Tikka Masala Soup

The strangest thing about loving someone for a long time is that eventually you begin to remember things that never happened to you.

Last Christmas, I was at a party in Tennessee talking to a man when his name caught somewhere familiar. “Sam Smartt,” I said. “With two t’s.” He looked at me, trying to place me, so I called my husband over. “David, you remember Sam Smartt.”

“Yes. With two t’s.”

For a moment, more than fifty years seemed to fold in on themselves. Sam was a friend of David’s best childhood friend, and they had met only once, when they were twenty-year-old boys. The three of them spent a weekend together, got into the kind of trouble young men later retell with great affection and very selective detail, then went on with their lives. I had heard about those adventures often enough to recognize a man I had never met from a life I had never lived. Sam could not have known how much of that conversation had already taken place without him.

Had that reunion never happened, his name would have remained among the thousands of things I know for no practical reason except that I love my husband. I had been interested in the person doing the talking, including the parts of his life that had nothing to do with me. Somewhere in the telling, an acquaintance from his youth had become familiar enough to need no introduction to his wife.

David and I did not meet at the beginning of our stories. We came with children and earlier marriages; finding each other did not make everything beforehand a mistake. I will never meet the boy Sam knew, but I have grown fond of him anyway. Loving someone later means caring about years you can reach only by listening. You cannot go back and stand beside them, but you can become someone to whom those experiences matter.

This is how David and I talk about people now. We may not be able to produce a name, but we know the incident attached to it. Half a description can be enough for me to see that he has supplied the rest. Early on, that exchange would have required introductions, possibly a lengthy explanation of who was related to whom. Eventually, you can begin in the middle and trust that the person beside you will follow.

Then there are the occasions when you do not have to begin at all.

Nothing tests your manners quite like catching the eye of the person who knows exactly why you are struggling to keep them. You may have been a perfectly respectable guest until that instant. Now you cannot risk another glance in that direction, which makes the whole business worse. The drive home is going to be excellent.

There is such pleasure in being understood before you have managed to behave badly. Somebody noticed what you noticed. You have not imagined the absurdity, and you will not have to explain why it amused you. Across a room full of perfectly innocent conversation, the two of you have become accomplices without either one uttering anything incriminating.

That same familiarity has a tenderness to it that matters far more than the joke. A roomful of people can hear the same answer, and only one may recognize what it cost you to give it. There are times when you want company but cannot bear the questions that usually come with it, when choosing the first sentence feels like more than you can manage. With someone who understands the pauses, you can be private without being alone.

I think that is part of what we are giving each other through all those apparently inconsequential conversations. Enough knowledge to recognize when the words are only the portion someone can bear to say. Enough trust that a difficult feeling does not always require a full account of itself before it can be treated gently. We spend years explaining who we are, and some of the reward is being spared an explanation when we most need the rest.

Even so, I can know what happened in an old adventure and still be learning what it means to David now. The reason for telling it may have changed since the first time I heard it. There is a difference between listening for the ending and listening for the person. I hope our familiarity always leaves room for that distinction.

Sometimes the closeness even seems to show on our faces. Someone recently said our grandchildren looked just like me when they appeared in a video for the first time. They share none of my DNA, which is a technicality I was perfectly willing to overlook. In a blended family, I rather like being told that belonging has become visible.