Friday, March 11, 2011

Miss Polanski

Miss Polanski
By Doc Walton

I do love the writing process, thinks Ronnie Penwick: the whole sitting back, arms folded, staring at the blankness while the hair grows grayer, the brow furrows deeper, and the eyes, reflecting the mind, glaze to murk in pursuit of an elusive opening line or, perhaps, just a clever word. I mean, Really Ronnie, is his thought’s conclusion, who wouldn’t? Ronnie is prone to sarcasm when his frustration level nears the tipping point.
He sits this day at an old, front-of-the-room teacher’s desk, the kind with drawers left and right set below the desk surface with a space in between for a chair. He had bought it for fifty bucks at a yard sale some time ago, because among its myriad ancient scratches were a series that spelled out “I love you Miss Polanski.” The desk was a size that he had mentally measured as just right for the small space in his home he allotted for writing. More importantly to the purchase, though, was the inscription on the old desk’s top as he too had known Miss Polanski when he was a student, and he too had loved her.
His gaze falls to the crudely etched heart that encircles and defines his schoolboy emotion and he wonders who else has shared his passion for the incredible Miss Polanski. He would not have been surprised, though, if there were legions - students and teachers alike – who fell before her charms and, he thinks, let’s face it Old Chum, in particular, her startling beauty. Women who looked like Miss Polanski were seldom caught standing in front of eager high school faces. They were more often found in front of cameras and adoring fans or smiling at you from the covers of magazines. He wonders too, if the author of the hastily carved sentiment had also been stung by the intensity of her presence and the excruciating agony of her loss.
Ronnie Penwick abandons his quest for the perfect word and allows his mind to drift into reminiscence. No matter, he thinks. I’ve got nothing today, anyway. His fingers, though, from the mechanical force of habit, type the words his thoughts suggest.
God, I remember the first time I saw her. I was dumbstruck, literally dumbstruck. I couldn’t speak.
“Ronnie Penwick” she had called out, and there was a small smile at the corners of her mouth as she did so. It was as if something about saying my name had given her a moment’s delight. She then looked up from the roll of students in her hand to see who would answer. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. “Is there a Ronnie Pen…oh there you are” she said to my hastily raised hand. “Ronnie Penwick. What a wonderfully Dickensian name! Welcome to my class.” I muttered something nearing a thank you in response, but she had already moved along.
I don’t recall another moment of that day apart from seeing her. I’m sure my mind was as blank then as it is now; off to fantasy most likely. I do remember subsequent days when talk in the locker room was all about the new babe teaching creative writing. I was the only guy on the team actually taking the class, so I was the one grilled on the subject of “what’s-she-like?” and, of course, “wouldn’t-you- like-to?” but I played the cool guy, all nonchalance and indifference, acting like she was no big deal. As the class mega jock, I had my own reputation to maintain.
Truth is I only took the elective because I loved to read. I thought maybe I would like writing too. I was good at English in general and figured the whole reading writing thing probably went together. Why not give it a shot? I had no clue it would prove so difficult and had Miss Polanski not been my teacher I doubt I would have stuck it out. I was not, actually, used to working hard in school. I was bright enough, I guess, to get by with half a brain in the classroom and the other half anticipating practice. I loved my sports and I was good at them. They brought me a kind of adulation and peer respect I wouldn’t otherwise have. Besides that, I could hide my basic shyness behind athletic skills and allow my on court, on field, abilities do the talking. And, of course, there was the girl factor. Girls liked the boys who could play the games. I think maybe it’s because while the boys were playing, the girls could ogle and no one would tease them about it. Okay, that’s just my theory, but think about it. When else is it okay to stare at someone…or be stared at, for that matter. Works both ways too. Cheerleaders don’t strut their stuff just for the exercise. Miss Polanski changed all that. After her arrival the girls all seemed so… so what? I don’t know, so girlie I suppose; lacking in substance or something like that. What surprised me most was not that I anxiously awaited my sixth hour class - after all, Miss Polanski was there - but that I hung on her every word and worked my tail off to please her. I did my assignments and sometimes submitted twice the material requested. I fell in love then, not just with Miss Polanski, but also with the joy of writing that sustains me to this day.
Ronnie skips back to reality for a moment, looks at the bright white screen before him punctuated with its small black symbols. He reads a few lines, pauses and then returns to remembrance. His fingers continue to type.
But it is not every boy whose adolescent fantasies become reality. How had it happened? And really, he thinks, why me?
He remembers then, a moment. Miss Polanski had asked him to return at the close of the school day. She needed help copying, printing and collating one thing or another and told him she would like to discuss his most recent class submissions while they did so. He had almost said, I have practice after, but cut the words off before they left his mouth and couldn’t be retracted. Practice could wait.
He found himself alone with her that afternoon in the small, cluttered room off the library that housed the school’s office supplies, copier, visual arts equipment, an ancient mimeograph machine, bound texts of every subject and where, he discovered, the atmosphere seemed as close and intimate as a closet. There was little room to move about and Miss Polanski’s body brushed his own lightly and often.
Ronnie Penwick’s face reddens as he sits at his desk and the moment in memory sharpens to virtual reality.
