The Psalm of Psaint Mabel

By Emma Mackin

The Psalm of Psaint Mabel follows Mabel Wirtanen, a ham fisted Finnish masseuse from Michigans Upper peninsula, on her quest to become a spiritual force the likes of Mother Theresa or Ghandi. The award winning novel describes an uncommonly honest middle-aged single womans frustrating, and hilarious, journey to self-knowledge. What new fresh hell is this? she asks herself repeatedly, as she tries to make her heart and mind so pure all will recognize her spiritual glory, rendering completion of her childhood fantasy to become an American Lutheran religious celebrity, a pseudo saint.

Escaping the confines of her small town, (where her dream is stifled because everyone knows her faults), for more fertile and fresh fields, Mabel takes on American economic inequities and the special justice reserved for the upper class, while working as a masseuse on a luxury island off the coast of South Florida.

Perhaps the first novel to detail the work of a massage therapist The Psalm of Psaint Mabelis also a landmark in portraying Yooperland, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. So insular a part of the USA it is sometimes left off the map by the likes of Newsweek magazine, the author gives voice to the peculiar Finnglish accent dying out with the older generation.

The string of unintended consequences as the Finnish Masseuse wrestles Beelzebub ring true in the style of great literary fiction. Dark humor acts as medicine for the soul as Mabel Wirtanens escapades clarify her true potential during the time of the Thomas-Hill hearings and the Kennedy-Smith Palm Beach Trial, events that outed the problems of women speaking truth to power.

Will the needed Big tips corrupt her plans for even ersatz piety? She walks the razors edge of how to work the money mojo while still appearing ethical and good. A Buddhist nun with a menagerie of stray dogs, an unhappy but sincere psychiatrist, an alcoholic New Age girlie girl, present edifying confusion into Mabels belief in the importance of being natural while striving for unattainable moral perfection.

The story covers the lingering effects of Vietnam, date rape, spinsterhood, homelessness, euthansia, sexual harassment, Hurricane Andrew and the dream that got away.Read reviews at other book sellers sites online.

Intrigued, but the book is too expensive? Encourage your local library to purchase a copy and help the author feed her dog during the coming End Times.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 11, 2004
• ISBN: 9781465326218

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

FOR CRYING OUT loud, Mabel Wirtanen Gardenia muttered from the edge of the squad car’s cold vinyl seat, "not even one celebrity Lutheran saint." An occasional passing car’s headlights glinted upon the stiff tongue protruding like a cherry Popsicle from the muzzle of the black Labrador beside her. Her loyal dog, Barker, had been dead for three days, but strong as she was, Mabel wasn’t able to bury him in frozen ground and she refused to leave him alone at the lake cabin when the officer came to take her away.

Gum? asked officer Otto Grepko holding a pack of Spearmint over his shoulder.

No thanks. Mabel’s breath steamed the bulletproof glass he’d slid open for conversation.

Your mother will be waiting for you down at the emergency room.

Yah, I suppose. She strained to see the deadpan landscape of Michigan’s frozen western Upper Peninsula through swollen eyes.

The officer glanced at her in the rear view mirror. Not much of a Christmas for you Mabel. But it’s almost a new year. You can look forward to that, eh?

Why?

Because people look forward to a new year with their resolutions and plans for stuff and everything.

Mabel scrutinized the isolated snow crusted houses going by at forty five miles an hour, lit up, full of people looking forward to a new year. Idiots, she thought. Mabel was jealous of people who could make plans and have them turn out. That wasn’t the way things operated in her family.

Memories whipped through her head of playing with her older brothers, Merlo and Toivo, during childhood summer vacations. The adolescent cowboys would sidle up to each other, plastic holsters slung low on their hips. Relegated to bar maid, Mabel would stand behind a picnic table slapping at black biting flies, waiting for her part to begin.

You’re a stranger in these parts, eh? Fixin’ to stay long? one would ask.

Nope, the other would snarl, "Just traveling through."

Well, see that you keep on going, eh. Then the brothers would break into a cap gun shoot out, or if it was really hot, a game of poker. When the boys would wear down and get thirsty they’d say, Hey, Mabel! Black Label! The heretofore-disengaged barmaid would open a couple bottles of Hires root beer and slide them down the rough pine boards to the desperadoes chewing candy cigarettes.

One day, fed up with being a bit player, she pulled out her Dad’s pistol and said, Not ‘till you pay up first. After the fracas that improvisation caused she was never allowed to play even her small part again. Funny, she thought, how such little things could put the kibosh, and for so long, on one’s entitlement to liberty. The gun wasn’t even loaded, as far as she knew.

