by Bobbi Marolt
“Chelsea, I won’t mislead you.”
Abruptly, Helen leaned forward. “Mislead her how?”
Chelsea pulled her back in the seat. “Let her finish,” she said quietly.
“Dr. Hellman—the oncologist—can provide therapy, but the disease isn’t one we’ve treated with much success.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Helen shouted, ready to whisk Chelsea out of the office. It wasn’t Dr. Santos’s job to impose a death sentence.
Chelsea remained firm. “Let her finish. I have to hear the bottom line.”
Dr. Santos gave Chelsea a year. Reality proved her over-optimistic.
Shove a stick of butter in a microwave oven for a minute. Watch while an unseen aggressor transforms the solid to liquid. Witness how quickly the molecules of fat speed up, scatter, and soon lie unrecognizable. You jam your finger on the stop button, but it doesn’t work. You yank the handle, but the door won’t give. You pound the glass, slam the top, rip the plug from the wall, but you’ve lost control and the process continues relentlessly.
Helen could only watch while the disease devoured Chelsea. A beautiful, vital woman melted into sunken features, the ravages of a starved body. Food, fluid, chemicals—none was an ally. There were no allies. Useless radiation treatments weakened her. Vomiting from chemicals had increased pain, drained life, and she struggled to remain alive.
“I want to go home,” she said from her hospital bed. “I don’t want to die here.”
One night, during the fifth month after the diagnosis, Chelsea’s previous hours were her most painful yet, and Helen was ready with morphine when asked for the medication.
“Hey, Townsend,” Chelsea whispered.
Helen snapped awake and was angry for having fallen asleep in her chair. She moved to Chelsea’s side. “I’m here, sweetheart.”
“Help me up.”
Helen avoided the IV tubing that fed the disintegrating body before her. Chelsea barely weighed eighty pounds and her ribs felt ready to puncture her thin skin. Helen lifted carefully and held gently.
“What do you need?” she whispered while Chelsea, the love of her life, lay dying in her arms.
“You.” She groaned. “I love you.”
Helen bit her lip. The lump in her throat stole her voice and she swallowed hard. “Yes, I know,” she wanted to say. “And I love you too and I don’t want you to hurt anymore and please get better so I can say I love you for fifty more years.” Helen’s body shook. None of those words would come and none of those things would happen. She could only nod.
Somewhere between Helen’s nod and a kiss to Chelsea’s forehead, Chelsea died in Helen’s embrace.
*
Helen placed the black sheep printout on her dresser and then blew her nose. Her mirrored reflection showed puffy eyes. She picked up the silver-framed photograph of Chelsea and herself, the one taken on their second anniversary. It was three years since her death and Helen had remained alone.
Startled by the ringing telephone, she let the machine answer.
“You home, Blondie? Pick up.”
She reached for the bedroom extension when she heard the voice of her closest friend, Stacey. “To what do I owe this honor?”
“You’re supposed to be here tonight. Remember?”
“Oh. The club. I’m sorry, Stacey. I completely forgot about your party.” She wiped her eyes and sniffed softly.
“You sound stuffy. Are you all right?”
“Allergies. I can’t go out feeling this way.” A feeble response. Stacey knew Helen had no allergies.
“You’re crying again. I wish you’d stop wallowing in the past and make a new life for yourself. Put on your Sunday best and come over. A friend is giving a private recital and I want you to meet her.”
She considered the offer, but tonight would be another night alone with her memories. “No, I won’t let go of Chelsea.” To appease Stacey, she quickly redirected the conversation. “I met a woman today.”
“That’s encouraging. Maybe I know her.”
Helen laughed about her absurd encounter. “I never got her name, but she had incredible eyes.”
“Really?” she asked and listened until Helen completed her tale. “She sounds yummy. How will you find her?”
“I haven’t thought about it. I don’t necessarily want to find her.”
