The time traveler's wife (50 page)

"Clare," says Richard.
"I—congratulations." He sinks slowly into the chair beside the bed.

"Um, would you like to hold her?"
Henry asks softly. Richard nods, looking at me to see if I agree. Richard looks
as though he hasn't slept for days. His shirt needs ironing and he stinks of
sweat and the iodine reek of old beer. I smile at him although I am wondering
if this is such a hot idea. I hand Alba over to Henry who carefully transfers
her into Richard's awkward arms. Alba turns her pink round face up to Richard's
long unshaven one, turns toward his chest and searches for a nipple. After a
moment she gives up and yawns, then goes back to sleep. He smiles. I had
forgotten how Richard's smile can transform his face.

"She's beautiful," he tells me. And,
to Henry, "She looks like your mother." Henry nods. "There's
your violinist, Dad." He smiles. "It skipped a generation."

"A violinist?" Richard looks down at
the sleeping baby, black hair and tiny hands, fast asleep. No one ever looked
less like a concert violinist than Alba does right now. "A
violinist." He shakes his head. "But how do you— No, never mind. So
you are a violinist, are you now, little girl?" Alba sticks out her tongue
a tiny bit and we all laugh.

"She'll need a teacher, once she's old
enough," I suggest.

"A teacher? Yes...You're not going to hand
her over to those Suzuki idiots, are you?" Richard demands. Henry coughs.
"Er, actually we were hoping that if you had nothing better to do..."

Richard gets it. It's a pleasure to see him
comprehend, to see him realize that someone needs him, that only he can give
his only granddaughter the training she will need.

"I'd be delighted," he says, and
Alba's future unrolls in front of her like a red carpet as far as the eye can
see.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001 (Clare is 30, Henry
is 38)

Clare: I wake up at 6:43 and Henry is not in
bed. Alba isn't in her crib, either. My breasts hurt. My cunt hurts. Everything
hurts. I get out of bed very carefully, go to the bathroom. I walk through the
hall, the dining room, slowly. In the living room Henry is sitting on the couch
with Alba cradled in his arms, not watching the little black and white
television with the sound turned low. Alba is asleep. I sit down next to Henry.
He puts his arm around me.

"How come you're up?" I ask him.
"I thought you said it wasn't for a couple of hours yet?" On the TV a
weatherman is smiling and pointing at a satellite picture of the Midwest.

"I couldn't sleep," Henry says.
"I wanted to listen to the world being normal for a little while
longer."

"Oh." I lean my head on Henry's
shoulder and close my eyes. When I open them again a commercial for a cell
phone company is ending and a commercial for bottled water comes on. Henry
hands Alba to me and gets up. In a minute I hear him making breakfast. Alba
wakes up and I undo my nightgown and feed her. My nipples hurt. I watch the
television. A blond anchorperson tells me something, smiling. He and the other
anchorperson, an Asian woman, laugh and smile at me. At City Hall, Mayor Daley
is answering questions. I doze. Alba sucks at me. Henry brings in a tray of
eggs, toast, and orange juice. I want coffee. Henry has tactfully drunk his in
the kitchen, but I can smell it on his breath. He sets the tray on the coffee
table and puts my plate on my lap. I eat my eggs as Alba nurses. Henry mops up
yolk with his toast. On TV a bunch of kids are skidding across grass, to
demonstrate the effectiveness of some laundry detergent. We finish eating; Alba
finishes, too. I burp her and Henry takes all the dishes to the kitchen. When
he comes back I pass her to him and head to the bathroom. I take a shower. The
water is so hot I almost can't stand it, but it feels heavenly on my sore body.
I breathe the steamy air, dry my skin gingerly, rub balm on my lips, breasts,
stomach. The mirror is all steamed up, so I don't have to see myself. I comb my
hair. I pull on sweatpants and a sweater. I feel deformed, deflated. In the
living room Henry is sitting with his eyes closed, and Alba is sucking her
thumb. As I sit down again Alba opens her eyes and makes a mewing sound. Her
thumb slips out of her mouth and she looks confused. A Jeep is driving through
a desert landscape. Henry has turned off the sound. He massages his eyes with
his fingers. I fall asleep again. Henry says, "Wake up, Clare." I
open my eyes. The television picture swerves around. A city street. A sky. A
white skyscraper on fire. An airplane, toylike, slowly flies into the second
white tower. Silent flames shoot up. Henry turns up the sound. "Oh my god,"
says the voice of the television. "Oh my god."

