I met Claire soon after I moved home from college.
I grew up in Springfield, an almost-a-city town set in the middle of a vast plane of flatness. They used to grow wheat here a century ago, before the land was used up and the farmers moved farther west. Old barns and grain silos still dot the landscape, empty now except for the history they hold.
My parents’ house was equidistant between the only wooded area in town—called, imaginatively, the Woods—and the public golf course. I spent an equal amount of time at both, allowed by my parents to roam free with my older brother, Tim. We learned to swim in the cold pools in the river, and played Pirates, Capture the Flag, and a game of our own invention called “You Can’t Get There from Here” in the Woods.
When Tim tired of me, I’d sling a bag full of my dad’s cast-off clubs over my shoulder and walk to the golf course. Everyone knew me there, and many of the grown-ups would let me join them, cheering me on if I made a good shot, helping me search for my ball in the tall grasses that waved along the side of the course when I didn’t.
Winter meant snow forts and snowball fights, skating on the rink my dad made in the backyard: fuelled by his dreams of having at least one son in the NHL, he’d be out there late most nights smoothing the surface by applying a fresh layer of water with a garden hose. It also meant shuffling to the golf course to look out over the snowy undulations and frozen water hazards, waiting longingly for spring.
When it was time to apply to college, Tim was already in his second year at State, but I decided to cast a wider net. I had good grades, so why not? And if the schools I applied to tended to have less winter and be in proximity to affordable golf, or have—nirvana—their own golf course, all the better.
I got into a smaller, liberal arts college several degrees latitude south, and my parents were amenable to helping me out, so that’s where I went.
I came home six years later.
I knew a few things about myself by then. The first and foremost was that I was never going to make the PGA Tour. Okay, I already kind of knew that, but a guy can dream, can’t he? But I also knew I didn’t want to be anything I’d imagined being as a boy—fireman, teacher, lawyer. It turned out what I really enjoyed was numbers, the certainty of 2 + 2. In my junior year, I’d switched from history to accounting, stuck around for a few extra years to get my CPA, and worked on how to make “I’m going to be an accountant” sound intriguing enough to get a couple girls to go home with me.
As much as I’d enjoyed my time away, I also knew I wanted to go back to Springfield.
Maybe I was homesick, but I felt like I knew that most of all.
After I got back, I spent enough time living with my parents to change my leisurely plan of looking for an apartment while I set up my accounting practice into a thing of urgency, then borrowed some money from them to buy a condo in a newer building close to what passed for downtown in Springfield.
And that’s how I met Claire.
I needed a lawyer to work out the paperwork for the condo, and to set up my new business. A bit of asking around told me that James & Franzen were the best, so I called to make an appointment. The receptionist asked me if I minded working with one of the newer members of the firm.
“Sure, that’d be fine.”
“Great. Claire James has an opening tomorrow at eleven thirty, would that do you?”
The name seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “It would.”
The next day I put on a pair of pressed khakis and a sport coat—a hand-me-down from my father that had the golf course’s crest embroidered above the right-hand pocket—and strolled across the town square. As I passed person after person I knew, and smiled and nodded and said, “Yup, I’m back for good, you need an accountant, you give me a call,” I wondered what it was about the name Claire James that was so familiar, but I still couldn’t get there.
I cast those thoughts aside as the Claire James in question came out to meet me. She was about my age, maybe a bit older, and pretty. Wearing a navy blue skirt and jacket, she had straight chestnut hair that touched her shoulders, pale blue eyes that were a little close together above a straight nose, and medium-full lips covered in a light gloss. She smiled and her whole face lit up, exuding warmth and confidence.
I felt tongue-tied as I followed her down the corridor. Although I was still in the process of breaking up with my college girlfriend, Lily—she didn’t want to move to Springfield, but we weren’t quite prepared to give up on the idea of us having a future together—I knew immediately that I really wanted to ask Claire out.
But first, we had some business to attend to.
“Did Tim give you my name?” she asked as she sat down behind her desk, kicking off an uncomfortable-looking pair of high-heeled shoes. “You don’t mind, do you?”
My brain fogged with confusion until I realized she was referring to her stocking feet.
“No, of course not. But how do you …”
Her face fell as memory clicked into place. Claire James. Shit. This was Tim’s law school girlfriend, who happened to be from Springfield too. The one I didn’t meet because Tim and I never seemed to be home at the same time anymore. The one I never met before that because she went through the private school system. And, most importantly, the one Tim broke up with around graduation and had been tight-lipped about ever since.
