Clara begins the countdown to her birthday a month beforehand. The event, at least on the local scale, rivals major religious holidays in terms of importance. If she had her way, all work would grind to a halt, and television stations would run “best of” marathons. In fact, each year conjures up the same air of complicated formality found in those ancient rites of worship that precipitate festivals. First extended family makes their offerings a few days in advance, followed by casual friends and then immediate family and rounded off with those friends near and dear. More important than the gifts to Clara, though, is centrality of the experience, the way a single day comes to represent her.
The first time I learned that Clara’s birthday was to be a month-long event was in March of my sophomore year in high school. We began dating a few months earlier and were still in the butterflies and honey phase of our relationship; she hadn’t cheated on me, and I hadn’t joined the privileged ranks of underage alcoholics. I was standing at my locker talking to Chris about the A’s chances for the season, a shared interest I had mostly picked up because Chris was so preoccupied with baseball. Chris pitched for our high school, and although he didn’t face much competition in the small private school division, his arm was powerful enough to give him hopes of college recruitment, if not professional ball. It was in the early days of the Big Three pitchers, Hudson, Mulder, and Zito, and all across the Bay Area, around lockers, water coolers, and glasses of beer, people were discussing whether our rotation could bring a championship to Oakland. The warm rainwater smell of spring was infectious, and everyone seemed to be thinking about love or baseball. And my thoughts of adolescent love, more precisely known as lust, tumbled into focus when Clara bounced up to me. Frenetic movement—bouncing and hopping—suited Clara the way long black dresses and silver earrings suited other women. She smiled, her cheeks dimpling, and her green eyes looked ready for mischief. A child of spring, she was willful and prone to bouts of temper.
The lockers huddled under the eaves of the building, and just past the edges of the roof rain pattered down lightly, a grey overcast remnant of a mild winter. Clara leaned in and kissed me quick on the lips, and I caught Chris smirking out of the corner of my eye. “So, guess what,” said Clara. It was more imperative than question. She brushed a stray, raven-dark hair away from her face.
“I take it I’m not supposed to guess,” Chris said as he pulled his trig textbook from his locker. Sarcastic remarks nobody acknowledged were part of my role in the friendship, but we were always stepping on each other’s lines. Clara glared at him briefly and then looked back at me.
“What?” I wasn’t being coy; I really didn’t have any idea why she was so excited. Although I may, at times, act obtuse to elicit a reaction, I was more than a few degrees wide of a right angle at that moment. I knew I had answered wrong when I saw her mouth drop into a frown.
The shadow of disappointment passed quickly, though, and she poked me in the stomach playfully. “It’s thirty-one days until my birthday!” Glancing at her watch, she kissed my cheek, pinched my side, and whispered at me not to forget. And then Clara ran off to class.
Chris rolled his eyes. A lanky, black athlete with a lop-sided grin, Chris was destined to become tall, dark, and handsome. At sixteen, his features were too striking for his young face, and his broad shoulders fit him like a hand-me-down tailored suit from an older brother. Women, however, are terrific talent scouts and had already begun to cultivate him. His romantic experience was by no means encyclopedic, but it was impressive enough that his advice, when given, demanded attention. “That girl is going to kill you,” he said. “You deserve better than that.”
I looked over at him and grabbed some programming books from my locker, shutting the door and spinning the combination dial. Physically nondescript in the most impressive way, I certainly didn’t understand what one of the most attractive girls in our grade saw in me. I didn’t deserve the time of day from Clara. I programmed computers for fun and computer parts the way Clara collected shoes. Every day I wondered when she would realize I wasn’t worthy of her. I remember this myth where some Greek king forced a man named Damocles to sit under a drawn blade dangling from a hair, a metaphor for the worries of a politician made manifest, but the fortunes of a politician are nowhere near as precarious as those of a plain man dating a beautiful woman. Chris saw that sword over my head, and he didn’t want me to blame myself when it fell. It had to fall, but I didn’t know that yet. I was sixteen and desperate to hold on to the happiness I found.
