THE PROFESSIONALS

There was a time in Helena Park’s life when she was completely content being silent. Not having to overreact or show off or start a conversation to fill in awkward silences. She usually left that to other people, one of her more charismatic friends, and, those who were so uncomfortable with peace and quiet that they felt they had to pipe in every few moments just to see if anyone on the receiving end was home. There was a time in Helena’s life when she believed in her ability to create something through what most people would deem as artistic expression, whether it was drawing a portrait of Lou Reed off an album cover or writing poetry at intervals that just spilled out of her when writing journal entries, which she had kept starting at age 12. She found the journal a healthy respite from her depression and hopelessness that had set in rather early on in her life. Had she misunderstood the latch key childhood and her parents’ unhealthy inherent narcissism and preoccupation with their own relationship believing it was neglect? As she grew older, that line became less clear.

When she met Tom Overton, it was no accident. They were brought together in a situation where Helena knew of her circumstances quite well. There was no party, no squalid need for a drunken encounter coated as one misguided night of romance, no guilty parties the next morning with sloppy morning whispers in her ear, no waiting to use a messy bathroom while she surveyed the equally putrid living quarters around her, scattered with cigarettes stubbed out messily in ashtrays, beer and liquor bottles, clothes strewn on the floor in a sordid array of carelessness. Those were days long gone, a time when she found herself running in those circles. She remembered as a teenager walking around her suburban neighborhood with two good friends smoking pot and sitting near the Mormon church around the corner from her house, the irony lost on them as they laughed, their voices cutting into the quiet, cold night violently like birds singing at a funeral. They had looked up at the dark twilight sky, black as ink, dotted with white stars, marveling at its expansiveness. The nights of her youth at that time were so still it scared her. She was afraid to disturb it, yet she wanted to scream and yell at the shrill complacence. There is a sound to silence, she remembered noting, just like there is a sound to sex, when both partners become reticent, too engaged in their actions to acknowledge just how possessed they are.

Those were days long gone, and every year that passed, she grew more and more distant from her days shrouded in youthful idealism, foolish dreams that made her believe she might become something “big.” Still, she drifted in and out of reality, never quite disconnecting from the time of her careless youth.

The large one-story house seemed flat, planted squarely in the middle of neatly trimmed pools of grass. Her house was the only one on the block within miles that had real grass. Shortly after moving in to this tract home, her father had stared out at the front yard, standing staunchly on the front porch. The lawn was nothing but brown dirt waiting to be dressed and adorned into greenery, so bare, it begged for landscaped foliage to brighten its sad forlorn mood. And so, her father made the decision to plant real grass seedlings because he wanted his lawn to be real. As the grass began to grow, Helena had noted its patchy, shorn, uneven appearance, and looked to the neighbors’ lawns, their grass so neat and full and green like slightly overgrown putting greens. The other houses had that fake grass, the kind they rolled out onto those bare dirt floors. A concrete walkway curved its way to the front porch and front door. Plots filled with dirt and bushes were placed on either side. Large granite-like rocks floated among the bushes.

Inside, Korean artifacts peppered the home – polished wooden chests with old-fashioned brass locks, stuffed silk ornately embroidered butterflies with long strands of silk string hung on the walls. The living room was furnished with black polished lacquered furniture with designs cut from shell and jade and coral. Scroll paintings of a face of a tiger, fierce and determined, descending down a mountain with his strong body in tow. Red chiseled coral vases. Wooden statuettes of a traditional Korean man and woman. Large stuffed traditional dolls wearing costumes. Their hair, black slick thread shaped closely to their styrofoam heads, large painted eyes, tiny sweetheart red lips, staring out into the distance looking peaceful and content.

Her parents were travelers, and they brought home all kinds of souvenirs from all over the world. Her mother was an avid collector. The house was littered with collectors spoons from Europe, England, Russia, Asia. Wedgewood, shot glasses, mugs, candy tins bearing the faces of Prince Charles and Princess Diane. Shelves and display cases featured all kinds of little knick knacks from afar.

Judith Park often accompanied her husband, Mike, on his conferences abroad. Pictures of their travels hung on the walls, in front of the fountains in Italy, on the mountain tops in Korea, wind blowing their clothes and hair about, in front of rose gardens in England, standing in the snow in Russia bundled up so thickly with coats, a hat and scarf, they looked almost unrecognizable.

