The time traveler's wife (22 page)

"What?" I say defensively.

"I didn't realize it was so huge. How many
rooms does this monster have?"

"Twenty-four," I tell him. Etta is
waving at us from the hall window as I pull around the drive and stop near the
front door. Her hair is grayer than last time I was here, but her face is pink
with pleasure. As we climb out of the car she's gingerly picking her way down
the icy front steps in no coat and her good navy blue dress with the lace
collar, carefully balancing her stout figure over her sensible shoes, and I run
over to her to take her arm but she bats me away until she's at the bottom and
then she gives me a hug and a kiss (I breathe in Etta's smell of Noxzema and
powder so gladly) as Henry stands by, waiting. "And what have we
here?" she says as though Henry is a small child I have brought along unannounced.
"Etta Milbauer, Henry DeTamble," I introduce. I see a little 'Oh' on
Henry's face and I wonder who he thought she was. Etta beams at Henry as we
climb the steps. She opens the front door. Henry lowers his voice and asks me,
"What about our stuff?" and I tell him that Peter will deal with it.
"Where is everyone?" I ask, and Etta says that lunch is in fifteen
minutes and we can take off our coats and wash and go right in. She leaves us
standing in the hall and retreats to the kitchen. I turn, take off my coat and
hang it in the hall closet. When I turn back to Henry he is waving at someone.
I peer around him and see Nell sticking her broad, snub-nosed face out of the
dining room door, grinning, and I run down the hall and give her a big sloppy
kiss and she chuckles at me and says, "Pretty man, monkey girl," and
ducks back into the other room before Henry can reach us.

"Nell?" he guesses and I nod.
"She's not shy, just busy," I explain. I lead him up the back stairs
to the second floor. "You're in here," I tell him, opening the door
to the blue bedroom. He glances in and follows me down the hall. "This is
my room," I say apprehensively and Henry slips around me and stands in the
middle of the rug just looking and when he turns to me I see that he doesn't
recognize anything; nothing in the room means a thing to him, and the knife of
realization sinks in deeper: all the little tokens and souvenirs in this museum
of our past are as love letters to an illiterate. Henry picks up a wren's nest
(it happens to be the first of all the many bird's nests he gave me over the
years) and says, "Nice." I nod, and open my mouth to tell him and he
puts it back on the shelf and says, "Does that door lock?" and I flip
the lock and we're late for lunch.

Henry: I'm almost calm as I follow Clare down
the stairs, through the dark cold hall and into the dining room. Everyone is
already eating. The room is low ceilinged and comfortable in a William Morrisy
sort of way; the air is warm from the fire crackling in the small fireplace and
the windows are so frosted over that I can't see out. Clare goes over to a thin
woman with pale red hair who must be her mother, who tilts her head to receive
Clare's kiss, who half rises to shake my hand. Clare introduces her to me as
"my mother" and I call her "Mrs. Abshire" and she
immediately says "Oh, but you must call me Lucille, everyone does,"
and smiles in an exhausted but warm sort of way, as though she is a brilliant
sun in some other galaxy. We take our seats across the table from each other.
Clare is sitting between Mark and an elderly woman who turns out to be her
Great Aunt Dulcie; I am sitting between Alicia and a plump pretty blond girl
who is introduced as Sharon and who seems to be with Mark. Clare's father sits
at the head of the table and my first impression is that he is deeply disturbed
by me. Handsome, truculent Mark seems equally unnerved. They've seen me before.
I wonder what I was doing that caused them to notice me, remember me, recoil
ever so slightly in aversion when Clare introduces me. But Philip Abshire is a
lawyer, and master of his features, and within a minute he is affable and
smiling, the host, my girlfriend's dad, a balding middle-aged man with aviator
glasses and an athletic body gone soft and paunchy but strong hands, tennis-playing
hands, gray eyes that continue to regard me warily despite the confidential
grin. Mark has a harder time concealing his distress, and every time I catch
his eye he looks at his plate. Alicia is not what I expected; she is
matter-of-fact and kind, but a little odd, absent. She has Philip's dark hair,
like Mark, and Lucille's features, sort of; Alicia looks as though someone had
tried to combine Clare and Mark but had given up and thrown in some Eleanor
Roosevelt to fill in the gaps. Philip says something and Alicia laughs, and
suddenly she is lovely and I turn to her in surprise as she rises from the
table.

