Doing The Crosswords Without You
Today at my fitness club, I found a virgin crossword puzzle in the Wall Street Journal. I like to exercise my mind and my body while I’m riding the stationary bike. This one was challenging me, but I suppose if I were the Journal’s target audience, I would already know the last name of the inventor of the Universal Stock ticker (Thomas Edison), or an eight-letter word for a stock that’s hardly a blue chip (Small Cap). After 50 minutes and 400 calories, I had only solved about a quarter of the puzzle. Staring at the unfilled squares, I wished that Meg had been there to help me.
I can never do another crossword puzzle without thinking of her. Our history as a couple is inexorably linked to them. Even before we met, our nightly phone conversations often included helping her finish the puzzles in the Phoenix papers. Solving them together became an intimate act.
At our favorite breakfast place, we’d scout the disassembled (Portland) Oregonian in the waiting area, hoping for an unsolved puzzle. If we were lucky we’d get two puzzles, the one in the comics section, and the New York Times crossword buried in the classifieds. Waiting at our table for food we’d write in the answers, switching off every few minutes, marveling at the new words she’d added to which I could now add more.
When Meg and I finished a puzzle at home, she’d smile and raise her hands like a cheerleader and yell out “Hooray!” I always wanted her to be just as demonstrative in public. I’d write “Hooray!” at the top of the puzzle and point to it, but most of the time she’d just get embarrassed. “Hooray,” she’d whisper.
The daily Oregonian wasn't worth a dollar a day, especially when all I wanted was the Living section where the puzzle lived, so I became a crossword thief. On buses, at my club, in the employee break room, in the recycling bins at my mother’s apartment, I was always on the lookout for a puzzle to take home to feed our shared addiction. New crosswords were folded and placed on a clipboard we kept in the bathroom. When the need arose, we worked the puzzle. If I was taking too long, sometimes I’d hear a small voice outside the door ask, “Are you still doing the puzzle?” It is one of my favorite memories of her.
Crossword puzzles should only be done in pen. Meg was quite insistent about that. I never wanted to make a mistake. Working in pen made me more cautious about filling in an answer, checking the clues of neighboring words to see if there were any complimentary letters. Meg was always more spontaneous, if she was wrong it wasn't a big deal. When I’m doing a crossword now I think about that, especially when I try to solve the bigger puzzle of why we’re no longer together.
(Sometimes I’ll still write “Hooray!” at the top.)
