IF W -W 7W Ll 7 I 6B - The Michigan Daily Literary Magazine - Thursday, March 12, 1998 Carl and Helen By Brie Tiderington The Michigan Daily Literary Magazine - Thy Duke Ellington and His Orchestra: Birthda By Ethan Shalom Johnson "Will it always be so hopeless?" Carl asks Helen after he swigs down the rest of his Guinness. "I don't think so." "Sometimes it seems like it will be." Outside, on the streets of Marquette it's quiet and black. A woman is leaning on a mailbox in front of the Tanglewood bar. Her hair is matted wet from the 20- minute downpour, and she stares down at the ground as if she thinks rain might be coming again. Helen thinks she knows the woman and stares to try and get a better look. It's the checkout woman from the A&P, the one who wears too much rouge and gig- gles endlessly with the other checkout women, and with the boys who bag the groceries. Every time Helen goes in to buy groceries, the woman is working there, gossiping and laughing. "You shouldn't be so sad all the time. It's not good for you," Helen says as she stands up and walks over to the other window. Carl watches how she moves. At Don's twenty-first birthday party this summer, Carl drank five shots in a row and went out to look at the full moon. Helen was there on the balcony watch- ing Lake Superior. Or maybe she wasn't watching anything at all. In the distance the lights from Marquette shimmered as brightly as Helen wearing her white summer dress that showed round calves, her angular ankles. "I don't know what to do anymore. I walk around the city and look at shop Even the Odds, I i windows and at restaurants where I used to go eat with her." "You'll get over it. It takes time." Helen's back is turned to him because she is still looking out the window at the woman who's so drunk she can barely stand. Carl opens another beer and turns off the dining room light. He sits back down at the dining room table and leans his head on his elbows. "I like the dark tonight." "Me too." Helen turns to him now, but stays over by the window. "I don't know how that woman outside will ever get home,"she says after a minute. She sighs and cracks her knuckles. A headlight sweeps across the window and outlines Helen's figure. Carl thinks how Helen is tall but not too tall, skinny but not too skinny, pretty but not too pretty. His ex- girlfriend was too pretty he thinks; and she was good, but not too good. "You're good," he says to Helen. "Do you know you're good?" "What bullshit are you talking now, Carl? Are you drunk?" "No ... yes ... no." He laughs softly. "If my dad taught me anything at all, it was how to drink beer. And maybe how to bait a fishing pole in the dark. He was good sometimes too." "You see him much now?" "Just holidays, really. We've never been too close, you know?" "Yeah, I know." "You see your parents much?" asks Carl after a sip of the beer. "Every couple weeks. But, you know, it's at fancy dinners at places only people like my parents go, and they ask me questions like, am I ever gonna get a real job, how come I don't have a boyfriend, am I ever gonna do anything with my life. I'm always'making up shit just to keep them quiet soI can eat my dinner." "How come you don't have a boyfriend? What happened to that guy with the flannel shirts?" Helen laughs. "Man, you really didn't LIKE NORTH CAMPUS? YOU'LL LOVE WILLOWTREE! 1 and 2 bedrooms Plenty of Free parking Now leasing for Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall WILLOWTREE APARTMENTS 769-1313 Look for us at the U-M Housing Fair! EHO like him at all, did you?" Carl smiles and shakes his head back and forth. "Yeah, that's how I felt too." Carl is warm and he likes how Helen sits when she sits down across from him. At the party this summer when Carl went out to the balcony, he went and stood next to Helen. The air was heavy and humid that night. It stuck to the skin. The house was out of the city and the stars were big and bright. Helen pointed out constellations and when the drinks began to hit Carl, she put her arm around his waist real tightly and held him steady. "You work tomorrow?" he asks. "Yeah, at seven." "Shit, that's early," he says as she reaches across the table for his beer. "Yeah, it's tiring. But I've also gotten more and more used to it," she says and takes a drink of his Guinness. Helen is a gardener for a rich old couple who own a house on a cliff as balanced as their lives. In the summer at the party Carl's girl- friend ignored him the whole night. She had said that it was better that they not see each other so much. It was too intense for her. She wanted to be her own person. "Do relationships ever turn out right?" Carl asks. "What do you mean?" Helen asks as the rain begins again. On the street below Helen's apartment, the woman has left, walking home alone along the curb, trying not to fall over. "When you love someone, how do you know when you love them too much?' "Can you love too much?" "I think so, but what does that mean?" Carl has an idea that loving too much is an untruth. All day it's been cloudy. There were no stars tonight. There was no moon. "It's when it destroys you. It's when you can't fall asleep because you're thinking about where they are, who they're with." "One night at a party I watched her leave with someone. I saw them making out by his car. I saw him put his hands on her thighs." "I'm sorry," Helen says as she lights some candles. She likes to watch the rain in near darkness. She holds onto the match until she feels the flame on her skin. In her stomach she has an uncom- fortable feeling that nothing she says matters. "Yeah, well, I guess that's just what happens to people;' Carl says, taking his beer back. "Not to everyone. Not to good peo- ple" "No, especially to good people." In the light of the candles, Carl doesn't look sad. He looks a few years younger too - nineteen or twenty. "Maybe you're right." "Did it happen to you?" he asks. He's never been able to ask her that before and he's always wanted to. He both wanted it to have happened to her and he wanted to have it never happen to her. He See CARL, Page 15B FUTON Coy' -ILE PHUTO/Daily SBEST COFFEE HOuME IN ANN AQDOQ *** 1 JAVA. 2 Locations at the Crossroads &uth U. 0 East U. 741-JAVA If you are inclined toward the sentimental, then your mood is mine, and you succumb to the lucid half-notes of remastered trombones and a tenor sax, upon ear drums, caressing the pentatonic scales. the orgasmic trilling of an And, as the trumpets cresc You are impelled to do the - Ethan Shalom Johnson Chase, Md. He loves writ the Bring on the trumpets. The sudden blaring, and you quiver, I FREE The Michigan Union 1st floor, Acrom from Info Desk 668-6770 Open Daily with the purchase of a futoi tPRAG '1S LA s VTOak Vali 7 CelestialFU -~ 665-4641 "" - r Theirs and Yours. 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