by Karis Walsh
“I did see more of the world than most people ever will. I was exposed to local food and customs and places, so I learned more than any school-bound class could have taught me. And my parents have saved thousands of lives. I’d never be selfish enough to think that a real house or a sleepover with school friends should have made my parents give up their mission.”
“No, I guess not,” Helen said, trying to adjust to the quick shift out of her own past as Jenny now defended her parents’ lifestyle choice. She guessed that Jenny had wavered between anger and guilt for a lot of years. Helen had been on that particular seesaw often enough to recognize the signs. She wanted to help Jenny banish the guilt forever. “Still, couldn’t they have compromised even a little once you were born? There must have been plenty of opportunities to help others in the States or by staying in one place where you could make friends and be safe.”
Helen paused at the edge of the rescue center’s parking lot when Jenny stopped in the shadows. Beyond them, volunteers were moving in and out of the building.
“I know you mean well,” Jenny said. She sounded as if she was speaking through gritted teeth. “But you probably grew up in a traditional home with parents who went to work from nine to five each day. Maybe one of them even stayed home and took care of you full-time. You can’t possibly understand the amount of suffering in this world. People who sacrifice their lives to ease it are doing something vital, and if I had to give up the stray dog I’d befriended or the tree fort I’d made, then I was doing what needed to be done.”
Helen shifted the awkward boxes in her hands. She was tempted to upend the lot on Jenny’s head. “You have no idea what my life was like growing up. I’ve seen my share of suffering, and I’ve experienced plenty, too. Just because I’m trying to find a quiet and settled home here doesn’t mean it’s all I’ve ever known. It means I’ve had enough of the opposite to last a lifetime.”
Helen walked away without giving Jenny a chance to say anything else. She was worn-out from the amount of work she’d been doing and by the conversation she’d just had, and she was about to lose her business on top of everything. All she wanted to do was go home and curl in a ball, but she pushed through the glass doors and set her boxes on a folding table, where they were quickly attacked by hungry workers who mumbled their thanks around crumbs and pastry cream. This might not be her community or her home for long, but right now she was needed here. She grabbed some long rubber gloves and a handful of trash bags.
Time to clean some cages.
*
Jenny took her time crossing the parking lot, and by the time she entered the rescue center, Helen was nowhere to be seen. She put her pizzas on the table next to the already-plundered pastry boxes and snagged a couple of sand dollars before they disappeared. She paused in the doorway leading from the large foyer to the open auditorium and leaned against the doorjamb while she ate and watched the scene before her.
The main floor was covered with plywood pens, laid out like houses on city blocks. Jenny knew the inhabitants of each one, even without seeing them. A few Western grebes along the far wall, although luckily many of them had been farther inland during breeding season and were safe from the oil spill. Pens for the murres were clustered on the north side. The gentle and timid loons were tucked in a quiet corner. A dark curtain separated the washing area from the rest of the space. Quiet human voices blended together, creating a background murmur.
Jenny licked a trail of raspberry pastry cream off the side of her palm and thought about her reaction when she had innocently touched the pink stain on Helen’s T-shirt. Powerful and unexpected, like everything else about Helen. Jenny had been foolish to make assumptions about Helen’s life before they met. She’d seen hints of toughness behind Helen’s cheerful smile, as if she’d survived something difficult and had stories to tell about her journey. Jenny had tried to ignore her interest in Helen, had lumped her in with what she thought of as everyone else. Jenny’s own life had been so far from the traditional ones she read about in books and saw in movies that she sometimes forgot everyone varied from normal in some way. She’d activated her usual response against getting attached to a community and had thought of herself as someone too different from these people to ever truly relate to them. Or care about them.
She’d made a mistake and had made Helen angry. Jenny rarely had long enough relationships to need to worry about apologies or fights, and she wasn’t convinced she knew how to handle either of them, but she didn’t want to back away right now. She wanted to move closer, if only for a brief time.
