Chapter 4: Helena

Helena’s father watched the dance of the servers moving around each other as they dropped plates on some tables and picked them up off of others. He still hadn’t told her the news but he seemed happier than he would normally be at a place like that.

“So what is it?” Helena asked, sipping the only glass of wine on the table. Tom didn’t drink anymore; she knew it bothered him when she drank in front of him.

“You mean the news?”

“Yeah.”

Tom didn’t look away from the servers at all as he spoke to her. Helena wanted to snap her fingers in his face to get his full attention, but she didn’t dare. At one time in her life, he would have put up with her attitude and snobbery. Now, she was too old for him to consider something like that cute.

“Helena, I can’t help but notice that you don’t really have much direction.” Tom’s eyes moved from the spiral of the servers to the immaculately plated meal in front of him. “You’re too old to just be drifting the way you are.”

“I’m not that old.”

“You couldn’t even get yourself out of bed today to run errands. You’re too old for shit like that.”

The way he said errands gave away that he knew her plans that day were centered on shopping and wasting his money. Helena pushed her food around her plate before spearing a cherry tomato and bringing it to her mouth. Her head ran through the possibilities of what he was about to say followed by a list of excuses she could employ.

“Maybe I should go back to school,” she offered weakly, the tacky seeds of the tomato jamming themselves into the flat tops of her molars. “That’s direction.”

“Unless you’re paying for it, that option’s off the table.”

“Well, what’s your idea?”

Tom looked at her. He was smiling but it didn’t put her at ease. His smile wasn’t exactly the warm and friendly kind. “You’re going to come work for me.”

“What?”

“Like an internship. I’ll pay you, I dunno, a stipend or something, and you can learn a bit more about my business.”

“I hate that idea,” Helena responded, tossing her fork down onto her plate. In the quiet ambiance of the restaurant, its metallic rattle caused everyone to look in their direction. “I can get a job somewhere else if that’s what you want but I don’t want to work for you.”

“Get a job somewhere else? Doing what? You don’t have any skills, ya dropped out of college. You’ve got a decent brain in your head, I’ll give ya that, but you’re too lazy to last anywhere with a real boss.”

Helena sat back in the chair, her arms crossed over her chest. Tom’s expression was neutral yet expectant like he was awaiting a confirmation from her. As if he had presented her with a choice and not an assignment.

“What happens if I say no?” she asked after a long while.

Tom’s face changed. That, apparently, was the response he was expecting. “Then you’re on your own. You can go find your own place to live, and you can make your own money. I’m not disowning you or nothing like that. You’ll always be my daughter and I’ll always love you but I’m not going to help you be a layabout anymore. Capiche?”

Their server was hovering just off to the side. When he saw Helena’s arm extend to grab the stem of her wine glass, he took a few steps closer. “Your next course will be out in a moment,” he told them both while wearing a plastered-on smile. “Is there anything else I can get you in the meantime? More wine, perhaps?”

“She’s had enough,” Tom answered but Helena held her empty glass out without a word, and the server took it, disappearing before an argument could brew up around him.

“So when do I start?” she asked, still slumped and pouting the chair.

“I’ll give ya some time to get ready so we won’t have you in the office until next week.” Tom leaned forward on his elbows and tented his fingers together. Helena noticed for the first time how large his hands were, how thick and stubby each digit. “This is going to be good for you, Helena. You might not like it right now but in the long run, you’ll thank me.”

“Sure, daddy,” she replied sarcastically.

Another glass of wine was placed gingerly in front of her, and she took a much deeper swig of it than she meant to. Her father’s eyes were locked on her face, she just knew it.

“You can put that stuff away pretty easily,” Tom said even though Helena was regretting how quickly she plowed through the second glass. “I think this job is coming along just in time.”

Helena cleared her throat to make a mention of where she got her drinking genes from but figured it wasn’t worth the trouble. Her father had been in the car when her mother crashed it drunkenly into the side of an overpass. He had survived with a few broken bones, substantially better than the driver of the car made out. The cops who arrived at the scene didn’t even have to do a toxicology screen to know Helena’s mother was drunk; they could tell by the purple stained lips and darkened teeth.

“I won’t show up drunk but I might show up hungover,” Helena said, placing the empty glass back on the table.

“That’s all I ask.”

The rest of their meal was eaten mostly in silence. Tom looked to be pleased with how the news was taken even though Helena seemed less than thrilled. Deep down, she knew she wasn’t doing much anyway but the idea of working for her father was making her sick to her stomach. He had a temper and trouble explaining things clearly. She hoped she would be working more closely with Genevive than with him, but she was positive he wasn’t looking for someone to replace his secretary so the odds of that were slim. He wanted her in the depths of his office, seeing the somewhat shady business he ran with her own two eyes.

On the ride back to Marin, through the fog shrouded reeds of the headlands, Helena leaned her head against the frame of the convertible as the dark water of the Pacific churned rough and cold under them. She felt dizzy and queasy, which was easy enough to chalk up to how much wine she had. Her mother always used to complain about feeling sick for no reason but by the time Helena was twelve, she had sussed out the culprit.

“Everyone assumes it’s because I drink too much,” her mother said one day when she was laid out on the couch with a cold compress over her eyes. “That’s not the root of the problem though.”

Helena assumed she’d hear what the root of the problem was eventually, and that it would be a clear cut and obvious issue. For most of her early life, Helena didn’t face too many problems that lacked easy answers. If she wanted something, she got it. If she needed something, she had it before she even mentioned it. The concept of being unsatisfied or less than content with her lot in life was an alien to her as the surface of Mars. Her mother’s consistently crossed eyes and sluggish existence had to have a clear and tangible solution but none of them, not Helena or her mother or Tom, were looking for it.

The convertible pulled into the driveway of the massive house that Tom owned and Helena lived in. For all of her father’s discussion about her not having direction, she knew he was comforted by having her around. Briefly, she had rented a place in the city, and it was Tom who broke the lease and moved her back home. At the time he made it sound like the choice was financial, as he was the one paying for the spot, but when Helena said she’d find a cheaper apartment, and cover the expenses herself, Tom told her it was for the best that she stick around with him for the time being. It was during the phase where he was still drinking too much, having not fully absorbed the lesson he was supposed to learn when the car slammed into the overpass.

“Maybe I’ll be able to move out now,” Helena said as she stumbled over her own feet while getting out of the car. She steadied herself and brushed her hair out of her eyes in the same motion. “Since I’ll be making money from the internship. Maybe it’s time for me to live on my own.”

“Trust me, daughter of mine,” Tom answered, his hulking back to her, “you’re not going to be paid all that much.”

The sneaking suspicion Helena had had since her mother’s death that her father struggled to be alone was confirmed in his slow moving silence. All the lights in the house were on even though neither of them was home, and Tom standing in the lit foyer staring into the empty living room seemed to shrink momentarily. He coughed, breaking himself out of whatever trance he had slipped into, then motioned with a wide sweeping arm for Helena to hurry up.

“I’m coming, I’m coming.”

Helena closed the door behind her. She didn’t see her father walk up the stairs but she heard his plodding footsteps and his throaty breathing. The nausea returned, stronger than before. She cracked the door open to get a gulp of fresh air but it did nothing for her head, stomach, or nerves. A revolt rankled her guts, and she burst outside just in time to expel all over the flower beds the fancy, expensive dinner her father had paid for only an hour ago.