by our common humanity and the beauty of it. I’d see the moms and dads at Target buying stuff to play Easter Bunny, and it would feel so damn sweet. I’d go to the garden department of some store and I’d take it all in, the abundance of flowers, the fat bags of bark, us folks with our endlessly optimistic desire to grow things. I noticed the big and small all around me—the lovely curve of orange peels, the bittersweet tenderness of twilight. I wanted to be a better person, certainly better than the one I was being then.
Sometimes I would go to Ian. I’d drive to Seattle during the day, thirty minutes each way, for a half hour of being together in his car somewhere, away from the eyes of anyone he might know. Or he would come to me. We’d meet on his way home from work, at one of the wooded trailheads that surrounded our neighborhood, or at a park in the next town over, a dank, dark, and eerie place seldom used because it was dank, dark, and eerie. I usually got there before he did, checking my makeup in the visor mirror while I waited, sucking on mints, playing music especially chosen to evoke the feelings I most wanted to have then. I’d watch and watch for his car (a silver Audi, in those days), and then there it would come, oh, God, and he would park, and I could see through the windows that his jawline was somber and almost resigned until he leaned over the passenger seat to unlock the door and let me in.
It’s been days. It’s been too, too long , he would say, and that’s exactly how it felt no matter how much time had passed. Eons. Slow, loud ticking clocks of days until our meetings, where the time would go so fast, you might become sure that some cruel, punishing time warp truly did exist. How could the very same minutes go so slow and then so fast? Scientific mystery. His carwas one of the few corners of his world I was allowed into, and I claimed it— my seat beside him. It sounds pathetic and insignificant, meeting in his car, but it was also oddly wonderful. The car was contained and protected from intrusion and from the complications and hazards of real life. A space small enough to be perfect. These were moments of time in a private, enclosed domain that belonged to only him and me. He would put a CD in, one of our favorites, and then he would lean in and we would kiss and kiss some more until my lips got numb. It was the sort of passion that could never fade, you were sure, that could never be lost among laundry and bills and the needs of children.
Just kissing, though. Always just that at first. See, it wasn’t an affair that was all about sex. ( Affair —what a trivial word. It sounds like a party with frilly dresses.) No, it was the much more dangerous kind of relationship, the marriage-breaking kind about meeting your soul mate.
What if this is nothing more than lust? he asked once. He asked a version of that question many more times still. And I would answer. I would give all the reasons, making an argument. I fought for it. The sinking ship was going under, under, under, and I was in the lifeboat and I was struggling to get him in there with me. I was grasping his hand and pulling more than my weight to haul him over the round rubber side of that small, perilous craft. He had swum there himself, though. He had pursued me. I shouldn’t forget that. I couldn’t have lifted him in without his desire to get in. Still. I had argued on our behalf.
You’re the one I should have always been with , he would say, after my logic had softened his and brought him back to me. I see a lifetime in your eyes , he said once, too, a line I would have made fun of if I had heard it on TV but that choked me up in real life. He meant it. There were small acts of electrifying teenage romance, too: He would twirl my hair around his finger; he wouldlook long and deep into my eyes. I can feel his round, hard shoulders and the buttons of his shirt under my fingers as I write this. I can feel my own heartbeat.
Sometimes I would go to Ian. I’d drive to Seattle during the day, thirty minutes each way, for a half hour of being together in his car somewhere, away from the eyes of anyone he might know. Or he would come to me. We’d meet on his way home from work, at one of the wooded trailheads that surrounded our neighborhood, or at a park in the next town over, a dank, dark, and eerie place seldom used because it was dank, dark, and eerie. I usually got there before he did, checking my makeup in the visor mirror while I waited, sucking on mints, playing music especially chosen to evoke the feelings I most wanted to have then. I’d watch and watch for his car (a silver Audi, in those days), and then there it would come, oh, God, and he would park, and I could see through the windows that his jawline was somber and almost resigned until he leaned over the passenger seat to unlock the door and let me in.
It’s been days. It’s been too, too long , he would say, and that’s exactly how it felt no matter how much time had passed. Eons. Slow, loud ticking clocks of days until our meetings, where the time would go so fast, you might become sure that some cruel, punishing time warp truly did exist. How could the very same minutes go so slow and then so fast? Scientific mystery. His carwas one of the few corners of his world I was allowed into, and I claimed it— my seat beside him. It sounds pathetic and insignificant, meeting in his car, but it was also oddly wonderful. The car was contained and protected from intrusion and from the complications and hazards of real life. A space small enough to be perfect. These were moments of time in a private, enclosed domain that belonged to only him and me. He would put a CD in, one of our favorites, and then he would lean in and we would kiss and kiss some more until my lips got numb. It was the sort of passion that could never fade, you were sure, that could never be lost among laundry and bills and the needs of children.
Just kissing, though. Always just that at first. See, it wasn’t an affair that was all about sex. ( Affair —what a trivial word. It sounds like a party with frilly dresses.) No, it was the much more dangerous kind of relationship, the marriage-breaking kind about meeting your soul mate.
What if this is nothing more than lust? he asked once. He asked a version of that question many more times still. And I would answer. I would give all the reasons, making an argument. I fought for it. The sinking ship was going under, under, under, and I was in the lifeboat and I was struggling to get him in there with me. I was grasping his hand and pulling more than my weight to haul him over the round rubber side of that small, perilous craft. He had swum there himself, though. He had pursued me. I shouldn’t forget that. I couldn’t have lifted him in without his desire to get in. Still. I had argued on our behalf.
You’re the one I should have always been with , he would say, after my logic had softened his and brought him back to me. I see a lifetime in your eyes , he said once, too, a line I would have made fun of if I had heard it on TV but that choked me up in real life. He meant it. There were small acts of electrifying teenage romance, too: He would twirl my hair around his finger; he wouldlook long and deep into my eyes. I can feel his round, hard shoulders and the buttons of his shirt under my fingers as I write this. I can feel my own heartbeat.
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