Chapter 16
By mid-August, Helena’s art career was bigger than she ever could have dreamed.
She was working on three commissions, two for Nantucket locals and one for a guy in Manhattan who’d reached out after seeing the pieces Hilary Salt had purchased.
Helena had to get organized, setting up a calendar to structure her days and ensure she could get her paintings done by the time they needed to be shipped.
Like always, she very rarely left the house.
But unlike before, she found herself escaping the prison of her body and entering the fantastical worlds on her canvases.
Although it had grown incredibly hot this late in the summer season, Helena made sure to spend as much time as she could on the patio, watching the orange sunlight dance through the waves.
She had groceries delivered twice per week: fresh fruits and vegetables that she usually ate on the table outside.
She was tanner than she’d ever been, including the years when she’d been a ragtag southern child, running through the streets of Orangeburg.
And privately, she’d begun to research various short-term treatments for her liver disease: pills and things that might give her worlds of energy during the time she had left.
Still, she had no friends. But Helena was too distracted by the windfall of her beautiful new life to notice she was lonely.
“Helena, hey.” Elliott’s voice yanked Helena back through time.
She sat down at the stool she kept near her easel, twirling her paintbrush. “Hey there.” She hoped she sounded light and easy.
“How are you?” Elliott asked.
“I’m good, actually.” Helena was surprised to feel how true that was.
“That’s wonderful to hear. Actually, I’m reaching out because.
Well, it’s a funny thing.” He laughed. “Meg’s on social media all the time.
She’s obsessive about it. And she showed me some artwork?
Something that maybe you did? We visited your site and checked out your other content.
It’s really pretty good, Helena. I mean, you’re onto something there. ”
Helena felt crushed between two worlds: annoyance and joy that he’d noticed, that he’d been impressed. She hated that she still felt that way when it came to him. It was a hard habit to break.
“It’s been a crazy time,” Helena said finally, her voice sweeter than she wanted it to be. “I just started posting online, trying to find more followers, and it all sprang from there.”
“The modern world,” Elliott said.
“Yes.” Helena blinked toward the ocean.
“From the looks of things online, you’ve moved?” Elliott offered.
Helena considered Elliott’s renewed interest in her life after so many years of silence strange. She’d literally been in Orangeburg, a ten-minute drive from anything, including Elliott, and he hadn’t bothered to check in. He hadn’t even sent flowers when her parents died.
“I’m up north, yeah,” she said, although she remembered that she’d mentioned Nantucket numerous times in her posts. If he wanted to, he could probably find her. A shiver went down her spine.
“It’s beautiful,” Elliott said. “I’m pretty jealous. I mean, you got out of Orangeburg.”
“I did.” Helena was feeling uneasy. She got to her feet and entered the house, where she sat in the shadows and waited for Elliott to get to the point. “What’s this about, Elliott?”
Elliott laughed. “Well, I mean. I wanted to know how you are, I guess. I didn’t like thinking that you ran out of Orangeburg—your home—because I told you about the baby.”
Helena rolled her eyes into the back of her head. “I’ve always wanted to leave. You know that.”
“I do!” He said. “I do. But the thing is.” And here, he seemed to build intensity, pausing for emotional weight.
“You remember all those years we were married? You weren’t bringing in very much money.
You remember, I guess. I mean, I set you up with a few art clients.
A few dealers. But it was always my money.
Remember? My money paying our bills. And now, it’s all you.
Ten thousand dollars for a single painting.
I saw that’s what one of them on your sight costs.
And how many hours do you spend on a painting like that? Six? Eight?”
Helena’s palms were sweaty. Her gut twisted, telling her to hang up on him.
But another, sick part of her was curious. Where was he taking this conversation?
“It’s been remarkable how much people like them,” Helena said. “From what I read, I could ask for a whole lot more.”
“The thing is, I was let go from my job earlier this summer,” Elliott continued. “It came as a total shock, especially given all that I’ve done for them. You remember how much I worked.”
Helena searched herself for any pity for Elliott and found none. Zilch.
She also understood he was reaching out because he wanted something from her.
He thought, for some insane reason, that she would be willing to give him anything of what she’d earned.
She felt sick with this fact, sick with the idea that he still thought he could manipulate her so long after he’d cheated on her and left her for one of their friends.
“I think I’d better be going,” Helena said. “It was nice talking with you.”
“Wait, Helena,” Elliott snarled, his tone entirely different now. “You know you owe me. You know I gave everything to you while we were together. You’d be nothing without me.”
