door. The soft sound of her own footsteps was almost startling. She opened it a little: the room was empty. She opened the door wider and stood on the threshold. Suddenly she flinched: in the corner, in a narrow section of the room that the door cast into shadow, there was an armchair, and in the armchair sat a woman. The woman looked at her with interest, as if she’d caught Anja in some childish misbehavior. Watchful triumph shone from her face like an exclamation point. Anja felt the tremble that followed alarm; the embarrassment of being surprised caused a flash of shame to redden her face.

“Oh, uh …” She coughed. “I didn’t know you were in here. I was waiting in there.”

The woman still didn’t say anything. There was a trace of a tight sort of smile on her lips, which seemed to Anja like nothing but ghoulish mockery after what had just happened.

“So is this … are you a psychiatrist?”

“What do I look like?” the woman said in a friendly voice.

“I didn’t mean … I just thought … I see.”

Anja went quiet, her explanation smothered in its insignificance. She didn’t want to say anything inconsiderate, to make the woman draw any conclusions about her.

“Would it be easier if I called myself the on-duty consultant?” the woman asked, still dubiously friendly.

Anja sat down in the chair across from her.

“So,” the psychiatrist said.

“So,” Anja said.

“I understand you’re going through a period of change in your life.”

“Yes.”

The woman was silent. Anja didn’t speak. What was there to say? Nothing noteworthy came to mind. It really is the same kind of light, she thought, trying to think of something to say. Presence is never mute, it said on a framed card on the desk. There was also a basket of tissues. People came here, cried bitterly about where their lives were, and wiped their noses on the tissues placed thoughtfully next to their chair; closed the door behind them, went to the store, bought some chicken legs and ground beef, went home, and watched the evening news. Presence is never mute. Is it an empty or full feeling, mute or clamorous, to yearn for something with all your senses, sleeping and awake? Mute. Above all, mute.

“How do you feel about your sister making this appointment for you? What kinds of feelings does that bring up?”

Anja’s lips narrowed to a thin line. “My sister has her own ideas about things.”

“And now her idea seems to be that you’re in need of help.”

Anja was quiet. It didn’t matter one way or the other to her. The psychiatrist was silent again for a long time, then she said, as if starting over, “What things do you see as meaningful in your life? What’s most important to you?”

“Nothing,” Anja said blankly.

She sounded like an obstinate child who hadn’t got her way. Nothing. It echoed in the room with a bright sound, ricocheted from the walls and hit Anja in the back of the head. The worst part was that it wasn’t a lie. Not that nothing mattered to Anja. It was just that the most meaningful thing was the gaping emptiness that echoed in every hollow second. Or was it the weight of the seconds? All that had been and was gone made the moments heavy, made it difficult to breathe.

She had an urge to disrupt events somehow, their randomness, their meaninglessness.

In the first years of the illness, when the signs were already there but there was no diagnosis yet, and neither of them had the information, or the courage, to recognize the seriousness of the situation, Anja had thought that her husband had another woman. He had started to come home late in the evening, a little later every week.

ONE THURSDAY her husband doesn’t come home until late at night. Anja’s waiting in the dark kitchen, trying to act nonchalant.

“Hi,” her husband says, as if to a co-worker.

Anja pauses before answering. “Hi yourself.”

He turns on the light and puts a bag of sweet rolls on the table. Dallas rolls with butter filling. She can tell from the bag that he bought them at a gas station along the highway. Anja draws her own conclusions; she doesn’t trouble herself to remark on them.

He goes to the cupboard and takes out a pot lid. What’s he going to do with that? she wonders. A pot lid on Thursday night at one a.m. He takes out the rolls and puts them on the lid. There are seven of them.

“So you’re thinking of having some rolls and coffee?”

“Yes.”

“You’re thinking we’ll have rolls and coffee in the middle of the night.”

“That’s right.”

“Have you been at work?”

“Yes, at work.”

“And was it a long day?”

“It sure was.”

He takes out the cheese cover and puts it over the rolls. Anja watches his actions, surprised. He takes the coffee pot from the coffee maker, fills it with water, and pours enough in the coffee maker for ten cups.

“What the hell are you doing, getting ready for a coffee party?” Anja says. “You don’t come home till the middle of the night, and now you’re going to make some coffee? Have a nice cup of coffee with your wife to end the day? Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Damn it,” he roars. “What’s your problem? I’m making coffee in my own kitchen.”

Anja feels like crying. Her question comes out wrapped around the first inevitable sob, sounding more forlorn than she intended:

“Where have you been?”

He relents, approaches her. For the first time, Anja sees a lost look in his eyes that she didn’t notice in her anger. He strokes her hair with his fingers. His hands are shaking.

He tries to smile, but his voice is squeezed to a narrow, frightened snort. “I took a wrong turn.”

“What? Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know. I got lost.”

He smiles an agonized smile, a pained grimace pierced with a certainty, and Anja suddenly wants to say something, anything, to make him stop smiling like that.

What does she say? What does she do? Maybe she says what her husband wants to hear, what they both want to hear. Maybe she kisses him and laughs, teases him for his absentmindedness, tries to break through the armor of fear that has surrounded them. You’re so scatterbrained, she might say, gently pinching him.

There they sit, husband and wife, eating rolls and drinking coffee on Thursday night at one a.m., and neither of them says anything about the fact that there are seven rolls, and that they’re on a pot lid under a cheese cover.

Neither of them mentions that.

THE PSYCHIATRIST was looking at Anja with a stupid, sympathetic look on her face.

“So what do you say we make an appointment for another visit?” she said in a patient tone. “How does next week sound? Maybe on Tuesday at two again?”

Anja said nothing, indicating assent. They shook hands and Anja closed the door behind her. When she got to the end of the hallway her anxiety faded, and anger mixed with shame took its place: she wouldn’t be coming back.

SHE SPENT THE REST of the afternoon at the library. At first the events of the day rattled around in her head and made her heart race. But the musty peacefulness of the library gradually settled her mind.

On the way home she saw a waxwing in a tree. It was standing on a branch, silent. It wouldn’t sing again until the spring. The afternoon was already darkening a little; the last light of the sun had come down from the sky and flowed in a red haze from the tops of the naked trees and down their trunks to the ground. In the fall, everything turned pink like this just before dark. There was no snow yet to lend its glow of cold, sharp light. And any ice there was on the ground filtered through the soil’s own frosty darkness in a soft shimmer, painted a gentle purple by the extinguishing light of the sun. Sky and land, and between them a person breathing the air. A waxwing perched on a rowan branch next to a bus stop, as if it were keeping watch over the descending darkness, the sky and land.

When she got home, Anja took the groceries out of the bag and put them on the kitchen table and turned on the television. The comforting theme music of the early-evening news soothed her. She took one of her husband’s shirts out of the closet and sat down on the sofa. She closed her eyes and read her husband’s familiar smell from the folds of the shirt — it still lingered there in the clinging lint, along the seams. She felt herself stepping back where she belonged, as if this were the axis around which her being turned. Safe in the familiar smell, she let the longing descend from the throbbing hollow of her temple and flow through her shoulders and into her limbs and rest there, like a weight.