The time traveler's wife (51 page)

Thursday, December 23, 2004 (Clare is 33, Henry
is 41)

Clare: It's the day before Christmas Eve. Henry
is at Water Tower Place, taking Alba to see Santa at Marshall Field's while I
finish the shopping. Now I'm sitting in the cafe at Border's Bookstore,
drinking cappuccino at a table by the front window and resting my feet with a
pile of bulging shopping bags leaning against my chair. Outside the window the
day is fading and tiny white lights describe every tree. Shoppers hurry up and
down Michigan Avenue, and I can hear the muted clang of the Salvation Army
Santa's bell below me. I turn back to the store, scanning for Henry and Alba,
and someone calls my name. Kendrick is coming toward me with his wife, Nancy,
and Colin and Nadia in tow. I can see at a glance that they've just come from
FAO Schwarz; they have the shell-shocked look of parents freshly escaped from
toy-store hell. Nadia comes running up to me squealing "Aunt Clare, Aunt
Clare! Where's Alba?" Colin smiles shyly and holds out his hand to show me
that he has a tiny yellow tow truck. I congratulate him and tell Nadia that
Alba's visiting Santa, and Nadia replies that she already saw Santa last week.
"What did you ask for?" I query. "A boyfriend," says Nadia.
She's three years old. I grin at Kendrick and Nancy. Kendrick says something,
sotto voce, to Nancy, and she says, "Come on, troops, we have to find a
book for Aunt Silvie," and the three of them go pelting off to the bargain
tables. Kendrick gestures at the empty chair across from me. "May I?"
Sure. He sits down, sighing deeply. "I hate Christmas."

"You and Henry both."

"Does he? I didn't know that."
Kendrick leans against the window and closes his eyes. Just as I think that
he's actually asleep he opens them and says, "Is Henry following his drug
regimen?"

"Um, I guess. I mean, as closely as he
can, considering that he's been time traveling a lot lately."

Kendrick drums his fingers on the table.
"How much is a lot?"

"Every couple days."

Kendrick looks furious. "Why doesn't he
tell me these things?" "I think he's afraid you'll get upset with him
and quit."

"He's the only test subject I have who can
talk and he never tells me anything!" I laugh. "Join the club."

Kendrick says, "I'm trying to do science.
I need him to tell me when something doesn't work. Otherwise we're all just
spinning our wheels."

I nod. Outside it has started to snow.

"Clare?"

"Hmm?"

"Why won't you let me look at Alba's
DNA?"

I've had this conversation a hundred times with
Henry. "Because first you'd just want to locate all the markers in her
genes, and that would be okay. But then you and Henry would start to badger me
to let you try out drugs on her, and that is not okay. That's why."

"But she's still very young; she has a
better chance of responding positively to the medication."

"I said no. When Alba is eighteen she can
decide for herself. So far, everything you've given Henry has been a
nightmare." I can't look at Kendrick. I say this to my hands, tightly
folded on the table.

"But we might be able to develop gene
therapy for her—"

"People have died from gene therapy."

Kendrick is silent. The noise level in the
store is overwhelming. Then from the babble I hear Alba calling,
"Mama!" I look up and see her riding on Henry's shoulders, clutching
his head with her hands. Both of them are wearing coonskin caps. Henry sees
Kendrick and for a brief moment he looks apprehensive and I wonder what secrets
these two men are keeping from me. Then Henry smiles and comes striding toward
us, Alba bobbing happily above the crowd. Kendrick rises to greet him, and I
push the thought away.

BIRTHDAY

Wednesday, May 24, 1989 (Henry is 41, Clare is
18)

Henry: I come to with a thud and skid across
the painful stubble of the Meadow on my side, ending up dirty and bloody at
Clare's feet. She is sitting on the rock, coolly immaculate in a white silk
dress, white stockings and shoes, and short white gloves. "Hello,
Henry," she says, as though I have just dropped in for tea.

"What's up?" I ask. "You look
like you're on your way to your first communion."

