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Chelsea

Michael Summerleigh

Part Two - Chelsea in Twilight.

1.

    They stood on the hillside in ragged little tatters of snow...late November...overhead clouds grey and heavy with an early surge of winter...in the wind that whistled through the trees and thrashed October leaves against gravestones piled against the walls of family mausoleums she stood beside his oldest friend and cried for when he had sat quietly watching her... never asking more of her than to simply be herself... to somehow stop being angry and afraid...be who she would have been if not for someone else’s sick baggage.
    Jeff said, “He’s in good company. This place is famous. Ellington’s buried here... Joe Oliver... Guggenheims... Hammersteins... Lionel Hampton... Otto Preminger... La Guardia... Countee Cullen... hundreds of famous people...”
    “Charlie’s here,” she said. “I don’t give a fuck about the rest of them. I miss him. I miss the feeling of somebody looking past my ass and my tits... looking into my heart and caring about me...
    “That was my Charlie...”
    She turned away from the little chunk of granite in the ground that told where they had put the last of her Charlie...started walking back down the hill towards the Lincoln SUV below. Inside, out of the wind, she stopped crying. His best friend had a thought cross his mind that she was something uncanny... to be crushed by grief and still be blindingly beautiful his best friend had lived with this...
    “Listen...” he said, “Don’t be angry okay...”
    She turned on him... knowing... dead certain...
    “Never! Not fucking once! You tell all his good good friends for me okay? You ask those fuckers if they really thought he would start where my father left off...”
    “I didn’t know Chelsea I’m sorry.”
    “Sure you are, Jeffrey. But how would your sorry hold out if I hit on you? Would you say no...or would you make excuses...blame me...go crying to your wife I couldn’t help it she was begging for it...
    “Fuck you! Fuck all of you! Charlie was supposed t’be the wildest fucking wild man of your whole crew and he was the only one who knew what was real. He admitted he wanted to fuck me...and I would’ve spread for him in a heartbeat...but he never asked because he had balls and he was thinking about what I wanted and what I needed...not like the rest of you fuckin’ pussies...”
    He drove her back to West End Avenue in silence, watched her hug the doorman and go upstairs to his best friend’s apartment.
    Chelsea played Beethoven on his stereo and cried some more.

2.

    Winter closed in on her. In the summer... in the wake of his death... she had fled back to her friends... but not one of them was going on to college or university... they were still on the street... no longer in sync with any of the things that had begun to matter to her. In September she had school... the challenge of taking her natural talents as an artist to somewhere above and beyond what she had done before... but it meant traveling a length of Manhattan where she came into contact with people... men... who only saw her in passing and somehow believed that whistles.... looks that stripped her bare of clothing... were things she would appreciate...
    Christmas without him...after one Christmas with him...was more loneliness than she could bear, and not even the quiet kindness of Jeremiah Stokes and his family during the holidays could fix it. In January, before she even went back to school for second semester, she called a telephone number on a business card.
    “Good morning,” said Jeff, picking up after his receptionist. “How are you?”
    “Are you thinkin’ with your brain today?”
    She heard him suck in a long breath.
    “I’m trying harder not to be an idiot, if that’s what you’re asking.”
    “It’s a start,” she said coldly.
    “What can I do for you, Chelsea? Is there anything you need...?”
    “I get the bank thing...goin’ t’the bank when I need money. How come I don’t get any bills for electricity or what...taxes...stuff like that...?”
    “I look after it for you. All the bills come to me. That’s why if you need anything... something not everyday...you call me...”
    “I need t’do it myself. Some of it anyway. So I can get a clue...some small sense of responsibility...I mean how am I supposed to know I’m buying a dangerous amount of fuckin’ Twinkies if I never see a bill...?”
    She heard him laugh even though he tried not to.
    “Valid point. Okay...I can do that...we’ll work something out with one of my people here, to set it up and walk you through whatever you need to know.”
    “That would be good. Thanks...and I wanna learn how t’drive next summer too...”
    “Anything else?”
    She didn’t answer right away. The part of her that still lived with memories from before Charlie cringed; the part that ached for him and what he had wanted for her needed to go somewhere. She looked around the apartment...at his books and the records and all the trappings of what was supposed to have been a peaceful transition into young adulthood. All of it had been part of his gift to her, but all of it just served to remind her all the time that he was gone.
    “I need t’talk to somebody, Jeff,” she said quietly. “I feel like I’m stuck someplace where I don’t even know which direction can get me out...”
    He said he knew a couple of people...asked if she had a preference to male or female... would work something out and get back to her.
    “When d’you want to start this, Chelsea?” he asked.
    She said “Yesterday.”
    Said goodbye... walked down the hall into the bathroom and took off all her clothes... looked at herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door...saw someone on the outside who should have been a Playboy Playmate of the Year but on the inside felt a lot like Charlie had looked, sitting in the Arte Café waiting for her to come back to the table...
    Lost and lonely...

