If you’d only known. A cliché among clichés, but also the sort of thing you find yourself thinking constantly.
If you’d known she wouldn’t make it to thirty, you would have crammed a lifetime of loving into the brief window when you knew her. When you’re young, it’s easy to be arrogant and assume you have unlimited time, but it only takes one day to feel like you’ve aged sixty years. You wouldn’t have allowed her to waste so much energy dusting bookcases or searching for the right brand of high-fiber cereal or stressing about properly folding her work slacks, because that sort of stuff was unimportant even then, but now it seems tragic that she spent so much of her existence worried about things that had no bearing on the outcome of her life.
And you wouldn’t have wasted so much time staring blankly at the TV. You wouldn’t have sneaked in a half hour of playing video games while she showered; instead, you would have sat on a stool beside the shower chatting with her, followed her to the bedroom, helped her pick an outfit, or even told her forget the outfit, we’re staying in tonight, the sort of take-charge thing Paul Newman would have said to Joanne Woodward.
IF YOU’D ONLY KNOWN, you would never have allowed the Month of Being Romantic to expire, but one day you ran out of ideas and were tired and just wanted things to be easy again, so it was over. If you’d known, you would have continued giving her what she needed, which was an occasional Big Gesture, rather than relying on steady adequacy to keep you afloat.
If you’d known she would be dead by thirty, you wouldn’t have envied her successful life while yours was a ragged mess. You watched her getting ready for work and you were proud of her, knew you were lucky to have a wife who had figured things out and was making money and doing something useful, but also you had to admit there was a little kernel of bitterness in your reaction, because you wanted that self-assurance and accomplishment, but never knew how to find it.
You wouldn’t have burned any energy being angry about stupid things, like her tendency to pick at her teeth in public, or the way she sometimes talked over your favorite TV shows. You wouldn’t have compared her to other women you saw on the beach, or spent any time thinking that even though she was beautiful, she could look even better if only she lost three, four, five pounds, if she stopped with the white chocolate and the sweetened iced tea. You wouldn’t have watched the women on TV and thought, why can’t her arms be just a little more toned or why can’t her eyes be iridescent like the ones on that woman in the cell-phone commercials?
Instead of trying to improve her, you would have perfected yourself, would have devoted yourself to loving her better, giving her the life she deserved but never got, organized yourself and pursued an actual career so you could afford all the things she dreamed of owning and doing. Got into shape and paid for a trendy haircut and bought stylish new clothes. Tried a little harder to get along with her family instead of grimly enduring the gatherings and then insulting them on the drive home. Taken some personal agency and made an effort to be a better, more likable, friendlier person instead of who you are. Would have convinced her to work less overtime and instead go on spontaneous trips to romantic weekend resorts in Cape May and Virginia Beach. And you would have saved enough cash to help her see the whole world before she died, because the narrative of her life at this point is not a love story, but rather a tale of unfulfilled dreams.
The future is nothing but the steady unraveling of the order we try to impose on the present. If you had known this sooner, you would have stopped waiting for life to happen to you and taken control of it instead, would have made important decisions rather than avoiding them. When strangers asked you about children, because strangers universally seemed to believe that the status of your wife’s womb was their business, you danced around the answer, said you didn’t know about kids. Maybe eventually, someday. But kids! Yes, of course kids! Kids with freckles and braces. Kids with asthma and pointy elbows like their mother’s, kids with frequent ear infections and allergies to peanuts, kids whose noses curved upward at the tip, kids whose fat little fingers would charm you to no end even though you’ve never had a moment of interest in the fat little fingers of other people’s offspring. Kids with precocious ideas about religion, rebellious kids with bizarre piercings, loving kids, beautiful kids, homely kids, kids who broke the state record in 200-meter hurdles, kids who couldn’t walk, kids with bad hearts and kids with powerful lungs, kids with superpowers, kids who could read minds and could communicate telepathically with animals, kids who composed symphonies when they were five, kids who represented the entire world of possibilities, all the permutations of yourselves, from 99 percent of you to 99 percent of her, kids you would love regardless of what they looked like or how efficiently their bodies processed lactose or what talents they had, because in their postures and their expressions you would see her, and in their voices you would hear her, and in every movement there would be a century of her genetic history mapped onto them. Hundreds of kids, just to see what they’d look like. Just to hold them and smell them and dry their tears on your sleeve. To repopulate the earth with facsimiles of Kait.