“You know what, Chris? Fuck off.” I thrust my books in my backpack and began to zip it up. Chris looked hurt, and I was glad. Glad that I had a girlfriend and he didn’t. Glad that he wasn’t my only companion anymore.
“Look, Ethan, I’m sorry. It’s just that—“
I cut him off. “Whatever. Don’t worry about it. I’ll see you later.” I walked to class less concerned about Chris than I was about finding something for Clara’s birthday. In any case, Chris likely forgave my cursing within an hour of me stomping away like a spoiled child—he has always been the better man.
***
On April 16th, I went out with Clara’s family to an expensive restaurant in San Francisco. She was bubbly and everywhere at once. Her family was laughing at her jokes and generally in thrall to her presence. There was caviar and champagne and talk of a new car if she passed her driver’s test. In that dim room of candlelit tables, Clara glowed. Even other tables looked on enviously; it was her night, and everyone else was just an extra in the Clara Show. At least, that’s how I felt. I sat quietly and did my best not to make any noise as Clara opened her presents and gushed over each of them. Occasionally she would look at me and squeeze my hand under the table. I tried to smile and make small talk with her mother, sister, and father, but I just felt like an interloper in the longstanding tradition. Her family knew the rhythm of the evening, and I tapped my foot soundlessly in the corner.
Clara’s mother passed her a plain, white clothing box with a gold ribbon wrapped around it as her father offered me glass of champagne. Too nervous, and too worried about making a good impression, I declined and watched Clara open the present. Inside, covered with tissue paper, laid a brilliant green dress that shimmered when Clara lifted it out of the box. It looked like money, and I felt a stone slowly settle into my gut. My gift, not wrapped at all but simply dropped into a decorative bag, cost only twenty bucks in some minor shipping fees. I was glad I had left it in my car back at Clara’s house.
After Clara had informed me of the impending holiday, I immediately began panicking over what present I could possibly get her; jewelry was out because I simply didn’t have enough money, and we had only been dating for a few months. I still hold firm to the idea that a man should never buy clothing for his girlfriend. Too many things could go wrong, might as well label the clothing box “Pandora’s” and get it over with. Clara read ferociously, and though I didn’t understand a lot of what she read, I knew she was passionate about literature. While she read a lot of French authors whose names I mangled, there was one contemporary American author she obsessed over, a witty, urbane novelist by the name of Jane Carroll. Her new novel was coming out in a month, but advance press copies were already being submitted to newspapers for review. My father, his personal faults aside, was a well-respected editor at the Chronicle. After some moderate pleading, he acquired one of the advance copies from the book editor. Now, if Clara were at all reasonable, anywhere in the realm of normal, about her birthday, I probably would have stopped right there. But I was infatuated and edgy.
I wrote a rather too earnest letter to Jane Carroll, detailing Clara’s love of her work and her birthday obsession and perhaps using phrases like “biggest fan” and “worship,” cheap words that I deeply regret now. I packed it in with the novel, and express mailed it to Carroll, including a prepaid envelope for the trip back. It came back the day before Clara’s birthday, thoughtfully inscribed to Clara, and accompanied by a letter to me stating that Clara is “quite lucky” and so on. The letter made me forget about the eleven heart attacks I had while waiting for the novel to return. All that work seemed pointless next to the expensive gifts that were piling up next to Clara.
The meal ended far earlier than my rumbling heart had hoped. I stared out the window of the family SUV, silently counting the lights that ran along the Bay Bridge. The family chattered as we made our way back into the winding hills of Oakland, where houses featured floor to ceiling, panoramic windows that welcomed every chill glow of the cities into their living rooms, home to earthquakes, fires, landslides, and girlfriends who win your heart too easily. As nervous as I was during that drive, I would have preferred to stay in that perpetual jumping in the air state of limbo than to enter Clara’s house and actually give her my gift.
