Dearly Departed

Summertime was always my favorite time of year; warm days of bright sunlight seemingly dragging on and on until evening settled its cloak of purple and golden shadow upon the land as if to smother the heat of the day in its balmy folds. Today, however, I hardly notice the sharp smell of eucalyptus and the mustiness of hot dust in the air. I shield my eyes with my left hand while my right clutches tightly around the thick bundle of books balanced precariously upon my hip as I hurry to the first class of the day. Yes, I am going back to school. Well, sort of! After Cynthia's death I did lose the plot for a while, wallowing deep in my own grief. Or was that guilt? My head droops on that thought and I develop a sudden deep interest in my own two feet, encased in their dust covered shoes, as they rhythmically move the rest of me towards the dull red building in the centre of the square.

Four months ago it had been raining. A wet spring day, cold as winter and pouring down while the countryside showed through in splendor of verdant fields tessellated with blotches of violet and yellow as they rolled away towards the foothills. Cynthia sat beside me with her head tipped back against the headrest her breasts jutting forward, and slightly upward, as they strained against the cobalt-colored fabric of her blouse. I glanced at her finely defined face, the face of a Greek goddess. Her hair, jet black, hung freely about her shoulders and over the back of the seat. She had her eyes closed, but I could picture them. Deep hazel brown, glowing with her special zest for life, shining with intelligence. I turned my attention back to the road, peering through the windscreen.

The continuous downpour distorted my view as I looked past the wipers swishing hypnotically back and forth, and fixed my gaze on the black strip of bitumen that snaked before me. White lines flickered at me, vanishing to my right one after the other like tracer bullets in the dark. Ahead the gloom was deepening and I knew it was time to light up, but my eyes were so heavy. Somewhere in my mind I knew I should reach out for the switch and ... Of course the headlights returned daylight to the world, but I wasn't driving any more. I stood under the new day in a field of dandelions, soaking up the sunlight. Cynthia stood a distance away and she was calling to me, but her words got lost in the light breeze that blew gently from the east. Something was troubling me and I knew that Cynthia was trying to tell me what it was. I strained to hear her words, as they became clearer with every repetition. Then the world twisted itself inside out. Cynthia screamed so loudly that my eyes snapped open. My hands froze on the wheel as my foot plunged onto the brake, but the car was off the road, on its side and, at that moment I knew I was going to roll...

God it is hard to forget! I can still see Cynthia's face, her eyes staring at me through a mask of blood. Mindlessly I tried to pull the car from her body, pinned under the roof, but even though I was virtually uninjured I hadn't the strength to move the twisted hulk of metal that was squeezing the life from her. Even as I strained and watched I saw her mouth moving to call my name as the light faded from those hazel brown eyes I loved so much.

Someone is shouting my name. The horror of the crash dissipates, like a thought balloon dispelling in a cartoon, and I lift my head to see Raymond Brewster waving his podgy hand at me. His fat buttocks waggle obscenely as he hobbles towards me in what he thinks is a light jog. His face beams, glistening with sweat, his shirt showing the first signs of perspiration stains under each arm. He pulls up a few feet away and reaches to help me with my books. They are, by now, surrendering to the tug of gravity and threatening to spill onto the hot bitumen.

"How's things?" he manages to say between huge gasps for air. "I mean, well..." He looks puzzled for a moment and a meaty left hand flaps before his face as he anxiously tries to mime 'that thing' that happened to me.

"Yeah. Getting by, Ray. You know how it is."

Bulldust! He doesn't know how it is. He hasn't experienced killing his beloved due to his own incompetence. Ray shrugs as my books tumble neatly into his outstretched right hand.

"Sure. I guess..." and like a magician's trick the books stack up, tucking neatly under his arm as he falls into step beside me.

We met in the fourth grade and have been friends ever since, only losing contact while Ray did his time in 'Nam; a conflict that I happily avoided by being naturally unable to win a lottery of any kind. He returned a different man, morose and moody, given to heavy drinking binges that eventually led to his weight problem. Now he hardly drinks at all and the black moods rarely visit him as time wears away the demons in his soul. Will time wear away my demon? Cynthia! My beloved Cynthia. Twisted and broken like a discarded 'Barbie' doll. Dead because I couldn't stay awake behind the wheel.

