Author's Note: Finally, I've chosen a name for this! Congratulations to
Mandelarae for winning the "contest", and thanks to everyone else who
reviewed and suggested titles—they were all great. I had such a hard time
making a decision.
Once again, special thanks to Houkanno Yuuhou for the suggestion of the song "You're Breaking My Heart". Let's see, what else… "Always" is undergoing major renovations…I may change the stuff I've already posted, or at least present it in a new way, but it'll be better, I promise. And Angels has been updated. That's about it…yeah.
Disclaimer: Surprise, surprise! Hey Arnold! does not belong to me.
Here's Looking At You, Helga
The band was playing "New York, New York."
Well, actually it wasn't "New York, New York," but it sounded like it. All of the band's songs did, like any good two-bit third-rate four-piece wedding band's. This one wasn't even trying. They were even called "The Wedding Band," as if to deny any last scrap of individuality.
The band was really playing "Some Enchanted Evening," or something vaguely like it. It was completely inappropriate for the couple—but then again, so was the wedding.
Some enchanted evening
You may see a stranger
You may see a stranger across a crowded room
And somehow you know
You know even then
That somewhere you'll see her again and again
Everyone had to admit that Helga looked beautiful. Her gown was all shimmering white satin, strappy with a plunging back. Her blond hair cascaded in loose ringlets halfway down her bare back, and the skirt was impossibly full and swooshed when she walked. Even Rhonda, who couldn't pay someone a compliment to save her life, couldn't find fault.
"That bodice certainly helps her figure out," she said snidely to Lila over a glass of bubbly. "She's lucky to land someone who can pay to keep her looking like that." Lila nodded docilely. Rhonda should know, after her last three failed marriages.
Rhonda sneered elegantly over the top of her lipstick-stained champagne flute. "If I live a hundred years, I'll never know how she did it. One day she's Helga Pataki, the next she's Mrs. Helga—"
The tail end of her comment was cut off by Patti Behrman swooping down upon them in several miles of purple chiffon. "Rhonda! Lila! How are you girls?"
Phoebe was looking for her husband. She found him sitting with Harold and Curly by an enormous potted plant the groom had imported from Africa just for the wedding, and well on his way to getting extremely spifflicated. They had shanghaied a bottle of champagne from the bar and were boisterously remembering the good old days.
Phoebe stopped in front of them, hands on hips, legs akimbo, looking sternly down at her husband. "Gerald, how could you? At Helga's wedding!"
Gerald looked up at her with eyes that were no longer concerned about anything. "Eashy. There'sh lotsh of drinksh here. Have to admit it…I don't like the guy, but he can shure throw a goo' party."
Phoebe collared him, dragging him to his feet with strength surprising for such a small woman, and snatched the champagne bottle from the other two men.
"You are in deep trouble, Gerald Johansen," she scolded the tall man who submitted meekly to her discipline. "And you—" she said, gesturing with the bottle in her hand towards the vast lawn where the guests were congregating but directing her comments towards Harold. "Your wife is over there…talking to your ex-wife. You know, the one both of you married?" Hiding her amusement at Harold and Curly's reactions to the presence of Princess Rhonda Wellington-Lloyd-Behrman-Gamelthorphe-Stanford, she dragged her intoxicated husband to the nearest bathroom.
In the bathroom, Phoebe filled the sink with cold water and dunked Gerald's head in it, trying to get him sober the quickest way possible. He gasped as he came up for air, shaking his head and wiggling free of his wife's grasp. "Okay! Okay! I'm sober!"
He slumped on the toilet, head in hands, avoiding Phoebe's eyes. "Look, I'm sorry," he said after a long silence. "I'm sorry. I just kept thinking about Arnold…"
Phoebe softened. "I know," she said, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I know. But Helga's made her choice."
"I just wish…" Gerald began, but Phoebe cut him off.
"Don't even say it. Don't say what you wish. I know, and we all feel the same way. But this is Helga's day, and we're not going to ruin it for her. If this is what she wants…" She sighed. "It's not our place to tell her that she's wrong. Even if we know she is."
Across the lawn, The Wedding Band continued to play "New York, New York/Some Enchanted Evening."
Some enchanted evening
Someone may be laughing
You may hear her laughing across a crowded room
And night after night
As strange as it seems
The sound of her laughter will sing in your dreams…
Helga Pataki, soon to be Helga Smythe-Higgins, stared into the mirror of her vanity. Were her eyes still red? She didn't want Rex to know she had been crying. She didn't want to spoil his day. She had barely managed to push Lila and Rhonda out before the tears started falling, and she was already afraid they had noticed something.
Uncapping her lipstick, she began to reapply it, carefully. Rex had worked so hard to make sure everything was perfect for their wedding; she had no right failing him in the slightest. She blotted her lips on one of the few tissues left over from the sudden storm of tears that had taken her without warning. Why was she crying? Wasn't this supposed to be the happiest day of her life?
Yeah, right.
Who can explain it?
Who can tell you why?
Fools give you reasons
Wise men never try…
There was a rough knock on the door. "Come in," Helga called, straightening up and putting on her "happy face."
It was Big Bob, and he was beaming so hard Helga thought he might explode. "Hey, there she is!" he said when he saw Helga. "My little girl, about to get married."
Helga mustered up a smile. "Yup, that's me," she replied, turning to face him.
