Every night for two years, Helen had sent her lonely voice out over the cable, through the fiber-optic lines, hoping for something.

She was not even sure what she was hoping for.  She knew she was tired of living alone in the old farmhouse on Highway 9, west of Cresco.  Tired of long, humid summer nights in the big old bedroom that had belonged to her parents, long ago, before cancer carried away her mother, before her father was killed when his tractor rolled over on the side of a hill on the north end of the farm.  She was tired of huddling alone under piled quilts when the northern Iowa winter brought blizzards howling down from Canada.   Helen was tired, completely tired of living alone in the old farmhouse where she had lived all her life.

The farmland was gone.  Helen sold the land to a neighbor a week after her father’s funeral.  She kept the house; she had never lived anywhere else.

Now, twenty-one years later, her fortieth year, Helen was tired of being alone.

Helen knew she was reasonably attractive, at least not ugly, even at forty.  Her skin was clear, her teeth straight if a bit long, and while she was a bit on the thin side, she had a wide, honest smile.  She kept her ash-blonde hair bobbed square at collar length, even thought it would become her if she let it grow; longer hair was too much trouble, so she kept it as it had been since she left high school, twenty-two years before.  When she looked in the mirror, her only real complaint was with her hands and feet – she thought both too big, although nobody else ever told her that.

For years, Helen had been lonely.  She saw people at work, but no real friends; it wasn’t easy, in a small town, if you didn’t fit in.  She had not been on a date since high school.  She had not been out with a friend in ten years.  Days she worked in the bank in Cresco, filing, opening new accounts, closing old ones.  Nights and weekends she sat alone in the drafty old farmhouse on Highway 9, watching television and sipping gin and tonics.

Then, one brisk autumn day, she drove her father’s old Chevrolet all the way to Waterloo, where she bought a computer.  She brought it back to the farmhouse, spent a Sunday morning setting it up on an old desk in the little side bedroom that had been hers when she was a child. 

The following Tuesday, she took the afternoon off work so that a technician from an internet company could drive all the way from Elkader to hook up Helen’s computer to something called a DSL line.

The cable that came through Helen’s dank, damp, dark basement, up through the ancient hardwood floor into the tiny bedroom, connected Helen to the entire world.

During the inevitable winter blizzards, she was able to do some of her work from home, through the cable that connected her to the Cresco State Bank as well as the rest of the world.  For two years, that was the only reason she touched the computer.

Gradually, though, she began to use it more often.  The winter nights were cold and dark in northeast Iowa, the air outside bitterly cold; Helen had nothing else to do.  She discovered that there were many more just like her, many lonely voices echoing out on the fiber optic lines, seeking someone else with which to share – something, anything.

Helen’s lonely voice went out on the net with all the others, and she supposed that a lonely, disembodied voice was all she’d be, that this was how things would remain.

That was before Robert.

Helen met Robert on MyWeb.com, which was advertised as a blogging site, but ended up being an online singles club.  Helen’s social skills were only fair at best, but the distance afforded by the Internet made it easier for her to make friends.

She surprised herself at how quickly she came to think of Robert as more than that.

Rapidly, maybe too rapidly, Helen’s interactions with Robert progressed from public message board posts, to private emails, to hours-long private chat sessions.  They exchanged photos, Helen having driven to Minneapolis to have a portrait taken, her first since her senior high school class photo.  Robert’s photo came in an email; he was tall, looked strong, with piercing dark eyes and black hair.  On two occasions Robert called Helen; his voice was strong and clear.  Their emails, their chats, even their infrequent phone conversations, became more intimate with every contact.

On the first of July, Robert called a third time.  He was driving to see Helen, all the way from Seattle.  He was driving to visit her in person; he would be in Cresco a week from Friday; he was anxious to meet her in person.

He’s coming to marry me, Helen told herself.  He’s coming to propose.

Helen already knew what her answer would be.  She had only a week and a half to prepare. 

