The time traveler's wife (41 page)

Sunday, October 2, 1966 (Henry is 33)

Henry: I am sitting, very comfortable and
content, in a tree in Appleton, Wisconsin, in 1966, eating a tuna fish sandwich
and wearing a white T-shirt and chinos stolen from someone's beautiful
sun-dried laundry. Somewhere in Chicago, I am three; my mother is still alive
and none of this chrono-fuckupedness has started. I salute my small former
self, and thinking about me as a child naturally gets me thinking about Clare,
and our efforts to conceive. On one hand, I am all eagerness; I want to give
Clare a baby, see Clare ripen like a flesh melon, Demeter in glory. I want a
normal baby who will do the things normal babies do: suck, grasp, shit, sleep,
laugh; roll over, sit up, walk, talk in nonsense mumblings. I want to see my
father awkwardly cradling a tiny grandchild; I have given my father so little
happiness—this would be a large redress, a balm. And a balm to Clare, too; when
I am snatched away from her, a part of me would remain. But: but. I know,
without knowing, that this is very unlikely. I know that a child of mine is
almost certainly going to be The One Most Likely to Spontaneously Vanish, a
magical disappearing baby who will evaporate as though carried off by fairies.
And even as I pray, panting and gasping over Clare in extremities of desire,
for the miracle of sex to somehow yield us a baby, a part of me is praying just
as vehemently for us to be spared. I am reminded of the story of the monkey's
paw, and the three wishes that followed so naturally and horribly from each
other. I wonder if our wish is of a similar order. I am a coward. A better man
would take Clare by the shoulders and say, Love, this is all a mistake, let us
accept it and go on, and be happy. But I know that Clare would never accept,
would always be sad. And so I hope, against hope, against reason and I make
love to Clare as though anything good might come of it.

ONE

Monday, June 3, 1996 (Clare is 25)

Clare: The first time it happens Henry is away.
It's the eighth week of the pregnancy. The baby is the size of a plum, has a
face and hands and a beating heart. It is early evening, early summer, and I
can see magenta and orange clouds in the west as I wash the dishes. Henry
disappeared almost two hours ago. He went out to water the lawn and after half
an hour, when I realized that the sprinkler still wasn't on, I stood at the
back door and saw the telltale pile of clothing sitting by the grape arbor. I
went out and gathered up Henry's jeans and underwear and his ratty Kill Your
Television T-shirt, folded them and put them on the bed. I thought about
turning on the sprinkler but decided not to, reasoning that Henry won't like it
if he appears in the backyard and gets drenched. I have prepared and eaten
macaroni and cheese and a small salad, have taken my vitamins, have consumed a
large glass of skim milk. I hum as I do the dishes, imagine the little being
inside me hearing the humming, filing the humming away for future reference at
some subtle, cellular level and as I stand there, conscientiously washing my
salad bowl I feel a slight twinge somewhere deep inside, somewhere in my
pelvis. Ten minutes later I am sitting in the living room minding my own
business and reading Louis DeBernieres and there it is again, a brief twang on
my internal strings. I ignore it. Everything is fine. Henry's been gone for
more than two hours. I worry about him for a second, then resolutely ignore
that, too. I do not start to really worry for another half hour or so, because
now the weird little sensations are resembling menstrual cramps, and I am even
feeling that sticky blood feeling between my legs and I get up and walk into
the bathroom and pull down my underpants there's a lot of blood oh my god. I
call Charisse. Gomez answers the phone. I try to sound okay, ask for Charisse,
who gets on the phone and immediately says, "What's wrong?"

"I'm bleeding."

"Where's Henry?"

"I don't know."

"What kind of bleeding?"

"Like a period." The pain is becoming
intense and I sit down on the floor. "Can you take me to Illinois
Masonic?"