Bob sat down next to her on the velour cushion. His voice was gruff and he didn't look at her, unused to sharing emotion this way. "I, uh…I just wanted to tell you that I'm real proud of you, girl," he told her. "I mean, you did real good, landing this Rex kid. He's a good boy, and he'll take real good care of you."
Helga nodded, bitterly admitting the truth to herself. Rex was a good guy, and he would take good care of her—very good care of her. She didn't try to delude herself, though. She knew what was making Big Bob Pataki happy. It wasn't his younger daughter's apparent chance at lifelong happiness—it was the fact that she was marrying into one of the richest families in the city. She sighed to herself. No matter how old she got, Robert Pataki never changed.
Big Bob plowed on. "You know, I was a little worried a while back, when you had that thing with that, uh, that Alfred of yours. You remember him, right?"
Helga kept her voice stoic. "Yeah, Dad. I remember Arnold."
"I thought you would," he said. "You dated him for three years, right?"
"Four years, seven months, and thirteen days," Helga replied mechanically. She fiddled with the lace on her bodice.
"Well, you did good to get out of that," Bob said. "I never liked that kid. He crossed me one too many times about the way I brought you up. But I was a good father. Wasn't I?" His eyes were suddenly anxious, and Helga realized for the first time that she had gotten her blue eyes from her father. "I was a good father to you girls, right? You don't hate me?"
She shook her head and patted him on the arm through his tuxedo. "No, Dad. I don't hate you." She kissed him on the cheek, thinking to herself that it wasn't even a lie, really. What child could really, truly hate their parents? Bob had his limitations, just like Helga did, but he had a way of showing, at the last minute, that he really did love her.
"Good." He relaxed. Suddenly he began to laugh. "You know, your mother's parents hated me?" he told her.
Helga shook her head. "No, I didn't know that. Grams and Pop hated you?"
He nodded. "They told her that she wasn't allowed to marry me, but she snuck out of her college dorm one night and we drove down to Atlantic City and got hitched."
Helga's jaw dropped. "You eloped?" she asked incredulously.
Bob spread his enormous hands. "What can you do? We loved each other. You do what you have to when you're in love." He stood up. "Which is why I'm glad you dumped that Alfred kid and got your head straight. Rex, he really loves you, and the money doesn't hurt. You have a swell day, kiddo." He gave her a gentle punch on the shoulder, then seemed to realize that it was inappropriate and stepped back. "You look real pretty, Helga."
With that, he left.
Helga turned to face the mirror. One look at herself, and she dissolved into tears again. "What am I doing?" she asked herself out loud.
Two years, four months, and sixteen days after her split with Arnold, she couldn't remember what it was that had driven them apart. It had been some stupid fight, something with her jealousy and his expectations of her that no human could possibly live up to. Arnold wanted to put her on a pedestal, and usually she had liked it up there, but it got a little cold when the wind blew. So when she couldn't be as perfect as him, when he couldn't handle her temper, when their ideologies clashed violently and she unwittingly hurt him…they had decided to take a break one day. And the break had just never ended.
And then Rex showed up. He had eyed her in high school, but in high school she had been Curly's girl; everybody knew that. And no one was brave enough to find out what Crazy Curly would do if someone went for his girl. They had called it quits at graduation and Helga hadn't seen anyone from the old neighborhood for her whole freshman year in college, aside from scattered visits to Phoebe.
Then Arnold showed up.
He had transferred to her school for sophomore year. Helga had walked into her journalism class, and there he was, that same football head, that warm grin, those eyes. There was no Curly around now to help Helga pretend she didn't love Arnold anymore, and when he smiled at her and told her that he had been looking for her since he arrived three days ago…she was a goner. Cupid was standing triumphantly over her, bow in hand, laughing his diapered little butt off.
Helga had been swooning over Arnold for almost a year when he told her how he felt. They had dated for two more years before moving in together after college, in their own little apartment in Chicago, while Arnold went to medical school and Helga started working at the Chicago Sun. But two years later…
What not a lot of people knew was that Arnold had proposed to Helga, just before they broke up. And she had accepted. She had kept the ring after they split; she tried to give it back to Arnold, but Arnold, who was more sad and disappointed than mad over the breakup in the first place, had insisted she keep it. So she had hidden it, along with her locket from childhood, her pink bow, and one red shoe, plus her most personal poems, in a shoebox in the basement of her parents' house. She applied for, and got, a job with the New Yorker, and moved back to New York, living with Gerald and Phoebe until she could get her own apartment in Manhattan. She hadn't seen Arnold since, and had spoken to him only once—a sobbing, drunken phone call during a pregnancy scare two months after she left.
For nearly a year she kept to herself, seeing her parents every so often, having dinner with Phoebe and Gerald sometimes…Gerald was surprisingly supportive in her moments of need. She would be forever grateful that they buried the hatchet, and when Rex insisted that his sister be the maid of honor over Phoebe, she put her foot down for Gerald as best man. Other than that, she didn't see many people other than her colleagues and Miss Kitty, her black cat. (She had gotten so used to Abner that there was an emptiness without a pet around the house.)
And then she got promoted, to a minor editorship. She had immediately been invited to one of the most elite parties in Manhattan. And who was standing there with a stunned look on his face the moment she walked in the door? Good old Rex Smythe-Higgins III.
He had steered her around the party, introducing her to the most important people in New York and making sure she didn't make any faux pas that was too hideous. Afterwards, he had asked for her number. She had refused, so it had been a surprise when he called her the next day. He had gotten her number through the magazine, he'd said, and he wanted to invite her to have a cup of coffee with him. No pressure, just a bit of caffeine.
