Elly, Episode 3

On the plane, Natasha finally allowed herself to relax.  She had counted her little party almost four times: the two little ones that she was chiefly worried about, the four teenagers, and Amy.  She had counted their luggage, too, until it had been safely checked in.

Amy sat, her face unreadable, across from Natasha, looking at the video monitor and its ceaseless inanities; Natasha had no patience with the thing.  Next to her, James sat, looking a little dazed.  She had imagined that the little fellow would be accustomed to air travel, after flying around with Helen all his life.

She caught his eye, and he smiled.  Not one of the children would hesitate to smile, that was their charm.  They had inherited, in full measure, their mother’s friendliness, even the adopted ones.
“Mama’s coming later, right?” he asked in his somewhat gruff voice.
Natasha looked at Amy and raised her eyebrows.  Amy smiled thoughtfully, and shook her head.  It had been a question about whether to tell a white lie, or the truth.
“No, James, your mother is going to be in Philadelphia!  We can call her if you want.”
“In Phillidelphia?”
“Yes!”
“Oh.”  He looked straight ahead, thoughtfully, like someone who was being forced to make new plans.  “No,” he sighed, “I’ll call her later.”


The seat next to Natasha was never occupied, and once they had climbed to cruising altitude, Natasha signaled Amy to come over.  Erin and Carol, seated next to her, were reading.

Natasha smiled at Amy.  It had taken her a while to get used to Amy’s dry manner, but she knew it hid a kind heart.  It seemed to Natasha that Amy was dealing with almost unbearable conditions.  If it had been she, Natasha thought, she would have walked away long ago.  Yet Natasha had really gotten to like the brother and sister the previous night, and they didn’t seem at all like her conception of gold-diggers, which she had assumed them to be.  There was dignity and generosity there, and a kind of caution that told her volumes about how they came to be in their present pass, alone, with no friends.

“I’m so happy you decided to come,” Natasha said quietly, tactfully not mentioning that Amy’s motives weren’t clear.
Amy smothered a sigh, and smiled.  “I—just wanted her to have a little time,” she said, answering the unasked question.  “And I can’t bear to be away from the children,” she admitted.
Natasha sighed.  “It is such a puzzle, how to help her,” she confided.  “Sometimes she acts like such a baby!”
Amy laughed.
“But in public she does very nicely,” she pointed out.  “Last night she behaved very well.”
“Oh, of course, yes.  The in-laws were there, n’est ce pas?”
Amy stared at her a second and then grinned.  “No, … it wasn’t just that; she wants all of us to like each other.  Her team, you know!  How do you say team in French?”
“Team, yes, I understand perfectly.  It is a good word.  She wants to make a big family.  All her friends and everybody, no?”
“Exactly.  She enjoys having a large crowd of people.  But then, she hates it, too.  She’s all contradictions.”
“You understand her so well!”
“Thirty years, Natasha.  Almost thirty years.  I was twenty-something, she was a college kid.  It was love at first sight.  You understand, love-at-first-sight?”
“What are you asking, cherie?  We French invented this love-at-first—what you say.  But of course! ”
Amy smiled.  “She’s told me how she feels about you,” she said with a sly grin.
“Me?”  Natasha blushed prettily. “What does she say?”
Amy shook her head mischievously.  “Can’t; that would be telling.”
“Nothing bad, eh?”
“No … nothing bad at all.  Quite the opposite, in fact!”
“Oh dear, more trouble for Amy!”
“No trouble,” Amy smiled.



Helen visited the Brookses a couple of days after the dinner, and was received graciously by Maryssa.  She led Helen out to the little sitting room, and proudly brought out some cookies she had been making.

