Helens-of-Troy (20 page)

“I think you're talking about something
else, El.”

He began to pull her hand up his leg,
but Ellie took his hand in hers, and laughed shyly.

Tom sensed that Ellie was slowing him
down, but not rejecting him. He decided to try another approach.
“You know, you have killer eyes,” he continued, “they sparkle when
you laugh.”

“Tom...”

He had her, he sensed. This would be
the time to move in for the kiss. “Maybe some time I could see them
without all the make-up. Maybe some time I could...”

“What did you have to say that for?”
Ellie freaked, throwing her hands up in the air.

“What?” Tom stammered, immediately
pulling back from her.

Every bone in Ellie’s body tensed up.
If she took off her make-up, he would see that she really looked
years younger. Jailbait younger. More than anything else in the
world, Ellie didn’t want him to see that.

“What did I say?” he asked
again.

“Would you ask Jacey to take off her
make-up?” Ellie asked defensively.

“That wouldn't be the first thing I'd
ask her to take off...I mean NO, no I wouldn't. I would not ask
Jacey to take off her make-up. That would be wrong.”

“YOU, Tom, are the insensitive jerk. Go
away and leave me alone.”

“Wait a minute, Ellie...” Tom pleaded.
“If I moved too fast, I’m sorry. I got the message. I’ll back off.
Just don’t get so mad at me.”

Ellie didn’t want him to back off. But
she didn’t know how to handle the situation either. She got up and
opened the back door. “I think it’s time for you to go
now.”

“El, listen...”

“I thought you wanted Jacey. What am I?
The fallback girl?”

“No. But I don’t think you were all too
concerned about Jacey a couple of minutes ago. If I read you wrong,
I’m sorry.” He could see her aura begin to appear again. He took a
moment to embrace it. Goth-Chic might be loony as hell, but he
couldn’t keep his eyes of her. He didn’t want to leave, but he knew
he wasn’t welcome. Not right now.

“I’ll call you tomorrow, Ellie,” he
said, as he left her standing alone in the kitchen. “And that’s not
just a line.” He meant that. He knew that even in the morning, when
he had time to digest everything that had happened today, he would
still want to call. He glanced nervously at the Lachey driveway as
he headed out the back door, but Ryan’s Toyota thankfully had not
yet come home.

Ellie burst into tears and ran
upstairs, past her mother and Helena who were both watching
television in the living room, in chairs moved as far apart as
possible. Helena was slumped in the beanbag. Helen sat upright in
the arm chair. The empty, comfortable couch between them was a sign
of their ongoing standoff.

“I told you it was a bad idea to leave
them alone,” Helen pointed out. “I guess we’re not going to be able
to go and have a quiet dinner together.”

“They’ve had a fight, that’s all. It's
a part of growing up. She’s not a child anymore. She’s going to
have to learn to take it when love hits you with a tire
iron.”

“She’s my baby.”

“Please. She's a pint-sized Lara Croft
waiting to happen.”

“Ellie,” Helen called. “Ellie come down
here. We want to talk to you.”

“I am never coming down there as long
as I live,” Ellie screamed from the top of the stairs.

“Child,” Helen sighed.

“Raging hormonal teenager,” Helena
countered. “Borderline woman. I wish I had tape recorded you when
you were her age.”

“Will you stop that please, Mom?” Helen
asked.

“Mom? You never call me
Mom.”

“Mother,” Helen sighed. “Can we call a
truce on this one? I really need your help. I’ve never had a
teenaged daughter before. I’ve never had a teenaged anything
before. I know I’m holding on to her too tight. But with all the
other stuff coming into the picture, it’s making it even harder to
let her loose on the world.”

Helena was moved. “Well, I have raised
a teenager as you recall. And at the time she yelled and screamed
at me daily. I gave her all the freedom she wanted. And she bolted
the first chance she got.”

“I didn’t bolt because of
you.”

“I know that. But it’s taken you
sixteen years to admit it.”

