The time traveler's wife (20 page)

"Well," I say, just for something to
say. "How goes it?"

"So-so. What's the date?"

"December 22, 1991. Saturday"

"Oh—Violent Femmes at the Aragon
tonight?"

"Yep."

He laughs. "Shit. What an abysmal evening
that was." He walks over to the bed— my bed—and climbs in, pulls the
covers over his head. I plop down beside him.

"Hey." No response. "When are
you from?"

"November 13, 1996. I was on my way to
bed. So let me get some sleep, or you will be sincerely sorry in five
years."

This seems reasonable enough. I take off my
robe and get back into bed. Now I'm on the wrong side of the bed, Clare's side,
as I think of it these days, because my doppelganger has commandeered my side.
Everything is subtly different on this side of the bed. It's like when you
close one eye and look at something close up for a while, and then look at it
from the other eye. I lie there doing this, looking at the armchair with my
clothes scattered over it, a peach pit at the bottom of a wine glass on the
windowsill, the back of my right hand. My nails need cutting and the apartment
could probably qualify for Federal Disaster Relief funds. Maybe my extra self
will be willing to pitch in, help out around the house a little, earn his keep.
I run my mind over the contents of the refrigerator and pantry and conclude
that we are well provisioned. I am planning to bring Clare home with me tonight
and I'm not sure what to do with my superfluous body. It occurs to me that
Clare might prefer to be with this later edition of me, since after all they do
know each other better. For some reason this plunges me into a funk. I try to
remember that anything subtracted now will be added later, but I still feel
fretful and wish that one of us would just go away. I ponder my double. He's
curled up, hedgehog style, facing away from me, evidently asleep. I envy him.
He is me, but I'm not him, yet. He has been through five years of a life that's
still mysterious to me, still coiled tightly waiting to spring out and bite. Of
course, whatever pleasures are to be had, he's had them; for me they wait like
a box of unpoked chocolates. I try to consider him with Clare's eyes. Why the
short hair? I've always been fond of my black, wavy, shoulder-length hair; I've
been wearing it this way since high school. But sooner or later, I'm going to
chop it off. It occurs to me that the hair is one of many things that must
remind Clare I'm not exactly the man she's known from earliest childhood. I'm a
close approximation she is guiding surreptitiously toward a me that exists in
her mind's eye. What would I be without her? Not the man who breathes, slowly,
deeply, across the bed from me. His neck and back undulate with vertebrae,
ribs. His skin is smooth, hardly haired, tightly tacked onto muscles and bones.
He is exhausted, and yet sleeps as though at any moment he may jump up and run.
Do I radiate this much tension? I guess so. Clare complains that I don't relax
until I'm dead tired, but actually I am often relaxed when I'm with her. This
older self seems leaner and more weary, more solid and secure. But with me he
can afford to show off: he's got my number so completely that I can only
acquiesce to him, in my own best interests. It's 7:14 and it's obvious that I'm
not going back to sleep. I get out of bed and turn on the coffee. I pull on
underwear and sweatpants and stretch out. Lately my knees have been sore, so I
wrap supports onto them. I pull on socks and lace up my beater running shoes,
probably the cause of the funky knees, and vow to go buy new shoes tomorrow. I
should have asked my guest what the weather was like out there. Oh, well,
December in Chicago: dreadful weather is de rigueur. I don my ancient Chicago
Film Festival T-shirt, a black sweatshirt, and a heavy orange sweatshirt with a
hood that has big Xs on the front and back made of reflective tape. I grab my
gloves and keys and out I go, into the day. It's not a bad day, as early winter
days go. There's very little snow on the ground, and the wind is toying with
it, pushing it here and there. Traffic is backed up on Dearborn, making a
concert of engine noises, and the sky is gray, slowly lightening into gray. I
lace my keys onto my shoe and decide to run along the lake. I run slowly east
on Delaware to Michigan Avenue, cross the overpass, and begin jogging beside
the bike path, heading north along Oak Street Beach. Only hard-core runners and
cyclists are out today. Lake Michigan is a deep slate color and the tide is
out, revealing a dark brown strip of sand. Seagulls wheel above my head and far
out over the water. I am moving stiffly; cold is unkind to joints, and I'm
slowly realizing that it is pretty cold out here by the lake, probably in the
low twenties. So I run a little slower than usual, warming up, reminding my
poor knees and ankles that their life's work is to carry me far and fast on
demand. I can feel the cold dry air in my lungs, feel my heart serenely
pounding, and as I reach North Avenue I am feeling good and I start to speed
up. Running is many things to me: survival, calmness, euphoria, solitude. It is
proof of my corporeal existence, my ability to control my movement through
space if not time, and the obedience, however temporary, of my body to my will.
As I run I displace air, and things come and go around me, and the path moves
like a filmstrip beneath my feet. I remember, as a child, long before video
games and the Web, threading filmstrips into the dinky projector in the school
library and peering into them, turning the knob that advanced the frame at the
sound of a beep. I don't remember anymore what they looked like, what they were
about, but I remember the smell of the library, and the way the beep made me
jump every time. I'm flying now, that golden feeling, as if I could run right into
the air, and I'm invincible, nothing can stop me, nothing can stop me, nothing,
nothing, nothing, nothing—.

