What Helen Nelson Did
She read Anne Tyler faithfully. And People—but only when she was getting her hair done.
She bought casual clothes at Bergdorf’s, on the second floor, suits and evening wear from designers and boutiques.
She had her body tended to—hair, nails, massage, tucks here and there, an unsightly mole removed.
When Jack died she sold the Westchester house and moved to Sutton Place.
A two-bedroom; nothing really grand.
She didn’t miss driving, she loved taking cabs and trains, private cars when she thought the trains would be crowded.
She lived well and she enjoyed her life, traveling in spring and fall, summering on Fisher’s Island, loving her family and being loved by them—
although, as one daughter-in-law put it, almost any woman of Helen’s class and station would have served as well as she.
Helen laughed when the remark came back to her, and she repeated it to several friends who also laughed.
But the remark festered over time. It got after her. Diana was the smartest of Helen’s three daughters-in-law, the least conventional, and Helen kept resisting the urge not to leave Diana the promised pearls. She could leave Diana the wizzly garnet earrings. The chipped topaz ring. Great-grandmother’s jet bracelet.
But no, Helen would not get anywhere being mean and vengeful. However,
she wasn’t getting anywhere trying not to act like her friends. Her classmates at Smith. The women with whom she’d entered the Junior League.
What on earth could a woman of her class and station do to change? To show that she had changed? To distinguish herself from the herd? And still be tasteful?
As it turned out, tasteful had to go. Insofar as Sutton Place was concerned. And Fisher’s Island.
Helen took up yodeling. Rather, she went back to yodeling, way far back, all the way to grammar school in Canton, Ohio, where little Helen’s yodeling brought down the house every spring.
It just happened, it was something she did in the backyard one day, and her father liked it so she kept it up until she got really good, until she could
yodel “Lady of Spain” and the first movement of Tchiakowsky’s piano concerto and “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” always the finale of the James A. Garfield School spring pageant.
Then Helen hit puberty, became beautiful and acquired the desire to be tasteful, whereupon the rest of her life took over.
And, as she looked back on it later, almost wiped her out.
She had always looked younger than she was. With a few more tucks and adjustments, plus a lot of great makeup, she contrived to look fifty.
Her career took off.
An appearance in a country show at the 92 nd Street Y led to a gig with a band in the Village. Springsteen caught the act and asked her to do backup on a new album. Then she opened for him in Philadelphia.
From there, as they say, the rest was history, mainly at The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. In polka dots and red high heels.
But you look like Daisy Mae! Diana cried when Helen showed her the outfit.
Diana! she responded. Thank you! Everyone says Helen Nelson is so stodgy. Daisy Mae Nelson! I’ll yodel for years!
Twenty years as it turned out, in whose progress the erstwhile Helen acquired
a Tennessee mansion much bigger than Graceland, a dark-haired husband younger than her youngest son, and a fondness for yams baked with honey
and pecans.
To Helen’s delight, the yams wrecked Diana’s bridgework one Thanksgiving, and Darlin’ Daisy Mae, as her tombstone read, apologized by leaving her favorite daughter-in-law not only her pearls but her diamond and opal tiara.
The latter was the ugliest thing Diana and Sam had ever seen, but it sold right away at Sotheby’s, to a Russian tycoon whose daughter wore the tiara for her marriage to a Saudi prince.
At the reception, Daisy Mae’s recorded yodels filled the gentle night in Bahrain.
