Helen Keller Really Lived: A Novel

Chapter Eight. “Life is Not a Lab”

Helen Keller Really Lived 263 Not Okay: A True Crime Story, by Selina Van Staal Chapter Eight “Life is Not a Lab” Only once as an adult had Selina Van Staal spent a prolonged period of time with a member of her own sex. Okay there was a female roommate or two. However the arrangement was always for convenience not company, a mutual place to crash or whatnot, without questions. The one exception being the fall after Selina’s sophomore year of college, when her mother sent Selina and her sister Cara to Europe. For an entire month. Even though Dolores Van Staal could no longer afford Selina’s tuition at SUNY on her 264 Elisabeth Sheffield secretary’s salary, receiving zero assistance from Selina’s dad Dean, who had driven off to Florida (the second to last time) one winter morning in a 1984 Airstream Limited, after cleaning out the family savings account. But going to Europe for a month or even six was what all the professors’ kids did, coming back with nude beach tans, unwashed hair and backpacks infested with hostel bed bugs. I want you both to have this beautiful, life-changing experience, Dolores said as she handed Selina and Cara round trip tickets from La Guardia to Charles De Gaulle and four week Eurail passes, all charged to Dolores’ credit card, but no money for food or hotels. I know that you will take care of each other, she added. What did she mean by that? Maybe that shoplifting is easier with two people: one can steal a baguette while the other is talking to the person at the register. Cara could do the talking because she had taken two years of French. For the first two and a half weeks Selina and Cara lived on money they had made over the summer back home, waiting tables and such. It was not a cushy time. Still, each night they could afford narrow bunks in a youth hostel or a hotel designated by one bed in Go Europe, one bed meaning the cheapest. And during the day they had enough lira, francs, deutschmarks or whatever, for a block of cheese or a stick of salami, bread and a bottle of wine, which when you are always a little hungry is enough Helen Keller Really Lived 265 to open your mind to a threesome with a young Australian trust funder whose looks are only so so. The threesome was two free nights in a four bed hotel on the Rhine, though there was only one bed, one large bed with smooth white sheets a white down comforter and French doors to a balcony that overlooked the water. Also several substantial dinners in das restaurant downstairs as well as a trattoria tucked beneath the ramparts of the Kastell. Always a little hungry but open minded the sisters stretched their limited funds all the way to Copenhagen where they arrived stiff and dirty on a Saturday morning at the Hovedbanegård with only 70 kroner, or about ten dollars. That was just enough to pay for one bunk in a youth hostel near the train station and two yoghurts. Cara started to cry. When a person with whom you have shared tough times starts to cry, it is easy to join in. Especially when that person is your older sister and in theory a person whose lead you should follow. Cara being older by four years. It is easy to join in the crying which after all can be a kind of comfort and even, with two attractive young women, an alluring scenario. That may be what Cara had in mind: fresh tear smeared faces pressed cheek to damp cheek soft shoulders heaving in tandem arms wrapped in mutual embrace. What man especially a fatherly type with hopefully a bit of fatherly dough could resist such dual distress? But you might also attract the 266 Elisabeth Sheffield attention of the police. One of whom Selina had already spotted—a stout woman in a navy skirt suit with gold buttons lurking by a kringle stand. Foreigners without funds tend to get sent home. It would be a shame to shorten the trip. Yes it would be, Cara sniffed as she dried her face with one of the two Pakistani scarves (Cara’s was green and white, Selina’s red and white) they had purchased in Kiel, because the...