Evening, the same day: (Henry is 28 and 33,
Clare is 20)

Clare: We're on our way to the Violent Femmes
concert at the Aragon Ballroom. After some reluctance on Henry's part, which I
don't understand because he loves les Femmes, we are cruising Uptown in search
of parking. I loop around and around, past the Green Mill, the bars, the dimly
lit apartment buildings and the laundromats that look like stage sets. I
finally park on Argyle and we walk shivering down the glassy broken sidewalks.
Henry walks fast and I am always a little out of breath when we walk together.
I've noticed that he makes an effort to match my pace, now. I pull off my glove
and put my hand in his coat pocket, and he puts his arm around my shoulder. I'm
excited because Henry and I have never gone dancing before, and I love the
Aragon, in all its decaying faux Spanish splendor. My Grandma Meagram used to
tell me about dancing to the big bands here in the thirties, when everything
was new and lovely and there weren't people shooting up in the balconies and
lakes of piss in the men's room. But c'est la vie, times change, and we are
here. We stand in line for a few minutes. Henry seems tense, on guard. He holds
my hand, but stares out over the crowd. I take the opportunity to look at him.
Henry is beautiful. His hair is shoulder-length, combed back, black and sleek.
He's catlike, thin, exuding restlessness and physicality. He looks like he
might bite. Henry is wearing a black overcoat and a white cotton shirt with
French cuffs which dangle undone below his coat sleeves, a lovely acid-green
silk tie which he has loosened just enough so that I can see the muscles in his
neck, black jeans and black high-top sneakers. Henry gathers my hair together
and wraps it around his wrist. For a moment I am his prisoner, and then the
line moves forward and he lets me go. We are ticketed and flow with masses of
people into the building. The Aragon has numerous long hallways and alcoves and
balconies that wrap around the main hall and are ideal for getting lost and for
hiding, Henry and I go up to a balcony close to the stage and sit at a tiny
table. We take off our coats. Henry is staring at me.

"You look lovely. That's a great dress; I
can't believe you can dance in it."

My dress is skin-tight lilac blue silk, but it
stretches enough to move in. I tried it out this afternoon in front of a mirror
and it was fine. The thing that worries me is my hair; because of the dry
winter air there seems to be twice as much of it as usual. I start to braid it
and Henry stops me.

"Don't, please—I want to look at you with
it down."

The opening act begins its set. We listen
patiently. Everyone is milling around, talking, smoking. There are no seats on
the main floor. The noise is phenomenal. Henry leans over and yells in my ear.
"Do you want something to drink?"

"Just a Coke."

