The time traveler's wife (17 page)

I laugh. "But it will be exciting! Like
Mary Poppins, or Peter Pan."

She squeezes my hands just a little.
"Think for a minute, darling: in fairy tales it's always the children who
have the fine adventures. The mothers have to stay at home and wait for the
children to fly in the window."

I look at the pile of clothes lying crumpled on
the ground where Henry has left them. I pick them up and fold them. "Just
a minute," I say, and I find the clothes box and put Henry's clothes in
it. "Let's go back to the house. It's past lunchtime." I help her off
the rock. The wind is roaring in the grass, and we bend into it and make our
way toward the house. When we come to the rise I turn and look back over the
clearing. It's empty. A few nights later, I am sitting by Grandma's bed,
reading Mrs. Dalloway to her. It's evening. I look up; Grandma seems to be
asleep. I stop reading, and close the book. Her eyes open.

"Hello," I say.

"Do you ever miss him?" she asks me.
"Every day. Every minute."

"Every minute," she says. "Yes.
It's that way, isn't it?" She turns on her side and burrows into the
pillow.

"Good night," I say, turning out the
lamp. As I stand in the dark looking down at Grandma in her bed, self-pity
floods me as though I have been injected with it. It's that way, isn't it?
Isn't it.

EAT OR BE EATEN

Saturday, November 30, 1991 (Henry is 28, Clare
is 20)

Henry: Clare has invited me to dinner at her
apartment. Charisse, Clare's roommate, and Gomez, Charisse's boyfriend, will
also be dining. At 6:59 p.m. Central Standard Time, I stand in my Sunday best
in Clare's vestibule with my finger on her buzzer, fragrant yellow freesia and
an Australian Cabernet in my other arm, and my heart in my mouth. I have not
been to Clare's before, nor have I met any of her friends. I have no idea what
to expect. The buzzer makes a horrible sound and I open the door. "All the
way up!" hollers a deep male voice. I plod up four flights of stairs. The
person attached to the voice is tall and blond, sports the world's most
immaculate pompadour and a cigarette and is wearing a Solidarnosc T-shirt. He
seems familiar, but I can't place him. For a person named Gomez he looks
very...Polish. I find out later that his real name is Jan Gomolinski.

"Welcome, Library Boy!" Gomez booms.

"Comrade!" I reply, and hand him the
flowers and the wine. We eyeball each other, achieve detente, and with a
flourish Gomez ushers me into the apartment. It's one of those wonderful
endless railroad apartments from the twenties—a long hallway with rooms
attached almost as afterthoughts. There are two aesthetics at work here, funky
and Victorian. This plays out in the spectacle of antique petit point chairs
with heavy carved legs next to velvet Elvis paintings. I can hear Duke
Ellington's I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good playing at the end of the hall,
and Gomez leads me in that direction. Clare and Charisse are in the kitchen.
"My kittens, I have brought you a new toy," Gomez intones. "It
answers to the name of Henry, but you can call it Library Boy" I meet
Clare's eyes. She shrugs her shoulders and holds her face out to be kissed; I
oblige with a chaste peck and turn to shake hands with Charisse, who is short
and round in a very pleasing way, all curves and long black hair. She has such
a kind face that I have an urge to confide something, anything, to her, just to
see her reaction. She's a small Filipino Madonna. In a sweet, Don't Fuck With
Me voice she says, "Oh, Gomez, do shut up. Hello, Henry. I'm Charisse
Bonavant. Please ignore Gomez, I just keep him around to lift heavy
objects."

"And sex. Don't forget the sex,"
Gomez reminds her. He looks at me. "Beer?"

"Sure." He delves into the fridge and
hands me a Blatz. I pry off the cap and take a long pull. The kitchen looks as
though a Pillsbury dough factory has exploded in it. Clare sees the direction
of my gaze. I suddenly recollect that she doesn't know how to cook.

"It's a work in progress," says
Clare.

"It's an installation piece," says
Charisse.

"Are we going to eat it?" asks Gomez.
I look from one to the other, and we all burst out laughing. "Do any of
you know how to cook?"

"No."

