Such a Pretty Face (17 page)

“Helen,” Grandma said, her voice calm like the swish of the wind, though she must have been devastated. “Come on out, Helen. I’ve got everything under control and no one is here for your brain.”

“No! I won’t go when they’re standing around waiting to take off with my brain. I’m not getting out of the car until you get rid of them.” She pointed at all the people.

I saw Grandma take a deep breath and think, then push back her wet white hair.

You see, what I learned growing up with Helen is that you have to do a lot of thinking. How do you handle this person in this situation? How do you talk to her? What are the triggers for explosions? What will calm her down? What words should be avoided? How long does it take?

“Honey, these people aren’t here to take your brain,” Grandma said.

“Yes, they are! I can tell. I’ve been there and I know what they want. Shitheads.” The water from the fountain was hitting the front of the car, and Helen screamed at it. “Turn that syrup off! Get rid of the syrup!” She took off one of the feathers from her hat and threw it into the water. “That’ll stop them! That’ll stop the shitheads.”

I knew that was a bad word, but it did not appear that anyone took offense.

Grandma said to Helen, “These people are here to protect you, sweetie. You see?” She turned toward the crowd and did a little wave. Suddenly, the crowd waved at Helen. I waved, too.

“Hello, Helen…. Hi, Helen, it’s Mrs. Gruback from Ashville Elementary. I was your second-grade teacher…. Hi, Helen, it’s me, Darla, from high school…. Hello, Helen, it’s Dr. Dix…. Hey, Helen, it’s Tracy, your neighbor, remember me? Hi, Helen, it’s Aunt Trudy, darling…. Hello, Helen, it’s me, Uncle Mac….” And on it went.

I could tell Helen was suspicious for a while as she peered out at all the people waving at her, calling her name, but then Geoff Gobinsky, a fifteen-year-old neighbor, held up his German shepherd, Twinkles, and waved Twinkles’s paw at Helen. I saw her analyzing that situation, that dog.

“This doesn’t appear to be enemy territory,” Helen shouted out the window.

“It’s not, sweetie,” Grandma said. “These are all your friends.” Grandma turned and indicated they were to wave again. Everyone waved. By this time Grandpa was climbing into the fountain with his cowboy boots, his cowboy hat on his head.

“Hi, sugar,” he said.

Helen nodded at him, then took out one more feather and threw it in the water. “All right. I don’t think these people want to take my brain and make it think. I’m coming out.”

“Good, good, lovely,” Grandma said.

Grandpa gallantly opened the door, put out his elbow, wet now from the fountain spray, and Helen took it quite graciously.

Everyone clapped and waved.

Helen bowed, right in that fountain, right and left, right and left. It was her performance bow, I thought, from the time she spent in New York, so I braced myself.

She walked to the little ledge around the fountain, near a part she had demolished, stepped up and sang three songs, one right after another from
Annie Get Your Gun
, including the song “There’s No Business Like Show Business.”

At the end, we all applauded again. It was a much bigger crowd by then because Helen had the best voice and people came running to hear it.

Then she gave her finale. She sang “Amazing Grace.” I can still hear her singing that song in my head, haunting, piercing.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me—I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind but now I see…

It brought us all to tears, even me, but especially Grandpa.

A bunch of his cousins stood around us then, patting him on the back. Two of them had tears streaming down their faces, which they did not bother to hide, because they were manly enough not to worry about that stuff.

I cried, too. My momma was a wretch, and I wanted her to be saved so I could have a real mother who didn’t worry about leeches on her brain.

Now, in any other town, driving a car into a fountain would be a pretty significant problem, but not in Ashville because of the relationships Grandma and Grandpa had with their relatives, long-term friends, hundreds of happy employees, and their happy employees’ families.

Grandpa and Grandma, privately and through the company, had quietly funded the new library; bought land to extend the park; installed the fountain Helen had smashed through; installed the best playground equipment ever, complete with tunnels, slides, wobbly bridges, and swings; and donated money for the senior center and a home for the mentally handicapped. Grandpa’s company funded the fireworks display every year, a huge town Christmas party, and a summer barbeque in the park.

