“You should give her more credit, James. Helena has never given us any cause for concern. She has good judgment.”
“Wrong, my love.” He flicked his paper again. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Millie placed a plate of scrambled eggs with Christmas ham between the polished silver. James took a deep breath, exhaled, and smiled at his wife as she sat down beside him. He would discuss his concerns with Helena directly, in time, calmly and rationally. There was no urgency since Millie was right: Helena was a smart girl who would realize the mistake of her own accord well before a life was ruined and the Wallin line was infiltrated by a Baden.
Grace surfaced at midday, shuffling her way into the kitchen, a stranger to her alter ego, and settled at the dining room table. Millie rushed over to wait on her. “Just coffee, thanks, Mum,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “I’m so tired.”
“You need to take better care of yourself,” said Millie, delivering the first in a series of coffees brewed in her new coffee maker.
“It’s so hot in here,” said Grace.
Millie moved the pedestal fan from the kitchen where it cooled her during preparations for their Boxing Day lunch to direct it at Grace’s back. Helena came through the doorway and smiled at the familiar scene.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” said Grace. “I was…shocked. It’s not like we ever thought you’d get married, and certainly not before me.”
Helena sat down opposite her sister. “So it had nothing to do with Michael?”
“Well he was my boyfriend,” Grace replied.
“He was, until you dumped him. Remember?”
“I had to. It was a condition.”
“What do you mean, a ‘condition’?”
Grace shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I made a choice. Who’s to know if it was right or wrong?”
“I thought you didn’t care for him, and I thought you were happy with your city life. You should be—you have everything you always whined about.”
“I don’t whine.”
“You do.”
Grace lit another cigarette and inhaled until the end burned bright red. “It’s so hard, so tiring, and I no longer do the parts I love, like setting and styling. Every day, it’s decision after decision. I’m responsible for everybody and everything, and making sure everyone else is happy. What about me? There’s no time to enjoy my life.”
“You’re whining again.”
“It’s like I have become you and you have become me,” Grace continued.
“No offence taken,” said Helena.
“Anyway, Lena, I am happy for you.”
“Thank you, Grace. That means a lot to me.”
“It’s strange no one calls me Gracie anymore. It’s as if the old Grace, Gracie, the fun-loving Gracie, has died and been replaced by…me…or you.”
“Sounds like you’d better go back to bed, Grace…Gracie.”
“No, no, no,” Millie interrupted. “We’re all going to sit down to a nice family lunch. Call your father, Helena.”
“Dad!” Helena yelled from where she sat.
“Not like that, dear. You sound like a fishmonger’s wife. Go and get him. He’s in the garage with his new ride-on mower.”
Helena returned with her father in tow, who promptly relocated Boxing Day lunch to the back yard under the Eucalypts. “What about the flies?” Grace asked as she carried platters to the garden setting.
“They won’t eat much,” said James. “And it’s a lot cooler out here.” He took his seat at the head of the table. “What on Earth are you wearing, Grace?”
“A mini-skirt. It’s all the rage in London.”
“And it should stay there. What is the world coming to?”
“Have you decided on a date yet, dear?” Millie asked, while passing the homemade mango chutney to James.
“April,” Helena replied.
“April is a lovely time for a wedding. The weather will be much cooler by then.”
“And your armpits won’t sweat all over the dress,” added Grace.
“Which year, dear?”
“Next year. Late April.”
“Next year!” James erupted, spraying masticated food over the table. “In four months?”
“Ah, yes, no point waiting, Dad. And besides, most girls my age are already married with children, and you know I want four or more.”