Finally she relented. At first she tried to scare him off, truth be told. She'd walk out the door for a movie or coffee or a walk with him in sweats, with her hair not brushed, no makeup, and a bad attitude. He'd always smile gallantly and tell her she looked beautiful. Then he'd take her to the ritziest places in New York in her awful pajamas and her hideous hair, and she'd feel really guilty.
Little by little, she began to warm to him. She started to care about how she looked around him, and she let him take her on actual dates to restaurants and dances and parties. And when he kissed her one night as he dropped her off, she smiled at him and asked him if he'd like to come inside. He was only too glad to oblige.
Before she knew it, they were meeting each other's parents and she was spending the weekend at the Smythe-Higgins estate in the Hamptons, and within a year of seeing each other they were setting a date for the wedding. Sometimes Helga felt like a car, letting herself be steered around obstacles by Rex, letting him guide her to their destination. It was nice to have someone else worrying about their path for her, though, so she let him do it. And now here she was, sitting in a white wedding dress so involved she hardly knew where she was in it, less than fifteen minutes away from making Daddy proud for the first time in her life, Daddy who hadn't been proud when she graduated valedictorian from her top tier college, or when she became editor-in-chief of the whole dang New Yorker. Oh, no, that wasn't enough. But marrying the richest man in New York City…that was just right for Big Bob Pataki.
It wasn't that she didn't love Rex. Oh, she loved him—she knew that much. But it was a quiet kind of love, a comfortable love for what he offered more than the man himself. And sometimes she thought he saw her as a prize to be won, a challenge to meet—as if the first night of their honeymoon was the championship game, and he would retire from her after that. As hard as she tried, she couldn't picture herself married to Rex.
She squinted up her eyes and imagined herself coming home to her husband, but there was no one there—just a vague, shadowy figure. Well, what about her kids? She imagined herself picking up a little boy—no, a little girl, with blond hair and beautiful, deep green eyes. Wait. Rex's eyes were brown; hers were blue. The only person she knew with eyes like that was…
Arnold's form solidified in the doorway of her fantasy home. Immediately she stopped daydreaming. She didn't want to see that, didn't want to see it because she didn't want to remember how much she missed him.
She didn't want to remember how much she loved him.
There was a timid knock at the door, and Phoebe poked her head in. "Helga?" she asked quietly, knowing that there was something wrong with her best friend. "They're starting."
How was the band still playing that song? Helga wondered as they walked towards the place where she was to stay until she heard the opening bars of "Here Comes the Bride." The singer's gravelly voice cut through the noise around her, Phoebe's anxious chatter, her father coming up to her, ready to walk her down the aisle, until there was nothing else.
Some enchanted evening
When you find your true love
When you feel her call you across a crowded room
Then fly to her side
And make her your own
Or all of your life you will dream all alone
Once you have found her, never let her go
Once you have found her
Never let her go…
Helga suddenly knew the meaning of cold feet.
Phoebe kissed her quickly on the cheek and headed down the aisle with the other bridesmaids. Helga stood there as the music of the band faded, listening to the almost complete silence on the other side of the hedge.
There it was. "Here Comes the Bride." Bob took Helga's arm, prodding her a little, and Helga made her legs move. Clasping her bouquet so tightly she wasn't sure it would survive the ceremony, she walked slowly through the archway between the hedges, onto the vast green lawn where the ceremony was to take place.
The assembled guests, all four hundred of them, were just a blur—vague, moony faces peering up at her. She scanned the crowd, but she couldn't make any of them even look like people she recognized, let alone find Arnold. No. Of course he wasn't here. He wasn't invited. Why would he be?
They were stopping. Her father was letting go of her arm, lifting her veil and kissing her on the cheek. She had to make this walk alone.
Was it possible for time to move this slowly? She felt like she was trudging through molasses. Everything slowed to a crawl; she felt a bead of sweat travel down the back of her neck. She tried to conceal a shudder. There. She was at the altar. And there was Rex; she recognized him, and the minister who stood before them in black.
The ceremony was a muttered jumble, a humming in her ear by the giant fly in black behind the pulpit. But she distinctly heard the words "…speak now, or forever hold your peace."
Now time really and truly stood still. No one moved, no one breathed. Helga stood there, hoping against hope that he would somehow hear her calling him and come…but no one spoke.
"Very well," the minister intoned. He turned to Rex. "Do you, Rex, promise to love and care for Helga…" Helga began to feel sick again.
"I do," Rex said.
"…as long as you both shall live?"
Wait. He had asked her a question. He had asked her…they were all looking at her. Rex was standing there, waiting. The minister was waiting. Her father was waiting, her mother, Rhonda, Phoebe, Gerald, they were all waiting.
Helga wetted her lips and tried to say the words, "I do." But another word came out instead.
"No."
The minister seemed taken aback. "What?"
Suddenly everything snapped into focus. Helga could see everything, see the wart on the minister's cheek, the pores in Rex's skin. She could see the fake dew on the flowers on the altar and the grain in the wood of the pulpit. She could see the sun, sinking down in the west and dying everything red and orange.
"No," she said again. She looked at Rex. "I'm sorry, Rex. I…I can't marry you. I should have told you." He just stood there, stunned.
