by Jade West
He put his hands in his hair. “This is insane. This is totally, absolutely insane.”
“It’s not… it’s the right thing…”
“No, it isn’t.”
“YES IT IS!” I took a breath and lowered my voice. “You’ve grown into this place and it’s grown into you! That’s what you said! The soul of the place, the soul of the land here. And Anna! You said you could never leave! You said you wouldn’t ever want to!”
“Things change, Helen. And I’ve changed my mind.”
I folded my arms and shook my head. “You haven’t changed your mind, your hand has been forced, that’s all.”
“It doesn’t matter why. The fact is I’ve changed my mind, circumstances don’t really matter.”
“You’re a teacher. A brilliant one. So, please, I’m asking you, please help me finish my exams… because I can’t… I can’t do this otherwise…” The tears came back and I hated it. I had to swat them away with my cuff. “I’m not going to take everything from you, so you may as well not hand in your resignation, because I won’t be coming, and I won’t be there watching Dad ruin everything for you. I just can’t do that.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“I’m not. It would happen. I know it would happen.”
“And maybe it wouldn’t be that bad!”
But it would be. It would be that bad.
“Please, Mark,” I said, and I didn’t even swat the tears away this time. “Please don’t hand in your resignation. Please don’t.”
“Helen…”
“Don’t,” I said. “I’m asking you, please, don’t do it. Maybe we can wait… maybe one day… maybe Dad will see…”
“I’ve had enough of listening to this, Helen. I’m going to Kenneth’s office and I’m going to tell him I quit, and that’s the end of it.”
“Then I’ll fail my exams, because I won’t be able to come with you, not without Dad going ballistic and setting the whole town on some crazy fucking witch hunt, and if I can’t come with you, then I’ll be here on my own… and I don’t want to be here on my own…”
“Fucking hell,” he hissed. “Don’t make things like this. It doesn’t have to be like this.”
“It does!” I played my final card, and I hated myself for it. “I’m not a baby, don’t treat me like one!”
He raised his eyebrows. “I would never treat you like that.”
“Then let me make my own decision. If you resign, then I’ll be forced to come with you and watch Dad ruin everything, or stay here and die inside and face my exams alone.”
“Or we live happily ever fucking after, Helen.”
But nobody ever lives happily ever after. Not with a twenty-year age gap and a dad like mine.
“Tell me you won’t resign.”
“I don’t think I can do that…” He was hurt and angry and I hated it, I hated everything.
“Please, Mark, tell me you won’t. Promise me you won’t!”
“I can’t fucking promise that, Helen!”
“PLEASE! Mark, please!” And I covered my face and I cried, and I cried and I cried until I heard him swear under his breath.
“That’s really what you want?”
No, it’s not what I want. It’s not even close to what I want.
I made myself nod. “Yes, that’s what I want.”
It took him a long while to speak again, and when he did it was full of frustration, and pain, and rage.
“Ok, Helen. If that’s what you want. I won’t hand in my resignation.” His eyes ate mine up. “But I’m going to keep a letter in my pocket, and the minute you change your mind, the second you change your mind, and I really do fucking hope you do, I’m going to hand it in, and we can put all this silliness behind us.”
But I wouldn’t.
I’d never ask him to walk away from his life like that.
Not for me.
Not ever.
***
Helen
My soul was broken. I could feel every broken piece, and they were rough and jagged like shards of glass. They hurt every time I moved, every time I thought. Every morning that I woke in my bed and realised all over again that he wasn’t with me.
But I didn’t break.
I didn’t stay late after class. I didn’t hang around at lunchtime. I didn’t go on the internet. I didn’t even ask for my phone back.
Every day Mark would look at me like his heart was broken, and my heart felt it, and it knew the same pain.
I’d cry more than I thought it was possible to cry. After tears came these horrible dry sobs that hurt my stomach. I’d retch and there would be nothing there, because I could hardly eat a thing.
A week in and it wasn’t any better. Mum would come to my room every night, and she’d stand in the doorway and sometimes she’d say my name and I know she’d be crying, too.
One night she even came and sat with me. She put her hand on my shoulder and begged me, pleaded with me just to talk, to tell her about it, to tell her anything.
But I couldn’t.
It was all I could do just to breathe.
I sat at the table and my fork stabbed at nothing on the plate. Again. The same every evening.
Only this time Dad slammed his fists down, and he stood, and he was angry. Again.
“Eat your fucking dinner, Helen!”
I shook my head. “I’m not hungry.”
“JUST EAT YOUR FUCKING DINNER!”
I choked on tears. “I can’t.”
His eyes were so nasty. So full of rage. “If you can’t behave like a fucking adult, then our deal is off. Do you understand me?”
And I did understand him. I understood loud and clear.
I picked up my cutlery and I chopped my waffles into pieces and I swallowed them down while he watched and my eyes were fixed on his until he looked away.
It tasted like shit. Just like everything else.
Mum couldn’t even sit there. She went to the bin and scraped her dinner off.
It seems she wasn’t hungry either.
Breathing and sleeping and eating were hard, but painting was hardest of all. Every time I tried it would hurt so bad I couldn’t bear to hold the brush. I had nothing to give.
I wished I could just tell Mark to put in his notice. I thought about it every minute of every day. Every morning I feared I would break, and take the weak option, the selfish option, and cave and watch his world fall down while I cried on the sidelines.
But I didn’t.
I just kept breathing.
And sleeping.
And walking around in a daze.
