When Heaven Weeps (18 page)

Jan just nodded and listened to her, wondering what this childhood fright had to do with the woman sitting before him now.

“That was when my mom got sick. The doctors never could figure out what it was, but one day she was just sick. At first it was just throwing up and being weak, so that I had to take care of her. And then she started acting really strange. I didn't know it then, but she'd started using acid. Acid and heroin. And the stuff wasn't everywhere back then. You know where she got it? Peter! The creep from my school! Peter was supplying my mother with drugs!”

“Peter. The one who was following you home,” Jan said. “How did you know it was him?”

“I came in one afternoon—I was out getting some groceries—and he was there, in the house, selling her dope.”

“What did he do?”

“Nothing. I think he wanted to get caught. I threw him out, of course. But by then my mom was a zombie. If she didn't have drugs in her system, she was puking from her sickness, and if she did have drugs, she was out to lunch. And the kid wouldn't go away. He was always there, feeding my mom her drugs and staring at me. I started using within a few months, after I pulled out of school. We ran out of money about a year later. It all went for the drugs.”

“You lost it all? Just like that?” She had cared for her mother too, Janjic thought. Just as Jan had cared for his own mother before the war in Sarajevo.

“Peter was robbing us blind. I never gave in to him; I want you to know that. The whole thing was about his demented obsession to make me his girl.” Helen shifted her eyes to the wall. “My mom died from an overdose. The way I figure it, Peter killed her with his drugs. The day after my mom's burial he and I had a huge blowup. I hit him over the head with a two-by-four and took off. Never went back. We were dead broke anyway. Honestly, I think I might've killed him.” She grinned and shrugged her shoulders.

“Killed him?” Jan said. “You never saw him again?”

“Never. I hitched a ride to New York that same day. Never heard a thing. Either way, if I did kill him, I figured he had it coming. One way or another he'd killed my mom and trashed my life.”

She looked up at them with her deep blue eyes, searching for a nod of approval. But it wasn't approval that Jan felt sweeping through his bones. It was pity. It was a biting empathy for this poor child. He couldn't understand the emotions in their entirety, but he couldn't deny them either.

“How old were you?”

“Fifteen.”

“You see, Janjic,” Ivena said, “she's a child of the war as well.”

“You're right. I'm so sorry, Helen. I had no idea.”

Helen shifted in her seat. “Relax. It's not so bad. It could be a lot worse.”

“Poor child,” Ivena said. “You have never been loved properly.”

Helen straightened. “Sure I have. Love is the only thing I've had my fill of. They love me and they leave me. Or I leave them. Honestly, I do
not
need your sympathy.” She held up a hand. “Please, I don't do sympathy well.”

Neither Jan nor Ivena responded. They'd both seen enough of the wounded to know that they all needed sympathy. Especially those who had persuaded themselves they did
not
need it. But it wasn't a gift that could be forced.

“So how did you return to Atlanta?” Jan asked.

“I came back six months ago. But that's another story. Drugs and love don't always mix so well, trust me. Let's just say I needed to get out of New York, and Atlanta seemed as good a choice as any.”

“And Glenn?” Jan asked.

Helen set her glass down and turned it slowly. “Glenn. Yeah, well, I met Glenn a while back at a party. He likes to throw these big bashes. Glenn is . . . bad.” She swallowed. “I mean he's really bad. People think of him as the powerful city councilman; that his money comes from real estate . . .” She shook her head. “Not really. It comes from drugs. Problem is, anybody who crosses him ends up hurt. Or dead.”

“And have I crossed him already?” Jan asked.

“No. I don't think so. This was my choice. I left him. It had nothing to do with you. Besides, he's got no clue who you are.”

“Except that you came in my car. Except that you're now in Ivena's house.”

She looked at him but didn't offer an opinion.

“And he's your . . . boyfriend, right?”

Her eyes widened briefly. “No, I wouldn't put it that way. He puts me up in this place of his. But no. I mean no, not anymore. Absolutely not. Nobody's gonna hit me and think they can get away with it.”

