Teach Me Dirty

It was something in his eyes. Some sliver of hope. Of desperation.

I looked beyond the pain to the happiness before it, and it made my gut hurt.

“My heart is broken…”

“You and me both, Helen. You and me both.” He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “Please, God, just let me hand in the fucking letter.”

I looked at him, really looked at him for the first time in weeks because I hadn’t dared. He looked drawn, and miserable, and his hair looked more grey, as though I’d sucked the life out of him by trying to preserve it.

Oh the irony.

“You don’t want to leave this job,” I said. “You don’t want to leave this town, either.”

“Give it a rest,” he said. “I’d leave both in a fucking heartbeat. Please, Helen, just paint something. I don’t care what it is. Anything. Just make it mean something. Make this mean something.”

But it did mean something. It meant everything.

“You have no idea how hard this is,” I whispered. “How hard I have to try to be strong.”

His eyes were dark, and angry. “Yes. Yes, I do. I know exactly how hard this is, Helen, because I’m feeling it, too. I’m feeling every-fucking-thing. Now paint, or let me hand in this letter, or both. Both would be good. Really fucking good.”

I picked up the paintbrush and splotched a big streak of purple, and it reminded me of his brush on my skin.

It sizzled and stuttered and cried.

And I did, too.

Angry lines, sad lines, crazy, chaotic lines that made no sense, until they did.

It was me. A sad version of me, my heart in my hands, bleeding. It bled down the canvas.

And it was good.

I hated that it was good, but even when I tried to make it bad it wouldn’t stop. It wouldn’t stop being good.

I cried, and I hated, and I slapped paint all around, but it was still good. It only got better out of spite.

Mark stopped talking. He just watched. He watched and he waited until I looked at the clock on the wall.

I took a breath, put the brush down. “I need to go.”

“You can’t,” he said. “You’re in the flow.”

“But, Dad…”

He handed me his phone from his pocket. “Call them. Tell them you’re finishing your coursework, tell them whatever, even tell them they can come and watch if they like. Just tell them something.”

My hand was shaking so bad I had to grip the phone to make the call. I dialled home and Mum answered, she was surprised to hear from me.

I laid it out, just like Mark said, and I could hear Dad raging in the background, spitting flames.

“Come if you want,” I snapped. “But I’m painting this picture! I’m doing it!”

I hung up, and Mark smiled.

“That’s my girl,” he said, and it only fuelled my pain.

It was Mum who arrived through the art room door at gone six. She was flustered and dithery and made gestures to indicate she was sick of the world and everyone in it.

She stopped moving when she saw my painting, and I heard her gasp.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, Helen, love…”

And it tipped me over the edge.

Yes, it was horrible. Yes, it was ugly, and sad, and pitiful, and broken, and disgusting. A terrible concoction of colours and lines all messed up together.

And it was my heart that was torn in the middle. My soul that died in the corners of that canvas. My sad eyes staring out at me.

I gritted my teeth and kept going, and my limbs were angry and desperate and my heart was full of hate.

I heard Mark get Mum a stool. He got her a coffee, too. And neither of them said a word.

I found that place inside, and it was so sad in there I could hardly stand. I summoned it and spat it out and sobbed and heaved and slashed my way around that canvas until it was full. Until it was brimming. Until the paint was thick and angry and I was a shaking wreck.

I let out a pitiful squeal that didn’t sound like me, and I cursed the universe for giving me something so good, only to make it so bad.

And then I was done.

I hated that picture with all my heart, but it was the most beautiful, raw thing I’d ever painted.

I dropped my brush and placed my hand in the centre of it, as though my palm could stop the bleeding.

And then my legs went from under me.

***

Mark

Helen’s mum gasped and let out a weird sob, but I was already over there, and I’d taken more than I could fucking bear.

Helen’s canvas was a beautiful monstrosity, her handprint the final emblem of heartache over an otherwise truly horrifying expression of grief. And I felt it.

I felt it when her fingers trailed down the canvas and she crumpled to the floor.