The time traveler's wife (23 page)

"How come?"

Sharon looks surprised. "Didn't they tell
you? Mark and I are getting married."

I wonder if Clare knows this; it seems like
something she would have mentioned. Then I notice the diamond on Sharon's
finger. "Congratulations."

"I guess. I mean, thank you."

"Um, aren't you sure? About getting
married?" Sharon actually looks like she's been crying; she's all puffy
around the eyes.

"Well, I'm pregnant. So... "

"Well, it doesn't necessarily
follow—"

"Yeah it does. If you're Catholic."
Sharon sighs, and slouches into the chair. I actually know several Catholic
girls who have had abortions and weren't struck down by lightning, but
apparently Sharon's is a less accommodating faith.

"Well, congratulations. Uh, when...?"

"January eleventh." She sees my
surprise and says, "Oh, the baby? April." She makes a face. "I
hope it's over spring break, because otherwise I don't see how I'll manage—not
that it matters so much now
 
"

"What's your major?"

"Premed. My parents are furious. They're
leaning on me to give it up for adoption." "Don't they like
Mark?"

"They've never even met Mark, it's not
that, they're just afraid I won't go to medical school and it will all be a big
waste." The front door opens and the skiers have returned. A gust of cold
air makes it all the way across the living room and blows over us. It feels
good, and I realize that I am being roasted like Nell's turkey by the fire
here. "What time is dinner?" I ask Sharon.

"Seven, but last night we had drinks in
here first. Mark had just told his mom and dad, and they weren't exactly
throwing their arms around me. I mean, they were nice, you know, how people can
be nice but be mean at the same time? I mean, you'd think I got pregnant all by
myself and Mark had nothing to do with it—"

I'm glad when Clare comes in. She's wearing a
funny peaked green cap with a big tassel hanging off it and an ugly yellow
skiing sweater over blue jeans. She's flushed from the cold and smiling. Her
hair is wet and I see as she walks ebulliently across the enormous Persian
carpet in her stocking feet toward me that she does belong here, she's not an
aberration, she has simply chosen another kind of life, and I'm glad. I stand
up and she throws her arms around me and then just as quickly she turns to
Sharon and says, "I just heard! Congratulations!" and Clare embraces
Sharon, who looks at me over Clare's shoulder, startled but smiling. Later
Sharon tells me, "I think you've got the only nice one." I shake my
head but I know what she means.

Clare: There's an hour before dinner and no one
will notice if we're gone. "Come on," I tell Henry. "Let's go
outside." He groans.

"Must we?"

"I want to show you something."

We put on our coats and boots and hats and
gloves and tromp through the house and out the back door. The sky is clear
ultramarine blue and the snow over the meadow reflects it back lighter and the
two blues meet in the dark line of trees that is the beginning of the woods.
It's too early for stars but there's an airplane blinking its way across space.
I imagine our house as a tiny dot of light seen from the plane, like a star.

"This way." The path to the clearing
is under six inches of snow. I think of all the times I have stomped over bare
footprints so no one would see them running down the path toward the house. Now
there are deer tracks, and the prints of a large dog. The stubble of dead
plants under snow, wind, the sound of our boots. The clearing is a smooth bowl
of blue snow; the rock is an island with a mushroom top. "This is
it."

Henry stands with his hands in his coat
pockets. He swivels around, looking. "So this is it," he says. I
search his face for a trace of recognition. Nothing. "Do you ever have
deja vu?" I ask him. Henry sighs. "My whole life is one long deja
vu."

We turn and walk over our own tracks, back to
the house.

Later:

I have warned Henry that we dress for dinner on
Christmas Eve and so when I meet him in the hall he is resplendent in a black
suit, white shirt, maroon tie with a mother-of-pearl tie clasp.
"Goodness," I say. "You've shined your shoes!"

"I have ," he admits. "Pathetic,
isn't it?"

"You look perfect; a Nice Young Man."

"When in fact, I am the Punk Librarian
Deluxe. Parents, beware." "They'll adore you."

