The time traveler's wife (58 page)

The following night:

It's very late at night and I am sitting by
Henry's bed in Mercy Hospital, watching him sleep. Gomez is sitting in a chair
on the other side of the bed, and he is also asleep. Gomez sleeps with his head
back and his mouth open, and every now and then he makes a little snorting
noise and then turns his head. Henry is still and silent. The IV machine beeps.
At the foot of the bed a tent-like contraption raises the blankets away from
the place where his feet should be, but Henry's feet are not there now. The
frostbite ruined them. Both feet were amputated above the ankles this morning.
I cannot imagine, I am trying not to imagine, what is below the blankets.
Henry's bandaged hands are lying above the blankets and I take his hand,
feeling how cool and dry it is, how the pulse beats in the wrist, how tangible
Henry's hand is in my hand. After the surgery Dr. Murray asked me what I wanted
her to do with Henry's feet. Reattach them seemed like the correct answer, but
I just shrugged and looked away. A nurse comes in, smiles at me, and gives
Henry his injection. In a few minutes he sighs, as the drug envelopes his
brain, and turns his face toward me. His eyes open so slightly, and then he is
asleep again. I want to pray, but I can't remember any prayers, all that runs
through my head is Eeny-meeny miney moe, catch a tiger by the toe, if he
hollers, let him go, eeny meeny miney moe. Oh, God, please don't, please don't
do this to me. But the Snark was a boojum. No. Nothing comes. Envoyez chercher
le medecin. Qu'avez-vous? Ilfaudra aller a Chapital. Je me suis coupe assez
fortement. Otez le bandage et laissez-moi voir. Out, c'est une coupure
profunde. I don't know what time it is. Outside it is getting light. I place
Henry's hand back on the blanket. He draws it to his chest, protectively. Gomez
yawns, and stretches his arms out, cracking his knuckles. "Morning,
kitten," he says, and gets up and lumbers into the bathroom. I can hear
him peeing as Henry opens his eyes.

"Where am I?"

"Mercy. September 27, 2006 "

Henry stares up at the ceiling. Then, slowly,
he pushes himself up against the pillows and stares at the foot of the bed. He
leans forward, reaching with his hands under the blanket. I close my eyes.
Henry begins to scream.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006 (Clare is 35, Henry
is 43) Clare: Henry has been home from the hospital for a week. He spends the
days in bed, curled up, facing the window, drifting in and out of
morphine-laced sleep. I try to feed him soup, and toast, and macaroni and
cheese, but he doesn't eat very much. He doesn't say much, either. Alba hovers
around, silent and anxious to please, to bring Daddy an orange, a newspaper,
her Teddy; but Henry only smiles absently and the small pile of offerings sits
unused on his nightstand. A brisk nurse named Sonia Browne comes once a day to
change the dressings and to give advice, but as soon as she vanishes into her
red Volkswagen Beetle Henry subsides into his vacant-lot persona. I help him to
use the bedpan. I make him change one pair of pajamas for another. I ask him
how he feels, what he needs, and he answers vaguely or not at all. Although
Henry is right here in front of me, he has disappeared. I'm walking down the
hall past the bedroom with a basket of laundry in my arms and I see Alba
through the slightly open door, standing next to Henry, who is curled up in
bed. I stop and watch her. She stands still, her arms hanging at her side, her
black braids dangling down her back, her blue turtleneck distorted from being
pulled on. Morning light floods the room, washes everything yellow.

"Daddy?" Alba says, softly. Henry
doesn't respond. She tries again, louder. Henry turns toward her, rolls over.
Alba sits down on the bed. Henry has his eyes closed.

"Daddy?"

"Hmm?"

"Are you dying?"

Henry opens his eyes and focuses on Alba.
"No." "Alba said you died."

"That's in the future, Alba. Not yet. Tell
Alba she shouldn't tell you those kinds of things." Henry runs his hand
over the beard that's been growing since we left the hospital. Alba sits with
her hands folded in her lap and her knees together.

"Are you going to stay in bed all the time
now?"

Henry pulls himself up so he is leaning against
the headboard. "Maybe." He is rummaging in the drawer of the
nightstand, but the painkillers are in the bathroom.

"Why?"

"Because I feel like shit, okay?"