“Maybe you should think about it, or maybe she’ll find you again.” Helen had no response. “Are you sure you don’t want to come over? If your mystery woman is a dyke, she might show up.”
“Another time. I promise. Good night, Stacey.”
*
She eased into a hot bath, and her chilled body immediately sucked in the warmth. Stacey didn’t understand that the love Helen felt for Chelsea hadn’t stopped with her death. She’d been left behind to awaken alone, to work countless hours, and to sit in the dark and cry. Helen’s memories of Chelsea haunted her every day: her art that hung on Helen’s walls, her laughter that still rang in Helen’s ears, her incredible need for munching pecans, and her love for a snowy day. Her tenderness. Helen held blatantly on to those memories.
And yet, as if death could ever offer fairness, Helen felt cheated. There were too many destroyed plans. Among them, their desire to have a child that Chelsea would carry, and a possible move to Scarsdale. Chelsea had promised to love Helen forever. “…from this day forward…” The words betrayed Helen, but how could Chelsea have known? “…until death…”
She cried. “You never said good-bye or go to hell.”
Helen was selfish with her memories, and she thrived on them. Every time she closed her eyes, Chelsea was there, coaxing her into her arms. Helen felt Chelsea’s love even after her death. She followed Helen to bed, sometimes to the bath. Those memories, those moments, they were all Helen had.
She leaned back in the tub and a wave of warm water splashed over her breasts. She closed her eyes. Chelsea smiled and her blue eyes sparkled. “Let me love you,” they said to Helen. She raised her knees, and opened her legs against the cold ceramic. Helen dipped her hand into the hot water and traced the inside of her thighs.
“Chelsea.” Her breaths were ragged splinters of sound.
Slowly, she teased herself with a zigzag pattern and brushed fine, floating hair. Chelsea’s blue eyes suddenly flashed emerald. Helen stopped. She opened her eyes, confused by the intrusion. She caught her breath.
She closed her eyes again. Chelsea reached. The tingling down the back of Helen’s legs strengthened. “Chelsea. I love you.” Emerald eyes twinkled back. No!
In her mind, Helen was hurtled back to Fifth Avenue, to captive eyes, to arms that held her securely. She groaned and stroked the tiniest bit of muscle that took control.
“Do you have a name?” the muscle whispered.
“Yes,” she whimpered and stroked it.
It yelled to her. “Do you have a name?”
“Yes,” she groaned and stroked it.
It screamed, “Do you have a name?”
Helen gripped the tub with one hand. Water sloshed over the side of the bathtub while she led into a quick and powerful release.
Through tear-soaked eyes, she looked down to the wet, tiled floor. Left shaken, she leaned back and closed her eyes. Helen conjured Chelsea’s image. Her mind struggled to sharpen the hazy shadows of curly hair that framed Chelsea’s face. The quick flash of her image snapped on and then went dark until a newer picture emerged, snowy and then clear. Blue eyes shone brightly in the foreground.
“I’m sorry, Chels,” Helen sobbed. “It’s you I still want.” The image faded. “Don’t leave me,” she pleaded, but the imagined eyes sharpened to deepest green.
Helen touched the tiniest bit of muscle. Her body twitched.
“Do you have a name?” the muscle asked.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Chapter Two
Sam Baker was editor of the New York News and had known Helen for fifteen years. She was fresh out of c
ollege when she waved her master’s degree in journalism under his nose and, having found her enthusiasm soldieresque, he allowed her the status of cub reporter. Not a glamorous post, but it was a beginning.
For starters, Sam tossed Helen a weekly opinion column and turned her loose on the streets. From Staten Island to Long Island, she fired questions to the public on capital punishment, religion in schools, and even the change in the New York skyline since the addition of the Twin Towers. New Yorkers grew to like Helen. She earned their respect and soon they came to her with topics to sharpen her skills.
A mother from Brooklyn had let her in on what she thought to be a local daycare swindle. Helen submitted an idea to Sam. She wanted to go undercover as an employee, but he wanted her to snoop around with her press badge in full view.