The brothers went their separate ways in 1969 and were long gone incommunicado ever since; a fraternal divorce due to proclaimed irreconcilable differences regarding love of country and true patriotism. Merlo went to Vietnam, dressed in camouflage as an American government employee. Secreted in a jungle, full of obedient principle, he hunted and hid from the perceived enemy of American style democracy. Toivo went to Manitoba, full of autonomous principle, also dressed in camouflage but as a truant of the American government. The draft dodger, veiled in a deep woods lodge, hid from and hunted the moose. Both were paid for their killing by men who came and left on helicopters. Chop-chop-chop-chop.

After their father, Erho, died there just wasn’t enough gravitational pull to reunite them with their sister and mother. Those male paragons of genetic descendance, those beloved sons, found something they continued to this day to want more than family ties, the feeling of being right, and so Mabel had been holding down the fort ever since.

Jealousy and spite were two flaws Mabel intended to work on in her quest for goodness, someday when she had the opportunity.

The car windows were open to circulate fresh air around the defrosting dead dog. Cold back there? Otto asked.

Yah. The winter chill stung her face but it was better than the smell of every living thing’s destiny coming from the garbage bag that held the only one who understood her despair.

Want me to close the windows?

Mabel stroked old Barker’s brittle ear. No.

The officer didn’t argue with her. He just kept the heater on maximum high and drove on.

She wondered if she had been Catholic if she could’ve taken the dog to Lourdes, but then Barker was perhaps beyond recovery having reached a point of weariness with life, as if he felt the time had come to forget the chase, that when he’d seen one deer, he’d seen them all. His heart wasn’t in it and besides Mabel never saw any pictures of cast off pacemakers or glass eyeballs at the French shrine of miraculous cures.

Just traveling through.

Ironwood’s Grand View Hospital’s emergency room entrance was decorated with green and red Christmas lights that when enhanced by the snowplow’s yellow strobe and the police car’s flashing blue-lit ski racks outside, made the place come alive with festivity. Mabel Wirtanen Gardenia sat on an examining table in an open backed dressing gown with scattered wads of snotty wet tissue balls around her feet. Her mother, Elka Wirtanen, and officer Otto Grepko, watched her like sentries, blocking the doorway with massive crossed arms clothed in Carhartt and Gortex.

Oh heck, mother, Mabel said. I just wanted a little privacy. You have me arrested for that? For crying out loud.

Officer Grepko stepped back, offended. You weren’t arrested, Mabel, your mother just wanted Dr. Woodrow to look you over, for your own protection.

Elka shook her finger. "Without telling anybody you go and stay at that in the middle of nowhere cabin. There’s no heat out there, no water. Your nose and feet’d take and turn black and everything. You can die of frostbite. My glory me, even duck hunters from Wisconsin hope they’re rescued in situations like that."

I needed to be alone.

Elka Wirtanen narrowed her lips. I don’t know what the heck you think you’re going to accomplish by being alone. And dragging Barker out there with you when he’s dead. Elka’s eyes looked wild, like slaughterhouse steer when they got a good whiff of what’s ahead. People’ll think you’re crazy. You’ll lose your job and then what?

The heck with Wisnicki Steam Bath Sauna and Massage. What do I owe them? I hope I lose the stupid job, that would make it perfect.

Elka stiffened. Well, if being the best masseuse in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is all you’ve got left, then you ought to hang on to it.

Dr. Maximillian Woodrow’s high gloss shoes appeared under the curtain. Well, he said pulling back the canvas to join the party. Good evening Mabel, Elka. He swept a wave of soft gray hair off his forehead. Sorry it took me so long, had to stitch up Jimmy Neidermyer’s forehead, hit a deer with his Buick coming home from Ontonagon. Somebody sick? He glanced at the chart hung on the bed rail.

I brought Mabel down here for you to take and look her over, Grepko said. Her mother requested me to.

Elka stomped her snow boot on the polished linoleum. I want to have my daughter committed.

Yah hey, Mabel snorted. "For cripes sakes. Committed."

Dr. Woodrow winked at Mabel. He shined his penlight ceremoniously into each of her eyes while Otto looked with anticipation over his shoulder. The doctor pocketed his light. Is the gendarme here because Mrs. Gardenia did something violent?

Well, no, Otto muttered.

Not yet anyways eh, Mabel said.