She took a huge bite of her second pastry and turned her attention to Helen. She had spotted her immediately, of course, as soon as she had looked into the auditorium, but now she let the rest of the world fade away and saw only her.
Helen was cleaning the grebes’ cages with her accustomed grace and efficiency of movement. She gently herded the birds into one end of the pen before she removed the soiled papers from the other. Then she moved them to the clean side and repeated the process. Pen after pen, with a quiet and experienced touch. She had developed a routine, and Jenny loved watching her work. Mostly because she was good at her job and kept the birds calm, of course. The tempting sight of Helen bending over to pick up a dropped glove or tie a full bag shut was only a bonus and not the reason Jenny was mesmerized by her.
Jenny wiped her powdered-sugar-covered fingers on her jeans and grabbed a pair of gloves from a supply box. She walked to the pen Helen was cleaning and stepped over the side of it, silently going to work alongside her. Helen didn’t acknowledge her verbally or even with a glance, but she subtly altered her rhythm to accommodate Jenny’s presence.
From the start, Jenny had recognized her own work ethic in Helen. Helen understood the importance of behind-the-scenes work. She stayed on the grubbier side of the rescue effort, cleaning pens and holding birds while a special food mash was tubed into their stomachs. Because she was such a familiar part of their days, the birds seemed to have adjusted more quickly to temporary captivity here than at other rescue sites Jenny had managed. She took on the role of assistant now, letting Helen move the birds. The elegant black-and-white grebes with razor-sharp, slender beaks waddled silently from one end of the pen to the other as if they’d been following Helen’s directions their entire lives. Helen might not realize what a difference she was making, but Jenny did. She’d have to find a way to thank her for taking care of the chore that was usually the least favorite for the volunteers but was one of the most vital to the well-being of the birds. Jenny had a few ideas about how she could thank Helen, but they all involved a more hands-on approach than Jenny usually took with the people she briefly met in disaster-torn communities. Maybe she’d have to settle for getting her a gift card instead, but the other options seemed much more enticing. She kept her thoughts to herself and wordlessly stuffed paper into garbage bags. Together they finished cleaning the remaining grebe pens and then carried the trash bags to the Dumpster behind the center.
The back lot of the rescue center was quiet in the growing dusk as they lobbed the bags into the huge, rusty container. Helen led the way back to the building, but Jenny put her hand on Helen’s arm to keep her from going through the door and returning to the brightly lit, crowded auditorium.
“I’m sorry,” she said, picking up the thread of their earlier conversation as if it had just happened. “I shouldn’t have implied that you had a boring or easy childhood. And I didn’t mean to sound like I thought I was superior because of the way I was raised or because of the way I live now. I’m not. It’s just the only way I know how to live.”
Helen shook her head and looked off into the distance. The fading colors of the sunset gave her skin a peachy glow and made her eyes glisten. “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have insulted your parents or the choices they made. I just heard some echoes of my own loneliness when you were talking about not having many friends, and I wanted to take your side against them. And maybe I was a little jealo
us because you were such a huge part of their lives and their work.”
Jenny realized she still had her hand on Helen. She should move it, let go, step back. Instead, she slid her palm down Helen’s arm until she reached her hand. Their fingers interlaced loosely.
“You weren’t close to your parents?” Jenny asked. Admittedly, after watching Helen interact with her neighbors in Cannon Beach, Jenny had pictured her growing up in a close-knit family. Learning how to bake in the kitchen with her mom. Experiencing the cozy domesticity Jenny had sometimes longed for.
Helen shook her head. “I never had a chance. We were in a car wreck when I was still a toddler. The truck hit us head-on, and since I was in the backseat, I was the only one to survive.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Grieving is abstract when you barely knew someone.” Helen leaned against the metal siding of the auditorium, still keeping her hand in Jenny’s. “Anyway, my uncle brought me to live with his family, but he was…well, he wasn’t a nice man. I don’t think he and my father were ever close. As soon as I was old enough to pack a bag, I was running away on a regular basis. I stayed on the street or in foster homes, but then I’d be taken back to his house. We lived in a small town, so the cops got to know me well enough to recognize me and I never got far. Once I turned eighteen and graduated from high school—barely—I got the hell out of there.”