Clare sits up very straight and says,
"Today is May 24, 1989." I think fast. "Happy birthday. Do you
happen to have a Bee Gees outfit squirreled away somewhere around here for
me?" Without deigning to reply Clare glides off the rock and, reaching
behind it, produces a garment bag. With a flourish she unzips it to reveal a
tuxedo, pants, and one of those infernal formal shirts that require studs. She
produces a suitcase containing underwear, a cummerbund, a bow tie, studs, and a
gardenia. I am seriously alarmed, and not forewarned. I ponder the available
data. "Clare. We're not getting married today or anything insane like
that, are we? Because I know for a fact that our anniversary is in the fall.
October. Late October."

Clare turns away while I am dressing. "You
mean you can't remember our anniversary? How male." I sigh. "Darling,
you know I know, I just can't get at it right now. But anyway. Happy
Birthday." "I'm eighteen."

"Heavens, so you are. It seems like only
yesterday that you were six."

Clare is intrigued, as always, with the notion
that I have recently visited some other Clare, older or younger. "Have you
seen me when I was six lately?"

"Well, just now I was lying in bed with
you reading Emma. You were thirty-three. I am forty-one at the moment, and
feeling every minute." I comb through my hair with my fingers and run my
hand over my stubble, "I'm sorry, Clare. I'm afraid I'm not at my best for
your birthday." I fasten the gardenia through the buttonhole of the tuxedo
and start to do up the studs. "I saw you at six about two weeks ago. You
drew me a picture of a duck."

Clare blushes. The blush spreads like drops of
blood in a bowl of milk.

"Are you hungry? I made us a feast!"

"Of course I'm hungry. I'm famished, gaunt,
and considering cannibalism." "That won't be necessary just
yet."

There is something in her tone that pulls me
up. Something is going on that I don't know about, and Clare expects me to know
it. She is practically humming with excitement. I contemplate the relative
merits of a simple confession of ignorance versus continuing to fake it. I
decide to let it go for a while. Clare is spreading out a blanket which will
later end up on our bed. I carefully sit down on it and am comforted by its
pale green familiarity. Clare unpacks sandwiches, little paper cups,
silverware, crackers, a tiny black jar of supermarket caviar, Thin Mint Girl
Scout cookies, strawberries, a bottle of Cabernet with a fancy label, Brie
cheese which looks a bit melted, and paper plates.

"Clare. Wine! Caviar!" I am
impressed, and somehow not amused. She hands me the Cabernet and the corkscrew.
"Um, I don't think I've ever mentioned this, but I'm not supposed to
drink. Doctor's orders." Clare looks crestfallen. "But I can
certainly eat.. .I can pretend to be drinking. I mean, if that would be
helpful." I can't shake the feeling that we are playing house. "I
didn't know you drank. Alcohol. I mean, I've hardly ever seen you drink
any."

"Well, I don't really like it, but since
this is a momentous occasion I thought it would be nice to have wine. Champagne
probably would have been better, but this was in the pantry, so I brought it
along."

I open the wine and pour us each a small cup.
We toast each other silently. I pretend to sip mine. Clare takes a mouthful,
swallows it in a businesslike fashion, and says, "Well, that's not so
bad."

"That's a twenty-something-dollar bottle
of wine."

"Oh. Well, that was marvelous."

"Clare." She is unwrapping dark rye
sandwiches which seem to be overflowing with cucumbers. "I hate to be
obtuse... I mean, obviously it's your birthday
         
"

"My eighteenth birthday" she agrees.

"Um, well, to begin with, I'm really upset
that I don't have a present for you... " Clare looks up, surprised, and I
realize that I'm warm, I'm on to something here, "but you know I never
know when I'm coming, and I can't bring anything with me... "

"I know all that. But don't you remember,
we worked it all out last time you were here; because on the List today is the
last day left and also my birthday. You don't remember?" Clare is looking
at me very intently, as though concentration can move memory from her mind to
mine.

"Oh. I haven't been there yet. I mean,
that conversation is still in my future. I wonder why I didn't tell you then? I
still have lots of dates on the list left to go. Is today really the last day?
You know, we'll be meeting each other in the present in a couple years. We'll
see each other then."

"But that's a long time. For me."

