The time traveler's wife (60 page)

Ingrid says nothing. She's pale under her
makeup. She digs in her coat pocket and brings out a pack of English Ovals and
a lighter.

"Since when do you smoke?" I ask her.
Ingrid hated smoking. Ingrid liked coke and crystal meth and drinks with poetic
names. She extracts a cigarette from the pack between two long nails, and
lights it. Her hands are shaking. She drags on the cigarette and smoke curls
from her lips.

"So how's life without feet?" Ingrid
asks me. "How'd that happen, anyway?"

"Frostbite. I passed out in Grant Park in
January."

"So how do you get around?"

"Wheelchair, mostly."

"Oh. That sucks."

"Yeah," I say. "It does."
We sit in silence for a moment. Ingrid asks, "Are you still married?"

"Yeah." "Kids?"

"One. A girl."

"Oh." Ingrid leans back, drags on her
cigarette, blows a thin stream of smoke from her nostrils. "I wish I had
kids." "You never wanted kids, Ing."

She looks at me, but I can't read the look.
"I always wanted kids. I didn't think you wanted kids, so I never said
anything."

"You could still have kids."

Ingrid laughs. "Could I? Do I have kids,
Henry? In 2006 do I have a husband and a house in Winnetka and 2.5 kids?"

"Not exactly." I shift my position on
the couch. The pain has receded but what's left is the shell of the pain, an
empty space where there should be pain but instead there is the expectation of
pain.

"Not exactly,'" Ingrid mimics.
"How not exactly? Like, as in, 'Not exactly, Ingrid, really you're a bag
lady?'"

"You're not a bag lady."

"So I'm not a bag lady. Okay, great."
Ingrid stubs out her cigarette and crosses her legs. I always loved Ingrid's
legs. She's wearing boots with high heels. She and Celia must have been to a
party. Ingrid says, "We've eliminated the extremes: I'm not a suburban
matron and I'm not homeless. Come on, Henry, give me some more hints."

I am silent. I don't want to play this game.

"Okay, let's make it multiple choice.
Let's see... A) I'm a stripper in a real sleazy club on Rush Street. Um, B) I'm
in prison for ax-murdering Celia and feeding her to Malcolm. Heh. Yeah, ah, C)
I'm living on the Rio del Sol with an investment banker. How 'bout it Henry? Do
any of those sound good to you?"

"Who's Malcolm?"

"Celia's Doberman." Figures. Ingrid
plays with her lighter, flicking it on and off. "How about D) I'm
dead?" I flinch. "Does that appeal to you at all?" "No. It
doesn't."

"Really? I like that one best."
Ingrid smiles. It's not a pretty smile. It's more like a grimace. "I like
that one so much that it's given me an idea." She gets up and strides
across the room and down the hall. I can hear her opening and shutting a
drawer. When she reappears she has one hand behind her back. Ingrid stands in
front of me, and says, "Surprise!" and she's pointing a gun at me.
It's not a very big gun. It's slim and black and shiny. Ingrid holds it close
to her waist, casually, as though she's at a cocktail party. I stare at the
gun. Ingrid says, "I could shoot you."

"Yes. You could," I say.

"Then I could shoot myself," she
says.

"That could also happen."

"But does it?"

"I don't know, Ingrid. You get to
decide."

"Bullshit, Henry. Tell me," Ingrid
commands.

"All right. No. It doesn't happen that
way." I try to sound confident. Ingrid smirks. "But what if I want it
to happen that way?"

"Ingrid, give me the gun."

"Come over here and get it."

"Are you going to shoot me?" Ingrid
shakes her head, smiling. I climb off the couch, onto the floor, crawl toward
Ingrid, trailing the afghan, slowed by the painkiller. She backs away, holding
the gun trained on me. I stop.

"Come on, Henry. Nice doggie. Trusting
doggie." Ingrid flicks off the safety catch and takes two steps toward me.
I tense. She is aiming point blank at my head. But then Ingrid laughs, and
places the muzzle of the gun against her temple. "How about this, Henry?
Does it happen like this?"