“We aren’t cops,” he said flatly.
Helen groaned, obliged, and with annoying persistence, blew the lid off a major money-laundering ring. The criminals got the slammer, the police got the glory, and Helen got a three-days-a-week featured column, along with Sam’s respect. His cub was a bear.
However, the bear soon collapsed with the proper ammunition.
Helen was in her sixth year at the paper when she lost both parents in an automobile accident. Her father was driving, suffered cardiac arrest, and slammed into a tree. His death was instantaneous, but her mother, his only passenger, died a day later of head injuries.
Sam and Stacey seldom left Helen’s side during the week that followed. Helen, purveyor of words, internalized her grief while Sam and Stacey led her through the horrible process of burial arrangements and then the funerals. It wasn’t denial of death she experienced, but complete shock. Sam kept her afloat and only once, aside from an occasional “yes” or “no,” had she commented on what should be.
“I want my mother dressed in blue.”
Stacey saw to her request and nobody saw Helen place a pink hair ribbon into her father’s hand. That piece of satin compelled Helen to fulfill his desire. She would write the book of his World War II experience that he had obsessed over.
Helen didn’t cry until three days after their burial.
“Can we go out on your boat?” she asked Sam.
“Sure. Want to give Stacey a call?”
“No. Just us.”
*
Sam steered the forty-foot vessel around Long Island and pointed out an occasional landmark. Helen sat quietly and held no interest in his stories. Her thoughts were with her parents as she stared at the worn black-and-white photo that she held. Her mother was a young, lovely bride whose wedding dress was probably borrowed, as times were hard on the wallet. Her father stood proud in his government-issued uniform. They were married one week before he shipped out to Germany.
She could have sat there, gone through her childhood, her love for them and his heroic contribution during the liberation of the death camps, but that would have to come later. The boat ride held a different purpose.
As they neared Port Jefferson, Helen signaled for Sam to stop. She walked to the stern of the fishing cruiser and said a silent prayer for her parents. After a deep breath, she forced a guttural and increasingly loud scream, until she heard the echo throughout the Sound. Sam ran to her and Helen fell into his arms.
“It’s okay, honey. Let it out,” he said while she bawled and shook against his shoulder.
*
Over the following years, Sam loved her like a daughter, came to know her better than she understood, and had enough wisdom to stay out of her personal life, until today.
Sam summoned her, and not too pleasantly, into his office. “Townsend! Get in here. Please,” he added, in a gentler tone.
Townsend? Sam never called her by her last name unless he was annoyed. Helen looked around his doorway and into his office.
“Yeah?”
“Sit down.” He looked at the paper in his hand and then at her. “On Monday you wrote a great column on choice, and Wednesday was pretty good with overpaid athletes.” He held an unlit cigar to his mouth, rubbed it under his nose, and then tapped it like a pencil on his desktop. “But what the hell is this piece about? Explain your invisible people.”
“I thought I was quite clear.”
“Call me stupid.” He clasped his hands behind his head and waited for her answer.
“There’s an invisible world of closeted lesbians and gay men in our society,” she explained. “Because they don’t fit the gay stereotype, they’re treated with respect. Invisible gays might work on this paper. We wouldn’t have the slightest clue that Julie in accounting is sleeping with Rhonda in Human Resources.”
Sam’s furry white eyebrows shot to their limit. “Julie and Rhonda are sleeping together?”
“That’s not what I’m saying and it’s exactly what I’m saying. They look straight, but that’s merely an assumption.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The column is straightforward, and no pun intended. Equal treatment. Butches and queens should have the same rights and respect as the invisible homosexuals.”
With a grunt, Sam hoisted himself from his chair and walked to the window. He scanned the street below. “Be careful,” he said to the glass and walked back to his desk.
“Of what?”
“This.” He drummed his fingers against Helen’s Friday column.
Helen rolled her eyes. “I know I’ll get a billion calls. I’m ready for them.”
