Spoiler Alert: Characters in this chapter are Arnold, Gerald, Phoebe, Grandpa, Sid, Stinky, Lila, Curly, and yes, Helga. There's a happy ending so wait for it. Thanks for reading and reviewing.
Finding Helga's father, Bob Pataki, was much easier than I had imagined. But being allowed to have a word with him was the opposite of simple. The man had always been impossible. But it seemed that Big Bob and all his Beeper Emporium with him had only gotten more difficult with time.
Gerald, Phoebe, and I all tried our best to get a word in with Helga's father, but no matter who we spoke to, the answer was always no. It took a bit of subterfuge on Phoebe and Gerald's part before we could finally reach him. Gerald pretended to be represent Phoebe in a contract for a large number of electronic devices before we were finally connected through to the man who had once sponsored my elementary school float.
"Yes, yes," Gerald had said on the telephone. "Now I apologize but I need you to speak to an associate of mine." Gerald had snapped his fingers and given me his got-to-it power finger. With fear, I took the telephone receiver from Gerald's hand and put it to my ear.
"Yes. Hello. Sorry about all this but this is Arnold Shortman. You know... your daughter's friend from grade school. I was hoping you could help me get in touch with Helga." My direct honesty was rewarded by the prompt dial tone. Big Bob Pataki had hung up.
"Well, that went well," said Gerald with sarcasm. But I could tell that deep down he was sympathetic.
I ground my teeth together in frustration. Big Bob's Beeper Emporium Corporation now reached across several major cities in the nation. Selling electronics in bulk was the only way to flourish in the industry, and Helga's father had excelled far beyond what I had ever anticipated. According to his company's stats, he was poised to become a millionaire.
Hearing Phoebe relate all this to me only made me unhappy. It made the truth of what had happened to Helga all the more inaccessible. I had to find her- had to find the woman I loved- but now she was hid behind a corporate veil. It was even a possibility that she had moved to another city with her father. It was possible also that she might have struck out on her own.
"What do we do?" Phoebe asked Gerald. The two exchanged hands to comfort one another and I turned away from the sight. Their moment seemed too private, too sacred somehow... and it reminded me of Helga.
"Give the stores a few more rings, I guess," said Gerald. "We might just have to fall back on spying. Like good 'ol FTI."
"Or hire a detective," said Phoebe who had much less a taste for adventure and mayhem that Helga had shown on the night when she had been our lawless informant, Deep Voice. "We could leave this to a professional."
"Um-hum," Gerald muttered uncommittally. We both knew that hiring a detective would be tough for youth just scraping by.
"I'll go make us some dinner," Phoebe announced, defusing the situation. "You two keep working."
We searched for telephone numbers, fax numbers, or stores we hadn't already tried. Then, out of stubbornness, I began to call the local beeper emporiums again just in case I could get someone new or someone to cave in and offer me information about how to contact Helga. If Big Bob's Beepers was a dead-end, I didn't know where else to look. Perhaps we could fake an offer on the old, vacant Pataki house in case it would turn up new leads.
Exhausted, I decided to give the phone one more try before digging into the dinner plate Phoebe had brought for me an hour earlier.
"Hello?" I spoke earnestly into the phone as it rung and was picked up. "Ma'am, my name's Arnold. Arnold Shortman. I really need to speak to Helga Pataki. Please. Will you let me speak to her?" I listened for a response but on the other end of the line was silence. "Please. Ma'am. Ma'am?" I asked prodding for a response. But Gerald came and laid a firm hand on my shoulder.
"Give it up man," he announced. "Get your coat on. Phoebe found something. We're going to visit the graveyard now. " On the other side of the line I thought I heard a tiny gasp. But this I dismissed as proof that everyone was Big Bob's Beepers Emporium was determined to pretend they could not hear me or tell me anything about Helga.
"Alright," I said with a deep sigh. I hung up the phone then carried my dinner with me. Gerald was driving so I had time to eat dinner in the Packard. I spooned the pasta dish into my mouth with difficulty as Gerald navigated a curve. When my meal was finished, I looked up into the car mirror at Gerald and Phoebe. I did not like the mood coming from them at all.
"Okay. What are we here to see?" I asked nervously when Gerald had parked outside of Hillwood Cemetery.
"Well," said Gerald awkwardly turning around in the seat. "Phoebe came up with the idea of visiting Miriam's grave. She looked up as much as she could find about the funeral and well, she found something we need to come here to check out for ourselves." Silent, I opened the Packard door and climbed out.
