Sisterchicks on the Loose (17 page)

So, that’s where Penny gets her persuasive skills. From her father. I’m sure she doesn’t know that. I’m going to enjoy being the one to tell her
.

Marketta looked into her empty coffee cup and then glanced at her watch. “I should be thinking of what I will feed my guests for dinner.”

“I’d be glad to help you.”

“Yes, good. I will make things ready. Should you check on Penny?”

I tiptoed into the other room and leaned over the couch. Penny’s steady, ruffled breathing didn’t alter as I stood there. I didn’t have the heart to wake her, yet it seemed she was missing out on all the fun.

“Penny?” I whispered. “Penny, are you about ready to wake up?”

She didn’t move an eyelash.

I returned to the kitchen and asked Marketta, “Do you think I should wake Penny, or let her sleep?”

“Let her sleep. She is comfortable. When she wakes on her own, she will feel better.”

“I hope so. She took the medicine because she felt as if she was getting a cold. I just can’t believe we came all this way, and now she’s missing out.”

“It is okay. Tomorrow will be a good day for all of us. My
sister, Elsa, could never take even an aspirin without getting sleepy. Penny is like her mother.”

“Does she look like her mother?”

“I can’t say yet. I will have a closer look at her when she is awake. She has her father’s color. Her brown hair and brown eyes, those she got from Hank. He had warm skin like her skin. Brown and warm all over. That was Hank. Elsa was fair like me with blue eyes and blond hair.”

“I know Penny is eager to hear anything and everything you can remember about her father.”

Marketta turned to me and tilted her head the same way Penny did when she was trying to discern a situation. “Penny did tell you, did she not? Her father was a pirate.”

I
tried to read Marketta’s expression
as she said the word
pirate
. Before I could figure out a delicate way of asking what she meant, Marketta added, “First Hank was brave enough to steal my sister’s heart, and then he was more brave to even steal her. We never saw her again.”

A relieved sort of laugh came out of my mouth. The poor man was guilty of being nothing more than a “pirate for love.” Penny would appreciate the irony of the label.

Marketta didn’t laugh. She rose and said we should be about our dinner.

“I’d like to help,” I said.

“Yes, of course.” Marketta tied an apron around my waist and explained that we were going to prepare a typical Finnish specialty, which was from the Karelian tradition. I told myself to look up
Karelian
in the tour book before the day was over.

First, we made egg butter from hard-boiled eggs. She had me peel the eggs and chop them. With a small wooden ladle, Marketta mixed the chopped eggs with soft butter. She added
salt by the pinch, rubbing it between her fingers.

“I made the rice pudding this morning. You can get the bread from the freezer,” Marketta said. “It is the package of ready-rolled bread dough of rye and wheat.”

I pulled out something that looked like small, oval pieces of pizza crust.

“This is what we do,” Marketta said. “Put the rice pudding in the middle like this while it is cold and spread it so.”

I watched Marketta fold the edges of the dough so that the rice pudding could be seen in the middle. I helped a little and soon we were surrounded by the warm, delicious fragrance of “Karelian pies” baking in the oven.

Marketta poured three small glasses of dark berry juice and set the table with three plates and only flat knives. I assumed she was setting for three because she was planning ahead in case Penny woke up.

The bowl of egg butter went in the center of the table. The timer for the oven rang, and Marketta invited me to take a seat. Placing the Karelian pies on the table, she sat down, folded her hands, and said, “I will pray.”

With my head bowed, my heart full, and surrounded by fragrant promises of the meal we were about to share, I listened as soft, lyrical Finnish words rolled off her tongue. Deep in my spirit I agreed with her. Silently I whispered my humble thanks to our gracious heavenly Father. I knew I would never forget this moment when all things eternal seemed so clearly reflected in simple, earthly elements.

I opened my eyes and realized the earthly elements set before me were, once again, bread and juice.

“I hope you don’t mind that I pray in Finnish,” Marketta said.

“No, of course not. I think it would be tiring to speak as much as you have in a language different from your own.”

Marketta nodded and offered me the plate of bread. “It is making me tired. My brain has to work hard to find the right words.”

“We don’t have to talk while we eat,” I said. “I feel comfortable just sitting with you.”

“Yes. Okay. We can sit in quiet. But first, I have to tell you how you make this for eating.” Marketta put her knife into the egg butter and spread the mixture in the open center of the warm bread. “There. Any problems?”

“No, I think I’ve got it.” I spread the egg butter and took a bite. “This is delicious.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Delicious. I think this could easily become my new favorite comfort food.”

Marketta looked as if she were about to say something when we heard the front door open. Her eyes widened, and she leaned to see through the doorway into the other room. She called out something in Finnish, and a male voice responded.

Heavy footsteps came our way. A broad-shouldered man, wearing a wool cap and jacket, entered the kitchen. He bent down and kissed Marketta while the two of them spoke to each other in Finnish.

I’m sure I must have looked like a Cheshire cat, sitting there, grinning nervously while my glance swung back and forth from him to her.
Marketta said her husband was gone. She said her son lives in the north, but this man looks too old to be her son. Is he her boyfriend? One of her strong brothers who rowed the boat to Porosaari?

The man turned to me as Marketta talked to him in Finnish. A look of understanding came over his leathered face.

