The Folded Clock: A Diary

Chapter 67: June 21

Today I thought I might educate my husband about birth control pills. I said, “You probably don’t know how birth control pills work,” and he replied, “Actually, I do.” By “work” I didn’t mean that I understood how they keep a person from getting pregnant. I had no idea about that. By “work” I meant that every month a person can predict what day she’ll get her period. It turned out he knew this much about birth control pills; he knew even more than I did. And yet I had never, until recently, been on the pill during our time together. So this knowledge of his, it predated me, and to predate me meant he’d learned about the pill well over fifteen years ago. What else did he know that I did not know he knew? I thought about how, now that we know each other so well, we rarely talk about the time before we met. Every once in a while we still talk like there is more to discover about each other’s past. Often this happens on car rides. When it does, it’s so exciting, it makes me feel like we’re dating again, and presenting, for inspection to one another, our personal narratives that have been practiced on the lovers that preceded us. I especially want — even now, after hearing it all — to hear again about his ex-girlfriends. Every man I’ve been involved with, his past girlfriends have played a great part in my falling in love with him. I can’t explain it except to say that I have felt with these women a blood connection; these women have parted with a valued possession and now it has fallen to me. I am the beneficiary of a bequeathing. If I’d dated this man before they had, he would not be this man. And so I feel kinship, and gratitude. Also curiosity. I love to meet ex-girlfriends when such meetings are desired and appropriate, and even when they’re not. Once, when my husband and I were first dating, I spotted his ex-girlfriend on the train platform. I had already thoroughly interrogated him about her because she, in particular, fascinated me. I had scrutinized pictures of her, I had reclined on pillows she’d sewn, I had admired her artwork, still on his walls. She was a key part of our courtship. And here she was! Standing beside me, waiting for the train! I was still a secret; she had no idea about me. But I knew everything about her. I knew her so well that I was scared to stay in the same car with her for too long. For sure she would feel this strange woman knowing her. Yet I half wanted her to notice and wonder about me. I half wanted us to be forced to contend with one another. Right before exiting at the next stop, I half wanted to put a hand on her shoulder and say, one subway stranger to another, Thank you.