He goes off to the bar. I rest my arms on the
railing of the balcony and watch the crowd. Girls in vintage dresses, girls in
combat gear, boys with Mohawks, boys in flannel shirts. People of both sexes in
T-shirts and jeans. College kids and twenty-somethings, with a few old folks
scattered in. Henry is gone for a long time. The warm-up band finishes, to
scattered applause, and roadies begin removing the band's equipment and
bringing on a more or less identical bunch of instruments. Eventually I get
tired of waiting, and, abandoning our table and coats, I force my way through
the dense pack of people on the balcony down the stairs and into the long dim
hallway where the bar is. Henry's not there. I move slowly through the halls
and alcoves, looking but trying not to look like I'm looking. I spot him at the
end of a hallway. He is standing so close to the woman that at first I think
they are embracing; she has her back to the wall and Henry leans over her with
his hand braced against the wall above her shoulder. The intimacy of their pose
takes my breath. She is blond, and beautiful in a very German way, tall and
dramatic. As I get closer, I realize that they aren't kissing; they are
fighting. Henry is using his free hand to emphasize whatever it is he is
yelling at this woman. Suddenly her impassive face breaks into anger, almost
tears. She screams something back at him. Henry steps back and throws up his
hands. I hear the last of it as he walks away:

"I can't, Ingrid, I just can't! I'm
sorry—"

"Henry!" She is running after him
when they both see me, standing quite still in the middle of the corridor.
Henry is grim as he takes my arm and we walk quickly to the stairs. Three steps
up I turn and see her standing, watching us, her arms at her sides, helpless
and intense. Henry glances back, and we turn and continue up the stairs. We
find our table, which miraculously is still free and still boasts our coats.
The lights arc going down and Henry raises his voice over the noise of the
crowd. "I'm sorry. I never made it as far as the bar, and I ran into
Ingrid—"

Who is Ingrid? I think of myself standing in
Henry's bathroom with a lipstick in my hand and I need to know but blackness
descends and the Violent Femmes take the stage. Gordon Gano stands at the
microphone glaring at us all and menacing chords ring out and he leans forward
and intones the opening lines of Blister in the Sun and we're off and running.
Henry and I sit and listen and then he leans over to me and shouts, "Do
you want to leave?" The dance floor is a roiling mass of slamming
humanity.

"I want to dance!"

Henry looks relieved. "Great! Yes! Come
on!" He strips off his tie and shoves it in his overcoat pocket. We wend
our way back downstairs and enter the main hall. I see Charisse and Gomez
dancing more or less together. Charisse is oblivious and frenzied, Gomez is
barely moving, a cigarette absolutely level between his lips. He sees me and
gives me a little wave. Moving into the crowd is like wading in Lake Michigan;
we are taken in and buoyed along, floating toward the stage. The crowd is
roaring Add it up! Add it up! and the Femmes respond by attacking their
instruments with insane vigor, Henry is moving, vibrating with the bass line.
We are just outside the mosh pit, dancers slamming against each other at high
velocity on one side and on the other side dancers shaking their hips, flailing
their arms, stepping to the music. We dance. The music runs through me, waves
of sound that grab me by the spine, that move my feet my hips my shoulders
without consulting my brain. (Beautiful girl, love your dress, high school
smile, oh yes, where she is now, I can only guess.) I open my eyes and see
Henry watching me while he dances. When I raise my arms he grasps me around the
waist and I leap up. I have a panoramic view of the dance floor for a mighty
eternity. Someone waves at me but before I can see who it is Henry sets me down
again. We dance touching, we dance apart. (How can I explain personal pain?)
Sweat is streaming down me. Henry shakes his head and his hair makes a black
blur and his sweat is all over me. The music is goading, mocking (I ain't had
much to live for I ain't had much to live for I ain't had much to live for). We
throw ourselves at it. My body is elastic, my legs are numb, and a sensation of
white heat travels from my crotch to the top of my head. My hair is damp ropes
that cling to my arms and neck and face and back. The music crashes into a wall
and stops. My heart is pounding. I place my hand on Henry's chest and am
surprised that his seems only slightly quickened.

Slightly later, I walk into the ladies' room
and see Ingrid sitting on a sink, crying. A small black woman with beautiful
long dreads is standing in front of her speaking softly and stroking her hair.
The sound of Ingrid's sobs echoes off the dank yellow tile. I start to back out
of the room and my movement attracts their attention. They look at me. Ingrid
is a mess. All her Teutonic cool is gone, her face is red and puffy, her makeup
is in streaks. She stares at me, bleak and drained. The black woman walks over
to me. She is fine and delicate and dark and sad. She stands close and speaks
quietly.