After we parked in the stubby driveway, everyone else walked into the house while I ran to my car to grab the present. I walked back to the front door, which had been left ajar, and stepped into the warm house. As I walked over to Clara’s room, I could hear the crisp murmur of the television from another corner of the house. It was already late, later than I was supposed to be out on a school night. I walked into her dimly lit room, closing the door behind me. Clara was sitting on her bed, grinning expectantly; if she’d had a tail, it would be wagging. A mess of stuffed animals and pillows surrounded her, and there were tangles of wrapping paper and boxes scattered all across the floor. Stacks of novels occupied every flat surface in the room: a small desk piled high with books in French, bookshelves occupied three deep, a vanity covered with paperbacks dusted with foundation and smears of eyeshadow. I sat at the edge of the bed and set the bag between my feet.
“Hi,” I said. Clara slid down the bed and settled next to me, resting her chin on my shoulder. She smelled fresh, and her hair, where it brushed against my shirt, cast off waves of vanilla. I felt light-headed and heavy-tongued.
“Hey there. You were pretty quiet at dinner. Is everything all right? Because if something’s wrong, you can tell me, even though it’s my birthday.” That was a damn lie, and we both knew it. Or perhaps she didn’t realize how sacrosanct she held her birthday.
“No, I’m fine. I just didn’t want to interrupt your night. Your family barely knows me anyway.” I leaned in and kissed her, partly to end the line of questioning and partly because I had no choice when she was that close to me. She closed her eyes, and I watched her be kissed and forgot, for a few moments, that I was petrified that I was going to disappoint her.
Clara broke off the kiss and said, “So. What did you get me?” Some small voice in my head, the part not drugged with lust, thought about how intolerable Christmas must have been for her parents. I picked up the bag and handed it to her, looking at the ground immediately afterward. I know some people who buy gifts for others simply for the look on their faces when they tear into the wrapping. I am not one of those people. I’m deeply convinced that the receiver of the gift will react as though confronting a deadly jungle asp from the Congo: first a flash of confusion followed quickly by a look of horror. So I was looking at the ground.
Clara had long ago mastered the mindless patter one is forced to deliver when opening gifts: “Oh, what a pretty bag. And, hey, you didn’t use newspaper . . .” She trailed off as she reached the book. I was scraping at my cuticles and felt, more than saw, Clara looking between the book and me several times. She began to rifle through the hardcover, I suppose to see if it was real, and then she stumbled across the sloppy red writing of the inscription. Then she began to cry. Her eyes got wide, and she blinked again and again as the light reflected off the pooling tears. They hung precariously to her eyelid until they streaked down her cheek, leaving dark stains of mascara.
Now, I admit that I was a romantic of the old order in my relationship with Clara, the kind who would compose symphonies or cut off his ear for his lover, if he had a talent for either. I believe all teenagers are romantics in this vein, and, if they aren’t, they should be. There’s plenty of time to be withdrawn and guarded when you’re going to therapy twice a week. That being said, I’d rather not disclose the words that I elicited from the novelist. Some things are too saccharine to remember even years later. I think it sufficient to note that it included “P.S. This guy’s a keeper.”
When I finally looked up at Clara, she was staring at me, her brow wrinkled in thought. “Ethan. I,” she said as she set the book aside. She tried to say more, but she got tangled up in her words and just looked up at me through her wet lashes. Blood thrummed back and forth in my chest, keeping a quicksilver pace. Ironic distance, my usual recourse when confronting emotion, was not an option at the moment. I felt physically ill.
“What’s wrong? Do you not like it? I can get you something else. I’m sorry.” Words spilled out as quickly as I thought of them. Coherence wasn’t an issue. I was just trying to say the right thing to make her stop crying, rather like the incompetent parent who, when a child is crying, begins to flail around and wave random objects in front of the baby’s face.