James shook his head. Silence consumed the rest of the meal with just the whistle of a summer breeze through the gum leaves to accompany the chinking of fine china. James brooded: his empire had collapsed. He was once its undisputed ruler and final arbiter and now, impotent, with his views questioned and often disregarded. Even Millie had challenged his wisdom on the issue of Michael Baden, and it was an ironic fate twisting of mammoth proportions that the girl sitting to his left, with her fashionable thigh exposed at the dining table, had become the sole implementer of his wishes. Four months would not be enough time to rectify the crisis at hand, not without the power to influence which he no longer possessed. His eldest daughter, most favored, most beloved, was leaving him, and nothing reasonably could be done about it.
“These flies are infuriating!” said Grace.
James sighed.
Chapter Seven
June 1967
THE wedding was a somber affair in contrast to the old man’s funeral. Michael had worn a rented dark suit on that occasion as well, a mourning suit, which was in no way comparable to the morning version James Wallin had selected for himself as father of the bride, the groom, and sole groomsman, Vincenzo, for the wedding of his eldest daughter.
A moment of almost happiness arose in the gray day when Helena appeared at the entry wearing a stunning ankle-length, full-flowing gown, with no evidence of the aborted training regime and what now grew inside. A silky bow marked the separation of a lacy upper and the off-white A-line silk below. A strip of exposed skin separated the bell-shaped lace sleeves and the long, silken gloves. Michael was less impressed with the bouffant hair and matching veil attached to the head by an Alice band, but the floor-length, coat-like train he loved, and if asked, would have proposed more lace. The regalia made a transpicuous statement: no expense spared. But the appendage that grasped Helena’s arm, threatening to remain attached, ruined the vision in off-white. Michael smiled at the irony: the bride’s father looked as Michael should have done at John Senior’s funeral, and the reverse was true.
The ceremony to inter the Baden patriarch in a plain pine box lined with pink organza and pink satin bows, had been a day of preposterous joy. Michael had removed the pink satin pillow from the coffin to ensure the corpse could not rest comfortably in the confines designed for a much shorter man. The funeral had also made a transpicuous statement: no expense incurred. Michael did not arrange flowers, a wake, or public notice of the passing, the costs assigned instead to his private after party.
Dorothy had remained emotionless from the death to the final goodbye, acknowledging the occurrence only by removing her wedding band and engagement ring to affranchise an almost dismembered swollen finger. Michael had assisted in the process by soaping the congested area. He wanted to use the pliers, but Dorothy had said not, and he was grateful for relenting on the proposed destruction, the ring now on approach down the aisle.
After John Senior’s passing, Michael expected Dorothy to warble with her release from a not so gilded cage, but her liberation seemed tinged with a fear of a crow pecking as if afraid to be happy and free. She stayed near to her coop, and perhaps this explained the irrepressible potato cake convention.
They had sent wedding invitations to everyone bar Harold, who had disappeared. A regretful declination came from George: he could not make the wedding for his wife was not otherwise able to cope with their four children. Raymond and Thomas conveyed best wishes in a letter telling of a Nullarbor crossing to work as boilermakers at the Kalgoorlie gold mines in Western Australia. Edward’s card enclosed a photo of him standing, hands in pocket, in
front of a Japanese vessel at the Woolongong wharf where he worked as a laborer. John sent a card with a letter and ten dollars. He wished he could attend, he explained, but he was laying railway sleepers while waiting for the sugarcane harvest to begin. He had moved to far north Queensland, staying at a small place called Miriwinni just south of Cairns. He loved the north and loved the harvest: there was nothing quite like the sweet smell of freshly cut cane, and the ceremonial burning of the fields after the sugar cropping. Nothing came from Alice, which hurt.
In the absence of all other living relatives, Dorothy was reliably present for her son/grandson’s wedding, bedecked in a cream, boucle wool suit, the jacket buttoned and trimmed on the cuffs and neckline with mink, all courtesy of Helena. Her chic dress was topped with a hat made from large fabric rose petals, and looked more like a well-to-do clown’s wig or ice-cream sundae.
The honeymoon was a similarly dismal event, although all expenses had been pre-paid by James Wallin, lifting the stature of the occasion above lugubrious. Their week at the up-market Carlton Ritz Hotel in Sydney was an altogether unpleasant experience for Helena who spent most of every day with her head buried in porcelain while Michael idled from bar to bar.