"You're miles away, Brad. What's eating you?"

I start and my eyes swim back into focus. My face feels stiff while my teeth ache, so tightly am I clenching them. Forcing myself to relax, I try a weak smile.

"Sorry, Ray. Guess I'm stressed out about this back to school thing. You know, wrong side of forty and sitting in a classroom."

He nods slowly and looks toward the building that we have now nearly reached.

"Yeah. No big deal though. Millions doing it."

I can read the sign over the door now as a stream of people moves into the building.

"ADULT EDUCATION CENTRE: Second Chance College."

Second chance? For me perhaps, but for Cynthia? Where is her second chance?

At least the classrooms are air-conditioned. I can still remember when I was a youngster going to school. In those days we sat in wooden buildings without heating or cooling. During summer you stewed in your own sweat while in winter you froze your buns off. Little wonder most of the kids could not concentrate on their lessons. It was like attending torture classes. Well, things sure have changed. In here it is pleasantly cool, the seats made of molded plastic with a slip-on cushion while the blackboard is now a white board upon which the teacher writes with something that looks like a Texta color pen. I didn't get a seat near Ray. He hasn't forgotten the old trick of below average students and has buried himself up the back, in a corner, where a teacher would need binoculars and a sector map to find him. Me? I just 'plonk' into a middle row seat, near the aisle so that I can stretch my legs out if I get cramped.

The class consists of about forty students, aged between nineteen and sixty-nine, here to study art, sketching and drawing. Ray deposits my books on one corner of the table as he heads for the back seat he so favors. In front of me is a large sketchpad, the kind with the cartridge paper that lends itself so well to charcoal and graphite drawing. I hold a thin stick of charcoal in my hand, waving it a few centimetres above the first white page, contemplating on whether it would be ill mannered to doodle while waiting for the teacher to arrive.

I joined this class to try and put my life together again. Art is a subject that has always interested me. Over the years my self-taught skills have molded me into an above average sketcher and painter, skills that I am hoping to polish to professional standards by this course. Dust motes dance in a beam of sunlight that falls across my desk and the cartridge paper reflects it into my eyes in a blinding white luminescence. Squinting against this glare I become conscious that my hand is guiding the charcoal across the page. Black lines swirl, cross and converge into a profile. An eye forms, then another. Wide, beautiful eyes in midnight black, glistening with life above a perfectly formed nose that tilts ever so slightly. The lips are full and turned up in a wistful smile. Charcoal hair cascades around the features and my hand trembles as it guides the stick around the beauty of her face, shading, darkening; bringing life to her. A tear splashes onto the faintly smiling lips and the smile vanishes in a watery explosion that washes the charcoal into sooty chaos. My stylus snaps with an audible crack as I stare in horror at the blood welling from the ruined mouth and nostrils. Blood on her face! No! In panic I lift my head, staring wildly around the room at the people who are totally oblivious of me as they chatter to old and newly found friends. My heart calms and I glance again at Cynthia's face seeing now that the blood is only my own tear-drop tinted inky black by the dissolved charcoal. Cynthia! Even in charcoal I let you die! Is there no reprieve?

Finally the murmur in the classroom dies into silence as the door opens. A breath of loveliness walks into the room. She would be in her early thirties with a halo of honey blonde hair that catches the sunlight, reflecting it in a haze of gold. As she reaches the centre of the room she stops and turns cornflower blue eyes upon the students. Her perfect lips are full; a hint of a smile curving them as her gaze sweeps the room.

"My name is Samantha Howdane. I am your tutor for the semester."

As she speaks her eyes rest directly upon me, her right hand comes up unconsciously to brush an errant lock of hair from her face and she pauses momentarily as if she has lost her train of thought. Then the spell breaks and her gaze continues to wander over the small sea of faces before her. What had she seen in my face? Was my examination of her so intense that I have embarrassed her? It occurs to me that, in my first examination, I had scanned her from head to foot. Taking in the shapeliness of her legs, the hourglass figure of her waist and the jutting firmness of her breasts; but then I was certain that I had not been the only male in the class to do so. Besides, some crass individual had even given a low wolf-whistle from somewhere near the rear of the room.

