Clare, Shannon, and Me
Not as simple as it sounds.
Like if you want using the keys below; only I can see who you are.
I first became “aware” of Shannon in October 1978. I called Clare’s sister, Karolyn, one Thursday night to see if she might want to go out on Saturday night. This was not un-typical; Kar and I went out a lot when Clare was out of town. Clare was at Flagler then, in Florida. Only…Clare answered the phone that Thursday night. I asked Clare what was up and she said, “all will be explained.” Huh. Now, I’d known Clare since ‘72, which was a pretty long time for two people under 25.
Karolyn called me back an hour later, said Clare was up in Detroit to talk about getting married…
Well, I of course said all the right things about how happy I was for her and how I wished her all the luck in the world. But Clare was going back to Florida the next day, and it was late (I was working security at the old man’s truck shop and a full-time student), so I didn’t get to say all those things to her myself. Ware and I didn’t have any kind of “understanding” or agreement, but we were, I thought, friends of a certain kind. And I knew we were better friends than that. But I told Kar I’d come around on Friday like I often did, hung up, and cried. I always thought…well, yeah, I hoped, anyway. She never said one way or another about me to me. I suppose the meaning of her attention was all in my head; wishful thinking again. But I went over to Faculty Way Friday to see…what…was…going…on? Then their mother said, “because she’s pregnant.”
Well, that explained it.
To say the family was “happy” would be a complete and utter lie. They knew That John not at all, and Clare’s simple “I’m keeping the baby” over the phone the Sunday before devastated their father. Their mother, of course, wasn’t much better, but Beth was made of sterner stuff and recovered faster. She invited me to the wedding, I believe, because I cared enough for that family to want to be in on it. I’d been to their brother Peter’s wedding in New York in ‘74, so it seemed natural. Kinda. Kar and I got pretty looped that night; I couldn’t drive home. I wrote an appropriate letter to Clare about how supportive I was of her decisions and how happy I was about the whole thing. She later said she got it, but I do not believe she bought the “happy” part.
The next few weeks were fuzzy…until Thanksgiving, when I met her future husband.
I came after dinner because I was invited. No one warned me off…not that they would have, anyway. Clare…lacked her fire, frankly. She just looked tired and dimly frightened. Pregnancy might do that, but Clare was always somewhat fearless. But not then. Everyone was civil; I thought That John was OK. He didn’t seem all that bad.
OK, I thought, you win; I lose. Congrats.
I went to the Christchurch Cranbrook ceremony on 9 December 1978 (the saddest wedding I’d ever attended), and the reception at the old Statler Hilton on Woodward right after. At the reception I sat next to Peter’s four-month-old son, who squalled through the meal. At the after-reception at Faculty Way, Kar, her future husband Don and I slammed shots so we wouldn’t have to think about it.
There was nothing left for me in Michigan, so I took a job in Wisconsin.
In May 1979, Karolyn called me and said she was getting married. I was thrilled for her because she and I never…no, we never even talked about doing more than bar-crawling. In June she called again, said Clare had delivered a baby girl, Shannon Elizabeth. I sent a plant. I first saw Shannon that October when I went over for Karolyn’s wedding.
Shannon slept through our first momentous meeting.
Just as well. The next time I saw her was Christmas 1980. I came to Michigan to spend the holidays with what was left of my father’s family and thought I’d pay a visit to Faculty Way. Clare, once again, surprised me by being there when I came in. But That John wasn’t around. She just that day filed for separation. Shannon was just a year and a half.
Clare was pretty raw; so was the rest of the family.
We talked about a great many things. I called my aunt and said I’d be there in the morning; not to wait up. It was odd because, that weekend, I had to explain to my aunt and uncle about the redheaded renter in my spare room (the factual basis for This Redhead, The Dialogues) that Kelly was just renting, nothing else. Here I was with an old friend who had just…I didn’t go that far.
But Clare had more fire than two years before.
