Helen Keller Really Lived: A Novel

Chapter Nine. “Not Okay”

Helen Keller Really Lived 285 Not Okay: A True Crime Story, by Selina Van Staal Chapter Nine “Not Okay” The morning after the night in Albany, Selina awoke, alone, in a room at the Ramada Plaza Inn. The date was the October 16, 2010, a turning point but unfortunately no turn was made. A note rested on the red-quilted bedspread, written in block print handwriting on a sheet of Ramada Plaza stationary: YOUR KEY CARD IS IN YOUR BACK JEAN POCKET—ON THE CHAIR. HOPE YOU’RE OK. I LEFT YOU SOME OXYCONTIN (ALSO IN YOUR POCKET). FRITZI 286 Elisabeth Sheffield No, Selina was not OK, or even okay. Okay being the correct spelling even though according to former English department secretary Dolores Van Staal, OK is an abbreviation for Oll Korrect. Also for Old Kinderhook, claimed Timor, who was always rooting around in etymologies like a pig looking for truffles. The choice bits that could be used to prove some lineage or another that all fed the same line of landed gentry or fat complacency with your own cultural command and socio-economic standing. Selina was not okay and had not been okay for quite some time. When you realize that you are not okay and have not been okay for quite some time, that is a call for introspection. But it is hard to look inward when all you want is to get out—out of your own head that feels like it is in a vise, tightening then releasing, tightening then releasing. Standing brought a wave of nausea so strong Selina tipped on her heels, almost falling back into the bed. That would not have been an unwelcome reversal. Even better to have fallen back into the bed such relief to rewind rewind speeding through the hot suffocation of sleep the stuporous ascent assisted by Fritzi and those two boys in their fedoras to your motel room the crouching on the cement in a puddle of steaming vomit hands holding your racked gut the floating naked alone in the heated pool watching Fritzi with that kid Aiden his hat Helen Keller Really Lived 287 bobbing between her legs her head thrown back laughing laughing like there was no tomorrow or yesterday for that matter the smell of semen mixed with chlorine the other one Dillan on a plastic chaise lounge with his hat tilted over his eyes drinking from a bottle of Jim beam after the boilermakers at Suzis bar Suzis with no apostrophe as if there were multiple suzis though the only other people there had been Dillan and Aiden two hipster youngsters in fedoras neither a day over twenty three and the bartender Jordan another boy toy who didn’t know that back in the early nineties suzis used to be called The Griffin a mythical animal with sharp claws that could seize you lift you up and carry you back to before Timor when you were still taking continuing education nursing classes at SUNY Albany getting by just fine on bartending when you still had a grip on things… Such relief it would be to rewind to shuttle back to the place before it all started to turn the pages back to the beginning and start again. But life is not a movie or a book! Life cannot be refilmed or rewritten or even arrested in one of the early chapters before everything began to go bad. Life only goes in one direction, which is a cliché but also true. Like something Lyndon would say. Lyndon who was now pregnant, and would either have a baby or more likely given her medical history, miscarry, but still would miscarry on, you could tell. Lyndon was a 288 Elisabeth Sheffield trooper. Picking up her jeans from the red upholstered armchair, Selina fumbled through the pockets for the Oxycontin. At the breakfast buffet in the ground floor restaurant called the Blue Cafe though there was nothing blue about it unless you counted the depressing atmosphere created by a sea of white cloth covered metal tables under an expanse of white ceiling tiles checkered with squares of fluorescent lights, Selina poured herself a glass of tepid pulpless orange juice. Over on the other side of the room was silver haired but young faced Fritzi with her back to the buffet and what looked to be those boys, Aiden and Dillan, still wearing their fedoras. Aiden...