I struggle to pay attention as Samantha begins the lesson but I cannot help comparing her with my beloved Cynthia; my love's raven hair against this woman's golden tresses. My sweetheart's hazel brown eyes in comparison with Samantha's sapphire blue eyes. She is the first woman since Cynthia's death that has sparked any interest in me and I feel again that familiar hot wave of guilt. What am I doing romanticizing over this woman while my true love lies cold in her crypt?

Finally the harsh clatter of a bell in the hall brings the lesson to a close. Students begin closing their books and sketchpads while some are already standing and moving towards the door. My mind snaps back from the astral trip into the past and the 'what might have been' where I have been most of the time during the lecture. Samantha is calling out over the general hubbub of students moving from the room, reminding them of the home assignments set during the period and the starting time of the next lesson. In front of me Cynthia's face looks up from the sketchpad still lying open on the desk. Sometime during the lesson the picture has been repaired, but her smile is different now. Harder, more accusing and the gleam in her eye angry. The teardrop that had fallen to ruin her countenance is almost indiscernible. New charcoal lies over it in swirls and ebony lines.

"I am dead because of you." a whisper echoes in my mind. "I am eternally cold and you lust after a strange woman."

Guilt rushes through me, washing over me like a tsunami over tranquil sands. Behind me my chair crashes to the floor as I stumble to my feet.

"Cynthia. I'm sorry!"

Samantha stops speaking. She turns towards me, screwing up her eyes slightly in concern.

"Excuse me? Did you say something?"

Now someone has anaesthetized my tongue. My eyes lock with hers. Deep blue pools swimming before my vision. I can't say a thing. We stand like that seemingly for hours, for days or centuries, but probably it is for only a few seconds. Then she breaks her gaze away from me, turning it instead upon the students as they exit through the door.

Finally the last person passes through the door leaving Samantha and me alone in the room. Silence descends like a mantle and I force myself to speak.

"Bradley James." I croak, my voice cracking like a teenager's. She swings her face back towards me as those three syllables reach her hearing. Her eyes widen slightly and a puzzled look comes into her face.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Bradley James. That's my name." My voice has strengthened to its normal level. I accompany my introduction with, what I hope is, an inviting smile. She responds with a smile that is like a burst of sunlight in the room.

"Hello Bradley James." she replies moving towards me along the aisle, her hips swaying gently as she walks. It is torture not to look at those hips, but I keep my eyes on her face as she approaches. Upon reaching the desk she glances down at my sketchpad, picks it up and studies the face I have drawn.

"This is excellent. Who is it?"

"Was." I whisper harshly. She looks at me, still holding the pad at arm's length.

"Was?"

"Yes. She is dead. She was my...er...special lady."

Samantha clutches the pad to her breasts. Her left hand grips my upper arm and squeezes gently, while her face reflects her concern.

"I am deeply sorry. You must have loved her very much." she whispers. At that moment the sadness wells up and I blink back tears that threaten to burst forth and make me bawl like a baby.

"Her name was Cynthia." I manage to say.

"Cynthia. It is a beautiful name." Letting go of my arm she stretches the pad out at arm's length again and studies the features of my beloved.

During the next few weeks of the semester I often stay behind after class with Samantha, using my sketching as an excuse, seeking her advise on numerous mundane points that I really don't need advice on. Ray Brewster teases me relentlessly about my developing friendship with Samantha, often asking crudely about the depth of our relationship. I do not get angry as I know he means no offence. In reality our 'relationship' is a non-event. At least, that is, until the eighth week of the semester.

Class broke up early today due to a faulty fire alarm. It kept disrupting lessons until the principal announced over the P.A. system that the class would resume next week. We are standing outside under the large verandah-like shelter provided for students as a meal area. Outside, rain is falling heavily and I stand staring out into it miserable with my memories of that other rainy day a half a year past. Students pelt from the dry shelter into the torrent running for their cars until, once again, I am alone.

"How are you getting home?"

I spin and there is Samantha standing with a few books clutched to her breasts, head slightly cocked. She looks at me with those smiling blue eyes.

"Oh, I have a car." I replied.

She glances down at the ground and shuffles one foot back and forth before looking at me again.

