The Chronology of Water - Lidia Yuknavitch [82]
I called Mike in Seattle from San Diego to tell him about my man situation. I didn’t call my mother, or my sister, or my father, or any woman friend. I called Michael. I called to tell him that I thought I had fallen in love with a man who was not yet untangled from a marriage gone bad. That the man was younger than me. A lot. That the man was big and beautiful and played the cello and could beat the crap out of pretty much anything. That the man had lived in Spain and witnessed some ETA stuff and that the man had interviewed people from Earth Liberation Front and that the man kissed me so hard in Tijuana I thought I’d swallowed my teeth. That the man was my student. All things that ought to have made another kind of friend go, Lidia, you are making a mess. But you know what Mike said? He said, “Jesus. Thank god you finally got with someone whose story can keep up with yours!” Then he said, “We’re going out of town for a week. You should come house-sit and bring this guy up.”
I did.
Our son Miles, my beautiful alive boy, was conceived in Michael’s house. In Mike and Dean’s bed. On the 600 count twill sheets. With Jake the dog loyally guarding our love. In his house, the only house I ever felt the word “home” in my heart, a boy was born.
In my head and heart I carry so many images of Mike and Dean. Me and Mike on the floor of a Baptist church at midnight, Dean playing Bach on the church organ. Me and Mike and Dean stripped to our underwear, running into the ocean on the Oregon coast. In December. Eating a Christmas rabbit with olives and capers that Andy and Mike cooked - snuggled up in Italy - me and Dean filling our mouths with more than food. Mike and Dean opening the door when I sent my sister to them - my sister whose lost tenure had manifested as a nervous breakdown - how they said, “You can come in.” How they let her live with them until her self returned. Miles and Mike and Dean and Andy on top of the Space Needle. My god. How many ways are there to love men? It’s enough to break a heart open.
The images in my head and heart. I know what they are. I do. They are a family album. It is possible to make family any way you like. It is possible to love men without rage. There are thousands of ways to love men.
A Sanctuary
THERE’S SOMETHING I WANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT THE miles.
When my son Miles was born we drove from San Diego to a place near Portland, Oregon. I’d been fired in San Diego and miraculously rehired in Oregon - back toward what I knew, and what Andy knew, the Northwest. Andy drove a U-Haul, and my dear friend Virginia and I drove a used Saab with Miles gurgling and pooing his pants in the back like a little road warrior.
Virginia. Everything that matters to me is a word. Slowly this woman grew in my life, a beautiful wetted stone turned over years. First she was my student, then my friend, then nothing I’d ever met before. Virginia became a friend who stayed near. She showed me intimacy is a word untethered from sexuality. Unconditionally, I drank.
The Saab broke down in Weed - yes, Weed, and Virginia and I sort of paced on the side of the road thinking, will he look in the rearview and notice we’re gone? Will this man drive all the way to Oregon? No bars on the little cell of a bitch. We weren’t scared, women like the two of us? That would not scare us. We’d have been excellent pioneers. Like Becky Boone.
But he did notice, because he’s that kind of guy, and within 20 minutes here came the U-Haul on the freeway coming our direction. Then we all had to cram in the weird front space of the U-Haul and pretend we didn’t have an infant stashed between the seats by the gearshift and cigarettes. Virginia and I sharing the passenger seat, our butts making sweat marks on the strange Burbury. We abandoned the Saab on the side of the road. Marking our exit like a scar.
When we got to Oregon Miles and I took a bath at a Holiday Inn. He lay against me, his back against my tits and stomach, his little monkey face smiling in between spit bubbles, and his arms and legs floating easily. I have