Matrimonial matters declined further upon their return to Maine on the issue of permanent residency. When Michael suggested to Helena that Dorothy live with them, the proposal was clearly one-directional: she, to live with them, not the antipode. He never expected Helena to leave the right side of town for Park Lane, but she did. And within days of doing so, the misguided and ill-conceived nature of her philanthropic endeavor came home to roost as Dorothy’s lard-saturated meals curdled a stomach already incapacitated by other influences. Helena assumed Michael’s aversion to potato cakes by osmosis without a single morsel sampling. Without knowing it, Dorothy had delivered retribution, and Michael reveled in Helena’s first lesson on altruism: no matter how graceful the dancer, one cannot dance in concrete boots.
The mill vine contributed to the connubial landslide. Michael knew the house on the range that James Wallin had wanted to buy his eldest daughter and new husband. The house was a cliché, a home for dreamers, perfect in its whiteness and picket-fenced botanic. The bay windows invited the morning sun, and cast overawed eyes across a 180-degree view of the lake. It amounted to death by nirvana, causing Michael to think as his father had done about every man’s capacity for vengeance.
His wife failed him again on the issue of Michael’s request for an administrative position at the mill. She had stalled for weeks claiming a prerequisite “reengineering of business processes,” which, in layman terms meant nowhere to sit and nothing for him to do. This Michael knew to be a falsehood: a position, in both respects, had been kept for Grace in anticipation of a failed Sydney venture that never eventuated. James Wallin was responsible, he was certain, and Helena was incapable of making a stand or a scene, especially when it came to her father who she loved more than anyone, and much more than her husband. Embittered, Michael sought relief in an antidotal brew.
Chapter Eight
June 1967
THE sky was ablaze with red the night the mill burned to the ground. Tiny embers scrambled free, rising like fireflies in an Icarus-like ascent into the black ozone to extinguish then return to Earth as a scorched skerrick of a once greater mass.
A crowd had gathered at the penultimate hour of June 22 in a sea of flannelette, football socks, slippers, and boots. Helena sobbed uncontrollably while James and Michael united in a jaundiced assault on an unperturbed furnace. James was a man obsessed, unable to accept certain ruination. A flame shroud unveiled images of his father, his grandfather, and his father before him, driving him to fight on in spite of futility.
The burning mill was diuturnal: the night sun would not fall until the subdued winter sun supplanted it to reveal the completeness of its counterpart’s devastation. Salt and soot stained Helena’s face, anew now with corrugations of wretchedness indicative of a much older woman. She limped home to Park Lane for a tepid shower and an unsuccessful attempt to still the quivering. Her head throbbed, protesting the insatiated demand for tears and unrequited need for sustenance. She dressed in a loose, fleecy tracksuit, not bothering with the usual sensible appropriateness of dress for a workday.
The administrative block at the mill had survived the night with a mere coating of black on the iron roof. The windows had not shattered, and the timber had not been scarred black. Helena unlocked the sliding glass door with her back facing the carnage below so she could deny its existence. She had not seen her father for several hours, not since she cried out to him to pull back from the flames, his otiose blanket like slaying a dragon with a pin.
James arrived soon after Helena, emaciated and damp. He had walked to the mill in the feathery rain wearing his usual short-sleeved, cream collared shirt. He owned a pullover, but never wore it. It was still new, and maintained for prosperity in a box of mothballs. He smiled forcibly at Helena then retired to his office to lock a gaze over the outdoor kiln.
Helena had four priorities: insurance, employees, customers, and suppliers. Reconstruction was not an agenda item—that required courage and conviction, which may or may not arise at a time in the distant future. Within the hour, their people would gather for an official grieving and words had to be said, which ones, Helena did not know.
