The time traveler's wife (46 page)

Friday, June 9, 2000 (Clare is 29, Henry is 36)

Clare: Henry has been terribly quiet,
distracted, and pensive all evening. All through dinner he seemed to be
mentally searching imaginary stacks for a book he'd read in 1942 or something.
Plus his right hand is all bandaged up. After dinner he went into the bedroom
and lay face down on the bed with his head hanging over the foot of the bed and
his feet on my pillow. I went to the studio and scrubbed molds and deckles and
drank my coffee, but I wasn't enjoying myself because I couldn't figure out
what Henry's problem was. Finally I go back into the house. He is still lying
in the same position. In the dark. I lie down on the floor. My back makes loud
cracking sounds as I stretch out.

"Clare?"

"Mmmm?"

"Do you remember the first time I kissed
you?" "Vividly."

"I'm sorry." Henry rolls over. I'm
burning up with curiosity. "What were you so upset about? You were trying
to do something, and it didn't work, and you said I wouldn't like it. What was
it?"

"How do you manage to remember all
that?"

"I am the original elephant child. Are you
going to tell me now?"

"No."

"If I guess will you tell me if I'm
right?" "Probably not."

"Why not?"

"Because I am exhausted, and I don't want
to fight tonight."

I don't want to fight either. I like lying here
on the floor. It's kind of cold but very solid. "You went to get a
vasectomy."

Henry is silent. He is so silent for so long
that I want to put a mirror in front of his mouth to see if he's breathing.
Finally: "How did you know?"

"I didn't exactly know. I was afraid that
might be it. And I saw the note you made for the appointment with the doctor
this morning."

"I burned that note."

"I saw the impression on the sheet below
the one you wrote on."

Henry groans. "Okay, Sherlock. You got
me." We continue to lie peaceably in the dark.

"Go ahead."

"What?"

"Get a vasectomy. If you have to."

Henry rolls over again and looks at me. All I
see is his dark head against the dark ceiling. "You're not yelling at
me." "No. I can't do this anymore, either. I give up. You win, we'll
stop trying to have a baby." "I wouldn't exactly describe that as
winning. It just seems—necessary." "Whatever."

Henry climbs off the bed and sits on the floor
with me. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." He kisses me. I
imagine the bleak November day in 1986 that Henry has just come from, the wind,
the warmth of his body in the cold orchard. Soon, for the first time in many
months, we are making love without worrying about the consequences. Henry has
caught the cold I had sixteen years ago. Four weeks later, Henry has had his
vasectomy and I discover that I am pregnant for the sixth time.

BABY DREAMS

September, 2000 (Clare is 29)

Clare: I dream I'm walking down stairs into my
grandmother Abshire's basement. The long soot mark from the time the crow flew
down the chimney is still there on the left-hand wall; the steps are dusty and
the handrail leaves gray marks on my hand as I steady myself; I descend and
walk into the room that always scared me when I was little. In this room are
deep shelves with rows and rows of canned goods, tomatoes and pickles, corn
relish and beets. They look embalmed. In one of the jars is the small fetus of
a duck. I carefully open the jar and pour the ducking and the fluid into my
hand. It gasps and retches. "Why did you leave me?" it asks, when it
can speak. "I've been waiting for you."

