Teach Me Dirty

Or maybe Helen was nothing like Anna at all.

And maybe I should’ve stopped pondering the two women in the same breath altogether.

I held up her coat and she slipped her arms in the sleeves, tickling me with the fine ends of her hair as she pulled it free from her collar. I wanted to bury my face there and breath her in and say sorry all over again. Sorry for everything. Sorry for meaning it, and sorry for not. I swallowed it down and took my car keys from my pocket.

“Need a lift?”

She shook her head, and it bothered me more than it should. “I’ll walk. Clear my head.”

“If you’re sure.”

She didn’t even answer, just held up a hand and left me, her dainty steps taking her further and further away, until she rounded the corner at the school gates and disappeared from view.

I could have kicked myself.

I went back inside and returned to the hall and I stared at the painting she’d done. I saw her there, looking so lovely in that pale turquoise shirt, so grown up, responsible, talented. I could still smell her, too, the fragrance of innocence on her scarf and on her coat. I’d wanted to hold her. Wanted to enjoy the feel of her as we worked together. Wanted the juniors to disappear and leave us alone. Wanted to hold her sweet face in my hands and peel her clothes away. Helen Palmer, what the hell are you doing to me? I made myself a coffee and pulled up a chair and scoured her painting, every stroke, every stipple, the way she’d used light and shade for effect, just as I’d taught her. And the reality was clear to me – I wanted to teach Helen Palmer a whole lot more.

I locked up and headed to my car, turning up the stereo and taking off into the countryside. I circled Much Arlock, my regular jaunt, then put my foot down on the bypass to hear the engine roar. The sun was going down behind Merton Ridge, casting amber shadows over the hillside, and I got the calling. The familiar pull of the river from over the hedgerow.

I pulled into the turnoff, and coasted the car to the fence, taking in a breath of air as I wound down the window.

Helen, Helen, Helen.

I grabbed my phone from the glove compartment and called up her details. I typed up a pointless text, then deleted it only to type up another. There was no point.

I’d just have to hope she turned up tomorrow.

And that’s when I saw her, perched on top of the rickety old picnic bench with her knees pressed to her mouth as she stared upstream.

Great minds.

I stepped out and closed the gap, clearing my throat to announce my presence, only she didn’t look at me.

“Sorry,” she said, wide-eyed and sheepish. “I know this is your place. I just wanted some time. I thought if I stayed still you might not see me.”

“Not at all,” I said. “Should I leave? I don’t want to interrupt.”

She shook her head and patted the table. I clambered up next to her and crossed my legs at the ankles.

I took a breath. “You asked me if I was happy, and the answer is, I don’t know. I like to think I’m happy.”

“You think you’re happy?”

“Most of the time.”

“But do you feel it?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Then you’re not.” She said the answer so matter of factly that I looked across at her afresh. With her uniform stripped away a lot of her girlishness had been stripped away with it. “Why do you think you’re too old for dreams? Nobody is too old for dreams, Mr Roberts.”

“Sometimes people lose their sense of dreams, Helen.”

“And that’s what’s happened to you?”

I smiled, sadly, and the pain in my chest ached in memory. “Yes, that’s what’s happened to me.”

“So, you’ve only lost them… you could find them again, no?”

“I didn’t realise they were missing.”

She pulled a face, and that girlishness was back. “How could you not realise you stopped dreaming?”

I could have given her some light-hearted answer and changed the subject, but it wouldn’t have done justice to her intuition… to her.

“Sometimes people break, Helen. Sometimes they break so badly it’s all they can remember to do just to breathe. And that’s all they do. Breathe. Day after day until they can take a little breath without it hurting. Dreams change in that place. They become about that one little breath, and maybe the one after it…”

She looked so small and fragile, her knees pressed to her lips as she stared at me. Her eyes were glassy but alive, fixed on mine.

“…and it’s easy to forget the dreams they had before they broke into pieces. Sometimes the chasm between the inner and outer never quite heals. Sometimes the person doesn’t even realise, doesn’t even want to know.”