.
The process of getting Helen back to Primrose and settled in was traumatic in the extreme. She could not be comfortable in the enormous, ornate home; her upbringing had been austere by the standards of Maryssa’s family, and she said the house looked like a church. And she could not enjoy all the delicious food she had appreciated just weeks before. In desperation, Elly was assigned to take Helen grocery shopping. “Anything she likes,” Peggy told her, “just get a balanced selection. The kids need to eat too.”
“Would you like to come grocery shopping with me?” Elly asked Helen cheerily, on the weekend. She had just brought Morgan to spend the day with the family. James, especially, liked Morgan a lot, and Morgan had consented to take the day off.
“Sure,” said Helen. Elly grabbed her purse, and she and Helen set out in the enormous van. “A bit big for a shopping trip, ain’t it?” Helen smiled.
“Well, don’t look at me,” Elly laughed. “You bought this so we could go out to help with the tornadoes last summer in Kansas!”
Helen’s eyes grew wide. “There were tornadoes?”
“Uh huh!”
Helen mulled that over for a while.
“Do I go about doing goody-goody stuff like that?”
“Yep. Nobody expects you to keep on doing it, of course.”
She was silent for so long, Elly looked around at her, and was startled to see a big tear roll down her cheek.
“What’s up, now?”
“It’s awful,” she blubbered, “I just can’t live up to all this … crap that I used to do!”
Elly cleared her throat. Tears of sympathy pricked at her own eyes, making speech a little difficult. “Well, Aunt Helen, if you …”
“Don’t say Aunt Helen! It makes me crazy!”
“Oh, sorry. I was just saying … if you lose your memory, you’ve gotta expect some crap. The way I see it, a brain tumor is like a lightning strike. If you come out of it alive, you either thank god, or wish you hadn’t come out of it. Know what I mean?”
“You’re just confusing me. You’re no help at all!”
They were in the parking lot of the supermarket now. Elly realized that she was escorting a sort-of aunt who was a bit of a social liability. It was too late to do anything about it now, though.
“It’s so funny; it’s like we’re the same age!”
Helen’s face grew stony. “How old am I s’posed to be?”
“Forty one, forty-two in a couple of days, I believe!”
Her face crumpled up, but she didn’t cry. She shook her head in bewilderment. Elly wondered what was going through her mind. Was she bitter about her age? Was she still railing against fate for having stricken her this way? She suppressed a sigh. It would have been so much easier if Helen had retained some of her patience and her wisdom.
“Did I have a happy life? Not successful and famous and all that. I mean happy, like … did I enjoy it?”
“Sure,” Elly asserted. “You had a great ol’ time.”
“Good! Because I sure hate this part of it!”
“Don’t you like shopping with me?”
Helen angrily wiped her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she sniffed loudly, “you’re sweet. I don’t want to make you mad at me!”
“I’m not mad,” Elly said gently, “I know what you’re up against. You’ve just gotta learn that you’ve got all of us on your side. It’s just going to take a little while before we know what kind of stuff you like, and what you hate. Now we know you don’t like vans, we can get bicycles, or whatever!”
“Oh, it’s not the van, silly! It’s just … I want to keep Maryssa happy, and … Suresh gets mad at me ’cause I don’t know wiring and stuff … it gets to me after a while.”
“Jeeze, I’ll beat the crap out of that Suresh. The nerve!”
“No, oh no! He’s helping put that house together for me and Maryssa!”
“But he should know that you can’t possibly have a memory of housing construction. That was something you learned when I was eleven or twelve—that’s recent. All the other stuff you learned when you were younger. The most recent stuff is what you’re most likely to forget.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes. So you can walk and talk, the things you learned as a kid.”
“So that’s why I talk like … like a teenager.”
“You noticed that too?”
Helen nodded. “I tried to talk all adult-like, but—it was too hard. Then I thought, what the heck. I’ll talk the way it comes easy, and I’ll get the details later.”
“Good for you! Wanna come out with me now?”
“Yes.”
They went in, and Helen looked around at the shelves with considerable interest.
“So, what would you like to eat?”
“Oh, I don’t know; what have you got?”
“No, I mean, what shall we buy, to take home and get Bridget to fix?”
A thoughtful look came into Helen’s eye.
“Hmm. I really like those hamburgers,” she said softly. “Can we make hamburgers in the house?”
“Sure! Okay,” she said, leading the way to where the hamburger patties were on display. “What else?” She efficiently snagged some rolls to go with it, and cheese and pickles.
“Hot dogs?”
“Fine.”
Soon the cart was piled high with soda, ice cream, and the wherewithal to make grilled-cheese sandwiches, popped corn, pizza and smores.
“You sure like a lot of junk food,” Elly said, looking over the cart a little doubtfully. “How about salad?”
“I hate salad,” Helen said. Elly looked at her reproachfully, and she said, okay a little salad would be all right.
“What about chicken?” She liked that, she said. She liked roasted chicken, with a lot of garlic. That was the first sign of something in line with Helen’s adult tastes that Elly could remember. As far as she could tell, some inhibitions that seem to have made Helen a sweet-natured child had been removed. Elly mourned for the Helen who had been shaped by those experiences. It had been the fire of sorrow and grief that had forged the Helen they all loved. If it had been those bitter experiences that had been inadvertently removed, what was left, presumably, was the raw material, the dull, untempered base metal that the universe had started with, to make its masterpiece that had been Helen.
“Are you getting tired?” Helen wanted to know. She liked Elly, and she was concerned about her. The universal concern for others that had driven Helen was now restricted to just a few individuals.
“No, I’m great; Helen, you are taking your diabetes pills, right?”
“Oh yes,” she said, wincing. “Every night, at supper.”
“Good.”
“They taste horrible!”
“Even better. You know they’re good for you, then.” Helen nodded, wide-eyed.
Helen was acutely embarrassed when Elly paid for the food. “I should pay for it,” she said, red-faced, “but I don’t have money right now.” It broke Elly’s heart to see the shifty-eyed teenager in the 40-year old body.
“We’ll find a way for you to make money,” she promised.
Helen related best to Elly and Trish, and a little less to Sita and Lalitha. She adored the children, and was partial to little Jeannie, who was thoroughly amused by the development, though Peggy made her feel guilty about enjoying others’ misfortunes. “The poor woman has lost her memory, for heaven’s sake! How can you laugh about such a thing?”
“But she’s so funny!” Jeannie cried. “She wants me to take her to the mall! That’s hilarious!”
“So take her! Take Erin, too.”
“Oh, good call! I’ll say yes, if Erin can come along!”
Helen watched bemused as Elly took over teaching the children the violin. It was awkward to lead the lessons with Helen watching, but she did it. Helen could hardly believe how well the kids played, especially Erin. “Do it again!” she said over and over, listening to simple tunes like the Twinkles until the children were bored to tears. But it was an education for her, and they had to let her watch. Elly hoped she would ask to be taught, but she never did. Everyone could see that she loved music. She went up to watch Lalitha do the classes at least once a week, hiding out in the hall. Unlike the old Helen, she was full of energy, eager to work. She worked a couple of days at the instrument factory, learning laboriously from scratch. But as she had with Suresh, she learned by watching, and was very quickly handy with a spokeshave and a chisel.