Miss Polanski had been wearing loose cut clothing throughout the year, probably aware that emphasizing her sexuality would be counter-productive to good teaching. All that did for us boys Ronnie recalls, was spark our imaginations. There were clearly womanly curves beneath the wrinkles and folds of those peasant blouses and billowy long skirts. We could visualize every one.
On that day, in the still, warm air of a confined space, she shed her light jacket and opened a few buttons at the top of her blouse. She then gathered her long, dark hair into a bunch at the back of her head and tied it off with a bit of ribbon. The elegant curve of her exposed neck had me instantly inflamed for reasons I could not explain. She said, “Warm in here” as she shook out her newly formed pony tail.
And was it ever! I was burning up. Can you be in sensory heaven and hell at the same time?
She put a stack of papers into the Minolta, pushed some buttons and then turned to face me, leaning against the copier as she did so.
“Ronnie” she said, fixing her eyes on me and stopping me from whatever it was I was doing, trying to breathe normally, most likely. “You are a very talented young man.”
I liked that man part. I said, “Thank you Miss Polanski” and immediately realized how un man-like that sounded.
She pushed herself off the copier, took a step forward, and put a hand on each of my shoulders. I was aware of nothing but the heat and pressure of those hands and the liquid quality of her eyes. No wonder poets were always describing eyes as pools of this and that. She looked at me with a gaze that was at once sincere, but also containing… what? Mirth? Amusement? Something else certainly, something lighter than sincerity. She said, “You must promise me that you will never stop writing and you will always work at it as hard as you do now.”
I said, “Sure” or “You bet” or words to that effect, not really aware of what I was promising, because it didn’t matter a whit. I would have promised those eyes and that touch anything in the world. And besides, maybe she was on to something. Maybe I could write a little. I definitely couldn’t talk worth a damn, though. Not while she was standing in front of me anyway; standing in front of me looking as if she wanted something more than my feeble promise. Or was I imagining that?
She leaned into me, gave me a quick hard hug and said, “Thanks for your help today. You can go now, but don’t ever forget your promise.” She turned then and left the room, leaving me alone. I stood there not moving, eyes closed, for the longest time. I stood there clinging to the sensation of her body pressed firmly against mine. I stood there feeling that, loving that, until the impress faded and slipped away. Not ‘til then did I open my eyes.
Yup, that was the moment Ronnie thinks. It had to be. The moment it all began.
And then, not long after, there came another. He pauses for a second to trace the heart on his desktop with an idle finger momentarily removed from his keyboard. He brings the memory to sharper focus. After that, though, he recalls, events had moved so rapidly they seemed to have overlapped and become a continuous happening rather than individual chapters. The second moment, that vital second moment, had occurred only a week or ten days later – the timeline now so distant – and, if he were to so designate, or to write it, would be called The Poem.
She had asked him to stay after class again, no specific reason given. Or, he thought, needed. The problem was, he couldn’t skip practice that day. The team was scheduled to play their principal rival and his coach had been adamant about preparation. “That’s okay” she said after he had explained, “I’ll wait.”
It was after five, post practice, and the halls were empty except for a few stragglers, teachers and students on detention. The school would be locked at six to all but those who had keys. He stood in the doorway to her classroom watching her read from a small, bound book. Her lips were moving slightly as if she were rehearsing; memorizing perhaps. She was, as always to him, stunningly beautiful. When, after a short while, she became aware he was standing there, she smiled and waved him over. “Sit here” she said, pointing to a chair next to hers, “I want to read you something.”
This was the first time that Ronnie had been within touching distance of her since she had hugged him in the copy room. He was suddenly reawakened to the feel of her body against his. It felt as if he was still caught in her embrace. Heat rushed simultaneously to his face and groin causing him an agony of embarrassment that deepened the color of his blush. In truth he was close to fleeing, but at that moment the incredible and now intuitive Miss Polanski reached out and placed a hand on his arm. “It’s okay” she said. “Relax. I know how you feel. I know exactly how you feel.” He doubted that she did.
Ronnie’s hands pause at the keyboard as he puts the moment in context. Poetry had been the topic in Miss Polanski’s class of late and Ronnie had been struggling to find a style that suited him. Miss Polanski had read to the class from her own published work, the book she now held in her hands, and every piece seemed to him a work of perfection. No two, however, were alike…how was that possible?… and he found her ability to impart the most possible meaning in the fewest possible words an achievement nearing miraculous.
“I want to read you something,” she said, “something that I wrote for you. A poem inspired by you in fact, and I hope this will demonstrate that it is not the technique that’s makes a poem a poem. It is the honesty of the author’s feelings, his senses and impressions expressed in words that give a poem a reason to be. It’s what I want from you Ronnie, an honest revelation of what you are feeling.”
I had thought for a moment then, that I had been called after school for a lesson, some poetry tutoring for a good student. Not that I would have minded had that been the reason, but as it turned out, I wasn’t even close.
Miss Polanski put down her book, picked up a sheet of paper, and began to read from it, or rather to, mostly, recite as she glanced at the text less often than she did my eyes.