"Gomez can make rice."

"Only Rice-A-Roni."

"Clare knows how to order pizza."

"And Thai—I can order Thai, too."

"Charisse knows how to eat."

" Shut up, Gomez," say Charisse and
Clare in unison.

"Well, uh.. .what was that going to
be?" I inquire, nodding at the disaster on the counter. Clare hands me a
magazine clipping. It's a recipe for Chicken and Shiitake Risotto with Winter
Squash and Pine Nut Dressing. It's from Gourmand, and there are about twenty
ingredients. "Do you have all this stuff?"

Clare nods. "The shopping part I can do.
It's the assembly that perplexes."

I examine the chaos more closely. "I could
make something out of this."

"You can cook?" I nod.

"It cooks! Dinner is saved! Have another
beer!" Gomez exclaims. Charisse looks relieved, and smiles warmly at me.
Clare, who has been hanging back almost fearfully, sidles over to me and
whispers, "You're not mad?" I kiss her, just a tad longer than is
really polite in front of other people. I straighten up, take off my jacket, and
roll up my sleeves. "Give me an apron," I demand. "You,
Gomez—open that wine. Clare, clean up all that spilled stuff, it's turning to
cement. Charisse, would you set the table?"

One hour and forty-three minutes later we are
sitting around the dining room table eating Chicken Risotto Stew with Pureed
Squash. Everything has lots of butter in it. We are all drunk as skunks.

Clare: The whole time Henry is making dinner
Gomez is standing around the kitchen making jokes and smoking and drinking beer
and whenever no one is looking he makes awful faces at me. Finally Charisse
catches him and draws her finger across her throat and he stops. We are talking
about the most banal stuff: our jobs, and school, and where we grew up, and all
the usual things that people talk about when they meet each other for the first
time. Gomez tells Henry about his job being a lawyer, representing abused and
neglected children who are wards of the state. Charisse regales us with tales
of her exploits at Lusus Naturae, a tiny software company that is trying to
make computers understand when people talk to them, and her art, which is
making pictures that you look at on a computer. Henry tells stories about the
Newberry Library and the odd people who come to study the books.

"Does the Newberry really have a book made
out of human skin?" Charisse asks Henry.

"Yep. The Chronicles of Nawat Wuzeer
Hydembed. It was found in the palace of the King of Delhi in 1857. Come by some
time and I'll pull it out for you."

Charisse shudders and grins. Henry is stirring
the stew. When he says "Chow time," we all flock to the table. All
this time Gomez and Henry have been drinking beer and Charisse and I have been
sipping wine and Gomez has been topping up our glasses and we have not been
eating much but I do not realize how drunk we all are until I almost miss
sitting down on the chair Henry holds for me and Gomez almost sets his own hair
on fire while lighting the candles. Gomez holds up his glass. "The
Revolution!"

Charisse and I raise our glasses, and Henry
does, too. "The Revolution!" We begin eating, with enthusiasm. The
risotto is slippery and mild, the squash is sweet, the chicken is swimming in
butter. It makes me want to cry, it's so good. Henry takes a bite, then points
his fork at Gomez. "Which revolution?"

"Pardon?"

"Which revolution are we toasting?"
Charisse and I look at each other in alarm, but it is too late. Gomez smiles
and my heart sinks. "The next one."

"The one where the proletariat rises up
and the rich get eaten and capitalism is vanquished in favor of a classless
society?"

"That very one."

Henry winks at me. "That seems rather hard
on Clare. And what are you planning to do with the intelligentsia?"

"Oh," Gomez says, "we will
probably eat them, too. But we'll keep you around, as a cook. This is outstanding
grub."

Charisse touches Henry's arm, confidentially.
"We aren't really going to eat anybody," she says. "We are just
going to redistribute their assets."

"That's a relief," Henry replies.
"I wasn't looking forward to cooking Clare." Gomez says, "It's a
shame, though. I'm sure Clare would be very tasty." "I wonder what
cannibal cuisine is like?" I say. "Is there a cannibal
cookbook?" " The Cooked and The Raw," says Charisse. Henry
objects. "That's not really a how-to. I don't think Levi-Strauss gives any
recipes."

