Leave Me Breathless

"Aren't you the football coach?" he asked Coach Kleatz. He stuck out his hand to shake. "I've heard that the team is looking good. People are saying that you guys might even win a game this year."

The locks on Helena's car popped open and she stepped out of the car. It was as if every head in the parking lot snapped around at the same time. Helena was wearing an off white sheath dress that molded itself to her curves. Around her neck was a strand of pearls and her hair, like mine, had a big flower tucked into one side.

She looked into my dad's eyes and said, "Hi Jim. I'd love to show you around. In fact, they like it when the chaperones work in teams. That way, if we see anything bad going on, especially hanky-panky, one of us can handle the girl and the other, gets the boy. Just let me get my purse."

She leaned back into the car and grabbed an expensive looking, off white, leather clutch.

She took my Dad's arm and they walked into the building together. I grabbed Dean's hand and dragged him off behind them. I had to see what happened next.

I noticed a lot of people looking at them both as they walked in. Helena may as well have had a target painted on her. Most of the women there immediately hated her. She set all new paradigms as soon as she stepped into the building. Her effect was especially pronounced among the women.

Most of the staff and volunteer mothers had seemingly agreed that the differences between them and the nubile young students was simply the age difference. They'd accepted that once they reached a certain age, they'd grown out of that hot and sexy look. It wasn't that they weren't attractive; they were simply attractive in a different way.

Then along came Helena and everything changed. She was at least as sexy and as slim as any of the students and as old as most of the mothers at the same time. She turned all of their compromises and rules on their ear.

And she and my dad looked like they belonged together. I was proud of the way my dad had stepped in to help her out with the coach, who was still trailing behind them angrily.

"Okay, we're here and you're safe," smiled my dad. I got a bad feeling as he turned to walk away.

"Jim," she said softly. "Where are you going?"

"Uhm, I just wanted to get you away from the guy who was pestering you," he said. "I'm going to go and check on Kit."

She took his arm again. "You rescued me, so now you're stuck with me. Besides, you've done a great job with Melinda. It's time to let her have some space. She's a smart, independent woman. I think it's us who needs some TLC." My dad looked confused but he sat down at a table with her.

Then what I thought was another wheel coming off of my plan happened. We all heard the sound of a car revving its engine coming from my Dad's jacket.

He smiled and pulled out his iPhone. Helena looked across from me and I shrugged my shoulders.

"Oh hi Honey," he said. "Are you feeling better?" Then he laughed and he listened and got quiet.

I was sure he was going to go running home to her, check and checkmate. The bitch had beaten me. But at least I'd gotten him to notice Helena.

He gestured for me to come over near him.

"I'm in trouble," he said. "Your mom says that Helena is depressed because only jerks ask Helena out. I've seen that coach, Honey. He's an asshole. Your mom says I should dance with her. How the hell am I supposed to do that?"

"You'll do fine Tiger," I said. "Just be yourself. After all you're only asking her to dance, not to marry you."

For some reason the DJ wasn't fully set up yet, but he put a song on and lots of people headed for the dance floor. Dean and I went out and danced and as he swirled me around the floor I couldn't help but keep watch on our table.

As Dean and I returned to the table a man came over and asked Helena if she'd like to dance.

"I'd love to," she said cheerfully. "But I've already promised all of my dances to someone. He hasn't asked me yet though."

"He must be an idiot," said the man.

Before Helena could say anything, the DJ put on another song.

All we heard was a warbling female voice with a beautiful Irish lilt to it.

The daylight's fading slowly

The time with you is standing still

I'm waiting for you only

The slightest touch and I feel weak

"Come on Jim, they're playing our song," said Helena.

"We have a song?" asked my dad.

As they went out onto the dance floor, I listened to the song. When the singer got to the chorus, I couldn't help but giggle a bit. Helena was definitely on her game.

So go on, go on

Come on leave me breathless

Tempt me, tease me

'Till I can't deny this

Loving feeling

Let me long for your kiss

Go on, go on

Come on leave me breathless

They danced and although my dad seemed confused at first, he had a smile on his face. I realized then that things were going to be alright.

