Clifford's Spiral: Chapter 19

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About This Novel

In Clifford's Spiral, the stroke survivor’s past is blurry, and his memories are in pieces. He asks himself:

Who was Clifford Olmstead Klovis?

Stroke sufferer Clifford Klovis tries to piece together the colorful fragments of his memories. He never meant to go there.

Chapter 19

Clifford’s plans for his life did a turnabout when he fell in love with Tessa, or what he thought at the time to be love. Her soft, reflective side touched him, and he began to want what she wanted more than he wanted whatever it was he’d thought he wanted for himself. Fundamentally, he wanted to see her happy. He wanted the black cloud that followed her around to be swept away. He wanted her to laugh without caution or shame.

So he paid for a private investigator to find the children, then he hired a family-practice law firm to handle the paperwork. He went through the savings he’d accrued in his years of bachelorhood in a month. The court had no trouble ruling against Dunham in the fellow’s absence. Once Tessa had custody officially, she and Clifford were married in a small ceremony in the dining room of a hotel in Midtown. Tim was ring bearer and Sarah was flower girl. His parents flew in to attend, still bewildered by his life choices, but his mother said confidentially she thought he was brave and doing a fine thing to take responsibility for those children. Tessa’s widower father Hank was there, arriving from points unknown, having sobered up for the occasion. Their two best friends, a young couple who lived in their apartment building, were best man and maid of honor. The officiant was the pastor from a church that operated a soup kitchen in the Village, a congregation where Clifford had told himself he meant to join.

Ten years later, after the family had moved to Cleveland and then to Los Angeles, teenage Tim died in a freak sports accident. Tessa suffered an emotional breakdown that lasted two years, then she ran away with the maître d’ of their favorite restaurant, leaving Clifford to care for fourteen-year-old Sarah. He was struggling financially at the time, as they pretty much always had since their marriage, and he would become all the more stressed when soon afterward he began his career transition from marketing to academia.