Chapter 7: The Secret of Helga Pataki
"This is your room. It was Helga's. Not much has been cleared away yet, just some of her clothes. I don't want to move or rearrange anything in case she comes home. She hated people changing things on her" Miriam whispered. Arnold just nodded. He put what he had brought with him on Helga's bed. He felt sorry for Miriam. He knew Helga was never coming home. At least not alive.
"Wow. I didn't realise how much I missed this room," she said. Arnold turned his head and glanced at her.
"It's nice," he said. He couldn't help feeling intrusive. And guilty. He could smell a faint smell of honey-suckle or something close to it.
"It's Foxfire" Helga told him. She walked over to her vanity table and picked up a crystal bottle with a crystal fox on the top. The bottle had been made to look like a fire was raging around it. It was still three-quarters full. "I started using perfume when I was eleven" she explained. "This was my favourite scent, and I have like twelve bottles of the stuff. It's Avon. Discontinued now. I had this bottle especially made for it. Pretty huh?" she asked handing it to him. He nodded. "Just take my clothes from the closet. I don't need them" she told him and lay down on her bed.
"Are you sure?" he asked. Helga nodded. So he opened the closet and took out the dresses and pants and skirt sets that were hanging in there. Some of them were really pretty and Arnold could imagine Helga in them. He took them out four sets at a time and laid them on the top of the drawers. When he opened them he found shoes. He closed the drawers and continued with the closet.
"There's a way into the attic from in there. It's the cord hanging down" she told him. He looked at the cord then up. Indeed it was. What was it doing in a wardrobe though? He shrugged and picked up a pink/purple velvet bag. There was a notebook inside. He looked back at Helga lying on her bed. He opened the bag. He closed of all thoughts, left his mind blank. A notebook. A pink notebook. He opened the first page . . .
II thought I loved Arnold when I was younger. I was wrong. That wasn't love. Well, yeah, puppy love, but not the kind of love in which I would dream of lying in his arms, making love to him, throwing all caution to the wind. But I have found that love. In Patrick. /I
Patrick? That was her brother in law. She was in love with her brother in law? He looked back at her.
"Yes, I was" she answered his silent question. "He loved me back too. Olga was too self-centred and absorbed to let anyone else love her, he told me. All the attributes that had made him fall in love with her now repelled him. I loved him the day I meet him" she explained. Arnold felt a little hurt at this revelation that she had loved someone else. But it passed. What did he expect her to do? Wait around until he had sorted his feelings about her out? That would have been selfish.
"What happened?" he asked.
"It was thanksgiving, I was 15. She brought him home. The moment I laid eyes on him . . . Arnold it was incredible. It was like lightning had entered in through my stomach and went through my body. Not even you had ever made me feel this way. No offence" she said.
"Non taken" he told her.
"Any way, he started teasing me, calling me kid and he paid attention to me Arnold. He listened. He didn't ignore me like my parents or my sister. When I spoke he would listen, when I was sad he would comfort me, when he was mad or angry I would listen to him rant and rave and –" Helga stopped and looked at her bookcase. "It's gone," she said.
"What is?"
"My certificate! It was red-wood and had a gold plaque on it with my name and the date of the poetry contest I entered and the poem, it's . . . it's gone!" she yelled.
"I wonder where it is?" Arnold asked.
"Olga's room. Its in Olga's room" she said confidently.
"Why would it be there?" he asked. He thought it was a stupid question. He had the feeling he already knew the answer.
"I don't know. Lets go find out. Bob leaves for work at 7 and Miriam will go out after. Grocery shopping. Unless she's changed her routine"
"Fine. Tomorrow morning we search Olga's room".
"Okay, they're gone" Helga said. Arnold left the room and went down the hall to Olga's room and opened the door. Helga went in before he did and he followed her. She went to the bed and reached under it.
"Nothing" she said.
"What is it in?" Arnold asked.
"A suitcase. It's a green suitcase" she told him.
"This one?" he asked pulling it out of the closet.
"Yeah, maybe" she said walking over to it.
Arnold opened it and looked in. Clothes. Helga's clothes? "These are yours aren't they?" he asked. He lifted ll of them out to reveal a plaque. Red-wood, gold, with Helga's name, poem and the date she recieved the award. And on the corner it looked chipped and there was a stain on it. A stain he could chip off. A stain that was dry blood. Helga's dried blood.
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