"I adore you. Come here." Henry and I
stand before the full-length mirror at the top of the stairs, admiring
ourselves. I am wearing a pale green silk strapless dress which belonged to my
grandmother. I have a photograph of her wearing it on New Year's Eve, 1941.
She's laughing. Her lips are dark with lipstick and she's holding a cigarette.
The man in the photograph is her brother Teddy, who was killed in France six
months later. He's laughing, too. Henry puts his hands on my waist and
expresses surprise at all the boning and corsetry under the silk. I tell him
about Grandma. "She was smaller than me. It only hurts when I sit down;
the ends of the steel thingies poke into my hips." Henry is kissing my
neck when someone coughs and we spring apart. Mark and Sharon stand in the door
of Mark's room, which Mama and Daddy have reluctantly agreed there is no point
in their not sharing.

"None of that, now," Mark says in his
annoyed schoolmarm voice. "Haven't you learned anything from the painful
example of your elders, boys and girls?"

"Yes," replies Henry. "Be
prepared." He pats his pants pocket (which is actually empty) with a smile
and we sail down the stairs as Sharon giggles. Everyone's already had a few
drinks when we arrive in the living room. Alicia makes our private hand signal:
Watch out for Mama, she's messed up. Mama is sitting on the couch looking
harmless, her hair all piled up into a chignon, wearing her pearls and her
peach velvet dress with the lace sleeves. She looks pleased when Mark goes over
and sits down next to her, laughs when he makes some little joke for her, and I
wonder for a moment if Alicia is mistaken. But then I see how Daddy is watching
Mama and I realize that she must have said something awful just before we came
in. Daddy is standing by the drinks cart and he turns to me, relieved, and
pours me a Coke and hands Mark a beer and a glass. He asks Sharon and Henry
what they'll have. Sharon asks for La Croix. Henry, after pondering for a
moment, asks for Scotch and water. My father mixes drinks with a heavy hand,
and his eyes bug out a little when Henry knocks back the Scotch effortlessly.

"Another?"

"No, thank you." I know by now that
Henry would like to simply take the bottle and a glass and curl up in bed with
a book, and that he is refusing seconds because he would then feel no
compunction about thirds and fourths. Sharon hovers at Henry's elbow and I
abandon them, crossing the room to sit by Aunt Dulcie in the window seat.

"Oh, child, how lovely—I haven't seen that
dress since Elizabeth wore it to the party the Lichts had at the Planetarium.
"Alicia joins us; she is wearing a navy blue turtleneck with a tiny hole
where the sleeve is separating from the bodice and an old bedraggled kilt with
wool stockings that bag around her ankles like an old lady's. I know she's
doing it to bug Daddy, but still.

"What's wrong with Mama?" I ask her.
Alicia shrugs. "She's pissed off about Sharon."

"What's wrong with Sharon?" inquires
Dulcie, reading our lips. "She seems very nice. Nicer than Mark, if you
ask me."

"She's pregnant," I tell Dulcie.
"They're getting married. Mama thinks she's white trash because she's the
first person in her family to go to college."

Dulcie looks at me sharply, and sees that I
know what she knows. "Lucille, of all people, ought to be a little
understanding of that young girl." Alicia is about to ask Dulcie what she
means when the dinner bell rings and we rise, Pavlovian, and file toward the
dining room. I whisper to Alicia, "Is she drunk?" and Alicia whispers
back, "I think she was drinking in her room before dinner." I squeeze
Alicia's hand and Henry hangs back and we go into the dining room and find our
places, Daddy and Mama at the head and foot of the table, Dulcie and Sharon and
Mark on one side with Mark next to Mama, and Alicia and Henry and me, with
Alicia next to Daddy. The room is full of candles, and little flowers floating
in cut-glass bowls, and Etta has laid out all the silver and china on Grandma's
embroidered tablecloth from the nuns in Provence. In short, it is Christmas
Eve, exactly like every Christmas Eve I can remember, except that Henry is at
my side sheepishly bowing his head as my father says grace.

