Reconciliation for Myriamj
Bob x Miriam x Reconciliation
Helga, their youngest daughter, was a lot like Miriam Brenner. Miriam Brenner was intelligent, creative and skilfully athletic. She stood for nothing that got in her way, and she always knew what she wanted.
Brenner headlined for the Plainsville High School swim team during their Senior year, and she had been the object of Bob Pataki's fascination since the very first moment he saw her as a Freshman. She was undeniably good looking; blonde with bright blue eyes and a water-toned curvy figure. Not that he had ever spoken to her, but she was quick witted and rarely lost a debate. Without a doubt, at least half the male population of the school would happily line up for her phone number.
Edwards, star running back for the football team, toted Brenner around on his arm like a trophy and it was insanely annoying. He wanted nothing more than to punch his snide-looking face. Brenner had begun as simply a fantasy, a face and a name for his daydreams, but he had soon become addicted. Still, nobody needed to know that. Pataki pride was a serious issue and it would do no good to admit he was pining after the golden girl, far out of his league.
In total, he had attended twenty four swim meets, taken two un-necessary classes and denied any attraction to her over fifty times, before they even spoke for the first time. It was barely three sentences later that they kissed. Brenner was drunk beyond measure, probably for the first time ever given her confusion as to why the room kept spinning, and she had stalked over wanting to know if he was 'the Pataki guy that knows about electronics'. Five minutes later he was in the high school staff room rewiring a television set so she could catch the penultimate Wrestlemania fight. He hadn't actually watched wrestling before, seeing as he preferred Baseball and Football, but when she decided to kiss him halfway through Mad Mike and Super-Slam Sam's fight, he decided he liked the sport quite a lot.
Olga, their oldest daughter, was a lot like Katherine Brenner. Katherine Brenner was cheerful, passive but sometimes a little flighty. She took direction well and sought to make her family smile at every turn.
Perhaps that was precisely why Olga had been simple to raise. The Brenner sisters had grown up close, and Katherine was the younger of the two. Essentially, Miriam had witnessed the raising of a child just like Olga before, and knowing how to raise a child like her so successfully was simply instinctual. Olga did exactly as she was asked, and despite sometimes doing something unexpected, she never went against the wishes of her family. She didn't set the date for her wedding until her parents had been won over by that pansy con-mans charms, and she didn't pursue her acting career until her father had stopped throwing her awards around the trophy room in protest.
Helga, on the other hand, might have been as intelligent as her mother, even more creative and just as athletic – but she was also a Pataki. Bob did not like that at all, and his poor younger daughter suffered for it far more than she should have. Because, he truly couldn't stand the way her determination easily transformed into aggression. He couldn't handle seeing her brilliant creativity limited to two dozen carefully locked away pink books and one small wardrobe crawl-space. He despised the way she used her intelligence to avoid her family and intimidate her classmates. It made him panic each and every time he looked at her, because...
Bob Pataki was absolutely convinced he had single-handedly ruined his poor youngest daughter by cursing her with Pataki DNA. And what if, to add to his crimes, he had ruined Miriam Brenner, by making her a Pataki, too.
After all, she had been drunk, and dating somebody else, the first time she kissed him. Pregnant when she walked down the aisle. In hospital for weeks after giving birth to Olga and clinically depressed after Helga. Diagnosed an alcoholic by the time Helga was seven. Slowly and painfully each and every detail Bob Pataki remembered about Brenner, Miriam Brenner, was wilting away into something he no longer recognised. The woman behind his couch now, passed out for hours and sure to wake with a raging hangover she would solve with more liquor, was she Miriam Pataki? Was Miriam Pataki a dreary looking woman, who fumbled on her words and had no energy to live her life?
Bob was afraid she might be, and just maybe, Miriam Pataki and Miriam Brenner needed reconciliation. Maybe he needed to go back to the start and help her be a little bit of both, his wife and his young love. By the time he had finished pondering the situation, he had rearranged his lounge room furniture and managed to dredge up an old television set. He had emptied the last drop of alcohol down the kitchen sink when the doorbell sounded and Helga called out from upstairs.
"Hey, kid."