“Oh,” was all I could manage.
“I’m guessing that means Tim didn’t send you?”
“I’m sorry, I called the general line and they put me on to you.”
“Why are you apologizing?”
“For not making the connection, I guess.”
“That’s all right. Have you heard from Tim lately?”
She was trying to act casual as she asked this, but the way her neck flushed gave her away. Problem was, I hadn’t spoken to Tim lately. None of us had. He’d fucked off a few months after finishing law school to take a “spin around the world,” and his communication since then had been infrequent and short. In Spain read one postcard, sent from Seville and depicting a bullfight. Old buildings.
“Not really.”
“Me neither.”
“If this is going to be awkward, I’m sure I can find someone else to handle my stuff.”
“No, no,” she waved off my suggestion. “That’s all done with. And it’s not your problem.”
But it was.
When I was twelve, my dad decided it was time to give me the Talk.
I’d been caught folding my stained Matchbox-car sheets into the washing machine early one Sunday morning. I stood there, frozen, while my dad watched me over his coffee cup with a look of deep understanding. My ears went hot, feverish. I thanked God my mom was a late sleeper.
He beckoned me into the kitchen, poured me a small cup of joe, and stumbled his way through a version of the facts of life that was so alien to what I already knew from TV and the schoolyard I was pretty sure he didn’t know what he was talking about.
When he finally let me go hide in my room, Tim came to find me. Tim was fourteen. He’d grown. I had not. The weight of him as he sat down on the side of my bed reminded me of my father. But his voice still cracked.
“Nice try, loser.”
I pulled the sheet down. He was smirking at me, but in a friendly way.
“Ah, fuck off.”
“You gotta wait till they’re out of the house.”
“I was kinda figuring that out.”
“Dad talk to you?”
“Yeah.”
“Predictable.”
“Whatever.”
“Bet you can’t wait to get a girl now.”
His mild sarcasm made me wonder whether what my dad had said might’ve been accurate after all.
“No way. Girls are gross.”
“Right. Till they aren’t.”
“Huh?”
“What do you think you were dreaming about, dummy? Unless …”
I picked up my pillow and threw it at him. “I’m not a homo.”
“Sure.”
“I’m not.”
“So girls won’t be gross forever, then.”
I thought about the girls in my class. How my friends and I made fun of their “best-friend” necklaces. How they held hands when they walked down the hall. How they’d cry over the breakup of their friendships.
Who needed that kind of drama?
“Maybe.”
“Trust me.”
“What do you know about it?”
“More than you, Mr. Matchbox Car.”
“I’ve asked Mom like a thousand times to get me new sheets.”
“Well, maybe she will now that you’re a man and all.”
My stomach clenched in panic. “Dad’s not going to tell Mom, is he?”
“I think you can count on it.”
I pulled the covers back up over my head. Tim left me in my fortress of embarrassment wondering whether what he said about girls was right, but it soon became clear. Almost overnight, girls stopped being “girls” and became Sara, Allison, and Christie. And the scuffle that resulted a couple months later from John kissing Brendan’s “girlfriend” led us to adopt the Rules.
Well, there was just the one rule, really: once a girl was stupid enough to go out with one of us, she was off limits.
Forever.
Because forever seemed like a real thing then, something that had to be respected.
Loyalty to my brother—and the certain knowledge that acting on my growing feelings for Claire would be a gross violation of the Rule—kept me from asking her out for months.
I held it in check while she helped me buy my condo and set up my business and became a friend. I worried that becoming her friend would mean I’d lose my chance to be something more. I spent way too much time thinking about the whole thing, to be honest, which really wasn’t like me. With the exception of Lily, I’d flitted in and out of relationships without much thought, and had been attracted to girls who I instinctively knew would tire of me in short order or wouldn’t be that upset if I tired of them.
I just didn’t know how much.
In the midst of all this thinking, I finally broke up with Lily, driving twelve hours to do it in person. Six hours there, a two-hour prolonged and tearful—on her part—conversation, then six hours back, knowing I’d done the right thing but still feeling shitty. Would I have tried harder to work things out if Claire wasn’t in the picture? But Claire wasn’t really in the picture, so why was I acting as if she were? My brain wheeled round and round until I took the final turn off the highway for home and my spirits began to lift.
I was now twenty-four, free, and half in love with my brother’s ex-girlfriend. I did a few stupid things to try to get her out of my system. Like hanging out in the local hook-up bar, taking home girls I knew I was never going to ask out again, who’d become someone I avoided in the grocery store. I was having fun, but I was brooding too. Assuming Claire did want to go out with me, how was I ever going to get past the Tim factor?