Without warning, the unidentified man leaned over me, smelling of sardines and tobacco. He planted a brusque kiss on my cheek with two very cold lips. Besides my husband, my father, and Grampa Max, I couldn’t remember any other man ever kissing me.

“Sharon, please meet my husband.”

“Your husband?” I smiled. What a fascinating face he had. “Hello.”

“This is Juhani,” Marketta said.

“Johnny?”

He repeated his name with the
j
making a
y
sound.

I tried to repeat it. “Juhani. It’s nice to meet you.”

“He understands English but does not usually speak it.”

Juhani took off his jacket and talked in Finnish while Marketta was still completing her explanation to me. “He wants to know if you speak Swedish.”

“No.”

“Juhani has been to the coast for a week, fishing with his brother.”

I decided to share my little misunderstanding with Marketta. “When you said earlier that your husband was gone, I thought you meant gone, gone. Not gone fishing.”

Marketta began speaking in Finnish before I completed my sentence. I’d never been in a situation before where someone was translating my words. It was unnerving.

Juhani laughed heartily at my translated comment and replied in clipped English, “I am not dead yet!”

We all laughed together, as if we had been friends for years. I decided I liked this crusty man with the cold lips and his
adoring Marketta with her blue eyes and deep laugh lines.

Oh, Penny Girl, you are missing all the good stuff!

After a leisurely dinner and the most confusing, overlapping conversation I’d ever been part of, I helped Marketta clean up. Juhani apparently had fish in the car that needed to be dealt with, and he disappeared.

Marketta and I concluded it would be best to leave Penny on the couch with another blanket since she didn’t want to get up when we tried to rouse her. That meant I had the bed in the compact guest room all to myself when I retired for the evening.

I closed the door and realized that was the first time in many days I had been by myself. The quiet was refreshing. I slipped into my new pajamas and pulled out the stack of postcards I’d promised Uncle Floyd I would send home. All the stamps were the same, and I couldn’t guarantee they were exceptional, but at least I was writing notes on the postcards. On each one I mentioned something different about what we had seen and done. I told Kaylee about the baby incident on the plane and wrote, “You won’t believe this, but I threw away my soiled clothes.”

On Jeff’s card, I mentioned my lost luggage and added, “So the credit card will have a few unexpected expenses this month.”

When I came to Max and Gloria’s card, I wasn’t sure what to say. Should I tell my mother-in-law that Penny was sacked out at the moment due to a drug overdose?

No.

How about if I told her that we ate reindeer?

Probably not a good idea.

What if I wrote that my practical tennis shoes, which she had insisted I bring on this trip, had returned to their country of manufactured origin?

The truth, as I now saw it, was that it didn’t matter what I wrote. Gloria would find a way to bend my words in a negative direction. That was her choice. Her way of viewing life, or at least her way of viewing my life.

With a light heart I wrote, “We’re having a wonderful time. Finland is a beautiful country. Penny’s aunt is making us feel very welcome here. Love you both, Sharon.”

Thinking back over the years, I realized that Max had loved me enough for both of them. I figured there was nothing wrong with my choosing to love them both. That was my choice. My new and improved way of viewing life. I could love my mother-in-law even if she didn’t choose to or care to love me the way I thought she should.

I rummaged through Penny’s suitcase and found her Bible. In the back of my mind, I was trying to remember a verse in the Psalms about how good it is when relatives dwell together in unity.

Opening up the Bible right in the middle, I flipped through the Psalms and was amazed at all the notes Penny had written in the margins. Her Bible looked like a workbook. I never knew anyone who had read so much of the Bible or read it as often as she apparently had.

I remembered years ago when Penny quoted a verse to me and referred to her Bible as her “owner’s manual.” At first I thought the term irreverent. Then she explained that she felt as if she were rebuilding her life after messing it up for so many years.

“It’s imperative,” Penny had said, “that I read my Bible to find out how to make my life work the way it was designed to work.”

I noticed now, in my quiet guest room, that Penny had underlined the first few verses of Psalm 126. I read them with my lips moving, without making any sound.

My sister-in-law, Bonnie, had given me a travel diary for this trip. I’d only written in it once, on the long plane ride while we were still seated in business class.

Reaching for the diary and a pen, I wrote, “Theme Verse for Trip” and copied the words I’d just read from Psalm 126. Then I added,

Trying to quote Penny’s admonition to me sent me to the last chapter of Proverbs because I vaguely remembered her words sounding a lot like a passage we had studied in our home Bible study group years ago.

I found the verse in Proverbs 31. “Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she smiles at the future.”

I finished my journal entry with,

I felt good as I closed the cover on my travel journal and thought about the future being filled with laughter. When Penny and I had a chance to be alone, I planned to tell her about our theme verse.

When the sun rose the next morning, wide-awake Penny was back on top of her game. She was at last experiencing the joys of being Marketta and Juhani’s niece.

Seated at the kitchen table with Marketta, Penny was listening intently to her aunt’s stories. The two of them appeared to have been up for several hours.

I watched Penny’s face. She was soaking it all in. I felt so happy for my friend. This was it. Right here. The whole trip could be summarized by this connection between these women who were bonded by their blood and so much more.