In my life I had done a lot of crazy and gutsy things. I had climbed the back of the motorcycle of Frankie G. and gone off to play hokey at the age of nine years old. I had played Casanova, going out with two different girls at a time on more than one occasion. I had helped Gerald drive a runaway bus up a ramp and over a fifty foot chasm in the interstate. I had even journeyed into a South American jungle on a dangerous adventure to find my parents. But nothing stole my courage as our silent march through the cemetery did.
I had come here once before as child on a dare. Helga had dressed herself in a bridal dress, pretending to the local "ghost bride" in order to scare me. Another of my friends, Curly had done the same, and frightened, Helga had looked up to me to save her as we had hidden together in one of the crypts. "I'll come back for you," I had said to her when I had decided to go out and confront the ghost. The words I had said back then filled me with the dread of anticipation now.
It was not dark yet. The warmth of the sun aided our search as we found our way to the cemetery's newest sites. A high stone pillar caught our attention there. It must have cost thousands to erect. On it the name Miriam Pataki had been engraved. I thought that was what the purpose of our adventure must be, but Phoebe approached me as I studied Miriam's engraved headstone. Then, with tears beading in her eyes, she nudged Gerald in the elbow.
"I'm sorry, man," said Gerald with his finger pointing down the line of gravestones like the grim reaper. I read a second epitaph I did not like. "Helga Pataki." Gerald whipped a piece of paper from his coat and then slowly, carefully, then offered me the treaty to end a hundred's year war.
He handed me a slip of paper and I held it up slanted against the sunlight to read it. Squinting, I read the title of the article and dropped it to the ground immediately.
"No!" I said shaking before I gathered enough strength to stoop down and hold the cruel article again. But the newspaper clipping's headline read the same as before. "Female Dead in Suspected Suicide."
Helga's grave was much smaller than her mother's had been. But things were much, much worse. I was frantic because I now saw something that Gerald and Phoebe had overlooked. Helga's tombstone exactly matched a second stone. This one read "Arnold Pataki" and was dated the day before. My stomach churned over and I was nearly sick.
"Ah, Helga!" I swooned before sitting down hard. So much grief was too had to bear. Tears fell and I could not speak to Gerald or Phoebe to let them know. Instead I pointed to the third, terrible gravestone and waited for comprehension to dawn on Gerald's face. Phoebe, ever the smarter one, put two and two together first and raised her hand to her mouth with a loud gasp.
"You mean. You two..."
'Yeah," I said gruffly as the shock I was feeling began to take on tears. But mostly I felt very dizzy. And sick as hell. I now believed that both my son and the love of my life had died without me ever knowing.
"It's my fault. It's all my fault. Helga visited me once," I said. My voice sounded wooden in my ears. "Helga," I said beginning to cry at last as I related my tale to them. I told them everything. The way she had tumbled from the bus into my arms. The way she had tasted so sweet in the summer sun. The way we had hid away from everyone for days, laughing and joking. How hurt and angry I had felt when Helga had disappeared without a word. It was good that I had finally let my secrets go. Now all three of us, Gerald, Phoebe, and I grieved. If Helga was still alive I never would have let Phoebe lay a hand on me. But now all three of us clung together. The pain I felt did not feel any less. But at least there was something good in my heart, too. Friendship.
The day that followed was one of my ugliest. I went back to the graveyard, bearing flowers and alone. Phoebe and Gerald, meanwhile, researched. When raindrops for a timid rain fell, I went for a walk up and down the nearby city boulevards.
"Sid?" I said with astonishment as the bus-boy of the restaurant I was passing came into view. "What are you doing here?"
"Work," Sid said. "Odd jobs. How about you? It's been years. You look like hell, Arnold."
"I know," I volunteered. "I lost the woman I loved." Sid squinted at my bedraggled face.
"Ah, I know just what you need. Wait here." Sid spun on his heel and I waited briefly before he came back. Sid set a large, square bottle of bourbon whisky on the table top.
"Ah," I said with understanding dawning. I slipped a fifty across the table. "Thanks!"
"Don't mention it," said Sid. "No, really don't mention it," he repeated with subtle meaning. "Now get out of here." I tucked the large bottle under my shirt and stepped away toward the nearest alley. From there my feet prowled of their own accord back to the graveyard I had just left.