"No." No! She frowns. "Are you
sure, Henry?" Ingrid moves the gun to her chest. "Is this better?
Head or heart, Henry?" Ingrid steps forward. I could touch her. I could
grab her—Ingrid kicks me in the chest and I fall backward, I am sprawled on the
floor looking up at her and Ingrid leans over and spits in my face.

"Did you love me?" Ingrid asks,
looking down at me.

"Yes," I tell her.

"Liar," Ingrid says, and she pulls
the trigger.

Monday, December 18, 2006 (Clare is 35, Henry
is 43)

Clare: I wake up in the middle of the night and
Henry is gone. I panic. I sit up in bed. The possibilities crowd into my mind.
He could be run over by cars, stuck in abandoned buildings, out in the cold—I
hear a sound, someone is crying. I think it is Alba, maybe Henry went to see
what was wrong with Alba, so I get up and go into Albas room, but Alba is
asleep, curled around Teddy, her blankets thrown off the bed. I follow the
sound down the hall and there, sitting on the living room floor, there is
Henry, with his head in his hands. I kneel beside him. "What's
wrong?" I ask him. Henry raises his face and I can see the shine of tears
on his cheeks in the streetlight that comes in the windows. "Ingrid's
dead," Henry says. I put my arms around him. "Ingrid's been dead for
a long time," I say softly. Henry shakes his head. "Years,
minutes...same thing," he says. We sit on the floor in silence. Finally
Henry says, "Do you think it's morning yet?"

"Sure." The sky is still dark. No
birds are singing.

"Let's get up," he says. I bring the
wheelchair, help him into it, and wheel him into the kitchen. I bring his
bathrobe and Henry struggles into it. He sits at the kitchen table staring out
the window into the snow-covered backyard. Somewhere in the distance a snowplow
scrapes along a street. I turn on the light. I measure coffee into a filter,
measure water into the coffee maker, turn it on. I get out cups. I open the
fridge, but when I ask Henry what he wants to eat he just shakes his head. I
sit down at the kitchen table opposite Henry and he looks at me. His eyes are
red and his hair is sticking out in many directions. His hands are thin and his
face is bleak.

"It was my fault," Henry says.
"If I hadn't been there..."

"Could you have stopped her?" I ask.

"No. I tried."

"Well, then."

The coffee maker makes little exploding noises.
Henry runs his hands over his face. He says, "I always wondered why she
didn't leave a note." I am about to ask him what he means when I realize
that Alba is standing in the kitchen doorway. She's wearing a pink nightgown
and green mouse slippers. Alba squints and yawns in the harsh light of the
kitchen.

"Hi, kiddo," Henry says. Alba comes
over to him and drapes herself over the side of his wheelchair.
"Mmmmorning," Alba says.

"It's not really morning," I tell
her. "It's really still nighttime."

"How come you guys are up if it's nighttime?"
Alba sniffs. "You're making coffee, so it's morning." "Oh, it's
the old coffee-equals-morning fallacy," Henry says. "There's a hole
in your logic, buddy." "What?" Alba asks. She hates to be wrong
about anything.

"You are basing your conclusion on faulty
data; that is, you are forgetting that your parents are coffee fiends of the
first order, and that we just might have gotten out of bed in the middle of the
night in order to drink MORE COFFEE." He's roaring like a monster, maybe a
Coffee Fiend.

"I want coffee," says Alba. "I
am a Coffee Fiend." She roars back at Henry. But he scoops her off of him
and plops her down on her feet. Alba runs around the table to me and throws her
arms around my shoulders. "Roar!" she yells in my ear. I get up and
pick Alba up. She's so heavy now. "Roar, yourself." I carry her down
the hall and throw her onto her bed, and she shrieks with laughter. The clock
on her nightstand says 4:16 a.m. "See?" I show her. "It's too
early for you to get up." After the obligatory amount of fuss Alba settles
back into bed, and I walk back to the kitchen. Henry has managed to pour us
both coffee. I sit down again. It's cold in here.

"Clare."

"Mmm?"

"When I'm dead—" Henry stops, looks
away, takes a breath, begins again. "I've been getting everything
organized, all the documents, you know, my will, and letters to people, and
stuff for Alba, it's all in my desk." I can't say anything. Henry looks at
me.