Helga looked at her father, who looked just as stunned as Rex. "I'm sorry, Dad," she told him. She looked out at the massed guests, sitting there, bewildered. "I'm…I'm sorry for making you all come out here. Um…there's still refreshments, I guess." No one said anything. "Uh…if you'll excuse me…there's somewhere I have to go."
Helga picked up her skirt and began to walk down the aisle. She passed by Phoebe, who was grinning, and Tish Wittenberg, who gave her a covert thumbs- up. Talking broke out behind her, whispers and exclamations, and a loud, condescending monologue from Rhonda.
Gerald was waiting for her around the hedge, leaning against it and smiling. She wasn't sure how he had gotten there, but it didn't matter right now.
"Atta girl," he told her, kissing her on the cheek. He held up his car keys. "It's in front of the hotel."
She grinned at him. "Thanks, Geraldo." She began to walk towards the back door of the hotel. Pulling it open, she headed through the hotel itself, faster and faster until she broke into a run, ignoring the stares of tuxedoed guests and servants.
Gerald and Phoebe's little yellow roadster was parked directly in front of the hotel. Bypassing the valet, Helga opened the door for herself and climbed in, cramming her huge skirt in as best she could. She turned on the ignition and drove off about thirty miles above the speed limit, heading towards the city.
As she drove, she wondered where exactly she thought she was going. Arnold wouldn't be in Brooklyn. He was at home, in Chicago. But she had to go to the Sunset Arms, to the place where he had lived. She would go from there. She was playing by ear now. Now she was driving.
By the time she got into New York, the sun had almost completely set. A crescent moon was hanging in the sky low enough to grab onto and sit on. The stars were pulsing with life, singing to her. But she had barely gotten into Manhattan when she found herself in the worst traffic jam of the century. She literally sat in the car without moving for ten minutes. Finally, she pulled out of the crush and parked the car at a meter. Neglecting the meter—she was in a hurry, and she had no money anyway—she headed for the nearest subway, a couple of blocks away.
As she ran towards the subway, her high heel got caught on a grate and snapped off. She stepped out of her shoes and kept running, skirt gathered in her arms, barefoot like she had been as a child on hot summer days; like in the grass at her college campus, walking with Arnold; in their apartment in Chicago on soft rugs and miles and miles of hardwood floors.
Down into the dank subterranean tunnels of the subway. There was no one in the token booth, and she could hear the train coming downstairs. Checking to make sure no one was around, Helga hopped the turnstile, ripping her skirt in the process. A strap on her bodice snapped, hanging down her back uselessly, but the thing was so tight it wasn't likely to fall down with no strips in the middle of a hurricane. She raced downstairs for the subway, catching the doors as they closed, ignoring the stares from the other passengers as she found a seat.
She knew the way to Arnold's childhood home with her eyes closed. It was twelve stops to the old neighborhood. Then up through the southwest exit, down two block, make a right, four blocks more. She ran all six blocks, her skirt hiked up around her knees, past a group of girls jumping rope, past a new generation of kids playing ball in Gerald Field, past the Jolly Olly Man who looked at her like she was crazy—like he was one to talk. Everything she remembered from balmy summer nights in Brooklyn.
There it was. The Sunset Arms. Her heart pounding out of her chest, Helga skidded to a halt in front of it, her feet stinging.
All the lights were out. No one was home.
Helga stood there for a minute, quelling her disappointment. After all, had she honestly expected him to be there? He didn't even live in this state, let alone his grandparents' house! She might as well just go back to Gerald and Phoebe's car before it got towed.
And yet…
Helga walked into the alley next to Arnold's old house. The fire escape was still there—rusty, but intact. She began to climb up it, carefully, trying not to trip on her skirt. As she reached the top, she thought she heard music.
You're breaking my heart 'cause you're leaving
You've fallen for somebody new
It isn't easy believing
You'd leave after all we've been through
It's breaking my heart to remember
The dreams we depended upon
You're leaving a slow dying ember
I'll miss you, my love, when you're gone
I wish you joy, though teardrops burn
But if someday you should want to return
Please hurry back, and we'll make a new start
Till then, you're breaking my heart.
He was standing on the roof, facing away from her, in the direction she had come from. The music was coming from the open skylight to his darkened room. A bottle of champagne stood beside him, and he held a glass in his hand, filled halfway with the golden sparkling liquid.
"Here's to you, Helga," she heard him mutter, lifting the glass and taking a sip.
"Well if you were going to drink a toast to me, you could at least have brought me a glass," Helga said suddenly. Arnold whirled around. He stared at her, and she was suddenly conscious of the way she looked—hair falling out of its carefully-arranged styling, curls going limp, a broken strap to her dress; bare, dirty feet poking out from beneath a torn hem, and her face sweaty and flushed.
"Helga…" Arnold breathed. "I thought you were marrying Rex."
"I was," she said. "I…couldn't. I left him…at the altar."
Arnold looked her up and down. "And you ran all the way here?"
"Well, I borrowed Gerald's car," she admitted. "And I took the subway. And then I ran." She tugged self-consciously at the dress. "Sorry I look like something the cat dragged in."
"You look beautiful," he told her, taking a step closer. "Do you…Is there…I…" He stopped, unable to find the right words to fit the situation. Finally he looked her straight in the eye.
"Is the break over?" he asked.
She blushed. "I think so. Do you want it to be?"
His eyes twinkled. "I do." He took another step towards her, and then another, finally taking her hand. She trembled at his touch. "Do you want to come inside?"
