Helen of Heavenward Homes

A love story.

Helen of Heavenward Homes

There were worms in her mug…tiny white maggoty swimmers--the kind that peek through the steam before diving back in your brew.

Helen blew them away and sipped without savor, more out of habit than desire. Her morose brown eye, rippling on the coffee’s face, stared back, steamed over, dissolved.

A trained observer would note that Helen performed this ritual, as a regular break from her street-watching, approximately once every ninety seconds. To an untrained observer, she would appear intent and impatient, perhaps waiting on a tardy acquaintance.

That untrained observer now looked down at his own eggs and coffee, feeling Helen lift her eyes.

It was one of those quirky events falling awkwardly into the norm; a square moment in a round day, a sentimental misstep in a routine dance of nods and evasions.

The elderly man looked back up. Their eyes met and held. It certainly wasn’t a case of spontaneous affection; he found nothing attractive in the frumpish and pasty, rotund little woman with the bland expression. And Helen, for her part, was not drawn to the spindly gray gentleman.

They both smiled.

Sun didn’t break through clouds; nothing like that. It was an everyday snapshot, dingy with caffeine, phlegm, and emotional disuse.

They looked back down.

Helen caught herself peeking. The elderly man’s eyes worked their way back up.

The strangers smiled again, this time out of good old-fashioned nervousness.

Now it was more than uncomfortable. The two, although in adjacent booths, were less than six feet apart, and situated dead-on: Crazy Dinah’s All-Day Diner featured notoriously narrow tabletops, forcing facing customers to sit diagonally with their personal plates and silver.

The old man’s voice was crushed cellophane. “Forgive me.” His fluttering hands were lame pigeons, desperately side-stepping his mug, silver, and plate. “I didn’t mean to make you nervous.”

“That’s okay,” Helen mumbled.

The gentleman coughed delicately. “Well, I guess I’m what you’d call a people person.” His eyes searched the sidewalk. “I couldn’t help noticing how you enjoy staring out this big old window.” He smiled crookedly. “I guess that makes us both people people.”

Helen studied her coffee mug. “People are…” she could feel herself blushing. “People people…are…good.”

The man, still smiling awkwardly, stuck his hand across the table. Long as his arms were, it was too great a gap. He swung around to his table’s facing bench, leaned over the back and tried again. “I’m Joe. Or Joseph, actually. Joseph Carten.”

Helen blushed until it burned. “Helen Bushnelkopf.” She timidly shook hands, immediately stuffing the unpracticed paw back in her lap.

He cocked an eyebrow. “Unusual last name, Helen.”

“From…from the Pennsylvania Bushnelkopfs. The family was in fertilizers.”

“Can never get enough fertilizer. Umm…the Cartens, far as I know, were never into anything.” He shrugged. “My dad was a serviceman. Air Force. He went down in the Pacific.”

“Oh!” blurted Helen. “I’m just so sorry.”

“Don’t be. I never actually met the guy. No bridges built, no bridges burned.”

“Then your mom must have been, well, very strong. She must have been very dedicated.”

He smiled engagingly. “That’s what they say on the boulevard.” That crooked old grin collapsed at her look of confusion. “I’m just kidding, Helen. Just being, well, you know, sarcastic about the whole family thing.”

“People shouldn’t talk about their parents that way.” She looked up quickly. “Not you, Joseph. I don’t mean to be critical.”

“Joe,” he said, drumming his palms on the seat’s greasy upholstery. “Look, I’m sorry, Helen. You must have had super parents. Anyway, you’re probably right. I should know enough to keep my big mouth shut.” His eyes lit fractionally. “I’ve got to run, m’dear. It’s been great jawing with you. I lunch here every day. Maybe we’ll slam into each other again.”

“I’d…” Helen managed, “I’d like that.”

Joe grinned, creaked to his feet, and said “Ciao.” He dropped a five on his tab, smiled back at her, and whistled on out the door.

The worms resurfaced.

A familiar voice broke through her melancholy. “So you scared off another one?”

Helen didn’t have to look up. Cassie was Dinah’s head day waitress, and one of those unfriendly friends who function as both conscience and bully at the worst of times. Not that the worst of times were all that much worse than the best of times, and not that knowing someone disagreeable was a hell of a lot worse than knowing no one at all.

“He was in a hurry,” Helen breezed. “An important man.”

Cassie laughed as she swept up Joseph’s untouched plates, scraping his five off the table as though daubing a smear. “In a hurry? The only thing that’d make that old guy jump is a defibrillator.” Her eyes gleamed. “But I do believe he got it up for you, honey.” She ticked a forefinger side to side. “Don’t tell anybody, but I think little Hella’s got a fella.”

“Stop it.”

“Seriously, sweetheart. While you were staring out the window ol’ Cassie was on the watch, as always. I think Mr. Hurry’s got googly eyes.”

“He was just being nice.”