By Memorial Day weekend ‘81, Clare and I had exchanged letters (she was working at the Science Institute and at Kingswood) and a few phone calls. I had vacation days I could take, so I went over there. We talked about That John and Shannon and how she was trying very hard to get a school in Michigan to accept her Florida teaching credentials. And other things. She said her family would never accept a serious relationship between us, and her parents had spent a great deal of money keeping her head above water and Shannon fed. So we had to respect that. Shannon, at two, didn’t quite know what to make of me; I was just another Big Person. That John came around when I was there. He and Clare and Shannon went to the zoo to celebrate Shannon’s birthday. Clare later said the animals were friendly.
And closer we got.
Distance relationships are awkward, but new distance relationships are downright clumsy. We called every Sunday; I talked to Shannon every time. I came to town in July and again in August for our birthdays. Again at Thanksgiving and then Christmas. I asked Clare to come to Wisconsin on the day after Christmas. She shed a tear and said, “sorry.” I went back to Wisconsin.
We still called every Sunday.
I think I always knew we were hopeless, but I still held out…something…because she was the first girl who I ever loved who loved me back…though she never said she did. I met Ev that April, and Clare…I think she felt as bad about that when I told her (though she knew in her way) as I did…then. What we didn’t know in ‘78 was That John was going to turn out to be not such a great guy as he seemed before the wedding. I think I was a known quantity; he wasn’t.
Over the next twenty years, we kept in touch.
When I’d call, Shannon would answer sometimes while she lived with her mother. What surprised me was that she knew who I was; always knew. Clare and I would share news about classmates and family, Shannon, talked about her friends and school. And more than once, Clare would have a dream with me in it. I suppose I was flattered but embarrassed, too. Once Shannon was out of the house, Clare would only refer to her as “somewhere,” because Shannon moved around a lot and they were out of touch as much as they were in.
Then, Beth passed away in ‘04.
Told that story before, but I hadn’t seen Shannon in 22 years, either. She was twenty-four years old and about six months pregnant with her first child. She still had the stuffed kangaroo I gave her that Christmas in ‘81. It was after Beth’s memorial Clare told me she had completely misread her family, that they would have been overjoyed at the prospect of us if only one of us had been more assertive. That…was…weird, but it couldn’t change anything then. Clare called a month after Beth’s memorial, said Shannon had been in a car accident and lost the baby. We both cried about that a little, too.
The next time I saw Shannon was Clare’s memorial in ‘19.
I saw her coming up the walk to the Green Lobby at Kingswood, where we held that memorial, and she looked like both her mother and her aunt, though more like the lithe Karolyn at twenty than the curvier Clare at any age. But I wondered, in that instant, how Shannon and I had got there in just the forty years we had known each other.
But it was just how our lives worked. And, happy birthday, Sasha
The Past Not Taken: Three Novellas
In ‘81, Clare asked me what I would have done if That John hadn’t been in the picture. The Past Not Taken is a version of what I told her.
A young man just coming up in his field makes a momentous decision that changes both his life and the lives of others…and sees a Past Not Taken. Available from your favorite bookseller or from me if you want an autograph.
Coming Up…
A Different Horse
War of 1812 Reconsidered
And Finally...
On 1 June:
1942: The news of the German death camps goes public in the “Liberty Brigade” newspaper, published underground in Warsaw, Poland. Rumored and whispered about for several months before, the report provided camp layouts and approximate numbers of people murdered at Treblinka, just 2.5 miles from Warsaw. At least two papers made their way to London and one to Moscow.
1961: Adolph Eichmann is hanged in Ayalon Prison, Ramla, Israel. After he was “kidnapped” in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and flown to Tel Aviv, an Israeli court tried Eichmann for his complicity in the “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem” that, ironically, involved Treblinka. Eichmann’s body was burned and poured into the Mediterranean.
And today is NATIONAL PLAY OUTSIDE DAY. Every first Saturday in every month is NATIONAL PLAY OUTSIDE DAY, but this week I decided to mention it. So go, have fun in the great outdoors.
I've read the Past Not Taken. I highly recommend it. It's intriguing, thought provoking, and informative. And in spite of all that, it's entertaining!