She smiled at him, letting herself relax into his arms, home at last.
"I do."
Once again, special thanks to Houkanno Yuuhou for the suggestion of the song "You're Breaking My Heart". Let's see, what else… "Always" is undergoing major renovations…I may change the stuff I've already posted, or at least present it in a new way, but it'll be better, I promise. And Angels has been updated. That's about it…yeah.
Disclaimer: Surprise, surprise! Hey Arnold! does not belong to me.
Here's Looking At You, Helga
The band was playing "New York, New York."
Well, actually it wasn't "New York, New York," but it sounded like it. All of the band's songs did, like any good two-bit third-rate four-piece wedding band's. This one wasn't even trying. They were even called "The Wedding Band," as if to deny any last scrap of individuality.
The band was really playing "Some Enchanted Evening," or something vaguely like it. It was completely inappropriate for the couple—but then again, so was the wedding.
Some enchanted evening
You may see a stranger
You may see a stranger across a crowded room
And somehow you know
You know even then
That somewhere you'll see her again and again
Everyone had to admit that Helga looked beautiful. Her gown was all shimmering white satin, strappy with a plunging back. Her blond hair cascaded in loose ringlets halfway down her bare back, and the skirt was impossibly full and swooshed when she walked. Even Rhonda, who couldn't pay someone a compliment to save her life, couldn't find fault.
"That bodice certainly helps her figure out," she said snidely to Lila over a glass of bubbly. "She's lucky to land someone who can pay to keep her looking like that." Lila nodded docilely. Rhonda should know, after her last three failed marriages.
Rhonda sneered elegantly over the top of her lipstick-stained champagne flute. "If I live a hundred years, I'll never know how she did it. One day she's Helga Pataki, the next she's Mrs. Helga—"
The tail end of her comment was cut off by Patti Behrman swooping down upon them in several miles of purple chiffon. "Rhonda! Lila! How are you girls?"
Phoebe was looking for her husband. She found him sitting with Harold and Curly by an enormous potted plant the groom had imported from Africa just for the wedding, and well on his way to getting extremely spifflicated. They had shanghaied a bottle of champagne from the bar and were boisterously remembering the good old days.
Phoebe stopped in front of them, hands on hips, legs akimbo, looking sternly down at her husband. "Gerald, how could you? At Helga's wedding!"
Gerald looked up at her with eyes that were no longer concerned about anything. "Eashy. There'sh lotsh of drinksh here. Have to admit it…I don't like the guy, but he can shure throw a goo' party."
Phoebe collared him, dragging him to his feet with strength surprising for such a small woman, and snatched the champagne bottle from the other two men.
"You are in deep trouble, Gerald Johansen," she scolded the tall man who submitted meekly to her discipline. "And you—" she said, gesturing with the bottle in her hand towards the vast lawn where the guests were congregating but directing her comments towards Harold. "Your wife is over there…talking to your ex-wife. You know, the one both of you married?" Hiding her amusement at Harold and Curly's reactions to the presence of Princess Rhonda Wellington-Lloyd-Behrman-Gamelthorphe-Stanford, she dragged her intoxicated husband to the nearest bathroom.
In the bathroom, Phoebe filled the sink with cold water and dunked Gerald's head in it, trying to get him sober the quickest way possible. He gasped as he came up for air, shaking his head and wiggling free of his wife's grasp. "Okay! Okay! I'm sober!"
He slumped on the toilet, head in hands, avoiding Phoebe's eyes. "Look, I'm sorry," he said after a long silence. "I'm sorry. I just kept thinking about Arnold…"
Phoebe softened. "I know," she said, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I know. But Helga's made her choice."
"I just wish…" Gerald began, but Phoebe cut him off.
"Don't even say it. Don't say what you wish. I know, and we all feel the same way. But this is Helga's day, and we're not going to ruin it for her. If this is what she wants…" She sighed. "It's not our place to tell her that she's wrong. Even if we know she is."
Across the lawn, The Wedding Band continued to play "New York, New York/Some Enchanted Evening."
Some enchanted evening
Someone may be laughing
You may hear her laughing across a crowded room
And night after night
As strange as it seems
The sound of her laughter will sing in your dreams…
Helga Pataki, soon to be Helga Smythe-Higgins, stared into the mirror of her vanity. Were her eyes still red? She didn't want Rex to know she had been crying. She didn't want to spoil his day. She had barely managed to push Lila and Rhonda out before the tears started falling, and she was already afraid they had noticed something.
Uncapping her lipstick, she began to reapply it, carefully. Rex had worked so hard to make sure everything was perfect for their wedding; she had no right failing him in the slightest. She blotted her lips on one of the few tissues left over from the sudden storm of tears that had taken her without warning. Why was she crying? Wasn't this supposed to be the happiest day of her life?
Yeah, right.
Who can explain it?
Who can tell you why?
Fools give you reasons
Wise men never try…
There was a rough knock on the door. "Come in," Helga called, straightening up and putting on her "happy face."
It was Big Bob, and he was beaming so hard Helga thought he might explode. "Hey, there she is!" he said when he saw Helga. "My little girl, about to get married."
Helga mustered up a smile. "Yup, that's me," she replied, turning to face him.
Bob sat down next to her on the velour cushion. His voice was gruff and he didn't look at her, unused to sharing emotion this way. "I, uh…I just wanted to tell you that I'm real proud of you, girl," he told her. "I mean, you did real good, landing this Rex kid. He's a good boy, and he'll take real good care of you."
