Claire and I talk more than we used to, and the conversations have a different quality than they did before any of this happened. She asks me questions she never used to ask, about my work, my life, what I’m thinking about. I ask her questions I never used to ask, about what she needs from a conversation, what she’s finding hard, what she’s proud of. We are both learning to ask rather than to handle, in our different ways, and we are both imperfect at it.
There are still moments that are complicated. I visited them for dinner in September, the first time I’d been to their apartment since the Brooklyn conversation in March, and the visit was warm and good and also slightly careful in a way that I don’t think is going to fully go away for a while. You can’t undo months of difficulty in a dinner, and I don’t think you should try. The carefulness is honest. It is the care of people who have found out that they can hurt each other and who are being thoughtful about not doing it again.
Owen has become, in a small way, a person I know rather than just a person I’m aware of. We text occasionally about things unrelated to Claire. He sent me an article about project management software that he’d read and thought I might find useful. I sent him back my actual thoughts about the article, which were mixed. He sent back a response that engaged with my thoughts. This is what knowing someone looks like at the beginning.