“No, no. It’s nothing like that.” She put her hand on me knee as if to pacify me. “I always cry on my birthday. And the book, well, I couldn’t imagine anything more perfect. That’s the problem because it’s great and the day was great and it’s almost midnight and then the day is over. I hate the day after my birthday more than anything else.” By that time, the crying had stopped. Setting words to thoughts sometimes has that effect. There wasn’t anything for me to do aside from nod. And then I thought of something.
“I just thought of something. Why don’t we go on a picnic tomorrow during lunch? We can go down to the marina and—.” At that point, Clara pounced on me, which made me think I had said something right. And then I stopped thinking. Her face was still slick from crying, and I could taste the salt.
***
A week before Clara’s eighteenth birthday, I was at the hospital with my father. The use of that preposition is deceiving though—it implies a connection, conjures up a shade of the word “together.” A more accurate statement would be that I sat in the room with my sleeping father and drank from a flask. The voice of this higher-level critique of my thoughts was Clara because, according to her, words had meaning.
I played with the cap of the flask, screwing it on and then unscrewing it, and said, “What a stupid, meaningless thing to say.” My voice sounded hollow in the room alongside the high-pitched whine of the heart monitor. Tubes, carrying medication and sustenance, curled from out of the crook of my father’s arm. The door to the small, private room was closed, trapping the musty scent of flesh and gauze. Nurses walked by too frequently, and I didn’t want them seeing me drink. In a few days my dad was going to undergo surgery to repair damage to his liver, and the possibility of his death had made him remorseful and tender toward me. Staring back at his own life, his own demons, I didn’t want him claiming my faults as his own.
I leaned back in the wooden chair next to my father’s bed and tipped the flask to my lips. It was a high-proof coffee liqueur that lingered on my tongue, its morning scent disguising my extracurricular activities. It was effective with everyone except Chris, who had very strong opinions about what I was doing with my life and knew most of my secrets. On the drive to the hospital, Chris didn’t say a word to me for fifteen minutes, navigating through bridge traffic with sharp twists of the steering wheel. He drove me to and from work most days too because I didn’t trust myself to be sober enough to drive. While that fact had occasioned many fights and arguments, Chris wasn’t angry about my drinking at that moment.
He finally turned to me, his hands clenching the wheel with white knuckles. “Why the fuck aren’t you breaking up with her?” The emphasis was on every word. It was the end of high school, and couples were deciding their fates as they looked onward to college. Chris and I were heading to Berkeley, which was no small source of pride for my suddenly attentive father, while Clara was bound for UC Davis. She would be over an hour away from me, and it didn’t make sense, logically, to try a long-distance relationship with her. That didn’t stop us from wanting to try.
“Could you just drop it, please?”
“No. She’s cheated on you. A lot. Probably even more times than you’ve told me. I hate the way she treats you. You’re probably even thinking about getting her a present for her fucking birthday.” Over the course of two years, Clara had cheated on me not more times that I could count, because I had every name and date etched in my memory, but more times than I wanted my best friend to know. Each time was numbingly repetitive: the confession, the tears, the swearing, the promises, and the forgiveness. I couldn’t be upset with Chris for not understanding. Hell, I barely understood myself. And I was trying to think of the perfect gift for her.
“Do you want to know why? I mean, really why? It’s because she still believes I’m a good person.” Chris tried to interrupt, but I continued, “She doesn’t know about my drinking. Or, if she does, she doesn’t acknowledge it. She doesn’t see me as someone who is getting worse, but someone who is getting better. I don’t care if it isn’t true. I forgive her, and, even though I feel like my chest is going to come apart, I feel like a better man. I won’t let myself be drunk around her. That much has to make you happy.” I would have taken a drink from my flask, but I made a point of only drinking when I was alone.
“Are you, at least, going to tell her about your mother?”
I laughed bitterly. “No, she doesn’t need to know about that. I want her to like me, not run in the opposite direction because I’m bat-shit crazy.”
“Why not tell her?” he asked as he ran his hands along the smooth wheel.
“It’s just a policy thing. I don’t talk about my mother’s suicide, and I don’t negotiate with terrorists.” Chris rolled his eyes at the joke.
