The time traveler's wife (43 page)

THREE

Saturday, March 13, 1999 (Henry is 35, Clare is
27)

Henry: Charisse and Gomez have just had their
third child, Rosa Evangeline Gomolinski. We allow a week to pass, then descend
on them with presents and food. Gomez answers the door. Maximilian, three years
old, is clinging to his leg, and hides his face behind Gomez's knee when we say
"Hi Max!" Joseph, more extroverted at one, races up to Clare babbling
"Ba ba ba" and burps loudly as she picks him up. Gomez rolls his
eyes, and Clare laughs, and Joe laughs, and even I have to laugh at the
complete chaos. Their house looks as though a glacier with a Toys "R"
Us store inside it has moved through, leaving pools of Legos and abandoned
stuffed bears.

"Don't look," says Gomez. "None
of this is real. We're just testing one of Charisse's virtual reality games. We
call it 'Parenthood.'"

"Gomez?" Charisse's voice floats out
of the bedroom. "Is that Clare and Henry?"

We all tromp down the hall and into the
bedroom. I catch a glimpse of the kitchen as we pass. A middle-aged woman is
standing at the sink, washing dishes. Charisse is lying in bed with the baby in
her arms. The baby is asleep. She is tiny and has black hair and a sort of Aztec
look about her. Max and Joe are light-haired. Charisse looks awful (to me.
Clare insists later that she looked "wonderful"). She has gained a
lot of weight and looks exhausted and ill. She has had a Caesarean. I sit down
on the chair. Clare and Gomez sit on the bed. Max clambers over to his mother
and snuggles under her free arm. He stares at me and puts his thumb in his
mouth. Joe is sitting on Gomez's lap.

"She's beautiful," says Clare.
Charisse smiles. "And you look great."

"I feel like shit" says Charisse.
"But I'm done. We got our girl." She strokes the baby's face, and
Rosa yawns and raises one tiny hand. Her eyes are dark slits.

"Rosa Evangeline," Clare coos to the
baby. "That's so pretty."

"Gomez wanted to name her Wednesday, but I
put my foot down," says Charisse.

"Well, she was born on a Thursday,
anyway" explains Gomez.

"Wanna hold her?" Clare nods, and
Charisse carefully hands her daughter into Clare's arms. Seeing Clare with a
baby in her arms, the reality of our miscarriages grabs me and for a moment I
feel nauseous. I hope I'm not about to time travel. The feeling retreats and I
am left with the actuality of what we've been doing: we have been losing
children. Where are they, these lost children, wandering, hovering around
confused?

"Henry, would you like to hold Rosa?"
Clare asks me. I panic. "No," I say, too emphatically. "I'm not
feeling so hot," I explain. I get up and walk out of the bedroom, through
the kitchen and out the back door. I stand in the backyard. It is raining
lightly. I stand and breathe. The back door slams. Gomez comes out and stands
beside me.

"You okay?" he asks.

"I think so. I was getting claustrophobic
in there." "Yeah, I know what you mean."

We stand silently for minutes. I am trying to
remember my father holding me when I was little. All I can remember is playing
games with him, running, laughing, riding around on his shoulders. I realize
that Gomez is looking at me, and that tears are coursing down my cheeks. I wipe
my sleeve across my face. Somebody has to say something.

"Don't mind me," I say. Gomez makes
an awkward gesture. "I'll be right back," he says, and disappears
into the house. I think he's gone for good, but he reappears with a lit
cigarette in hand. I sit down on the decrepit picnic table, which is damp with
rain and covered with pine needles. It's cold out here.

"You guys still trying to have a
kid?"

I am startled by this until I realize that
Clare probably tells Charisse everything, and Charisse probably tells Gomez
nothing.

"Yeah."

"Is Clare still upset about that
miscarriage?" "Miscarriages. Plural. We've had three."

"'To lose one child, Mr. DeTamble, may be
regarded as a misfortune; to lose three looks like carelessness."
"That's not really all that funny, Gomez."

