It is three years and the drifty banks of the Illinois river. It is a get together of several Lutheran youth groups in the area. I have invited Patrick and Hale. Jackie and Nikki have also shown up even though they are more or less heathens. I graduated high school three months earlier. My girlfriend is wearing a red dress. Patrick is ogling and taking pictures of her calling her Julie Delpy. The Julie Belle Swing is now the Spirit of Peoria We are all Lutherans. We are signing hymns to a God we have never met. We are worshiping, I am ready to start my freshman year of college.
All I want to do is write poems.
It has been over a year since she called me and told me that she was engaged even though I had plans to go out and visit her. It has been over a year since she stated that, if I wanted to, since she really wasn’t that close to her Dad and since I already have a ticket, I can, if I like, still fly over and, if I like, escort her down the aisle.
It is the Illinois River and it smells like a noisome alloy of tuna and moldy yeast. We paddle under the rutted- arthritic eye-soar of the Murray Baker Bridge.We are treading up and down the river. They are doing cheesy dances on the inside of the boat. The limbo and something call the macarena.
It never even occurs to me that this is probably the first time I have been on a boat with this many youth since that night on the Thames three years ago.
I am tired. I want to hold my girlfriend and write
poems. I want to smoke a cigarette. I am
working most afternoons in the Barnes & Nobles which finally opened in Big
Hollow close to where Dawn Michelle used to live.I am looking at the sun
falling into the sliver of river on the East side glazed side of the river. I
am walking around the deck by myself. The last week of high school I spent in
the hospital because my body just couldn’t take it any more. Now, even though I
am attending a community college, somehow life seems like it felt all though
springs ago.
Somehow life seems brand new.
I turn the corner and walk on the far side of the
ship. Then I see her.
It is Karen.
Karen Christmas.
***
“Listen” Harmony says sounding very Business
professional. I feel like my romantic pining’s
are about to somehow be admonished.
“I know you really want to kiss me, but thing is….”
I look at her. I stare directly at the almond flavored
center of her forehead. There is music and laughter and shenanigans in the
background. Spencer who has been quiet and pensive for the entirety of the
night has walked on the dancefloor where daisy is modulating the lithe limbs of
her body with her group.
“Listen, David, you can’t kiss me. I mean, I want you
to, I want to make out with you in front of everyone here and everything but…”
There is more of a pause. I can see the coats
reflecting off the window off the Thames.
“David, listen.” Harmony squeezes my hand. It is
almost like she is biting into the top of her palms with her nails.
It looks like she is almost beginning to cry.
It looks like she is almost beginning to cry.
***
The last time I saw Karen Christmas was when I was in 8th grade in January 92 and she had just been awarded the Young Columbus trip to Paris. She is in college. Her hair is shorter than the last time I saw her. She is next to another blonde-headed girl who is her sister, who won the Young Columbus contest to Spain in '95.
I look at Karen Christmas after all these years.
I say her name and smile.
***
Justin is doing his devotions. He is down on one knee.
He is praying. It looks like he is proposing to Jesus. He is praying into the
cap of his knee.
“I know this is crazy man but, when we were on the
Thames, did it feel like we went somewhere.”
Justin uses his matter-of-factual you –ever-cry when
Old Yeller die voice and says of course we went somewhere, we were rowing up
and down the river. I tell him not to be a smart ass.
“I mean, it felt like, when we were dancing, for a
moment only it felt like eternity, it felt like we just, I don’t know man-like
we went somewhere like to the end of the
universe. Like all of this life, this trip was just a stage set and we were
somehow able
Justin looks back at me. He tells me that he is
praying to his God. I don’t listen.
Justin calls me whupped. He says that I've given everything inside of me to that girl.
***
“Tell me something else I don’t know about you,” I again say to Harmony, late at night over the phone.
She is giggling. It sounds like she is tipsy. Again I mention something about still being able to feel her in my arms from the dinner dance cruise on the Thames the night before. I try to be romantic and state that every time I placed my arms around her it felt like she had wings. There are more giggles. The summation of our awkward pause has been superseded by a spring of feminine giggles.
“I know,”
Harmony responds by stating what.
“What’s your middle name….”
“…..”
‘’You know, your first name is so unique. I’ve never met a Harmony before. I love the sounds of it. Surely you have a cool middle name as well. “
On the opposite end of the phone I can feel Harmony blushing.
“Your first.”
“What?”
“Tell me your middle name first then I will tell you mine.”
I look out. I am still at the bed next to the wall. Justin has long been asleep.
“Arthur.”
“What?”
“My middle name is Arthur. It’s my Dad’s name.”
I tell Harmony that his is the only Arthur I have ever known.
“So your named after two kings?”
“What?”
“King David and King Arthur One is biblical and one is mythological.
“Mine is Anne.”
“What?”
“Like Anne Boylan?” I say, thinking about our all too rushed cursory tour the chapel at Windosr early in the day.
“No, just Anne.”
Again I am trying to be witty. I tell her that grade school I harbored a massive school boy crush on Anne of Green Gables. Anne with an e. On the polar end of the phone can hear Harmony smile.
“Is your middle name spelled with an e.”
If we went solely by ur middle names it would be Arthur and Anne and everyone would call us AA and think were in recovery and attending meetings.”
Harmony is laughing again on the opposite side of the phone.
It is going on three o’clock in the morning. Justin warbles something in his sleep that sounds like why don’t you guys get a room.
***
I ask Karen what she remembers vividly about her trip. She says that she remember the Louvre and the McDonalds on the Champs-Elysees. She then says that she won the contest when she was really young. I ask he sister if she enjoyed Spain, I want to hear their stories. I want to hear about people they met on the trip. I want to hear if they ever made it back to Europe.
If they ever fell in love.
"Do you still keep in touch with anyone you met on the trip?" I inquire. Karen bobs her gentle head into a nod, saying one or two. The same with her sister. They ask me the same,
I think about Mark. I think about Harmony who has been married now for almost a year. I think about the hundreds of kids I met that week from all throughout the country who have gone back to their respective domiciles, their respective colleges, their respective lives.
"No," I say, looking out past the Bob Michael bridge, near the spires emitting yeasty plumes of corporate exhaust from the ADM plant downtown.
I don't keep in touch with anyone really at all.
***
I ask Karen what she remembers vividly about her trip. She says that she remember the Louvre and the McDonalds on the Champs-Elysees. She then says that she won the contest when she was really young. I ask he sister if she enjoyed Spain, I want to hear their stories. I want to hear about people they met on the trip. I want to hear if they ever made it back to Europe.
If they ever fell in love.
"Do you still keep in touch with anyone you met on the trip?" I inquire. Karen bobs her gentle head into a nod, saying one or two. The same with her sister. They ask me the same,
I think about Mark. I think about Harmony who has been married now for almost a year. I think about the hundreds of kids I met that week from all throughout the country who have gone back to their respective domiciles, their respective colleges, their respective lives.
"No," I say, looking out past the Bob Michael bridge, near the spires emitting yeasty plumes of corporate exhaust from the ADM plant downtown.
I don't keep in touch with anyone really at all.
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