At Last

by Aliyat Lecky

  Helen was a member of neither classification. She was of a select group, one that did not care to think about status so shallowly as to believe that being seen in a certain restaurant was a measure of class, or to admonish or reject others for thinking so. No, to Helen, Palomino’s was simply the halfway point between her house and Sydney’s, consequently making the restaurant a good meeting place. Therefore, when the group of women approached her table, one of whom carried her latest book to ask for autographs, her reaction was earnest delight. Fans were never really any bother to Helen. She enjoyed their comments for the most part, and never begrudged them her signature. Although she did get a little uncomfortable when they approached her while she was in a public restroom. Those interactions were always a trifle too intrusive.

  After her fans left the table, Helen checked her watch once again. Sydney was late. Sydney was always late, and she often canceled altogether. She sat quietly sipping her drink, staring vaguely into the constant commotion of the room, her eyes lighting to this group or that couple, and never really focusing on anyone until she caught a glimpse of two women sitting on the opposite side, fifty feet away. She couldn’t hear them, but they were obviously sharing a heated conversation. Their exchange, punctuated by meaningful grasps of the other’s hand, a caution when they thought they might be overheard, while very animated, was silent to all those around them. The women, careful to make sure no one could hear their conversation, did not realize they were being observed from across the room. Helen watched them in this way for nearly five full minutes before the one of them felt the intensity of her gaze and looked in her direction. Startled by being caught in the act of spying, Helen turned once again to her Pepsi. She was suddenly overcome by the same uneasiness of her plane ride and her conversation with Angie the evening before.

  It is just not enough.

  She called the server over and ordered another diet Pepsi. “Add two shots of rum, please. Bacardi.”

  Three-quarters of an hour and two diet Pepsis with rum later, Helen gave up on seeing her granddaughters. “Too bad, too,” she thought aloud. “I was looking forward to visiting with the girls.” She settled instead for a warm plate and a cool beverage.

  “Sydney, where in heavens are you?” Helen snapped at her daughter after snatching open her cell. “I’ve been sitting here waiting for over an hour,” Helen said, sipping her Bacardi Apple laden drink.

  “Mom, sorry. I thought I was going to make it. Sidney asked me to run a few errands for him this morning…Sammi, sit back. You two need to sit tight just a little while longer. Mother needs to check in with Grammy.”

  Helen could hear both daughters whining in the background. “Clearly they’re hungry, Syd. Bring them up. I’ve just started lunch.”

  “Can’t, mother. Don’t call me Syd.” She sounded annoyed by the suggestion. “Besides, I’m on the other side of the cities. West. Just go on and enjoy your lunch. I’m sorry. I did try.”

  Helen was in no mental condition to acknowledge or address the obvious tension her daughter was projecting. “Let’s meet anyway. I’ll take the girls off your hands, and you can finish your errands. What is it that he has you doing?” she asked, attempting to hide her own irritation. Being stood up by her daughter because her husband had assigned her a task at the last minute, knowing she had planned to meet her, was becoming a recurring provocation that she would prefer to live without.

  “Thanks, but by the time—hold on. Sammi! Erica, give that back this instant. I don’t want to have to pull over. If I pull over, Daddy is going to hear about it.”

  Helen pulled the phone from her ear to lessen the effects of her daughter’s screeching. “Sydney.” Helen attempted to refocus her daughter’s energy.

  “Mom, I’ll call you later for a rain check, okay?” With that, she was gone.

  Poor Sydney, she thought. She’ll never learn. I suppose it’s entirely my fault.

  Because of the way she herself was brought up, Helen had always had a very clear idea of what the good life would entail. It was precisely the opposite of the way of life her parents modeled. Her parents, though quite indulgent, offered very little structure and support in the way of parental guidance. They, being the self-indulgent artists that they were, preferred a life free of obstructive baggage that threatened to stifle their creativity. This included most aspects of governing a child. They preferred to think of Helen as more of a prodigy to be cultivated than progeny to be nurtured as a child needs to be reared. They thought it best to limit their influence on their offspring, and take a more hands-off approach in order to allow her to develop organically.

  They also seemed to take a similar approach to their marriage as well. Other than support one another’s work as artists, Helen had to think long and hard to remember a time when she witnessed her parents behaving as a committed married couple. The only time she could remember them behaving in a loving way to each other was when they had an audience around. In fact, as far back as Helen could recall they slept in separate rooms, vacationed independently, very often without her, and spent more private time with their personal assistants than with their spouses. She wouldn’t have believed they were indeed married if they weren’t her own parents, and she hadn’t spent hours staring at their elegant wedding photographs. It wasn’t as though they hated each other. Quite the contrary. Her father doted on her mother. He spoiled her, and gave her everything she asked for. Her mother, in turn, fulfilled his every request without ever complaining. Which, to say the least, was quite a feat, because as Helen matured into an adolescent, she realized that her father asked her mother to carry out some very peculiar requests.

