ELTHAM HIGH SCHOOL ANTHOLOGY   

Earl Ober was young and in love. He was just like any other young man on the block, except that Doreen Stevens loved him. None other than the Doreen Stevens was in love with the young Earl Ober.

It was two weeks until the homecoming dance and everyone had dates. Except Doreen. Everyone knew she would go with him. The two had been dating for half a year and there had only been one cause of disagreement. When Doreen had flirted with a young man at the college bar.

Earl and his friends had taken a trip to the college two hours west in the spring. They had invited their girls along with them and had borrowed the car that belonged to Earl’s father. Together in the Volkswagen were Earl and Doreen, Dean and Sherrie, Joshua and Claire, and Andy and Nicole. The young men would be attending business school in the fall, and they had decided to show the girls what it was going to be like. They had booked four rooms at the closest hotel for two nights. It was on the first night that the incident occurred. Earl, Dean, Joshua and Andy had been invited to dinner by the college freshmen who had attended their high school the previous year. Leaving the girls to themselves at the hotel, the young men had cleaned up and locked the doors behind them. They had told the girls they would return by 9pm. The girls sat in Doreen’s room as the sunlight faded from behind the curtains. They ran out of things to say. The girls had nothing to bond them, apart the friendship shared between the boys, and conversation became sparse.

It was Thursday night. The group had spent the morning travelling, then the afternoon looking about the town. The men had noted that there were only three worthwhile sources of entertainment: the athletics club, the cinema and the bar on campus.

Left on their own, the girls sprawled themselves across the double bed in Doreen’s room. Discussion had turned to the future.

“I’m not sure I want children,” Doreen said.

“I’m certain that I do,” Claire said.

Doreen sighed. “I know that Earl wants them. I heard him saying it just the other day in Clarke’s class.”

“How can you not be sure? Doesn’t everyone want children?” Sherrie said.

The conversation was interrupted by static from the radio.

“Wouldn’t you get that fixed, already?” Nicole said.

“I’ve tried! I don’t know how Earl did it last time,” Doreen replied.

“Well then get him to come fix it again! And this time, for good!” Nicole said.

Doreen found the switch and turned the radio off.

The girls decided to leave the hotel. The room was left unlocked so they could return later. They reviewed their options. The athletics club was out of the question, and they had been promised dinner and a movie for the second night, so they couldn’t visit the cinema. They found themselves wandering onto the college campus and into the artificial light of the bar. An empty table at the end of the way had accommodated them.

A cluster of young men crowded around the counter and cheered as they watched a sports game. Going on an hour, four of the young men approached the girls. They carried flasks of liquid and pushed them across the table, towards the girls.

“No, thank you. I have a boyfriend,” Claire said.

“It’s just a drink darl, doesn’t mean nothing.”

The men had surrounded the table. One put a hand on Doreen’s shoulder.

“What about you? Any boyfriend to claim?” He said.

The man’s breath made the hair on Doreen’s neck stand on end. She leaned her ear away from his mouth and he followed her. He shifted his hand. Her blouse moved off her shoulder slightly. The man pulled back at the collective intake of breath from the other girls.

“She does.” Sherrie said.

The man straightened and moved off with the others, returning to the bar…

 

Doreen didn’t know what she had been expecting, although she had to admit that since returning from the college trip, she had noticed the tension rising in Earl. She hadn’t planned to see him today but she didn’t refuse when he insisted on coming over. She sat on the couch under the window as the growl of the car engine died out. She stood by the door and opened it when she heard the rapping of his knuckles on the other side. She offered her cheek as Earl stepped inside and he placed a kiss on it while lightly touching her waist. He sat down on the couch and she sat next to him. The leather of his jacket whined as he turned towards her and slid his hands into his pockets.

“Is everything okay?” Doreen said.

“I just wanted to see you.” Earl said.

He looked up at her and cursed at the light shining in his eyes.

“Jesus, Doreen. Would you close that? The light’s blinding me, I can’t even see you.” He said.

She yanked the curtain across the rod, plunging the room into darkness.

“Well I still can’t see you, now.” He said.

“Sorry.” She said, making her way across the room to the lights. She flicked the switch and the room slowly filled with a dull yellow.

She sat back down to face him. A moment of silence passed.

“Now I’m going to say some things and I want you to listen until I’m done, okay?” He said.

Doreen gave a small nod.

“Well… I… uh…” Earl stumbled for words.

“Well, do you remember when we went to the college last month?” He said.

Doreen remained silent, waiting for him to continue.

“Well do you, dammit?” Earl said.

“Yes, I do.” Doreen said, with a start.

“Well good… and do you remember how you girls were approached by those jokers at the bar?” He said.

Doreen nodded again.

“Well, I guess I’ve been thinking.” He said, “And I don’t like how it felt for other blokes to be hitting on you. You’re my girl and people need to know that.”

He pulled something out of his pocket and held it between his hands.

“So I got this. So people know.” He said.

He moved his hands to hold out the little box. He opened it to reveal a thin gold band with a white gemstone.

“Here.” He said.

Earl took Doreen’s hand and slid the ring onto her finger. His fingertips brushed the gold band…

 

Doreen had woken throughout the night, unaccustomed to the unfamiliar motel room bed. As sunlight was beginning to climb around the corners of the curtain, Earl roused and sat up in the bed.

