Carol Ch. 02

Chapter 2: Darkness and Dawn

Charlie finally transferred to a college far away, as far from Carol and his memories as he could manage. He began again there, trying to find a way to find something to live for without her.

He wrote her from time to time. If she answered at all, it was a polite two-line note.

A few times he called her, and she spoke to him; with warmth and even a hint of concern, especially if he was crying. She didn't like it when he cried, but sometimes...

She offered him no hope, but at least she didn't hang up.

He remembered bits and pieces of some of those calls for years:

"Charlie, I promise you'll get over me. Someday you're going to find someone really special." She whispered the last word.

"I had someone special, Carol."

Sadly: "Oh, Charlie..."

And:

Crying: "What would you say if I told you I was going to kill myself if you don't come back to me? What would you say, Carol?"

"Well.... I wouldn't say no...."

He waited.

"But you know that can't happen, Charlie. Please don't tell me that."

Sniffing, pulling himself together: "I won't. It's okay, Carol. I'll be okay someday." He let her off the hook again.

And:

"I'll always be grateful to you, Charlie. You taught me how to love. If it wasn't for you, I'd never have been able to be with Larry."

"I'm glad you're happy, Carol. But who's ever going to teach me?"

"Someone will, Charlie. You just have to keep looking."

He let her off the hook again. "I am."

It was nice when she showed that she cared: but in the end, he found that it didn't matter much. When he hung up, she was still gone.

He did look. He slept with more than several girls; it was the early 70s, after the Pill and before herpes and AIDS. Sexual freedom was a very real thing, and he got his share of pussy; but in his heart there was still a big empty space shaped like a girl named Carol.

He masturbated often, to magazines and fantasies; he began to smoke marijuana, because it made the pictures seem real and enhanced the fantasies. But he avoiding masturbating to his memories of her. They were still the most moving and exciting thoughts he had, but sometimes he came crying, and cried for hours afterward.

His dearest memories became a place he dared not go. He tried not to think of her at all, but still...

A bit of music, a word, a familiar piece of clothing, a turn of a head with long brown hair--and it hit him like a punch in the heart. He began to smoke more pot, because only then could he feel better just because he wanted to and turn the memories off.

He went to class, and wrote his papers, and talked with friends, and dated now and then; but her ghost was always at his side. It only left him when he was stoned, and then he could be alone with his dirty magazines or with the girl that he was fucking but didn't love.

She sent him an invitation to her wedding. He bought two bottles of liquor that day, and drank them both on her wedding night. He had never so wanted to get stinking drunk in his life.

He couldn't do it. He drank it all, but went to bed cold sober.

At least he slept.

He finally graduated, a year late, with the class of '73. He bounced from one job to another, and tried to fall in love again. He never could.

He even got married once. The woman did not remind him of Carol at all, and she was passionate and loved to fuck; he hoped that he could grow to love her and forget about Carol.

The marriage didn't last. His wife was self-centered and uncaring of his feelings, and she had a cruel, withholding streak: when she discovered something that he liked in the bedroom, she'd never do it again. "You're supposed to love ME, not THAT," she'd say. Then she complained that he was not as passionate as he had been before they married, when she had actually tried to please him.

Even so, he stayed with her long after he knew there was no hope or comfort there--because he couldn't bear to give someone else the pain that he had known. It was only after he figured out that most people did not hurt that much, or that long, that he finally found the strength to leave.

He tried to remain friends with Carol. He even visited her from time to time, suppressing the ache when he saw her and wearing the mask of an old friend.

Sometimes it slipped, and Carol would squeeze his hand in sympathy, but no more. They never spoke of it, and both went on pretending that he was just a friend.

He met Larry; and even though no man had ever been born that he more wanted to hate, he found he couldn't. Larry was a genuinely nice guy, and he obviously loved Carol. Charlie was glad. No one deserved her, but at least he wasn't an abusive bastard; and he made her happy.

Once, they made a connection, when he happened to visit when Larry wasn't home. He spoke her name, in a kind of pleading tone--by accident, in a way; he wasn't lost in his need for her at that moment, but was thinking of something else.