“I was barely older than Ellie,
pregnant and scared. I thought the early appearance of a grandchild
for you would be more than you could handle.”

“Oh Helen,” Helena sighed, “I was still
young enough then to have called her my own.” She waited for
Helen’s pained reaction. “Darling, I am just kidding. I would have
opened my arms to you both, just like I’m doing now. I tried to
tell you that. But you, Helen, are not a listener.”

Helen though about what her mother was
telling her. Helena wasn’t the only person in her life who had told
her that. They were all wrong.

“You did manage to take care of Ellie
and get a university education. That shows if nothing else, you
have tenacity,” Helena offered.

“If I haven’t already thanked you for
your help with that, thank-you. That nanny you sent along was a
godsend. What was her name again? It was something
peculiar...”

“Marita.”

“That’s right. Marita. Only she
pronounced it with a pause between syllables. Mah-Rita. I wonder
what ever happened to her. For two years she was there and then
without a word she was gone. I had to get a husband to replace
her,” she laughed.

“I’m sure I don’t know, dear,” Helena
said uncomfortably. “Life goes on.”

“Hmm. I wonder if Ellie remembers her,”
Helen paused. “I’ll have to ask her sometime. She was only about
six years old then.”

“Ellie,” Helena shouted. “Come on
downstairs. We’re not done embarrassing you tonight. We’re going
out for dinner and then we’ll take in a movie at the
Roxy.”

“She’ll never come with us,” Helen
said. “She’s supposed to show up with a boy, not her female
guardians. I remember that much from my teenage years.”

“I don’t want to go see some stupid
love story,” Ellie cried down the hall.

“See,” Helen said, “what did I tell
you?”

“Well then, you’re in luck. It’s a
horror festival. This is the last night it’s playing. I’d really
like to see it. It’ll give me some ideas for next Halloween,”
Helena shouted back. “You can watch a bunch of guys getting ripped
to shreds. It’ll make you feel better. We’ll just stay for the
first show.”

“That’s not going to work. But if you
want to waste your breath, go right ahead,” Helen
insisted.

“Ellie, darling,” Helena said, with a
note of anger in her voice. “If you think for one second that any
granddaughter of mine is going to wallow away in her room because
some wanna-be poster-boy made her cry, you’ve got another thing
coming.”

Helen’s jaw dropped as Helena
continued.

“We LaRose women pick ourselves up,
dust ourselves off, and go strut our stuff. That’s the way it has
always been and that’s the way it will always be as long as I’m
alive. So unless you’re thinking of snuffing me out in the next ten
minutes, get your ass down here.”

Ellie came slowly down the stairs. “You
called me your granddaughter,” she whispered.

“It’s time to stop all this denial,”
Helena said, looking at Helen. “At least within these four walls.”
She pointed at Helen. “You are my daughter.” She looked at Ellie.
“You are my granddaughter. And we are united in ways others can
only dream of. Someday we’ll figure it all out. But right now, I’m
hungry and I want to see a movie. Come on, or we’ll wind up with a
table by the restrooms.”

Helena walked to the front closet and
handed the girls their coats. “Even superheroes need some down
time.”

“Are we taking the van?” Ellie
sighed.

“Not in this life,” Helena replied.
“We’ll take my car. I parked it in the back lane.” She watched as
Helen ensured the front door was locked. “Expecting a
problem?”

“Just being cautious,” Helen
replied.

As they headed down the driveway, they
were met by a very upset Betty Lachey, coming out the side door of
her house. Her over-sized body wobbled with nerves as she made her
way towards the LaRose women.

“You!” she screeched at Helena. “I
don’t know how you did it, or why you did it, but I know this is
all because of you.” She fumbled with the zipper on her bright
orange vest. The concentration needed to pull a bit of fabric from
its teeth was more than she could handle at the moment, so she left
it undone.

“Well, at least this time it’s your
fault,” Helen noted.

“Why is the pumpkin yelling at us?”
Ellie asked.

“I haven’t the foggiest,” Helena
answered. “Just ignore her and get in the car.”