“You made these?”
“Yes!  What do you think?”
They were wonderful, and Helen said so.  “I shouldn’t eat too many of them,” she said quietly.
“Well, of course you shouldn’t,” Maryssa acknowledged, a trifle amusedly.  “But they’re sugar free!”
“Uh-uh!  No way,” Helen contradicted her, tasting the cookie carefully.  Not only did it taste wonderful, it had a wonderful chewy texture.
“Yes, they really are!” Maryssa insisted, excitedly.  “I invented them myself!  You know what I did?  I put in honey instead of sugar!  There’s not a bit of sugar in them at all!”
Helen laughed so hard she nearly choked.  Maryssa was very indignant indeed.  Helen gave her a long hug, and explained, trying hard to refrain from laughing, that honey and molasses and maple syrup all were kinds and forms of sugar, and they were all equally forbidden.  Maryssa was utterly downcast, and it took a lot of work to cheer her up.
“They’re good, though,” Helen said, taking another one.
“That’s enough for you,” Maryssa said in alarm, confiscating the rest of them.
“Did you really invent the recipe?”
Maryssa nodded, a little suspiciously, expecting more humiliation.
“Do you think you could invent a really sugar-free recipe?”
“Oh, sure, as long as I know what you’re allowed to eat,” she said, a little doubtfully.  Helen proceeded to tell her exactly what constituted sugar substitutes, and she carefully wrote everything down in her precise, spiky handwriting.  Helen was sure she kept a diary somewhere, that journalled everything that had ever happened to her, and Helen longed to read what she might have written about her.
“Maryssa, I think it was a brilliant idea to have the family to supper.  Even if I did help a little, I think you were very brave, and I want to give you something as thanks for it!”
“Oh!”  Maryssa covered her face with her hands.  Helen waited, worried, until she finally dropped her hands and looked at Helen, her face red.
“I sort of made a promise to myself never to do that again,” she said in a tiny voice.
“Why?  It was brilliant!”
Maryssa smiled indulgently.  Helen’s heart churned inside her, as she fixed the moment in her memory.  Now, at last, she had someone to talk about Maryssa with.  David didn’t seem to mind her carrying on about how wonderful Maryssa was.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Maryssa said.  “Looking back, it was a lot of fun!”
“Then—why?”
Maryssa’s face looked serious.  “I didn’t realize how much of a gamble it was,” she said softly.  “I began to panic when I saw you all pour out of the car.  If there had been more—strangers—I would have really … really panicked.  Luckily there was only—Natasha?” Helen nodded.  “Only Natasha,” she finished.  Her eyes widened.  “What if there had been more?”
“But—Natasha wouldn’t hurt a fly!  Maryssa, you saw her!  What’s bringing on all this imagined fear of strangers?”
“Well, I was just vague about exactly who was coming, that’s all!”
“Oh.  Well, it’s always better to know, so there’s no surprises, I suppose.”
“Exactly!”
Helen looked at her, bemused.
The day came when Helen sat with Elly, and told her her troubles.
“Yeah,” said Elly, “I guessed most of that.”
“Pretty obvious, huh?”
“Uh huh.  Maryssa seems a lot more interesting when you talk about her, though,” Elly remarked.  “She seemed just a pleasant gal, not an oversexed demon!”
Helen laughed.  “That civilized exterior covers a tigress,” she said.  “Seriously, though … she’s innocent, loving, generous, … I’m dying of love, Elly!”
Elly laughed.  “You’re such a lovesick puppy, Aunt Helen!  You’re hopeless!”
Helen looked at her, hurt.  “You’re supposed to sympathize!  A great help you are, Miss You’re A Lovesick Puppy!  As if you’ve never been in love!”
Elly’s brown eyes flinched, and she gave Helen such a look of pain that Helen’s heart stopped.
“Your turn,” she said softly.