She turned and answered, "Yes?" in a tone of such gentle warmth and feeling, and looked at him with such compassion in her eyes, that he forgot what it was. He could only look at her--and how it hurt to do so.

His eyes filled, and she came closer and gave him a hug. "I'm so sorry, Charlie," she whispered. "I know it's hard for you." And she held him while he cried. No more than that was said.

It only happened once.

----

A day came when they stopped speaking. He had put her off a bit with something he had said in a recent visit, speaking of his feelings for her--and she had told him, gently but firmly, that he just couldn't talk to her about that any more. She was married now, and there was nothing she could do.

In reply, he had written her a letter; and he went too far. He accused her of being the reason he never got over her, bringing up the coldhearted way she had left him, and then used him so callously, ten years before.

It was all true, but she had been kind to him since; and it wasn't fair of him to bring it up. They had both been young, and she had done the best she could at the time. She hadn't meant to hurt him so, and he knew that. And it had been a long, long time before. He should have known better.

But for him, the pain of losing her had never gone away, and he never had a single day, not one, when he didn't miss her and long to hold her in his arms again and know she loved him. For him, it hadn't been a long, long time. It was yesterday, last night, an hour ago.

That letter destroyed their friendship. After a short, bitter phone call--"I have nothing to say" was all she told him, in a voice as cold as ice--they had no more contact for more than fifteen years.

----

He tried to forget, again and again. He sought out therapists and talked it out with them for years; he meditated; he read self-help books--"Letting Go," "Surviving the Loss of a Love," "Moving On"--but her ghost walked with him still.

When he looked for pictures of naked women in magazines or on the Internet, he always found himself keeping or downloading the ones that looked like or reminded him of Carol in some way. Sometimes he was even conscious of it; but better to masturbate to pictures of models who resembled her than to the things that he had actually seen and done with her.

That road led to madness and death, he knew. He had been too far down it too many times not to.

He limped through his life like a man with one leg gone. The smallest things were so much effort; it was hard to care about anything. What was the point? It was a struggle to care enough to brush his teeth.

He once described losing Carol, to one of his therapists, as being very much like losing an arm or a leg; you adjust, you live with it, you learn to get along--but you never, ever forget for a single moment what you have lost.

He finally got to a place where he didn't think about her much. He worked, he read, he watched TV, he masturbated to other things, he slept, and he hammered out a kind of peace of mind from one day to the next.

He no longer cried, or not so much; he didn't spend whole days aching for her, only minutes, and even that not often.

The dreams were the worst. He would go for weeks with only minimal thoughts of her, shaking them off and pushing them away as soon as they arose; and then he would have a "Carol dream," and he'd be depressed for days.

He would dream of seeing her briefly, then trying to find her but only getting short glimpses from far away; or of seeing and being near her, but she could not see him. Or of talking and laughing with her and just being friends again. They all left him aching when he woke up.

But the worst dreams were the ones where they were in bed together, and she was naked. They never made love; often she was simply asleep near him, and he was afraid to wake her. Sometimes she took him in her arms. Once or twice he dreamed of kissing her and stroking her back. Even in dreams, it seemed, he could go no farther.

After one of those, it might take him weeks to recover. But they did not come often.

Most days, he simply tried not to think about her, and for the most part, he succeeded.

He lived his life. He learned to listen to talk radio and not the music stations; to avoid certain movies; to beware of thinking too hard about love or relationships or women with pretty hands and feet. And so much more.

He was not happy, for that could never be. He had had to shut down too much of his life and not look in too many places that he knew would hurt him. But he was content.

He lived alone, and found ways to get from one day to the next and smile and laugh. His friends and students thought him sweet and funny, and they liked him.

He no longer even tried to date. He taught his classes, graded his papers, had friends, and was functional. He was doing all right. And then he saw a movie.

"Forrest Gump" would change his life. If he had known what the picture was like, he would never have watched it, but it took him by surprise.

He found himself in tears through half the picture, and weeping like an abandoned child at the end. It depressed him horribly for days, and he could not shake it off. The old wound was fresh again, and he knew exactly why.