Jenny sighed and propped her shoulder on the wall next to Helen. She felt a current of excitement being this close to her, their hands joined and their thighs barely touching, but she put her own responses in the back of her mind. This was a time for a different kind of intimacy, and she didn’t want Helen to stop talking. Jenny lived her own story. When she went to disaster sites to work, the focus was always on the present—how to deal with the crisis of the moment. Rarely did she stand still long enough to listen to someone else’s life unfold through their words and expressions. Rarely had she ever wanted to hear.
“What did you do once you left?”
Helen shrugged and Jenny felt the friction of the movement against her own shoulder. Her fingers tightened on Helen’s reflexively, and Helen returned the squeeze.
“I was directionless. For most of my life, I had been straining to get away, but I never had any idea where I was headed to. I didn’t have the best support system in place. Most of my friends were runaways, too. Ditching school, leaving home, getting into trouble. I managed to stay clear of the worst parts of street life, but I was on a downhill slope. I was crashing with some people I knew and couldn’t seem to get a decent job, let alone hold on to one if I managed to get hired.”
Jenny shuddered to think of the direction in which Helen’s life could have gone. She realized the sharp edge she had seen beneath Helen’s surface had been honed by survival. The added dimension made her even more attractive to Jenny, but it scared her, too. She wasn’t accustomed to seeing depth—just names and faces that blurred together and faded from her mind once she moved on.
“And now you’re a pastry chef and entrepreneur. I’m impressed. What made you turn your life around?”
Helen looked at her with an appreciative smile, as if Jenny’s compliment actually meant something to her. “I got a job washing dishes in a diner. Not exactly the dream career for most people, and it didn’t pay much, but I got a hot meal every night. It was owned by a huge Italian family, and I loved watching them fight and laugh and run their business together. They were everything a family should be, and nothing like the one I had. At first I figured I’d be there for a month or two and then leave—my usual work pattern—but I stayed. Every once in a while, one of them would give me a little cooking lesson, and eventually I was working on the line. My favorite things to make were breads and desserts. I worked my way through culinary school and saved enough to open a bakery of my own.”
Helen spoke the last three sentences with a casual voice and a shrug, as if the journey had been as simple as one-two-three, but Jenny knew better. The effort and discipline required to start from scratch and build a new life were awe-inspiring to her. She felt an inexplicable sense of pride in Helen’s accomplishments, and she wasn’t sure why. She’d had nothing to do with Helen’s life before this, and she had no stake in her future. She didn’t understand how an attachment seemed to be forming between her and Helen, but she had to stop it before it got strong enough to threaten her life’s work.
And she would stop it. Later.
Right now, though, Jenny gave in to the itchy feeling in her fingers and she reached out to touch Helen’s hair, tucking a strand of gold behind Helen’s ear. She let her hand linger there, feeling the warmth of flesh and heartbeat.
“You seem to fit here,” Jenny said, feeling somewhat sad because she herself didn’t fit anywhere. “After accomplishing so much, I’m sure you’ll have no trouble making your bakery a success.”
Helen gave a bitter laugh. She straightened and pushed away from the wall, breaking all contact between them. “Thanks, but I’m already on my way out of business. Everything I read told me to have at least six months of living expenses saved before trying to start a new business, but I only had saved enough for maybe three when I found the opportunity to rent here. I thought I’d be okay since the summer season was about to start, but then…”
“But then…” Jenny echoed. The spill. The damaged beaches and wounded animals. Jenny had seen this happen again and again, when lives were ruined by this type of disaster. She did her best to help everywhere she went, but somehow this felt different. She was inside, with the rest of the community. “You’ve been doing more than your share of work, but we can get by if you need to spend more time at your bakery. And all the donated pastries you bring each night—you really don’t need to feel responsible for feeding everyone here. It must be costing you a fortune in ingredients. I’ll come to your store with cash when I need my sand dollar fix.”
