She couldn't look at him.
"Helga." His voice reminded her of sawdust and the way it feels when the bristles of a broom are swept over your feet.
"Helga, please."
She suddenly remembered that she had broken a vase once, playing with Olga of all people, when she was just three. Bob and Miriam both had been angry with that mistake because the vase had belonged to Miriam's mother. It wasn't the memory of the punishment or the yelling that she thought of now. Instead, her mind was occupied with her sister, and the way Olga had tried to defend her. Pressed up against her sister's leg when they were caught, Helga could feel for a moment what true love was.
"Helga…" Jimmy sounded ready to give up.
Before he could speak again Helga threw her arms around his neck and buried her face in his skin. He made an odd sound in his throat, but wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her against his hard body so hard he may have crushed her.
"I'm so sorry." She said.
"I know." He answered, his voice lost somewhere in her hair. "I knew it would happen someday."
"You did?" She was shocked, and tried to pull out of the hug a little. He wasn't ready to let go.
"Yeah. The locket was confirmation enough."
She grew tense. Her locket. It had gone missing years ago. The last time she could remember having it was at Miriam's funeral.
When Jimmy had collected her after her fit, Helga sat curled up in his front seat holding the little locket hard. Over the years of Arnold gone, she had rarely taken it out to look anymore. What once was a daily totem that enriched her heart with passion, was now something like a vacant memory that she could hardly touch. His young face, an updated picture from Gerald was gifted every year, never changed. He was always calm, always charming. There was nothing like animosity or upset in his pictures. Helga was perpetually envious of his calm; how could she correct the disaster she was?
When Jimmy drove her home that night she had left the locket in the pocket of her skirt. After that, she couldn't find it anymore… She never thought that Jimmy might have taken it.
"You have it?" She asked. She didn't even try to keep the anger out of her voice, it was a violation that he could not be forgiven for.
Jimmy sighed. The air rolled around inside him and reverberated against Helga. It chilled her neck.
"I'm sorry," He said. "I found it that night. It's not like I didn't know he existed."
Helga couldn't make a noise.
Jimmy continued, "Everyone knew that you loved him, Helga, everyone. How can I compete with that kind of love?"
"I love you too." She said, but she wasn't sure.
"Don't hurt me to make yourself feel better." He pleaded.
She stopped talking, stopped trying to think of something to say.
"I found the locket, and I didn't know what to feel. How could I keep you for myself when you loved another guy?" The sawdust in his voice thickened. "But I wanted to keep you. You needed someone, and I needed you.
"I took the locket. You were asleep, so I left the house. At first, I wanted to take it to be opened and remove the picture, but the inside had an inscription. I got a buddy of mine to pry it open and we found the love letter inside." Jimmy let her go a little so he could look at her face.
"I don't even remember what it says in there now." She said.
"Liar."
"Yeah, I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize," He said. "I don't want you to feel bad about this."
"I will anyway…" She pulled away from him a little more. Although the conversation was still charged with pain and confusion, although she was prying from the inside out with turmoil, she also was imagining what to pack, and what to take so she could leave. The dream was here, Arnold was here, and she was quickly losing touch with what needed to be done.
"I have the locket, you know." He said.
"Oh…" It came out as a sigh.
Jimmy walked slowly over to his nightstand, and spent a minute or so digging through its contents. Even though they lived together for a long time, Helga never went through his things. When the locket went missing, she had searched everywhere, but never considered checking his belongings. Keeping something so precious from her seemed unreal of Jimmy. Jimmy was not the type to be jealous, not the type to care. Perhaps she had misjudged some of his feelings.
He produced the locket, just as it was years ago, Arnold's image intact and smiling ignorantly.
When she took it in her hand, she absently drew it up to her mouth, relishing the cool touch of it, like Arnold's kiss. Jimmy pushed the lamp of the nightstand.
"I never had a chance, did I" He asked. The lampshade had been glass, and it was now a shattered mess, the lightbulb cracked, and a little cloud of dust erupted around it. Everyone was startled by this reaction. Helga hoped that Arnold would stay where he was, and let her settle this, but she heard him shuffled towards the door.
"Jimmy…" She kept her voice gentle, know that Arnold was listening. "I am so sorry for everything. I have been nothing but horrible to you."