3.

    Early Saturday morning she walked crosstown and south to Grand Central...caught a train into Westchester...watched the city at 125th Street begin to give way to open space... snow... the Hudson, a mosaic of grey water and grey ice that sparked silver fire whenever the sun showed through the clouds...the Palisades across the river...she realised she had never been north of the Bronx...only recognised the station-names... Hastings... Dobbs Ferry...Ossining...she stepped out onto the platform looking for a face she’d never seen before and heard her named being called...a tallish slim woman in a red-plaid lumberjack and jeans...tall boots to her knees...short shagged pepper-and-salt hair and the same startled look in her grey eyes that she’d seen in Jeff’s six months before... the one that said Wow before she introduced herself...held out her hand...
    “Chelsea. Hi. I’m Doreen Patterson. Dory...forgive me for staring.”
    “I’m the fucking poster child for Total Strangers Who Stare,” she said. “I’ll get over it if you will.”
    Doreen Patterson pressed her lips together and nodded.
    “Fair enough. Are you hungry? My place is just a couple of minutes over the line in Chappaqua but we can stop if you want something to eat?”
    Chelsea shook her head said thanks she was good...followed her off the platform and across the parking to a plum-coloured Escalade.
    “Do all of Charlie’s friends drive expensive cars?”
    “How d’you know I was one of Charlie’s friends?”
    “Jeff knows you...Charlie would’ve gone for you; you’re still pretty hot...and you’re in a lot of his old photographs.”
    Patterson didn’t say anything... unlocked the car, took them out along the Pleasantville Road and then left onto Chappaqua Road... east over countryside showing houses well off the beaten path through the dense woods. Ten minutes later they turned right onto a long paved drive that wound into the trees. Chelsea closed her eyes... still feeling stared at by strangers...

***

    It was barely noon but she asked for a glass of wine...wished for the some of the sweet stuff she was used to...accepted a Chablis and decided it was okay.
    They sat on fat chaise cushions in a glassed solarium at the back of a small Tudor cottage...dark wooden beams and diamond-paned windows...some floors tiled in slate and others bare wood covered in rag rugs...furniture and fixtures totally upscale and modern but fitting right in anyway.
    They sipped wine for a little while. She was grateful for the time...fascinated by the way she could be inside and look up at the sky at the same time...watch the play of light and dark across the sky and the way it fell down across the trees making shadow places in the pines...etching the deciduous ones like the old bones she had seen with Charlie in the museum.
    “Jeff tells me you’re an artist...a good one.”
    Chelsea came back. Doreen Patterson’s stare wasn’t as obvious anymore... nowhere near as warm as Charlie’s...nowhere as cold as the men who tried to see through her clothes... Doreen Patterson didn’t want anything from her...already had what she needed...
    “Did he tell you my father fucked me but Charlie didn’t?”
    Patterson nodded.
    “I needed to get an idea of why you wanted to see me so he mentioned it. He didn’t intend it as a violation of your privacy...just felt it was something I should know ahead of time...”
    “Did you ever fuck Charlie?”
    Doreen Patterson blinked.
    “I was looking for something more than he was willing to give...at the time...” “That’s not the answer!”
    Suddenly she was as angry as she’d ever been...had seen this woman flinch and had felt a glow of satisfaction.
    “Chelsea I want to help you.”
    “Why?”
    “Because you asked for help...and you were important to him.”
    “So now I’m the fucking mascot for the Charlie Stinson Fan Club?”
    “No...not at all...”
    “Did you fuck him?”
    Dory nodded slowly and Chelsea started crying all over again.