As I watched Helena, I knew that he was in good hands. She'd started out dancing very formally with him. But she very slowly, yet deliberately, pulled him in. When they weren't dancing together, they sat at the table and laughed and talked. Helena was in heaven. She practically glowed. There were men all over the place trying to catch her eye but she kept both of them firmly on my dad. She caught me watching her and silently mouthed, "Breathless," to me.

Even though my poor daddy didn't realize it, he was having a nearly perfect first date. We'd only been there for about three hours when the fantasy came to an end. Someone must have spiked the punch, because Coach Kleatz was angry and drunk. He headed towards our table and Helena.

Helena was talking and leaning towards my dad. The hulking form of Coach Kleatz loomed over them. He stood there glowering as they laughed.

"Helena, get up and dance with me," he demanded. "This guy has monopolized you the whole God damned night."

"You've got it wrong Mr. Kleatz," she said. "I've been monopolizing him. Do you have any idea of how many women wanted to dance with him? And he's turned them all down."

As anger flashed across the face of the coach, my dad stood up and put himself between Helena and the coach.

"Look buddy," gushed the coach. "I know it's rough and I feel for you. But just because Eddington is screwing your wife, it doesn't mean that you get to move in on my woman, and I..."

My dad's fist rocketed into the coach's face so quickly that the coach never saw it coming. The punch was so hard that it lifted the coach off of his feet and knocked him on his ass out cold. Confusion, anger and pain all competed for a spot on my dad's face. He looked around him in total confusion.

I had no idea what to say or do. This had never been considered in my plans. I never considered that anyone but me would ever tell my dad about what was going on. Unexpectedly though, a jealous, drunken asshole had ruined everything.

Just when I thought that there was no possible way for things to get any worse, the bottom dropped out. Three police officers pushed their way through the crowd and came after my dad.

He held his hands out so they could cuff him and they just looked at him.

"Sir, are you James Carson?" asked the first officer. My dad nodded his head. I could tell he was still in shock.

"Sir, we need you to come with us, please," said the officer.

"Do I have to wait until we get to the station to call my lawyer?" asked my dad. The cops looked at him like he was crazy.

"Sir, no one cares about you knocking that drunk out," said the officer. "This is a private party. It's up to security to handle fights on the premises. Unless we're called, we don't care. We came to get you because your wife has been involved in an accident."

"Did she fall?" asked my dad.

"She was involved in a car accident," said the officer. "She was not the driver. The man with her has uhm...very serious injuries too."

"We'll follow you there, Jim," said Helena. I was glad that she'd taken over because I was still in shock and feeling so bad for my daddy.

Everything I'd planned, all of my schemes had been designed and intended to make sure that he endured as little pain as possible. It had all blown up in my face.

Dean and Helena pulled me out of the school with everyone staring at us. Helena threw me her keys and told me to follow her. She got into my Dad's car and took off after the police. The tires chirped very loudly but she soon got it under control. I followed her as she'd asked and Dean was behind me.

The thing I wondered the most was how the hell my mother ended up in a car accident. She was supposed to be staying home.

The three of us went into the waiting area near the emergency room. We were directed to a waiting room on the third floor that was near the operating rooms. That bothered me. And as analytical as my mind is, it made me question myself. Here I was waiting for my mom to come out of surgery and my only concerns were for my father and how this would affect my plans for him.

Dean was, of course, very supportive as usual. The thing that shocked me the most was Helena. I guess I expected her to be a neutral bystander or at most a concerned friend. But she was clearly upset and we didn't know yet what was going on. I hugged her and told her that things were going to be fine.

As we sat down, I noticed a woman and two small children come into the room. The woman said, "Hello," to Helena and sat down on the other side of the room.

Helena barely acknowledged the woman's presence. She kept her eyes locked on the door.