I dream that my mother and I are walking
together down a quiet residential street in South Haven. I am carrying a baby.
As we walk, the baby becomes heavier and heavier, until I can barely lift it. I
turn to Mama and tell her that I can't carry this baby any farther; she takes
it from me easily and we continue on. We come to a house and walk down the
small walkway to its backyard. In the yard there are two screens and a slide
projector. People are seated in lawn chairs, watching slides of trees. Half of
a tree is on each screen. One half is summer and the other winter; they are the
same tree, different seasons. The baby laughs and cries out in delight, I dream
I am standing on the Sedgewick El platform, waiting for the Brown Line train. I
am carrying two shopping bags, which upon inspection turn out to contain boxes
of saltine crackers and a very small, stillborn baby with red hair, wrapped in
Saran Wrap. I dream I am at home, in my old room. It's late at night, the room
is dimly illuminated by the aquarium light. I suddenly realize, with horror,
that there is a small animal swimming round and round the tank; I hastily
remove the lid and net the animal, which turns out to be a gerbil with gills.
"I'm so sorry" I say. "I forgot about you." The gerbil just
stares at me reproachfully. I dream I am walking up stairs in Meadowlark House.
All the furniture is gone, the rooms are empty, dust floats in the sunlight
which makes golden pools on the polished oak floors. I walk down the long hall,
glancing in the bedrooms, and come to my room, in which a small wooden cradle
sits alone. There is no sound. I am afraid to look into the cradle. In Mama's
room white sheets are spread over the floor. At my feet is a tiny drop of
blood, which touches the tip of a sheet and spreads as I watch until the entire
floor is covered in blood.

Saturday, September 23, 2000 (Clare is 29,
Henry is 37)

Clare: I'm living under water. Everything seems
slow and far away. I know there's a world up there, a sunlit quick world where
time runs like dry sand through an hourglass, but down here, where I am, air
and sound and time and feeling are thick and dense. I'm in a diving bell with
this baby, just the two of us trying to survive in this alien atmosphere, but I
feel very alone. Hello? Are you there? No answer comes back. He's dead, I tell
Amit. No, she says, smiling anxiously, no, Clare, see, there's his heartbeat. T
can't explain. Henry hovers around trying to feed me, massage me, cheer me up,
until I snap at him. I walk across the yard, into my studio. It's like a
museum, a mausoleum, so still, nothing living or breathing, no ideas here, just
things, things that stare at me accusingly. I'm sorry, I tell my blank, empty
drawing table, my dry vats and molds, the half-made sculptures. Stillborn, I
think, looking at the blue iris paper-wrapped armature that seemed so hopeful
in June. My hands are clean and soft and pink. I hate them. I hate this
emptiness. I hate this baby. No. No, I don't hate him. I just can't find him. I
sit at my drawing board with a pencil in my hand and a sheet of white paper
before me. Nothing comes. I close my eyes and all I can think of is red. So I
get a tube of watercolor, cadmium red dark, and I get a big mop of a brush, and
I fill a jar with water, and I begin to cover the paper with red. It glistens.
The paper is limp with moisture, and darkens as it dries. I watch it drying. It
smells of gum arabic. In the center of the paper, very small, in black ink, I
draw a heart, not a silly Valentine but an anatomically correct heart, tiny,
doll-like, and then veins, delicate road maps of veins, that reach all the way
to the edges of the paper, that hold the small heart enmeshed like a fly in a
spiderweb. See, there's his heartbeat. It has become evening. I empty the water
jar and wash the brush. I lock the studio door, cross the yard, and let myself
in the back door. Henry is making spaghetti sauce. He looks up as I come in.

"Better?" he asks.

"Better," I reassure him, and myself.

Wednesday, September 27, 2000 (Clare is 29)

CLARE: It's lying on the bed. There's some
blood, but not so much. It's lying on its back, trying to breathe, its tiny
ribcage quivering, but it's too soon, it's convulsing, and blood is gushing
from the cord in time with the beating of its heart. I kneel beside the bed and
pick it up, pick him up, my tiny boy, jerking like a small freshly caught fish,
drowning in air. I hold him, so gently, but he doesn't know I'm here, holding
him, he is slippery and his skin is almost imaginary, his eyes are closed and I
think wildly of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, of 911 and Henry, oh, don t go
before Henry can see you! but his breath is bubbling with fluid, small sea
creature breathing water and then he opens his mouth wide and I can see right
through him and my hands are empty and he's gone, gone. I don't know how long,
time passes. I am kneeling. Kneeling, I pray. Dear God. Dear God. Dear God. The
baby stirs in my womb. Hush. Hide. I wake up in the hospital. Henry is there.
The baby is dead.