Grandpa’s company was one of the few in those days that hired, and promoted, women at the same rate as it did men. In addition, no one was forced into retirement. He had many people working for him in their seventies and eighties, hobbling around with canes and walkers. “They don’t quit, sugar, and I’m glad of it. They’ve been with me since the start. Jefferson knows more about the company than I do and he’s eighty-four. Mabel knows every single one of our clients and has more knowledge about them in her head than I do in my filing cabinets. Jan Wu has memorized each employee’s personnel file. Their friends are there. I pay them and they’re valued. Why quit?”

Grandpa ran a clean, honest, family-centered company where they closed down the week of Christmas and had spring break for family time and everybody got two weeks off in summer. There was, apparently, no turnover at Grandpa’s company.

Unless you got fired, and Grandpa did fire people, including his own relatives if they weren’t working hard enough. One man made the mistake of rubbing up against the body of the mother of a friend of mine, who was the head of a department. First time she warned him. The second time it happened she hit the man so hard she bruised his jaw, and when he fell back he caught the corner of a desk. He bled like a sieve. The idiot had wanted to know if she needed a little “woo-ha” at night since her husband had recently left her for a twenty-two-year-old. When he got off the floor, Grandpa fired him and, according to town lore, said, “Nice hit, Sandra. Next time follow up with a kick to the groin.” He gave the woman a bonus for putting up with “too much baloney. This will not happen again. I apologize, Sandra.”

But he and Grandma were people who believed in second chances.

They went to school with a man named Herman. Tough, tough home life. He went off the bad end, had problems with liquor and drugs and finally hit bottom when he got himself involved in a burglary. He went to jail. Grandpa visited a couple of times. The man found God in jail and came out a changed man. Grandpa hired him as a janitor. Grandpa said he was the best damn janitor ever. Grandpa paid for his degree in accounting and Herman worked his way up the ladder.

Now he’s a vice president and says Grandpa saved his life. “Without your grandpa, Stevie, I would be in a coffin, that’s the truth. He believed in me until I could believe in myself.”

There were also many people who were on the receiving end of their financial gifts, especially children. Grandma and Grandpa believed that not helping people was a sin and that turning your back on suffering was a “double sin with a huge dose of arrogance and selfishness thrown on top,” according to Grandma.

My friend Rudolph had a cleft palate. They paid to get it fixed. A teenager, Helga Alena, got cancer. Grandpa and Grandma rented the family an apartment in Portland while she underwent treatment. She lived, grew up, went to college, then went to work for Grandpa. She, too, ended up a vice president.

One woman battled depression and was suicidal. She was from my grandma’s side. Her hobby was sewing, so Grandma encouraged her to sew. The woman started a clothing business. She became famous, moved to New York, and sent Grandma four new outfits a year.

So after Grandma and Grandpa got Helen into the pickup, Tryler Torelli got his truck and his wrench, got the car out of the fountain, and towed it to Dwayne O’Holloway’s shop, where he got things running again. Gen Shiner fixed up the brick that Helen had knocked out, and when the city turned off the fountain and drained it, a bunch of ladies went in and cleaned out the mess and skid marks.

No one made a big deal about it. No one pressed charges.

And life could have gone on and on, I suppose, for Grandma and Grandpa. Exhausting, frustrating, so disappointing, fraught with worry, grief, pain, but it could have gone on.

But Helen started to get violent.

And that’s when things got worse. So much worse.

But I’m skipping ahead.

I miss my relatives in Ashville, but I don’t think I could ever go back. It would hurt too much. My presence there might hurt them, too. Then they would have to remember what happened, as I do. Every. Single. Day.

Portland, Oregon

I
will plant corn, I told myself.

I can do it.

I will do it.

I shuddered.

I can’t do it.

Not ready yet. No.

I held my hands as they automatically started to shake.

I can do it.

I breathed in.

Deep.

I wished my hands would stop shaking.

Jake left a note, on my front door, asking if I would go out to dinner with him. He left an e-mail address and a phone number. He was going to be out of town for a while, but please, please call and let him know if that would work. He thought it would be best if we did not go out for pasta.

I curled up on my red couch and pulled a pillow onto my lap. My toes wriggled. My stomach flip-flopped. My whole body felt warm and cuddly and liquid hot in that private area.

