Clifford's Spiral: Chapter 4

What if your memory was in pieces?

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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?

Can you imagine how difficult it would be for you? Stroke sufferer Clifford Klovis tries to piece together the colorful fragments of his memories. The narrative’s sardonic tone recalls the wry wisdom of Kurt Vonnegut, and its preoccupation with male centeredness is reminiscent of Philip Roth.

Chapter 4

Clifford didn’t want to dwell on guilty thoughts about his first marriage, which occurred fully five years after Ruth deserted him. In the interim, he’d experimented in various unsuccessful relationships, about which he would reflect much more during his institutionalization.

Why he should feel guilty about Tessa, he realized only later in life, was a matter of karmic arithmetic. The summation was complete after Tessa, too, left him, seven years after they were wed. She was still calling herself Tessa Merrihew Dunham, the Merrihew from a second marriage and the Dunham from a third. Her clutching onto surnames made Clifford wonder whether any of her divorces had been official. Not ever having met Tessa’s parents or siblings, what her maiden name was he never rightly knew, until, years later, he and she applied for passports and the name Smith appeared for the first time on a birth certificate she resurrected from a silver keepsake box.

Tessa’s first marriage, as she admitted during pillow talk years later, was over almost before it began. She was pregnant and in Florida. The groom was an unnamed fellow she called The Podiatrist, and she put up with him and aggressive mosquitos the size of dragonflies for almost three months. Even as she walked down the aisle (which must have been a short trip in the private ceremony), she suspected he was taking her on out of charity (the baby wasn’t his) but would eventually exact his price.

The foot doctor demanded routinely administered oral sex and an office assistant, and she performed both roles for a time. When in a matter of weeks her pregnancy ended in miscarriage, she was out of there and, like a heat-seeking missile, she flew straight into banker Merrihew’s hot tailpipe. That fellow, it turned out, was cold as cash, and their marriage didn’t last a year. Third husband Milton Dunham gave her children Timothy and Sarah, and only then did she realize that even the sobering responsibilities of fatherhood would not change his habits as a philanderer and a heartless batterer.

Damaged goods? Y’think?

I was, at my core, the obedient son of dutiful Southern Baptists. It was my job — my mission — to save whatever and whoever needed saving, including Tessa and her two fatherless children.

That’s where the karma comes in.