Tuesday, June 11, 2002 (Clare is 31)

CLARE: I'm making a drawing of Alba. At this
moment Alba is nine months and five days old. She is sleeping on her back, on a
small light blue flannel blanket, on the yellow ochre and magenta Chinese rug
on the living room floor. She has just finished nursing. My breasts are light,
almost empty. Alba is so very asleep that I feel perfectly okay about walking
out the back door and across the yard into my studio. For a minute I stand in the
doorway inhaling the slightly musty unused studio odor. Then I rummage around
in my flat file, find some persimmon-tanned paper that looks like cowhide, grab
a few pastels and other implements and a drawing board and walk (with only a
small pang of regret) out the door and back into the house. The house is very
quiet. Henry is at work (I hope) and I can hear the washing machine churning
away in the basement. The air conditioner whines. There's a faint rumble of
traffic on Lincoln Avenue. I sit down on the rug next to Alba. A trapezoid of
sunlight is inches away from her small pudgy feet. In half an hour it will
cover her. I clip my paper to the drawing board and arrange my pastels next to
me on the rug. Pencil in hand, I consider my daughter. Alba is sleeping deeply.
Her ribcage rises and falls slowly and I can hear the soft grunt she makes with
each exhalation. I wonder if she's getting a cold. It's warm in here, on this
June late afternoon, and Alba's wearing a diaper and nothing else. She's a
little flushed. Her left hand is clenching and unclenching rhythmically. Maybe
she's dreaming music. I begin to rough in Alba's head, which is turned toward
me. I am not thinking about this, really. My hand is moving across the paper
like the needle of a seismograph, recording Alba's form as I absorb it with my
eyes. I note the way her neck disappears in the folds of baby fat under her
chin, how the soft indentations above her knees alter slightly as she kicks,
once, and is still again. My pencil describes the convexity of Alba's full
belly which submerges into the top of her diaper, an abrupt and angular line
cutting across her roundness. I study the paper, adjust the angle of Alba's
legs, redraw the crease where her right arm joins her torso. I begin to lay in
pastel. I start by sketching in highlights in white— down her tiny nose, along
her left side, across her knuckles, her diaper, the edge of her left foot. Then
I rough in shadows, in dark green and ultramarine. A deep shadow clings to
Alba's right side where her body meets the blanket. It's like a pool of water,
and I put it in solidly. Now the Alba in the drawing suddenly becomes
three-dimensional, leaps off the page. I use two pink pastels, a light pink the
hue of the inside of a shell and a dark pink that reminds me of raw tuna. With
rapid strokes I make Alba's skin. It is as though Alba's skin was hidden in the
paper, and I am removing some invisible substance that concealed it. Over this
pastel skin I use a cool violet to make Alba's ears and nose and mouth (her
mouth is slightly open in a tiny O). Her black and abundant hair becomes a
mixture of dark blue and black and red on the paper. I take care with her
eyebrows, which seem so much like furry caterpillars that have found a home on
Alba's face. The sunlight covers Alba now. She stirs, brings her small hand
over her eyes, and sighs. I write her name, and my name, and the date at the
bottom of the paper. The drawing is finished. It will serve as a record—I loved
you, I made you, and I made this for you—long after I am gone, and Henry is
gone, and even Alba is gone. It will say, we made you, and here you are, here
and now. Alba opens her eyes and smiles.

SECRET

Sunday, October 12, 2003 (Clare is 32, Henry is
40)

Clare: This is a secret: sometimes I am glad when
Henry is gone. Sometimes I enjoy being alone. Sometimes I walk through the
house late at night and I shiver with the pleasure of not talking, not
touching, just walking, or sitting, or taking

a bath. Sometimes I lie on the living room
floor and listen to Fleetwood Mac, the Bangles, the B-52's, the Eagles, bands
Henry can't stand. Sometimes I go for long walks with Alba and I don't leave a
note saying where I am. Sometimes I meet Celia for coffee, and we talk about
Henry, and Ingrid, and whoever Celia's seeing that week. Sometimes I hang out
with Charisse and Gomez, and we don't talk about Henry, and we manage to enjoy
ourselves. Once I went to Michigan and when I came back Henry was still gone
and I never told him I had been anywhere. Sometimes I get a baby-sitter and I
go to the movies or I ride my bicycle after dark along the bike path by
Montrose beach with no lights; it's like flying. Sometimes I am glad when
Henry's gone, but I'm always glad when he comes back.