"I've got to go to St. Basil's," she
informs me. "I've got a rehearsal. Are you coming to church?" I dart
a look at Clare, who nods slightly, and I tell Alicia "Of course,"
and as everyone sighs with—what? relief? I remember that Christmas is, after
all, a Christian holiday in addition to being my own personal day of atonement.
Alicia leaves. I imagine my mother laughing at me, her well-plucked eyebrows
raised high at the sight of her half-Jewish son marooned in the midst of
Christmas in Goyland, and I mentally shake my finger at her. You should talk, I
tell her. You married an Episcopalian. I look at my plate and it's ham, with
peas and an effete little salad. I don't eat pork and I hate peas.

"Clare tells us you're a librarian,"
Philip assays, and I admit that this is so. We have a chipper little discussion
about the Newberry and people who are Newberry trustees and also clients of
Philip's firm, which apparently is based in Chicago, in which case I am not
clear about why Clare's family lives way up here in Michigan.

"Summer homes," he tells me, and I
remember Clare explaining that her father specializes in wills and trusts. I
picture elderly rich people reclining on their private beaches, slathering on
sunblock and deciding to cut Junior out of the will, reaching for their cell
phones to call Philip. I recollect that Avi, who is first chair to my father's
second at the CSO, has a house around here somewhere. I mention this and
everyone's ears perk.

"Do you know him?" Lucille asks.

"Sure. He and my dad sit right next to
each other."

"Sit next to each other?"

"Well, you know. First and second
violin."

"Your father is a violinist?"

"Yeah." I look at Clare, who is
staring at her mother with a don't embarrass me expression on her face.
"And he plays for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra?"

"Yes."

Lucille s face is suffused with pink; now I
know where Clare gets her blushes. "Do you think he would listen to Alicia
play? If we gave him a tape?"

I grimly hope that Alicia is very, very good.
People are constantly bestowing tapes on Dad. Then I have a better idea.

"Alicia is a cellist, isn't she?"

"Yes."

"Is she looking for a teacher?"

Philip interjects: "She studies with Frank
Wainwright in Kalamazoo."

"Because I could give the tape to Yoshi
Akawa. One of his students just left to take a job in Paris." Yoshi is a
great guy and first chair cello. I know he'll at least listen to the tape; my
dad, who doesn't teach, will simply pitch it out. Lucille is effusive; even
Philip seems pleased. Clare looks relieved. Mark eats. Great Aunt Dulcie,
pink-haired and tiny, is oblivious to this whole exchange. Perhaps she's deaf?
I glance at Sharon, who is sitting on my left and who hasn't said a word. She
looks miserable. Philip and Lucille are discussing which tape they should give
me, or perhaps Alicia should make a new one? I ask Sharon if this is her first
time up here and she nods. Just as I'm about to ask her another question Philip
asks me what my mother does and I blink; I give Clare a look that says Didn't
you tell them anything?

"My mother was a singer. She's dead."

Clare says, quietly, "Henry's mother was
Annette Lyn Robinson." She might as well have told them my mom was the
Virgin Mary; Philip's face lights up. Lucille makes a little fluttering motion
with her hands.

"Unbelievable—fantastic! We have all her
recordings—" und so wiete. But then Lucille says, "I met her when I
was young. My father took me to hear Madama Butterfly, and he knew someone who
took us backstage afterward, and we went to her dressing room, and she was
there, and all these flowers! and she had her little boy—why, that was
you!"

I nod, trying to find my voice. Clare says,
"What did she look like?"

Mark says, "Are we going skiing this
afternoon?" Philip nods. Lucille smiles, lost in memory. "She was so
beautiful— she still had the wig on, that long black hair, and she was teasing
the little boy with it, tickling him, and he was dancing around. She had such
lovely hands, and she was just my height, so slender, and she was Jewish, you
know, but I thought she looked more Italian—" Lucille breaks off and her
hand flies to her mouth, and her eyes dart to my plate, which is clean except
for a few peas.