It got a little easier with Lizzie back around, but only a little. Lizzie’s mum threw Ray out, and they found pictures on his phone. They arrested him, and I was glad. One sliver of happiness amongst the grey.
Lizzie was away from school for days, but when she came back things were like old times again, as much as they could be. There was no Rachel, only us. Two broken people trying to make their way through the day together. A lot of the time we walked in silence, sat in silence, just being there. And that was ok, too.
We were ok.
Barely, but we were ok.
***
Mark
Every morning I walked to Kenneth’s office to hand in my resignation, and every morning something would stop me. A student with a question, some meeting or other, or Helen. Mainly Helen.
She was morose, but resolute, with the tenacity of a bloodhound. Her pretty eyes defied me every fucking day. She was my first thought, and my last. She was my only thought.
Life had faded to a ghostly shade of pale which no employment contract could ever fix, but she wouldn’t listen. She didn’t want to listen.
She wouldn’t even give me chance to speak.
She wouldn’t paint, either. She’d make scratchings of nothing, with no substance, no texture. I’d stand at her side, and I’d do everything I could to reach her in that place, but it was beyond me. In all my years of doi
ng this she was the only student I couldn’t reach.
She broke my heart every day. But never so much as she did when I watched her stare at an empty canvas for hours on end. She was losing weight, too. I could see it in her drawn face, the bones in her fingers. I wondered what life at home was like for her. And I felt so bad, so guilty for putting her through it all.
I hated the house. I hated being in there. I hated pulling my car into the driveway at night, knowing she was gone from me. The house was dead, again. I was dead, again.
So, I’d walk. Pull up the car and walk in the opposite direction, through the fields and the woods until I couldn’t walk any further. Sometimes I’d be lucky and walk faster than my thoughts, other times I’d race them and lose.
Most of the time I’d end up in the alleyway at the back of Helen’s, and I’d ache to charge in there and lift her into my arms and take her away and put this stupid situation to bed, once and for all.
But she’d hate me for it, maybe not now, but someday. Just another example of someone making her decisions for her, telling her what’s right and wrong and insisting she toe the line.
She was worth so much more than that.
I thought it would be a matter of days before she saw sense and asked me to hand in that letter, but days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into a serious lack of coursework. It just added another colour to the rainbow of anguish that Helen Palmer caused me in those horrible weeks.
Professional concern.
The icing on the fucking cake.
***
Helen
“How’s your art going, Helen?” Mum’s voice was a whisper at dinner.
I didn’t even look at her. Only shrugged.
“I haven’t seen you paint anything for a while, love.”
“I’ve nothing to paint.”
She sighed. “Oh, love, there must be something.”
“Art comes from my soul,” I said. “And mine is broken.”
Dad left the table with a scowl. Again.
I’d hear them arguing late at night. Mainly about my coursework.
We have to do something, George! This isn’t right!
She’ll fucking snap out of it, Angela. She has to fucking snap out of it!
They really didn’t know me at all.
***
Mark looked tired, and drained, and sad.
He knelt at my side and my skin prickled. It hurt.
“You need to paint,” he said. “I need an assessment piece before the break.”
I shrugged. “I don’t think I can.”
And he was angry, too. His anger was under his breath, not like Dad’s that blew and bellowed and roared. Mark’s anger was quiet and full of sadness.
“You wanted me to help you through your exams. That’s what you said you wanted. But I can’t, you’re not letting me.” His whisper was so harsh, so raw. He looked around the room and as usual nobody was listening. Just as well. “What good is all this if you’re going to fail anyway? Just let me hand in the fucking letter, Helen. For pity’s fucking sake, just let me hand it in.”
I shook my head.
“Christ, Helen. I have no fucking words.”
I thought he’d given up on me, that even Mr Roberts had limits of patience, but he hadn’t. The others left at the end of the afternoon, but he blocked me off. He blocked me off with his hands around my wrists and he didn’t even care who saw. He marched me back to my seat and he got me the most ridiculous sized canvas and the sheer whiteness of it broke me. I cried all over again.
“I have to go! My dad!”
“Fuck your stupid father,” he hissed. “Jesus, Helen, you have to fucking paint something. For God’s fucking sake, Helen, please.”
He took my hand in his and it was the most beautiful pain in the world. He set out my palette and he pulled up a stool and he waited.
“I can’t…”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, you can.”
“There’s nothing there…”
“You have to feel it. If you can’t beat it then use it. Fucking hell, Helen, just use it. Take that pain and feel it, and make it real, and use it. Please, God, just use it.”
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 sp
at 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.
I pulled her to her feet and into my arms, and she weighed nothing, just hollow bones and skin. It broke my fucking heart.
She flailed pathetically, shrieking through sobs that her mum was there, and she’d tell her dad and it would ruin everything, but I was done with her ridiculously sweet ideas of nobility. And I was done with Helen’s dad, too.
I wrapped my arm around her waist, and tipped her chin up and made her look at me and I said what I should have said weeks ago.
“Enough,” I said. “This is enough. It finishes here.”
“But…”
“No,” I said. “Absolutely enough, I mean it, Helen.” I fished the envelope from my pocket and slammed it on the table and it was the greatest relief of my life.
For once she didn’t even argue. She buried her face in my chest, and she was nothing but sobs and arms, and it felt so good, even though it was so sad. Just to feel her against me was the only thing that mattered. The only thing I cared about.
“I’m going to hand in that letter first thing tomorrow morning, and you’d better start thinking, Helen Palmer. You’d better start thinking about what we’re going to do with the rest of time.”