Dr. Woodrow looked at his patient for a moment. Otto, why don’t you get a cup of coffee?

Yah, Grepko said looking disappointed to be shut out of the action. Okay then. He went down the hall clomping his boots to illustrate his displeasure.

And Elka, Dr. Woodrow gave her a smile of encouragement, if you’d let us talk, in private.

Elka, who had worked as receptionist for him for twenty-one years in flat shoes and only part-time to not be too uppity, hesitated.

For just a few minutes.

I’ll be right out here in the waiting room, she said making a slow exit. She poked head around the doorway. Right out here, before she disappeared.

Okay, Mabel. Dr. Woodrow sat on the swivel stool. What the heck is going on then anyways, eh?

Well, Barker had a heart attack, she said pulling tissues from the box by her side. "Dropped right into his dog dish. We were watching Jeopardy! and he just kind of staggered and went down. My mother said, ‘Oh cripes’ sakes, he’s gonna let go on the carpet!’ Barker just died for crying out loud, but that’s where her mind is, keeping the ninety year old carpet clean. Not a thought of his poor soul wafting around the house in shock . . ." Her eyes teared.

Yah, well, it was a poor sentiment to express.

Mabel looked up at the harsh ceiling light, I tried to give him CPR, blew into his nostrils but his teeth were pretty foul smelling, and he looked pretty much out of here, if you know what I mean. Not like he had a second chance left in him.

That sounds like an accurate assessment of the situation.

Does it? I wasn’t sure I’d done enough. I never know when I’ve done enough. Mabel slumped her head into her hands. Doctor Woodrow, I’m so lost. Everything keeps changing, but then it seems like it never changes enough.

He patted her hand. It’s always real tough when your dog dies. He scratched his neck, rubbed under his chin. He was looking at her intently, sizing her up. So what’s the big business about being out at your Dad’s camp?

Well, it all started because Susan Simitch is leaving. You know her, the masseuse from Bessemer who works at Wisnicki’s. She got a job in Florida, way down at the bottom of it.

Yah, ok, but what’s that got to do with this whole situation?

Dr. Woodrow’s overly concerned expression was like a faint whiff of ether that made Mabel’s forehead bead with dizzy perspiration. She’s just getting away and I’m not.

Susan Simitch got a job in Florida and you didn’t?

Yah, heck, she gets to go and I’m stuck here. Mabel could see he didn’t understand her predicament anymore than the others. Sometimes she thought he could. After all, it was only two months ago he’d allowed her comatose husband’s pneumonia to be treated with morphine, ending a ten-year nightmare. It seemed he understood a lot in the nursing home hallway back then. I needed some time to myself, to say good bye to my dog. So I went to the lake. For that my mom sends Otto Grepko out to get me, like I’m a lunatic.

Mn hmn. He gazed at her while tapping his fingers to his upper lip.

"I don’t know why I’m not crazy. Thirty nine years in the Village of Five Lakes. She blew her nose. Watching Tony waste away month after month. And let me tell you, caring for the ungrateful is not an easy row to hoe. It was like mining an empty twenty-mile iron ore shaft with a fork. Any more could’ve killed me." She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, as if to convey the justifiable self-preservation instinct.

Dr. Woodrow smoothed his pant leg.

She continued. "I could endure anything if there was a point to it and that’s why I was out at the cabin, and cabin mind you with walls, roof and a fireplace, not a blasted rusty tin duck blind lean-to. I went there so I could think if there is a point to my existence. But how the heck am I supposed to get enlightened when I keep getting interrupted?"

Enlightened, eh?

Mabel went on. You know science fiction is more believable than my life. Sometimes I think I have magnets in the bottom of my feet that keep me stuck to the iron ore of the Upper Peninsula. If a UFO came down, opened its hatch and the aliens said, ‘Come on! Let’s go to our world where you’ll fit in!’ I wouldn’t be able to get my feet to let go. She blew her nose again. "With my Dad dead my Mom depends on me to take care of everything. Every day is eight, nine hours massaging stiff necks and skiers’ sore asses, coming home to Jeopardy! And then laundry, and macaroni and cheese every Sunday, fish fry every Friday, a trip to Shopko once a month for a highlight. I need a real life."

What about your brothers? Any word from them yet?