***

    “...I’m going to ask you lots of questions. Some of them are going to sound stupid. Some of them you may not want to answer right away...or at all...
    “I’m good with whatever I can do to make this work for you, and starting an hour ago nobody but you and me will know what goes on here. I promise...”
    The afternoon had grown dark...snow beginning to cover the flagstones of the terrace on the other side of the glass...shifting and swirling across the sky to fill the shadow pines with ghost corpses Chelsea was drowsy with more wine and warmth... desperate enough to be trusting Dory Patterson without consciously having made the decision to do so.
    “Why was it so important for you to know?”
    Chelsea curled herself up on the chaise turned on her side to look at her...
    “It was the only thing I had that I could give back to him and he never took it...he said he didn’t wanna be like everybody else...like my father...”
    “Why do you think he said that?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Chelsea let me tell you more about Charlie, okay?” She poured more wine for herself. “When I knew him we were both still really just kids, and we had baggage just like everybody else. He tried to bury his by being plain outrageous crazy...lookin’ for love in all the wrong places and cutting a pretty wide path through the female population. In a lot of ways he was a real bastard, but he never ever really intended anybody any harm...
    “And then he got sick...did he tell you how it happened...?”
    Chelsea nodded.
    “Nobody is not changed by stuff like that...and as time went by I could see that even writing those dumb-ass books there was something else going on in his head; that something about the way Charlie had looked at the world was undergoing a huge transformation and it wasn’t just because he couldn’t party anymore.”
    “He was alone,” Chelsea said. “The first day we talked to each other he tried to explain why he couldn’t stop staring at me. It was like...you have this spectacular set of tits and a great ass and you have a beautiful face and it’s so easy to just look at you and pretend...
    “But then he started talkin’ about this weird stuff...that he liked watching me because... I don’t know... I never really understood what he was saying... but in one way I understood perfectly... like when I would see something that I wanted t’draw... whatever it was that made me want t’draw... I don’t know...a fuckin’ squirrel... it went beyond just what was on the outside...
    “Sometimes I wish I could kill the assholes on the street who think it’s okay to look at me and pretend they can do whatever they want to me. When Charlie looked at me it was warm...and safe...and there was love in it...he made me happy t’be just what I was...he never asked me t’be anything but what I wanted t’be...”
    “But you felt badly that he wouldn’t sleep with you.”
    “Yeah. And it wasn’t fair. He said he dreamed about me...about us bein’ together...
    “I used t’wake up in the middle of the night and think about him...how nice it would be if he would just put his arms around me and hold me...”
    “Which is what you wished your real father would have had done.”
    She could feel her breathing stop...knew that she was the one staring now...straight out into nothing...
    “It’s nowhere near as simple as that, Chelsea. I’d be really surprised if that one little thing fixes everything...but I think the two of you found each other at just the right time.
    “Charlie had discovered a different way to deal with the way he viewed himself and the world. Somehow...maybe because he honestly felt crazy-ass physical sex was all over for him...he got to look at you as something much more intrinsically beautiful than just a pair of boobs... and when the two of you started to inter-relate his attitude began to change the way you viewed yourself...
    “For however long it was, you were just a sex toy for your father. Then Charlie comes along and he’s attracted to you for the all the same reasons, but because of...I don’t know...whatever...the way he related to you was something entirely different.
    “He didn’t want to be your father. Knowing Charlie I’m pretty sure it would not have hurt his feelings at all to have been your lover...except for the part where you were fifteen...
    “...But he wanted to be something good for you more than he wanted anything else. He’d learned a different appreciation for what you were on the outside...and it led him away from just observing you...objectifying you...to where he could appreciate what you were on the inside as well.”
    “He said I didn’t need another pair of hands bein’ put on me that way...that he didn’t need it either...”
    “He was right, Chelsea. I’m having trouble describing the distinction I think he made in his own head...but whatever it was it was right for both of you...the balance between physical love and the concept of attraction...and something else that had nothing to do with physical at all.”
    Chelsea sat up...asked for another glass of wine...watched the afternoon get longer and the snow outside get deeper.
    “I’m really lost without him,” she said to the trees. “I don’t know what t’feel anymore...what t’say or do with anybody...”