Alba shrinks away from Henry, gets up off the
bed. "Okay!" she says, and she is opening the door and almost
collides with me and is startled and then she silently flings her arms around
my waist and I pick her up, so heavy in my arms now. I carry her into her room
and we sit in the rocker, rocking together, Alba's hot face against my neck.
What can I tell you, Alba? What can I say?

Wednesday and Thursday October 18 and 19, and
Thursday, October 26, 2006 (Clare is 35, Henry is 43)

Clare: I'm standing in my studio with a roll of
armature wire and a bunch of drawings. I've cleared off the big work table, and
the drawings are neatly pinned up on the wall. Now I stand and try to summon up
the piece in my mind's eye. I try to imagine it 3-D. Life size. I snip off a
length of wire and it springs away from the huge roll; I begin to shape a
torso. I weave the wire into shoulders, ribcage, and then a pelvis. I pause.
Maybe the arms and legs should be articulated? Should I make feet or not? I
start to make a head and then realize that I don't want any of this. I push it
all under the table and begin again with more wire. Like an angel. Every angel
is terrifying. And yet, alas, I invoke you, almost deadly birds of the soul...
It is only the wings that I want to give him. I draw in the air with the thin
metal, looping and weaving; I measure with my arms to make a wingspan, I repeat
the process, mirror-reversed, for the second wing, comparing symmetry as though
I'm giving Alba a haircut, measuring by eye, feeling out the weight, the
shapes. I hinge the wings together, and then I get up on the ladder and hang
them from the ceiling. They float, air encompassed by lines, at the level of my
breasts, eight feet across, graceful, ornamental, useless. At first I imagined
white, but I realize now that that's not it. I open the cabinet of pigments and
dyes. Ultramarine, Yellow Ochre, Raw Umber, Viridian, Madder Lake. No. Here it
is: Red Iron Oxide. The color of dried blood. A terrible angel wouldn't be
white, or would be whiter than any white I can make. I set the jar on the
counter, along with Bone Black. I walk to the bundles of fiber that stand,
fragrant, in the far corner of the studio. Kozo and linen; transparency and
pliancy, a fiber that rattles like chattering teeth combined with one that is
soft as lips. I weigh out two pounds of kozo, tough and resilient bark that
must be cooked and beaten, broken and pounded. I heat water in the huge pot
that covers two burners on the stove. When it is boiling I feed the kozo into
it, watching it darken and slowly take in water. I measure in soda ash and
cover the pot, turn on the exhaust hood. I chop a pound of white linen into
small pieces, fill the beater with water, and start it rending and tearing up
the linen into a fine white pulp. Then I make myself coffee and sit staring out
the window across the yard at the house.

At that moment:

Henry: My mother is sitting on the foot of my bed.
I don't want her to know about my feet. I close my eyes and pretend to be
asleep. "Henry?" she says. "I know you're awake. C'mon, buddy,
rise and shine." I open my eyes. It's Kimy. "Mmm. Morning."

"It's 2:30 in the afternoon. You should
get out of bed." "I can't get out of bed, Kimy. I don't have any
feet."

"You got wheelchair," she says.
"Come on, you need a bath, you need a shave, pee-yoo, you smell like an
old man." Kimy stands up, looking very grim. She peels the covers off of
me and I lie there like a shelled shrimp, cold and flaccid in the afternoon
sunlight. Kimy browbeats me into sitting in the wheelchair, and she wheels me
to the door of the bathroom, which is too narrow for the chair to pass.

"Okay," Kimy says, standing in front
of me with her hands on her hips. "How we gonna do this? Huh?"

"I don't know, Kimy. I'm just the gimp; I
don't actually work here."

"What kind of word is that, gimp?"

"It's a highly pejorative slang word used
to describe cripples."

Kimy looks at me as though I am eight and have
used the word fuck in her presence (I didn't know what it meant, I only knew it
was forbidden). "I think it's 'sposed to be disabled, Henry." She
leans over and unbuttons my pajama top.

"I've got hands" I say, and finish
the unbuttoning myself. Kimy turns around, brusque and grumpy, and turns on the
tap, adjusts the temperature, places the plug in the drain. She rummages in the
medicine cabinet, brings out my razor, shaving soap, the beaver-hair shaving
brush. I can't figure out how to get out of the wheelchair. I decide to try
sliding off the seat; I push my ass forward, arch my back, and slither toward
the floor. I wrench my left shoulder and bang my butt as I go down, but it's
not too bad. In the hospital the physical therapist, an encouraging young
person named Penny Featherwight, had several techniques for getting in and out
of the chair, but they all had to do with chair/bed and chair/chair situations.
Now I'm sitting on the floor and the bathtub looms like the white cliffs of
Dover above me. I look up at Kimy, eighty-two years old, and realize that I'm
on my own, here. She looks at me and it's all pity, that look. I think fuck it,
I have to do this somehow, I can't let Kimy look at me like that. I shrug out
of my pajama bottoms, and begin to unwrap the bandages that cover the dressings
on my legs. Kimy looks at her teeth in the mirror. I stick my arm over the side
of the tub and test the bath water.

