Helen Hath No Fury by Gillian Roberts Page A

Dick Burton and Dick—you probably catch my drift. I think it was literally true.
    “So there’s that. But so much more that I can’t describe—can’t even see clearly. Like when you look too closely at a newspaper photo and all you see are the dots that make it up, not what the picture’s of? She’s too complicated and maybe we have too long a history and it’d take too long for this tape, for sure.” Clary snapped off the tape and blew her nose and wiped at her eyes. She sat blinking and inhaling for a brief while, her finger held up as a signal she’d begin again soon. Finally, she cleared her throat and started the tape again. “We’ve been through rough times and good times. But what comes to my mind first was how decent a person she was, how good-hearted. Sometimes I guess I thought of her—and maybe you did, too—as being a worrywart or even sometimes as, well, a meddler. But it was concern that did it, a sense of fairness, a desire to make things right. I don’t want this to sound too goody-goody, because it wasn’t, necessarily. That trait didn’t always work well for making business decisions, but—” Clary inhaled and seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “—it was a good way to be a human being.” And Clary, whose motions were always quick, stood up, said “Gotta run, sorry,” and was gone.
    “Listen, Gretchen,” Tess said into the tape, “your mother’s beginning to sound too much like a plaster saint and just a bit unbelievable, so I want to say that while everything everybody else said is true, she could be a real pain in the butt, too. She was human is what I’m saying. Which means that if you’re beginning to think that we’re all making stuff up that sounds good—now you know that isn’t true. Believe what we say.
    “For me, I’ve seen your mother sad and upset and angry, but my personal mental photo, if you asked for one, would be of her laughing. Lots of times, lots of laughing. I remember when you were born, and, oh, how she’d laugh with pure joy just because you existed. So I think I’d add that to the picture of her, plus bravery. There were lots of times she stuck her neck out, when she believed in a cause and went for it. Do you remember her marching against the Gulf War—when she turned out to be the only person who showed up? Well, it was the wrong day, in fact, but march on she did. And then laughed at herself, too. That’s what I hold on to and you should, too, no matter what.” Tess sighed heavily, then grimaced.
    I nodded to show that I’d cut that sorrowful sigh out, but I was controlling a sigh of my own. Her “no matter what” meant she accepted the idea that Helen had committed suicide.
    “I admire your mother’s spunk.” Wendy Loeb had a self-assured, warm tone. As she spoke, she fiddled with the impressive engagement ring she’d worn for a decade. “She had guts. I met her years ago, through Ivan. The three of us were a partnership. We were going to build apartments in Devon and get stinking rich. But the project went kerplooey, and we got really poor instead, and in debt, and that might have scared off most women from high-risk projects, but not Helen. She paired up with Clary and wound up making another risky business work. And I found my footing again, too, and it all has a happy ending.” She stopped and put her hand to her mouth, eyes wide. I put my hands up to express, I hoped, that it was all right. An understandable slip of the tongue that no one would take to mean Helen’s death was a happy ending.
    But she shook her head and said, “Turn it off,” andwhen we did, she was crying. “Erase that. It sounds horrible, it sounds as if I thought—you know how it sounds. Just because we had that awful time with the project—Helen blew it, if you must know, and it set me back years. But then, look, things turned out economically for all of us, including Helen most of all, but that makes me sound … and it’s all water under