As I sat there, I ran all possible permutations of the events through my mind and saw how their possible outcomes might affect what I had to do. The nightmare scenario for me would be if somehow this accident drew my mom and dad back together. I could see them having tear-filled conversations by her bedside and him agreeing to forgive her if she just got better. Then she'd tell him that I knew about it all along. That could ruin my relationship with the person I loved most. This whole thing, despite my careful planning, had developed into the worst shit-storm imaginable.

The door to the surgery suites and the hallway between them swung open. A doctor came out followed by my dad. Before I even realized that the door was open, Helena was on her feet and moving towards Dad. She wrapped her arms around him and he put one of his arms around her waist while continuing to speak to the doctor.

The thing I noticed the most was the look on his face. My dad was trying to hold it together but he was clearly very angry. I got up to move closer to them so I could hear what they were talking about. As I got closer, I heard parts of the conversation.

I heard the doctor say. "...Head slammed into the center console beneath the airbag."

I also heard, "...Will probably need reconstructive surgery if she pulls through."

Another one I heard only part of, "...Can't figure out why her head was down there."

Then I heard, "...Jaw slammed shut and bit it clean off." That last one filled in the pictures for me. I'm probably a monster because I turned on my heel and ran out of the waiting room. I found the nearest rest room on the floor and made sure it was empty. Then I just exploded in laughter. It took me a good five minutes of hysterical laughter before I could put a serious expression back on my face. I was just remembering when I'd called him, "Dick-less," during our argument in his office.

When I went back into the waiting room, I heard a mild argument going on.

"I'm telling you right now that if you do this your way, you're going to go through life with a lot of regrets." My dad was standing up and Helena was holding his hand and telling him to sit back down.

"But I don't care," he said. "She's covered under my health plan. I don't want to be here anymore. I don't want to talk to her. I just want her out of my life."

She pulled him back down into the chair next to her and he didn't resist. "Honey, I know you don't want to talk to her and that's why I want you to. If you truly want her out of your life...well that's really not going to happen. It can't," she said. He turned and looked at her and she hugged him.

"If you walk out of this hospital and plan on never seeing her again or speaking to her again, it still won't work. Maybe you can find a way to let your lawyers handle everything so you never have to say another word to her. Either you'll get the house or she will and the two of you will never see each other ever again, just like in one of those internet divorce stories, right?"

He nodded his head.

"It won't work, Jim," she said. I noticed that my dad was calming down as she spoke. I also noticed that the woman on the other side of the room was listening to every word she spoke as well.

"This is the real world and when two people have been together for a long time they forge connections. The most important of those connections is that you have a beautiful daughter together and she has a lot of events in her life that the two of you will probably at least run into each other at.

"Are you telling me that you won't go to Melinda's wedding because her mother will be there? Or are you telling me that you're so cruel a person that you'd refuse to allow the woman who gave birth to her the privilege of seeing her only daughter's wedding?" My dad stuck his lip out and folded his arms across his chest.

Helen just looked at him and took his hand back, locking it inside of hers. "I wasn't done holding that hand yet," she said.

"No matter how you feel about her, there's another problem," she began again. "Even if you do lock her out of your life and avoid her there's the concept of resolution. Shrinks like to call it closure. I don't like that term because when you're dealing with people and emotions, nothing really ever closes. Five or ten years from now, even when you've resolved everything, there will still be fifty or sixty questions you just don't know the answers to. But for your own sake, so you don't go through the rest of our life doubting yourself, you have to talk to her."

Shit, I thought. I'd been worried about Helena not being aggressive enough and about my dad being equally wimpy. Now events had moved so quickly that I was gone for five minutes and I no longer knew what the hell was going on. Helena was talking about the rest of their life as if it was a foregone conclusion that they were going to spend it together. And my dad wasn't arguing with her. This was exactly what I'd wanted to happen, but the sequence of events was nowhere near what I'd planned.

I guess I shouldn't be upset because all I wanted was to get my dad away from my cheating mom. I wanted to set him up with someone who would love him and be worthy of his love and it looks like he's going to end up with the right woman. I just need to make sure all of the pieces fall into place...

On second thought, I'm done meddling. Let's let the universe sort this out. Life seems to have a way of making things right in the end.