  Helen didn’t consider their behavior odd in the least. As a child, she assumed all parents behaved the way hers did. As she matured, she simply attributed the way they interacted as quirky genius artists’ behavior. For Helena and Jack Dahl were certainly, as long as they had been Helen’s parents, self-absorbed, self-indulgent people preferring to focus most on their art, rather than their lone daughter.

  For that reason, Helen formulated for herself an idea of what would make the picture perfect family, a thing greatly longed for in her youth, and she planned to get it for herself. She wanted a loving, attentive husband…enter Richard. She wanted to have perfect children, a boy, and then a girl…enter Sydney and David, though rather in the wrong order. Sydney, her darling Sydney, came first.

  Sydney Rose, named after both her father’s grandmothers, was Richard’s precious flower from the moment he saw her in the hospital. This had come as no surprise to Helen. She, herself, was her father’s joy. He had done very little to guide her, but had created works of art in her name.

  Helen and Richard’s first born was never any trouble. From infancy, Sydney had been the easiest child to care for. As a toddler, she walked early. Her first words, to which both her parents crowed with delight, were right on time. She enjoyed school, earned excellent grades, and was invited to spend time in the homes of all their closest friends. Sydney was a great kid growing up and even through adolescence. On her mother-in-law’s advice, Helen braced herself for Sydney’s fractious teen years, but they never came. She and Sydney only became closer during this time. While many of their friends complained about their teens and the turmoil they were causing, Helen and Richard took comfort in the fact that Sydney brought them no trials.

  As the years progressed, they became closer still, which surprised other mothers and daughters in their circle of friends. The proof of their bond was to come as quite a surprise, principally to Helen. On the eve of her wedding, Sydney left the group of friends collected in her bedroom for a final girl’s sleepover, electing to spend most of the evening alone with her mother in their study.

  When Sydney gave birth to her own daughters, her mother-in-law insisted on being in the room with her after a request was made from her husband, to whom Sydney conceded after months of negotiations. However, when the time came, to Helen’s delight, Sydney called for her mother until she
was rushed into the room to be by her daughter’s bedside. Helen enjoyed the births of both her granddaughters.

  Yet, as of late, Helen was concerned about her daughter’s happiness and began that thinking Sydney was perhaps a little too sheltered. Her daughter’s world seemed a little too perfectly crafted and neatly defined. Even by Helen’s standards. She had given her husband two beautiful daughters one right after the other with little time in between the two births. At times, her husband was quite demanding of her time, however, Sydney insisted she wanted nothing more out of life except to care for her daughters, Erica and Samantha, and her husband, Sidney.

  “Who marries another person with the same name?” Helen thought aloud. Her daughter had been so pleased when she met him. She loved the idea of seeing someone with the same name. Everyone else thought it was a bit odd, or at least too cute.

  Helen’s annoyance with her daughter grew by the moment as she sat alone in the restaurant contemplating the edification she bestowed upon her daughter. She was not sure why she had become a little uncomfortable and impatient with her. Perhaps it was because Helen understood on some level what most are loathed to admit. Sometimes by looking critically at the lives of loved ones, we are compelled indeed to hold up a mirror, which reflects an image we do not care to see. Helen knew, as she adjusted in her seat, that her daughter’s sacrifices were quite like her own.

  Helen wondered how much she was to blame for Sydney’s outlook on life. Sydney limited herself to being Mrs. Sidney Hendrickson and Erica and Sammi’s mom, and not much was left for Sydney. Helen worried that her daughter’s sacrifices were a direct result of the lessons she had passed on to her daughter, in a legacy of sacrifice for an ideal that Helen was old enough only now to know did not exist. In her present stage of life, Helen began to understand that the good life she had defined for herself so many years ago, and the good life that was presently forming in Helen’s subconscious desire, grew more diametrically opposed with each breath.

  FOUR

  THE DAY HAD developed to the entire satisfaction of the dozens of patrons enjoying spring shade, iced drinks, and conversation in the prime seats set out in the afternoon sun just outside Sappho’s Repose. A prominent coffee house, and bakery notorious for its appetizing delectables. Like many of the neighboring businesses that offered food and various legal stimulants, the management took advantage of the profitable potential a sunny day might bring by turning the front footpath area into a quaint sidewalk café, broadening the appeal as well as increasing capacity on a warm day.

  Hennepin Avenue was alive with kinetic energy. Given that the early theater shows had just let out, the popular boulevard was crowded with matinee goers still animated from the show, late-lunchers taking a break from corporate offices, college students in search of caffeinated refreshment, gay pride revelers still celebrating Gay Pride months later, people in search of other people, others in search of no one at all, a small minority who found themselves lost in the congested high-interest area, and finally, a few who had arrived much too early for an appointment and decided to pass the time in the high rent district on Hennepin.

  Unable to locate a sidewalk seat outside beneath the lavender-colored awning, Helen took a sunny window chair in full view of the outside action. That way she could enjoy, though to a lesser degree of those sitting outdoors, the sunshine, the colors, and the din of the day on what promised to be an eventful afternoon pregnant with possibility and very little pause. After carefully setting the covered painting to lean against the window seat, Helen turned to view the space in which she had just entered. When she first arrived from the bright day, her sun-shocked eyes could register only dark surfaces and shallow motion. Once her vision adjusted to the artificial light inside, she realized immediately where she had landed.