They wouldn’t come back to the U.P. if giant Musky were pulling thirty point bucks behind a ski boat in a twelve month season. Merlo married the Asian girl and won’t leave Japan. He still thinks Highway 2 is the Yooper equivalent of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And Toivo is inert up in Canada avoiding the defunct draft with Frenchie Baptiste. Remember him? The over-dressed osteopath who became his wilderness guide and expatriate cohort? Yah, heck, their fish and hunt camp is sacred ground, like Moses wrote ‘Do not disturb’ on the front door. She fired another tissue onto the floor. No ways are they coming back to the Upper Peninsula. I’m the unmarried daughter, available and disposable. You know how they treat daughters in the outback of China?

Dr. Woodrow blinked.

They drown them. Or make slaves out of them. Mabel narrowed her eyes to drive home the point. "That’s what it’s like for me with my mother. She looks like a Finlander but she’s part Chinese."

Elka?

I mean metaphorically speaking and without casting aspersions on the Chinese race, what with all their contributions to the world. She wiped her eyes. You better learn some acupuncture if you want to keep up. There was a moment’s pause for absorption.

So, then, other than Barker’s heart attack, and you going to your Dad’s cabin, nothing happened? he said.

Exactly! And I can’t take being boxed in anymore. I’m ready to crack.

At that moment Elka reentered, her cheeks burnished from eavesdropping. Oh, you’ve been no more boxed in than anybody else around here, Elka snapped. What do you think you missed so much of?

"Other people do things, you know, Mabel said without surprise at her mother’s intrusion. People travel and expand their horizons. People think in some parts of the world."

Oh, you’re imagining things. There’s nothing more than this anywhere. Life is hard and I’m sorry you weren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth able to loll around every day, but life comes different than we plan and you just have to swallow the medicine when the Lord gives you a dose.

Officer Grepko eased himself back into the fold with a steaming coffee mug in his fist. I think Upper Michigan is God’s country, myself, he said sniffing thawed mucous into his nasal passages.

Oh, yah, paradise with the all winter sports of pushing snow up and down the driveway, knocking ice daggers off the roof edge, kicking chunks of brown road ice boulders from under the wheel wells and windshield scraping. And the three month summer garage sale and fly swatting. Wow, look at all the jets circling Gogebic airport loaded with tourists jonesing to join all the action. People are just lined up to sample bratwurst and dance to polka tunes at the VFW after dodging deer on the highway. Mabel got off the table and started to dress herself right in front of everybody. Pretty soon I’ll be taking care of you, she said pointing to her mother, When you fall and break your hip on the ice. That’ll be just dandy. That’ll be another picnic for everybody.

How about keeping her overnight at least? Elka said to the doctor. "For what you call it, your observation."

Mabel said, I’d rather go to jail.

Officer Grepko leaned towards Mabel, At least you don’t have to have insurance to get in there.

Dr. Woodrow placed his hands on Mabel’s shoulders in a gesture that seemed both to give comfort and prevent an escalation. I’m going to give you a prescription for an anti-depressant, eh. Take a few months before you decide on anything, eh.

He had been with them through the most difficult and intimate moments in their lives with a loving level headedness so Mabel suspected it gave him a wider perspective and she knew any rash move would simply increase resistance on Elka’s part. "I’ll go back to my mother’s tonight. And I’ll take handfuls of pills. But I am going to get out of here someday," she said.

The Upper Peninsula was disconnected from the rest of mother mitten Michigan except for the Mackinac Bridge that could easily be bombed away. Mabel felt like that, just hanging on to her mother’s world by a frayed genetic thread. What about Barker?

Where is he now? Elka asked.

Back of the squad car, Grepko said.

Dr. Woodrow stopped writing in Mabel’s chart for a moment then said, Otto can take him to the freezer at the veterinary hospital till you decide what you want to do with his body.

No fighting the elements, eh. I’ll have to have him cremated and bury his ashes in the spring, Mabel said dejectedly.

Elka Wirtanen sighed and brushed her hands together like she was cleaning off crumbs. Yah, well, ok. I’ll go get the car then.

Mabel solemnly gathered her tissue collection off the floor and put them into the trash.

Officer Grepko said, So, are you working on Monday then? ‘Cause my shoulder still hurts from when my snow machine fell off the trailer.

Mabel sighed. Can’t you just ask Doc for a cortisone shot right now?

Shots don’t feel as good as when you work it out by hand.

Yah, I’ll be there on Monday. She grabbed the sleeve of his jacket in both fists. You take good care of my dog.

That night Mabel Wirtanen Gardenia twisted under heavy blankets. A grown woman in a kid’s bed, that said it all. Physically strong, hardy by nature, how was it she was so weak she couldn’t escape some flannel sheets and a pile of quilts? There wasn’t even a lock on the bedroom door.

