No Wasted Word: This is Between Us by Kevin Sampsell

No Wasted Word is a bi-monthly column where Caitlin Reade Keenan discusses and reviews books by contemporary writers published by independent presses.

Written by Caitlin Reade Keenan

Year One

There is a book called This Is Between Us (Tin House). In this book there is a man, a storyteller, talking to a woman. He is telling her stories, short memories directed to her, meant for her. He is telling her their story. Pick up this book and read it.

The woman is a Portland townie with a taste for pills. She also has an ex-husband and twelve-year-old daughter. The man is a local, too, with an ex-wife, a son, and a long list of ex-girlfriends. Their story starts as an affair.  They are struggling with the damage their respective divorces caused while simultaneously relishing in the hope for this new love, this new family, this new life.

You, reader, will be privy to the most intimate details of their sweet start, like the locket he gives her with a picture of his fifteen-year-old self (she only likes lockets of old pictures, of memories).  You will watch them engage in domestic negotiations (he thinks all his stuff ends up in the Goodwill pile). You will see them work to blend a family (there are trips to the pumpkin patch).

You see her only how he sees her, which is to say that you, also, start to fall in love with her, her humor, her unapologetic sexiness. You watch them have playful, adventurous sex. You will read some of the best sex writing out there which shouldn’t surprise you coming from the memoirist of A Common Pornography.

The voyeuristic nature of the story’s structure gives you the privilege of seeing true intimacy.

Year Two

Things will start to feel ominous. You will start to question what he wants. You will start to question why he is telling her all these things. You will be given no answer, yet.

You will begin to see some cracks that you fear will be the start of the demise of these two creatures whose love you’ve come to love. And that will make you want to read faster, get to the next page, see what has happened.

You will learn of the arguments that force them into different rooms, the frequent phone calls to members of the opposite sex, the bickering over household chores. But the problems are not just domestic. There is also the encounter with the ex-girlfriend in the bar bathroom. You will start to wonder if this love is doomed. If maybe this is a letter or speech to the woman now that the relationship is over.

Year Three

Their inevitable-seeming separation leads to a whole new set of challenges. Families are re-broken, but the ties that once bound are still there, and neither party can seem to shake them. Our storyteller insightfully concludes that, “Scars plus Time still equals Scars.”

In this story, things become unsentimental and then sentimental again in the way that real love operates. You will be reminded of the ways that you can be uniquely damaging to those that you know/understand/care for the most.

Year Four

The storyteller is so frank that it will catch you off guard when he reveals things like the incident in the car with the woman’s brother and the ex-girlfriend he got pregnant and left. You might initially judge these things that he has kept from her. But people are always more complicated than you would like to draw them as. This storyteller also cries during E.T. and makes her voice-letter recordings for Christmas, and takes his stepdaughter on bike excursions all over town to find a slushie, and tries to be careful and nonjudgmental with his awkward son.

It will remind you that no matter how hard you try, you cannot divorce the bad from the good in anyone, whether you know all the stories or not. In this relationship, at least all the stories are told.

Year Five

You may decide that this love is not healthy or careful or a love that you want. But you will no longer be able to deny the love that is there, that the people are complicated and real, and that it was worth it to spend time in their story. You will feel grateful for the brutal honesty and lovely secrets that you were allowed to know.

Some people might think that a story needs more of a point than that. But those people are wrong. It is best for them to remember what the storyteller reminds us, “Love is fluid, I think. It doesn’t flow in timelines. Once it starts, it doesn’t end or anything.”