"Are you Jewish?" Mark asks,
pleasantly.

"I suppose I could be, if I wanted, but
nobody ever made a point of it. She died when I was six, and my dad's a lapsed
Episcopalian."

"You look just like her" Lucille
volunteers, and I thank her. Our plates are removed by Etta, who asks Sharon
and me if we drink coffee. We both say Yes at the same time, so emphatically
that Clare's whole family laughs. Etta gives us a motherly smile and minutes
later she sets steaming cups of coffee in front of us and I think That wasn't
so bad after all. Everyone talks about skiing, and the weather, and we all
stand up and Philip and Mark walk into the hall together; I ask Clare if she's
going skiing and she shrugs and asks me if I want to and I explain that I don't
ski and have no interest in learning. She decides to go anyway after Lucille
says that she needs someone to help with her bindings. As we walk up the stairs
I hear Mark say,"— incredible resemblance—" and I smile to myself.
Later, after everyone has left and the house is quiet, I venture down from my
chilly room in search of warmth and more coffee. I walk through the dining room
and into the kitchen and am confronted by an amazing array of glassware,
silver, cakes, peeled vegetables, and roasting pans in a kitchen that looks like
something you'd see in a four-star restaurant. In the midst of it all stands
Nell with her back to me, singing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and waggling
her large hips, waving a baster at a young black girl who points at me mutely.
Nell turns around and smiles a huge gap-toothed smile and then says, "What
are you doin' in my kitchen, Mister Boyfriend?"

"I was wondering if you have any coffee
left?"

"Left? What do you think, I let coffee sit
around all day gettin' vile? Shoo, son, get out of here and go sit in the
living room and pull on the bell and I will make you some fresh coffee. Didn't
your mama teach you about coffee?"

"Actually, my mother wasn't much of a
cook" I tell her, venturing closer to the center of the vortex. Something
smells wonderful. "What are you making?"

"What you're smellin' is a Thompson's
Turkey," Nell says. She opens the oven to show me a monstrous turkey that
looks like something that's been in the Great Chicago Fire. It's completely
black. "Don't look so dubious, boy. Underneath that crust is the best
eatin' turkey on Planet Earth."

I am willing to believe her; the smell is
perfect. "What is a Thompson's Turkey?" I ask, and Nell discourses on
the miraculous properties of the Thompson's Turkey, invented by Morton
Thompson, a newspaperman, in the 1930s. Apparently the production of this
marvelous beast involves a great deal of stuffing, basting, and turning. Nell
allows me to stay in her kitchen while she makes me coffee and wrangles the
turkey out of the oven and wrestles it onto its back and then artfully drools
cider gravy all over it before shoving it back into the chamber. There are
twelve lobsters crawling around in a large plastic tub of water by the sink.
"Pets?" I tease her, and she replies, "That's your Christmas
dinner, son; you want to pick one out? You're not a vegetarian, are you?"
I assure her that I am not, that I am a good boy who eats whatever is put in
front of him.

"You'd never know it, you so thin,"
Nell says. "I'm gonna feed you up."

"That's why Clare brought me."

"Hmm," Nell says, pleased.
"Awright, then. Now scat so I can get on, here." I take my large mug
of fragrant coffee and wend my way to the living room, where there is a huge
Christmas tree and a fire. It looks like an ad for Pottery Barn. I settle
myself in an orange wing chair by the fire and am riffing through the pile of
newspapers when someone says, "Where'd you get the coffee?" and I
look up and see Sharon sitting across from me in a blue armchair that exactly
matches her sweater.

"Hi" I say. "I'm sorry—"

"That's okay," Sharon says.

"I went to the kitchen, but I guess we're
supposed to use the bell, wherever that is." We scan the room and sure
enough, there's a bell pull in the corner.

"This is so weird," Sharon says.
"We've been here since yesterday and I've been just kind of creeping
around, you know, afraid to use the wrong fork or something... "

"Where are you from?"

"Florida." She laughs. "I never
had a white Christmas 'til I got to Harvard. My dad owns a gas station in
Jacksonville. I figured after school I'd go back there, you know, 'cause I
don't like the cold, but now I guess I'm stuck."