Helga nodded, bitterly admitting the truth to herself. Rex was a good guy, and he would take good care of her—very good care of her. She didn't try to delude herself, though. She knew what was making Big Bob Pataki happy. It wasn't his younger daughter's apparent chance at lifelong happiness—it was the fact that she was marrying into one of the richest families in the city. She sighed to herself. No matter how old she got, Robert Pataki never changed.
Big Bob plowed on. "You know, I was a little worried a while back, when you had that thing with that, uh, that Alfred of yours. You remember him, right?"
Helga kept her voice stoic. "Yeah, Dad. I remember Arnold."
"I thought you would," he said. "You dated him for three years, right?"
"Four years, seven months, and thirteen days," Helga replied mechanically. She fiddled with the lace on her bodice.
"Well, you did good to get out of that," Bob said. "I never liked that kid. He crossed me one too many times about the way I brought you up. But I was a good father. Wasn't I?" His eyes were suddenly anxious, and Helga realized for the first time that she had gotten her blue eyes from her father. "I was a good father to you girls, right? You don't hate me?"
She shook her head and patted him on the arm through his tuxedo. "No, Dad. I don't hate you." She kissed him on the cheek, thinking to herself that it wasn't even a lie, really. What child could really, truly hate their parents? Bob had his limitations, just like Helga did, but he had a way of showing, at the last minute, that he really did love her.
"Good." He relaxed. Suddenly he began to laugh. "You know, your mother's parents hated me?" he told her.
Helga shook her head. "No, I didn't know that. Grams and Pop hated you?"
He nodded. "They told her that she wasn't allowed to marry me, but she snuck out of her college dorm one night and we drove down to Atlantic City and got hitched."
Helga's jaw dropped. "You eloped?" she asked incredulously.
Bob spread his enormous hands. "What can you do? We loved each other. You do what you have to when you're in love." He stood up. "Which is why I'm glad you dumped that Alfred kid and got your head straight. Rex, he really loves you, and the money doesn't hurt. You have a swell day, kiddo." He gave her a gentle punch on the shoulder, then seemed to realize that it was inappropriate and stepped back. "You look real pretty, Helga."
With that, he left.
Helga turned to face the mirror. One look at herself, and she dissolved into tears again. "What am I doing?" she asked herself out loud.
Two years, four months, and sixteen days after her split with Arnold, she couldn't remember what it was that had driven them apart. It had been some stupid fight, something with her jealousy and his expectations of her that no human could possibly live up to. Arnold wanted to put her on a pedestal, and usually she had liked it up there, but it got a little cold when the wind blew. So when she couldn't be as perfect as him, when he couldn't handle her temper, when their ideologies clashed violently and she unwittingly hurt him…they had decided to take a break one day. And the break had just never ended.
And then Rex showed up. He had eyed her in high school, but in high school she had been Curly's girl; everybody knew that. And no one was brave enough to find out what Crazy Curly would do if someone went for his girl. They had called it quits at graduation and Helga hadn't seen anyone from the old neighborhood for her whole freshman year in college, aside from scattered visits to Phoebe.
Then Arnold showed up.
He had transferred to her school for sophomore year. Helga had walked into her journalism class, and there he was, that same football head, that warm grin, those eyes. There was no Curly around now to help Helga pretend she didn't love Arnold anymore, and when he smiled at her and told her that he had been looking for her since he arrived three days ago…she was a goner. Cupid was standing triumphantly over her, bow in hand, laughing his diapered little butt off.
Helga had been swooning over Arnold for almost a year when he told her how he felt. They had dated for two more years before moving in together after college, in their own little apartment in Chicago, while Arnold went to medical school and Helga started working at the Chicago Sun. But two years later…
What not a lot of people knew was that Arnold had proposed to Helga, just before they broke up. And she had accepted. She had kept the ring after they split; she tried to give it back to Arnold, but Arnold, who was more sad and disappointed than mad over the breakup in the first place, had insisted she keep it. So she had hidden it, along with her locket from childhood, her pink bow, and one red shoe, plus her most personal poems, in a shoebox in the basement of her parents' house. She applied for, and got, a job with the New Yorker, and moved back to New York, living with Gerald and Phoebe until she could get her own apartment in Manhattan. She hadn't seen Arnold since, and had spoken to him only once—a sobbing, drunken phone call during a pregnancy scare two months after she left.
For nearly a year she kept to herself, seeing her parents every so often, having dinner with Phoebe and Gerald sometimes…Gerald was surprisingly supportive in her moments of need. She would be forever grateful that they buried the hatchet, and when Rex insisted that his sister be the maid of honor over Phoebe, she put her foot down for Gerald as best man. Other than that, she didn't see many people other than her colleagues and Miss Kitty, her black cat. (She had gotten so used to Abner that there was an emptiness without a pet around the house.)
And then she got promoted, to a minor editorship. She had immediately been invited to one of the most elite parties in Manhattan. And who was standing there with a stunned look on his face the moment she walked in the door? Good old Rex Smythe-Higgins III.
He had steered her around the party, introducing her to the most important people in New York and making sure she didn't make any faux pas that was too hideous. Afterwards, he had asked for her number. She had refused, so it had been a surprise when he called her the next day. He had gotten her number through the magazine, he'd said, and he wanted to invite her to have a cup of coffee with him. No pressure, just a bit of caffeine.