At first she thought it was not love, but simply talent’s due
That had her heart leap to distress, when he came into view.
But then, as time delivers truth, she came to understand
Although she dearly loved his words, she also loved the man.

But was he man or simply boy, just playing out his youth?
She dared not hope nor dared not wish, nor seek to find the truth.
Happenstance had placed her there, a position fraught with trust.
But love is blind, it’s often said, and love is fraught with lust.

He was a boy both tall and broad, in sculpture clearly strong,
Who wrote of unfulfilled desires, in poems prose and song.
He wrote of her though left unnamed, the woman he would choose.
Was she a fool to think it so, that she might be his muse?

She could not bear to leave untouched, the boy near grown to man.
She longed to hold him to her breast, to have him close at hand.
But would she dare to risk his no, that she might be too old
That he might push her hard away, and leave her lost and cold.

There was but one more thing to do, to draw him further out.
To see if he was of like mind, eliminate her doubt
She’d lean in close, present her lips, a sign he could not miss
If he too shared her inner wish, there would then… be a kiss.

Miss Polanski did lean forward at her own cue, with her eyes closed and her lips parted. I wanted so badly to kiss her I was literally squirming with desire. But I couldn’t! I just couldn’t! My fear overcame my desire. How incredibly ridiculous it seems now, but then I was only seventeen. I was actually afraid I would “get in trouble!”
Ronnie puts his memory on hold. He pauses to laugh at himself. What an idiot, he thinks. But then he returns to the part of his memory he has often visited and long cherished.
Miss Polanski, left un-kissed, appeared neither alarmed nor disappointed. When she opened her eyes, I’m sure she must have seen the fear written large upon my face. Again she told me it was okay, she understood. And then, looking at the paper in her hands, she simply said, “Ronnie, there’s more.”

A kiss perhaps to seal our fate, to usher in desire,
For acts of love youth long awaits, wet lips most oft inspire.
When mouths and tongue and teeth are one, in passionate embrace,
A craving fierce and strong ensues, to reach a deeper place.

Be shed of clothes, of doubts and fears, let bodies two be one,
Let yours be full inside of me, till passion’s course be run.
Though it may take ‘til time leaks out, to temper need of you,
To want your love, I dare to say, I never will be through.

So grant me now that sweet first kiss, your heart to me extend,
For if you can’t my life is lost, my verses at an end.
No love, no sex, no smoky fire, will my boy muse excite.
But if your trembling lips find mine, together we will write.

