The time traveler's wife (19 page)

"I know Celia Attley."

"Dear me. You do keep strange company. How
did Ingrid try to kill herself?" "An overdose of Valium."

"1991? Yeah, okay. That would be Ingrid's
fourth suicide attempt."

"What?"

"Ah, you didn't know that? Celia is only
selectively informative. Ingrid actually succeeded in doing herself in on
January 2, 1994. She shot herself in the chest."

"Henry—"

"You know, it happened six years ago, and
I'm still angry at her. What a waste. But she was severely depressed, for a
long time, and she just sunk down into it. I couldn't do anything for her. It
was one of the things we used to fight about."

"This is a pretty sick joke, Library
Boy."

"You want proof."

He just smiles.

"How about that photo? The one you said
Clare has?"

The smile vanishes. "Okay. I admit that I
am a wee bit befuddled by that."

"I met Clare for the first time in
October, 1991. She met me for the first time in September, 1977; she was six, I
will be thirty-eight. She's known me all her life. In 1991 I'm just getting to
know her. By the way, you should ask Clare all this stuff. She'll tell you
"

"I already did. She told me."

"Well, hell, Gomez. You're taking up
valuable time, here, making me tell you all over again. You didn't believe
her?" "No. Would you?"

"Sure. Clare is very truthful. It's that
Catholic upbringing that does it." Lance comes by with more coffee. I'm
already highly caffeinated, but more can't hurt. "So? What kind of proof
are you looking for?"

"Clare said you disappear."

"Yeah, it's one of my more dramatic parlor
tricks. Stick to me like glue, and sooner or later, I vanish. It may take
minutes, hours, or days, but I'm very reliable that way."

"Do we know each other in 2000?"

"Yeah." I grin at him. "We're
good friends."

"Tell me my future."

Oh, no. Bad idea. "Nope."

"Why not?"

"Gomez. Things happen. Knowing about them
in advance makes everything.. .weird. You can't change anything, anyway."

"Why?"

"Causation only runs forward. Things
happen once, only once. If you know things...1 feel trapped, most of the time.
If you are in time, not knowing...you're free. Trust me." He looks
frustrated. "You'll be the best man at our wedding. I'll be yours. You
have a great life, Gomez. But I'm not going to tell you the particulars."

"Stock tips?"

Yeah, why not. In 2000 the stock market is
insane, but there are amazing fortunes to be made, and Gomez will be one of the
lucky ones. "Ever heard of the Internet?" No.

"It's a computer thing. A vast, worldwide
network with regular people all plugged in, communicating by phone lines with
computers. You want to buy technology stocks. Netscape, America Online, Sun
Microsystems, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Amazon.com." He's taking notes.

"Dotcom?"

"Don't worry about it. lust buy it at the
IPO." I smile. "Clap your hands if you believe in fairies."
"I thought you were pole-axing anyone who insinuated anything about
fairies this evening?"

"It's from Peter Pan, you
illiterate." I suddenly feel nauseous. I don't want to cause a scene here,
now. I jump up. "Follow me " I say, running for the men's room, Gomez
close behind me. I burst into the miraculously empty John. Sweat is streaming
down my face. I throw up into the sink. "Jesus H. Christ," says
Gomez. "Damn it, Library—" but I lose the rest of whatever he's about
to say, because I'm lying on my side, naked, on a cold linoleum floor, in pitch
blackness. I'm dizzy, so I lie there for a while. I reach out my hand and touch
the spines of books. I'm in the stacks, at the Newberry. I get up and stagger
to the end of the aisle and flip the switch; light floods the row I'm standing
in, blinding me. My clothes, and the cart of books I was shelving, are in the
next aisle over. I get dressed, shelve the books, and gingerly open the
security door to the stacks. I don't know what time it is; the alarms could be
on. But no, everything is as it was. Isabelle is instructing a new patron in
the ways of the Reading Room; Matt walks by and waves. The sun pours in the
windows, and the hands of the Reading Room clock point to 4:15. I've been gone
less than fifteen minutes. Amelia sees me and points to the door. "I'm
going out to Starbucks. You want Java?"