Finally she relented. At first she tried to scare him off, truth be told. She'd walk out the door for a movie or coffee or a walk with him in sweats, with her hair not brushed, no makeup, and a bad attitude. He'd always smile gallantly and tell her she looked beautiful. Then he'd take her to the ritziest places in New York in her awful pajamas and her hideous hair, and she'd feel really guilty.
Little by little, she began to warm to him. She started to care about how she looked around him, and she let him take her on actual dates to restaurants and dances and parties. And when he kissed her one night as he dropped her off, she smiled at him and asked him if he'd like to come inside. He was only too glad to oblige.
Before she knew it, they were meeting each other's parents and she was spending the weekend at the Smythe-Higgins estate in the Hamptons, and within a year of seeing each other they were setting a date for the wedding. Sometimes Helga felt like a car, letting herself be steered around obstacles by Rex, letting him guide her to their destination. It was nice to have someone else worrying about their path for her, though, so she let him do it. And now here she was, sitting in a white wedding dress so involved she hardly knew where she was in it, less than fifteen minutes away from making Daddy proud for the first time in her life, Daddy who hadn't been proud when she graduated valedictorian from her top tier college, or when she became editor-in-chief of the whole dang New Yorker. Oh, no, that wasn't enough. But marrying the richest man in New York City…that was just right for Big Bob Pataki.
It wasn't that she didn't love Rex. Oh, she loved him—she knew that much. But it was a quiet kind of love, a comfortable love for what he offered more than the man himself. And sometimes she thought he saw her as a prize to be won, a challenge to meet—as if the first night of their honeymoon was the championship game, and he would retire from her after that. As hard as she tried, she couldn't picture herself married to Rex.
She squinted up her eyes and imagined herself coming home to her husband, but there was no one there—just a vague, shadowy figure. Well, what about her kids? She imagined herself picking up a little boy—no, a little girl, with blond hair and beautiful, deep green eyes. Wait. Rex's eyes were brown; hers were blue. The only person she knew with eyes like that was…
Arnold's form solidified in the doorway of her fantasy home. Immediately she stopped daydreaming. She didn't want to see that, didn't want to see it because she didn't want to remember how much she missed him.
She didn't want to remember how much she loved him.
There was a timid knock at the door, and Phoebe poked her head in. "Helga?" she asked quietly, knowing that there was something wrong with her best friend. "They're starting."
How was the band still playing that song? Helga wondered as they walked towards the place where she was to stay until she heard the opening bars of "Here Comes the Bride." The singer's gravelly voice cut through the noise around her, Phoebe's anxious chatter, her father coming up to her, ready to walk her down the aisle, until there was nothing else.
Some enchanted evening
When you find your true love
When you feel her call you across a crowded room
Then fly to her side
And make her your own
Or all of your life you will dream all alone
Once you have found her, never let her go
Once you have found her
Never let her go…
Helga suddenly knew the meaning of cold feet.
Phoebe kissed her quickly on the cheek and headed down the aisle with the other bridesmaids. Helga stood there as the music of the band faded, listening to the almost complete silence on the other side of the hedge.
There it was. "Here Comes the Bride." Bob took Helga's arm, prodding her a little, and Helga made her legs move. Clasping her bouquet so tightly she wasn't sure it would survive the ceremony, she walked slowly through the archway between the hedges, onto the vast green lawn where the ceremony was to take place.
The assembled guests, all four hundred of them, were just a blur—vague, moony faces peering up at her. She scanned the crowd, but she couldn't make any of them even look like people she recognized, let alone find Arnold. No. Of course he wasn't here. He wasn't invited. Why would he be?
They were stopping. Her father was letting go of her arm, lifting her veil and kissing her on the cheek. She had to make this walk alone.
Was it possible for time to move this slowly? She felt like she was trudging through molasses. Everything slowed to a crawl; she felt a bead of sweat travel down the back of her neck. She tried to conceal a shudder. There. She was at the altar. And there was Rex; she recognized him, and the minister who stood before them in black.
The ceremony was a muttered jumble, a humming in her ear by the giant fly in black behind the pulpit. But she distinctly heard the words "…speak now, or forever hold your peace."
Now time really and truly stood still. No one moved, no one breathed. Helga stood there, hoping against hope that he would somehow hear her calling him and come…but no one spoke.
"Very well," the minister intoned. He turned to Rex. "Do you, Rex, promise to love and care for Helga…" Helga began to feel sick again.
"I do," Rex said.
"…as long as you both shall live?"
Wait. He had asked her a question. He had asked her…they were all looking at her. Rex was standing there, waiting. The minister was waiting. Her father was waiting, her mother, Rhonda, Phoebe, Gerald, they were all waiting.
Helga wetted her lips and tried to say the words, "I do." But another word came out instead.
"No."
The minister seemed taken aback. "What?"
Suddenly everything snapped into focus. Helga could see everything, see the wart on the minister's cheek, the pores in Rex's skin. She could see the fake dew on the flowers on the altar and the grain in the wood of the pulpit. She could see the sun, sinking down in the west and dying everything red and orange.
"No," she said again. She looked at Rex. "I'm sorry, Rex. I…I can't marry you. I should have told you." He just stood there, stunned.
Helga looked at her father, who looked just as stunned as Rex. "I'm sorry, Dad," she told him. She looked out at the massed guests, sitting there, bewildered. "I'm…I'm sorry for making you all come out here. Um…there's still refreshments, I guess." No one said anything. "Uh…if you'll excuse me…there's somewhere I have to go."
