The time traveler's wife (35 page)

(1:48 p.m.)

Henry: I'm sitting on a radiator in a musty
room full of boxes of prayer books. Gomez is pacing back and forth, smoking. He
looks terrific in his tux. I feel like I'm impersonating a game show host.
Gomez paces and flicks his ashes into a teacup. He's making me even more
nervous than I already am.

"You've got the ring?" I ask for the
gazillionth time.

"Yeah. I've got the ring."

He stops pacing for a moment and looks at me.
"Want a drink?"

"Yeah." Gomez produces a flask and
hands it to me. I uncap it and take a swallow. It's very smooth Scotch. I take
another mouthful and hand it back. I can hear people laughing and talking out
in the vestibule. I'm sweating, and my head aches. The room is very warm. I
stand up and open the window, hang my head out, breathe. It's still raining.
There's a noise in the shrubbery. I open the window farther and look down.
There I am, sitting in the dirt, under the window, soaking wet, panting. He
grins at me and gives me the thumbs up.

(1:55 p.m.)

Clare: We're all standing in the vestibule of
the church. Daddy says, "Let's get this show on the road," and knocks
on the door of the room Henry is dressing in. Gomez sticks his head out and
says, "Give us a minute." He throws me a look that makes my stomach
clench and pulls his head in and shuts the door. I am walking toward the door
when Gomez opens it again, and Henry appears, doing up his cuff links. He's
wet, dirty, and unshaven. He looks about forty. But he's here, and he gives me
a triumphant smile as he walks through the doors of the church and down the
aisle.

Sunday, June 13, 1976 (Henry is 30)

Henry: I am lying on the floor in my old
bedroom. I'm alone, and it's a perfect summer night in an unknown year. I lie
there swearing and feeling like an idiot for a while. Then I get up and go into
the kitchen and help myself to several of Dad's beers.

Saturday, October 23, 1993 (Henry is 38, and
30, Clare is 22) (2:37p.m.)

Clare: We are standing at the altar. Henry
turns to me and says, "I, Henry, take you, Clare, to be my wife. I promise
to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will
love you and honor you all the days of my life." I think: remember this. I
repeat the promise to him. Father Compton smiles at us and says,".. .What
God has joined, men must not divide." I think: that's not really the
problem. Henry slides the thin silver ring over my finger into place above the
engagement ring. I place his plain gold band on his finger, the only time he
will ever wear it. The Mass proceeds, and I think this is all that matters:
he's here, I'm here, it doesn't matter how, as long as he's with me. Father
Compton blesses us, and says, "The Mass is ended, go in peace." We
walk down the aisle, arm in arm, together.

(6:26p.m.)

Henry: The reception is just getting underway.
The caterers are rushing back and forth with steel carts and covered trays.
People are arriving and checking their coats. The rain has finally stopped. The
South Haven Yacht Club is on North Beach, a 1920s building done up in paneling
and leather, red carpet, and paintings of ships. It's dark out now, but the
light-

house is blinking away out on the pier. I'm
standing at a window, drinking Glenlivet, waiting for Clare, who has been
whisked away by her mother for some reason I'm not privy to. I see Gomez and
Ben's reflections, heading toward me, and I turn. Ben looks worried. "How
are you?"

"I'm okay. Can you guys do me a
favor?" They nod. "Gomez, go back to the church. I'm there, waiting
in the vestibule. Pick me up, and bring me here. Smuggle me into the downstairs
men's John and leave me there. Ben, keep an eye on me," (I point at my
chest) "and when I tell you to, grab my tux and bring it to me in the
men's room. Okay?"

Gomez asks, "How much time do we
have?"

"Not much."

He nods, and walks away. Charisse approaches,
and Gomez kisses her on the forehead and continues on. I turn to Ben, who looks
tired. "How are you?" I ask him. Ben sighs. "Kind of fatigued.
Um, Henry?"

"Hmm?"

"When are you coming from?"

"2002."

"Can you.. .Look, I know you don't like
this, but..."

"What? It's okay, Ben. Whatever you want.
It's a special occasion."

"Tell me: am I still alive?" Ben
isn't looking at me; he stares at the band, tuning up in the ballroom.
"Yes. You're doing fine. I just saw you a few days ago; we played
pool." Ben lets his breath out in a rush. "Thank you."

"No problem." Tears are welling up in
Ben's eyes. I offer him my handkerchief, and he takes it, but then hands it
back unused and goes off in search of the men's room.

(7:04 p.m.)

Clare: Everyone is sitting down to dinner and
no one can find Henry. I ask Gomez if he's seen him, and Gomez just gives me
one of his Gomez looks and says that he's sure Henry will be here any minute.
Kimy comes up to us, looking very fragile and worried in her rose silk dress.
"Where is Henry?" she asks me.

"I don't know, Kimy."