It was a sad story.  It started at the end, backed up to the beginning, rushed through to the end, backed up to the middle … and Helen’s sympathetic heart felt Elly’s bruises with her.  It was a tale of desperate love, pride, betrayal, cowardice, forgiveness, more pride, more betrayal, foolishness, stubbornness, callousness, stupidity, remorse and shame.
At the end of it, Elly sat, her face red, but dry-eyed.  She looked at her adopted aunt stony-faced.  It was love that made her tell it all, but she was by no means confident that Helen would accept it as it was intended, now that she was done.  Once she had started, pride had made her continue.  The money was on the table, and fate held the cards.  Elly waited with almost clinical curiosity for Helen’s verdict.  If Helen betrayed her trust, she was ready to leave the house.  One chance was all she was gonna get.
She loved Helen very much.  But that was different.  She loved her whole family.  But a time came when you had to smile and walk out the door.  She had waited as long as she could for this moment.  Everything she had learned about Helen so far pointed to the fact that Helen would be cool.
“Elly,” said Helen, blithely unaware of the stakes, “there are lots of people in the world who are interested in what you do.  Some of them care about your grades most of all.  Will Elly deliver the goods?  That’s the big question for them.  Darling, you have to believe that your mom and I are not in that crowd.  There might be very few people in that crowd that you care about!”
“Hmm!  An interesting thought for all you listeners out there,” said Elly, sarcastically.  Her face had that stony look again, and she watched Helen with narrowed eyes.  “Oh yes.  We pay big bucks to send you out to big-name schools, but be aware that we don’t care whether you make the grades!  No sirree.  We just want you to build your character!  That’s what counts!”
Helen smiled.  “Look kid, I’m the pet hate du jour of the USA, and I’m trying not to let it bother me.  You might think I don’t care about your problems, but I do!  But see, girl, you’ve got to separate the real problems from the imaginary problems.  It’s a kind of game, and your strategy depends on what you think the consequences are likely to be.  If you’re confused about the consequences, how can you choose?”
“You’re a fine one to talk, Helen.  I mean, look at you: stuck between three people you’re in love with at the same time, I don’t see you assessing consequences!  But when it comes to me, it’s all about consequences.”
Helen turned red.  Elly’s hostility was clear, and instinctively Helen suspected that she had placed a premium on the outcome of this conversation.  The point was not any longer to win the argument, but to keep Elly’s trust.  And Helen was constitutionally incapable of compromising her principles in an argument.
“You’re going to pick a fight with me, and you’re going to walk out,” Helen accused her.
Elly shook her head.  “I’m not going to pick a fight, Helen, but I’m certainly ready to walk out.  I’ve had my fill of shallow advice, and I’m here as a last resort.  I didn’t see it that way at first, but now that I’ve told you everything, I’m waiting for an intelligent analysis.  If you don’t have it, I’m off.”
“So, if I say the wrong thing, you’re out of here?”
“I didn’t quite say that, but yes!  Why not?”
Helen smiled uncomfortably.  She was half afraid of the situation, and half amused.  It had been many years since she had been afraid of failure, and the sensation was pleasantly unfamiliar.  Then she got a brainwave.
“Elly … will you let me write you a letter, so that if you decide to …”
“Walk out?”
“… yes, walk out, as you say, you can read it at your leisure?  I want to write it first, so that it isn’t full of apologies and crap like that.  Please?”
Elly gave her a rather feral grin.  “You’re getting silly, Helen!”  Helen’s face lost all its expression, and Elly thought it was better to humor her.  “Go ahead,” she said, with a casual wave.
Helen perspired over the note.  It had to be brief, and it had to be substantial.  And it had to be written so that Elly wouldn’t throw it away in disgust.  Cursing silently, she wrote.  She had typed her letters for so long, she had lost the habit of writing by hand.
Finally it was done.  She found an envelope, and put it in.  She hurried out to the porch where they had been sitting, and placed it on the table.
“The envelope, please!”
“No, that’s for when—and if—you walk out.”
“I’m curious now.  The only way I can read it is to walk out!”
“Well, no, I guess you can read it even if you stay, Elly.”
“All right.  The verdict, then.”
“Verdict?  You want me to pronounce judgement on you?”
“Okay, advice, then.”
The story had been all about Elly’s relationship with Tommy, and the consequences of them.  They had, in the innocence of their freshman year, decided to take a year away from each other, and Tommy had picked up a boy friend and done very well, while Elly had had one sexual adventure after another, made incredibly bad grades, cut herself off from the anxious Tommy, become somewhat of a misanthrope, actually hurt another girl physically, fallen in love with her and ruined her school career, and so on, and so on.  She was suspended now, having managed to evade suspension thus far only by the intercession of kind-hearted faculty members.
It was hard to find anything positive in the litany of shame Helen had been subject to for nearly an hour.
Helen shook her head.
“Well,” she sighed, “you probably feel like a failure, but golly, Elly, you’ve worked at it so hard!”
Elly nodded.  “Right.  I brought it on myself.”  She looked at Helen with disgust.  “Any idiot could have told me that! ”
“Whew, that’s a relief.  I thought I had said something stupid.”
“You done already?  I’ll take the envelope and be off, then!”
“Elly, sit down and listen.”  She sat down on the edge of her seat, ready to rise any second.  “There are certain things I’m qualified to talk about.  Talent, luck, love, humility, patience, desire.  Other things I’m not: hard work, memorization, cheating on exams, doing poorly in courses, getting suspended.  Why don’t you ask me what you want to know?  Why make me guess for the magic answer you want to hear?”
“Aunt Helen,” Elly said, using the term of respect for the first time in more than an hour, but using it with sarcasm, “I’ll be honest with you.  Our college experience has been so different, it’s like asking a fish what it feels like to be an elephant.  I obviously have ‘issues’ I have to resolve, and you have no words of wisdom for me at this time.  Okay, I’m not walking out, I’m just heading out—I don’t know where.”
“You didn’t hear the part about humility!”
“What has humility got to do with it?”
“Well, it takes humility to take instruction from people of inferior talent.  It takes humility to have to take a course when you know all the content.  It takes humility to accept the love of someone, when that someone is doing better than you, and you’ve agreed to stay away from her.”
Elly stared at her.  “If you think I’m embarrassed by what you said, think again.  I didn’t do well in college, Aunt Helen, but I’m not stupid, you know.  I think I have enough humility to see that I’ve made mistakes.  But if that’s all you have, why, I’ll be going, then.”
“It takes humility to trust someone, you know.”
Elly sighed.
“Will you trust me that I’m not going to humiliate you?”
“I’ll try.”
“Well, why don’t you try to analyze some of your own failures?”
Elly was furious, so furious that Helen’s heart sank.
Her eyes wide, Helen spread her arms in helplessness.  “I don’t want to rub your nose in stuff you’ve recognized already, Elly.  Once you’re finished, I’ll try to talk about some things you haven’t noticed.  I’m absolutely non-judgmental.  I’m trying to give the situation the Elly-eye view, not the professor-eye-view, you understand?  I don’t see your success in college as a test of your value as a person, Elly!  It’s simply something that makes you useful to people, that’s all!  Once in a while, a person comes along who doesn’t fit into that mold, and you might be one of those!  For god’s sake, Elly, I’m in love with one: Maryssa never finished high school!”
“Really?”
“Yes!  Grade nine, I believe.  She didn’t know honey is sugar!”
To Helen’s relief, Elly smiled.  After thinking a while, she asked, “You really believe college might not agree with some people?”
“Certainly!”
She thought some more.
“But … for me, I have to do the college thing.”
Helen barely suppressed a gasp.
“Why do you say that?” she asked, as calmly as she could.
“Because I’m an intellectual.”
As preposterous as that sounded, it was all of a piece of what she had known of Elly.
“But so is Maryssa, and I take her very seriously.”  This was brinkmanship of the worst kind, but some madness drove Helen to live dangerously.
“No, it’s not that.  It’s … Aunt Helen, I want to be a professor.”
Helen was astounded.
“Why do you say that, Elly?  Of course … that makes a difference!”
“Because … I don’t know … I guess I’ve always wanted to do the things you do!”

