Free Helen Hath No Fury by Gillian Roberts Page B

meditation, a necessary one.
    Clary sighed raggedly. Then she dabbed at her eyes and looked at Susan. “Know what? Helen was a fan of yours. In her book—the book that had the note also had a lot about your Polly Baker story.”
    “Polly? Really?” Susan looked delighted.
    Clary nodded. “Helen must really have loved it. I mean writing it down, wanting to remember it.”
    “Speaking of writing things down,” Tess said. “I thought of something we could do, something that would be nice. I’m assuming we’re all concerned about Helen’s daughter, and that I’m not the only one who feels useless in a situation like this. Gretchen doesn’t know me well, and she’d be uncomfortable if I went to talk to her or spend time. But a letter might be different. My mother died when I was around Gretchen’s age, and a few of her friends wrote down their memories of her. It doesn’t sound like much, but there have been so many times I reread those letters….” She let the sentence dangle.
    “Well, but—” Louisa was expert at objecting.
    “I’ll find a pretty scrapbook,” Tess said, interrupting her. “We can put all the letters in it. Just write on one side of the page, is all. Whoever wants to—no obligations, but if you’re going to do it, do it as soon as possible. I think Gretchen could use immediate gestures of kindness.”
    “What kind of things do you want in it?” Louisa sounded put-upon. “I’m not exactly a writer, you know.”
    Tess was the calmest person I knew. I don’t know if this was part of her professional training, or if it camenaturally, but where others rush to fill silence and say anything—and by
others
, I mean myself, of course—Tess waited while you could almost hear her thinking. What I found amazing is that almost always, her listeners were patient and did not themselves rush in to fill that space. “An anecdote,” she now said. “An opinion, an appreciation, a thought about life, why you’ll miss her, a photo. Whatever good things her memory triggers in you. Gretchen’s an adolescent; she lives in another country. Someday she’ll want to know her mother better as a person. She’ll want to see her with adult eyes. That’s all—we share our perceptions.”
    “I didn’t know her that well,” Louisa said. Louisa probably didn’t waste her mental storage space on good or happy memories. She needed all of it for her world-class collection of grievances. “I saw her once a month at book club. And at my sister’s social events. And felt her presence, because of the preschool board she was on.” She pursed her mouth, and to her probable dismay, nobody encouraged her to talk about the heartache of not getting her kid into the right preschool. I knew she wanted to begin a sentence with, “I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but—”
    “Can we have the memories, the letters, in by the weekend?” I asked. “I’ll be glad to help out, Tess.”
    “What do we do?”
    I shrugged. “We should have a central collection point. It could be Tess—”
    “We’re at the shore,” Tess said. “Have to get the house ready for summer. Replace the rusted and the rotting.” She smiled at the mess she implied she would find. “However,” she continued, “I could get the scrapbook and my letter here before we leave Friday, and if you wanted to, the whole shebang could be ready by Monday.”
    “That’s when they’re talking about a memorial service,” Clary said. “If the body’s released by then, which it should be.”
    Two people suddenly realized they were leaving town the next day and wouldn’t be able to get anything down on paper beforehand. It looked as if Tess’s idea was going to be stillborn.
    “Wait a minute,” Louisa said. “Just one minute. Forget the book.”
    “But—”
    “Let’s say it. A collective memorial. Right now. All together. We don’t need a scrapbook. Do you have a tape recorder? We could get it all down—”
    I was horrified to