"Heavenly Father, we give thanks on this
holy night for your mercy and for your benevolence, for another year of health
and happiness, for the comfort of family, and for new friends. We thank you for
sending your Son to guide us and redeem us in the form of a helpless infant,
and we thank you for the baby Mark and Sharon will be bringing into our family.
We beg to be more perfect in our love and patience with each other. Amen."
Uh-oh, I think. Now he's done it. I dart a glance at Mama and she is seething.
You would never know it if you didn't know Mama: she is very still, and she
stares at her plate. The kitchen door opens and Etta comes in with the soup and
sets a small bowl in front of each of us. I catch Mark's eye and he inclines
his head slightly toward Mama and raises his eyebrows and I just nod a tiny
nod. He asks her a question about this year's apple harvest, and she answers.
Alicia and I relax a little bit. Sharon is watching me and I wink at her. The
soup is chestnut and parsnip, which seems like a bad idea until you taste
Nell's. "Wow," Henry says, and we all laugh, and eat up our soup.
Etta clears away the soup bowls and Nell brings in the turkey. It is golden and
steaming and huge, and we all applaud enthusiastically, as we do every year.
Nell beams and says, "Well, now" as she does every year. "Oh,
Nell, it's perfect," my mother says with tears in her eyes. Nell looks at
her sharply and then at Daddy, and says, "Thank you, Miz Lucille."
Etta serves us stuffing, glazed carrots, mashed potatoes, and lemon curd, and
we pass our plates to Daddy, who heaps them with turkey. I watch Henry as he takes
his first bite of Nell's turkey: surprise, then bliss. "I have seen my
future," he announces, and I stiffen. "I am going to give up
librarianing and come and live in your kitchen and worship at Nell's feet. Or
perhaps I will just marry her."

"You're too late," says Mark.
"Nell is already married."

"Oh, well. It will have to be her feet,
then. Why don't all of you weigh 300 pounds?" "I'm working on
it," my father says, patting his paunch.

"I'm going to weigh 300 pounds when I'm
old and I don't have to drag my cello around anymore," Alicia tells Henry.
"I'm going to live in Paris and eat nothing but chocolate and I'm going to
smoke cigars and shoot heroin and listen to nothing but Jimi Hendrix and the
Doors. Right, Mama?"

"I'll join you," Mama says grandly.
"But I would rather listen to Johnny Mathis."

"If you shoot heroin you won't want to eat
much of anything," Henry informs Alicia, who regards him speculatively.
"Try marijuana instead." Daddy frowns. Mark changes the subject:
"I heard on the radio that it's supposed to snow eight inches
tonight."

"Eight!" we chorus.

"I'm dreaming of a white
Christmas...," Sharon ventures without conviction.

"I hope it doesn't all dump on us while
we're in church," Alicia says grumpily. "I get so sleepy after
Mass." We chatter on about snowstorms we have known. Dulcie tells about
being caught in the Big Blizzard of 1967, in Chicago. "I had to leave my
car on Lake Shore Drive and walk all the way from Adams to Belmont."

"I got stuck in that one," says
Henry. "I almost froze; I ended up in the rectory of the Fourth
Presbyterian Church on Michigan Avenue."

"How old were you?" asks Daddy, and
Henry hesitates and replies, "Three." He glances at me and I realize
he's talking about an experience he had while time traveling and he adds,
"I was with my father." It seems transparently obvious to me that
he's lying but no one seems to notice. Etta comes in and clears our dishes and
sets out dessert plates. After a slight delay Nell comes in with the flaming
plum pudding. "Oompa!" says Henry. She sets the pudding down in front
of Mama, and the flames turn Mama's pale hair copper red, like mine, for a
moment before they die out. Daddy opens the champagne (under a dish towel, so
the cork won't put out anybody's eyeball). We all pass our glasses to him and
he fills them and we pass them back. Mama cuts thin slices of plum pudding and
Etta serves everyone. There are two extra glasses, one for Etta and one for
Nell, and we all stand up for the toasts. My father begins: "To
family."

"To Nell and Etta, who are like family,
who work so hard and make our home and have so many talents," my mother
says, breathless and soft.

"To peace and justice," says Dulcie.

"To family," says Etta.

"To beginnings " says Mark, toasting
Sharon. "To chance" she replies. It's my turn. I look at Henry.
"To happiness. To here and now."