“You are evil, Helena LaRose,” Betty
shrieked. “EVIL. I’m going to tell everyone what you did, and
you’re going to be run out of town.”

“Nan?” Ellie questioned.

“We all have to make choices in life,
Ellie.” Helena sighed. “Sometimes they’re not easy, but they need
to be made. This one however, is a no-brainer. Wave goodbye to the
lady who forgot to take her meds.” She opened the rear door of her
black Ford Mustang and motioned for Ellie to get in the
car.

“I am so glad you live on the corner,”
Helen said, getting into the passenger seat beside her mother. “One
nutty neighbor is enough.”

Helena nodded.

“They’ve got him,” Betty screamed down
the driveway.

“Mother?”

“I swear Helen, I don’t know what she’s
talking about.” As Helena reached to adjust the rearview mirror,
she glanced at Betty Lachey’s figure in the background, and she
instinctively new that their lives were about to be changed
forever.

“Here we go girls,” she said, as she
pulled out into the back lane. “Here. We. Go.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Ryan sat on the edge of the single bed,
eating some giant sunflower seeds that Officer Purdy had slipped
him through the bars of his jail cell. He was trying to spit them
into the toilet but they were a little too big, and by the time he
had licked the salt off, a little too soggy, to work well as a
projectile.

This wasn’t Ryan’s first time in the
town jail—there had been the broken window incident at Old Man
Wagner’s when he was ten and Betty wanted to teach him a lesson—but
this was a whole different thing. The police were taking the
situation much more seriously.

Purdy had taken Ryan’s wrist watch from
him, along with his belt and his shoelaces, when the teenager first
arrived. Ryan supposed Purdy was making sure he wasn’t going to try
to commit suicide.

“If I really wanted to kill myself,” he
argued with the officer, “I could give myself a death wedgie with
my tightie-whities. Did ya ever think of that?”

Purdy evidently didn’t find this funny.
“I’d wipe that smile off your face, Lachey. You’ve got nothing to
smirk about. Shorts off.”

“I didn’t know you wanted to see my
ass,” Ryan pushed back. “Should I be nervous?”

“Why don’t you spend some time thinking
about what you’re going to tell your mother when Chief Cohen brings
her here. Maybe you can come up with something better than the
vampire story you were babbling about when we brought you
in.”

Ryan’s face turned red. “I didn’t do
anything. I apologized for the broken window when I was here half a
decade ago, and I’ll apologize to the Quinlan’s for being at the
wrong place at the wrong time. I had nothing to do with Brooke’s
death.”

“You had the body in your arms. You
were caught ‘flagrante delicto,’ as they say.”

“That sounds—just wrong.”

“It’s a Latin legal term. Get used to
it. You’re going to be hearing a lot of it.”

“De-lickto my butt. What’s with all the
Latin today? Did everyone wake up and think, hey, let’s talk a
language nobody knows? I’m not into doing it with a dead anything.
And she was already dead when I got there.” Ryan insisted. “It
was... what do you call it? Circumstantial.”

“Good luck with that one,” Purdy
replied, leaving the police station. “How old are you now, Ryan?
Murder automatically ages you in the court system.”

Ryan shuffled his feet and ran his
hands across his bald head. The hair was beginning to grow back,
forming a rough layer of stubble, but he knew asking for a razor
was out of the question. “You can’t fucking believe I really killed
her?” he stammered.

“It doesn’t matter what I do or don’t
believe at this point,” Purdy said, taking his winter coat off the
hook by the front door, barely glancing at Ryan as he did so. “I’ll
be back in a half an hour. I hope you like toaster strudel, because
that’s what you’re getting for breakfast,” he said, letting the
front door to the station slam behind him.

Ryan glanced at the television above
Purdy’s desk. It had been left on, and Ryan was happy that the last
station Purdy had watched had been the sports network. With any
luck, the nightly highlights would keep him occupied until he got
back. He didn’t like the places his imagination was beginning to
take him. Boredom in jail, he realized, was depressing.