Fun times at the boarding house. Wondering how things are at the beeper emporium? Let's find out.
Chapter 2: A Normal Family
Here is the townhouse. It is blue and has a green door. It is very lovely. Here is the family. Mommy, Daddy, Olga and Helga live in the blue townhouse with a green door. They are very happy. See Helga. She has a pink dress. Who will play with Helga? See Helga. She goes grumble grumble. Come and play. Come play with Olga. Olga goes la la la la. Helga will not play. See Mommy. Mommy is very nice. Mommy, will you play with Helga? Mommy mumbles. Mumble, Mommy, mumble. See Daddy. He is big and strong. Daddy will you play with Helga? Daddy is shouting. Shout, Daddy, shout. Daddy shouts at Mommy. Mommy makes a smoothie. Drink, mommy, drink. Olga has a trophy. It is pretty and shiny. The pretty shiny trophy makes Daddy very happy. Helga is frowning. Frown, Helga, frown. Here is the piano. It is big and black. Do you want to play, piano? Olga plays with the piano. The piano plays a pretty song. It is very pretty. Daddy and mommy clap. Clap mommy and daddy, clap. Where is Helga? Helga is nowhere. Mommy and Daddy are very happy. Olga smiles at Mommy and Daddy. Smile, Olga, smile… smile… smile…
As the sterile utopian world of her dreams faded away, Olga Pataki forced her eyes open with some effort, feeling eyeliner and mascara cracking like old cement on her eyelids. She knew full well that going to bed with her makeup on was just asking for breakouts, and yet somehow that just didn't seem to matter to this once perfectionist. Since moving back in with her parents to help them out she had gradually stopped caring so much about her appearance as the toll of cooking and cleaning for them took over her daily routine, and without much help or thanks from either of them, the once prized trophy daughter now felt like a broken pedestal.
Her burden in life had long been projecting a constant picture of perfection and success for a mother and father would would have divorced years ago, or worse if not for her lightening their worlds or just pacifying them at their worst. It was a heavy responsibility, taking on the role of one of two things holding the family together; the other binding force for the Pataki household had come in the form of upper middle class stability thanks to her father's business. In a world where rapidly advancing technology had left her neanderthal father's beeper business in the dust however, not only had they lost their family home, but worse they had lost any illusion of family unity that Olga had so long tried to preserve.
Olga had more or less put her life on pause just to help out at home, and now for all her daily struggles to keep things afloat she had very few triumphs in life to flaunt to her parents to keep them happy. Nowadays her greatest accomplishments in life consisted of pulling in and charming the occasional elderly customer looking to buy some means of communicating with their kids. The very thought of that gave Olga even more sad pause for thought; even a grandmother trying to communicate with her grandkids with a pager was a better and more healthy means of communication than any strategy used by a Pataki.
She glanced around her room, actually the conference room of Big Bob's Beeper Emporium where the Pataki clan made their home nowadays; and they did feel more like a clan of separate families now more than a real family. As she draped on an old bathrobe and slippers she lurched over to the kitchen where she found her mother Miriam lying face down on the coffee table, as was her morning ritual. Every day brought the same troubles of yesterday, from Miriam's endless smoothie induced stupor, to her father's growing rage and irritation with her. Olga filled a pot with water and placed it on the stove, setting it to boil. She then grabbed a pack of instant oatmeal and prepared herself for the same old reaction that breakfast got from her father every morning. Olga had a fair amount of savings still stashed away, and all of it was slowly going into helping with the bills to keep the lights on at the emporium, and keeping some modest amount of food on the table. Olga knew well enough that when the going got tough, one had to eat frugally, which had meant oatmeal nearly every day.
"Morning, mommy dearest." Olga said with zero of the usual rays of sunshine shimmering from her voice, "I see you slept well…"
Miriam muttered some indistinct attempt at words, and Olga just sighed sadly. Olga got started on brewing the morning coffee; the only thing that kept Miriam among the living in the morning. Hopefully she could get her mother to stir before the beeper king made his grand royal entrance.
"Another day… another… end to a day…" Olga said sleepily.
