Chapter 6: Helena

“Daddy’s little girl and her first day on the job,” Genevive said, a joking hiss in every word. “How absolutely precious.”

“Well, he told me he’s dying to replace his do-nothing assistant,” Helena shot back. It only made Genevive ’s knowing grin wider.

“Oh, honey, you could never do everything I do around here.”

Helena had the self-control to not make the comment they were both expecting her to make. Whether it was true or not, Genevive was aware of the fact that people thought she and Tom were sleeping together. Helena’s mother stormed the office once, convinced she was going to catch them in the act. What she found instead was a stripper Tom had paid giving him a blowjob while Genevive was in the copy room, dutifully printing and stamping contracts.

“Did you know what was going on?” Helena’s mother demanded after she had slammed the door to Tom’s office and left the pair to their own devices.

“Mrs. Vandersloot, you know I’m just here to do my job.”

Helena’s mother left in the same huff with which she entered. Genevive went back to work, and a few minutes later, the stripper left a few bucks richer. Until the day she died, Helena’s mother blamed Genevive for not telling her what was happening.

“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t support other women,” she’d repeatedly tell Helena who had entered her teen years only months prior. “That Genevive’s going to get the toasty spot when she gets there.”

But Helena could see her mother was losing it, slipping further into her anger and addictions. The worst thing about it all was the moments when her parents were happy together, and both Helena and her mother would separately hope that this was a turning point; the storm was clearing. Unfortunately, when morning came and her parents had sobered up, the magic was gone again, and every time it came back, it was a little weaker.

A few months before the accident, Helena came home late to find both her parents still up. They were drunk and swaying to some sort of Glenn Miller type music that Helena thought sounded painfully old fashioned. The living room was sunken with a wide wall of windows staring into the black nighttime hills of the Marin headlands, and they danced next to their own shadowy reflections, the glass a surface of an ominous, oil-slicked pond.

It took them a while to notice Helena standing there. She thought for a moment that she should just sneak upstairs before they spotted her. Leave them to their own weird, inebriated ritual. Before she had reached the landing, she heard a sharp wail, a shuddering breath. She peered down over the top of the polished wood banister and saw her father holding her mother as she wept uncontrollably. They were still dancing but her feet weren’t moving; he was propping her up by the waist and dragging her along in those wide, swaying circles.

“Don’t patronize me, Tom,” Helena’s mother cried into his chest. She couldn’t even lift her head to look him in the eyes. “Don’t expect me to be your second favorite.”

“We were having such a nice night dancing.”

He swirled in a circle, her feet swinging too far as she went completely limp. From where Helena stood, he appeared to be dancing with a corpse. Her mother’s eyes connected with hers over Tom’s shoulder. Only then did she return to herself, pushing him away and wiping the streaks from her face.

“Hi honey,” Helena’s mother said as the muscles returned to her legs. She stepped onto the single stair of the sunken living room. “Just getting in, huh?”

“Yeah. Just now.”

The silence held like the fog that coated the city, the fog Helena had watched from her bedroom window her entire life. A thick, throat-closing silence.

“Well, have a good night,” her father said after it became clear none of them knew what to do next. He touched his wife’s arm, coaxed her back to their tepid whirling dervishes. “Let us know if we’re being too loud.”

“Yes, good night, honey,” her mother said. She allowed herself to be pulled into the dance again, and Helena heard a few small cries as she got ready for bed.

“They’re fucked,” she told her reflection in the mirror. “They’re absolutely fucking fucked.”

The news of her mother’s death would numb her when she heard it. In a sick, unexplored corner of her brain, she hoped to hear that they were both gone. Her father’s tragedy only made him more insufferable to her but by that point, she had found herself angry at the world in general, a fact Genevive more than mocked her for.

“Things could be worse,” she’d say so often that Helena would guess it before it left her mouth. “Things could be much worse.”

She said it again on the first day of the internship, or whatever it was, and Helena bit into the inside of her cheek to not snap at her. Most of the people in Helena’s life coddled her or gave into her or dismissed her in a condescending way. A poor little rich girl they could appease with money and flattery. Genevive didn’t do any of these, and though Helena was often annoyed by it, she was also grateful. The problem was that she didn’t know how to express gratitude so Genevive had to find it in eyerolls and scoffs.

“I don’t even know what my dad wants me to do around here,” Helena complained. “He said he wants me to learn the business.”

“Well, for right now, I’m going to show you some of the basics: files that always need sorting, accounts that need updating. In theory, your dad is supposed to do a lot of this but it always finds its way to me.”