They were always having parties, Helena remembered. And traveling, leaving her with sitters. But on their return, they brought back an abundance of gifts, clothes, toys, souvenirs. It became a routine – her father, a professor of economics, went to conferences and her mother went along with him, and she would await their return and anticipate the gifts. That’s what her young mind sped to, the gifts. She remembered a porcelain blue and white windmill from Holland that made music when the windmill was turned. Her little cousin, a terror at age five, had grabbed it and smashed it into the floor, breaking it into pieces.

Her parents had tried their best to give Helena everything they thought she should have. When they moved to that larger home in the northwest suburbs, in a more upscale neighborhood, they had a pool built in the backyard, a new puppy, and she had learned to ride her bike. She used to roller skate in the alleyway in the backyard on the side of the house. It was only a short distance, but she enjoyed strapping on her skates as soon as she got home from school to go that short distance, back and forth, until she got bored with it and flung off the skates, running inside to occupy herself with other things. She sometimes skated around the pool, though she knew it was dangerous. She got excited at the prospect of danger, skimming the corners of its sensible rectangular shape, getting as close to the edge as possible, her heart racing as she went around the deep end. She imagined herself slipping and falling into the cool water and sinking quickly as the heavy steel connecting the wheels to her feet dragged her down to the bottom. Would she be able to bend down in the water and untie the laces in time to release them and swim up to the surface? Or would she struggle and flail, submitting to the heavy pull downward, panicking, as she slowly drowned?

When she was 13, her parents had taken her on summer vacation to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Mike Park had made it a point to visit the Native American reservations in the area. Helena had never seen such disparate poverty. Old men, women and children sat outside tin shacks; cloths and blankets covered open windows. Helena had stared at the faces, withered like worn brown leather, their eyes sullen and empty with exhaustion. They had stopped and bought some pottery from one of the women, but when her mother tried to take a picture, the woman became angry. Mike Park had told her later: “They don’t want to be seen as spectacles, they’re human, they’re just living their lives. Why should we want to document them like they’re some kind of zoo animal?” They had driven away in silence, still with a kind of respect or sadness, Helena wasn’t quite sure which. She would always remember that trip. The pottery they had purchased sat on a glass table in the living room that would always remind her.

They had also visited the petrified wood forest. She would marvel at the swirled yellow and blue colors of the petrified wood she had collected that she placed on a shelf in her bedroom. Their family vacations had always amused her. They had taken another trip to Vancouver for the World Expo, and it was somehow comical planning the trip and then sitting innocently in the back of the car as her father insisted on driving these long distances instead of flying. The hours dragged on as she stared at the back of her parents’ heads. Those vacations were supposed to be fun, but they always turned out to be somehow educational, and somehow, like work.

Helena ducked under the awning and closed her umbrella, shaking off the rain before stepping into the revolving door that led to her office.

As senior supervising consultant, a title she recently got promoted to just within the last few months, she was enjoying her time being a higher-up, with all its privileges – long lunches with the other managers, the weekends out of town, the clean and fresh hotel rooms she got to have special treatment in. Most of all, she loved training others, those just hired in the company, those that could contribute in meaningful ways, making the company better and more competitive.

Ever since the promotion, she decided it best to get more serious in life, and not wither away being stuck in a cubicle taking orders from others and playing office politics. She still had to deal with those kinds of things, but she had a clearer idea of who she was now, and others relied on her, were even dependent on her, to get the job done and to do it well.

She arrived at her desk and plunked down her briefcase. She wiped her dark hair back with both her hands and straightened her suit jacket, which hung well on her lithe figure. Then she checked her messages.

All of them were about matters already taken care of, just a follow up or two needed to be done – except for one.

They were looking to hire a new junior consultant in their satellite office in Chicago. The message was from her manager who told her she needed to fly out immediately and take care of hiring. They were already in the process of taking applications, but the interview and hiring process were to be her sole responsibility.

She sat down and bit her lip. She was to fly out by tomorrow. She was excited to see applicants, but she had just returned from Chicago and wanted some time to rest. So much for that. She prepared herself mentally and motivated herself with a reward upon her return to Los Angeles, a trip to a day spa.

She picked up the phone and asked her secretary Anastasia to book the flight.