EXPERIENCING
TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

Friday, May 7, 2004 (Henry is 40, Clare is 32)

Henry: We are at the opening of Clare's exhibit
at the Chicago Cultural Center. She has been working nonstop for a year,
building huge, ethereal bird skeletons out of wire, wrapping them in
translucent strips of paper, coating them with shellac until they transmit
light. Now the sculptures hang from the high ceiling, and squat on the floor.
Some of them are kinetic, motorized: a few beat their wings, and there are two
cock skeletons slowly demolishing each other in a corner. An eight-foot-tall
pigeon dominates the entrance. Clare is exhausted, and ecstatic. She's wearing
a simple black silk dress, her hair is piled high on her head. People have
brought her flowers; she has a bouquet of white roses in her arms, there's a
heap of plastic-wrapped bouquets next to the guest book. It's very crowded.
People circle around, exclaim over each piece, crane their heads back to look
at the flying birds. Everyone congratulates Clare. There was a glowing review
in this morning's Tribune. All our friends are here, and Clare's family has
driven in from Michigan. They surround Clare now, Philip, Alicia, Mark and
Sharon and their kids, Nell, Etta. Charisse takes pictures of them, and they
all smile for her. When she gives us copies of the pictures, a few weeks from
now, I will be struck by the dark circles under Clare's eyes, and by how thin
she looks. I am holding Alba's hand. We stand by the back wall, out of the
crowd. Alba can't see anything, because everyone is tall, and so I lift her on
to my shoulders. She bounces. Clare's family has dispersed and she is being
introduced to a very well-dressed elderly couple by Leah Jacobs, her dealer.
Alba says, "I want Mama."

"Mama's busy, Alba," I say. I am
feeling queasy. I bend over and set Alba on the floor. She puts her arms up.
" No. I want Mama." I sit on the floor and put my head between my
knees. I need to find a place where no one can see me. Alba is pulling my ear.
"Don't, Alba," I say. I look up. My father is making his way to us
through the crowd. "Go," I tell Alba. I give her a little push.
"Go see Grandpa." She starts to whimper. "I don't see Grandpa. I
want Mama." I am crawling toward Dad. I bump into someone's legs. I hear
Alba screaming, "Mama!" as I vanish.

Clare: There are masses of people. Everyone
presses at me, smiling. I smile at them. The show looks great, and it's done,
it's up! I'm so happy, and so tired. My face hurts from smiling. Everyone I
know is here. I'm talking to Celia when I hear a commotion at the back of the
gallery, and then I hear Alba screaming, "Mama!" Where is Henry? I
try to get through the crowd to Alba. Then I see her: Richard has lifted her
up. People part to let me through. Richard hands Alba to me. She locks her legs
around my waist, buries her face in my shoulder, wraps her arms around my neck,
"Where's Daddy?" I ask her softly. "Gone," says Alba.

NATURE MORTE Sunday, July 11, 2004 (Clare is
33, Henry is 41)

Clare: Henry is sleeping, bruised and caked
with blood, on the kitchen floor. I don't want to move him or wake him. I sit
with him on the cool linoleum for a while. Eventually I get up and make coffee.
As the coffee streams into the pot and the grounds make little exploding puffs,
Henry whimpers and puts his hands over his eyes. It's obvious that he has been
beaten. One eye is swollen shut. The blood seems to have come from his nose. I
don't see any wounds, just radiant purple fist-sized bruises all over his body.
He is very thin; I can see all his vertebrae and ribs. His pelvis juts, his
cheeks are hollow. His hair has grown down almost to his shoulders, there is
gray shot through it. There are cuts on his hands and feet, and insect bites
everywhere on his body. He is very tanned, and filthy, grime under nails, dirt
sweated into creases of his skin. He smells of grass, blood, and salt. After
watching him and sitting with him for a while, I decide to wake him.
"Henry," I say very softly, "wake up, now, you're home... I
stroke his face, carefully, and he opens his eye. I can tell he's not quite
awake. "Clare," he mumbles. "Clare." Tears begin to stream
from his good eye, he is shaking with sobbing, and I pull him into my lap. I am
crying. Henry is curled in my lap, there on the floor, we shake tightly
together, rocking, rocking, crying our relief and our anguish together.