My Estonia II. Justin Petrone
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a white shirt with a herring-bone pattern.
“What’s the matter?” the Stylist ran his hands through his perfectly coiffed brown hair and then scratched at his goatee.
“I was worried you were going to make me look like somebody.”
“Like who?”
“Like that actor… Juhan Ulfsak.”
“Ulfsak?” the Stylist folded his arms. “What about him?”
“There was a Stiil cover a few years back. They dressed him up in angel wings.”
“Oh, right, the angel wings,” the Stylist clicked his tongue and turned to the Photographer with a grin. “They should be arriving any minute now.” “What?”
“Calm down,” said the Photographer. “No angel wings,” he leaned down to adjust his tripod, “at least not this time.”
I put on the sweater and sat on a chair while the Stylist and Photographer discussed the appropriate lighting. It had been seven years since I was last up here in the publishing house. Seven years is all it took to go from a person involved in the assembly of a magazine to a character inside its covers, from the content provider to the content itself. I never had the ambition to be here this morning getting my photo taken in a strange pullover. Or had I? Maybe I had been secretly lusting after moments like these all along. So many things happened in life. Sometimes it was hard to remember what you had wished for.
“Turn your head a little to the left, now a little to the right,” the Photographer said in his deep voice, the camera flashing four times. “Now, cross your arms.”
“Like this?” I crossed them.
“Try to relax more. You should look like you are saying, ‘Hi, I’m Justin, and I really want you to read my new column.’”
“Ok.”
“That’s it! Don’t move.” The camera flashed three more times. “Super!”
To the others, it looked like I came alone. But Peep was there the whole time, buzzing in the air like a mosquito, a question mark on his forehead. And no matter how many times he asked me what I wanted, I just couldn't answer. I didn’t trust Peep because I didn’t trust myself. People like him tried to inspire us to an almost religious quest for personal achievement. And here I was, a writer, a columnist, a husband and father, but, at my core, an individual who apparently could not answer the most important questions.
“Ok, last photo,” the photographer made a funny face and I cracked up.
“There you go!” the camera flashed one, two, three, four more times. “Super!”
“Those flashes are kind of bugging me,” I blinked.
“Don’t worry, it should only take about four days for the flashes to wear off,” the Stylist quipped. “What?”
“My God,” the Stylist said to the Photographer. “He may be the most gullible one we’ve had yet.”
In the elevator, Peep began whispering in my ear again. But this time his voice was smooth and relaxed, like the disc jockey of a jazz station. It was as if we were in an Old Town café having a chat. Peep wasn’t the enemy. He was a motivational speaker. He just wanted to help.
“Is this what you really wanted, Justin?” Peep asked one last time.
“Of course it is, Peep,” I conceded as the floors clicked by. “I’m here, aren’t I? It has to be.”
“Good,” he crossed his legs and smiled. “Then I never, ever, want to hear you complain.”
P.S. Some names have been changed in the following story to protect the individuals’ privacy. While most of the following really happened, this book must be considered a work of fiction.
HIIU HUMOR
I toyed with my wedding ring and stared at the tape on the airplane wing. It was August 6, 2003, and I had been married for exactly two months.
I thought the flight from Tallinn to Kärdla would last, at the most, 30 seconds, but we were still up in the air, gliding above the thick, dark forests of western Estonia, bouncing in the wind. I rolled the fat metal band around my finger and realized it had probably been days since I last noticed its slight weight. I had taken the ring off a few times in the two months since it came to reside there, just to see if my hands felt any more at ease, but, no, they actually felt naked without the ring, so I put it back. My finger had come to expect the ring to be there, and there it would stay.
“What are you thinking about?” Epp asked me.
“The tape on the wing.”
“Let me see.” She leaned over, her face illuminated by the August sunshine. “Oh,” her eyes widened as she peered through the small window at the tape, the plastic and glue that held part of the aircraft together. “Wow.” She settled back into her seat and seemed a little troubled. “Anne Helene was in a plane crash, you know.”
“Anne Helene?”
“The designer we’re going to interview.”
“Oh, right.”
“And she was flying this same route.”
“She was?”
I looked at the small plane’s sole flight attendant, seated outside the cabin door, an expression of utter boredom on her face, and wondered why she signed up for this job of all jobs, to fly everyday on an old plane with tape on the wings back and forth to Hiiumaa.
Epp often asked what I was thinking, as if my mind only processed one thought at a time. I usually picked one to answer her, the one that was easiest to describe, but there had been at least half a dozen thoughts crowding in there, mixing and sloshing together. Physically, the two of us were up in the sky. But emotionally, metaphysically, I was at sea, lapped by the tides, knocked around, but strangely, as a whole, unstirred. I used to worry about so many things, but I had come to put my faith in the ocean of life. Everything would turn out alright. I would not sink, and I would not founder. No matter what happened, I told myself, I would stay afloat, seaworthy, treading water to the horizon.
Assuming our plane landed in one piece.
The flight attendant walked the aisle, collecting the wrappers from the one piece of candy that had been distributed to each passenger. I handed her ours, and she returned to her seat, fastening its safety belt as we prepared for descent to Hiiumaa.
Just days before, I was in New York. I went to pick my older brother up at the train station. It was a humid, rainy summer day, and the ride back to our parents’ home seemed like the ideal moment for a brother to brother chat. Eight years older than me, my brother was single, again, and, according to him, “loving every minute of it.” I meantime was a young newlywed and, in most people’s minds, in need of some mentoring.
“So,” he buckled his seatbelt. “How are you doing with this whole thing?” He whispered the question.
“I’m fine with it.”
“Are you sure?” he looked more deeply into my eyes. “Because, you know, it’s a lot of responsibility.”
“Yep,” I turned my eyes back to the road.
“Dude, you’re 23 and you’re going to have a kid!”
“What? People my age have kids.”
“People your age had kids. Like in the forties.”
“Look, I’m fine with it, ok?”
“Ok,” he looked out the window. “If you say you’re fine.”
“I am. I’m fine.”
And I was. I was convincing