4.

    “...Where did it start, Chelsea? Can you talk about it?”
    She nodded asked for more wine knew she was getting shit-faced but it was the only way she could say anything...everything...hope it would stop hurting...
    “One day when I was ten years old I came home from school and my mom wasn’t there. I guess she just got tired of my father beating the crap out of her every time he got drunk. She never came home and I never saw her again.”
    “Did he hit you?”
    “As far back as I can remember...but it stopped on the day I stopped crying whenever he fucked me.”
    “Why?”
    “I have no idea.”
    “No...I meant why did you stop crying?”
    “Because it made him angry and he’d hit me.”
    “Anything else?”
    “I went somewhere else. I stopped listening to his bullshit about how my mom never did right by him but I was a good girl and I loved him and blah blah blah...
    “Everything would stop. Somewhere else there was this whisper about how good I was and how good I was making him feel and I just turned it off and sang Somewhere Over the Fuckin’ Rainbow to myself until he was finished. When I knew he was asleep I went t’the bathroom and washed myself...brushed my teeth...spit into the toilet and pissed on it before I flushed...”

***

    “...Would you like to stay? That snow is looking pretty determined to go most of the night.”
    “Can I? I didn’t bring anything.”
    “Henry...my husband... is away on business for the weekend. I wasn’t planning on it, but I was hoping that we’d get along okay...that you’d consider staying overnight. Jeff and I talked for quite a while and he said if I was patient we’d probably end up liking each other...”
    “Patient.”
    “Yeah he said you had a few quirks. Would poached salmon with wild rice and vegetables to go over be okay with you?”
    “I could force myself.”
    “We’re gonna need more wine though...”
    “Did you really steal the salmon?”