Helga picked up her skirt and began to walk down the aisle. She passed by Phoebe, who was grinning, and Tish Wittenberg, who gave her a covert thumbs- up. Talking broke out behind her, whispers and exclamations, and a loud, condescending monologue from Rhonda.
Gerald was waiting for her around the hedge, leaning against it and smiling. She wasn't sure how he had gotten there, but it didn't matter right now.
"Atta girl," he told her, kissing her on the cheek. He held up his car keys. "It's in front of the hotel."
She grinned at him. "Thanks, Geraldo." She began to walk towards the back door of the hotel. Pulling it open, she headed through the hotel itself, faster and faster until she broke into a run, ignoring the stares of tuxedoed guests and servants.
Gerald and Phoebe's little yellow roadster was parked directly in front of the hotel. Bypassing the valet, Helga opened the door for herself and climbed in, cramming her huge skirt in as best she could. She turned on the ignition and drove off about thirty miles above the speed limit, heading towards the city.
As she drove, she wondered where exactly she thought she was going. Arnold wouldn't be in Brooklyn. He was at home, in Chicago. But she had to go to the Sunset Arms, to the place where he had lived. She would go from there. She was playing by ear now. Now she was driving.
By the time she got into New York, the sun had almost completely set. A crescent moon was hanging in the sky low enough to grab onto and sit on. The stars were pulsing with life, singing to her. But she had barely gotten into Manhattan when she found herself in the worst traffic jam of the century. She literally sat in the car without moving for ten minutes. Finally, she pulled out of the crush and parked the car at a meter. Neglecting the meter—she was in a hurry, and she had no money anyway—she headed for the nearest subway, a couple of blocks away.
As she ran towards the subway, her high heel got caught on a grate and snapped off. She stepped out of her shoes and kept running, skirt gathered in her arms, barefoot like she had been as a child on hot summer days; like in the grass at her college campus, walking with Arnold; in their apartment in Chicago on soft rugs and miles and miles of hardwood floors.
Down into the dank subterranean tunnels of the subway. There was no one in the token booth, and she could hear the train coming downstairs. Checking to make sure no one was around, Helga hopped the turnstile, ripping her skirt in the process. A strap on her bodice snapped, hanging down her back uselessly, but the thing was so tight it wasn't likely to fall down with no strips in the middle of a hurricane. She raced downstairs for the subway, catching the doors as they closed, ignoring the stares from the other passengers as she found a seat.
She knew the way to Arnold's childhood home with her eyes closed. It was twelve stops to the old neighborhood. Then up through the southwest exit, down two block, make a right, four blocks more. She ran all six blocks, her skirt hiked up around her knees, past a group of girls jumping rope, past a new generation of kids playing ball in Gerald Field, past the Jolly Olly Man who looked at her like she was crazy—like he was one to talk. Everything she remembered from balmy summer nights in Brooklyn.
There it was. The Sunset Arms. Her heart pounding out of her chest, Helga skidded to a halt in front of it, her feet stinging.
All the lights were out. No one was home.
Helga stood there for a minute, quelling her disappointment. After all, had she honestly expected him to be there? He didn't even live in this state, let alone his grandparents' house! She might as well just go back to Gerald and Phoebe's car before it got towed.
And yet…
Helga walked into the alley next to Arnold's old house. The fire escape was still there—rusty, but intact. She began to climb up it, carefully, trying not to trip on her skirt. As she reached the top, she thought she heard music.
You're breaking my heart 'cause you're leaving
You've fallen for somebody new
It isn't easy believing
You'd leave after all we've been through
It's breaking my heart to remember
The dreams we depended upon
You're leaving a slow dying ember
I'll miss you, my love, when you're gone
I wish you joy, though teardrops burn
But if someday you should want to return
Please hurry back, and we'll make a new start
Till then, you're breaking my heart.
He was standing on the roof, facing away from her, in the direction she had come from. The music was coming from the open skylight to his darkened room. A bottle of champagne stood beside him, and he held a glass in his hand, filled halfway with the golden sparkling liquid.
"Here's to you, Helga," she heard him mutter, lifting the glass and taking a sip.
"Well if you were going to drink a toast to me, you could at least have brought me a glass," Helga said suddenly. Arnold whirled around. He stared at her, and she was suddenly conscious of the way she looked—hair falling out of its carefully-arranged styling, curls going limp, a broken strap to her dress; bare, dirty feet poking out from beneath a torn hem, and her face sweaty and flushed.
"Helga…" Arnold breathed. "I thought you were marrying Rex."
"I was," she said. "I…couldn't. I left him…at the altar."
Arnold looked her up and down. "And you ran all the way here?"
"Well, I borrowed Gerald's car," she admitted. "And I took the subway. And then I ran." She tugged self-consciously at the dress. "Sorry I look like something the cat dragged in."
"You look beautiful," he told her, taking a step closer. "Do you…Is there…I…" He stopped, unable to find the right words to fit the situation. Finally he looked her straight in the eye.
"Is the break over?" he asked.
She blushed. "I think so. Do you want it to be?"
His eyes twinkled. "I do." He took another step towards her, and then another, finally taking her hand. She trembled at his touch. "Do you want to come inside?"
She smiled at him, letting herself relax into his arms, home at last.
"I do."