The car came to a stop next to the looming façade of the hospital. Chris put the car in park and said, “She bought you a flask for your birthday, Ethan. A flask.” I shook my head and got out of the car. The weight of six ounces sloshed in the pocket of my hooded sweatshirt. Chris stopped me from closing the door. “Wait a second. Tell your dad hi for me, will you?” I nodded and walked into the building.
As I sat next to my father, I didn’t think about what would happen if he died. I thought about Clara and her birthday and trying to make her happy. His breath was more noticeable in the flutter of his narrow chest than in the rasp of his throat. I wasn’t certain, but I suspected his sleep was drug-induced.
“So, Dad, what should I buy Clara?” Even though he was asleep, I tried to banish the slur of alcohol from my voice. When he didn’t respond, I quietly asked another question, “I’ve always wondered why you didn’t send me to therapy or something. It’s my first memory, you know? Mom. It’s a hell of a memory. Really vivid. This helps blur it around the edges.” I waved the flask in the air. “Don’t worry, I know why you were at work all the time and why you drank when you were home. Lethe, right? I think that’s the name of the river.” I waxed poetic the more I drank.
“Clara gave me this poem that reminded me of you. It’s about fishing, which doesn’t really relate, but there’s a line where the guy talks about not being able to hold his liquor either. I don’t know. It just reminded me of us. I wish you’d ask me what it was like to find Mom that day.” With a groan, my father sank back into his sheets, reminding me of the present. I trailed off and thought about the surgery.
“Fuck.” I jumped up from the chair and looked at the chart. The surgery was scheduled for the morning of the 16th. I walked over to the window and stared at the rows of cars in the parking lot. “How am I going to stop doing this?” I asked.
I spent all of the 16th with Clara’s family. I bought her a platinum necklace with a slim broach, two small gems clinging to it: one diamond and one emerald. The necklace against her tan skin made her eyes seems explosive. I didn’t see my father.
***
I was sitting in the living room of my apartment waiting for Clara to call me back, a glass of scotch resting next to me on a stack of economics textbooks. The drink was my first out of an expensive bottle Clara bought for my birthday, and I was waiting to hear from Clara about the bouquet of two dozen roses I had just sent for her birthday. In front of me, on top of a table made from overturned Berkeley Farms milk crates and a slab of plywood, the Dickens novel I should have been reading remained unopened. It was getting close to midnight, the end of the hallowed day, and I still hadn’t heard from Clara. Outside, the traffic on Bancroft was slowing to a whisper.
The smoky flavor of the scotch swirled in my mouth and drifted through my chest. I tried to stay sober that day, so that when Clara called I would be lucid and endearing. Unfortunately, since coming to college I drank more than ever. Even with Chris living in the next room, I had so much privacy for so many hours of the day that I could get quietly trashed without much criticism. Except for the criticism from my academic advisor, who told me two weeks ago that I was going to lose my scholarship. When I came to Berkeley, I had high hopes. I was a double major in English literature and computer engineering. While literature had never really been a passion of mine, somewhere along the way I started confusing Clara’s will for my own. Now, because my grades were so tragic, I was forced to drop all of my computer classes. After four years of being a programming ace, I blew it when I came to the big game. I even struggled to keep up with assignments in my remaining classes. I sipped at my drink and stared at the cover of the novel. Struggling valiantly to accumulate knowledge I didn’t even want.
The phone rang, and I picked it up on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Hey, Ethan. How’s it going?” Clara’s voice sounded smeared. In the background I could hear laughter and shouts, the backbeat of a dorm.
“It sounds like you had a good birthday.” Chris walked into the living room with an overnight bag slung over his shoulder. He gestured toward the door with his thumb, and I nodded and waved him off—probably spending the night at his girlfriend’s place.
“Yeah, I just shotgunned some beers with the guys in the dorm. It was great.” I cringed and took a quick sip of scotch. Since college, Clara and I had adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with regards to infidelity. I still got nauseous every time she mentioned another guy in her life.