She pulls me toward her and whispers in my ear,
"I saw his young friend Ben carrying a pile of clothing out of the
Lounge." Oh, no. If Henry has snapped back to his present it will be hard
to explain. Maybe I could say that there was an emergency? Some kind of library
emergency that required Henry's immediate attention. But all his co-workers are
here. Maybe I could say Henry has amnesia, has wandered away

"There he is," Kimy says. She
squeezes my hand. Henry is standing in the doorway scanning the crowd, and sees
us. He comes running over. I kiss him. "Howdy, stranger." He is back
in the present, my younger Henry, the one who belongs here. Henry takes my arm,
and Kimy's arm, and leads us in to dinner. Kimy chuckles, and says something to
Henry that I don't catch. "What'd she say?" I ask as we sit down.
"She asked me if we were planning a menage a trois for the wedding
night." I turn lobster red. Kimy winks at me. (7:16 p.m.)

Henry: I'm hanging out in the club Library,
eating canapes and reading a sumptuously bound and probably never opened first
edition of Heart of Darkness. Out of the corner of my eye I see the manager of
the club speeding toward me. I close the book and replace it on the shelf.

"I'm sorry, sir, I'm afraid I'll have to
ask you to leave." No shirt, no shoes, no service.

"Okay." I stand up, and as the
manager turns his back blood rushes to my head and I vanish. I come to on our
kitchen floor on March 2, 2002, laughing. I've always wanted to do that.

(7:21 p.m.)

Clare: Gomez is making a speech: "Dear
Clare, and Henry, family and friends, members of the jury... wait, scratch
that. Dearly beloved, we have gathered here this evening on the shores of the
Land of Singledom to wave our handkerchiefs at Clare and Henry as they embark together
on their voyage on the Good Ship Matrimony. And while we are sad to watch them
bid farewell to the joys of single life, we are confident that the
much-ballyhooed state of Wedded Bliss will be a more than adequate new address.
Some of us may even join them there shortly unless we can think of a way to
avoid it. And so, let us have a toast: to Clare Abshire DeTamble, a beautiful
artbabe who deserves every happiness that may befall her in her new world. And
to Henry DeTamble, a damn fine fellow and a lucky son of a bitch: may the Sea
of Life stretch before you like glass, and may you always have the wind at your
backs. To the happy couple!" Gomez leans over and kisses me on the mouth,
and I catch his eyes for a moment, and then the moment is gone.

(8:48 p.m.)

Henry: We have cut and eaten the wedding cake.
Clare has thrown her bouquet (Charisse caught it) and I have thrown Clare's
garter (Ben, of all people, caught that). The band is playing Take the A Train,
and people are dancing. I have danced with Clare, and Kimy, Alicia, and
Charisse; now I am dancing with Helen, who is pretty hot stuff, and Clare is
dancing with Gomez. As I casually twirl Helen I see Celia Attley cut in on
Gomez, who in turn cuts in on me. As he whirls Helen away I join the crowd by
the bar and watch Clare dancing with Celia. Ben joins me. He's drinking
seltzer. I order vodka and tonic. Ben is wearing Clare's garter around his arm
like he's in mourning.

"Who's that?" he asks me.

"Celia Attley. Ingrid's girlfriend."

"That's weird."

"Yep."

"What's with that guy Gomez?"
"What do you mean?"

Ben stares at me and then turns his head.
"Never mind."

(10:23 p.m.)

Clare: It's over. We have kissed and hugged our
way out of the club, have driven off in our shaving-cream-and-tin-can-covered
car. I pull up in front of the Dew Drop Inn, a tiny, tacky motel on Silver
Lake. Henry is asleep. I get out, check in, get the desk guy to help me walk
Henry into our room and dump him on the bed. The guy brings in the luggage,
eyeballs my wedding dress and Henry's inert state, and smirks at me. I tip him.
He leaves. I remove Henry's shoes, loosen his tie. I take off my dress and lay
it over the armchair. I'm standing in the bathroom, shivering in my slip and
brushing my teeth. In the mirror I can see Henry lying on the bed. He's
snoring. I spit out the toothpaste and rinse my mouth. Suddenly it comes over
me: happiness. And the realization: we're married. Well, I'm married, anyway.
When I turn out the light I kiss Henry goodnight. He smells of alcohol sweat
and Helen's perfume. Goodnight, goodnight, don't let the bedbugs bite. And I
fall asleep, dreamless and happy.

Monday, October 25, 1993 (Henry is 30, Clare is
22)

Henry: The Monday after the wedding Clare and I
are at Chicago City Hall, being married by a judge. Gomez and Charisse are the
witnesses. Afterward we all go out for dinner at Charlie Trotter's, a
restaurant so expensive that the decor resembles the first-class section of an
airplane or a minimalist sculpture. Fortunately, although the food looks like art,
it tastes great. Charisse takes photographs of each course as it appears in
front of us.

"How's it feel, being married?" asks
Charisse.

"I feel very married," Clare says.

"You could keep going," says Gomez.
"Try out all the different ceremonies, Buddhist, nudist..."