She thought about her two days in the woods, the sweetness of rocking in front of a hand built fire and talking out loud to herself without fear of being heard. Two days to cry over the loss of her pet without some moron saying, Oh come on now take and pull yourself together. Two days out of her whole life to be alone at her favorite place in the world, as she knew it.

Mabel’s grandfather built the Chaney Lake cabin in the twenties. Aspens and firs grew all around for miles, the water was so clear back then you could see the bottom way out in the middle. The little log house had one bedroom, a kitchen with pantry, a small living room with a stone fireplace made from rocks pulled out of the land or hauled from Lake Superior, and a screened porch where, later on, the kids slept on army cots in the summer. It had that old closed up cabin smell Mabel hated until her brother, Merlo, told her it smelled that way because the Yetis used it when the family wasn’t there.

One of Mabel’s earliest memories was of sitting in the backyard cedar sauna sweating on a bench with large naked relatives surrounding her, their round bodies lit up by the glowing embers’ heat. There was an outhouse window with a view of the woods and lake. Nailed to the inside of the shithouse door were the ten commandments and a picture of Jesus—that enchanted stinking shrine taught her the most visceral human acts were coupled with divinity.

An indoor toilet was one of the few things Elka had ever insisted on having. That came after Mabel’s grandfather died and the cabin became theirs. If you expect me to take and bring the kids out here you can take and put in a regular bathroom. The heck with an outhouse, her mother said with the narrow eyes that meant business. It seemed sacrilegious to tear it down but her Dad always wanted his wife to be happy so he made the addition, and threw in a shower with hot water to boot. It seemed real deluxe in comparison.

Years later some guy from Milwaukee bought most of the land around the lake and people from Wisconsin and Illinois started to buy his lots to build summer cottages because once you crossed the Wisconsin border into the U.P. land became incredibly cheap. They brought up motorcycles and powerboats. When Erho Wirtanen died the cabin remained unused, the property tax another burden on Mabel’s shoulders, but she wanted to keep it. She’d always dreamed one day she’d live like the blind hermit who joyfully took in monsters, seeing God in all human detritus like in the old Frankenstein movie, eating a humble diet of bread and cheese, studying mysticism, becoming pure of heart, free of most sin. A Lutheran Psaint, a term she had fashioned meaning a non-Catholic, so probably self-appointed, Lutheran religious celebrity, a pseudo saint with icons and statues for dashboards, the whole shebang. Something more than Luther’s idea that all true believers were saints, something that required some recognizable effort that would mean dashboard figurines and maybe a few saint cards, if not a Time magazine article.

But it didn’t quite happen that way. She never got around to unlocking the secrets of life and the cabin was all run down. With an overload of Tony Gardenia’s nursing home bills there was no extra money to go into restoration of either. And the sad part was that this had gradually come to seem normal to Mabel, that dreams were dreams and life was life, and a rut was a natural place to be. Until the Friday before when her friend and fellow masseuse broke some news.

* * *

After work that day, Susan Simitch, while sitting in the Wisnicki sauna with Mabel and Esther, her co-workers, announced she was moving to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to work for a husband and wife chiropractic team. Lucy and Maurice Vital. I could have gone to California but I don’t know, earthquakes and all that kind of stuff.

Just like that? You’re leaving Wisnicki’s? Esther asked wide-eyed.

Just like what? You just go ahead and leave when you want. Nobody makes you stay anywhere. Not really.

But you don’t know anybody down there, Esther continued.

"Oh please. I want what life is all about, adventure, romance. Her audience sat on the cedar benches sweating in awe. Don’t you guys want adventure and romance?"

Mabel had said, I don’t think about that kind of thing.

What have you got here? Nobody appreciates you, you’re a machine.

Esther said, People do too appreciate her. Plenty of people.

"As long as she’s doing something for them. But think of yourself and see what happens, Mabel."

Myself?

"Yah! For crying out loud. You’re still young. Don’t you want to be swept off your feet, especially after what you’ve been through with Tony? He was in a coma, for Christ’s sake, the ultimate deadbeat. If he was my husband I wouldn’t have gone to the nursing home even one day, unless it was to unplug some machine he was tied up to."

Esther stiffened. Mabel has a real good heart, she’s forgiving. She lived up to her responsibilities.

Susan laughed. Goody two shoes nice girl. You know what that’s going to get you. Why wait? Just start donating your organs now. She adjusted her towel and sighed. "I’m just saying, Mabel, you’ve given up a lot already and you could grab hold of something for yourself. Be selfish for a change, eh? Take.’"