Helen was so mad, she threw a cushion at Elly.  She gave her a tirade about how cruelly Elly had treated her, how she had her believing that she would have walked out on her, and did she know how much she had Helen worried, and on and on.  Elly calmly replied that she had indeed been ready to walk out, and she still was.
“But … you just said …”
Elly sighed.  “I said I wanted to do the things you do, but—that doesn’t mean you have any advice for me, you realize?”  Helen stared at her open-mouthed.  “What worked for you might not work for me, and I’m beginning to realize that even you can’t see that obvious fact!”
“Well, darling … the road is clear.  Suspension —academic suspension, which is not the end of the world— simply means that they want you to go to a different school.  You can go permanently, or you can go until you’ve got enough high credits that they’ll take you back.”
“Yeah.”
“So we pick a school, you go there, and try again!”
“The same old thing will happen.”
“If Tom isn’t there to see you fail, maybe you won’t mind failure quite as much.”
Elly looked at Helen thoughtfully.  “You’d think that all this terrible record will keep me from becoming a professor!”
“Not necessarily.  Especially if you change your major.”
“I never had a major.  I never declared a major!”
“What would you like to do?  What are you interested in?”
“Music, music, music!  At least, that’s what I thought.”
“Do you want to be a music professor, or don’t you care what subject it’s in?”
Elly shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I just don’t know,” she said, and finally she was beginning to sound like the niece Helen loved so dearly.

The long conversation was beginning to take its toll on Helen’s strength.  She begged Elly not to decide to walk out that afternoon, and Elly agreed not to with a heavy sigh.  Just then, David came in, and asked what they were talking about.
Helen was surprised when Elly told him exactly what they had been discussing.  She left out the personal details, but acquainted him with the academic facts with admirable candidness.  Helen slipped away holding little Ruth’s hand while David and Elly settled into a long discussion.

[K]