The time traveler's wife (59 page)

Henry: Clare has cajoled me into getting
dressed and has enlisted Gomez to carry me out the back door, across the yard,
and into her studio. The studio is lit with candles; there are probably a
hundred of them, more, on tables and on the floor, and on the windowsills.
Gomez sets me down on the studio couch, and retreats to the house. In the
middle of the studio a white sheet is suspended from the ceiling, and I turn
around to see if there's a projector, but there isn't. Clare is wearing a dark
dress, and as she moves around the room her face and hands float white and
disembodied.

"Want some coffee?" she asks me. I
haven't had any since before the hospital. "Sure," I reply. She pours
two cups, adds cream, and brings me one. The hot cup feels familiar and good in
my hand. "I made you something," Clare says.

"Feet? I could use some feet."

"Wings," she says, dropping the white
sheet to the floor. The wings are huge and they float in the air, wavering in
the candlelight. They are darker than the darkness, threatening but also
redolent of longing, of freedom, of rushing through space. The feeling of
standing solidly, on my own two feet, of running, running like flying. The
dreams of hovering, of flying as though gravity has been rescinded and now is
allowing me to be removed from the earth a safe distance, these dreams come back
to me in the twilit studio. Clare sits down next to me. I feel her looking at
me. The wings are silent, their edges ragged. I cannot speak. Siehe, ich lebe.
Woraus? Weder Kindheit noch Zukunft! werden weniger... Uberzahliges Dasein!
entspringt reir Herzen. (Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor
future/grows any smaller.. .Superabundant being/ wells up in my heart.)

"Kiss me," Clare says, and I turn to
her, white face and dark lips floating in the dark, and I submerge, I fly, I am
released: being wells up in my heart.

FEET DREAMS

October/November, 2006 (Henry is 43)

Henry: I dream that I am at the Newberry,
giving a Show and Tell to some graduate students from Columbia College. I'm
showing them incunabula, early printed books. I show them the Gutenberg
Fragment, Caxton's Game and Play of Chess, the Jensen Eusebius. It's going
well, they are asking good questions. I rummage around on the cart, looking for
this special book I just found in the stacks, something I never knew we had.
It's in a heavy red box. There's no title, just the call number, CASE WING f ZX
983.D 453, stamped in gold under the Newberry insignia. I place the box on the
table and set out the pads. I open the box, and there, pink and perfect, are my
feet. They are surprisingly heavy. As I set them on the pads the toes all
wiggle, to say Hi, to show me they can still do it. I begin to speak about
them, explaining the relevance of my feet to fifteenth century Venetian
printing. The students are taking notes. One of them, a pretty blonde in a
shiny sequined tank top, points at my feet, and says, "Look, they're all
white!" And it's true, the skin has gone dead white, the feet are lifeless
and putrid. I sadly make a note to myself to send them up to Conservation first
thing tomorrow.

In my dream I am running. Everything is fine. I
run along the lake, from Oak Street Beach, heading north. I feel my heart
pumping, my lungs smoothly rising and falling. I am moving right along. What a
relief, I think. I was afraid I'd never run again, but here I am, running. It's
great. But things begin to go wrong. Parts of my body are falling off. First my
left arm goes. I stop and pick it up off the sand and brush it off and put it
back on, but it isn't very securely attached and it comes off again after only
half a mile. So I carry it in my other arm, thinking maybe when I get it back
home I can attach it more tightly. But then the other arm goes,

and I have no arms at all to even pick up the
arms I've lost. So I continue running. It's not too bad; it doesn't hurt. Soon
I realize that my cock has dislodged and fallen into the right leg of my
sweatpants, where it is banging around in an annoying manner, trapped by the
elastic at the bottom. But I can't do anything about it, so I ignore it. And then
I can feel that my feet are all broken up like pavement inside my shoes, and
then both of my feet break off at the ankles and I fall face-first onto the
path. I know that if I stay there I will be trampled by other runners, so I
begin to roll. I roll and roll until I roll into the lake, and the waves roll
me under, and I wake up gasping.

I dream that I am in a ballet. I am the star
ballerina, I am in my dressing room being swathed in pink tulle by Barbara, who
was my mom's dresser. Barbara is a tough cookie, so even though my feet hurt
like hell I don't complain as she tenderly encases the stumps in long pink
satin toe shoes. When she finishes I stagger up from my chair and cry out.
"Don't be a sissy," says Barbara, but then she relents and gives me a
shot of morphine. Uncle Ish appears at the door of the dressing room and we
hurry down endless backstage hallways. I know that my feet hurt even though I
cannot see them or feel them. We rush on, and suddenly I am in the wings and
looking onto the stage I realize that the ballet is The Nutcracker, and I am
the Sugar Plum Fairy. For some reason this really bugs me. This isn't what I
was expecting. But someone gives me a little shove, and I totter on stage. And
I dance. I am blinded by the lights, I dance without thinking, without knowing
the steps, in an ecstasy of pain. Finally I fall to my knees, sobbing, and the
audience rises to their feet, and applauds. Friday, November 3, 2006 (Clare is
35, Henry is 43)

Clare: Henry holds up an onion and looks at me
gravely and says, "This...is an onion." I nod. "Yes. I've read
about them."

He raises one eyebrow. "Very good. Now, to
peel an onion, you take a sharp knife, lay the aforementioned onion sideways on
a cutting board, and remove each end, like so. Then you can peel the onion,
like so. Okay. Now, slice it into cross-sections. If you're making onion rings,
you just pull apart each slice, but if you're making soup or spaghetti sauce or
something you dice it, like this.. "

Henry has decided to teach me to cook. All the
kitchen counters and cabinets are too high for him in his wheelchair. We sit at
the kitchen table, surrounded by bowls and knives and cans of tomato sauce.
Henry pushes the cutting board and knife across the table to me, and I stand up
and awkwardly dice the onion. Henry watches patiently. "Okay, great. Now,
green peppers: you run the knife around here, then pull out the stem..."

We make marinara sauce, pesto, lasagna. Another
day it's chocolate chip cookies, brownies, creme brulee. Alba is in heaven.
"More dessert," she begs. We poach eggs and salmon, make pizza from
scratch. I have to admit that it's kind of fun. But I'm terrified the first
night I cook dinner by myself. I'm standing in the kitchen surrounded by pots
and pans, the asparagus is overcooked and I burn myself taking the monkfish out
of the oven. I put everything on plates and bring it into the dining room where
Henry and Alba are sitting at their places. Henry smiles, encouragingly. I sit
down; Henry raises his glass of milk in the air: "To the new cook!"
Alba clinks her cup against his, and we begin to eat. I sneak glances at Henry,
eating. And as I'm eating, I realize that everything tastes fine. "It's
good, Mama!" Alba says, and Henry nods. "It's terrific, Clare," Henry
says, and we stare at each other and I think, Don't leave me.

WHAT GOES
AROUND COMES AROUND

Monday, December 18, 2006/Sunday, January 2,
1994 (Henry is 43)

Henry: I wake up in the middle of the night
with a thousand razor-toothed insects gnawing on my legs and before I can even
shake a Vicodin out of the bottle I am falling. I double up, I am on the floor
but it's not our floor, it's some other floor, some other night. Where am I?
Pain makes everything seem shimmery, but it's dark and there's something about
the smell, what does it remind me of? Bleach. Sweat. Perfume, so familiar—but
it couldn't be—

