I had one of those days recently when I really missed Mark.
I’d just read a review of the new Jamaica Kincaid novel, a scathing, sometimes
fantastical recounting of her marriage to William Shawn’s son Allen Shawn and
how he left her for a younger woman. I somehow had forgotten this interesting
fact, that the two of them were married, amidst all the other lore I’d
accumulated about the rather strange but intriguing Shawn family: that the
seemingly staid William Shawn, longtime editor of the New Yorker, had secretly conducted an affair with his colleague
Lillian Ross for many years; that Allen’s twin sister Mary, who was autistic,
had been “put away” by the family; and that Wallace Shawn, the funny looking
younger brother had turned into a consummate stage and screen actor. In fact,
“My Dinner With Andre,” in which Wallace stars with Andre Gregory, was one of
Mark’s all time favorite movies. Boy, did I really want to talk about all this
with him and run right out and buy Kincaid’s book.
But I was spending the weekend with my kids and neither one
of them had ever heard of William Shawn or ever seen “My Dinner With Andre,” so
my story lost its punch. At least Max, who graduated last year from Claremont
McKenna College, where Jamaica Kincaid now teaches, had some interesting gossip
to relay about her, but which I will refrain from retelling.
Mark’s and my accumulated knowledge, born of 34 years of accumulated
experience, is now reduced by half. Without access to the full percent, the
compartmentalization of my other relationships becomes more obvious. While this
doesn’t diminish their value, it intensifies my loss.
With my neighbors in El Valle I share our sense of place,
our desire to be buen vecinos, our delight
in the mitote and craziness that gets
played out in this tiny village. My political relationships, born of thirty
years of activism and community organizing, extend to concentric circles of
concern that rarely intersect with my personal circles of engagement. I
maintain intimate relationships with a few friends and family members who come
close to being with me in that holistic world: music, books, movies, art, politics,
personal revelation. But they’re an effort, a phone call or e-mail away;
they’re not sitting across the room from me as I’m reading the New Yorker: “Listen to this!”
A lot of this has to do with age, of course. Who still gets
off listening to Steely Dan? Who wants to read Middlemarch every year? Who wants to talk about the Vietnam War,
Watergate, the fall of Allende, and the Iran-Contra scandal? Who wants to hear
Mark’s story about how he got out of the draft by crying? Who wants to hear my
story about hitchhiking north out of Albuquerque and sleeping on the floor of
Ulysses S. Grant’s commune in Placitas? At the end of 34 years Mark and I didn’t
want to hear each other’s stories either (listen to This American Life podcast,
#226 Reruns, March 10 for the very funny stories of the way couples listen and
don’t listen to each other) but we knew the details, the context, and the
meaning without the words, as no one else ever would.
So I’m still looking for someone to talk to about Jamaica
Kincaid’s novel.
But I’m also glad I don’t have to participate in one of our
hackneyed routines: his lament about the UNM Lobos (they just lost in the
first game of the NCAA tournament) and my refrain, I told you so!