Helen laughed. “I’d much rather be here doing something good than sitting in my empty bakery and watching the empty street. I like bringing food, too. I crunched the numbers, and if I stopped it would only delay the inevitable. I wouldn’t save enough to make a real difference. But I can make a difference here. I think I’ve always felt like it was me against the world, but now I’m part of a team. I don’t want to lose that feeling, even if it’s only temporary.”
“I’ve always been the team coach,” Jenny said with a grin. “But I’ve never really been part of it, until—”
“Jenny, there you are. I have a surprise for you.” Mel’s voice broke into their conversation, shattering the intimacy Jenny felt growing between them. Jenny turned to see Mel framed in the open doorway, backlit by the bright fluorescent lights. She didn’t have to hear what the surprise was since she recognized the two silhouettes behind Mel.
She sighed and walked toward them, away from Helen. “Hello, Mom. Dad. It’s good to see you both. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”
*
Jenny opened the door to her room at the inn and dropped her mom’s light canvas bag on the floor next to the bed. She shouldn’t have been as surprised as she was to see her parents at the center tonight. She knew they were in the States—albeit on the other coast, in Florida—and they often came to see her and help with her rescue efforts whenever they could. She tried to be grateful because they were giving their time, and they worked hard no matter what job they were given, but somehow their visits were more exhausting than the hard work of disaster relief.
“You’ll be staying in here and I’ll move to the smaller room upstairs,” Jenny said. She didn’t like leaving what she’d come to think of as her room. Now she’d have to share a bathroom with two of Danny’s college friends, and she’d miss sleeping in this room with Pam’s beautiful painting of the tide pool. She stared at the mosaic whenever she felt despair or weariness settling in her bones. The sun shining through her window and making the sea glass sparkle gave her the lift she needed and the incentive to keep going until the beach return
ed to the state of Pam’s vision. Still, she couldn’t begrudge her parents the larger room, and she was glad Mel had space for her somewhere besides the floor in here. She was accustomed to much more primitive conditions than this on most of her job sites, so she wouldn’t complain.
“Very glamorous,” her father said, as if reading her mind. “I hope you don’t forget you’re here for work and not a vacation.”
“I never forget why I’m here,” Jenny said softly, but he had already walked over to the window where her mother was standing. She watched the two of them as they looked out at the dark and looming hulk of Haystack Rock. Eve and Lars Colbert. Dark and light. They looked as young as they had when she first left them to attend vet school in the States. Similar in build and quick in movement, they only showed the passing years in a few lines on their faces. They would be leaving for the Sudan in a few days and stopped here to volunteer along the way. She wondered where they got their energy to keep moving and changing. She was always on the go, too, but the effort was sometimes too much to bear.
“Mel’s partner Pam did the paintings for all the rooms,” she said when Eve turned away from the window and came over by the bed. “They’re spectacular. I can show you the others one of these days.”
Her parents both made the right comments when they admired the mosaic, like Jenny had when she’d first seen it. The difference was, Jenny had immediately wanted to buy one like it, impractical as it would be. Mel had told her that almost everyone who stayed at the inn wanted to buy one of the paintings. The cost was prohibitive for most, but Pam had created a line of smaller, more affordable canvases, each with a scattering of sea glass. Jenny had already bought one with a purple- and coral-colored starfish on it. She didn’t offer to show it to her parents, though. They would have liked the small oil painting if they’d seen it on display somewhere, but not as a possession. She didn’t want to hear the lecture about how impractical it was to purchase souvenirs from all her trips. Mental pictures were easy to pack, her mom liked to say. Anything besides the essentials for living was a waste of space and travel funds.