"When?" I ask. Henry shakes his head.
"Months? Weeks? Days?" "I don't know, Clare." He does know,
I know he knows.

"You looked up the obituary, didn't
you?" I say. Henry hesitates, and then nods. I open my mouth to ask again,
and then I am afraid.

HOURS, IF NOT
DAYS

Friday, December 24, 2006 (Henry is 43, Clare
is 35)

Henry: I wake up early, so early that the
bedroom is blue in the almost-dawn light. I lie in bed, listening to Clare's
deep breathing, listening to the sporadic noise of traffic on Lincoln Avenue,
crows calling to each other, the furnace shutting off. My legs ache. I prop
myself up on my pillows and find the bottle of Vicodin on my bedside table. I
take two, wash them down with flat Coke. I slide back into the blankets and
turn onto my side. Clare is sleeping face down, with her arms wrapped
protectively around her head. Her hair is hidden under the covers. Clare seems
smaller without her ambiance of hair. She reminds me of herself as a child,
sleeping with the simplicity she had when she was little. I try to remember if
I have ever seen Clare as a child, sleeping. I realize that I never have. It's
Alba that I am thinking of. The light is changing. Clare stirs, turns toward
me, onto her side. I study her face. There are a few faint lines, at the
corners of her eyes and mouth, that are the merest suggestion of the beginnings
of Clare's face in middle age. I will never see that face of hers, and I regret
it bitterly, the face with which Clare will go on without me, which will never
be kissed by me, which will belong to a world that I won't know, except as a
memory of Clare's, relegated finally to a definite past. Today is the
thirty-seventh anniversary of my mother's death. I have thought of her, longed
for her, every day of those thirty-seven years, and my father has, I think,
thought of her almost without stopping. If fervent memory could raise the dead,
she would be our Eurydice, she would rise like Lady Lazarus from her stubborn
death to solace us. But all of our laments could not add a single second to her
life, not one additional beat of the heart, nor a breath. The only thing my need
could do was bring me to her. What will Clare have when I am gone? How can I
leave her? I hear Alba talking in her bed. "Hey," says Alba.
"Hey, Teddy! Shh, go to sleep now." Silence. "Daddy?" I
watch Clare, to see if she will wake up. She is still, asleep.
"Daddy!" I gingerly turn, carefully extricate myself from the
blankets, maneuver myself to the floor. I crawl out of our bedroom, down the
hall and into Alba's room. She giggles when she sees me. I make a growling
noise, and Alba pats my head as though I am a dog. She is sitting up in bed, in
the midst of every stuffed animal she has. "Move over, Red Riding
Hood." Alba scoots aside and I lift myself onto the bed. She fussily
arranges some of the toys around me. I put my arm around her and lean back and
she holds out Blue Teddy to me. "He wants to eat marshmallows."

"It's a little early for marshmallows,
Blue Teddy. How about some poached eggs and toast?"

Alba makes a face. She does it by squinching
together her mouth and eyebrows and nose. "Teddy doesn't like eggs,"
she announces.

"Shhhh. Mama's sleeping."

"Okay" Alba whispers, loudly.
"Teddy wants blue Jell-O." I hear Clare groan and start to get up in
the other room. "Cream of Wheat?" I cajole. Alba considers.
"With brown sugar?" Okay. "You want to make it?" I slide
off the bed. "Yeah. Can I have a ride?"

I hesitate. My legs really hurt, and Alba has
gotten a little too big to do this painlessly, but I can deny her nothing now.
"Sure. Hop on." I am on my hands and knees. Alba climbs onto my back,
and we make our way into the kitchen. Clare is standing sleepily by the sink,
watching coffee drip into the pot. I clamber up to her and butt my head against
her knees and she grabs Alba's arms and hoists her up, Alba giggling madly all
the while. I crawl into my chair. Clare smiles and says, "What's for
breakfast, cooks?"

"Jell-O!" Alba shrieks.

"Mmm. What kind of Jell-O? Cornflake
Jell-O?"

"Nooooo!"

"Bacon Jell-O?"

"Ick!" Alba wraps herself around
Clare, pulls on her hair. "Ouch. Don't, sweetie. Well, it must be oatmeal
Jell-O, then." "Cream of Wheat!"