Heidi Julavits - The Folded Clock - A Diary

We asked the woman where she lived, she answered vaguely, we calculated based on these vague descriptions that her house wasn’t too far out of our way. We offered her a ride, even though my husband worried, given the woman’s tenuous grip on her surroundings, that she’d never be able to locate her own driveway, and that we’d be carting her around all night.

I drove. My husband sat in the back because he hates making small talk with strangers on street drugs with whom he is, by the laws of vehicular proximity, obliged to chat. We also figured he could restrain her from behind if she went nuts. We’d already shared a knowing glance —bath salts, clearly . Given we had no experience with the bath salt high, we thought we should be prepared for anything.

Once we were driving, her brain notched into a manic groove. “You have no idea what happened to me tonight. You have no idea. You have no idea what happened to me tonight.” This refrain persisted for seven miles. She’d grabbed my husband’s hand over the back of her seat; she violently caressed it. “Shit Louie,” she said. “That’s what people say down south. Shit Louie. Shit Louie. Shit Louie. You have no idea what happened to me tonight.”

At this point I wanted an idea. The reason I’d agreed to give this woman a ride was, yes, because she was in a bind, but the repayment for my generosity should be her story. What happened tonight? I half suspected there’d been a dead body in her car. She’d killed her boyfriend, maybe, for refusing to drive her home.

As we neared the town where she lived, her energy changed. She grew distracted. Her scatty brain got ideas it couldn’t articulate. She held her purse in her lap; she slid one hand inside of it. I sensed an impulsive act brewing. For the first time, I got scared. She was going to pull a gun — the gun with which she’d killed her boyfriend — and now she was going to kill me, or my husband, or herself. No target would prove compelling until, in a random millisecond, it became unbearably compelling. She started repeating, menacingly, “I owe you big-time. I owe you big-time. Shit Louie, I am going to give you the best present ever .”

The ride ended uneventfully. She located her driveway. She lived in a trailer, a nice one. She hopped out of the car and suddenly seemed as harmless as a drunk teenager relieved to be home. “I am going to give you the best present tomorrow!” she said again, forgetting she had no idea who we were or where we lived.

I concluded by saying to my dinner partner, “And for sure the woman was on bath salts!” I felt a little bit guilty having wasted so much time telling her this story. It starts promisingly, but the end tells nothing. “Very interesting true story but the ending is a letdown.” I hadn’t turned the deflation of events into a moment of unexpected revelation. I could see the woman trying to apply the right kind of curiosity, because I hadn’t properly directed it. Her curiosity passed over the bath salts woman and landed on me.

“I can’t believe you gave her a ride,” she said. “That says a lot about you as a person.” I thought she was going to compliment me on my selflessness, and I would then counter with the usual demurrals. She was so desperate! Anyone would have done what I did!

“Either you’re stupid,” she said, “or you’re just really nosy.”

Today my friends and I swam the entire length of the harbor, and out into the Reach, and around the point, and to the beach where my friends are staying. As we swam past the docks, we chatted with the people on them. “George,” we said, as we neared the first dock. “When’s your daughter arriving?” George replied, “Late tomorrow night. Would you like to take a rest here? Can I get you a drink?” We demurred. We had places to be! People to visit! As we stroked past I thought I saw George growing older and older. His grandchildren beside him grew older, too, taking his place before being replaced themselves by their children. It was like a trick of stop-time photography, everyone shading into everyone else. (It helped that I didn’t have my glasses on, and that the members of George’s family are tall and thin and slightly stooped, even the young. At a squint, they blend.) Near the yacht club dock we exchanged pleasantries with the commodore. “Where are you going?” he asked. “Out into the Reach!” we said. We swam and we swam. We waved to people on boats and deflected, with good cheer, their slightly concerned disbelief regarding our swimming project. Eventually, we reached our destination, and all of us were blue, and all of us concurred, “That might have been a little shorter, that swim.” We lay on the hot rocks. We each drank a beer. Time passed. Time passed. I started to doze. The cold water had slowed our pulses but everything else spun at great speed. I worried I would awake to find myself an old woman, my husband dead, my daughter grown and turned into me. But life, when I woke up, was as I’d left it.

Today I had a dinner party. I did not tell the people I’d invited who else was coming. I didn’t want anyone to pre-Google anyone. I don’t know why I wanted to control what my friends did or did not know before they arrived to my house. I do know that I treat the Internet as an oracle that one consults, like Laius, father of Oedipus, at his peril. Must I know my son will grow up to kill me? Or that my Amazon star ranking is on the wane? For this reason I limit my visits. I don’t ask questions I feel I cannot handle the answers to.

I feel others should exercise similar caution.

A few years ago, when my son was in day care, I met the father of one of his playmates. I did not know at the time, but I would soon learn via parental gossip, that the man’s wife had died when his daughter was two months old. “Gossip” is maybe the wrong word to describe how I came to know his history. No malice was intended. The chatter was in the service of protection. It prevented the unwitting from asking the father, “Do you and your wife live around here?” or asking the little girl, “Is your mother picking you up today?”

The gossip gave rise to further curiosity and speculation on my part, especially since I’d become somewhat acquainted with the man. I so badly wanted to know how his wife had died. Had she committed suicide? Had she been killed in a car accident? The man is an actor and his wife was a director of documentary films; they were, in other words, slightly more Googleable than other people. But Googling him seemed invasive; also, to learn the details about his wife would put me in the position, when he eventually told me these details, of pretending I didn’t already know them. Unlike him, I am no actor.

I did not Google him. After a few more weeks of walking together and spending time in playgrounds, during which time he still hadn’t told me about his wife, I considered that he possibly hoped I’d look him up online (as my friend having the affair with her married coworker had possibly hoped I’d look up her lover’s identity online), as this would remove the burden of his having to tell me. He’d let the Internet do the disclosing for him.

I still did not Google him. My loyalty paid off. Finally, six months into knowing him, he told me what had happened to his wife. We were at a party. The ambient noise was such, however, that I couldn’t hear him. What he was telling me was no doubt extremely heartrending, and so it seemed rude to say, repeatedly, “Sorry, what ?” I pretended, for politeness’ sake, to understand. I expressed regret and sadness and said, repeatedly, “Wow,” and, “Oh my God.” Then I went home and Googled him.