One day a week or two later, another teacher--a friend named Sharon--found him wiping his eyes in the teacher's lounge. She sat down beside him and put a solicitous hand on his arm.

"Chuck, what's the matter?"

He allowed no one to call him Charlie. He hadn't for years.

"It's nothing," he quavered. "I'm okay. Or I will be by the time my off period is over."

"It's got to be something, Chuck. I've never seen you this way."

It was true. Charlie had the reputation of being unfailingly cheerful and very funny, always ready with a wisecrack or a joke and a smile for everyone; the few people who knew were invariably stunned to learn that he was chronically depressed, and had been for decades. No one, ever, saw his darkness.

"You can talk to me, Chuck," Sharon went on. "Come on. What's the matter?"

He managed to choke out, "I saw 'Forrest Gump' last week."

She blinked. "That's kind of a sad movie, but--why on Earth would it affect you this much? And for this long?"

He looked at her, and his face dissolved. He wept openly.

"Because my Jenny never came back," he managed to say.

She put her arms around him and held him as he sobbed.

The vice-principal happened to come in. He walked over and asked quietly, "What's going on?"

Charlie tried to speak, but couldn't. Sharon said, "Chuck is having a bad moment."

"Something to do with school? The kids?" Teaching can be emotionally draining.

"No. It's personal. Love-related," said Sharon.

"Oh. Should I get a sub?"

Charlie shook his head, but Sharon said, "I think we better."

Charlie looked up, then shrugged. He still couldn't speak.

"Well, there's only two periods left. I'll see if I can get some other teachers to cover."

"I can take his eighth," Sharon said. That was the last period.

He nodded, then bent down and put his hand on Charlie's shoulder. "I hope you feel better soon, Chuck. We can't have the school funnyman crying."

Charlie smiled, his eyes wet, and finally croaked, "I'll be okay." The vice-principal nodded and went out.

Charlie looked at his lap. He was bending and straightening a paper clip. He wondered how long he'd been doing it. "Thanks, Sharon."

She patted his hand. "No problem." She paused.

Then, "Tell me about your Jenny."

He talked for twenty minutes, and cried a little more. He didn't tell her everything, of course, but enough to get the drift.

"Twenty-seven years?" she whispered.

He could only nod, and then he said, "I haven't heard her voice for--" He thought. "Maybe seventeen. Yeah, it was 1980 last time we talked."

She looked at him seriously. "Chuck, you need to see a doctor."

"I've been to more therapists than Carters' got pills," he said.

But Sharon shook her head. "I didn't say a therapist. I said a doctor." At his puzzled expression, she said, "They have pills now that can help you. Antidepressants that really work. And you need some, Chuck."

He wiped his eyes, then smiled. "I guess maybe I do."

She wouldn't leave the lounge till he had made an appointment--and requested a substitute--for the following day.

Before she left, she told him, "Chuck, I want you to know that you can call me anytime. Day or night. Okay?"

"Okay. Thanks."

She looked at him. "You know, Chuck, in the movie, Jenny just came back to use Forrest. She was dying and just wanted a father for her boy. Doesn't that matter?"

He shook his head. "No. Not a bit. It's only important that she came back. It doesn"t matter why."

He hadn't told her of that fall, after she left him, when she loved someone else and fucked him anyway.

"You still want this Carol back? Even after everything she did to you? Now that you know what she's really like?"

He looked at her with a small, sad smile. "Sharon? Do you pray?"

"Sure, sometimes."

"You want to know what I pray?"

"What?"

"I tell God that I'd trade all the rest of my life--every day that I have left--for just one hour in her arms, knowing she loves me again. And I mean it."

She stared at him. He thought she was about to say, "That's crazy," or some such thing.

What she said was, "My God. I wish somebody loved me like that."

The next day, Charlie went to see the doctor. He was given a questionnaire, and checked almost all of the symptoms: trouble sleeping, difficulty with routine tasks, obsessive thoughts, missed work, loss of interest in hobbies, thoughts of suicide, and all the rest. The doctor looked it over, asked him a few questions, then wrote a prescription. "These will take a few days to start working, and a couple of weeks before you'll really feel a change," he said. "Stay with them anyway. But if you start feeling worse, I want you to call me immediately, all right?"

