Mark
“Penny for your thoughts?”
She pondered my question and the soft smile on her lips warmed me inside. She forked up another piece of cold sausage and looked across the table at me, and her eyes were innocent and dirty all at once, and her cheeks were still flushed, and her hair was messy from where I’d held her so tight.
And right there, with a plate of cold breakfast on the table in front of me, I knew. I loved Helen Palmer.
I loved the girl in a way that defied all professional integrity. That defied all reason. I loved her with the same kind of intensity I’d loved Anna, but this was different.
Helen was a pure little blossom in my jaded life, the promise of something beautiful and all-consuming. And it worried me. It worried me that I’d never be strong enough to let her go.
“I’m just thinking,” she said. “About nothing. About everything. About you.” She smiled. “A lot about you.” “What about me?” She looked embarrassed. Nervous. “I meant it, Helen, you can tell me anything.”
“It’s just…”
“Just what? Embarrassing?”
“No. Just… I feel shy. In case you don’t…” I smiled. “In case I don’t understand?”
She shook her head. “In case you don’t feel the same way.” “I see,” I said. “Why don’t you try me?”
Her eyes were big and scared but she took a little breath and swallowed another piece of sausage. “I’m thinking how I’ve never felt like this. How I didn’t even know it was possible to feel so close to another body the way I feel when… when you’re inside me. How I didn’t know it was possible to feel someone the way I feel you when your skin is against mine. I didn’t know how much I’d want to breathe someone else’s breath and feel their heart next to mine, and see what they see, and love what they love.” She chased a piece of mushroom around her plate. “I didn’t know being in love with you could feel like this. I didn’t know I’d want to crawl inside your skin and stay there, and be part of you, and never leave.”
And I couldn’t breathe. My chest felt tight and heavy. “Helen… that’s…” “Not how you feel, it’s ok.” She cut up her bacon.
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
“It’s not?” I saw a flash of hope in her eyes.
“No. It’s really not.” I moved to her, freed myself from the table and dropped at her side and placed my hand in hers on her knee and squeezed her knuckles. “I never meant to do this.”
“I know…” she said.
“You don’t know.” I sighed. “You don’t know how much I wanted you to be free, to see you live your life the way a beautiful young woman like you has the potential to live her life. I wanted you to disappear from my class and soar through the sky, and maybe I’d read about you sometimes and I’d be able to smile and say ‘that was my student. That was my beautiful, talented Helen, and look at her now’.”
“But you can, right? You can still do that?” And she squeezed my hand so tight that it broke my heart. “But it doesn’t need to be in the paper, does it? You could come. We could do it together.” And she saw my face and her lip shook a little bit. “Say you will.”
“Look at me, Helen. Look at my life.”
“I am looking,” she said. “And I love your life. I love you.” “And that’s exactly it,” I sighed again. “You shouldn’t.” “Don’t,” she said. “Please don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t finish this.” She blinked away a tear. “You think I’m going to finish this?” “Aren’t you? It sounds like it.”
“It’s too late for that.” I brushed her cheek with my thumb. “You made me feel alive again. And I didn’t even know I was dead. I didn’t know I’d given up until you came along and reached out your hand to me and asked me to hold it.”
“Begged,” she smiled, and her eyes were wet. “I begged you to hold it.”
“I told you I don’t see the point in lying, and I don’t.” Her eyes transfixed me. Consumed me whole. “I love you, Helen, but that’s really a moot point. My dilemma runs much deeper than that.”
“You love me?”
And I smiled, I really smiled. “I was in love with you long before you dragged your drunken little backside down to the river last night and made me come and rescue you, before you think that performance won you any credit. But I didn’t want to be, for your sake, not mine.”
“Don’t think pulling away would be for my sake,” she said. “I want you to love me. That’s everything I want, everything I ever wanted.”
“But not everything you need.” “You don’t know that.”
“I do know that.”
“Please don’t take this away from me,” she said. “Sometimes my heart knows things, like I said before, and my heart knows I’m supposed to be with you. It’s always known I’m supposed to be with you. It’s like I walked into your classroom when I was just a little kid, and my heart did this little thump and it knew, it just knew you were mine and I was yours. And you can say all the things you want with your mind, with your brain, with your common sense, but I think your heart knows it, too.”
“My heart isn’t going to win you creative opportunities, or critical acclaim. My heart isn’t going to grant you a first at university, and sponsor you to travel the world learning your craft, until you’re a world-renowned artist, living her life to its fullest potential.”
“You are my fullest potential.” And I laughed. “That’s absurd.”
“Is it?” I’d offended her, I could see it in her eyes. “Loving you is my inspiration. Loving you makes me feel and hope and try. You’re my teacher, you taught me everything, and I’m so good because of you. Because I want to be good for you.” “You’re so good because you have talent.”
“And because I love you.”
“You are quite possibly the most addictive little thing I’ve ever had the pleasure of encountering, I hope you realise that.” “So don’t let me go.” She smiled the most nervous little smile. “Please.”
“It’s crazy to think this could ever work. One day you’ll outgrow me and wonder what you were ever thinking.” “Don’t count on that.”
“I am counting on that.”
“So, what happens now?” She took a breath. “Please don’t say we’ll just be friends again, and you’ll just be my teacher.
Please don’t say that.”
“I’ll never say that, because I’m past lying to myself. I’m past trying to walk an impossible line.” “What, then?” she said. “We’ll really be real? We’ll be together?”
“Until you say you don’t want me anymore.”
“I’ll never say that.” And her eyes were honest, they were so honest.
I cleared my throat. “There’s one condition, and it’s a big one. I won’t ever lie to you and I’d really like you to show me the same courtesy, so if you can’t agree to this and do everything you possibly can do to stay true to it, then say so. You can think about it, you don’t need to answer right now.”
“What’s the condition?”
“I want you to go to university, and I want you to be happy there. And when you’re at university you’ll be a student, and you’ll do all the things students do, and you’ll try your very hardest and you won’t plan your life around me, here. You’ll think of me as little as possible, and then, when you’re done, I’ll be here, but only if that’s what you want.”
She was quiet for long while. “And you’ll wait for me?” “Yes, I’ll be waiting for you.”
“You promise?”
I smiled. “I promise. I’ll be here, in this same old house, teaching a fresh batch of the same old students, going to the same old places, just like I’ve been doing the entire time you’ve known me.”
“Then I agree to it. I’ll go to university, and I’ll do well, and then I’ll come back for you.” “If that’s still what you want.”
“If that’s still what I want.”
“Good girl.” I pulled her towards me and she folded like paper, straight into my arms. She wrapped me up in her legs, in her arms, and she laid her head on my shoulder and breathed me in. And I forgot about my mind, and reason, and common sense, and I listened to my heart. And my heart knew Helen’s heart. It told the same story.
It told me I wanted to crawl inside her skin, and be a part of her, and never let her go.
***