***

    “...Whenever Charlie asked me if I was hungry I’d say Charlie I’m fuckin’ starving and he would grin like I’d just made his day by being hungry. After a while I started doin’ shit I knew he liked me t’do...like peeling pepperoni slices off the pizza with my fingernails an—”
    She stopped... looked at Dory looking at her.
    “What?”
    “Did you hear what you just said? You started doing things you knew he liked you to do. You wanted to please him...”
    “Well sure I did.”
    “Did you get rewarded for pleasing him?”
    “Charlie bought me stuff all the time.”
    “Do you think he wouldn’t have bought you stuff all the time if you stopped picking up those pepperoni slices?”
    “Fuck no of course not I told him he didn’t have t’do any of that. He said when I got stuff I really liked it was a different look on my face than just bein’ regular happy.”
    “So he wasn’t asking for anything from you...and even though it’s something you probably did all the time to try and get your father to stop using you for sex, you didn’t have that problem with Charlie... so what do think was going on...?”
    Chelsea shook her head, shrugged.
    “Is it possible that both of you were reacting like... regular human beings maybe... trying to give some happiness to each other...?”
    “I don’t know...maybe...me for Charlie...definitely...”
    She pushed herself away from the table and made happy after-dinner noises... another couple of glasses of wine drowsy...but suddenly not hurting so much ...
    “That was really good.”
    “Not really fucking good?”
    “That too.”
    “Thank you,” said Dory. “I’m a pretty good cook. Henry loves my cooking. Henry says he loves my cooking too much.”
    “Was that him in the photograph in the kitchen?”
    She nodded. Chelsea watched her face warm up and start to shine.
    “That’s the way I got with Charlie.”
    “What way?”
    “Don’t fuckin’ pretend you don’t know, Dory. Not with something like that. We’re supposed t’be feminist all-business-can-do-anything women but if we love somebody they make it out like we’re bein’ pussies...”
    “Are you okay?”
    “I’m better...I just hate being in that apartment without him being there too.”
    Dory collected dishes, put them in the sink and moved them into the living room where she put a pile of logs in the fireplace and Chelsea on one end of a big couch where she was in no danger of sliding off. She held out her glass but Dory shook her head.
    “Take a break, little girl,” Dory said, wriggling down into the other end. “What I was talking about before was just that Charlie was very good at making you feel good. He knew what t’say and when t’say it. Most of the time you knew it was a good measure of bullshit but he was charming and while he always seemed to get what he wanted he somehow never let you feel like you were being short-changed.”
    “Charlie never bullshitted me.”
    “Honey I do believe he never did. That’s why I’m shaking my head a little. Somehow the two of you managed to have a relationship that was normal if you ignored the fact that you were fifteen and he was forty-something.” She laughed. “At its heart it resembled something more like what two eight-nine-ten-year olds would do...assuming sex didn’t get in the way ...which it didn’t seem to do...”
    “So...?”
    “So what you’re missing is the next logical step, Chelsea. Where the two of you get older and simply pleasing each other begins to include the possibility of physical intimacy, as well as everything else you shared before. By social standards you should have been with child services and Charlie should have been in jail...but instead, the two of you are having this lovely charming innocent healing romance...you...and Charlie... of all the people in the world...”
    “Whattaya mean Charlie of all people...?”
    “The Charlie I knew wasn’t quite like that. I’m starting to wonder if Jeff didn’t have some ulterior motives in asking me to talk to you. Funny though...in one sense... back there at the train station...you were really close on the mark...about there being a Charlie Stinson Fan Club. He made big big dents in everyone who knew him. Big good dents and big bad dents. I’m thinking maybe Jeff figured I was ready for some shop time to finally bang out mine with you.”
    “You loved him a lot.”
    “I did, Chelsea. I think I loved him for all of the reasons he gave you to love him...only I never saw much of them.”
    “How’s Henry with that?”
    “Henry thought Charlie was an asshole but he loved him anyway. We all did. It was almost impossible not to love Charlie. We were this big raise-a-lotta-hell-together family... incestuous... it was crazy... and Charlie was so desperate for love that in his way he gave it away hoping to get more...”
    Dory’s face got soft and dreamy with looking backward... Chelsea saw the corners of her eyes go shiny...
    “We looked out for each other.”
    “Charlie was always lookin’ out for me. He was so scared I’d end up someplace where I would get hurt again.”
    “That was him too.”
    Dory sighed. Stretched for the bottle of Chablis she’d just opened for herself. Tipped it in the direction of Chelsea’s glass. Firelight turned it into liquid fire pouring into the crystal wineglasses... pine logs spat spice and warmth...
    “I’m breaking so many fucking rules,” she said, swirling the wine in her glass looking down into the little golden whirlpools. “I was so fucked up for so long...before and after Charlie...and here I am trying to play psychologist for you...the one who pretty much got what I wanted from him...and you really are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my life... and I’m really happy he did something good for you...”

5.