SEVEN

Thursday, December 28, 2000 (Henry is 33, and
37, Clare is 29) Henry: I am standing in our bedroom, in the future. It's
night, but moonlight gives the room a surreal, monochromatic distinctness. My
ears are ringing, as they often do, in the future. I look down on Clare and
myself, sleeping. It feels like death. I am sleeping tightly balled up, knees
to chest, wound up in blankets, mouth slightly open. I want to touch me. I want
to hold me in my arms, look into my eyes. But it won't happen that way; I stand
for long minutes staring intently at my sleeping future self. Eventually I walk
softly to Clare's side of the bed, kneel. It feels immensely like the present.
I will myself to forget the other body in the bed, to concentrate on Clare. She
stirs, her eyes open. She isn't sure where we are. Neither am I. I am
overwhelmed by desire, by a longing to be connected to Clare as strongly as
possible, to be here, now. I kiss her very lightly, lingering, linking about
nothing. She is drunk with sleep, moves her hand to my face and wakes more as
she feels the solidity of me. Now she is present; she runs her hand down my
arm, a caress. I carefully peel the sheet from her, so as not to disturb the
other me, of whom Clare is still not aware. I wonder if this other self is somehow
impervious to waking, but decide not to find out. I am lying on top of Clare,
covering her completely with my body. I wish I could stop her from turning her
head, but she will turn her head any minute now. As I penetrate Clare she looks
at me and I think I don't exist and a second later she turns her head and sees
me. She cries out, not loudly, and looks back at me, above her, in her. Then
she remembers, accepts it, this is pretty strange but it's okay, and in this
moment I love her more than life.

Monday, February 12, 2001 (Henry is 37, Clare
is 29)

Henry: Clare has been in a strange mood all
week. She's distracted. It is as though something only Clare can hear has
riveted her attention, as though she's receiving revelations from God through
her fillings, or trying to decode satellite transmissions of Russian cryptology
in her head. When I ask her about it, she just smiles and shrugs. This is so
unlike Clare that I am alarmed, and immediately desist. I come home from work
one evening and I can see just by looking at Clare that something awful has
happened. Her expression is scared and pleading. She comes close to me and
stops, and doesn't say anything. Someone has died, I think. Who has died? Dad?
Kimy? Philip?

"Say something," I ask. "What's
happened?"

"I'm pregnant."

"How can you—" Even as I say it I
know exactly how. "Never mind, I remember." For me, that night was
years ago, but for Clare it is only weeks in the past. I was coming from 1996,
when we were trying desperately to conceive, and Clare was barely awake. I
curse myself for a careless fool. Clare is waiting for me to say something. I
force myself to smile.

"Big surprise."

"Yeah." She looks a little teary. I
take her into my arms, and she holds me tightly. "Scared?" I murmur
into Clare's hair.

"Uh-huh."

"You were never scared, before."

"I was crazy, before. Now I know
        
"

"What it is."

"What can happen." We stand and think
about what can happen. I hesitate. "We could...." I let it hang.

"No. I can't." It's true. Clare
can't. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic. I say, "Maybe it will be good.
A happy accident."

Clare smiles, and I realize that she wants
this, that she actually hopes that seven will be our lucky number. My throat
contracts, and I have to turn away.

Tuesday, February 20, 2001 (Clare is 29, Henry
is 37)

Clare: The clock radio clicks on at 7:46 a.m.
and National Public Radio sadly tells me that there has been a plane crash
somewhere and eighty-six people are dead. I'm pretty sure I am one of them.
Henry's side of the bed is empty. I close my eyes and I am in a little berth in
a cabin on an ocean-liner, pitching over rough seas. I sigh and gingerly creep
out of bed and into the bathroom. I'm still throwing up ten minutes later when
Henry sticks his head in the door and asks me if I'm okay. "Great. Never
better."