A Partridge in a Pear Tree

Clarisse had no idea why she was thinking of him today. For that matter, she didn’t know why she’d kept tabs on him ever since they parted ways the summer he left for college. But she had.

Maybe it was that schoolboy crush he’d had on her since the seventh grade. Maybe it was that they had become good friends by senior year. Maybe it was that he never judged or thought less of her, even when he thought she was making poor choices. Maybe it was because she had let him slip through her fingers.

Not that she was unhappy. She had married her high school sweetheart, Seth Parker, after high school. He was a mechanic & made a good living. They both loved cars & trucks & spent many a Friday or Saturday night out at the local stock car races. They had five kids together, two boys & three girls, & loved to take them camping out at the lake on weekends where they could fish, hike & swim. He was a good man & they had a good life together.

But there were some things she couldn’t help but think about now & then, such as when she had decided to pose for the nudie magazine when she was sixteen. She had to lie about her age. Her mom & stepdad had no problem with that. They thought it was a great opportunity for her. Seth had agreed. As a matter of fact, he started bragging to his friends that his girlfriend was about to become a centerfold. It made him strut like a peacock to think that he had been able to bag a sex goddess. That’s how Corbin had found out about it.

But while Seth had taken her pictures & hung them up in his room & around the garage for everyone to see, Corbin, who she knew had thought it was a bad idea, sent a beautiful bouquet of flowers to the set before her shoot. After that, the rest of her classmates treated her either as a star or yesterday’s trash. But Corbin hadn’t changed. He still greeted her in the hallways, agreed to help her with homework if she asked, & blushed whenever she said something nice to him.

She knew that the bouquet of flowers had cost a whole lot more than he could afford. Corbin was someone who didn’t go out to the movies or the local drive-in on weekends because he didn’t have the money. She wasn’t supposed to know that, but she had her ways, & it endeared him to her.

So, she had started inviting him to do things with her & her family senior year. They watched “Rambo” movies together (she loved them, he had to be persuaded), & she introduced him to the joys of “Dr. Who”. When her family spent an afternoon at the lake, he was their guest. She was still going steady with Seth, which she made clear to Corbin. And she made sure that Seth knew they were just friends. Still….

Not that he had been perfect. He could be stubborn & annoying. One evening they had made plans to do something, but she never showed. It’s not that she had anything else to do. She had simply forgotten & decided to stay in for the night. Corbin, assuming something had come up & neither she nor her family were home yet, decided to call. He made the first call at a quarter past seven, fifteen minutes after they were supposed to meet. When the phone rang, she remembered where she was supposed to be & told her family not to answer. It was just him & she didn’t want to admit she had forgotten. He, continuing to assume they weren’t home yet, decided to call every fifteen minutes until they were. This had lasted until ten thirty that night.

She wasn’t sure who was more upset, she or her parents. Her younger brother just thought it was funny. She mentioned to Corbin later that someone had driven them crazy one night by calling every fifteen minutes, pretending she hadn’t known who it was. He asked her, “Why didn’t you just answer the phone?”

She had to admit, that was a good question.

Then there was his awkwardness in social situations. Seth could usually tell when she wanted to be left alone, or a hug, or just someone to hang with her for a while. Corbin didn’t have a clue most of the time. She had to be really obvious when it was time for him to leave. He always asked if it was okay to give her a hug, even when she thought she had made quite apparent that’s what she was needing. And there were a couple of times she thought she might have liked a kiss, or for him to take her hand. He never once caught on.

And then there were the times he didn’t seem to understand that enough is enough & that too much of a good thing is not so good. Around Christmas that year he had taken to singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, adding to the last line, “and a partridge in a pear tree,” one of the names from “The Partridge Family”. Hearing, “This one’s Shirley!” followed by, “This one’s Keith!” & on down the line through Laurie, Danny, Tracy & Chris one time was kind of cute. But there are twelve verses ending with that line. That’s already a bit much. And then, to have to tell him to stop singing the song every time their paths crossed in the months of December & January because it was annoying…!

Seth didn’t have a lot of trouble believing they were just friends. He never thought of Corbin as being any kind of competition or threat.

Still, she found herself wondering from time to time what her life would have been like if she’d just hauled off & kissed him. She was certain she would have felt like a fish out of water—after all, the life she had suited her perfectly. And yet….

But why tonight? She hadn’t thought of him for months. She knew where he lived, that he had met someone in college & that they had lived together for a long time but had since parted ways. She knew he’d graduated summa cum laude & gone on to complete his masters with distinction but had dropped out of the doctoral program after two years. She knew that he still lived in the same apartment he had shared with his girlfriend….

Hey, it’s not like she was stalking him. This was just the kind of things friends know about each other, right?

The thing is, he had treated her as though she mattered, not as a trophy to show off or a pinup to hang on the wall, but as though she was worthy of having someone else care about her. And yet she had never once told him how much he mattered to her, not really. They had joked around a bit, yes, but still she had to wonder, given how clueless he had been about other things, if he ever knew.

At that moment she had decided that when Seth got home from work, she would ask him to take down the pictures of her at the garage. She was no longer that sixteen-year-old girl & she didn’t want him continuing to think of her that way. She wanted him to see her as she was now. Besides, the boss had confided to her that some of the guys were uncomfortable having nudie pictures of a co-worker’s wife on the walls. As for those who were comfortable with them, she really didn’t think that Seth should be happy with the things they said about her & what they’d like to be doing with her.

As she thought about this, she could imagine Corbin’s approval, not as a value judgment, but in a very happy for her sort of way.

So, why was he on her mind? It was really pretty simple when she thought about it. She’d read the newspaper earlier in the day & had seen the story of the epic storm about to hit the mountain ranges to the west. But with the mild days they'd been enjoying on the plains she hadn’t paid much attention.

It wasn’t until later in the day that she began to make the connection. She’d pulled out a map & realized that where he lived was very close to what was supposed to be the worst of it. The mountain pass just to the north was ground zero. They had given up trying to predict just how much snow would accumulate or how long the storm would last. Their best guess: three to four days. If they were lucky road crews might be able to clear the major arteries by the end of day five, but it would be much longer before basic services could be restored. Line crews from all around the continent were already offering help & preparing to move in as soon as they could.

She thought of her friend, home alone with no electricity, gas, or water for a week or more. She hoped he would be okay. Surely there had to be others out there who knew what a treasure he was. There had to be friends who would watch out for him, who thought as much of him as she did all these years later & those hundreds of miles away.

And then she secretly wondered if he ever thought of or even remembered her. She hoped he did.

“On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…,” she began singing to herself. She had her beau & her family & they made her happy. But where would she ever find herself another partridge?