I had never been drunk before. At age eighteen, I could not legally buy it and I had never been able to steal even a swig from my parents table. The liquor tasted terrible to me. But I was in a bad mood. The worst. I'd never been so self-persecuting. So I sat down under the street lamplight as it flickered on and the daylight turned to dusk. It was not quite the drink Romeo had drunk when he had been told he had lost his Juliet. But it was good enough. I wished to feel as sorry for myself as possible and so I drunk until my hand could hardly bring the bottle to my lips and I slopped a mess of it over my shirt front. In the darkening graveyard, then, I saw a movement. And a ghost.
"Helga?!" I said rubbing my eyes. Certainly I was imagining things. But then when the vision did not fade I pulled myself painfully to my feet. I stumbled before a very startled woman, with one hand outstretched.
"Helga?" I queried. But I stopped cold when I saw that the one eye that regarded me beyond a mess of hair was very brown, not blue.
"Oh. Sorry, miss. You look just like someone I knew. "
The young woman had a fair-complexion and flaxen-gold hair much like Helga had. But the eye- that startled eye- was brown and not the bold cerulean Helga's had been. Besides, the small bit of face that was visible beneath that hair was heavily scarred from top to bottom. The many gashes were not unpleasant but visibly red. It was the type of injury that might take years to fade.
"Nooo! No of course not," said the voice that was a bit too... foreign... to be Helga."
I turned my head away from my watcher's sharp gaze, too much like Helga's, and brushed off the shirt of my coat. I was sure I stank like booze.
"Sorry," I said slurring. "I guess I've never looked worse. I'm not usually like this. It's my first time drinking like this. I'm just a mess right now I guess."
"Why?" came that voice that was so much like Helga's.
"Why?" I said gesturing a hand around the rainy cemetery. Drunk as I was, it swayed me off balance and I took a half-step to steady myself.
"Why?" I echoed more to myself than to her. "Because my parents kept me practically locked up for the last seven years. Because I was father to a son who died before I could even meet him. Because I failed the woman I loved," I said sitting back down on one of stairs leading to a tombstone. I lay a single, fierce eye on her. Mostly because my head was swimming and the other eye would probably start rolling in the opposite direction of the first. My watcher's face was pale. But I could tell she was relieved I had sat down so docilely. Slowly, she pried open her lips.
"What son?" she asked carefully.
"The one on the tombstone," I said before placing a hand against my chest. "Arnold Pataki. My name's Arnold so it makes sense that if Helga did have a son, it'd be mine."
"Arnold Pataki's mother was not Helga," said Helga's cousin. "It was Olga."
"What?" I said sitting as upright as I could. Which wasn't much. The booze had left my muscles half-useless. "Olga had a son?"
"Look up the birth certificate," the blond, with one brown eye peering out behind a massive wave of crimped hair, said. "I know it sounds strange but it's true. Olga was reminded of her sister's old school friend and liked the name."
"That is barely believable," I mumbled.
"I know. But no matter what is that's troubling you, I know that Helga wouldn't have wanted you to see you like this," my watcher reprimanded me. " She would have wanted to see you happy."
"You're right," I said bending forward. I braced my arms against my legs as I kept my head bowed. "Like I said, I'm not usually like this. Damn that Sid. It's fitting that his name is spelled almost like sin. I can't believe I've been taking advice from him. Thank you, miss," I said meekly. But joyless.
"Katy, call me Katy," she offered. "So what do you plan to do next?"
"I don't know," I joked. "Jump off a bridge?" The young woman in took a breath sharply.
"I'm joking, alright? I guess I'll go home, then," I decided weakly. "To the boarding house. It's a little lonely now. Empty. Helga was right, though," I said looking up at the cloudy sky as if it were a textbook on my fate. "Parents are a pain. I was better off with them."
"Don't say that, Arnoldo," my watcher remarked with deep tenderness. It took me a moment for what she had said to sink in clearly. Arnoldo... Arnoldo was the pet name Helga had called me ever since the day we had performed the play Romeo and Juliet together in the fourth grade. I shot to my feet immediately. Even if her voice was different. Even if her eye color was not the same… there were too many similarities. The raw affection in her voice was too uncanny. "Helga?" I asked the woman before me sharply. But the woman who called herself Katy had left already. Maybe Helga had bolted on me...again. She had always been a great actress. But I was too drunk to catch up with her and I was left alone in the gloom and dampening rain.
Either way, I kicked myself for embarrassing myself in front of Helga's cousin. Or maybe Helga pretending not to be Helga. I gave a short, bitter laugh at myself then decided it was time for me to find a safe spot to sleep it off for the night. But my heart was still so lonely and confused that it felt like madness. Either Helga was alive and hiding or not alive. I had a son somewhere out there or maybe no son at all. But at least some the pain had ceased to ache. I had hope.