“Did I wake you?”

Doreen had draped Earl’s suit from the night before over a hanger and hung it in the closet.

“No. It wasn’t you.” Earl said.

Earl stood and moved towards Doreen. He reached past her and pulled a shirt from the closet, throwing it over his head and down his chest. He sat on the edge of the bed facing the wall. The cotton stretched across his back and Doreen stood watching his body rise and fall with each breath.

“I heard you girls went out to the bar on the last night.” He said.

“We had run out of things to do so the others decided to go out. It was too awful a thought to stay here all alone.” Doreen said.

Earl paused. “I suppose that means you can go out and flirt with other men then.”

“It wasn’t like that.” She said.

“I suppose it wasn’t.” He said.

“Really. They were just young men keen to welcome everyone. I couldn’t be rude.” She said.

Earl considered the fact. Doreen was young and enticing, and the other girls would’ve been fair game to any less aware man. Earl was an understanding man, after all.

“Still. You’re my girl,” he said. “I don’t like to hear that I can’t leave you for one night without you making a fool of me.”

Doreen remained silent from a distance.

“I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t expect it. I’m sorry. I just made a mistake.” Doreen said.

She had made a mistake. Earl was a forgiving man. Moreover, it would be worse to return home without a girlfriend.

Doreen moved over to stand in front of Earl. He looked up at her, then wrapped his arms around her body and pulled her closer.

“I love you,” she said.

 

Earl Ober was young and in love. Doreen Stevens was his girl and he was proud to call her that. She was beautiful and there was nothing to stop him from making her his wife one day.

 

 

Reflective commentary:

I chose to write the young love of Doreen and Earl from ‘They’re Not Your Husband’ by Raymond Carver because I wanted to explore how Doreen may have unintentionally fallen into her marriage with Earl. I decided early on in the process that I wanted to use my piece to highlight how their relationship could have started from something very pure and warm, only to deteriorate to something cold and abusive. I saw an opportunity to do this through investigating Doreen’s reaction to Earl’s proposal, as well as touching on various doubts and fears within the relationship and when these started to occur to Doreen. I specifically chose to write about Doreen’s ‘incident’ at the college bar as it provided a solid foundation for where Earl’s possessive nature, as seen in Carver’s short story, came from. This is also why I titled the piece ‘Who’s your girl’ as it not only suggests that the women belong to the men but because it also places significant importance on the role that women and men take on in a relationship. This title is also in reference to the title of ‘They’re Not Your Husband’. I also chose to omit the question mark from the title to imply that Earl may not actually want a reply, as he fears that the answer may suggest he is a lesser man.

‘They’re Not Your Husband’ evoked a very strong reaction in me as a reader, so naturally I was interested in using my piece to explain how the short story came about. I had wanted to analyse how Carver’s themes of status and expectations could influence the outcome of my piece. I included these themes in my piece through time jumps to highlight the shift in relationship dynamics. The jumps emphasise how Doreen is quite independent towards the beginning, shown through how she chose to eliminate the problem of the static radio by turning it off rather than contacting Earl, but ends up very passive and yielding to Earl at the end, as indicated by her lack of assertion during the proposal scene despite how she is unenthusiastic for the marriage. Specifically, I tried to emphasise the power that the men held over the women by removing the female characters’ autonomy and making their circumstances a product of other’s actions; for example, describing the girls as having “found themselves wandering onto the college campus” rather than independently pursuing the option of the bar.

I also used the symbol of light throughout my story. I used light to indicate Doreen’s feelings towards the situation, by personifying sunlight and referencing whether the light was ‘artificial’ or not. I described how the sunlight was ‘beginning to climb around the corners of the curtain’ to indicate the ease Doreen felt before ‘Earl roused and sat up in the bed’, and I used this to also suggest that Earl might be starting to influence Doreen to become a more anxious person.

I briefly included the theme of alcoholism and control. The scene where I most explored the balance of power between men and women, the bar scene, I had the men bring ‘flasks of liquid’ and ‘push them’ across the table towards the girls to prompt the reader to consider who holds the status within the scene. I found that I had to carefully design the scene and phrase it certain ways in order to maintain tension without allowing one of the two groups to dictate the other. This is an example of when I had to sacrifice some of Carver’s elements in order to pursue my own.

I also referenced Carver’s ‘They’re Not Your Husband’, the short story that inspired my piece, by having Earl refer to the young men as ‘jokers’. This occurs in the original Carver story when the businessmen comment that ‘some jokers like their quim fat’ and later when Doreen’s co-worker asks her ‘Who is this joker?’ after Earl has ‘made a fool of’ himself by trying to show off Doreen to other customers at her workplace. I also used this reference to momentarily consider the character development that occurs both throughout the text and outside of it. I specifically discovered the possibility that Earl becomes exactly what he criticised others of when he was a young man.

Overall, I attempted to emulate Carver’s tone, though it was somewhat unsuccessful. I also found it difficult to balance exhibiting Earl as good person in his youth while still hinting at the possessive monster he later becomes. I tried to use time jumps to communicate the character development clearly, however, I found that this made it difficult to maintain flow and easy comprehension for the reader. Ultimately, I decided to retain the time jumps in order to imitate Carver’s format and to make the piece less linear and therefore more interesting for the reader. I also chose to write from a third person omniscient perspective, similar to Carver.