I’ve been to Florida, Mabel said. Our family went for a couple of Easter vacations a long time ago. It was nice I think, what I remember.

Susan went on, Don’t you guys have any dreams?

I always wanted to be thin, Esther said.

Mabel shrugged. I used to dream of being useful to humanity. What else is the point of existence? All the dying, pain, suffering . . . She looked at the blank expressions of her perspiring compatriots.

"Dying, pain and suffering is what you have to get away from Mabel," Susan said.

Mabel wondered if they really didn’t get what she was saying or if they were deliberately trying to make her feel more alone and isolated because long winters had made them mean.

Esther and Mabel both stretched out on their benches. Minutes passed with eyes averted and nothing exchanged but heavy sighs as they sweat.

Susan sat tall. Well, I have dreams and I’m going after them.

When are you leaving? Mabel asked sitting up.

I gave two weeks notice today. My new life starts January twenty first.

The other two masseuses stared at Susan. Mabel pondered her endless future at Wisnicki’s and surely the extra work until they found a replacement.

And that’s what triggered this desperation Mabel was feeling that drove her out to her Grandfather’s cabin to think. Somebody was busting out of the rut. There were, in spite of everything, possibilities. Maybe she still had a shot at becoming Psaint Mabel if she got away and really knuckled under.

Mabel, forlorn and sleepless without Barker’s warm body beside her, got out of bed and knelt down on the wooden floor. Dear God, she prayed, I’ve never seen your face, I’ve never heard your voice, but I’ve always believed in you. Now I need to know you believe in me a little. I don’t think anybody else down here does. And even though my

Dad always said I could do what I wanted if I tried hard enough I’m beginning to think that isn’t true. Please, help me become a better person or, if that’s impossible, at least find some purpose in life. And give

Barker a good home in heaven. Amen

* * *

Monday morning Otto Grepko showed up at Wisnicki’s with his sore shoulder and a box of cinnamon buns, a gift from his wife. She’s concerned about you, like all of us, he said. The buns only added to the unspoken rumors at work about Mabel’s trouble over the weekend. No one said anything because people were careful around Mabel to begin with because she was considered sensitive for her size.

Mabel stopped Susan in the frozen parking lot after closing Monday evening. Let’s go to Joe’s pasty shop in Ironwood. I want to hear how you got this job.

Oh, yah, Susan said. And I want to hear why you were arrested. I heard you had a shot gun.

"Who said I was arrested?"

Carl, Esther’s husband, over at the Finnish bakery.

They sat at the eat-in the corner table of Joe’s Pasty Shop where the frigid air from the opening door wouldn’t whip their faces.

May explained her version of the night before Christmas Eve leaving out the part about her dog for his dignity’s sake. I had plenty of fire wood for the old stove and a sleeping bag good for halfway up K-2, I wasn’t going to freeze to death. I know how to take care of myself.

Everybody knows that.

Except my mother.

Yah, my mom thinks I’m gonna get stabbed to death if I leave the U.P. but I’m twenty eight years old and I don’t have any kids yet. I’ve met every man there is from Houghton to Escanaba. I’ve got to expand my territory if I’m ever going to reproduce. Heck, half the men within a hundred miles of Five Lakes are alcoholic.

That’s all, you think? Half?

Well, yah, at least. Even in its’ hey day of copper mining and logging when it had a chance this place has never become anything but Shanties Galore. Just a load of old taverns on torn up roads.

We have the Ace Hardwares and IGAs, Mabel added defensively. When I was a kid we used to take a canoe out in the summers with a dog and go exploring. Old man Johnson made a rink to skate on in the winter and Esther and I used to cross country ski. I used to love it here. Mabel sipped her coke. Imagine that.

"Mabel, even the name ‘village’ is bogus. And ‘Five Lakes’, my ass. You live in a grouping of houses and no lakes, full of 300 old people who think Wakefield is a big city. They cut into their steaming meat pies and huddled closer conspiratorially. "The Vitals have a spa on a little private island called Reliance Key, off Fort Lauderdale, where they hire masseuses, too, and they said those girls make a lot of money because of tips. But I want to be in a city, get out and circulate, meet people with futures, not just work and go to bed."

Yah, I suppose.

I want a new life.

Mabel held an ice cube to her burned tongue. Yah, you said that.

The two women finished their meal in silent contemplation.

