Helsinki White Read Free

artist, strong-arm specialist and enforcer. Three months ago, I was an honest cop. I’m not sure I care how or why, but I reflect on how I could have undergone such a drastic change in such a short time. Jyri wanted me to recruit some other tough cops, but I refused. More than four people is too many in on a secret. The group is just me, Milo, and Sweetness. Milo is a sick puppy, but he’s grown on me over time because of his enthusiasm. Sweetness is a baby-faced behemoth, whom I hired out of sympathy, because of his size and capacity to commit violent acts without enjoying them, and to piss Jyri off. Which it does. Jyri refers to him as “the oaf.” Sweetness often seems a simpleton, but he’s far from it.
    To quote Sweetness: “Life just is. Ain’t no reason for nothing.”

1
    A little over three months before my meeting with Jyri, Kate gave birth to our first child, a girl, on January twenty-fourth.
    It was an easy birth, as childbirths go, no more difficult than squirting a watermelon seed out from between her fingers, only sixteen hours from her first contraction to me cradling our child in my arms. When I first held her, I felt a wealth of emotions I didn’t know existed, and I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but I loved Kate tenfold more for the gift she had given me.
    She was an easy baby. Didn’t cry much. Often slept through the night. She wasn’t officially named until her christening, but we chose to call her Anu. A simple and pretty name, pronounceable by Finns and foreigners alike, important in a bi-cultural marriage.
    Our bi-cultural marriage changed me. When I met Kate, like many Finnish men, I was unable to utter the words “I love you.” I’ve heard women complain more than a few times that their husbands don’t tell them they love them. The typical answer: “I told you I loved you when I married you. If anything changes, I’ll let you know.” But she told me often, with sincerity and without shame. I learned to return the sentiment. At first, it was awkward for me.Before long though, I learned to say it first, it felt natural, even good, and I couldn’t understand why it had ever been difficult.
    I had been suffering severe migraines for the better part of a year. I thought they were the result of stress related to Kate’s pregnancy—she had miscarried twins the previous December, and I was scared that it would happen again—but Kate insisted I had tests run. My brother, Jari, is a neurologist. I went to him and he sent me for an MRI. The day we brought Anu home from the hospital, it fell upon him to tell me that I had a brain tumor.
    Kate and I had always had a great relationship, were best friends as well as husband and wife, but there was a sticking point that stood between us. My failure to tell her about my past or current events in my life, especially if they’re unpleasant. She isn’t as bad as, say, characters on American television shows who throw hissy fits upon finding out that their spouse had a one-night stand twenty years ago and five years before the couple even met, and believe the lives of their spouses, even their deepest and most private thoughts and emotions, must be open books. But a couple times, Kate has found out things about me that shocked her, and she’d like me to open up, at least a little, so she can know and understand me better. It’s hard for me, just not my nature. Kate said she viewed my failure to tell her about events relevant to our life together as a form of lying. And it disturbed her that I kept much of my past under lock and key.
    I saw her point, and promised to try to learn to be more open. But she was a new mother, radiant, full of joy. I debated on how long to let her be happy before telling her I might die. I decided on two days. I probably would have put it off longer, but the biopsy to determine the nature of the tumor was scheduled in two days,on the twenty-eighth. It would have been hard to fabricate an explanation of why part