SOLES OF FEET PRESSED UP AGAINST MINE

This isn’t strictly part of the story. I need to tell you about what happened with Harry, but for most of this story I don’t get my own voice. It’s always, ‘Caddy said’ or ‘Caddy replied’ or ‘Caddy pondered’.

OK, now I have an I. I’m an I, like Sarah. How come Sarah gets an I, when she’s only an imaginary character that I imagined? Who’s in charge of this story anyway?

Let’s pretend for a moment that it’s me. I’m in charge of this story. So here’s what I want to tell you.

I loved Harry. I love him now, so much. The smell of his neck, where it met his chin – is there a word for that? That little corner, ripe for biting, for burying a face in when the world outside is too much and all there should be, as far as the horizon, is skin and warmth, and stubble, and the smell of Harry.

When we first met I wasn’t sure. I mean, I was sure; I was sure that nothing much would come of it. He asked me to come home with him and I said no, that first time, but not because I had morals or anything – you’ve read the rest of this story, so you know I don’t – but because I was shy. I said no, thinking I’d have another chance soon enough.

But I didn’t. I invited him to things and he didn’t show up. Then later, when he did, he didn’t want to talk to me. I’d been having a time of disappointments and rejections and I was hardened to it. I wrote him off. I mean, seriously, why would I need a guy like Harry? He’d never read 1984. He actually liked to drink Carlton Draught – give him a choice of beers and that’s the one he’d choose. So, you know, whatever. I started to look around.

What is it with guys? That was what he needed, I guess: for me to not care. I went home with him one night, then again a few days later, and later again. But I still didn’t care.

Here’s what he said to me: ‘Caddy, I love you. I can’t get enough of you.’ Just like that. Not anywhere special or anytime special.

I don’t know why I’m still alive. When we were together it became impossible for me to imagine life without him. OK, that’s not true – I did. I’m that kind of person. I imagined him finding someone else and leaving, or getting in a car accident, or something falling on him at work. I imagined it all the time: how I’d pay the mortgage, would I have to get a boarder, would I have to move into an apartment and lose my garden. Of course I imagined life without him. But I did know that whatever practical measures I might take to manage, I would be, for all intents and purposes, dead. Harry’s kindness, his just not minding how I was and who I was, his refusal to be afraid or even all that interested when I got crazy, him cooking, him with the soles of his feet pressed up against mine in bed at night – I was ruined for any kind of life without him.

People talk about great passions and they make it sound like it should be a tumult of fighting and declarations of undying love followed by public rooting and accusations of infidelity and then more declarations of how one would die without the other. It’s bullshit. I’m telling you, it’s bullshit! Seriously, that fucker Heathcliff and everyone like him? They can get fucked. You know what it’s really like? It’s quiet and calm and steady, and it doesn’t change that much from one day to the next. It’s always there. You can count on it. You can know that when you get home in the evening, someone will be there and he’ll love you. He might not tell you right away or anything, but he does. He loves you.

So that’s how it was. And now it’s gone. I don’t even know why I’m still here. It won’t come back. Believe me: I wasn’t any kind of kid when Harry and I got together, there had been plenty of others. Statistically, there won’t be something else for me like I had with Harry. I don’t even want it. There was me and him and it wasn’t magical or like anything you’d see on TV, it was just love. Kind and real and every single day. Every fucking single day, and I never had to doubt it, ever.