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Allies
The other day Becky and I were having one of those idle conversations couples sometimes have. What would our lives be like had we never met? We talked of trivialities, places where we’d both be living and jobs we might still have, and then she looked at me strangely.
“You would have married,” she said, appending a name to the sentence, a person from our past whom I no longer know, on whose rock I nearly foundered my marriage. “And divorced four months later,” I thought to myself. But life does not work that way. I met her at a job Becky had encouraged me to take.
Seventeen years together, and no part of my life entirely distinct from hers. She would be living in an airy single apartment full of light and Scandinavian furniture with no piles of desert books, no random stones from hikes long since forgotten. I would be dead, or in Barstow. She would have no one to challenge her self-abnegation. I would have no one to kick my ass.
Life does not work that way. Ask me what my life would be like without veins, or lungs. She is not part of me, nor I of her. But she has suffused herself into me, my thought, my work. My life.
We knew each other for two years before we were romantically involved. When we met we were romantically involved, I with Elissa, Becky with Elissa’s brother Michael. Becky and Michael lived in San Francisco, and would visit us about once a month, perhaps a little more.
Michael would tell non-stop jokes about old television shows. Becky would roll her eyes. As 1987 turned to 1988, her eyerolling became less patient. Michael was her first love, and so she was growing dissatisfied.
She and I would talk quietly of nothing as Michael and Elissa joked and argued. I tried my best to keep my silly, growing crush on her a secret. Eight years younger than me! I was 27 when we met. The math was irrefutable, my feelings inappropriate and doomed. I worked to transmute secret ardor into simple friendship, familial affection. It worked, for a time. Elissa’s family was large and chaotic, tempestuous, her father famously difficult to bear, though he was always kind to me. Becky and I became allies, confidantes in our struggles with the in-laws. I slowly put my crush aside, concentrated on my failing relationship with Elissa.
Michael and Becky were leaving our house after one weekend of jokes and sniping, talking and eye rolling. We stood in our kitchen. Elissa and Becky exchanged a quick hug, and Michael and I clapped hollow hands on one another’s backs. Michael turned to kiss his sister. Becky moved to me and hugged me. I gave her an affectionate embrace, squeezed just a bit, moved to let go. She didn’t. She clasped herself to me. I melted a little, clasped back again. There passed a very long time. Fifteen seconds? Thirty? Far beyond the bounds of propriety, whatever the duration. And then she turned and walked out without a word, and Michael followed, and when the door closed behind them Elissa masked her rage in mockery.
Neither Becky nor I mentioned that hug for some years after.
The next year Elissa met a man she loved deeply. She dithered. Choose him, or choose me, I said, but choose. Three days later, the kitchen full of boxes, I tapped half the cumin into an empty jar. When I’d bought it, I thought, I hadn’t anticipated dividing it. The phone rang. I smeared tears and cumin on the handset. Becky had heard. Elissa had told her family, and Michael had told Becky. I was fine, I said. Sad, of course. Some friends in Berkeley had invited me to move in with them.
“I don’t want to lose touch with you,” she said. We made plans for coffee.
“I am probably breaking up with Michael,” she said.
Elissa came home, looked at me sorrowfully, told me to take all the cumin if I wanted to. “That,” I said, “is not the point.”
We ate with Allison last week, the night before her plane took her back east. We were talking boys, and it occurred to me she is now as old as Becky was when we started dating. Just don’t fall for a 29-year-old, I said, and Becky agreed. “Don’t make the same mistake I did!” Under the table her hand took mine.
It was a long time ago. I can no longer fully remember the person I was. Nor do I wish to. Twenty-nine from forty-six is a lifetime. How do I disentangle the threads of her from the life I might have had? Sadness, brilliant joy, foundering. Days spent avoiding topics we both dared not bring up. Passion, boredom. Walks back home from Chinatown in Oakland, heavy fresh noodles making the plastic bag handles cut into my fingers. Her voice on the phone from China, from the desert, from across the bay. Waffles and companionable silence. Fierce happiness. Languor. Longing. Laughter.
One day I drove five miles toward the desert, turned and drove back home to kiss her one more time. One day we cast bare hooks into the Trinity’s South Fork, each of us aching as she pulled me back into our marriage, the first day in four years the ravens spoke to me. One day we woke up, our coffee date having run longer than we planned, and looked at each other in wonderment and a little fear. One day I left her forever, washed over with remorse at hurting Michael. One day she handed me a box: food from Chinatown to eat on the plane to Oahu with Elissa. One day I smiled at her through dinner as she picked every last flake of cilantro from her bowl with chopsticks. One day she pulled a love letter from her backpack, handed it to me among the Joshua trees. One day we stood before our friends and slipped rings on one another’s fingers, platinum with some iridium and osmium, Alvarez layers to seal away the monsters of the past.