"Okay." He opened his mouth, then closed it.

"Something else?" asked the doctor.

"Don't you want to know what I'm depressed about?" asked Charlie.

The doctor shook his head. "You can tell me if you like," he said, "But it won't change anything. You probably ought to get into therapy too, but that medication needs to come first. It should help you get out from under the pain so the therapy can work. Give it a couple of weeks and see if whatever it is still bothers you."

It only took a few days, not weeks. Charlie began to feel the darkness lifting right away.

He began to wake every morning without that oppressive sense of hopelessness he'd felt for so long. It no longer seemed like the labors of Hercules to shave, brush his teeth, make coffee and get dressed (on weekends he rarely got out of bed except to go to the bathroom and eat a cold meal or two).

He stopped getting drunk three or four nights a week. He didn't masturbate so much, and when he did, he enjoyed it more and felt no sense of loneliness or loss.

He actually felt good, and optimistic, and enjoyed common little things again--a cheeseburger, a TV show, a book. He realized he had been dragging himself through life by sheer willpower alone for years and years.

And he found he could go whole days without thinking of Carol even once; and when he did, it didn't trouble him.

After a week or two, he dropped his guard and tried it. For the first time in many years, he sat down and deliberately tried to think about her, to explore what he felt instead of pushing the thoughts away. Like a tongue cautiously probing a rotten tooth, he tentatively let his mind rest on a few small things that he remembered:

Carol sitting close to him in his car.

Watching "Mission: Impossible" with her in the basement of her dorm.

Meeting her in the Student Union for a Dr. Pepper.

Her voice.

He sat there in astonishment. They were just memories, and old ones at that. There was no pain.

He went farther:

Making out at the drive-in.

Holding her bare breasts in his hands.

That day at the beach, when she first posed naked for him there.

Fucking her as she whined, "Chahlie, I'm coming..."

No pain. They were sweet memories, sweet and hot, but that time was long over. Why had they hurt him so? They only made him smile now. He was lucky to have had her when he did.

He was amazed--but the really hard stuff remained to be tested.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes:

Calling her and hearing her say, "Hello?"--and then hang up.

Standing outside the door that would not open--and watching her shadow, of her walking away, on her curtains.

--"It was the best summer of mine! I met Larry!"

--"Hello, love!" Right in front of him.

Standing by his car, where she gave him one last, long, deep French kiss on that last weekend before Christmas before she left for home and Larry--and then watching her run away from him, back to her apartment, without looking back.

--"I have nothing to say."

He sat and thought of more and more, and shed a tear--not from the pain, but because there was none. He was free.

It was a college romance. They broke up. She never meant to hurt him; she was young and didn't know how to break it off. Nothing special.

Look how sweet and kind she was to him in later years. Look how she listened and tried to be his friend. Look how big a fool he'd been to blame her and insult her, ten long years after the fact. It had all been him, not her.

He thought about calling her, but decided he'd been enough of a pain in the ass over the years. Best to leave her alone.

He stood up. He felt taller. Then he realized; He was. There was no weight on him now, had not been for days. It was over.

----

A few days later, as he was walking back to class after his break, he abruptly stopped dead in his tracks.

As happens with dreams, he suddenly remembered he had had a Carol dream the night before. What's more, he had awakened remembering it. But he had thought about it little, and then forgotten it until this moment.

A month ago, it would have sent him into a tailspin that would have kept him in the dark for weeks; Carol in bed beside him, her breasts bare, smiling and looking into his eyes. Today--it was just a dream, almost forgotten.

A Carol dream. Almost forgotten.

He shook his head in wonder, and smiled to himself. He could hardly wait to tell Sharon. He had told her about the dreams.

Carol? Carol? She was just a girl he once knew.

He went on to class, and thought no more of it.

But later that day, he thought of the last time they had spoken, of the letter he had written and how wrong it had been. It had ended so ugly, he thought.

Not a call, he thought. No, he would not call her. But he would write her a letter, to apologize for everything and tell her what had happened with the pills. She deserved that much, to know he didn't ache for her any more.