"Sorry." Gomez does look abashed, for
once. I don't want to talk about this. I have no words to talk about it, and I
can barely talk about it with Clare, with Kendrick and the other doctors at
whose feet we've laid our sad case. "Sorry," Gomez repeats. I stand
up. "We'd better go in."

"Ah, they don't want us, they want to talk
about girl stuff." "Mmm. Well, then. How about those Cubs?" I
sit down again.

"Shut up." Neither of us follows
baseball. Gomez is pacing back and forth. I wish he would stop, or, better yet,
go inside. "So what's the problem?" he asks, casually.

"With what? The Cubs? No pitching, I'd
say."

"No, dear Library Boy, not the Cubs. What
is the problem that is causing you and Clare to be sans infants?"

"That is really not any of your business,
Gomez."

He plunges on, unfazed. "Do they even know
what the problem is?"

"Fuck off, Gomez"

"Tut, tut. Language. Because I know this
great doctor
  
"

"Gomez—"

"Who specializes in fetal chromosomal
disorders." "Why on earth would you know—" "Expert
witness."

"Oh."

"Her name is Amit Montague " he continues,
"she's a genius. She's been on TV and won all these awards. Juries adore
her."

"Oh, well, if juries love her—" I
begin, sarcastically. "Just go and see her. Jesus, I'm trying to be
helpful." I sigh. "Okay. Um, thanks."

"Is that 'Thanks, we will run right out
and do as you suggest, dear Comrade,' or 'Thanks, now go screw yourself?"
I stand up, brush damp pine needles off the seat of my pants. "Let's go
in," I say, and we do.

FOUR

Wednesday, July 21, 1999/September 8, 1998
(Henry is 36, Clare is 28)

Henry: We are lying in bed. Clare is curled on
her side, her back to me, and I am curled around her, facing her back. It's
about two in the morning, and we have just turned out the light after a long
and pointless discussion of our reproductive misadventures. Now I lie pressed
against Clare, my hand cupping her right breast, and I try to discern if we are
in this together or if I have been somehow left behind.

"Clare," I say softly, into her neck.

"Mmm?"

"Let's adopt." I've been thinking
about this for weeks, months. It Ferris like a brilliant escape route: we will
have a baby. It will be healthy. Clare will be healthy. We will be happy. It is
the obvious answer. Clare says, "But that would be fake. It would be
pretending." She sits UP» faces me, and I do the same. It would be a real
baby, and it would be ours. "What's pretend about that? I'm sick of
pretending. We pretend all the time. I want to really do this."

"We don't pretend all the time. What are
you talking about?"

"We pretend to be normal people, having
normal lives! I pretend it's perfectly okay with me that you're always
disappearing God knows where. You pretend everything is okay even when you
almost get killed and Kendrick doesn't know what the hell to do about it! I
pretend I don't care when our babies die... " She is sobbing, bent double,
her face covered by her hair, a curtain of silk sheltering her face. I'm tired
of crying. I'm tired of watching Clare cry. I am helpless before her tears,
there is nothing I can do that will change anything.

"Clare..."I reach out to touch her,
to comfort her, to comfort myself, and she pushes me away. I get out of bed,
and grab my clothes. I dress in the bathroom. I take Clare's keys from her
purse, and I put on my shoes. Clare appears in the hall.

"Where are you going?" "I don't
know." "Henry—"