She pulled the file marked insurance having never questioned the indispensable nature of it despite the horrendous cost. She struggled with the uncomplicated claim form, the most elementary detail arduous without the requisite mental focus. A faint tapping on the glass door interrupted her mindlessness. Charles Baker, their insurance agent for twenty plus years, stepped tentatively inside.
“I’m really sorry, Helena. This is heartbreaking.”
She sighed. “It all seems so…unreal.”
“I see you have a claim form. I’ll help you with it if you like.”
“Thanks, Charles, I could do with some help. I can’t think straight.”
“How’s your father doing?”
Helena nodded at the broken, damp effigy still standing at his office window. They stared after James through the open door until another tap on the glass door disrupted the silence.
“Everyone’s here,” Michael announced.
“I’ll leave you to do what you have to do,” said Charles. “Just sign the form. I’ll fill in the rest and get it away.”
Helena handed the signed form to Charles then knocked gently on her father’s door. “Dad?” She thought she saw a nod. “Everyone’s here,” she added when there was no movement. He turned, keeping his eyes downcast. The pride that had once held his shoulders aloft had disintegrated with his mill allowing them to fall forward.
Helena waited for James at the top of the steps that led down to the gathering. Millie bustled among the assembled workers with an impromptu canteen, serving tea, coffee, and an assortment of homemade cakes and biscuits. Helena wondered if her mother’s philosophy on life—that home cooked food could remedy anything that ailed anyone at any time, was applicable on a global scale. Lard and potato bouquets rose from the fibers of her tracksuit causing Helena to focus more closely on what Millie served. The consolatory banquet would at least settle her nerves, for the moment.
Two months had passed since the wedding and Helena had cried for most of every day: the unremitting nausea, merciless regret, and the anvil of life in Park Lane. She had coveted the house on the range, the one her father had wanted to buy for her, and she could still see herself in it, living the married life she had dreamed of since the earliest time. And that is where she would be if she had not discussed the house and the move with Dorothy prior to closing the deal. At the outset, Helena had thought Dorothy’s uncontained enthusiasm for every detail, especially the way her age-spotted hands clasped as in prayer against her lips, was a willingness to move with them. It was not. The excitement was for the newly-weds and their dream home. Dorothy had no plans to go anywhere Helena learned soo
n enough, and since the rum had not yet stained the white icing on their wedding cake, it was too soon for a new wife to disregard her husband’s wish for his mother to live with them. Helena also cared deeply for her mother-in-law, deserted by seven children and abused for a lifetime by her husband. Her right collarbone still protruded in an unsightly way, broken twice by his callous hands. According to Maine legend, she had continued to function with one break for three months without medical treatment, forcing her to lift heavy, sodden sheets from a boiler to guide them through the ringer with one functioning arm. A neighbor, having witnessed Dorothy struggling with the washing, had invited her to morning tea, with a doctor present. He re-fractured the bone to reset it, and the chores continued unabated and unassisted in a cast.
Helena joined Millie and the buffet on the gathering’s perimeter. Beige lace from Burana adorned the pure white Irish linen tablecloth, incongruous against the cindered relics surrounding them. Helena smiled, relieved by the absence of the matching napkins.
James began his eulogy with a raspy throat, and a story of his father and brothers, and a mill for a playground. He had sat alongside his father in the old dozer, the only one then, moving tree trunks from one pile to another. The smell of the mill after the rain endured in his memory, and came to the fore now, in spite of the charring. He talked of family and heritage, stopping at intervals to push back the lumps that rose from his heart. He made promises about a new mill, and thanked everyone for loyalty beyond his comprehension, their hard work, and commitment. If they returned at four that afternoon, their final pay, leave entitlements, and reference would be ready for collection. Helena glanced at her watch in response and shook her head. He wished every one of them the best from life, and suggested no one hesitate to contact him if ever there was anything he could do to help, until the mill restored when he hoped to see them all again, and soon.
Rain Page 4