On Saturday, she went all the way to Waterloo again, where she bought a light blue flowered dress, the first piece of clothing she had bought in five years that wasn’t intended for work or home.  She had her ash-blond hair trimmed and styled in the salon in Cresco she had used all her life; the old woman who ran the salon saw Helen’s nervousness and anticipation, asked her what was going on, but Helen told her nothing.

It seemed a thousand years and yet only a few moments before the appointed day came.  On Friday afternoon, Helen was standing at her front door, wearing the blue dress, when an old blue Mercury Marquis pulled off Highway 9 and drove up the long, gravel drive to stop next to the house.

Robert got out, and stood up next to the car as Helen watched through the rusting steel screen of the front door.  He was older than his picture showed, but still tall, straight, confident.  He walked quickly to the door with a package in his hand.

“Helen?” he asked through the screen.

“Yes,” she said, and smiled.  “Robert.  It’s so nice to see you at last.”

“It sure is,” he smiled back.

Helen opened the door.  “Please come in.”

The package turned out to be chocolate covered cherries, one of Helen’s few vices besides white wine; it turned out Robert had a bottle of that, too, stashed away in his suitcase.

They spent Friday night drinking wine and talking on the old, overstuffed couch until well past midnight.  Finally, Robert said he was tired; he had driven a long way.  Then he put his arms around Helen and kissed her.

Helen had not kissed a man since her senior year of high school.  She wanted Robert to kiss her, but the insecurity bred of all her lonely years intervened.  In seeming deference to her caution, Robert spent the first night, Friday night, on the living room couch.

On Saturday, Helen wanted to go to Decorah for dinner at a Chinese restaurant she favored, but Robert politely declined, pleading that they had spent enough time in the car as it was.  Instead, they walked in the fields behind the house, fields Helen’s father had farmed but that now belonged to a neighbor.  They walked and talked, had dinner, watched a movie on Helen’s old television, opened another bottle of wine and talked some more.  They even danced, on the creaking oak floorboards of the living room, to the music from Helen’s old record player.

That night, when Robert kissed Helen again, she found most of her nervousness gone.  Robert spent that night with Helen, upstairs in the old main bedroom, in the huge, ancient four-poster bed that her parents had used.

She woke up in the morning smiling.  He’ll propose today, she thought.  She lay very still, feeling all the feelings slowly.  Her body felt different; something was new.

Robert was already up and about.  She could hear him moving around downstairs.  Quickly, happily, she got up, washed her face, brushed her teeth, put on her new blue dress she’d worn for Robert only two days earlier.  She went downstairs to find Robert just walking through the front door, his suitcase in his hand.

“Robert,” Helen called as she walked across the living room.  “What… Where are you going?”

“Home,” he said.

“Will you be coming back soon?”

“No,” he said.  He frowned slightly.  “I’ll be going home to Seattle.  I’m afraid I won’t be coming back.”  With that, he turned and walked to his car, leaving Helen standing in the open doorway, her mouth open in shock.

As he drove away, Helen finally noticed the license plates on Robert’s car.

Minnesota.

Not Washington.  Not Seattle.  Minnesota.

She went back inside, and sat down at the ancient, battered kitchen table.  She sat there for a long time.

Towards evening, a thunderstorm came in.  It was a typical northern Iowa summer thunderstorm, riding in with the setting sun, setting the sky ablaze with lightning, the ground shaking with thunder, Helen’s old farmhouse trembling with wind and rain.

Helen looked up from the dented and chipped table.  She looked up at the rain pounding the kitchen windows, listened to the rain driving against the roof.  She saw the lightning strobing in the sky over the two old oaks in the yard back of the house.

She stood up.

She walked to the door, opened it, and stepped out onto the porch.  The wind hit her, the rain drove through her thin cotton dress.  She ignored it.  The rain, the thunder, the wind, called her off the porch, onto the sparse grass of the yard.

She stepped onto the grass.  Her bare feet felt the wet grass.  The rain drove through her dress, making it cling to her, like Robert’s hands had clung to her the night before, like his scent, his memory, still did.  Helen began slowly to dance, to dance in the rain as the downpour washed the scent and memory away.