Jimmy laughed, a little strained. "No, not at all. Never horrible… We aren't right for each other."
"I wish we were."
"Liar."
"No, I do mean it. I wish I could love you like I want to. Wanting it, and doing it are two different things. There is someone else I need to be with."
"He abandoned you!" He grunted another awkward laugh. There were tears streaming down his face now, and his skin turned dusky pink.
"He needed to be with his family." She countered.
"He left you here, with Bob, with your mother… No one was there for you." He said.
"You were here," She said. "You took care of me."
"Yeah, and you never even loved me for it."
"I can't fix that, Jimmy."
"Is he going to love you better than I do?" Jimmy asked. He kicked at the pieces of the lamp on the ground.
"Probably not."
"Is he going to appreciate you like I do?"
"Not the same way."
"Is he going to make you happy? Happier than you are with me?" He looked a little feverish, the tears sparkled like diamonds in the light emanating from under the door.
"He makes me feel alive, Jimmy."
This startled him. Silence enveloped them. No one even breathed.
He crossed the dark room and stood in front of her. Her hand instinctually gripped the locket tighter in her hand. But he surprised her, leaning down to give her a soft kiss on the forehead.
"Three hours. I'm going to Teddy's. That should be enough time to get everything you need."
With her free hand, she touched his cheek, a little rough with the shadow of his beard.
"Always love you, Jimmy."
"Okay babe, you get going now. I can't have it hurting anymore." He turned and left, bumping into Arnold, who was standing by the door with nervous energy.
The two young men locked eyes for a moment, but Jimmy was coated in tears and anger, and couldn't see past the way Helga gasped when he took a strong step towards Arnold.
He left quickly, leaving the couple to breathe shaky breaths and pack whatever they could find that was Helga's. He was at Teddy's, his friends packed around him in a beer drinking, cigarette smoking circle, when they slipped away. They shoved her things in garbage bags, and grocery bags, and one old suitcase. There wasn't much to pack, so they didn't need three hours.
Jimmy gave them those hours though, and then some, because the idea of returning and finding the bed empty was something that made him sick in the stomach.
He knew this was the best, knew that Helga needed this more than she had ever needed him. He let her go, and there was a gaping hole left in her place. But in his dreams, he could see her, even years later, the girl with the shining eyes, and poetry in her skin, and love in her head and hands. She had always been totally beautiful to him, always perfect.
In high school, she was always the melancholy beauty that everyone watched and pretended not to. She was slender and small, but tough. There was a contradiction in her that was sexy to everyone, but she remained ever as she always had been. She dressed dark, talked dark, and cussed a lot. When he asked to prom she had laughed at him ecstatically. She was delirious with the joke of it all, and believed that it was nothing but a prank. Until he showed up the night of, and Phoebe squeezed her into a dress for him.
She had danced with him that night, and the whole school marveled over how he made her smile. No one saw a genuine Helga smile in a long time. On her growing face, with her growing beauty, that smile was glorious.
For the promise of that smile, Jimmy could let her go. He wished a thousand times over that that smile would appear for him. He hoped and he prayed, and he worked as much as he could, trying to give her what she wanted. He wanted Bob to let her work better jobs, but the old croak was adamant that 'the girl' should stay as janitorial staff. Some long-harbored anger about things he could never understand. Maybe Helga didn't even really know. The intricate details of families, the way things worked and didn't work, was all lost on them. They wouldn't understand, and they couldn't make themselves try.
Sometimes when he dreamed, he could see her and Arnold, clasped closely forever. Making money, or starving on a beach, they never let go.
He saw some pictures occasionally, as years slipped by softly. They made money, they worked good jobs, and had babies of their own. A little pair of twin girls, last he checked. Helga went back to school at night and they both worked for a publishing company, low level jobs for a while. But soon, they made their way up the chain.
They settled in a refurbished lighthouse outside of the city. He never saw her again, but he saw her everywhere. On the streets, and in the store; writing poetry in his bed, and sleeping on the bus.
One day, he hoped he could forget her, but for now she was there. She was an imprint burned on his heart, smiling with each of his heartbeats. Someday, he would forget her, Helga G. Pataki.