Then she did it for me.
About six months after we’d first met, we were having lunch at a deli that had opened recently near her office.
I’d received a postcard from Tim. Welcome to Coolangatta it read, with the words Learning to scuba written on the back. I had to look up the name to figure out he was in Australia. It was in my pocket, and I was fingering it nervously, wondering if I should show it to her. I eventually decided to do it, and tried to act casual as I pulled out the slightly moist card and slid it across the counter towards her.
“Heard from Tim,” I said, taking a large bite of my sandwich.
“Oh?”
She picked up the card, staring at the azure ocean, the cloudless sky, the red sand beach. I watched her out of the corner of my eye as she turned it over and read the words on the back.
“Well, that’s that, then.” She pushed it back to me.
“What’s that?”
“Tim wanted to go to Australia. That’s why we broke up.”
“You didn’t want to go?”
She shook her head, looked away.
“I know how that feels.” I took a sip of my Coke to wet my drying throat. “Lily, I told you about her, right? Anyway, she didn’t want to move here. So …”
“So?”
“We broke up.”
“I heard.”
I wondered what else she’d heard. Not too much, hopefully.
“Small towns.”
She played with her napkin. “The funny thing is, I would’ve gone with him if he’d really wanted me to, but the minute I expressed some reluctance he blew it up into this big thing, like he was looking for an excuse to break up.”
“Idiot.”
“Pardon?”
“I said, my brother’s an idiot.”
“Yeah, well, some things aren’t meant to work out. I mean, if he really loved me, we would’ve figured it out, right?”
Did that mean I hadn’t really loved Lily? Because I thought I had. It certainly felt like love during the good parts. But one thing was certain: Claire loved Tim enough to move around the world for him; I’d better put my dreams away if I knew what was good for me.
She put her hand on my knee. Thoughts of Tim receded.
“You won’t tell Tim about any of this, will you?”
“Thanks, Jeff, you’re a really good friend.” She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek, then pulled back, looking confused. “I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be. I … I’ve wanted that for a while now.”
“You’ve wanted me to kiss you on the cheek?”
“Among other places,” I said, hoping I was striking the right flirty tone, my heart racing against my chest.
“Well, then, maybe we should do something about that,” she said slowly.
“What did you have in mind?”
She thought about it for a moment. “Do you like Asian food?”
As I stood in the shower two nights later, a riot of rationalization skipped through my brain. He broke up with her. She’d asked me out. He’d barely communicated with any of us for months. Maybe he was never coming back. Besides, if I even wanted to ask his permission, he’d made that impossible. We had no address, no phone number, no way of contacting him. He’d untethered himself from us. How could he complain if things happened? How could he be surprised if life moved on?
I towelled off and climbed into fresh clothes: a new pair of jeans, a collared shirt, and my trusty blazer. Maybe it was too dressy for the occasion, but it felt like a time to dress up.
I drove to Claire’s, wishing I’d taken the time to clean out the inside of my beaten-up Toyota. She was waiting on the stoop—something I took as a good sign—wearing a wool skirt and a turtleneck sweater. She had on some makeup and her hair was shiny. I was glad I’d gone with the blazer.
We went to dinner at the only Thai restaurant in town, and the conversation flowed in an easy way I hadn’t felt in a while, maybe never. She teased me about my lack of knowledge of Asian cuisine, and I ate whatever she put in front of me, struggling with my chopsticks. Some of it was slimy, and some of it was too spicy for my taste. I washed it all down with too many Chinese beers, and by the end of the meal I was slightly drunk.
After dinner, we took a walk through the town square. The bare trees had lights strung through them, a leftover from Christmas. They glinted off Claire’s hair, and to me, she looked perfect. It was coming on spring and the air was warm, though there was still some snow on the ground. A gentle breeze blew through the trees, and I breathed in the loamy smell of wet earth, dead grass, and old snow. I’d be golfing in a month if I was lucky.
I felt light on my feet and happy.
Happy in my soul.
Claire strolled next to me, her hands clasped behind her back, like she was keeping them to herself. I wanted possession of her hand — I wanted more than that, but the hand would do for now—so I said something silly to distract her, and it worked. Her arms fell to her side and I seized the opportunity. She started slightly, looking down at her soft, white hand encased in mine, then up at me.
By the smile on her face, I knew we’d be kissing soon.
Any moment now.
Any moment now.