“Well, that sounds like fun. What else did you do today? Did you get the flowers?”
“Hold on a sec.” The sound suddenly muted on the phone, and I could hear Clara yelling at people to get out of the room. A door slammed and Clara got back on the phone. “Yeah, I got the flowers. They’re beautiful.” She tripped over her words, the beer just then reaching her head.
There was a long silence. “I need to tell you something,” she said. I didn’t say anything. “Now I know for sure that you’re good in bed.”
“Excuse me?” My words caught at my throat.
“I just know now. You’re really good in bed.”
“Please don’t.”
Clara tried to continue, and I hung up the phone. I looked around the room, felt the ground drop from under me. The rest of the scotch was in my mouth before I knew I was swigging it. The phone began to light up and ring. I pressed the talk button without bringing the phone to my ear. I could hear sobbing, and I swore. I threw the phone straight through the window, shattering glass and letting the hum of the street into the apartment. It was a throw Chris could be proud of, except for the broken window. Outside, the phone skittered to the edge of the street and lay in the gutter. No cars crushed it; that would have been too cinematic.
I lost weeks after that.
***
Her response came on a plain, white card in a slim envelope. I held it between my fingers and looked back and forth between the letter and the old bottle of scotch. Three years older now, three years added to its eighteen-year blend. The gold highlights on the dark green label were worn away, the paper scuffed with misuse. Enough of the amber liquid rested at the bottom for one more drink. The only objects accompanying the bottle on the bare desk were two pens, one blue, black, and a stack of loose-leaf paper.
The desk sat in the corner of the small living room and kitchenette Chris and I shared. In contrast with a few years ago, this apartment was neat and organized. I dropped the card to my desk and rested my face in my hands. Making amends was never easy, but the letter to Clara had been particularly difficult. I tried to explain everything, or almost everything. Why I stopped talking to her, seeing her, why I took time off from school. I still couldn’t trust myself to hear her voice and certainly not to see her in person. My hand shook when I wrote the letter, the anxious palpitation of a coffee-disguised hangover.
Reading the letter again, I could hear her anger—letters that got sharper and more flared at the end of sentences, broken language, and harsh words. I knew it would be difficult to read, so, after I received the letter a few days beforehand, I waited until the hardest single day of the year to open it. Facing Clara’s birthday wasn’t like facing any other day. It was every day and every night rolled into one occasion. More than the anniversary of joining AA, this day, each year, made me shake.
In the letter, Clara told me, “You were never a happy person, as long as I knew you. It just isn’t who you are.” Writing the letter to her was like screaming into a tempest. But I knew I would keep yelling until my voice was raw and bloody. I put the card aside and began to write another letter, slower, more confidently, stopping only twice to calm down. When I was almost done writing, Chris came into the room and leaned up against the counter of the kitchenette. He looked trim and old-fashioned in the crisp baseball uniform.
“You almost ready to go?” Chris pushed his equipment bag toward the door with his feet. Reaching up to a cabinet, he took a glass and filled it with tap water from the sink.
“Yeah, just give a few more minutes. Are you nervous?” It was the last game Chris would start as a pitcher in college. After that, it was just the infinite possibility of the first-year player draft. He might have looked collected, but I knew he was just as anxious as I was at that moment.
“Nah. Well, maybe a little. That’s to Clara, right?” I nodded. Chris gulped at the water and said, “I’m glad you’re finally telling her everything.”
I finished writing and placed the folded papers into an envelope. After it was stamped and addressed, I carried the letter and the bottle of scotch over to the kitchenette. I grabbed a glass and poured out the remaining scotch while Chris stared at me and tried to gauge my intentions. I raised the glass up in a toast.
“To Clara’s birthday.”
Chris raised his own glass and repeated, “To Clara’s birthday.” I dumped the scotch down the sink, watching the brown liquid curl into the metal drain. Chris poured out his water, chasing the alcohol. I knew that, even in real life, symbolism was important.