"Miriam!" Bob's voice finally thundered through the hallway and into the kitchen. Olga winced as glassware all around her shook with the rhythmic tremors caused by her father's footsteps. He didn't go by the title of 'Big Bob' for his catlike grace and stealth; everything about Bob Pataki came down to size, be it his ego, anger, appetite, and now even the spectacular failure that had been his Beeper Empire matched his size. Formerly always well groomed as a professional businessman, now his typically combed over hair just stuck out wildly, stubble covered his face and his bloodshot eyes rested above dark bags. The slow death of his business had taken its toll on him both mentally and physically, and finally his outside matched his inside.
Olga quickly forced herself to smile broadly as her father appeared in the doorway, donned in his regal purple bathrobe and holding a rolled up newspaper like a scepter.
"Come on, come on! Look alive everyone!" Bob shouted, "Today's our big eighty percent off buy ten get twenty beeper-straveganza! Miriam? Why isn't the sign up!?"
"Huh?" Miriam at last mustered enough strength to lift her head off the table
"C'mon, Miriam." Bob insisted, "I'm trying to be more supportive and appreciative of you and your talents… so where's that stupid sign I asked you to make?"
"Oh it's uh… well our graphic guys are on… but we don't have graphic guys so uh…" Miriam reached for a piece of paper sitting at the end of the table and held it up. Bob's face went wide with shock when he saw the words written in sharpie proclaiming his big sale for all the world to squint at.
"That's it!?" Bob bellowed, "That's the best you could do? Yeesh, I don't know where Olga got an ounce of creativity from…"
Olga's grip tightened around the pot handle as she poured the oatmeal into the now boiling water, as she felt her own blood similarly begin to boil.
"Well I just uh, well I…" Miriam muttered, "It's not really the sort of environment that inspires anything artistic…"
"Ah, don't give me that." Bob disregarded her, "Art from adversity, business from art, and money from business! We're so close to pulling out of this little dip in sales I can almost taste it…"
Bob then sniffed the air, and then turned to Olga with an expression sour enough to make her want to crawl back into bed and not face the rest of the day. Thanks to her father, Olga really was starting to gain a deeper understanding of her mother's approach to life.
"But first I want to taste breakfast." he said, "Olga? Whatcha got for me? I don't smell bacon or sausage… it better be steak and eggs!"
"Not in the budget," Olga said, "And you know what the doctor would say about-"
"Hey! Hey hey hey hey hey hey hey!" Bob bellowed, "None of that loser talk, now. C'mon, Olga I'd expect that from Miriam, but you? Today's the day! The money is out there and we're going to bring it in like flies to a big steaming heap of- what is that!?"
Bob pointed at the boiling pot of water and looked at Olga
"Breakfast, daddy." Olga said, "You need your fiber if you're going to conquer the beeper market…"
"Ah, for crying out loud!" Bob shouted, "I fought my way to the top of the food chain to eat cattle! Not cattle feed!"
The coffee kettle slowly began bubbling as the heat intensified. Olga took a deep breath and forced herself to smile at her father, just as she had always done. Smiling through the pain never came easily, but Olga always believed that behind his blustering and brutality, her father did ultimately have the family's best interest at heart. That was of course before his business took a nosedive, and Big Bob ever unwilling to say 'die' just stayed the course even as his ship sank. Bob wouldn't abdicate as king of beepers, which just told Olga that he was in deep denial about the reality that no one wanted his throne anyway, and his family was suffering for his stubbornness. Bearing all this in mind, Olga girded the last bit of blissful denial she had in her being and treated her father to a bright winning smile.
"Oh Daddy…" she said coyly, "You don't want to encourage the destruction of the environment by constantly just eating-"
"Oh criminey…" Bob groaned, "What did I think was gonna happen to you by sending you to that granola crunching college in Vermont… guess there's no one to blame but me."
Olga blinked rapidly as her cheek muscles started to hurt from her intensive smiling, and she could feel herself about to boil over with the coffee and oatmeal on the stove.
"Let's… not… be grumpy." Olga said, "You have your big sale today, and Mommy and I are here to help…"
"Yeah, yeah," Bob said as he sat down at the table and opened his paper to the business pages. "'Pager industry expected to be completely obsolete by… two years ago… ah, this stinking rag has really gone to the dogs with fake news like that… hey Olga, where's the girl?"
Olga turned to her father, looking genuinely taken aback.
"The girl?" she asked.