Helena was sure Tom would chide her as he reminded her that he was an idea man: he was there to negotiate and find new clients. Paperwork could be done by just about anybody, and he shouldn’t be expected to bother himself with that. She noticed her father did a lot of talking but not much physical work.

After about twenty minutes of filing system explanation, Tom appeared in the alcove of the copy room, his rounded fist pounding on the door as if to announce him. “Genevive, can I borrow you for a second?” He didn’t even acknowledge Helena. “We’ve got a bit of a problem.”

Genevive dropped the papers she was filing and followed him to his office. Helena caught snippets of words through the door, but they were both speaking too quickly and softly for her to get the full picture. Instead of standing around in the copy room like fish out of water she was, she headed to Genevive ’s desk, sank into her chair, and pulled out her phone. The coffee she had left there before whatever problem came up was waiting for her, slightly cooled but with ghostly steam spools lifting from its surface. She brought it to her mouth as she scrolled absently through her phone.

“Excuse me, do you work here?”

The question emanated from above her, a nasal male voice she didn’t recognize. Helena brought her focus from the tiny lit screen to the scowling face staring down at her. Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t that much older than her. Younger than Genevive was Helena’s guess. His shoulders were pinched up towards his ears, tightly wound toy soldier arms with a spring about to pop.

“I’m Tom’s daughter,” she answered without hesitating. She never missed a chance to bark back at someone. “I just started working here.”

Usually, the mention of her father drains the fight from any opponent but not this one. The guy stared back at her and ran his tongue across his teeth. With his lips closed, Helena watched the odd motion of bulging and shrinking. She bit into her cheek again but this time to stop herself from laughing.

“Well, shouldn’t you be working then?” the guy asked, his voice pitching higher.

“I was. With Genevive . Then she got called into my dad’s office so I’m just waiting for her to be done with whatever’s going on in there.”

“If you need something to do, I can find you something to do.”

Helena leaned forward, placing one elbow on the desk. In the cup of her palm, she rested her chin, smiling prettily up at him. “No thank you. I have all I need to do right here. Don’t think I don’t appreciate your concern though.”

The guy started with a retort but snapped his mouth shut when Tom’s door opened. Genevive came out, her face flushed and her forehead drawn.

“Genevive,” the guy said as she breezed past him, “what is this nepotism nonsense? Tom’s daughter is just sitting around-”

“Not right now, Ralph,” Genevive snapped as she moved Helena out of the way and logged into her desktop.

“It’s bullshit and you know it,” Ralph continued, but Genevive had stopped paying attention which meant she had stopped answering. Ralph gave one last withering look in Helena’s direction before shrinking back into his office.

“What the hell is that guy’s problem?” Helena asked, half trying to peep at what Genevive was pulling up.

“He’s an asshole. Same old story.”

Genevive hit print then closed whatever she had been looking at. She bolted into the copy room as the printer creaked into action, whirring mechanically upon receiving its command.

Before she knew it, Helena was alone again. Ralph was in his office or wherever he had emerged from, and Genevive was with Tom and the door was closed. Helena tentatively sat down again, waiting for someone to give her either direction or admonishment.

There were shards of noise coming from her father’s office that gave away the situation. Helena might not have known what exactly was happening, but she knew something was going wrong. After another few minutes, Genevive blustered out again.

“Everything cool?” Helena asked.

“As ice.” Genevive laid a stack of papers in front of Helena and extended her hand. In her fingers was a highlighter. A pink one, which caught Helena by surprise. “You’ve got your first assignment: go through these and highlight every interaction that happened on September 8th. I’ll be back in a bit but we’ve got a fire to put out.”

“What is it? What’s going on?”

Genevive didn’t answer but she grimaced when asked so Helena knew it was something big. Genevive was hard to rattle. Helena had seen her deal with emergency after emergency using little more than an acerbic joke and a pot of coffee to keep her collected. Tom was more prone to panic and fits, which was also true of Helena’s mother. Nobody in that relationship understood the concept of talking one another down off a ledge. They were always standing under each other with their fingers webbed together in an offer to give a boost to a higher, more unstable spot.

Helena listened to the splinters of noise that managed to reach her through the thick wood door. She uncapped the highlighter and started on the mindless busy work that had so obviously been thrust at her to keep her out of the way for the time being. At least, she thought as she dragged the fat-tipped marker across the tight formations of ink, aimless marching soldiers, and it left a snail trail of color behind it, I’ve got something to do if Ralph comes out again. She sipped her coffee and went through each page, bored to tears but not sure of what else she should be doing.

Rising again from the bowels of the office, the whole entire section where she wasn’t even permitted to go, she could hear her father’s voice exploding in what sounded like muffled curses and thinly veiled threats.