Susan insisted on paying for both of them, which embarrassed Mabel. She herself was not generous because things were always taken away before she had a chance to give. As they trudged to their cars through the fresh snow Susan leaned close. Can I ask you something personal?

I guess.

Why did you take such good care of a man who was mean to you when he didn’t even know what you were doing?

I thought one day he might wake up and love me, for being good to him. Mabel was surprised at the tears that came so quickly. She couldn’t stop them from falling for many days.

* * *

Susan insisted they go out New Year’s Eve to celebrate her new life in Florida. Mabel couldn’t refuse even though she agreed with her mother that it was suicidal to drive ice-slicked roads in the dark on a night devoted to alcohol poisoning. But young Susan, the Viking explorer who was off to conquer the new world, would drive and they’d be home before midnight when the real trouble between ice glare and tavern patrons began.

Mabel’s blue jeans and holiday sweater, knit full of reindeers by a grateful client cured of sciatica, made her look wide compared to Susan who wore a tight red mail order knit dress and black high heels. They crossed into Wisconsin on back roads in Susan’s Oldsmobile to live it up at the Little Bohemia Lodge. The parking lot was full and even though freshly plowed, the giant firs were still dropping big bomb loads of snow every now and then.

The spacious dining hall was warm with bodies and kitchen aromas. The polished old wood floors had a nice feel as Mabel walked over their creaking planks past the modest Christmas tree and flocked window dressing. The bullet holes from John Dillinger’s shoot out with the Feds, preserved in a window by the owner, Emil Wanetka, gave the homey atmosphere a certain underworld panache’.

They had a dinner of roast beef, green beans, mashed potatoes and Jell-O. Susan insisted they have cold cranberry wild rice salad and champagne since it was cheap by the glass. Here’s to dreams coming true! Cheers!

Yah. Cheers, Mabel added hoping an extra helping of potatoes would absorb the alcohol content since she wasn’t supposed to drink while on the Elavil tablets.

After dinner they went into the saloon, which looked like a movie set from a 1940’s Humphrey Bogart murder mystery. The room was cozy under the sloping ceiling. Jolly patrons stood three deep behind the early birds who held down the red leather stools at the golden wood bar. Mabel remembered having a coke at Little Bohemia when she was a child, traveling the chain of lakes in her grandfather’s small wooden outboard. He gave her nickels to put in the beautiful jukebox that still stood at one end of the room.

Susan stood with her little purse swinging off her bare shoulder. What do you want to drink, Mabel?

Oh heck. Just another pop, or coffee.

"Two Irish coffees," Susan called to the bartender.

Underdressed and under enthused, Mabel didn’t object.

The heavy set Fitzpatrick twins, Erin and Darren, who had a roofing company in Wakefield, insisted on buying their drinks. No one could tell them apart, which they used to their advantage when dealing with the local law. Undomesticated, in their later thirties, they did good work when they showed up but had a reputation for being ruthless when challenged in any way. Rumor had it they blew up boats belonging to lake property people who were late to pay. The backs of their plaid flannel shirts looked the size of double bed sheets from the small table Mabel had staked out in a corner near the ice-flocked windows.

How about a back rub, Susie? one twin roofer called as Susan wiggled her way through the crowd towards Mabel.

Let’s play hide-the-Kielbasa in the back of my Suburban! roared the other so the whole room could hear.

They are so crude, Susan said. I can’t wait to get away from this kind of backwoods stuff.

The twins conferred at the bar and laughed, snorting and backslapping.

If I stayed here that’s the kind of man I’d have as a father to my children. I can’t wait to leave.

Hey Susie! one twin bellowed. Massage my Irish potato, will ya?

Just don’t make eye contact, Mabel said.

I’m not afraid of them.

I am.

You’ve got to not be scared of things like that, Mabel. You’re too afraid of taking chances. When you get the application from the Vitals you fill it out and try for the job. You’re the best masseuse at Wisnicki’s, you could work anywhere and make a lot more raja than you do here.

Yah, but I can’t just take off and go like you, eh, my mother needs me here.

You could leave if you wanted. You let Tony Gardenia just suck up your guts.

The roofers were now facing Mabel and Susan, their cheeks red and bulging with smiles. Hey ladies! How about a steam bath—from my breath! Har har har har!

Let’s work up a good sweat! I’ll give you a good tongue massage! The Little Bohemia patrons stuck tight to their conversations, the Fitzpatricks’ ribaldry unappreciated but uncontested. The bartender had words with the men but he wasn’t being forceful, Mabel could see that from twenty feet away.