My brain sizzled and descended into
absolute panic.

The hospital had upped the amount they were willing to pay for the Atherton case.

“We’re basically going to pay to make it go away,” Crystal said, sneering. “We don’t want it in the newspaper. Bad for the hospital. Hopefully the country hicks will have the sense to take the money and go back to their pitchforks and wagons and plumber cracks.”

The whopping amount the hospital would agree to: $75,000. No admittance of wrongdoing.

Compared to the costs the Athertons were incurring for in-home care, and the medical bills outstanding and coming down the pike, it was comparable to offering to pay the Athertons grocery bills for a few months, but no pop.

Mr. and Mrs. Atherton rejected that amount through their attorneys. I can only imagine how insulted and ravingly pissed they must have felt. Mr. Atherton’s comment came back to us through their attorneys: “We will never agree to that. It is our goal to change the policy at that hospital and ensure that not one more child has to live as ours does, half dead, half alive. If I can do that, then I will have done my job. I do not want any parents, or children, to go through what we’ve been through, and by God’s grace I will fight the good fight.”

“We’ll still squish them and their good fight,” Crystal said, her high heels clacking around her office floor, her skinny hips swaying. “The Athertons’ attorneys are newbies. They haven’t a clue how to win a case of this size.”

I thought of Danny, in a hospital bed, half here, half not, and I stared at the boxes and boxes of papers, endless folders we’d already accumulated for this case. I’d seen Crystal going through them the other day, and as usual she seemed nervous, anxious. “Have you seen the Dornshire letter? Are you sure you haven’t seen it, Steve? Positive? Think hard.”

Why did she want the Dornshire letter so bad?

When she was out of the office, I thought I’d try to end that mystery….

“I have a girlfriend who’s nursing twins,” Zena told me as we ate in Pioneer Courthouse Square. It had been raining, but now it was sunny. Earlier in the morning it had hailed. Typical Oregon weather. “She says she knows how a cow feels now.”

“I would feel that way, too.” I choked up about that, couldn’t help it. She had two babies. That was so nice. I blinked hard.

“She says her boobs are twice as big as normal and she hates it. Can’t run, can’t exercise, she leaks all over the place, and when her husband touches her, milk squirts out. She was ticked off at him the other night in bed because he wasn’t helping her with the twins and she only sleeps about four hours a night so she squirted him with her breast milk.”

I laughed. “Good for her. That’ll get him up and at ’em.”

“It did. Hasn’t done much for their sex life.”

“She has twin babies. Why does she want to have sex?”

“She doesn’t. It’s her husband.”

“Lemme guess. She’s exhausted all the time. He thinks going to work for nine hours a day is hard work and comes home, wants dinner and sex for dessert. She, however, is entering her second shift and can’t stand the man, and wants him to take his horn and go away.”

“That’d be about it. She said to me the other day, ‘Zena, I make milk in these jugs. I have a yeast infection so I’m making yeast. Blend those two together, add the salt from my tears, and I can almost make bread. Aren’t I special?’ Then she started crying. If you were bread, what kind would you be?”

“I want to be cinnamon, but I think I’m more blah whole grain bread.”

“Nah, you’re cinnamon.”

“What are you?”

“I’m cheese garlic bread.”

I nodded. “Yep, Zena, you are.”

I handed her some grapes. She gave me a sprinkled donut. I handed it back. She ate it. How come skinny people can eat donuts?

“Janet, you will go with Stevie to the caterers on Tuesday to firm up our order for the party,” Herbert intoned to his wife across the dining room table. He did not bother to see if she was listening, or even alive, and kept consuming the meatloaf he always insisted she make on the first Thursday of the month.

Lance stared straight ahead, the candlelight flickering, that ponderous chandelier still evil. He cannot stand to watch Herbert chew. Polly had her hands in her lap. I pushed the meatloaf around my plate as if it were a train.

“I can’t, Herbert,” Aunt Janet said, as the fire made a popping sound. “I already told you that I have two classes on Tuesday.”

He scoffed, still didn’t deign to look in his wife’s eyes. “You are not to go. We have other things more important than your…classes.”