I walk out the door, and slam it. It feels good
to be outside. I can't remember where the car is. Then I see it across the
street. I walk over to it and get in. My first idea was to sleep in the car,
but once I am sitting in it I decide to drive somewhere. The beach: I will
drive to the beach. I know that this is a terrible idea. I'm tired, I'm upset,
it would be madness to drive...but I just feel like driving. The streets are
empty. I start the car. It roars to life. It takes me a minute to get out of
the parking space. I see Clare's face in the front window. Let her worry. For
once I don't care. I drive down Ainslie to Lincoln, cut over to Western, and
drive north. It's been a while since I've been out alone in the middle of the
night in the present, and I can't even remember the last time I drove a car
when I didn't absolutely have to. This is nice. I speed past Rosehill Cemetery
and down the long corridor of car dealerships. I turn on the radio, punch
through the presets to wluw; they're playing Coltrane so I crank up the volume
and wind the window down. The noise, the wind, the soothing repetition of
stoplights and streetlights make me calm, anesthetize me, and after a while I
kind of forget why I'm out here in the first place. At the Evanston border I
cut over to Ridge, and then take Dempster to the lake. I park near the lagoon,
leave the keys in the ignition, get out, and walk. It's cool and very quiet. I
walk out onto the pier and stand at the end of it, looking down the shoreline
at Chicago, flickering under its orange and purple sky. I'm so tired. I'm tired
of thinking about death. I'm tired of sex as a means to an end. And I'm
frightened of where it all might end. I don't know how much pressure I can take
from Clare. What are these fetuses, these embryos, these clusters of cells we
keep making and losing? What is it about them that is important enough to risk
Clare's life, to tinge every day with despair? Nature is telling us to give up,
Nature is saying: Henry, you're a very fucked-up organism and we don't want to
make any more of you. And I am ready to acquiesce. I have never seen myself in
the future with a child. Even though I have spent quite a bit of time with my
young self, even though I spend a lot of time with Clare as a child, I don't
feel like my life is incomplete without one of my very own. No future self has
ever encouraged me to keep plugging away at this. I actually broke down and
asked, a few weeks ago; I ran into my self in the stacks at the Newberry, a
self from 2004. Are we ever going to have a baby? I asked. My self only smiled
and shrugged. You just have to live it, sorry, he replied, smug and
sympathetic. Oh, Jesus, just tell me I cried, raising my voice as he raised his
hand and disappeared. Asshole, I said loudly, and Isabelle stuck her head in
the security door and asked me why I was yelling in the stacks and did I
realize that they could hear me in the Reading Room? I just don't see any way
out of this. Clare is obsessed. Amit Montague encourages her, tells her stories
about miracle babies, gives her vitamin drinks that remind me of Rosemary s
Baby. Maybe I could go on strike. Sure, that's it; a sex strike. I laugh to
myself. The sound is swallowed by the waves gently lapping the pier. Fat chance.
I'd be groveling on my knees within days. My head hurts. I try to ignore it; I
know it's because I'm tired. I wonder if I could sleep on the beach without
anyone bothering me. It's a beautiful night. Just at this moment I am startled
by an intense beam of light that pans across the pier and into my face and
suddenly I'm in Kimy's kitchen, lying on my back under her kitchen table,
surrounded by the legs of chairs. Kimy is seated in one of the chairs and is
peering at me under the table. My left hip is pressing against her shoes.

"Hi, buddy," I say weakly. I feel
like I'm about to pass out.

"You gonna give me a heart attack one of
these days, buddy," Kimy says. She prods me with her foot. "Get out
from under there and put on some clothes."

I flop over and back out from under the table
on my knees. Then I curl up on the linoleum and rest for a moment, gathering my
wits and trying not to gag.

"Henry.. .you okay?" She leans over
me. "You want something to eat? You want some soup? I got minestrone
soup...Coffee?" I shake my head. "You want to lie on the couch? You
sick?"

"No, Kimy, it's okay, I'll be okay."
I manage to get to my knees and then to my feet. I stagger into the bedroom and
open Mr. Kim's closet, which is almost empty except for a few pairs of neatly
pressed jeans in various sizes ranging from small boy to grown-up, and several
crisp white shirts, my little clothing stash, ready and waiting. Dressed, I
walk back to the kitchen, lean over Kimy, and give her a peck on the cheek.
"What's the date?"

"September 8, 1998. Where you from?"

"Next July." We sit down at the
table. Kimy is doing the New York Times crossword puzzle. "What's going
on, next July?"

"It's been a very cool summer, your
garden's looking good. All the tech stocks are up. You should buy some Apple
stock in January."

She makes a note on a piece of brown paper bag.
"Okay. And you? How are you doing? How's Clare? You guys got a baby
yet?"