But before he could finish his diatribe, Helena hung up on him and blocked his number. Her hands were shaking. She let out a cry and threw her phone across the living room.
A few hours later, Helena was out walking.
It had been a long time since she’d left the house for this long, a long time since she’d let herself go and go without any destination in mind.
She’d felt out of her mind with grief and anger, and she’d packed a little bag of water and snacks and her phone and stepped out onto the beach.
Now, sweat ran in snakes down her back and steamed her neck.
She stopped on a beach she didn’t recognize to drink the rest of her water and put her feet in the ocean.
When she looked at her phone, she realized that she’d already walked more than two miles from her house.
It felt surreal and stupid. But she’d been so angry with Elliott, so enraged at the nerve of that guy.
They hadn’t been married in years. Did he really think she was weak enough to give him some of the money she’d earned? For his new girlfriend? For their child?
Although Helena had recently been feeling better than she had in years, the walking in the heat and through the sand had nearly destroyed her. Her heart thrashed in her chest. She raised her water bottle to gaze longingly at the few drops that remained. None of it would sustain her.
She suddenly felt like she was going to pass out: from exhaustion, from loneliness, from sorrow.
She had half a mind to call Matteo, right from this beach. She’d put his number in her phone, of course, she had. But she hadn’t considered calling it till now, when she felt so awful that he probably wouldn’t recognize her anyway.
Staggering back toward the trail, back toward home, Helena realized that she probably wouldn’t make it.
There was a road not far from here. She could see it, its asphalt shining.
She wondered if she should limp over there and try to flag someone down.
She wished there was someone at this beach, someone who would notice her distress. But she was alone.
It was during this high-stress moment, this chaos, that she remembered she had health insurance.
She didn’t have to let herself suffer just because she couldn’t pay to take care of herself any longer.
As another moment of unsteadiness came over her, as her stomach tightened with nausea, she called an ambulance, telling the operator on the line where she was and what she was feeling.
“I’m going to pass out,” she heard herself say, before she finally did.
Helena came to when EMT workers hauled her onto a gurney and carried her to the ambulance waiting on the road.
She felt groggy, and everything felt unreal.
The EMT workers had faces she almost recognized, as though she’d gone to high school with them, as though she’d nearly forgotten them in some long-ago past. But she knew that was just in her overheated mind.
During the ride to the hospital, she mumbled to the EMTs that she had a liver disease, that she hadn’t been taking care of herself correctly. “I can’t take care of myself all the time,” she mumbled.
The EMT workers sprang into action, hooking her up with an IV drip that relieved her anxiety and plunged her in and out of consciousness.
When she came to again, she was in a hospital room, hooked up to several machines, her body exhausted, her eyes half open.
A nurse came in to check on her, smiling gently when she realized that Helena was half-awake.
“You’re going to be just fine, honey,” she told Helena. “The doctor will be in shortly.”
Helena’s heart filled with hope that the doctor in question would be Bethany, that kind-hearted woman who’d gone out of her way to suggest a free consultation. “Tell her that things have changed,” Helena mumbled to the nurse. “Tell her that I want to try.”
She knew she wasn’t making any sense. The nurse patted her shoulder again, then retreated, leaving Helena alone.
But the doctor who came in was a man, rather than a woman. Helena couldn’t hide her disappointment. After she’d told the doctor—briefly—about her liver disease, she asked, “But where is Bethany Sutton?”
The doctor looked taken aback. “She’s out, I’m afraid,” he said.
“But maybe I could see her tomorrow?” Helena suggested.
“I’m going to be your doctor going forward,” the man said. “But I can give Dr. Sutton a call and talk to her about your previous history together.”
Helena felt like a child, demanding things and people that didn’t matter. “It’s okay,” she said gently.
“I see that you’re on a list for a liver transplant,” the doctor went on.
“It’s a pipe dream,” Helena said. She didn’t add that she hadn’t had health insurance till now.
“Until then,” the doctor began, “we’re going to need to think about the medications you’re on, what you’re eating, and how you’re staying healthy.
We’ll have to closely monitor your MELD score.
We want your body as healthy as possible before it receives the liver transplant.
” He said a few things that went in and out of Helena’s ear, things that she knew didn’t pertain to her, as she probably would never receive a liver transplant.
But when the doctor left her to fall back asleep again, the nurse came back in, her eyes buggy. “Honey, I just realized! You’re that artist I love on social media!”
Helena laughed as she drifted away. It was funny to be recognized as a minor “celebrity” so late in life. It was funny to feel at the end of it all, yet live in the hearts and minds of so many.