“What classes?” Lance asked. Tonight he was wearing a shirt that had an imprint of his blow-up dolls on the front, with the words, “Buy Me,” and the number for Lance’s Lucky Ladies on the back.

Aunt Janet didn’t say anything. I dropped my fork. I could tell she was trying not to cry.

“Oh, Momma,” Polly said, leaning over and holding her hand.

Lance glared at his father.

Aunt Janet put her head up. “I am taking classes at Portland State University.”

“You are?” Polly was shocked, yet totally delighted.

“That’s great, Aunt Janet,” I said. “Which classes?”

“Three classes. One on the works of Jane Austen, a Russian history class, and basic math.”

“No, it is not great,” Herbert snapped. “Aunt Janet’s place is here at home, helping me and taking care of the household chores. A woman belongs in the home. She’s sixty-two years old. Why does she need to finish her degree now?”

“Because she wants to, Dad,” Lance said. “It’s never too late!”

Herbert pounded a fist on the table. Even the evil chandelier shook.

“The woman has not been in school since she was twenty years old—”

“That’s because she dropped out of school to put you through college, Wonder Man, then graduate school. She worked until the day before she had Lance,” Polly put in. She didn’t even bother to hide the paper bag in her hand. She put it up to her mouth and took deep, long breaths.

“Young lady, I will accept no back talk at my table,” Herbert said, pointing his fork at Polly.

“She wasn’t talking back, Dad,” Lance said. He had tried so hard, all of our growing-up years, for Herbert’s approval. It had never worked. “She’s saying that Mom never got a chance to finish her business degree because of what she did for you.”

Herbert laughed. Weren’t we all amusing? So entertaining! “What your mother did for me?” He laughed again. Ho, ho, ho, how funny is that statement! “Your mother has led a privileged life. Perhaps you’ve missed this home that I bought for her, her expensive clothes.”

We knew all about her plain, frumpy clothes. Aunt Janet dipped her head.

“This furniture, her car.” Aunt Janet drove a Cadillac. New, every five years. But the car wasn’t for Aunt Janet. Anyone who knew her in the slightest way would know that car didn’t suit her. Herbert bought her the car to show off his money. See what I, a community pillar and leader, can buy for The Wife! The Helpmate!

“She hasn’t worked a day in her life.”

“She raised three kids,” Polly said. “She took care of the house and she stayed married to you. An impossible feat, if you ask me. Mom’s been married to Godzilla, frankly. Overly large teeth, clenched face, pointy claws, nasty…”

Polly and Herbert locked eyes.

“Herbert,” I said, while Polly had to stand up, then bend over, bag plastered to her face. Isn’t family life fun? “You don’t own your wife—”

“I won’t take any further argument. My wife needs to be home. Janet, you will miss your classes and go to the caterers on Tuesday, do you understand me?”

At the end of the table, Aunt Janet bent her head, studied her plate, and then I saw her shoulders square and she tilted her head back up. “No. I am going to my classes.”

Yeeesss! Go, Aunt Janet!

“I’ve had enough of these fun and games, Janet. I said you could take your classes, waste my hard-earned money, but only if they did not interfere with my life here.” Herbert suddenly stopped his lecture and his jaw got tight. “It’s Virginia, isn’t it. She’s going to class down there, too, isn’t she?”

Aunt Janet didn’t say anything.

“She is, isn’t she?” Herbert roared as he realized that his wife was meeting Virginia without his permission, and he leaped to his feet. “I have forbidden you to see her.”

“Get control of yourself, Dad!” Lance said, standing square in front of him.

“You are not to see that crazy woman, Janet! She’s a bad influence on you—a liberal, loud woman who has no understanding of her role—”

“Control, Dad, control!” Polly inhaled again, then pulled her bag away from her face. “You’re the most narcissistic, critical, controlling person I’ve ever met in my life.”

The silence was electrifying.

Aunt Janet burst into tears, then said, “Do you think so, sweetheart?”

I gaped at Aunt Janet. “Do you need to ask?”

“Mom, Dad is a miniature dictator. He and Napoleon would be best friends. They’d certainly see eye to eye. If you weren’t here, I would never set foot in this house again, although every time I’m here I want to shake you upside down because you’re still,
still,
taking loose crap from Dad.”