"I wonder if I'm a bigamist?" Clare
is eating something pistachio-colored that has several large shrimp poised over
it as though they are nearsighted old men reading a newspaper.

"I think you're allowed to marry the same
person as many times as you want," Charisse says.

"Are you the same person?" Gomez asks
me. The thing I'm eating is covered with thin slices of raw tuna that melt on
my tongue. I take a moment to appreciate them before I answer:

"Yes, but more so."

Gomez is disgruntled and mutters something
about Zen koans, but Clare smiles at me and raises her glass. I tap hers with
mine: a delicate crystal note rings out and falls away in the hum of the
restaurant. And so, we are married.

II A DROP OF BLOOD IN A BOWL OF MILK

"What is it? My dear?"

"Ah, how can we bear it?" "Bear
what?"

"This. For so short a time. How can we
sleep this time away?"

"We can be quiet together, and
pretend—since it is only the beginning—that we have all the time in the
world." "And every day we shall have less. And then none."
"Would you rather, therefore, have had nothing at all?"

"No. This is where I have always been
coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the
mid-point, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run.
But now, my love, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running
elsewhere."

—A. S. Byatt, Possession

MARRIED LIFE

March, 1994 (Clare is 22, Henry is 30)

Clare: And so we are married. At first we live
in a two-bedroom apartment in a two-flat in Ravenswood. It's sunny, with
butter-colored hardwood floors and a kitchen full of antique cabinets and
antiquated appliances. We buy things, spend Sunday afternoons in Crate &
Barrel exchanging wedding presents, order a sofa that can't fit through the
doors of the apartment and has to be sent back. The apartment is a laboratory
in which we conduct experiments, perform research on each other. We discover
that Henry hates it when I absentmindedly click my spoon against my teeth while
reading the paper at breakfast. We agree that it is okay for me to listen to
Joni Mitchell and it is okay for Henry to listen to The Shags as long as the
other person isn't around. We figure out that Henry should do all the cooking
and I should be in charge of laundry and neither of us is willing to vacuum so
We hire a cleaning service. We fall into a routine. Henry works Tuesdays
through Saturdays at the Newberry. He gets up at 7:30 and starts the coffee,
then throws on his running clothes and goes for a run. When he gets back he
showers and dresses, and I stagger out of bed and chat with him while he fixes
breakfast. After we eat, he brushes his teeth and speeds out the door to catch
the El, and I go back to bed and doze for an hour or so. When I get up again
the apartment is quiet. I take a bath and comb my hair and put on my work
clothes. I pour myself another cup of coffee, and I walk into the back bedroom
which is my studio, and I close the door. I am having a hard time, in my tiny
back bedroom studio, in the beginning of my married life. The space that I can
call mine, that isn't full of Henry, is so small that my ideas have become
small. I am like a caterpillar in a cocoon of paper; all around me are sketches
for sculptures, small drawings that seem like moths fluttering against the
windows, beating their wings to escape from this tiny space. I make maquettes,
tiny sculptures that are rehearsals for huge sculptures. Every day the ideas come
more reluctantly, as though they know I will starve them and stunt their
growth. At night I dream about color, about submerging my arms into vats of
paper fiber. I dream about miniature gardens I can't set foot in because I am a
giantess. The compelling thing about making art—or making anything, I
suppose—is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid
there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances. Circe, Nimbue, Artemis,
Athena, all the old sorceresses: they must have known the feeling as they
transformed mere men into fabulous creatures, stole the secrets of the
magicians, disposed armies: ah, look, there it is, the new thing. Call it a
swine, a war, a laurel tree. Call it art. The magic I can make is small magic
now, deferred magic. Every day I work, but nothing ever materializes. I feel
like Penelope, weaving and unweaving. And what of Henry, my Odysseus? Henry is
an artist of another sort, a disappearing artist. Our life together in this
too-small apartment is punctuated by Henry's small absences. Sometimes he
disappears unobtrusively; I might be walking from the kitchen into the hall and
find a pile of clothing on the floor. I might get out of bed in the morning and
find the shower running and no one in it. Sometimes it's frightening. I am
working in my studio one afternoon when I hear someone moaning outside my door;
when I open it I find Henry on his hands and knees, naked, in the hall,
bleeding heavily from his head. He opens his eyes, sees me, and vanishes.
Sometimes I wake up in the night and Henry is gone. In the morning he will tell
me where he's been, the way other husbands might tell their wives a dream they
had: "I was in the Selzer Library in the dark, in 1989." Or: "I
was chased by a German sheperd across somebody's backyard and had to climb a
tree." Or: "I was standing in the rain near my parents' apartment,
listening to my mother sing." I am waiting for Henry to tell me that he
has seen me as a child, but so far this hasn't happened. When I was a child I
looked forward to seeing Henry. Every visit was an event. Now every absence is
a nonevent, a subtraction, an adventure I will hear about when my adventurer
materializes at my feet, bleeding or whistling, smiling or shaking. Now I am
afraid when he is gone.