There is an awkward pause. It's strange to
think that right now I am in Chicago, twenty-five years old, going about my
business, completely unaware of Clare's existence, and for that matter,
oblivious to my own presence here in this lovely Michigan meadow on a gorgeous
spring day which is the eighteenth anniversary of her birth. We are using
plastic knives to apply caviar to Ritz crackers. For a while there is much
crunching and furious consumption of sandwiches. The conversation seems to have
foundered. And then I wonder, for the first time, if perhaps Clare is being
entirely truthful with me here, knowing as she does that I am on slippery terms
with statements that begin "I never," since I never have a complete
inventory of my past handy at any given moment, since my past is inconveniently
compounded with my future. We move on to the strawberries.

"Clare." She smiles, innocently.
"What exactly did we decide, the last time you saw me? What were we
planning to do for your birthday?"

She's blushing again. "Well, this "
she says, gesturing at our picnic.

"Anything else? I mean, this is
wonderful."

"Well. Yes." I'm all ears, because I
think I know what's coming.

"Yes?"

Clare is quite pink but manages to look
otherwise dignified as she says, "We decided to make love."

"Ah." I have, actually, always
wondered about Clare's sexual experiences prior to October 26, 1991, when we
met for the first time in the present. Despite some pretty amazing provocation
on Clare's part I have refused to make love to her and have spent many amusing
hours chatting with her about this and that while trying to ignore painful
hard-ons. But today, Clare is legally, if perhaps not emotionally, an adult,
and surely I can't warp her life too much.. .that is to say, I've already given
her a pretty weird childhood just by being in her childhood at all. How many
girls have their very own eventual husband appearing at regular intervals buck
naked before their eyes? Clare is watching me think this through. I am thinking
about the first time I made love to Clare and wondering if it was the first
time she made love to me. I decide to ask her about this when I get back to my
present. Meanwhile, Clare is tidying things back into the picnic basket.

"So?"

What the hell. "Yes."

Clare is excited and also scared. "Henry.
You've made love to me lots of times...."

"Many, many times."

She's having trouble saying it.

"It's always beautiful," I tell her.
"It's the most beautiful thing in my life. I will be very gentle."
Having said this I am suddenly nervous. I'm feeling responsible and Humbert
Humbertish and also as though I am being watched by many people, and all of
those people are Clare. I have never felt less sexual in my life. Okay. Deep
breath. "I love you."

We both stand up, lurching a bit on the uneven
surface of the blanket. I open my arms and Clare moves into them. We stand,
still, embracing there in the Meadow like the bride and groom on top of a
wedding cake. And after all, this is Clare, come to my forty-one-year-old self
almost as she was when we first met. No fear. She leans her head back. I lean
forward and kiss her.

"Clare."

"Mmmm?"

"You're absolutely sure we're alone?"

"Everyone except Etta and Nell is in
Kalamazoo."

"Because I feel like I'm on Candid Camera,
here."

"Paranoid. Very sad"

"Never mind."

"We could go to my room."

"Too dangerous. God, it's like being in
high school."

"What?"

"Never mind."

Clare steps back from me and unzips her dress.
She pulls it over her head and drops it on the blanket with admirable
unconcern. She steps out of her shoes and peels off her stockings. She unhooks
her bra, discards it, and steps out of her panties. She is standing before me
completely naked. It is a sort of miracle: all the little marks I have become
fond of have vanished; her stomach is flat, no trace of the pregnancies that
will bring us such grief, such happiness. This Clare is a little thinner, and a
lot more buoyant than the Clare I love in the present. I realize again how much
sadness has overtaken us. But today all of that is magically removed; today the
possibility of joy is close to us. I kneel, and Clare comes over and stands in
front of me. I press my face to her stomach for a moment, and then look up;
Clare is towering over me, her hands in my hair, with the cloudless blue sky
around her. I shrug off my jacket and undo the tie. Clare kneels and we remove
the studs deftly and with the concentration of a bomb squad. I take off the
pants and underwear. There's no way to do this gracefully. I wonder how male
strippers deal with this problem. Or do they just hop around on stage, one leg
in, one out? Clare laughs. "I've never seen you get undressed. Not a
pretty sight."