"If you throw some herbs in there you can
have stewed gimp for supper." "Too hot?" Kimy asks.

"Yeah."

Kimy adjusts the faucets and then leaves the
bathroom, pushing the wheelchair out of the doorway. I gingerly remove the
dressing from my right leg. Under the wrappings the skin is pale and cold. I
put my hand at the folded-over part, the flesh that cushions the bone. I just
took a Vicodin a little while ago. I wonder if I could take another one without
Clare noticing. The bottle is probably up there in the medicine cabinet. Kimy
comes back carrying one of the kitchen chairs. She plops it down next to me. I
remove the dressing from the other leg.

"She did a nice job," Kimy says.

"Dr. Murray? Yeah, it's a big improvement,
much more aerodynamic."

Kimy laughs. I send her to the kitchen for
phone books. When she puts them next to the chair I raise myself so I'm sitting
on them. Then I scramble onto the chair, and sort of fall/roll into the
bathtub. A huge wave of water sloshes out of the tub onto the tile. I'm in the
bathtub. Hallelujah. Kimy turns off the water, and dries her legs with a towel.
I submerge.

Later:

Clare: After hours of cooking I strain the kozo
and it, too, goes into the beater. The longer it stays in the beater, the finer
and more bone-like it will be. After four hours, I add retention aid, clay,
pigment. The beige pulp suddenly turns a deep dark earth red. I drain it into
buckets and pour it into the waiting vat. When I walk back to the house Kimy is
in the kitchen making the kind of tuna fish casserole that has potato chips
crumbled over it.

"How'd it go?" I ask her.

"Real good. He's in the living room."
There is a trail of water between the bathroom and the living room in
Kimy-sized footprints. Henry is sleeping on the sofa with a book spread open on
his chest. Borges"

Ficciones. He is shaved and I lean over him and
breathe; he smells fresh, his damp gray hair sticking up all ways. Alba is
chattering to Teddy in her room. For a moment I feel as though I've time
traveled, as though this is some stray moment from before, but then I let my
eyes travel down Henry's body to the flatnesses at the end of the blanket, and
I know that I am only here and now. The next morning it's raining. I open the
door of the studio and the wire wings await me, floating in the morning gray
light. I turn on the radio; it's Chopin, rolling etudes like waves over sand. I
don rubber boots, a bandanna to keep my hair out of the pulp, a rubber apron. I
hose down my favorite teak and brass mold and deckle, uncover the vat, set up a
felt to couch the paper onto. I reach down into the vat and agitate the slurry
of dark red to mix the fiber and water. Everything drips. I plunge the mold and
deckle into the vat, and carefully bring it up, level, streaming water. I set
it on the corner of the vat and the water drains from it and leaves a layer of
fiber on the surface; I remove the deckle and press the mold onto the felt,
rocking it gently and as I remove it the paper remains on the felt, delicate
and shiny. I cover it with another felt, wet it, and again: I plunge the mold
and deckle down, bring it up, drain it, couch it. I lose myself in the
repetition, the piano music floating over the water sloshing and dripping and
raining. When I have a post of paper and felt, I press it in the hydraulic
paper press. Then I go back to the house and eat a ham sandwich. Henry is
reading. Alba is at school. After lunch, I stand in front of the wings with my
post of freshly made paper. I am going to cover the armature with a paper
membrane. The paper is damp and dark and wants to tear but it drapes over the
wire forms like skin. I twist the paper into sinews, into cords that twist and
connect. The wings are bat wings now, the tracing of the wire is evident below
the gaunt paper surface. I dry the paper I haven't used yet, heating it on
sheets of steel. Then I begin to tear it into strips, into feathers. When the
wings are dry I will sew these on, one by one. I begin to paint the strips,
black and gray and red. Plumage, for the terrible angel, the deadly bird. A
week later, in the evening: