Author's note: Thanks for the reviews. I hope you'll like this one too.
Chapter 2: Sins of the father
"Honey I'm home!" - Bob shouted as he entered the house. He never came home like this in years, but today she had such a horrible day, she really wanted the old times to come back.
"Please don't let her sleeping drunk at the kitchen table. Not today... Not anymore..." - he begged. But of course it was exactly that kind of day. Miriam was sleeping there, with a bottle of whiskey in her hand. There were weeks, when she managed to stay dry. But she always fell back. Always.
It wasn't so bad, really. She didn't drunk gallons of alcohol, she didn't became violent or harsh, only... sleepy.
"Hi daddy!" - Olga said, as she entered the room. She was happy and full of life - as she walked to the refrigerator, it seemed like her toes are not even touching the floor. She filled her glass with milk at the table, only a few inches from Miriam's head.
"Don't act like everything is fine! She's your mother for god's shake!" - Bob thought. Of course he would never say that out loud. It was the Bob he tried to leave behind at work.
"Hi Honey." - she said. Here at home he, Miriam and Olga had a huge experience with avoiding problems. They never talked about Miriam's alcohol problem. They swept it under the rug, just like everything else. The only one, who wasn't able to do that all the time was Helga. She just entered the kitchen too.
"Hey Bob, Olga." - she said. - "Geez, Miriam is passed out again. It's like we're living in a bar. But of course, in that case she would be thrown out to the alley trough the back door every night."
"Hey, Sis!" - Olga said, an she hugged Helga.
"Hey, what's wrong with you? Stop touching me you moron!" - Helga said. Olga stopped hugging her and walked away humming some cheery tone. As he looked at Helga, he was able to see, how worried she is of her mother. It was something he never saw at Olga's eyes. His older daughter was great, in recognizing and responding joy. But real, deep pain was something she never understood. Not like Helga.
"So, Olga, how was you're day?" - he asked.
"It's Helga dad! Crimney, if you want to have a "father of the year" conversation, learn my name first!" - she said. - "But if you want to know, I had a normal teenage girl day: boys, parties, drugs, unwanted pregnancy. Same old, same old. as she left the kitchen and walked toward the front door. Yeah, he called her Olga again. For ten years he only had one daughter, Olga, and really couldn't do anything about calling her second daughter that sometimes.
"Hey, missy, you're still grounded, don't you forget that!" - Bob shouted.
"Fascist." - Helga murmured, as she turned around to go to her room.
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"C'mon, C! Ask for a goddamn C!" - Bob said to Frank, the player from Fargo, Minnesota. Frank didn't hear a word he said, basically because he was sitting in the "Wheel of fortune" studio, miles away from Hillwood. That did not stop Bob from giving advice to the players. He knew this game is destroying his mind day by day - and still, he longed for it. He started to watch the show a few years ago.
Since then he and Miriam didn't get any social life. After the wonderful first ten years of their marriage the life of the Patakis became more and more average, and it made Bob depressed sometimes. Helga - who wasn't there to witness the first years - only saw the emotional dead end, that their life was now.
"Miles would be ashamed to see me wasting my life like this." - he thought. Miles, was the one, who helped him when he arrived to the country without a cent. They went to collage together, and both men fought for the hands of Miriam. He did not take Bob to all of his journey's but they visited a lot of interesting places together. And when Miles got married to Stella, the two couples done everything together. They were inseparable.
Bob remembered their last fight well. Miles and Stella had their own kid since almost a year then, but they still decided to go on some semi-dangerous mission to Central America.
He preached about the different kind of responsibility what a child means for pretty long. About how Helga and little what's his name will be in the age to play with each other soon. Maybe he could have convinced them, but Miles' looney father Phil was so supportive. "Of course, we will take care of Alfred... go, fight the good fight!" He had some conflicts with Phil because of that later.
Miles and Stella never came back. It was like a part of Bob and Miriam gone forever with them. He escaped to his work and to stupid TV shows, while Miriam... well, she had her own little way of escapism. But more importantly they never talked about the death of their friends. They had no proof. A part of him still believed, one day they will come back for their football headed kid, and show up in the door as one happy family.
But of course he was a serious businessman. An adult. He must deal with death, it can't cripple him. He's too strong for that.
"Fascist." - Helga called her that only a few hours ago. He knew he's on the best possible way to loose her daughter. He wasn't the greatest father for her, even if he tried sometimes. But it was so much harder to handle her, than Olga. He stood up, and walked upstairs, to check on his little girl. She was grounded for some time now, for a fight she had with her friend Rhonda. It was the weirdest, most twisted friendship Bob ever seen. At least she had some friends. He knocked on the door.
"Ol... Helga. Can I go in?" - he asked. There was no answer.
"Hey, Missy, C'mon. Stop being such a pain in the... Open it! - he said. Hey, it was his house after all. Who does she think herself? He opened the door. There was no one inside.
It didn't matter if she climb down the fire escape, or sneaked out downstairs, she was gone. Bob felt, she's becoming angrier and angrier.
"Why does she have to be such a miserable little brat?! Why can't she do something nice for a change?" In times like these, Bob thought Helga is simply mean, and doing these things just to annoy him. There was a pink book laying on the bed opened. He though this is one of her romantic novels she was reading in secret. Bob sometimes peaked into them, and found them pretty out-of-character with Helga. But as she peaked into this one, he was pretty shocked. He didn't wanted to read, but just couldn't help it. IT was the most horrible thing he ever read, partly because he knew he's guilty for reading into her daughter's diary, partly because he not only peaked into a book. He read Helga's inside thoughts he was hiding from everybody. He was able to see the world trough the eyes of his daughter - and it was a pretty desperate view. And he was the biggest monster of the strange world, Helga was living in.
When he read the third page, he forced himself to put it down. He knew what he had to know - why fate put this diary to his way. Helga needed serious help - and he was the only one who could help him
As he read the book, it was almost like he wrote it himself when he was younger. If there was someone who could understand what the girl went trough, it was him. He was almost as good in shading his real self, as Helga. But it was too late for him - there was a chance for him, to become a better person years ago. But things happened, and he went back to his old pretending. Now, he became what he is today, a desperate, cynical, selfish man. But in some strange way, reading these pages of this diary, and seeing Helga's well hidden, sensitive, poetic side, gave him something really important.
A goal. A mission. But most importantly, first time in years her daughter gave him hope.
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Maybe I'm becoming too sentimental here. But I had to introduce "The real Bob" before I got into the real deal.
(About Bob and Miles being friends: for a while I was thinking about making Miles the father of both, Helga and Arnold. That could have been funny :) I decided it's gross, but I still liked the idea of Miles and Stella hanging out with Bob and Miriam in the past.)
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