"I'll be right there, Clare." She
hangs up, and I replace the receiver gently, as though I might hurt its feelings
by handling it too roughly. I get to rny feet with care, find my purse. I want
to write Henry a note, but I don't know what to say. I write: "Went to IL
Masonic. (Cramps.) Charisse drove me there. 7:20 p.m. C." I unlock the
back door for Henry. I leave the note by the phone. A few minutes later
Charisse is at the front door. When we get to the car, Gomez is driving. We
don't talk much. I sit in the front seat, look out the window. Western to
Belmont to Sheffield to Wellington. Everything is unusually sharp and emphatic,
as though I need to remember as though there will be a test. Gomez turns into
the Unloading Zone Or the Emergency Room. Charisse and I get out. I look back
at Gomez, smiles briefly and roars off to park the car. We walk through doors that
open automatically as our feet press the ground, as in a fairy tale, as though
we are expected. The pain has receded like an ebbing tide, and now it moves
toward the shore again, fresh and fierce. There are a few people sitting abject
and small in the brightly lit room, waiting their turn, encircling their pain
with bowed heads and crossed arms, and I sink down among them. Charisse walks
over to the man sitting behind the triage desk. I can't hear what she says, but
when he says "Miscarriage?" it dawns on me that this is what is going
on, this is what it is called, and the word expands in my head until it fills
all crevices of my mind, until it has crowded out every other thought. I start
to cry. After they've done everything they could, it happens anyway. I find out
later that Henry arrived just before the end, but they wouldn't let him come
in. I have been sleeping, and when I wake up it's late at night and Henry is
there. He is pale and hollow-eyed and he doesn't say a word. "Oh," I
mumble, "where were you?" and Henry leans over and carefully embraces
me. I feel his stubble against my cheek and I am rubbed raw, not on my skin but
deep in me, a wound opens and Henry's face is wet but with whose tears?

Thursday, June 13 and Friday, June 14, 1996
(Henry is 32)

Henry: I arrive at the sleep lab exhausted, as
Dr. Kendrick has asked me to. This is the fifth night I've spent here, and by
now I know the routine. I sit on the bed in the odd, fake, home-like bedroom
wearing pajama bottoms while Dr. Larson's lab technician, Karen, puts cream on
my head and chest and tapes wires in place. Karen is young and blond and
Vietnamese. She's wearing long fake fingernails and says, 'Oops, sorry,' when
she rakes my cheek with one of them. The lights are dim, the room is cool.
There are no windows except a piece of one-way glass that looks like a mirror,
behind which sits Dr. Larson, or whoever's watching the machines this evening.
Karen finishes the wiring, bids me good night, leaves the room. I settle into
the bed carefully, close my eyes, imagine the spider-legged tracings on long
streams of graph paper gracefully recording my eye movements, respiration,
brain waves on the other side of the glass. I'm asleep within minutes. I dream
of running. I'm running through woods, dense brush, trees, but somehow I am
running through all of it, passing through like a ghost. I burst into a
clearing, there's been a fire—

I dream I am having sex with Ingrid. I know
it's Ingrid, even though I can't see her face, it is Ingrid body, Ingrid's long
smooth legs. We are fucking in her parents' house, in their living room on the
couch, the TV is on, tuned to a nature documentary in which a herd of antelope
is running, and then there's a parade. Clare is sitting on a tiny float in the
parade, looking sad while people are cheering all around her and suddenly Ing
jumps up and pulls a bow and arrow from behind the couch and she shoots Clare.
The arrow goes right into the TV and Clare claps her hands to her breast like
Wendy in a silent version of Peter Pan and I leap up and I'm choking Ingrid, my
hands around her throat, screaming at her—