"Now, you're too nervous and too keyed up," said Helena. "Stop drinking coffee, as a matter of fact, I want you to go out and just take a nice long drive to calm down. Then come back here to me and we'll wait this out together. You said she was going to be in surgery for about another hour, right. She'll have to be in recovery for at least that. So you take some time. But you don't get to just blow this off. I want you back here in an hour."

"But what about...?" he began.

"Melinda and I are here," she said. "We can fill out any forms or do anything else that needs to be done." I smiled at him as he looked at me. He came over and gave me one of his huge hugs. I went over and sat down next to Helena.

"Go drive dad," I said. "Helena is right. Driving your car always relaxes you."

As my dad headed for the door, the woman across the room reached out and grabbed his sleeve. "I'm really sorry for your pain," she said sadly. My dad nodded his head. I don't think he even noticed what the woman had said to him. It was then that I recognized her. She was Russell Eddington's wife.

Helena started talking as soon as I sat down. "Melinda, I thought you were the grand schemer," she said. "But your mother has you beat. She out maneuvered us all. She fooled your dad into thinking that she was sick so she wasn't at the dance. She told you that if she was there that your dad would be too shy to dance with me, right?" I nodded, trying to figure out where she was going.

"The phone call that your dad got, when we got to the dance, was her," said Helena.

"I know that much," I said. "I was glad that she called because it was her that got my dad to dance with you."

"Don't be," said Helena. "She called him to make sure that both you and he were at the dance, so she could sneak off to fuck Russell. Apparently, they were going to a motel this time, because you caught them at your house last time. She didn't know what time you were going to be home and she didn't want to take the chance of getting caught again. From what the doctor said, and the police report that they filed at the scene, your mom was performing oral sex on Russell while they drove to the motel."

"Apparently, he lost control of the car or he just wasn't watching the road and they slammed into a tree. The airbags worked perfectly and Russell has only one injury, but it's a big one. Okay... it's probably a small one," she laughed. "She apparently bit his you know what off. He also lost a lot of blood."

"Your mom, on the other hand, has one side of her face caved in. She has a lot of damage to those same facial muscles and a possible concussion. The force of the accident caused her jaw to snap shut so severely that it split her mandible. She also lost six of her teeth. Since she was leaning sideways she broke several ribs on one side and forced her shoulder out of the socket. She also severely twisted her spinal column. They say that it's a wonder that she didn't sever her spinal cord. They also say that it's going to take some time but they expect for her to walk again, someday."

"I can't believe that fucking bitch was going to cheat on him again," I said. "Helena, Daddy was right. We just don't need her in our lives."

"Maybe they can't help it," said the woman across the room.

"I don't understand you, ma'am," I said. "But then, I don't understand your husband either. You're a beautiful woman and you two have two adorable little girls. You're a lot more attractive than my mother is. Why the hell would he cheat on you with her?"

"Your mother isn't the only one," she said. "But she'll probably be the last one. Helena, he never cheated with you, did he?"

"Of course not," said Helena, as if she'd been asked if she'd eat dog poop.

"But he tried didn't he?" asked his wife. Helena nodded her head.

"Russell would try to screw a snake if he could get it to hold still long enough to get his dick into it. The only good thing about him is that he's a good provider. My girls and I need that financial security. My plan was to wait until my girls were old enough to understand the situation and then divorce him. That may all be thrown up into the air now. I'm pretty sure that your dad is going to name Russell in his divorce case. I'm also sure that when that happens your mom will sue him for something. And I'm sure he's going to lose his job over this. I might need to just go ahead and try to get my piece of the pie before he's totally broke. I'm sorry for how all of this affects your family young lady, "she said.

Even as she said it, a light bulb went on in my head.

A short time later my dad came back. Dean called his parents and told them that he was on his way home. He hugged me and gave me a quick kiss and then said goodbye to everyone. My dad sat down next to me in the space that Dean had been in. I got up and sat down on the other side of him pushing him over next to Helena who immediately claimed his hand again.