“No. I’m concerned about you.” He sat down again. “This, and your black sheep column, tell your story.”
The black sheep bullshit again? She’d written that piece months ago, but Sam possessed a reporter’s instinct of committing the tiniest bits of information to memory. She wondered if he was conspiring with that tease on the street.
“Sam, I’m too old for games.” He could play caring papa if he chose, but she demanded treatment as an adult. Besides, she enjoyed watching him squirm.
“It’s not easy”—he ran his fingers through his hair—“and it’s not my business.”
“Go on.”
“I knew about you and Chelsea. I think love is love no matter—” He stopped and looked at Helen.
Outside of her parents, Helen had never outed herself to anyone straight before now. There were times in the past when straight friends asked her if she was gay, and she always answered honestly. Some stayed, some dumped her, but she felt clear to her bones that Sam was a stayer. Still, there was a quickening to her pulse, and she took a deep breath.
“Let me make this easier for you. I need to do something for the gay community. Something for myself.” Her face was hot, but she survived her admission.
“You’re going public, aren’t you?”
“In some way.”
“Why? They could stonewall you. Gays still get bashed, and the last thing I’d ever want is for you to get hurt.”
“I’m tired of living underground. It isn’t fair or healthy for any of us.”
“I can’t imagine what it must be like. I agree with you, but are you ready to risk your career?”
“There are laws to protect me.”
“Laws schmaws. If the old geezers on the board want you out—”
“I hope the paper has the integrity to place merit over sexuality.”
“Don’t count on that.” He looked squarely into Helen’s eyes. “But you can count on me to fight for you.”
“Thanks.”
He rubbed a hand over his face and looked at the column again. “It’s good copy.” He nodded. “You’re on for Friday.”
“Good. Are we finished?” Helen stood, anticipating his yes.
“Not just yet.” He waved her down again. “Let me read something, and I quote: ‘Message to green eyes. I will have lunch at the restaurant that bears the name of the column we discussed. I’d like to talk with you further. Friday, one p.m.’”
Sam cocked his head and raised only one eyebrow. Helen let out a slow breath. She’d rather work the mailroom than lose t
he message.
“Starting a private dating service?” The editor was back.
“Sam, leave it in. It’s a one-time deal.”
“Lucky for you I’m feeling generous.”
*
Helen met Tucson at Central Park South for lunch. The weather was tauntingly warm compared with earlier in the week.
“Two pretzels with mustard,” Tucson said and paid the street vendor. He handed one to Helen. “I can’t believe you’ve never had a pretzel with mustard. Are you really a native of this smoggy city, or are you feeding us a load of bull in your columns?”
“To be honest, I grew up in Brewster, but you’ll never hear me admit it in public.” She bit into her pretzel and added a muffled comment. “This tastes pretty good.”
They ate and chatted casually, but Tucson finished his lunch quickly.
“Now tell me, word wizard, what’s with the column on closeted gays?” He dropped his napkin into the trash. “Have you taken it upon your shoulders to help create a more accepting society for us?”
“I’m a realist. I’ll never fully see that in my lifetime. I’m just tired of the oppression and I want to say something. My readers can interpret me however they choose, and they will.”
“Well, oppression will always exist. We live with it and try not to carry a chip.”
Helen stopped and grabbed his arm, not believing what she’d just heard. “How can you be so insensitive? It’s attitudes like yours that give our society the notion that some are better than others. I’ve conformed long enough.”
“You’re turning into a martyr,” he said, unruffled by her demeanor. “Talk is cheap. Coming out would serve a better purpose, but I don’t see you jeopardizing your career.”
Helen laughed to herself. The friend conspiring with the editor conspiring with the tease on the street. When they approached a vacant horse-drawn carriage, Tucson handed a wad of bills to a coachman and helped Helen up and onto the seat.
“What’s going on that you hired a coach to smooth it over with me?” Helen asked as the carriage lurched forward.