Seven thousand days and each one changed me whole, but one more than the others. I was in school and she came to me, but I would not know it for some time. I was doing math, or looking out the window. A continent away she drew a breath and screamed. March 29, 1968, and I am the least of those whom she has changed. I may be the most grateful.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Note: A database glitch in 2008 ate a bunch of archived comments. Don't be offended if yours isn't here, or confused if the conversation seems disjointed. Thanks!
Happy Birthday Becky, and Happy Life to both of you!
By: By tigtog on 2006 03 29
Happy happy birthday. And 7000+ more days together.
By: By Becca on 2006 03 29
Thank you. To tell this is a deep gift not only to Becky but to anyone who reads it. I’ll celebrate the both of you today.
By: By MindSpin on 2006 03 29
You’re both lucky, if luck really exists. So glad you have each other. This was a beautiful piece, Chris.
By: By beth on 2006 03 29
This is so beautiful.
Happy birthday, Becky. You’re a lucky woman, but I think he’s even luckier.
By: By Stephanie on 2006 03 29
Happy Birthday, Becky!
By: By craig on 2006 03 29
This piece brought tears. What a gift!
By: By Carol Crews on 2006 03 29
You have such a gift for writing.
I am lucky enough to be with someone I want to write pieces like this to. In fact, it’s time I did that right now (I won’t be posting though!). Thank you. And happy birthday Becky.
By: By deviousdiva on 2006 03 29
Happy Happy, Becky! :-)
Chris, make sure you relay the message! :mad:
You can even relay it poetically, like you did in this here post. ;-)
I’m doin’ the smiley thing :P
By: By Carrie on 2006 03 29
I love when you write love letters to Becky. The eloquence of your heart is its most tender and beautiful.
Happy birthday, Becky.
By: By Rexroths Daughter on 2006 03 29
Lovely and tear inducing indeed. How’d you get so lucky? Muchas felicidades a Becky.
By: By Janeen on 2006 03 29
Happy birthday to Becky!
By: By Allison on 2006 03 29
More teary eyes here. Thank you for sharing this love letter. Happy birthday to Becky.
By: By Kimberly on 2006 03 29
Happy Birthday to my wonderful, beautiful daughter-in-law, Becky.
By: By Rita Xavier on 2006 03 29
Seems to me Becky’s mother is owed a huge thanks here too. It is after all a birthing day that takes all of one to give completely into the other. As it does in loving relationships, and thus “ain’t love grand; ain’t life great!!”
By: By spyder on 2006 03 29
You’re right, of course, spyder, and I plan to deliver those thanks tonight when Joan calls.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2006 03 29
Many happy returns of the day, Becky and congratulations again Chris, for choosing well.
:D
By: By Space Kitty on 2006 03 29
Pass on another “Happy Birthday!” will ya?
:-)
By: By Rachel Shaw on 2006 03 29
Thanks to all of Chris’s friends. He’s a fantastic writer and an even better pal. Yes, I know how lucky I am. And thank you, Chris.
By: By Becky on 2006 03 29
Smiles,
My highest compliment Chris, is that you’ve become Lloyd Dobler.
For all I know, you were the actual model for the fictional Lloyd Dobler, the main character in the sweet masterpiece, “Say Anything” (played by the gifted John Cusack and directed by the genius Cameron Crowe).
“To know Lloyd Dobler is to love him.” (It’s right there on the DVD.) Lloyd set the standard for what a guy could be like that women have, ever since, been referencing as the holy grail of relationship perfection.
We know. It’s a process, not a destination. And you’ll probably try to respond with something humble. Forget it. We’re not buying it.
You’re Lloyd Dobler and the rest of us are just doomed normal guys.
And congratulations to your circle of friends. Pass the cup and drink deeply.
/ehj2
By: By ehj2 on 2006 03 30
ehj2, all I can say is that if you’d posted that before Becky read the thread, she would have left the line about “sacrificing neatness for art” in her comment.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2006 03 30
thanks to you both for a little window into your lives. happy birthday becky.
and chris, barstow=death is very funny. at least to those of us who don’t live there.
By: By dread pirate roberts on 2006 03 30
so honest and beautiful. happy birthday becky - and chris, you are blessed with luck no matter how often coyote shows up!
By: By Anne on 2006 03 30
Chris, I really have to stop reading your blog before I have a box of tissues at hand. Man!
Happy belated birthday, Becky.
I will freely admit that I deeply envy what you have—and deeply admire it, too.
By: By Ancrene Wiseass on 2006 03 30
Hi! I’ve been lurking here on and off for a while now. I enjoy your writing a lot, both here and in comments on other blogs.
But this… I’m another who got tears in her eyes reading this wonderful tribute.
Thank you for posting it.
And a (somewhat belated) happy birthday to Becky.
By: By liveparadox on 2006 03 30
F###. You are the best writer.
By: By Helen on 2006 03 30
Happiness to both of you! 1968, such a youngster. Enjoy every blessed day.
By: By Buffalo Gal on 2006 03 31
Well, that’s the most beautiful birthday greeting I’ve every read. Happy Birthday (late) to Becky :)
By: By eRobin on 2006 03 31
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