I wake up. I'm cold with sweat and my heart is
pounding. I'm in the sleep lab. I wonder for a moment if there's something
they're not telling me, if they can somehow watch my dreams, see my thoughts. I
turn onto my side and close my eyes. I dream that Clare and I are walking
through a museum. The museum is an old palace, all the paintings are in rococo
gold frames, all the other visitors are wearing tall powdered wigs and immense
dresses, frock coats, and breeches. They don't seem to notice us as we pass. We
look at the paintings, but they aren't really paintings, they're poems, poems
somehow given physical manifestation. "Look," I say to Clare,
"there's an Emily Dickinson." The heart asks pleasure first; And then
excuse from pain...She stands in front of the bright yellow poem and seems to
warm herself by it. We see Dante, Donne, Blake, Neruda, Bishop; linger in a
room full of Rilke, pass quickly through the Beats and pause before Verlaine
and Baudelaire. I suddenly realize that I've lost Clare, I am walking, then
running, back through the galleries and then I abruptly find her: she is
standing before a poem, a tiny white poem tucked into a corner. She is weeping.
As I come up behind her I see the poem: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the
Lord my soul to keep, If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to
take. I'm thrashing in grass, it's cold, wind rushes over me, I'm naked and
cold in darkness, there's snow on the ground, I am on my knees in the snow,
blood drips onto the snow and I reach out—

"My god, he's bleeding—" "How
the hell did that happen?"

"Shit, he's ripped off all the electrodes,
help me get him back on the bed—"

I open my eyes. Kendrick and Dr. Larson are
crouched over me. Dr. Larson looks upset and worried, but Kendrick has a
jubilant smile on his face.

"Did you get it?" I ask, and he
replies, "It was perfect." I say, "Great," and then I pass
out.

TWO

Sunday, October 12, 1997 (Henry is 34, Clare is
26)

Henry: I wake up and smell iron and it's blood.
Blood is everywhere and Clare is curled up in the middle of it like a kitten. I
shake her and she says, "No."
"ComeonClarewakeupyou'rebleeding." "I was dreaming... "
"Clare, please..."

She sits up. Her hands, her face, her hair are
drenched in blood. Clare holds out her hand and on it reclines a tiny monster.
She says, simply, "He died," and bursts into tears. We sit together
on the edge of the blood-soaked bed, holding each other, and crying.

Monday, February 16, 1998 (Clare is 26, Henry
is 34)

Clare: Henry and I are just about to go out.
It's a snowy afternoon, and I'm pulling on my boots when the phone rings. Henry
walks down the hall and into the living room to answer it. I hear him say,

"Hello?" and then "Really?"
and then "Well, hot damn!" Then he says, "Wait, let me get some
paper—" and there's a long silence, punctuated once in a while with
"Wait, explain that" and I take off my boots and my coat and pad into
the living room in my socks. Henry is sitting on the couch with the phone
cradled in his lap like a pet, furiously taking notes, I sit down next to him
and he grins at me. I look at the pad; the top of the page starts off: 4 genes:
pert, timeless!, Clock, new gene-time traveler?? Chrom-17 x 2, 4, 25, 200+
repeats TAG, sex linked? no, +too many dopamine recpts, what proteins???... and
I realize: Kendrick has done it! He's figured it out! I can't believe it. He's
done it. Now what? Henry puts down the phone, turns to me. He looks as stunned
as I feel.

"What happens next?" I ask him.

"He's going to clone the genes and put
them into mice."

"What?"

"He's going to make time-traveling mice.
Then he's going to cure them."

We both start to laugh at the same time, and
then we are dancing, flinging each other around the room, laughing and dancing
until we fall back onto the couch, panting. I look over at Henry, and I wonder
that on a cellular level he is so different, so other, when he's just a man in
a white button-down shirt and a pea jacket whose hand feels like skin and bone
in mine, a man who smiles just like a human. I always knew he was different,
what does it matter? a few letters of code? but somehow it must matter, and
somehow we must change it, and somewhere on the other side of the city Dr.
Kendrick is sitting in his office figuring out how to make mice that defy the
rules of time. I laugh, but it's life and death, and I stop laughing and put my
hand over my mouth.

INTERMEZZO

Wednesday, August 12, 1998 (Clare is 27)

Clare: Mama is asleep, finally. She sleeps in
her own bed, in her own room; she has escaped from the hospital, at last, only
to find her room, her refuge, transformed into a hospital room. But now she is
past knowing. All night she talked, wept, laughed, yelled, called out
"Philip!"