"Would you like to drive me home?" she asks softly. Her eyes hold mine enthralled as she awaits my reply. I feel my mind eddy slightly as thoughts jostle each other. Is this gorgeous woman asking me to take her home?

"Sure. No problem." I hope that the excitement in my voice is not too noticeable as I thrust both hands into my pockets to hide their trembling. She comes to my side and slides her arm through mine.

"Where are you parked?"

I nod vaguely and gently pull her in the direction of the car park. The rain has eased and is now only a faint misty drizzle making it unnecessary to run, and for that I am glad, for I do not want to break her grip on me. Someone is whispering in the back of my mind, but it is so faint that I can easily ignore it by looking at the radiant face beside me.

Driving steadily, well below the speed limit, I wind through the traffic, peering through the rain-distorted windshield. My wipers squeak slightly on each backstroke and there is a sigh of hot air from the vents warming our feet before spreading through the rest of the car. She sits beside me slightly twisted towards me in her seat belt, looking at my face.

"Tell me about her."

I glance across at her, risking only a split second of distraction from the inundated bitumen that runs like a black river before me. Immediately my attention snaps back to the road and I begin to tell her about that day.

That weekend had been the pinnacle of our blossoming romance. We had known each other for several years but had only been seriously involved for just under six months. Our relationship had been a casual one in which we were comfortable with each other, enjoying each other's company and occasional bouts of passion. On that weekend we had traveled nearly two hundred kilometres to a riverside resort where we had fished, ridden horses, picnicked, and danced at night. The river had sparked true romance in both our hearts and, by the early hours of Sunday morning, we knew we were meant for each other eternally.

As dawn approached we were dancing to a beautiful clarinet solo rendition of 'Strangers on the shore'when I asked her, softly in her ear, if she would marry me. When she whispered back her answer, "yes", our emotions overwhelmed even the beauty of the music and we left the dance-floor hand in hand, returning to our cabin just as the sun came breaking over the river in a ruddy splash of color. We closed our cabin door and made love until the early afternoon when finally, absolutely exhausted, we fell asleep.

Late that afternoon we packed the car in preparation for our trip to the city. It was now raining heavily and I was tired. So tired my eyes felt as if they had sand in them.

"Perhaps we should stay another night?" Cynthia suggested. Even her dark brown eyes were marred with red and slightly puffy from lack of sleep.

"I'll be okay my darling. I need to be back before tomorrow." I turned to give the car a final checkup before leaving, stifling a yawn as I proceeded. Soon we were on the road, heading for home.

We had traveled only sixty kilometres when Cynthia fell asleep while I occupied myself with peering through the rain at the road ahead with darkness only a short time away and that was when I must have fallen asleep...

I risk another glance at Samantha sitting silently beside me. She is still looking at me, her eyes displaying her sorrow at my pain. I clear my throat, dashing my left hand across my eyes to wipe away the tears that have begun to spill over my eyelids. Then I turn my concentration back to the road.

"What about you?" I asked. "Tell me your story."

Samantha stays silent for a minute or so, then turns to face the front of the car. She points through the windshield.

"Take the second on the left. That one from where the bread van just turned."

I shrug slightly and follow her directions.

Her home is a medium sized unit in a medium class neighborhood, on the ground floor. The rain has now virtually ceased and I stop my car as close as I can to the curb to avoid letting her out over a puddle. While she is unclasping her seat belt I alight from the car, walk around the other side, and open her door extending my fee hand to assist her. She takes it and steps out, turning towards me with a smile.

"Thank you Bradley." Even after two months she still always calls me Bradley, never Brad. I have an overwhelming desire to take her in my arms and kiss her. She must have seen it in my eyes for her gaze drops and her smile becomes coy. Slowly we walk to the door, hands clasped tightly. When we reach the door she removes her hand from mine, takes a key from her pocket and opens the door. Again she faces me. This time her face is tilted slightly upward and her eyes are half closed as she waits expectantly. I kissed her. Tentatively, at first. Hesitant, expecting her to pull away from me. As her lips touch mine the softness of her mouth moulds against me as if it was custom made to fit. We kiss passionately for several minutes, exploring with our tongues, her body pressing into mine until we both needed to break for air. She tips her head back, away from my face, and smiles her infectious smile as she touches me on the lips with one finger.