“Get out, Polly,” Herbert ordered Polly. “How dare you. I have done everything for you. I have been an outstanding father and mentor to you. You are where you are because of me, and this is how you pay me back—”

“I got where I am, Dad, because I worked for it.” Polly threw her fork. It hit the wall. “I put myself through college, I found my own jobs. You didn’t help at all, not one bit. In fact, you made me pay you back your medical insurance deductible when I went to the hospital in college! I was broke, I was sick, and you made me come up with $500, which you easily, easily had—”

I heard Aunt Janet gasp. “Oh, my God, Herbert, you didn’t! You didn’t!”

“That’s neither here nor there—” he shouted, eyes shifting.

“He did,” I said, quiet, but sure. “He made her pay him back. He’s a millionaire but he made Polly come up with that money herself. We both worked extra hours to pay him back.”

“Stevie, you get out of my house, too!” Herbert roared. “I liked you better when you were fat. You were more pleasant to be around. You didn’t argue, you kept your head down, and you mostly did as you were told. Ever since you lost weight your attitude has been appalling. You think you know everything now. You think you can come in my home and tell me how it is. You have all these radical opinions and you have the temerity to voice them. I have been wanting to speak to you about it for months, privately, but now you’ve forced my hand!”

“Yes, let’s address it as a family. Stevie is a better woman now,” Aunt Janet said, chin up. “She sticks up for herself.” She sat up straight. “She carries herself better. She smiles more. She laughs. She works hard and she walks and she has a job and the partners are always asking her to work late because she’s so good at what she does.” She nodded at me. “She’s so valuable to the firm. She’s wonderful.”

My jaw dropped.

“I am going to take those classes, Herbert, and I am not going to the caterers on Tuesday. If you want to oversee the food, then you go. I don’t care.”

Polly said, “Woo-hoo, Mom!” Lance raised a fist in victory.

“You don’t care? You don’t care about the food for my anniversary party?” he hissed out, knuckles to the table, leaning forward to intimidate her.

“I don’t care, Herbert.”

“You don’t care?” He pounded both fists, once, on the table.

“No. Not at all. I’m sick of this. I’m sick of you. I’m taking classes with Virginia. I’m going to Portland State. I am going to finish my degree and I’m going to get a job. Do you hear that, Herbert? I’m going to get a job and a life.”

With that, she got up, kissed all of us on the forehead, except for Herbert, and left the room.

“Whoa,” Lance breathed. “You should have been nicer to Mom, Dad. Now you’re in trouble. The door is opening to a whole new, colorful world without Godzilla, and I’ll betcha she’s gonna choose that world, I’ll betcha.”

“Way to go, Mom,” Polly said. She laughed, bag at her side. “Way to tell off Dad, the ultimate whack job, and keep it classy.”

I thought of the expression on Aunt Janet’s face. She seemed…confident, victorious,
proud of herself.

And on Herbert’s face?

Shock. Total and complete shock.

Lance called me at work the next day.

“Honey, I know you’re busy and I feel bad I’m not doing more for this anniversary torture chamber that Dad’s got going down, so I’ll do the invitations. You’re doing the food, getting the tents, the flowers, so I got ’em, no problem. I got a gal who’s a graphic artist and she said she’d do the invitations for the anniversary torture chamber and for my eighties Hard Rock party the next night and send them out. I met her on the corner of Broadway and Market when she was painting a picture. She’s very cool, although my left ankle didn’t twitch.”

“Hmmm. Well, it’s not a business deal of yours, so maybe it’s okay to work with her even though there was no twitch?”

“Unclear, very unclear, but I’ll handle it. Trixie’s very creative, and we talked about my invitations. They’re going to be red and black with a white skull on the front and an electric guitar. She’s going to use some silver stuff to make the guitar shiny, then there’s going to be a pop-up in the middle—you know when you open up a kid’s book sometimes there’s pop-ups? Well, this is a pop-up of one of my blow-up dolls. I think it’ll be Fiona Butterfly—she’s warm and friendly. Then it’ll say the date and time and to dress up as your favorite hard rocker.”