"Yeah, your sister." Bob said, as he appeared to be searching his memory for a name, "Uh…"
"Helga?" Olga finished for him.
"Yeah, yeah, that one." Bob said, "She didn't sneak off to school early again, did she? She's got to have at least a few sick days she could call in for to help out around here."
Olga looked at her father blankly for a moment, then reminded him of his younger daughter's whereabouts.
"Helga has been living at the Sunset Arms…" she said, "For over a month…"
"Huh?" Bob reacted with genuine bewilderment at this notion, but then as he scratched his chin he seemed to remember, "Oh yeah. They grow up so fast, don't they. Well, good for her. Off in the world, finding a place of her own… and one less mouth to feed around here…"
Olga's grip tightened around the handle of the boiling pot to the point where she felt as it it might break. Bob didn't even sound remotely concerned for Helga, which was sadly not out of the ordinary, but never to this degree. This level of carelessness had to be stemming from his mind deteriorating from stress.
"She left because of…" Olga started to say, but then she saw her mother's face wrought with guilt and shame, stopping her.
"Yeah, yeah, at least she's not-" Bob stopped in mid sentence as his eyes widened, "Hey wait… what's the Sunset Arms?"
Olga sighed, "The boarding house… that Phil Shortman runs…"
"What!?" Bob roared in anger as reality finally sank in, "You mean to tell me my girl walked out a month ago, and you both knew she was running off to elope with that Atticus kid with the weird head?"
Olga tightened her fists as her smile began to fade.
"Well, Daddy… you never asked…" Olga said through closed teeth.
"Miriam! You knew about this? What kind of mother are you?" Bob demanded, "Letting Olga just run away from home and go off to stay with a bunch of weirdos and-"
"Leave Mommy alone!" Olga finally snapped at her father, "Helga went to stay with Mr. and Mrs. Shortman because they care more about her than you ever did!"
The room fell silent. Bob stared at his eldest and most prized daughter in utter shock. Olga had occasionally snapped at him before, but normally for not getting her way. Olga snapping normally meant pulling the water works and sobbing pathetically, not chastising the man with bitter resentment and anger. Stunned by his daughter's sudden burst of Anger, Bob backed off on his own fuming just a little but still spoke dourly.
"Of course I care about her. I need her." Bob said, "I need her to wear the beeper costume and wave the sign around out front! Kid's a nut job, but if she's good at one thing it's making a scene. And we are gonna use that to-"
Olga finally grabbed the boiling pot from the stove and threw it to the floor, forcing Bob to jump back in fright as hot water splashed everywhere.
"Daddy you're being an awful brute!" Olga wailed.
"Olga?" Bob asked, sounding more surprised and concerned than angered by his daughter's outburst, "This isn't like you… c'mon, you're my perfect little girl!"
"I'm not a little girl!" Olga shot back, and then a very bitter look came over her, "And maybe I'm not so perfect either…"
Without another word, Olga dashed out of the kitchen leaving her parents both speechless. Bob looked at Miriam as if wanting to say something, but for one of a very few times in his life words failed him. Miriam just looked away, as if too broken down and beaten by life to even care anymore.
Olga stomped outside, not caring that she was still just draped in a bathrobe. In the month since Helga had gone to stay with Arnold's family, Olga had taken on the burden of keeping an eye on their fragile mother while also trying to keep their father in check. This morning, after twenty some years she had finally reached her breaking point and couldn't keep up the act any more. Letting Helga go had been in an effort to shield her from the unhealthy reality the Patakis all lived in, so she could take on the responsibility of trying to rebuild. By this point however she knew they were beyond her help; even with all her book smarts on the subject of human psychology,
Olga withdrew her mobile phone from the pocket of her bathrobe and she hastily dialed the number she had been holding off on calling for the last month. After only a few rings, someone answered.
"Sunset Arms," an old woman's voice came over the line, "Home of colorful eccentrics, two old kooks, and their adorable grandson."
"Hello…?" Olga asked cautiously, "Is Stella Shortman available?"
Olga's dream is my little tribute to Toni Morrison.
Of Big Bob's many obvious faults, I at least don't think he's sexist… at least not overtly, considering how he clearly wants Olga to go out and conquer the world. Or maybe it'd be different if Helga had been a boy.