Previously Bette : wow this is a nice place Helena : yes it is, it’s my favorite spot of the house. I always come here not only when I want to be creative but also when I’m feeling down or when I want to think about things Bette : I can’t blame you, this place immediately gives you all the inner peace you need. I see you made some drawings can I have a look at them? Helena : yes but they’re no good, I tried to work out some ideas I had in my head but I just wasn’t able to get them on paper Bette : well they are looking good to me so far. Next time I’ll be redecorating my house I know where to be Helena just gave Bette a faint smile. Bette : Helena are you all right? I mean when you called me earlier this week you sounded a little sad and even though you’re trying your very best to hide your feelings for me I can feel something is up. You can trust me Helena, talk to me. What’s wrong? NowHelena : the question is what isn’t wrong? I don’t know Bette I just get like this sometimes. I feel as if my life doesn’t belong to me, as if I’m constantly being controlled. Bette : who or what gives you that idea? Is it your mother? Helena : she’s part of it yes. All my life everything has been arranged for me; my parents decided to put me in boarding school because they were to busy doing whatever it was they were doing. Then when I graduated and wanted to go to college I couldn’t chose which one, oh no. Again they chose which college I was going to... Bette : I hope they at least let you study what you wanted? Helena : yes that’s about the only thing. They let me study architecture since it was my childhoods’ dream. After I graduated my father had already deceased, in the meanwhile, my mother pushed me into the Peabody foundation. She wanted me to learn everything so I could take over from her one day. But Bette that was so not what I wanted. I wanted to create things, design things bot being in a stuffy office whole day looking at figures until I got a headache. My entire life I have been told what to do, what to wear, where to go., who to date, who my friends would be .... I could never have my own opinion about anything ... Bette : yeah I can understand that and as far as I know Peggy ‘ what Peggy wants, Peggy gets....’ Helena (sighing) : exactly.... and then I met Christopher Bette: was your marriage an arranged marriage? Helena : Oh no not at all even though Christopher was a friend of my parents it was never an arranged marriage. I met him at one of the annual parties and I was so taken by his charms and of course my parents didn’t object because they knew him. When we got married and finally moved to our own house it was such a liberation for me you couldn’t imagine. After a while I told him about my dream and he didn’t object at all; He said that I definitely had to go for it and he even would back me up when I was going to tell my mother I no longer wanted to be CEO of the Peabody foundation. But then I got pregnant and everything changed again, all of a sudden Christopher wanted me to stay home and not go through with the projects I was intending to do. Bette : I guess that’s undestandable Helena, Tina stayed home as well in the beginning of her pregnancy. Helena : yes ok but my job wouldn’t be that hard and tiring. Of course he got every support of my mother cause she wanted nothing to happen to her first grandchild. Bette smiled imagining how Peggy must have been thrilled and very demanding at the same time. Helena : it drove me crazy just sitting in the house all day doing nothing, so I started drawing and creating ... Bette : I’m glad you found something to keep you busy Helena : but when Wilson got born everything changed of course. I was so in love with that little guy, I wanted to be with him all the time, Bette : yes I know what you mean. Helena : I was so happy Bette. I had everything I wanted a good husband, a nice house, an adorable baby but then my world collapsed.... Bette : what do you mean? Helena : my husband had to go on business trips a lot and that’s when I found out he was cheating on me |