We kissed then. How could I not? There are temptations that even fear cannot resist. We kissed. We kissed again. And then we sought her car.
Of course it all went crazy after that. We had our trysts sporadically, clandestinely, and undeniably mad, throughout the remainder of the school year. We were extremely careful, Miss Polanski’s career was in the balance, and we were not caught.
Ronnie finds himself grinning as the memories of their stolen hours in deep woods and distant motels flicker in his mind like a slide projector set to show its images on a too rapid setting. Summer and his eighteenth birthday had arrived, and although they were now technically legal, they kept their affair secret for fear the difference in their ages would still be considered scandalous. Ronnie remembers wanting to shout his love to all creation, but Miss Polanski made him promise not to do so. She reminded him it was her reputation that would be ruined, not his. To the world at large, he was still a boy. It had been difficult for Ronnie to keep his joy quiet then, but now, in reminiscence, he understands that secrecy had intensified their couplings and made their affair one of urgency and heat. It had been a long hot summer indeed: one of hidden abandon where love and lust were fully explored but never fully sated.
Ronnie’s thoughts, sadly but inevitably, take him to the years that followed. He had signed a letter of intent with his state’s university and accepted their athletic scholarship over several out-of-state offers that promised him better sport programs and more media exposure. He did this not out of any loyalty to his home state, but, rather, to be within easy driving distance of Miss Polanski. He assumed she would still be teaching at his old high school, but they had never really talked about it.
One late August day, after registering for his freshman year at his chosen school, he drove home and found her gone. He had talked to her several times that day on his cell phone, excited about his prospects and the courses he had selected. She was encouraging, but quiet and he thought at first that she was just letting him enjoy his moment. It was his last call, when she had said, “Goodbye Ronnie” in a hollow, robotic voice as if trying to disguise her actual meaning, and then hung up abruptly before he could ask, “What’s wrong?”- for surely something was - that left him then, lost and haunted by the why of thing. He would learn the truth later, but there were years to be endured before that truth was revealed. He had made inquiries, of course, but Miss Polanski left no forwarding address and even her neighbors were surprised to learn she was gone. His high school staff said only that she had resigned to take a position elsewhere, and it was an elsewhere she had not disclosed.
Ronnie sits at his desk and again absently traces with a finger the heart that is carved there. He is not seeing, though, anything in front of his eyes. He sees only the thoughts behind them. The truth, the reality, the why of it, would have been of little use to him at the time, he thinks. He was too young, too “head-in-the-clouds,” too in love with the future as he foresaw it, to accept there might be other versions of tomorrow than his own. He thinks, I was an idiot, for the second, or was it the third time. He is not sure that even now with the clarity of hindsight that he fully comprehends the emotional gamut that Miss Polanski had run before leaving him. But he does know, if not completely understanding, the peculiar mix of guilt, shame, remorse and, oddest of all, opportunity that conspired to take Miss Polanski from him. He knows because he read it in her book.
They had written together that summer as promised in her poem; separately, but together, often shoulder to shoulder. He wrote with ardor and passion his songs of wonder and adoration, the poems that would one day announce his talent and assure his future. She had written her first novel; a story of forbidden love with a teenage boy and the devastating emotional and psychological consequences his seduction had caused to the twenty-four year old woman who had seduced him. Ronnie, of course, was not allowed to read it then. “It’s not finished“ she said. “You can read it when it’s finished.” She was gone before “finished” in any form, Ronnie thought, ever happened.
On the strength of the first six chapters, Miss Polanski’s publisher agreed to buy the book. On the strength of those same six chapters, the publisher’s letter of acceptance and her book of poetry, Miss Polanski was offered the position she had always dreamed of and aspired to. She felt she had no choice. She accepted the offer and said a brutally painful good bye to the inspiration that had led her to the door of academic success.
Ronnie slogged through his freshman year at college, depressed, barely passing. He took refuge in the daily contact of practice and solace in the words he came to write during long sleepless nights. Eventually, and in some ways rapidly, for the young are quick to heal, Ronnie shook off his blues and his sophomore and junior years found him dating and even enjoying the playfulness and carefree attitude of immature college girls. Not one, however, was able to erase his memories of Miss Polanski or fill the dull ache that lingered in his heart when his thoughts turned to her. By his senior year he stopped dating altogether – why bother? he thought - and dedicated himself to writing. He had, after all, made a promise. Upon his graduation, he was accepted into a prestigious postgraduate literary program at the University of Iowa. It was there he would again find love.
Ronnie’s fingers leave his keyboard and he leans back in his chair, his reminiscence up to date and at an end. He pulls his mind into the present at the sound of the slightly squeaking noise to his right. The door there is opened softly by his wife so as not to disturb him should he be fully concentrated. She stops in the doorway and seeing him at rest says, “How’s it going? Got anything good?”
Ronnie signals her to come in and answers, “Not a damn thing, Miss Polanski, how about you?”
His wife makes a soft, throaty, giggle noise, walks over and plops herself down on his lap. “Yeah,” she says, “I’m on a roll, but quit that Miss Polanski stuff. I am now Mrs. Ronald Penwick and don’t you forget it.”
Ronnie laughs and touches his lips to her neck. Through his kisses his wife hears him mumble the words, “You will always be Miss Polanski to me.”



Copyright Doc Walton March 2011