The time traveler's wife (12 page)

"This sucks," says Helen.
"Where's Ruth?"

Ruth is hiding upstairs in her bedroom with
Laura. They are smoking a joint in the dark and watching out the window as a
bunch of Jake's friends skinny dip in the pool. Soon we are all sitting in the
window seat gawking.

"Mmm," says Helen. "I'd like
some of that."

"Which one?" Ruth asks.

"The guy on the diving board."

"Ooh."

"Look at Ron," says Laura.
"That's Ron?" Ruth giggles.

"Wow. Well, I guess anyone would look
better without the Metallica T-shirt and the skanky leather vest," Helen
says. "Hey, Clare, you're awfully quiet."

"Um? Yeah, I guess," I say weakly.

"Look at you," says Helen. "You
are, like, cross-eyed with lust. I am ashamed of you. How could you let
yourself get into such a state?" She laughs. "Seriously, Clare, why
don't you just get it over with?"

"I can't," I say miserably.

"Sure you can. Just walk downstairs and
yell 'Fuck me!' and about fifty guys would be yelling 'Me! Me!'" "You
don't understand. I don't want—it's not that—"

"She wants somebody in particular,"
Ruth says, without taking her eyes off the pool. "Who?" Helen asks. I
shrug my shoulders. "Come on, Clare, spit it out."

"Leave her alone," Laura says.
"If Clare doesn't want to say, she doesn't have to." I am sitting
next to Laura, and I lean my head on her shoulder. Helen bounces up. "I'll
be right back."

"Where you going?"

"I brought some champagne and pear juice
to make Bellinis, but I left it in the car." She dashes out the door. A
tall guy with shoulder-length hair does a backwards somersault off the diving
board.

"Ooh la la," say Ruth and Laura in
unison.

Henry: A long time has passed, maybe an hour or
so. I eat half the potato chips and drink the warm Coke Clare has brought
along. I nap a bit. She's gone for so long that I'm starting to consider going
for a walk. Also I need to take a leak. I hear heels tapping toward me. I look
out the window, but it's not Clare, it's this bombshell blond girl in a tight
red dress. I blink, and realize that this is Clare's friend Helen Powell. Uh
oh. She clicks over to my side of the car, leans over and peers at me. I can
see right down her dress to Tokyo. I feel slightly woozy,

"Hi, Clare's boyfriend. I'm Helen."

"Wrong number, Helen. But pleased to meet
you." Her breath is highly alcoholic. "Aren't you going to get out of
the car and be properly introduced?"

"Oh, I'm pretty comfortable where I am,
thanks."

"Well, I'll just join you in there,
then." She moves uncertainly around the front of the car, opens the door,
and plops herself into the driver's seat.

"I've been wanting to meet you for the
longest time," Helen confides.

"You have? Why?" I desperately wish
Clare would come and rescue me, but then that would give the game away,
wouldn't it? Helen leans toward me and says, sotto voce, "I deduced your
existence. My vast powers of observation have led me to the conclusion that
whatever remains when you have eliminated the impossible, is the truth, no
matter how impossible. Hence," Helen pauses to burp. "How unladylike.
Excuse me. Hence, I have concluded that Clare must have a boyfriend, because
otherwise, she would not be refusing to fuck all these very nice boys who are
very much distressed about it. And here you are. Ta da!"

I've always liked Helen, and I am sad to have
to mislead her. This does explain something she said to me at our wedding,
though. I love it when little puzzle pieces drop into place like this.

"That's very compelling reasoning, Helen,
but I'm not Clare's boyfriend."

"Then why are you sitting in her
car?"

I have a brainstorm. Clare is going to kill me
for this. "I'm a friend of Clare's parents. They were worried about her
taking the car to a party where there might be alcohol, so they asked me to go
along and play chauffeur in case she got too pickled to drive."

Helen pouts. "That's extremely not
necessary. Our little Clare hardly drinks enough to fill a tiny, tiny
thimble—" "I never said she did. Her parents were just being
paranoid."

