Love
The three friends had escaped the assembled chaos of Clarissa’s party for ocean skinny-dipping but now she insisted they return. She knew what Peter and Sally were thinking then. Perfect hostess.
They mocked her for her parties. Tea parties. Birthday parties. Christmas parties. Costume parties. Clarissa and her parties. Clarissa the social butterfly—flitting from one guest to another, introducing people, making sure every guest was having a satisfactory evening. Clarissa with the charming smile and winning personality. Perfect Clarissa in her perfect dresses. Confident and charismatic Clarissa.
But they knew their Clarissa, the behind-the-scenes Clarissa:
Rissa bleeding in the bathtub
Rissa fighting with Sally
Rissa kissing tenderly
Rissa stressed during finals week
Rissa naked on the beach
Rissa happily playing with her dog
Rissa arguing with her Aunt Bruton
Peter and Sally ridiculed Clarissa the hostess; they didn’t understand her parties. Superficial, shallow, a façade, pointless, too much work, dangerous for her mental health… on and on they went. Over the years she’d heard every possible criticism. Multiple times.
Even Richard worried about her parties. “Are you sure you’re feeling up for tonight?” he’d asked earlier this morning.
He was having a late breakfast; Peter and Sally were to arrive at the beach house in a few hours; she was arranging flowers and humming as she worked. At his question, her contented lips turned into a scowl. “Don’t you start. I hear enough from them.
(There was no need for names. ‘Them’ was always Peter and Sally. Sally and Peter.)
“Honestly. I’m fine. I’m always fine…” she trailed off. They both knew that statement wasn’t true but Richard let her say it nonetheless. Maybe they were both trying to convince themselves that she was fine.
Clarissa hid her face in the flower arrangement to conceal the irrational tears that threatened to spill over. She was watering the flowers. She just wanted to give a party. “I love my parties,” she whispered.
Richard gently put his hand on her shoulder. “I know dear.”
His small touch contained safety. Unlike the aggressively playful wrestling with Peter or Sally’s protective arm around her waist, Richard’s touch was impersonal and calm. He was there, by her side, but he was not there. He was not a part of her, just as she was not a part of him.
Although Clarissa and Richard would soon share the same last name, they would never be one.
Their relationship infuriated Sally. Those fights in the garden after Clarissa and Richard had decided to get married.
Tell me the truth, Clarissa! Do you even love him? Tell me that you love him like you love… like you loved me and I will leave be, but how can I just let you go like this. How can I let you go when I know that you can’t possibly be in love with him? He’s a suit and a brainwashed one at that. He doesn’t think for himself; he’s not interesting. How could you choose him?
And what about us? I am in love with you Rissa!
I wanted to marry you!
Sally didn’t understand then.
She didn’t understand now.
Clarissa had been in love
(strangled by that degrading passion)
with Sally but romance was a fleeting emotion
(luckily).
Yes, Clarissa loved Sally
(and still did)
but she also loved Richard.
Richard understood that Clarissa could not be known; she would not be owned by someone who was in love with her. People were forever isolated from one another, that was her theory. They may walk through life together. They can be as intimate as Clarissa’s relationships with both Peter and Sally. They may be connected by the heart string ties of love, but ultimately: it is impossible to fully know someone. It was unsatisfactory, how people were unknowable. But nevertheless, always the disconnect. Always the distance.
Richard respected that belief. He didn’t ask for more than Clarissa could give. He bought her red and white roses as an apology for upsetting her that morning. There.
He would be worried; she had been so long from the party.
“I’m going in now.”
Sally waved her off. “Go find Richard. Peter and I will be there in a few.”
Peter smiled sympathetically; they both new Sally’s cold dismissal was a cover for her turbulent emotions.
She said go.
She meant please stay.
“Go on Rissa, we’ll be right there.”
Clarissa finished drying off and slipped back into her green shift, an old piece especially mended for the evening’s party. The dress hung loosely on her angular frame. Gangly, like a giraffe, Peter would say. My lovely gangly giraffe.
She walked away from the shore, back toward the light of her party. Sand clung to her damp feet; her long hair flew with the wind. The dress felt cold and foreign next to her bare skin; in dark green, she was just a shadow on the beach.
She hadn’t always been a shadow. Last summer—the last time she was on this very beach—she had worn her best white dress. For Peter. Walking on the sand, dressed in white. For Peter, who she loved.
Peter was everything Clarissa wasn’t.
He was poor, but romantic; he had a rebellious streak, but kept an open-mind; he was free.
She had money, but a practical heart; she was a goody two-shoes with unfortunately strong opinions; she was trapped.
They balanced each other out.
After their first meeting, the pair was inseparable. They talked politics. The catastrophe that is marriage. Sex. Poetry. The future. Feminism. Equal rights. Religion. Books. Everything.
They had been walking, on this very spot. She was quoting Shakespeare.
(Was it Othello? Or Much Ado?)
Peter glowed in the dusky light; the sun was beginning to dip behind the horizon and a pathway of light appeared on the water.
(A path I want to follow someday, she had thought.) It was Much Ado About Nothing.
(“I’d rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he looooves me.”) She laughed and turned to look at Peter, his face awash in affection for her, for life, for this moment.
Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life, this moment on the beach. Peter stopped, picked up a piece of emerald green sea glass; kissed her on the lips.
“…if it were now to die ‘twere now to be most happy”
And Clarissa felt as Othello had felt.
When Peter slipped the sea glass into her palm, she knew she had been given a diamond. They watched the sun and its final moments in the sky. The first stars began to appear.
“Stargazing?”
The horror of an interruption.
Sally. She had caught up to them, hoping to join their walk—jealous of their companionship. For they were always three
(Clarissa,
Peter,
And Sally)
and could be nothing less than that.
Clarissa reached the lantern-lit patio of her party. Richard was there, casually keeping an eye out for her return.
But who were they now, she wondered:
Clarissa soon to be Clarissa Dalloway;
Peter Seton and his husband, who had just adopted a baby girl—practically respectable;
Sally Walsh, forever-in-love-Sally-Walsh
Would they always be defined by their relationships?
Richard met her there, under the lantern light. She knew that he could not see beauty in the people assembled at her party. Instead of seeing art, he saw a crowd of people and a very fatigued Clarissa at the end of the night. But Clarissa loved the way her friends and acquaintances mingled together, producing a night of vitality and connection. This was her offering—these parties. To combine and create life.
And she did not mind that Richard could not see this.
She was cold. He offered her his cardigan.
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