Let鈥檚 Take the Long Way Home
The chief heartache of Gail Caldwell鈥檚 love letter of a memoir, Let鈥檚 Take the Long Way Home, is also its main subject: The person she wrote it for will never be able to read it.
鈥淚 was 51 when Caroline died, and by that point in life you should have gone to enough funerals to be able to quote the verses from Ecclesiastes by heart,鈥� Caldwell writes, but Caroline Knapp was the first person she lost who was irreplaceable in her life.
Caldwell, a Pulitzer Prize winner and former chief book critic for The Boston Globe, met Knapp, a columnist with the Boston Phoenix, in 1996.
Both women gave up drinking at 33 (Knapp鈥檚 memoir is titled 鈥淒rinking: A Love Story鈥�); both had to overcome physical challenges in their youth, polio for Caldwell and anorexia for Knapp; both adored dogs and loved the water. Caldwell swam and Knapp rowed, and each taught the other her sport.
The similarities extended to owning the same pieces of clothing and discovering that both had, at different times, dated the same man. (He wasn鈥檛 a keeper for either. Caldwell sums up her love life thus: 鈥淩eader, I moved on.鈥�)
Both were introverts, to the point where a potluck dinner would cause Knapp a week鈥檚 worth of anxiety. Caldwell dubs herself 鈥渢he gregarious hermit,鈥� while Knapp said, 鈥淚鈥檓 a merry recluse!鈥� As a result, they valued each other deeply.
鈥淔inding Caroline was like placing a personal ad for an imaginary friend, then having her show up at your door funnier and better than you had conceived,鈥� Caldwell writes.
The two developed the kind of bosom friendship that Anne Shirley longed for in 鈥淎nne of Green Gables鈥� and most of us rarely find. They walked their dogs, Clementine and Lucille, together around Fresh Pond; rowed together on the Charles River; vacationed together in New Hampshire and on Cape Cod, even after Knapp reunited with the man she would marry; and they talked to each other every day.
鈥� 鈥榃hat are you doing?鈥� I would say in the early afternoon, when I called after the writing hours were done and before the walking ones began. 鈥榃aiting for you to call,鈥� she would answer, half kidding....鈥�
It鈥檚 common to say that people didn鈥檛 have enough time together, but they really didn鈥檛. In 2002, Knapp was diagnosed with lung cancer, and Caldwell was there when the doctors pronounced 鈥渢he obscene euphemism that telegraphs the end: 鈥榃e can make her more comfortable.鈥� 鈥�
鈥淟et鈥檚 Take the Long Way Home鈥� isn鈥檛 a devastating examination of grief in the way of Joan Didion鈥檚 鈥淵ear of Magical Thinking,鈥� now perhaps the most purchased book for handing out at funerals.
Caldwell is not a wallower as a writer, and that, plus the memoir鈥檚 slim size should help readers prone to waterworks. (I鈥檒l cry at commercials, so I was doomed from the prologue.)
In addition to honoring Knapp鈥檚 friendship, Caldwell also discusses her own battle with alcoholism and spends a good bit of time talking about a subject dear to both friends鈥� hearts: dog-training. (Personally, I could have used another couple of chapters about dogs as a buffer.) Once she reaches the pages about Knapp鈥檚 death, Caldwell summons up an incisive emotional clarity about a subject from which many Americans instinctively shy away.
鈥淭he only education in grief that any of us ever gets is a crash course,鈥� Caldwell says. Of the time immediately after Knapp鈥檚 death, she remembers thinking, 鈥淚f only I could get to sorrow, I thought, I could do sorrow. I wasn鈥檛 ready for the sheer physicality of it, the lead-lined overcoat of dull pain it would take months to shake.鈥�
The friends who come to eat the vat of black beans Caldwell makes after Knapp鈥檚 death help, and so do poets from Edna St. Vincent Millay to Anne Sexton to Pablo Neruda.
鈥淚 still have my set of keys to her house, to locks and doors that no longer exist, and I keep them in my glove compartment, where they have been moved from one car to another in the past couple of years,鈥� she writes. 鈥淪omeday I will throw them in the Charles, where I lost the seat to her boat and so much else.鈥�
鈥淓verything about death is a clich茅 until you鈥檙e in it,鈥� Caldwell writes. That may be true, but very little about this gift of a book would qualify.
Yvonne Zipp regularly reviews fiction for the Monitor.