High heels click down the sidewalk. This time
it is Clare. She freezes when she sees that I have company. Helen jumps out of
the car and says, "Clare! This naughty man says he is not your
boyfriend." Clare and I exchange glances. "Well, he's not," says
Clare curtly. "Oh," says Helen. "Are you leaving?"

"It's almost midnight. I'm about to turn
into a pumpkin." Clare walks around the car and opens her door. "Come
on, Henry, let's go." She starts the car and flips on the lights. Helen
stands stock still in the headlights. Then she walks over to my side of the
car. "Not her boyfriend, huh, Henry? You had me going there for a minute,
yes you did. Bye bye, Clare." She laughs, and Clare pulls out of the
parking space awkwardly and drives away. Ruth lives on Conger. As we turn onto
Broadway, I see that all the street lights are off. Broadway is a two-lane
highway. It's ruler-straight, but without the streetlights it's like driving
into an inkwell.

"Better turn on your brights, Clare,"
I say. She reaches forward and turns the headlights off completely.

"Clare—!"

"Don't tell me what to do!" I shut
up. All I can see are the illuminated numbers of the clock radio. It's 11:36.I
hear the air rushing past the car, the engine of the car; I feel the wheels
passing over the asphalt, but somehow we seem to be motionless, and the world
moves around us at forty-five miles per hour. I close my eyes. It makes no
difference. I open them. My heart is pounding. Headlights appear in the
distance. Clare turns her lights on and we are rushing along again, perfectly
aligned between the yellow stripes in the middle of the road and the edge of
the highway. It's 11:38. Clare is expressionless in the reflected dashboard
lights. "Why did you do that?" I ask her, my voice shaking.

"Why not?" Clare's voice is calm as a
summer pond.

"Because we could have both died in a fiery
wreck?"

Clare slows and turns onto Blue Star Highway.
"But that's not what happens" she says. "I grow up and meet you
and we get married and here you are."

"For all you know you crashed the car just
then and we both spent a year in traction."

"But then you would have warned me not to
do it," says Clare.

"I tried, but you yelled at me—"

"I mean, an older you would have told a
younger me not to crash the car." "Well, by then it would have
already happened."

We have reached Meagram Lane, and Clare turns
onto it. This is the private road that leads to her house. "Pull over,
Clare, okay? Please?" Clare drives onto the grass, stops, cuts the engine
and the lights. It's completely dark again, and I can hear a million cicadas
singing. I reach over and pull Clare close to me, put my arm around her. She is
tense and unpliant.

"Promise me something."

"What?" Clare asks.

"Promise you won't do anything like that
again. I mean not just with the car, but anything dangerous. Because you don't
know. The future is weird, and you can't go around behaving like you're
invincible—"

"But if you've seen me in the
future—"

"Trust me. Just trust me."

Clare laughs. "Why would I want to do
that?"

"I dunno. Because I love you?"

Clare turns her head so quickly that she hits
me in the jaw, "Ouch."

"Sorry." I can barely see the outline
of her profile. "You love me?" she asks.

"Yes."

"Right now?"

"Yes."

"But you're not my boyfriend."

Oh. That's what's bugging her. "Well,
technically speaking, I'm your husband. Since you haven't actually gotten
married yet, I suppose we would have to say that you are my girlfriend."

Clare puts her hand someplace it probably
shouldn't be. "I'd rather be your mistress."

"You're sixteen, Clare." I gently
remove her hand, and stroke her face.

"That's old enough. Ugh, your hands are
all wet." Clare turns on the overhead light and I am startled to see that
her face and dress are streaked with blood. I look at my palms and they are
sticky and red. "Henry! What's wrong?"

"I don't know." I lick my right palm
and four deep crescent-shaped cuts appear in a row. I laugh. "It's from my
fingernails. When you were driving without the headlights."

Clare snaps off the overhead light and we are
sitting in the dark again. The cicadas sing with all their might. "I
didn't mean to scare you."

"Yeah, you did. But usually I feel safe
when you're driving. It's just—"

"What?"

