ou were pretty young, but maybe you were just
well-preserved. But I swear to you that it's really nice, and won't it be great to
have a studio in the back like that?"
I sigh. "Yeah. It will. God. I wish you could videotape some of your
excursions. I would love to see this place. Couldn't you have looked at the
address, while you were at it?"
"Sorry. It was just a quickie."
Sometimes I would give anything to open up Henry's brain and look at his
memory like a movie. I remember when I first learned to use a computer; I was
fourteen and Mark was trying to teach me to draw on his Macintosh. After about
ten minutes I wanted to push my hands through the screen and get at the real
thing in there, whatever it was. I like to do things directly, touch the textures, see
the colors. House shopping with Henry is making me crazy. It's like driving one
of those awful toy remote control cars. I always drive them into walls. On
purpose.
"Henry. Would you mind if I went house hunting by myself for a while?"
"No, I guess not." He seems a little hurt. "If you really want to."
"Well, we're going to end up in this place anyway, right? I mean, it won't
change anything."
"True. Yeah, don't mind me. But try not to fall for any more hellholes, okay?"
I finally find it about a month and twenty or so houses later. It's on Ainslie, in
Lincoln Square, a red brick bungalow built in 1926. Carol pops open the key box
and wrestles with the lock, and as the door opens I have an overwhelming
sensation of something fitting... I walk right through to the back window, peer
out at the backyard, and there's my future studio, and there's the grape arbor and
as I turn around Carol looks at me inquisitively and I say, "We'll buy it."
She is more than a bit surprised. "Don't you want to see the rest of the house?
What about your husband?"
"Oh, he's already seen it. But yeah, sure, let's see the house."
Saturday, July 9, 1994 (Henry is 31, Clare is 23)
Henry: Today was Moving Day. All day it was hot; the movers' shirts stuck to
them as they walked up the stairs of our apartment this morning, smiling
because they figured a two-bedroom apartment would be no big deal and they'd
be done before lunch time. Their smiles fell when they stood in our living room
and saw Clare's heavy Victorian furniture and my seventy-eight boxes of books.
Now it's dark and Clare and I are wandering through the house, touching the
walls, running our hands over the cherry windowsills. Our bare feet slap the
wood floors. We run water into the claw-footed bathtub, turn the burners of the
heavy Universal stove on and off. The windows are naked; we leave the lights off
and street light pours over the empty fireplace through dusty glass. Clare moves
from room to room, caressing her house, our house. I follow her, watching as she
opens closets, windows, cabinets. She stands on tiptoe in the dining room,
touches the etched-glass light fixture with a fingertip. Then she takes off her shirt.
I run my tongue over her breasts. The house envelops us, watches us,
contemplates us as we make love in it for the first time, the first of many times,
and afterward, as we lie spent on the bare floor surrounded by boxes, I feel that
we have found our home.
Sunday, August 28, 1994 (Clare is 23, Henry is 31)
Clare: It's a humid sticky hot Sunday afternoon, and Henry, Gomez, and I are at
large in Evanston. We spent the morning at Lighthouse Beach, playing in Lake
Michigan and roasting ourselves. Gomez wanted to be buried in the sand, so
Henry and I obliged. We ate our picnic, and napped. Now we are walking down
the shady side of Church Street, licking Orangsicles, groggy with sun.
"Clare, your hair is full of sand," says Henry. I stop and lean over and beat my
hair like a carpet with my hand. A whole beach falls out of it.
"My ears are full of sand. And my unmentionables " Gomez says.
"I'll be glad to whack you in the head, but you will have to do the rest
yourself," I say. A small breeze blows up and we hold our bodies out to it. I coil
my hair onto the top of my head and immediately feel better.
"What shall we do next?" Gomez inquires. Henry and I exchange glances.
"Bookman's Alley" we chant in unison.
Gomez groans. "Oh, God. Not a bookstore. Lord, Lady, have mercy on your
humble servant-"
"Bookman's Alley it is, then " Henry says blithely.
"Just promise me we won't spend more than, oh, say, three hours..."
"I think they close at five" I tell him, "and it's already 2:30."
"You could go have a beer," says Henry.
"I thought Evanston was dry."
"No, I think they changed it. If you can prove you're not a member of the
YMCA you can have a beer."
"I'll come with you. All for one and one for all." We turn onto Sherman, walk
past what used to be Marshall Field's and is now a sneaker outlet store, past what
used to be the Varsity Theater and is now a Gap. We turn into the alley that runs
between the florist's and the shoe repair shop and lo and behold, it's Bookman's
Alley. I push the door open and we troop into the dim cool shop as though we
are tumbling into the past.
Roger is sitting behind his little untidy desk chatting with a ruddy
white-haired gentleman about something to do with chamber music. He smiles
when he sees us. "Clare, I've got something you will like," he says. Henry makes
a beeline for the back of the store where all the printing and bibliophilic stuff is.
Gomez meanders around looking at the weird little objects that are tucked into
the various sections: a saddle in Westerns, a deerstalker's cap in Mysteries. He
takes a gumdrop from the immense bowl in the Children's section, not realizing
that those gumdrops have been there for years and you can hurt yourself on
them. The book Roger has for me is a Dutch catalog of decorative papers with
real sample papers tipped in. I can see immediately that it's a find, so I lay it on
the table by the desk, to start the pile of things I want. Then I begin to peruse the
shelves dreamily, inhaling the deep dusty smell of paper, glue, old carpets and
wood. I see Henry sitting on the floor in the Art section with something open on
his lap. He's sunburned, and his hair stands up every which way. I'm glad he cut
it. He looks more like himself to me now, with the short hair. As I watch him he
puts his hand up to twirl a piece of it around his finger, realizes it's too short to
do that, and scratches his ear. I want to touch him, run my hands through his
funny sticking-up hair, but I turn and burrow into the Travel section instead.
Henry: Clare is standing in the main room by a huge stack of new arrivals. Roger
doesn't really like people fiddling with unpriced stuff, but I've noticed that he'll
let Clare do pretty much whatever she wants in his store. She has her head bent
over a small red book. Her hair is trying to escape from the coil on her head, and
one strap of her sundress is hanging off her shoulder, exposing a bit of her
bathing suit. This is so poignant, so powerful, that I urgently need to walk over
to her, touch her, possibly, if no one is looking, bite her, but at the same time I
don't want this moment to end, and suddenly I notice Gomez, who is standing in
the Mystery section looking at Clare with an expression that so exactly mirrors
my own feelings that I am forced to see-.
At this moment, Clare looks up at me and says, "Henry, look, it's Pompeii."
She holds out the tiny book of picture postcards, and something in her voice
says, See, I have chosen you. I walk to her, put my arm around her shoulders,
straighten the fallen strap. When I look up a second later, Gomez has turned his
back on us and is intently surveying the Agatha Christies.
Sunday, January 15, 1995 (Clare is 23, Henry is 31)
Clare: I am washing dishes and Henry is dicing green peppers. The sun is setting
very pinkly over the January snow in our backyard on this early Sunday evening,
and we are making chili and singing Yellow Submarine: In the town where I was born
Lived a man who sailed to sea...
Onions hiss in the pan on the stove. As we sing And our friends are all on board I
suddenly hear my voice floating alone and I turn and Henry's clothes lie in a
heap, the knife is on the kitchen floor. Half of a pepper sways slightly on the
cutting board.
I turn off the heat and cover the onions. I sit down next to the pile of clothes
and scoop them up, still warm from Henry's body, and sit until all their warmth
is from my body, holding them. Then I get up and go into our bedroom, fold the
clothes neatly and place them on our bed. Then I continue making dinner as best
I can, and eat by myself, waiting and wondering.
Friday, February 3, 1995 (Clare is 23, Henry is 31, and 39)
Clare: Gomez and Charisse and Henry and I are sitting around our dining room
table playing Modern Capitalist Mind-Fuck. It's a game Gomez and Charisse
have invented. We play it with a Monopoly set. It involves answering questions,
getting points, accumulating money, and exploiting your fellow players. It's
Gomez's turn. He shakes the dice, gets a six, and lands on Community Chest. He
draws a card.
"Okay, everybody. What modern technological invention would you deep-six
for the good of society?"
"Television," I say.
"Fabric softener," says Charisse.
"Motion detectors," says Henry vehemently.
"And I say gunpowder."
"That's hardly modern " I object.
"Okay. The assembly line."
"You don't get two answers," says Henry.
"Sure I do. What kind of a lame-ass answer is 'motion detectors,' anyway?"
"I keep getting ratted on by the motion detectors in the stacks at the
Newberry. Twice this week I've ended up in the stacks after hours, and as soon as
I show up the guard is upstairs checking it out. It's driving me nuts."
"I don't think the proletariat would be affected much by the de-invention of
motion sensors. Clare and I each get ten points for correct answers, Charisse gets
five points f