    “Dory I can’t figure out why it’s so fucked up?”
    “Are we gonna try and unravel it all out tonight?”
    Chelsea shrugged. “I spend a lot of time starin’ up at the ceiling. All I know is that if some of them would just say Hi instead of whistling or telling me where they wanna stick their dicks I could be a lot friendlier.”
    Dory wagged her head. “It’s pretty amazing what they think will get them into our panties.”
    “That’s for sure! I was goin’ up Fifth Avenue and this well-dressed guy in a suit sees me...starts walkin’ a little bit sideways so I won’t see the hard-on in his shorts...and he starts in with how would I like to have lunch with him and he’s a big-shot in some modelling agency and he can guarantee a girl like me could be famous inside of a year.”
    “I sense a train wreck,” Dory said.
    Chelsea grinned. “I asked whattaya mean a girl like me and I can see him trying to figure out a polite way to tell me I have humungous tits. Instead he says something about being smart and sexy and oh my and I just started laughing...”
    “I’m sure that went over well.”
    “No...I shouldn’t’ve laughed...but he asks me what I’m laughin’ at so I just say I’m eighteen years old and I’m a student doing exactly what I wanna do...
    “And he says well wouldn’t it be better if I was doin’ that with a place of my own and a six-figure bank account. So I tell him I’ve already got eight rooms on the upper West Side, eight figures in the bank, and one asshole in my jeans is more than enough but thanks for tryin t’be so fuckin’ altruistic t’poor little ole me.”
    Dory smiled into her glass. “So you didn’t end up as friends.”
    ”Not unless calling somebody a wise-ass cunt is the new way to make the little girls swoon...”
    “You hurt his feelings. Took a chunk out of his assessment of himself in the role of the manly male benefactor.”
    “Damn straight yes I guess...and I almost felt bad about it because he was one of the nicer ones.”
    “That’s too bad,” Dory sighed. “Charlie’s a tough act t’follow...”
    Chelsea stared into the fire, said “Yeah...so now I get t’choose exactly whatever it is I want whenever it comes along and I’d still rather be out on the street bumpin’ into Charlie in the park. Why’re they such assholes, Dory?”
    “I think they’re scared more than anything, honey. There’s all sorts of theories, but mostly I think it’s because they’re scared and Western culture has never managed to get comfortable with sex. Too much religion to get in the way. Too much capitalism. Too much bullshit to cover up the insecurities we ladle out to our children...
    “When I was your age I’d agonise over a pimple or if I was carrying two pounds more than would comfortably fit into my bathing suit.”
    Chelsea said, “It’s like it’s this big dark stupid secret. I mean you can turn on a computer and watch people doin’ it for hours, but Janet Jackson pops a boob at the Super Bowl and suddenly the whole fuckin’ world is ready to collapse from the shock.”
    Dory nodded.“We program our girls and women to believe that what’s between their legs is a precious commodity to be protected and bartered in a marketplace...and then all our little boys get taught it’s something they have to steal...or trick us into giving away...
    “For too many of them it becomes this guilt-ridden game that’s not a game at all. Honest sexual urges end up being sublimated... turned into something to be ashamed of. Even regular sex... never mind the adventurous stuff...is something they’re not allowed to expect or ask for; then a sense of frustration gets built into the equation and next thing you know a misplaced and totally unnecessary anger has replaced simple desire as the foundation of interplay between men and women. Aggression instead of passion.”
    “It sucks.”
    “It does.”
    “How’d you and Henry get together?”
    Doreen started to glow from the inside again...
    “One of our beach parties...dozens of us just hanging out...bonfires...lots of beer and stuff... Henry wasn’t really part of our crowd but I’d seen him a few times usually on the edges being quiet...not so crazy as the rest of us...
    “One night after being especially stupid I sort of staggered out into his part of the solar system and threw up in the sand. He waited until I was all done and offered me his towel...asked me if I was okay...just kept me company until the world stopped spinning so much and we talked for a little while before I passed out.
    “In the morning in among all the casualties I was in this comfortable little hollow in the sand with his blanket on top of me and him sitting there waiting for me to wake up.”
    Chelsea realised she was smiling. “That sounds really romantical...”
    “It was. Romantical and sweet. All the stuff that Charlie was at his very best...but slower and less bullshit. Henry was my grown-up teddy bear Casanova...”

6.

    Chelsea made breakfast in the morning. Toast. Bacon. Scrambled eggs. Dory sat in the breakfast nook sipping coffee watching her, and she felt an almost ghostlike presence that gave her goose bumps...then a rush of warmth she turned to the older woman...puzzled for a moment before she recognized the feeling and something unspoken passed between them. They smiled in the same instant.
    “I got an email from Henry this morning. He’s got a 4.35 flight into LaGuardia and I told him I wanted to drive into the city to pick him up...that I’d met someone special I wanted him to meet. You could come with...have supper with us...meet my teddy bear...”
    Chelsea smiled again.
    “It’s so strange, Dory,” she said.
    “What’s so strange?”
    “Everything. Nothing at all.”
    “Fuckin’ amazing?” offered Doreen.
    “Yeah.”