“No,” Jan said. “Of course you're right.” Heat flared up his back. Who could strike such a person?

Karadzic could,
a small voice snickered. He shook his head at the thought.

“Helen would like to stay with me for a while,” Ivena said. “I have told her”— she looked at Jan—“that I would accept nothing less. If there's any danger, then God will help us. And we're no strangers to danger.”

“Of course. Yes, you should stay here where it's safe. And perhaps Ivena can buy you some new clothes tomorrow. I'll pay, of course. It's the least I can do. We will put our ministry funds to good use.”

“You will trust two women with your bank account?” Ivena asked with a raised brow.

“I would trust you with my life, Ivena.”

“Yes, of course. But your money?”

“Money's nothing. You've said so a thousand times, dear.”

Ivena turned to Helen with a sly smile. “There is my first insight, young woman. Always downplay the value of money; it will make it much easier for him to hand it over.”

They laughed, glad for the reprieve.

Jan left the house an hour later, his head buzzing from the day.

God had touched his heart for Helen's sake, he decided. Maybe because she was an outcast as he himself once was. His odd enchantment with her certainly couldn't be natural.

It had been God, although God had never touched him in such a specific way before. If only his whole ministry were filled with such direct impressions. He could touch a contract, say, and wait for a surge of current to fill his arms. If it didn't, he would not sign.
Ha!
He could pick up a phone and know if the person on the other end was to bode well for the ministry. He could take Karen's hand and . . . Goodness, now there was a thought.

Maybe he'd imagined the whole thing. Perhaps his emotions had gotten the best of him and caused some kind of hallucinogenic reaction, tripping him back to the weeping in Bosnia; another kind of war-trauma flashback.

But no, it had been too clear. Too real.

He drove the Cadillac toward Antoine's where he'd agreed to meet Karen for dessert. And what should he tell her of this day? Of Helen? Nothing. Not yet. He would sleep on this business of Helen. There was plenty to talk about without muddying the waters with a strange, beautiful junkie named Helen. There was the engagement and the wedding date. There was talk of love and children. The movie deal, the book, the television appearances—all of it was enough to fill hours of talk by Antoine's soft lights.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“What is love? Love is kind and patient and always enduring.

Love is kisses and smiles. It is warmth and ecstasy.

Love is laughter and joy.

But the greatest part of love is found in death.

No greater love hath any man.”

The Dance of the Dead, 1959

IVENA MEANDERED through her kitchen at nine the next morning, humming the tune from “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.” Helen still slept in the tiny sewing room down the hall. Poor girl must have been exhausted. What a sweet treasure she was, though. Abused and dragged down life's roughest paths to be sure, but so very sweet. Today she would take Janjic's signed checks—he'd given them five—and shower Helen with a little love.

Ivena turned one of four taps by the greenhouse door and the overhead misters hissed inside. She opened the door. The musty smell of dirt mixed with flower scent always seemed to strengthen with the first wetting.

She'd shown Helen the garden yesterday evening and the flowers seemed to have calmed her. Ivena had known then, seeing the spindly gray stalks of her daughter's rosebush, that it was for all practical purposes dead, despite the strange green shoot at its base. She was still having difficulty remembering if she had—

“Huh?” Ivena caught her breath and stared at the dead bush.

But it wasn't dead! Or was it? Green snaked up through the branches; vines wrapped around the rose stalks and spread over the plant.

Ivena stepped forward, barely breathing. It looked as though a weed had literally sprung up overnight and taken over the rosebush! But that was impossible!

The bush had seven main branches, each one as black and lifeless as they'd been yesterday. But now the green vines ran around each one in eerie symmetry. And they all came from the base of the plant; from the one shoot that had been grafted in.

But you did not graft that shoot, Ivena.

Yes, I must have. I just don't remember it.

Ivena reached her hand out to the strange new plant and ran a finger along its stalk. How had it grown so quickly? It had appeared yesterday, no more than four inches in length and now it ran the height of the plant! The skin was very similar to that of a healthy rose stalk, but without thorns. A woody vine.