"Um, no, I don't think so. But
thanks." I have a horrible headache. I stick my face into Roberto's office
and tell him I don't feel well. He nods sympathetically, gestures at the phone,
which is spewing lightspeed Italian into his ear. I grab my stuff and leave.
Just another routine day at the office for Library Boy.

Sunday, December 15, 1991 (Clare is 20)

Clare: It's a beautiful sunny Sunday morning,
and I'm on my way home from Henry's apartment. The streets are icy and there's
a couple inches of fresh snow. Everything is blindingly white and clean. I am
singing along with Aretha Franklin, "R-E-S-P-E-C-T!" as I turn off
Addison onto Hoyne, and lo and behold, there's a parking space right in front.
It's my lucky day. I park and negotiate the slick sidewalk, let myself into the
vestibule, still humming. I have that dreamy rubber spine feeling that I'm
beginning to associate with sex, with waking up in Henry's bed, with getting
home at all hours of the morning. I float up the stairs. Charisse will be at
church. I'm looking forward to a long bath and the New York Times. As soon as I
open our door, I know I'm not alone. Gomez is sitting in the living room in a
cloud of smoke with the blinds closed. What with the red flocked wallpaper and
the red velvet furniture and all the smoke, he looks like a blond Polish Elvis
Satan. He just sits there, so I start walking back to my room without speaking.
I'm still mad at him.

"Clare."

I turn. "What?"

"I'm sorry. I was wrong." I've never
heard Gomez admit to anything less than papal infallibility. His voice is a
deep croak. I walk into the living room and open the blinds. The sunlight is
having trouble getting through the smoke, so I crack a window. "I don't
see how you can smoke this much without setting off the smoke detector."

Gomez holds up a nine-volt battery. "I'll
put it back before I leave."

I sit down on the Chesterfield. I wait for
Gomez to tell me why he's changed his mind. He's rolling another cigarette.
Finally he lights it, and looks at me.

"I spent last night with your friend
Henry."

"So did I."

"Yeah. What did you do?"

"Went to Facets, saw a Peter Greenaway
film, ate Moroccan, went to his place." "And you just left."
"That's right."

"Well. My evening was less cultural, but
more eventful. I came upon your beamish boy in the alley by the Vic, smashing
Nick to a pulp. Trent told me this morning that Nick has a broken nose, three
broken ribs, five broken bones in his hand, soft-tissue damage, and forty-six
stitches. And he's gonna need a new front tooth." I am unmoved. Nick is a
big bully. "You should have seen it, Clare. Your boyfriend dealt with Nick
like he was an inanimate object. Like Nick was a sculpture he was carving. Real
scientific-like. Just considered where to land it for maximum effect, wham. I
would have totally admired it, if it hadn't been Nick."

"Why was Henry beating up Nick?"

Gomez looks uncomfortable. "It sounded
like it might have been Nick's fault. He likes to pick on.. .gays, and Henry
was dressed like Little Miss Muffet." I can imagine. Poor Henry.

"And then?"

"Then we burglarized the Army-Navy surplus
store." So far so good.

"And?"

"And then we went to Ann Sather's for
dinner."

I burst out laughing. Gomez smiles. "And
he told me the same whacko story that you told me." "So why did you
believe him?"

"Well, he's so fucking nonchalant. I could
tell that he absolutely knew me, through and through. He had my number, and he
didn't care. And then he—vanished, and I was standing there, and I just.. .had
to. Believe."

I nod, sympathetically. "The disappearing
is pretty impressive. I remember that from the very first time I saw him, when
I was little. He was shaking my hand, and poof! he was gone. Hey, when was he
coming from?"

"2000. He looked a lot older."

"He goes through a lot." It's kind of
nice to sit here and talk about Henry with someone who knows. I feel a surge of
gratitude toward Gomez which evaporates as he leans forward and says, quite
gravely, "Don't marry him, Clare."

"He hasn't asked me, yet."