Footsteps walking up stairs, voices, a key
unlocking several locks (where can I hide?) the door opens, I'm crawling across
the floor as the light snaps on and explodes in my head like a flashbulb and a
woman whispers, "Oh my god." I'm thinking No, this just can't be
happening, and the door shuts and I hear Ingrid say, "Celia, you've got to
go" and Celia protests, and as they stand on the other side of the door
arguing about it I look around desperately but there's no way out. This must be
Ingrid's apartment on Clark Street where I have never been but here is all her
stuff, overwhelming me, the Eames chair, the kidney-shaped marble coffee table
loaded with fashion magazines, the ugly orange couch we used to—I cast around
wildly for something to wear, but the only textile in this minimal room is a
purple and yellow afghan that's clashing with the couch, so I grab it and wind
it around myself, hoist myself onto the couch and Ingrid opens the door again.
She stands quietly for a long moment and looks at me and I look at her and all
I can think is oh, Ing, why did you do this to yourself? The Ingrid who lives
in my memory is the incandescent blond angel of cool I met at Jimbo's Fourth of
July party in 1988; Ingrid Carmichel was devastating and untouchable, encased
in gleaming armor made of wealth, beauty, and ennui. The Ingrid who stands
looking at me now is gaunt and hard and tired; she stands with her head tilted
to one side and looks at me with wonder and contempt. Neither of us seems to
know what to say. Finally she takes off her coat, tosses it on the chair, and
perches at the other end of the couch. She's wearing leather pants. They squeak
a little as she sits down.

"Henry."

"Ingrid."

"What are you doing here?"

"I don't know. I'm sorry. I just—well, you
know." I shrug. My legs hurt so much that I almost don't care where I am.
"You look like shit." "I'm in a lot of pain," "That's
funny. So am I." "I mean physical pain."

"Why?" For all Ingrid cares I could
be spontaneously combusting right in front of her. I pull back the afghan and
reveal my stumps. She doesn't recoil and she doesn't gasp. She doesn't look
away, and when she does she looks me in the eyes and I see that Ingrid, of all
people, understands perfectly. By entirely separate processes we have arrived
at the same condition. She gets up and goes into another room, and when she
comes back she has her old sewing kit in her hand. I feel a surge of hope, and
my hope is justified: Ingrid sits down and opens the lid and it's just like the
good old days, there's a complete pharmacy in there with the pin cushions and
thimbles.

"What do you want?" Ingrid asks.

"Opiates." She picks through a baggie
full of pills and offers me an assortment; I spot Ultram and take two. After I
swallow them dry she gets me a glass of water and I drink it down.

"Well." Ingrid runs her long red
fingernails through her long blond hair. "When are you coming from?"

"December, 2006. What's the date
here?"

Ingrid looks at her watch. "It was New
Year's Day, but now it's January 2. 1994." Oh, no. Please no. "What's
wrong?" Ingrid says.

"Nothing." Today is the day Ingrid
will commit suicide. What can I say to her? Can I stop her? What if I call
someone? "Listen, Ing, I just want to say...." I hesitate. What can I
tell her without spooking her? Does it matter now? Now that she's dead? Even
though she's sitting right here?

"What?"

I'm sweating. "Just...be nice to yourself.
Don't...I mean, I know you aren't very happy—"

"Well, whose fault is that?" Her
bright red lipsticked mouth is set in a frown. I don't answer. Is it my fault?
I don't really know. Ingrid is staring at me as though she expects an answer. I
look away from her. I look at the Maholy-Nagy poster on the opposite wall.
"Henry?" Ingrid says. "Why were you so mean to me?"

I drag my eyes back to her. "Was I? I
didn't want to be."

Ingrid shakes her head. "You didn't care
if I lived or died."

Oh, Ingrid. "I do care. I don't want you
to die."

"You didn't care. You left me, and you
never came to the hospital." Ingrid speaks as though the words choke her.
"Your family didn't want me to come. Your mom told me to stay away."
"You should have come."

I sigh. "Ingrid, your doctor told me I
couldn't visit you." "I asked and they said you never called."

"I called. I was told you didn't want to
talk to me, and not to call anymore." The painkiller is kicking in. The
prickling pain in my legs dulls. I slide my hands under the afghan and place my
palms against the skin of my left stump, and then my right.

"I almost died and you never spoke to me
again."

"I thought you didn't want to talk to me.
How was I supposed to know?"

"You got married and you never called me
and you invited Celia to the wedding to spite me."

I laugh, I can't help it. "Ingrid, Clare
invited Celia. They're friends; I've never figured out why. Opposites attract,
I guess. But anyway, it had nothing to do with you."