“My goodness, what on earth do we have here?” Ivena whispered to herself. Maybe it was this vine that had killed her rosebush. A parasite. Perhaps she should cut it off in the hopes of saving the rose.

No, the rose was already dead.

“Ivena.”

She whirled around. Helen stood in the doorway, her hair tangled, still dressed in her pajamas.

“Well good morning, my dear.” Ivena walked toward her, shielding the bush. “I would ask you how you slept, but I think I have my answer already.”

“Very good, thank you.”

“Wonderful.” They stepped into the kitchen and Ivena closed the door to the greenhouse behind her. “Now you'll need some food. You can't shop properly on an empty stomach.”

HELEN WATCHED Ivena with an odd mixture of amusement and admiration. The Bosnian woman wore her gray hair quite shaggy. She held her head confidently but gently, like her words. Both she and Janjic shared one stunning trait, Helen thought. They both had eyes that smiled without letting up, bringing on pre-mature wrinkles around their sockets. If there were other human beings with Ivena's unique blend of quirks and sincerity, Helen had never met them. It was impossible not to like her. In the woman's presence the small voice that called Helen back to the drugs sounded very faint. Although it was still there—yes it was, like a whisper in a hollow chamber.

They ate eggs for breakfast, and then readied themselves for a few hours of American indulgence, as Ivena put it. She seemed amused by the five checks she waved about. When Helen asked her why, she just smiled. “It's Janjic's money,” she said. “He has far too much.”

Helen insisted Ivena take her far from the central city district—with Glenn's men on the prowl, anything within a five-mile radius of the Twin Towers was out of the question. Even here it took Helen a good hour to satisfy herself that the chances of Glenn finding her were nearly nonexistent.

Ivena drove them to a quaint shopping district on the east side, where most of the merchants spoke with heavy European accents. They parked Ivena's Volkswagen Bug on one end of the district and made their way through the shops on either side of the street.

“Honestly, Ivena, I really love the halter top. It's so . . . fitting, don't you think?”
Glenn will love it.

“Yes, Helen. Perhaps,” Ivena returned with a raised brow. “But the red blouse, it is a lady's choice.”

“I don't know, it looks a little old for me, don't you think?”
He'd kill me if I wore that thing!

“Nonsense, dear. It's fabulous!”

They held the choices up to Helen's neckline, each arguing their case; trying not to be too forceful. A moment of silence ended the debate. It was then that Ivena, the final judge, issued her verdict. “We'll get both.”

“Thank you, Ivena. I swear I'll wear them both.”
Glenn . . .

Get a grip, Helen. Glenn's history.

“Yes, I'm sure you will, dear.”

And so the day went, from shop to shop. With halters and blouses; with jeans and skirts; with T-shirts and dresses; with tennis shoes and pumps; with everything except for lingerie. In the end they spent a thousand dollars. But it was just money, Ivena said, and Jan had altogether too much of the stuff. They walked and they laughed and then they spent another hundred dollars on accessories.

The beauty salon presented a challenge because two choices simply couldn't be made without resorting to wigs, and Helen would have nothing to do with wigs, despite Ivena's urging. Helen favored the short sporty look. It was sexy, she said. “Sexy? And you think a full-bodied woman's look is not sexy?” Ivena countered. The beautician tried to interject her opinion, but Ivena kept cutting her short. “It's Helen's hair,” she finally announced. “Do as she wishes.” And she retreated to a waiting chair. Helen walked out wearing a big smile and her hair just below the ears in a cropped style that even Ivena had to admit was “quite attractive.”

Three times Helen thought about the life she'd left, and each time she concluded that this time she would stay straight if it killed her. She couldn't ignore the feeling of butterflies that accompanied the brief memories—a yearning for the drug's surge of pleasure—but watching Ivena carry on about a dress, she could not imagine crawling back to her old life.

It was three o'clock by the time they returned to Ivena's flower-laden home. It was four by the time Helen had wrapped up her fashion show, displaying every possible combination their purchases allowed and then some. Ivena looked on, sipping at her iced tea and boldly proclaiming how beautiful Helen was with each new outfit.