    They ate breakfast washed dishes, and went outdoors to dig themselves out of a two-foot snowfall. Chelsea was introduced to the snow-blower and took a faceful of snow before Dory showed her how to rotate the thrower to follow the prevailing wind that wound its way up the driveway. A snowman in front of the garage followed. Then a snowball fight... then back indoors for showers and an hysterically successful attempt at Benny & Joon grilled cheese sandwiches after dusting off Dory’s not-used-in-a-decade steam iron.
    “D’you have nightmares, Chelsea? Anything that keeps rearing up inside your head to remind you...?”
    She thought about it... shook her head...
    “Not really.”
    “You said you went somewhere else...sang to yourself...were you ever scared?”
    Again she shook her head no. “Only at first. Then I knew what was happening... what he was doing...and I knew it had nothing t’do with me.”
    “But you were ashamed when Charlie found out.”
    Revelatory...Chelsea went blank...then slowly said, “I was...”
    “D’you know why? Deep down maybe felt what your father was doing to you was something you should accept and offer gladly...but someone else finding out made it shameful...?”
    Chelsea felt numb sitting beside the fireplace...
    “No.“
    “Because you didn’t fight back...or stopped fighting back?”
    “No.”
    So why...why was Charlie finding out so horrible?”
    ...Felt numbness giving way to the same sense of shame...
    “Because...it was wrong...and I was afraid Charlie would stop caring about me....that I would lose him and have nowhere t’go...have nobody t’care about me.”
    “But it wasn’t your fault, Chelsea. You never encouraged your father. This was something that was done to you...not something you participated in. Accepting his guilt as your own was something he forced on you...making you feel as if it was your duty to make up for the failure of his relationship with your mother.
    “You have no blame in this, honey. Parents are supposed to take care of their children, not use them to fill up the holes in their own souls. Your mother abandoned you because she saw it as the only way she could escape an abusive relationship...and then your father made you pay the price for having driven her away himself.”
    She started crying. Helplessly. Sat in front of the fire and felt tears pouring down her face and raining down on her heart. Fell into Dory Patterson’s arms when she came off the couch to hold her.
    “Chelsea, you’re going to be okay, I promise. It might take a while but you’re going to be fine. We never ever forget what they did to us, but if we can hang on... hang in... find the right people to help us... we can live past it...”
    She looked up. Felt Dory’s hands in her hair smoothing it away from her face. “For me it was my uncle. My mother’s brother. It was only for a summer when I was thirteen but it was more than enough to fuck up the next fifteen years of my life. And then one morning I woke up on the beach and found Henry watching over me. “Charlie started the same thing for you... and while he still might have a pretty precarious balance sheet when it comes to Heaven or Hell, right now he’s probably sitting on a cloud he intends to move someday soon so you can have some sunshine in your life... you just have to believe in your right to be there when it shows up...”

7.