“Don’t you be coy with me, darlin’. A girl has to take what she can in this world. And I like ‘nice’.” Facing Helen, Cassie leaned halfway across the table, using her upper arms to meaningfully squeeze forth her very ample bosom. “If you think you can do better than these, sugar, then you just don’t know men.”

Helen’s eyes burned into her brew. The worms circled concentrically in response, making for the rim. Helen blew so hard her coffee sprayed the tabletop. “Joseph’s not like that. He’s a gentleman.”

Cassie cupped Helen’s free hand in hers. “Give me a break, Helen. All men, God bless ’em, are ‘like that’.”

“No,” Helen whispered into her cup. “Not Joseph. Not Joe.”

* * *

Helen brooded all the way home. How could she have been so stupid. Joseph was the first man she’d spoken to, on anything remotely resembling an intimate level in…in…how could she have offended him like that. “Googly eyes”. Absurd or not, the idea grew on her as she waddled across the courtyard to her tiny apartment. Like most of Heavenward Homes’ disability recipients, Helen’s inability to pursue meaningful employment came from hormonally-triggered chronic despondency. But, unlike the rest of the girls, she was unable to find comfort in medication or company. Helen was a drifting, stale dreamer, unwilling to focus on anything real.

She prepared her usual bath; lukewarm and not too full, tepid like everything else in her life. But for once she was prey to a forgotten impulse: Helen dug out her makeup kit and got liberal with the lipstick and liner. She added a capful of rose to the bath.

The water took her as always, yet with an extra caress. Helen soaped herself slowly with her left hand while her right slid over a breast and down her tummy. Two fingers made way for the third. But it wasn’t wrong this time; it couldn’t have been more right--that was Joseph down there, that was Joe. And Helen’s depression was lifting like fog.

That was Joey.

* * *

She wasn’t exactly waiting for him, not in the literal sense. He’d never show, not after she’d embarrassed them both. But Helen was on her fourth cup, and the sidewalk had lost all its appeal.

She’d dolled herself up considerably. An ex-beautician neighbor took care of the hair and manicure, another loaned her a somewhat flattering dress. Helen’s mood shift was all over the building; in a heartbeat the secret was out, and her gentleman admirer the subject of endless gossip and guesswork.

Helen stank of Tabu from five feet away. In her purse was a neatly folded love poem, sealed with a kiss; part heartfelt rain and daybreak, part saccharine Hallmark cliché. Never had she been so nervous; it took the whole building to talk her into this. Helen wanted to die. Or to live. It didn’t matter. If he laughed, if he turned away, if he gave her one funny look--it didn’t matter; she’d die. This was it, and she knew it. Her one and only chance for a man. For happiness, for comfort, for company. For all those things life had denied her, and granted everybody else in spades.

She carefully wiped the lipstick off her mug’s porcelain rim. And again. Helen sobbed and caught herself. She must look a mess. She’d gnawed away half her nail polish, the dress was bunching in all the wrong places, and tears and mascara just don’t mix. She couldn’t breathe. And now she was hyperventilating. Hard to swallow. She took a sip and sobbed again, checked her lipstick in the window’s reflection.

The diner’s door chimes rang cheerfully, followed by Cassie’s girlish squeal. Helen couldn’t believe her ears.

“Joey!”

At the same moment a dark brown step van pulled to the curb. The van’s deep color provided a temporary backing for the glass pane, so that Helen was able to monitor the goings-on behind her by their reflection. The floral delivery van’s huge heart-shaped logo formed a frame for the action at the register. Around this logo was set the legend: Life Is For Lovers.

Cassie was all over Joseph; kissing and petting and stroking and groping. In his gangly fingers dangled a large box of chocolates with a big pink bow.

Helen turned, against her will. Cassie had Joseph’s face in her chest now, but she swiveled long enough to squeeze her breasts with her arms while giving Helen a triumphant wink and smile.

* * *

Helen stumbled all the way home. Pedestrians stared curiously as she staggered off curbs, neighbors blanched and retreated into the shadows of their knowing lives.

She carefully plucked the flat packets off her medicine cabinet’s bottom shelf, neatly laid out her makeup items around the tub’s rim while the basin slowly filled.

She got in and her hands trembled upon submerging. Helen whimpered against the pain to come.

“Shhh,” the razor blades whispered, “shhh…shhh.”

It didn’t hurt the way she expected. The bath quickly went pink, only gradually turning red. Helen raised her streaming arms and folded her fouled wrists across her chest. And Joseph appeared as a brooding transparency, waxing almost-real in perfect sync with the room’s slow fade. She could see his mouth struggling to reach hers, could read his slow-motion lips, contorted by guilt and shame:

“I’m…Just…So…So…Sorry…”

“I,” Helen heard her voice reply, “forgive.” But the sound was hollow, and leaning whence it came. And the air congealed, and the room went dim, and Helen’s lips were utterly without sensation as Joey bent at the waist, passed out of passion’s way, and kissed her once goodnight.