  She had passed the small coffee house on many occasions without really giving the storefront any notice. She was aware of the clientele the business attracted, however, she herself never found reason to enter the trendy establishment. Now that she was inside, she figured she might as well have a look around, explore a bit, and collect information to be filed for later use, possibly in one of her unwritten, yet vaguely formed novels. Quite like the appeal of the outside atmosphere, the room was charming, yet held an air of sophistication in a funky, urban erudite way. The length of the back wall was lined with library shelves of “books for sale.” A similar, though less adequate space, which was given no less care, was allocated for the “books to be shared” shelves. The café was furnished for the most part to compliment the library feeling the shelving offered. In addition to the numerous sets of traditional café seating, comfy chairs in various shades of lavender and plum were sprinkled around the large space, softening the glare of the highly polished hardwood floors. All the art work, principally paintings, though there were also a few sculptures, were ingenious copies of greater works in varying purple hues, and seemed quite at home there. Even the mauve version of Venus de Milo was well placed on a coordinated purple-hued wall.

  The servers, of whom there were only two on the floor, also wore purple. Draped in purple aprons, they bustled about the room tending graciously to customers, and taking every step to the beat of the music piped in through invisible, though no doubt purple, speakers.

  Helen followed the lead of two women entering together with such confident ease. She took them as regulars, as they walked straight to the counter to order their drinks. Standing at the counter gave her a better view of the back of the store where the store’s grape-colored neon moniker “Sappho’s Bakery” hung. Helen had no idea this was that Sappho’s. She had never been there to purchase baked goods, but she had often enjoyed them. Helen smiled at her little discovery. Their bakery was one of the best in the Twin Cities area. She had been purchasing their tasty products through an intermediary who was charging her sixty percent mark up to cater her small events and luncheons. As Helen returned to her table with an iced chai and a tres leche scone, she made a silent promise not to eat anything else that day, and that she would begin to explore more of downtown Minneapolis to see what other treasures she might discover.

  Helen sat quietly against the warm glass enjoying the spoils of her trek to the counter. She watched the customers and workers, most of who were women, interact without actually engaging with them. She watched them as if she were not a part of the scene, as if she were in a separate dimension, but was somehow able to glimpse into a world a little out of time with her own, in the same way she used to watch her father work in his studio.

  As a little girl, she spent half her waking life sitting quietly in a corner of his workspace, watching as he found shapes in stone or some other media she lacked the potential to see. With each stroke, pick, or scrape of his tools, he would breathe life into indistinct material, willing grace into great blocks of formless stone. Their movement, like her father’s, seemed obscured and out of focus—foreign almost.

  By contrast, seated in the midst of all the blurred activity, sat a figure whose person registered with such sharp clarity, that her attention was seized away from the blur of motion going on around her. The woman appeared to be no different than any of the others seated in her area, yet there was a touch of the familiar that kept her in the center of Helen’s attention. There was something about the way the other vague creatures distorted the area around her that made Helen take notice of her. Was it reverence?

  The African American woman sat alone in one of the armchair groupings located in the center of the café. Her coffee rested on books set on a small round table next to the chair in which she sat. While Helen was keenly aware of her and the circumstance that they two existed alone together in exclusive lucidity, the woman seemed unaware of Helen at all. Her attention, all of it, she paid to her newspaper.

  “Mom, can I hit your coffee?” A third server entered from beyond the kitchen door.

  “Thanks, Baby.” The woman smiled without looking up from her paper to face the server. “Are the caramel rolls r
eady yet?”

  “No,” she replied, sitting opposite the woman she called Mom. “We’ll have to start switching over more oven space for them. With all the delivery orders, we can’t keep them in stock for walk-in customers.”

  Mom drank warily from her coffee. The touch-up had warmed it more than she expected. She swirled the hot liquid around her mouth, rolling it with her tongue until it was cool enough to enjoy. The next sip, she blew before drinking. She continued to concentrate on her beverage, making no attempt to offer any advice to the server’s business observation concerning sweet rolls or oven space.

  “Or we could just start earlier,” the server continued. Her hopeful tone belied her interest in discussing pastry or time management. There was a pressing in her voice, an anxious tone that did not go undetected by Mom.

  Mom looked over the top of her newspaper. Her glasses slipped low on her nose, giving her the appearance of an old schoolmarm about to scold a naughty student. Mom had seen much of life, some good, some not so great, and her experience showed in the way she held herself. In her early seventies, many would describe her as short and round, but she had a presence that made people notice her and not discount her experience. Like most African American women, she had the blessing of aging particularly well, but the last decade seemed to have caught up with her, erasing splendor and youth for wizened age lines and poise. Only in the past few years had grey bothered to touch her head, weaving only at her temples and a small patch in the front, leaving the majority of her hair thinned, but otherwise untouched. Mom was a little intimidating without trying to be. She posed no real threat to anyone, but then there was an ever-present countenance that suggested she was not to be trifled with. All in all, once you got to know her, Mom was just that…“Mom” to all.