"You know what I mean."

I sit very still, looking at my hands quietly
clasped in my lap. I'm cold and furious. I look up. Gomez regards me anxiously.

"I love him. He's my life. I've been
waiting for him, my whole life, and now, he's here." I don't know how to
explain.

"With Henry, I can see everything laid
out, like a map, past and future, everything at once, like an angel
"I shake my head. I can't put it into
words. "I can reach into him and touch time.. .he loves me. We're married
because.. .we're part of each other...."! falter. "It's happened
already. All at once." I peer at Gomez to see if I've made any sense.

"Clare. I like him, very much. He's
fascinating. But he's dangerous. All the women he's been with fall apart. I
just don't want you blithely waltzing into the arms of this charming
sociopath.."

"Don't you see that you're too late?
You're talking about somebody I've known since I was six. I know him. You've
met him twice and you're trying to tell me to jump off the train. Well, I
can't. I've seen my future; I can't change it, and I wouldn't if I could."

Gomez looks thoughtful. "He wouldn't tell
me anything about my future."

"Henry cares about you; he wouldn't do
that to you."

"He did it to you."

"It couldn't be helped; our lives are all
tangled together. My whole childhood was different because of him, and there
was nothing he could do. He did the best he could." I hear Charisse's key
turning in the lock.

"Clare, don't be mad—I'm just trying to
help you."

I smile at him. "You can help us. You'll
see."

Charisse comes in coughing. "Oh, sweetie.
You've been waiting a long time." "I've been chatting with Clare.
About Henry."

"I'm sure you've been telling her how much
you adore him," Charisse says with a note of warning in her voice.
"I've been telling her to run as fast as possible in the opposite
direction."

"Oh, Gomez. Clare, don't listen to him. He
has terrible taste in men." Charisse sits down primly a foot away from
Gomez and he reaches over and pulls her onto his lap. She gives him a look.

"She's always like this after
church."

"I want breakfast."

"Of course you do, my dove." They get
up and scamper down the hall to the kitchen. Soon Charisse is emitting
high-pitched giggles and Gomez is trying to spank her with the Times Magazine.
I sigh and go to my room. The sun is still shining. In the bathroom I run hot
hot water into the huge old tub and strip off last night's clothes. As I climb
in I catch sight of myself in the mirror. I look almost plump. This cheers me
no end, and I sink down into the water feeling like an Ingres odalisque. Henry
loves me. Henry is here, finally, now, finally. And I love him. I run my hands
over my breasts and a thin film of saliva is reaquified by the water and
disperses. Why does everything have to be complicated? Isn't the complicated part
behind us now? I submerge my hair, watch it float around me, dark and net-like.
I never chose Henry, and he never chose me. So how could it be a mistake? Again
I am faced with the fact that we can't know. I lie in the tub, staring at the
tile above my feet, until the water is almost cool. Charisse knocks on the
door, asking if I've died in here and can she please brush her teeth? As I wrap
my hair in a towel I see myself blurred in the mirror by steam and time seems
to fold over onto itself and I see myself as a layering of all my previous days
and years and all the time that is coming and suddenly I feel as though I've
become invisible. But then the feeling is gone as fast as it came and I stand
still for a minute and then I pull on my bathrobe and open the door and go on.
Saturday, December 22, 1991 (Henry is 28, and 33) Henry: At 5:25 a.m. the
doorbell rings, always an evil omen. I stagger to the intercom and push the
button.

"Yeah?"

"Hey. Let me in." I press the button
again and the horrible buzzing noise that signifies Welcome to My Hearth and
Home is transmitted over the line. Forty-five seconds later the elevator clunks
and starts to ratchet its way up. I pull on my robe, I go out and stand in the
hall and watch the elevator cables moving through the little safety-glass
window. The cage hovers into sight and stops, and sure enough, it's me. He
slides open the cage door and steps into the corridor, naked, unshaven, and
sporting really short hair. We quickly cross the empty hall and duck into the
apartment. I close the door and we stand for a moment looking ourselves over.