"We could just adapt a recipe," says
Gomez, taking another helping of the chicken. "You know, Clare with
Porcini Mushrooms and Marinara Sauce over Linguini. Or Breast of Clare a la
Orange. Or—"

"Hey," I say. "What if I don't
want to be eaten?"

"Sorry, Clare," Gomez says gravely.
"I'm afraid you have to be eaten for the greater good."

Henry catches my eye, and smiles. "Don't
worry, Clare; come the Revolution 'I'll hide you at the Newberry. You can live
in the stacks and I'll feed you Snickers and Doritos from the Staff Lunchroom.
They'll never find you."

I shake my head. "What about 'First, we
kill all the lawyers'?"

"No," Gomez says. "You can't do
anything without lawyers. The Revolution would get all balled up in ten minutes
if lawyers weren't there to keep it in line."

"But my dad's a lawyer," I tell him,
"so you can't eat us after all."

"He's the wrong kind of lawyer" Gomez
says. "He does estates for rich people. I, on the other hand, represent
the poor oppressed children—"

"Oh, shut up, Gomez," says Charisse.
"You're hurting Clare's feelings."

"I'm not! Clare wants to be eaten for the
Revolution, don't you, Clare?"

"No." "Oh."

"What about the Categorical
Imperative?" asks Henry. "Say what?"

"You know, the Golden Rule. Don't eat
other people unless you are willing to be eaten."

Gomez is cleaning his nails with the tines of
his fork. "Don't you think it's really Eat or Be Eaten that makes the
world go round?"

"Yeah, mostly. But aren't you yourself a
case in point for altruism?" Henry asks.

"Sure, but I am widely considered to be a
dangerous nutcase." Gomez says this with feigned indifference, but I can
see that he is puzzled by Henry. "Clare," he says, "what about
dessert?"

"Ohmigod, I almost forgot," I say,
standing up too fast and grabbing the table for support. "I'll get
it."

"I'll help you" says Gomez, following
me into the kitchen. I'm wearing heels and as I walk into the kitchen I catch
the door sill and stagger forward and Gomez grabs me. For a moment we stand
pressed together and I feel his hands on my waist, but he lets me go.
"You're drunk, Clare," Gomez tells me.

"I know. So are you." I press the
button on the coffee maker and coffee begins to drip into the pot. I lean
against the counter and carefully take the cellophane off the plate of
brownies. Gomez is standing close behind me, and he says very quietly, leaning
so that his breath tickles my ear, "He's the same guy."

"What do you mean?"

"That guy I warned you about. Henry, he's
the guy—"

Charisse walks into the kitchen and Gomez jumps
away from me and opens the fridge. "Hey," she says. "Can I
help?"

"Here, take the coffee cups... " We
all juggle cups and saucers and plates and brownies and make it safely back to
the table. Henry is waiting as though he's at the dentist, with a look of
patient dread. I laugh, it's so exactly the look he used to have when I brought
him food in the Meadow...but he doesn't remember, he hasn't been there yet.
"Relax," I say. "It's only brownies. Even I can do
brownies." Everyone laughs and sits down. The brownies turn out to be kind
of undercooked. "Brownies tartare," says Charisse. "Salmonella
fudge," says Gomez. Henry says, "I've always liked dough," and
licks his fingers. Gomez rolls a cigarette, lights it, and takes a deep drag.

Henry: Gomez lights a cigarette and leans back
in his chair. There's something about this guy that bugs me. Maybe it's the
casual possessiveness toward Clare, or the garden variety Marxism? I'm sure
I've seen him before. Past or future? Let's find out. "You look very familiar,"
I say to him.

"Mmm? Yeah, I think we've seen each other
around."

I've got it. "Iggy Pop at the Riviera
Theater?"

He looks startled. "Yeah. You were with
that blond girl, Ingrid Carmichel, I always used to see you with." Gomez
and I both look at Clare. She is staring intently at Gomez, and he smiles at
her. She looks away, but not at me. Charisse comes to the rescue. "You saw
Iggy without me?"