Arnold, better known to him as the kid, or the football headed boy, stood on the stoop looking mildly uneasy, as always. He had a good reason for doing so, after all, the moment he uttered a response to the greeting was the moment he would begin to receive the standard lecture.
"Hello, Mr Pataki."
Beginning the customary threat of not even thinking about putting his slimy hands anywhere near his youngest daughter – not now, not in the future, not ever – suddenly seemed useless. Arnold was a decent kid, thoroughly annoying at the best of times, but the boy was thoughtful and loved Helga beyond measure. Besides, ten months ago the kid had stopped receiving his lecture with patient politeness and instead nodded with slightly awkward horror. Bob was no idiot, it was rather clear that the kid had, in fact, put his hands all over his daughter at some point around that time. He was also aware that the kid had the morals of a nun, whereas his feisty youngest daughter most certainly did not and Bob commended the boy for resisting her as long as he had. After all, Bob himself had failed miserably at that with Miriam.
Helga bounded down the stairs before he could even open his mouth, and Arnold looked like he had been saved from an oncoming bus. Bob smiled uncharacteristically at them.
"Helga?"
"Yeah?"
"Stay out tonight, come home tomorrow or something. Yeah?"
Arnold looked about as shocked, maybe panicked, as any teenage boy would when more-or-less given permission to do inappropriate things with ones daughter for an entire night. Helga simply grinned like the cat that caught the canary, and assured her father that he need not tell her twice, before dragging the kid off toward his car.
"Huh?"
Bob snapped his head around as he pushed the front door shot, turning to see Miriam slowly emerging from the trophy room with a hand placed to her, probably pounding, forehead. She appeared, as usual, rather bewildered by her surroundings and probably again wondering why she had fallen asleep on the floor. He felt the standard guilt flood his body, had he truly reduced the beautiful, wonderful Miriam Brenner to this?
"Miriam. Come back to the office, we're going to watch Wrestlemania."
"Office?"
"Staff office. Come on."
One worn picnic rug was spread out over the Trophy Room, or rather the 'office' floor, and just beyond it sat a now ancient looking television set. Miriam appeared slightly more alert when her eyes caught sight of the old-school wrestling match blaring from the aging speakers.
"Mad Mike... Super-Slam Sam?"
Miriam Brenner would have dragged them both to sit on the fading picnic rug at this particular junction, but Miriam Pataki made no such move. Instead, Bob guided her down onto the floor and settled himself beside his slightly disoriented wife, tucking her small frame firmly against his broad chest. On screen, Mad Mike called time out for a bloody nose and Super-Slam Sam pumped his gloved fist at the raving audience. Miriam blinked at the television screen before tilting her head up slowly to look at Bob with slight confusion. He sighed, she was more than likely still drunk from her latest binge.
"Miriam, you're getting help. You're going to AA."
"Oh, B... gosh, I don't need t-"
"No, Miriam, you're going."
Miriam stiffened a little in his grasp; they had never directly discussed her addiction to alcohol, not since her problem had been confirmed a decade prior. Bob could admit, right then and there, that he had taken the cowards way out of dealing with the issue. Then again, she had too. Pataki's - they had acted like Pataki's, masking their fear with an air of misplaced pride. Back then, he didn't think they were capable of dealing with it, not able to say the words 'drunk' or 'alcoholic' because it might make it all too real. But, if Helga could tell her classmates she loved the football headed kid, and show him her entire collection of pink books, then surely he could step up to help his wife and she could find the determination to get better. Yes, it was completely possible.
"And, I think you should hyphenate your name."
"My... name?"
"Yes, something like, Miriam Brenner-Pataki."
"Oh... well, alright, B... I-I think I'd like that."
Miriam Pataki, at that moment, was still slightly intoxicated and didn't fully grasp the reason she was sitting on a picnic rug watching Wrestlemania but that didn't matter so much right now. Bob Pataki was determined that, one day in the future, Miriam Brenner-Pataki would share this memory with him, completely sober, and they would truly begin a reconciliation.
A/N: Helga is seventeen here, she and Arnold have been together for about a year and a half... just in case you wanted to know.