    Chelsea borrowed a clean t-shirt and they needlessly wintered up for what had turned into a mild almost spring-like afternoon...some of Dory’s promised sunshine...the sound of snow-melt in the gutters...the intimation of small rivers running beneath white-carpeted fields and sleepy field mice moving unseen through snow caverns. They piled into the Escalade and Dory took them onto the Hutchinson River Parkway heading south to the city.
    At the 678 interchange she said, “I think I should warn you though...Henry is the president of your Total Strangers Who Stare club. He’s polite and he tries to be discreet but he’s got that same fascination thing you said Charlie tried to explain to you. He was pretty shy compared to the rest of us so he spent a lot of time watching too.
    “Anyway...please don’t be offended he doesn’t mean t’be rude. The funny part is that I think he thinks I don’t notice...like all the extra hugs and smooches I get afterward come out of nowhere...”
    Chelsea smiled. “He sounds like he might be okay.”
    Dory said, “You’ll like him. I hope so...”
    They traveled in silence for a while, Chelsea watching Westchester County float by in the almost totally-silent cocoon of the Escalade’s interior.
    “You guys don’t have any kids, do you?”
    Dory shook her head. “Thanks to my uncle, no. We thought about adopting so many times, but it just didn’t seem to be a comfortable fit...and then Henry’s work took off and I started grad school...”
    “Jeff told me you teach pysch at Purchase.”
    “And I’ve been teaching a course at NYU. His daughter Caroline is in the psych program there... somebody else you should meet. You guys are taking your classes in the same neighbourhood...”
    “What’s Henry do?”
    Dory took time out to navigate them onto the Whitestone Bridge, sunlight bouncing off ice-floes in the East River Long Island materialising out of snow-glare and afternoon haze.
    “He and Jeff look after your money,” she said.
    “Charlie’s money...”
    “Your money, Chelsea,” said Dory forcefully. “Charlie had his faults but being a cheapskate wasn’t one of them. We all got more than our share from him. Those of us who really cared about him would never dream of begrudging you something he gave willingly.”
    “So Henry’s...”
    “A suit,” Dory laughed. “He’s even got a politically correct briefcase to carry all the paperwork pertaining to all your politically correct investments. He doesn’t deal with anything that’s not eco-friendly self-sustaining and green.”
    They exited onto the Grand Central Parkway and minutes later pulled into the short-term parking at LaGuardia. In front of the terminal Dory turned to her and fluffed her hair, marched them arm-in-arm inside...sipped hot chocolates...people-watched and were watched in turn until the arrival of Henry’s flight was announced. Chelsea recognized a feeling of warmth...felt it in Doreen Patterson’s smile...her touch...the way she seemed to be so pleased to be there in her company...
    It almost felt like being with Charlie.

    When Henry appeared through the checkpoint at the arrival gate, Dory bounced a couple of times and waved at him; Chelsea walked up to him and took the briefcase out of his left hand, offering him her right she said:
    “Hi Henry I’m Chelsea and Dory says it’s okay if you stare at me.”
    Grinned impudently. Watched the neatly-bearded face grow a couple of shades more ruddy than it had been a moment before. Decided she would like him just fine.

8.

    They had dinner at the Palm Court in the Plaza Hotel, Henry taking a smiling Buddha-like satisfaction in showing them off in way-less-than-elegant dinner attire. Chelsea sensed a quiet rebel inside the three-piece suit.
    “You have t’let me pay,” she insisted. “It would make Charlie smile. We useta walk down here t’talk to the horses...and besides, if Jeff sees it on my credit card bill then he gets t’find out he finally did something right without me having to tell him he’s not as big an asshole as I thought he was.”
    Henry snorted into his cognac. Dory tried not to laugh. Chelsea realised she wasn’t near as lonely as she’d felt on Friday.

***

    When Henry pulled the Caddy up in front of Charlie’s place Dory got out to walk Chelsea inside...waved to Stokes who let them open the door on their own and won a stuck out tongue from Chelsea for his trouble.
    “Henry’s hooked,” said Dory. “He wants to know if you’re going to issue fan club badges or membership cards he wants t’be a founding member.”
    “So that means lots of hugs and good lovin’ for you tonight?”
    “Got all my fingers crossed,” she laughed, and then, seeing a small cloud pass over the sky blue eyes, “Just be patient, Chelsea. I promised. Remember that. We’ve still lots of ground to cover so you call me any time day or night for any reason at all...okay?”
    Chelsea swallowed and nodded. “Can I come up t’visit too?”
    “All you have t’do is tell me your on your way.”
    Chelsea nodded again and Dory leaned into her...kissed her forehead.
    “G’night, sweetheart, I’ll talk to you soon.”
    She watched her walk back to the car, slide in beside Henry...wave...and drive away. A voice behind her said, “They good people...and it’s good t’have you home, Miss Chelsea.”
    She turned to Jeremiah Stokes, said “Thank you Mister Stokes it’s really nice t’be home...”

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