I’m kind of tired now, it’s gonna be a tricky drive all the way home from here, maybe we should call it a night, eh?

But it’s not even ten o’clock!

Just then Roddy Cook, the local bank owner’s son, touched the back of a chair at their table and asked, Is this seat taken?

Help yourself, Susan said smiling at him.

Happy New Year Mabel, he said extending his hand. His hair was neatly combed back and he wore a navy blue suit, noticeably better quality than the other men’s. He had been in charge of the repossession of Mabel’s house.

Roddy, she replied, giving him a passing touch.

I thought you could use some protection from the Irish Army. He smiled into Susan’s face and turned his back on Mabel.

Well, thank you, yah, they were getting a little out of hand.

I heard you’re planning on leaving our fair area, eh. Is that true?

"I have a new job, in Florida," she said proudly.

All the ways in Florida? But we haven’t even danced yet.

Is that an invitation?

I believe it is. You won’t mind Mabel, eh?

Well, actually, I was ready to go home and she’s driving.

Please stay! Susan said.

Hey, I have an idea. Why don’t you go and take Susan’s car and I’ll drive her home when she’s ready.

Mabel, if you want to go, here’s the keys to my car. I’ll just get it tomorrow.

Are you sure? Mabel asked.

I’ll take care of your friend. Don’t worry, Roddy said. He grinned and Susan nodded vigorously so Mabel drove home alone feeling left out and relieved. The headlights reflected off desolate miles of dirty snow berms as she drove along in the cold night, all quiet except for the heater fan. She parked the car in the rutted driveway of her mother’s shingled house and sat for some time, feeling empty.

When she came in through the kitchen door her mother called, Is that you?

Yah, she said kicking the snow off her shoes.

Ok, then. Don’t get crumbs all over if you’re taking food to bed or the ants’ll come.

More power to ‘em if any ants can come marching in when it’s twenty below zero, Mabel muttered.

Mabel Wirtanen Gardenia was in bed reading Ethan Fromme with a piece of fudge cake when she noticed it was 12:39. A new year had begun when she wasn’t paying attention. January 1, 1989. Boom. Missed out on something again.

Mabel had read that Mayan eras began and ended on specific days. Her life had been like that. The Hopeful Era began the day she was born, contained the times when she was a child making plans at slumber parties for a future as an astronomer, an archeologist, a philosopher, an airplane pilot. It ended on her high school graduation day when Tony Gardenia, an electric guitar playing Italian boy exiled from Chicago by his parents, told her she was too pretty and sent his sperm, jettisoned from his gonorrhea infected penis, to unite with one of her eggs.

Tony agreed to marry Mabel after a talk with Erho Wirtanen, who was probably holding a claw hammer in each fist, because Tony had to if he wanted to stay in Five Lakes, which was cheap, and he didn’t want to leave his band, which he thought could make it big. Then Mabel not only didn’t carry the child to term but also was left infertile from the improperly treated strain of venereal germs, a personally agonizing state made worse because her mother resented the lack of grandchildren who would never sit on her front porch with coloring books and pop. She wished she could spin it into a tale similar to the Virgin Mary giving birth, that somehow her being violated and being left unable to bear children so she cared for the world at large sort of thing, but hadn’t nailed the detailed story down yet exactly.

So even though it was the sixties and there were supposed to be lots of possibilities for everybody, she didn’t join the Army or march in anti-war rallies, didn’t go up the Amazon searching for medicinal herbs, didn’t back pack through England or meditate in the ashrams of India or join the Peace Corps or take a trip down the Nile. Instead of a university she took further education at the Wisnicki Steam Bath Sauna and Massage and dealt with an alcoholic cheating husband. With Mabel making good money as a masseuse Tony saw no reason to divorce her and no one had taught Mabel, yet, how to throw in the towel. Finns, as far as she knew, didn’t know how to give up on anything.

From the age of eighteen to twenty eight, in Mayan terms, it was the Age of Despair. The promise of a future was replaced with empty drudgery. And as awful as it seemed at the time, the worst part was losing it all. In one dark night of alcohol and icy roads her little world was erased. No more overtired unloved wife, at least she thought.

But Tony was tough. He hung on in a coma at the Aspen Crest nursing home for another ten years, in Mayan terms, the Age of Endless Effort. Her brothers disappeared, her father died, but Mabel had a lot of the Wirtanen fortitude and went to Tony’s bedside every evening after work, massaged his limbs and