"I was in a car accident when I was a kid,
and I don't like to ride in cars."

"Oh—I'm sorry."

"'S okay. Hey, what time is it?"

"Oh my God." Clare flips the light
on. 12:12. "I'm late. And how can I walk in all bloody like this?"
She looks so distraught that I want to laugh.

"Here." I rub my left palm across her
upper lip and under her nose. "You have a nosebleed."

"Okay." She starts the car, flips on
the headlights, and eases back onto the road. "Etta's going to freak when
she sees me."

"Etta? What about your parents?"

"Mama's probably asleep by now, and it's
Daddy's poker night." Clare opens the gate and we pass through.

"If my kid was out with the car the day
after she got her license I would be sitting next to the front door with a
stopwatch." Clare stops the car out of sight of the house.

"Do we have kids?"

"Sorry, that's classified."

"I'm gonna apply for that one under the
Freedom of Information Act."

"Be my guest." I kiss her carefully,
so as not to disturb the faux nosebleed. "Let me know what you find
out." I open the car door. "Good luck with Etta."

"Good night."

"Night." I get out and close the door
as quietly as possible. The car glides down the drive, around the bend and into
the night. I walk after it toward a bed in the Meadow under the stars.

Sunday, September 27, 1987 (Henry is 32, Clare
is 16)

Henry: I materialize in the Meadow, about
fifteen feet west of the clearing. I feel dreadful, dizzy and nauseated, so I
sit for a few minutes to pull myself together. It's chilly and gray, and I am
submerged in the tall brown grass, which cuts into my skin. After a while I
feel a little better, and it's quiet, so I stand up and walk into the clearing.
Clare is sitting on the ground, next to the rock, leaning against it. She
doesn't say anything, just looks at me with what I can only describe as anger.
Uh oh, I think. What have I done? She's in her Grace Kelly phase; she's wearing
her blue wool coat and a red skirt. I'm shivering, and I hunt for the clothes
box. I find it, and don black jeans, a black sweater, black wool socks, a black
overcoat, black boots, and black leather gloves, I look like I'm about to star
in a Wim Wenders film. I sit down next to Clare.

"Hi, Clare. Are you okay?"

"Hi, Henry. Here." She hands me a
Thermos and two sandwiches.

"Thanks. I feel kind of sick, so I'll wait
a little." I set the food on the rock. The Thermos contains coffee; I
inhale deeply. Just the smell makes me feel better. "Are you all
right?" She's not looking at me. As I scrutinize Clare, I realize that
she's been crying.

"Henry. Would you beat someone up for
me?"

"What?"

"I want to hurt someone, and I'm not big
enough, and I don't know how to fight. Will you do it for me?" "Whoa.
What are you talking about? Who? Why?"

Clare stares at her lap. "I don't want to
talk about it. Couldn't you just take my word that he totally deserves
it?"

I think I know what's going on; I think I've
heard this story before. I sigh, and move closer to Clare, and put my arm
around her. She leans her head on my shoulder.

"This is about some guy you went on a date
with, right?"

"Yeah."

"And he was a jerk, and now you want me to
pulverize him?"

"Yeah."

"Clare, lots of guys are jerks. I used to
be a jerk—"

Clare laughs. "I bet you weren't as big of
a jerk as Jason Everleigh."

"He's a football player or something,
right?"

"Yes."

"Clare, what makes you think I can take on
some huge jock half my age? Why were you even going out with someone like
that?"

She shrugs. "At school, everybody's been
bugging me 'cause I never date anyone. Ruth and Meg and Nancy—I mean, there are
all these rumors going around that I'm a lesbian. Even Mama is asking me why I
don't go out with boys. Guys ask me out, and I turn them down. And then
Beatrice Dilford, who is a dyke, asked me if I was, and I told her no, and she
said that she wasn't surprised, but that's what everybody was saying, so then I
thought, well, maybe I'd better go out with a few guys. So the next one who
asked was Jason. He's, like, this jock, and he's really good looking, and I
knew that if I went out with him everyone would know, and I thought maybe they
would shut up."