The time traveler's wife (36 page)

Henry: When you live with a woman you learn
something every day. So far I have learned that long hair will clog up the
shower drain before you can say "Liquid-Plumr"; that it is not
advisable to clip something out of the newspaper before your wife has read it,
even if the newspaper in question is a week old; that I am the only person in
our two-person household who can eat the same thing for dinner three nights in
a row without pouting; and that headphones were invented to preserve spouses
from each other's musical excesses. (How can Clare listen to Cheap Trick? Why
does she like The Eagles? I'll never know, because she gets all defensive when
I ask her. How can it be that the woman I love doesn't want to listen to
Musique du Garrot et de la Farraille?) The hardest lesson is Clare's solitude.
Sometimes I come home and Clare seems kind of irritated; I've interrupted some
train of thought, broken into the dreamy silence of her day. Sometimes I see an
expression on Clare's face that is like a closed door. She has gone inside the
room of her mind and is sitting there knitting or something. I've discovered
that Clare likes to be alone. But when I return from time traveling she is
always relieved to see me. When the woman you live with is an artist, every day
is a surprise. Clare has turned the second bedroom into a wonder cabinet, full
of small sculptures and drawings pinned up on every inch of wall space. There
are coils of wire and rolls of paper tucked into shelves and drawers. The
sculptures remind me of kites, or model airplanes. I say this to Clare one
evening, standing in the doorway of her studio in my suit and tie, home from
work, about to begin making dinner, and she throws one at me; it flies
surprisingly well, and soon we are standing at opposite ends of the hall,
tossing tiny sculptures at each other, testing their aerodynamics. The next day
I come home to find that Clare has created a flock of paper and wire birds,
which are hanging from the ceiling in the living room. A week later our bedroom
windows are full of abstract blue translucent shapes that the sun throws across
the room onto the walls, making a sky for the bird shapes Clare has painted
there. It's beautiful. The next evening I'm standing in the doorway of Clare's
studio, watching her finish drawing a thicket of black lines around a little
red bird. Suddenly I see Clare, in her small room, closed in by all her stuff,
and I realize that she's trying to say something, and I know what I have to do.
Wednesday, April 13, 1994 (Clare is 22, Henry is 30) Clare: I hear Henry's key
in the front door and I come out of the studio as he walks in. To my surprise
he's carrying a television set. We don't own a TV because Henry can't watch it
and I can't be bothered to watch by myself. The TV is an old, small, dusty black
and white set with a broken antennae.

"Hi, honey, I'm home," says Henry,
setting the TV on the dining room table.

"Ugh, it's filthy" I say. "Did
you find it in the alley?"

Henry looks offended. "I bought it at the
Unique. Ten bucks."

"Why?"

"There's a program on tonight that I
thought we should watch." "But—" I can't imagine what show would
make Henry risk time traveling. "It's okay, I won't sit and stare at it. I
want you to see this." "Oh. What?" I'm so out of touch with
what's on television. "It's a surprise. It's on at eight."

The TV sits on the floor of the dining room
while we eat dinner. Henry refuses to answer any questions about it, and makes
a point of teasing me by asking what I would do if I had a huge studio.

"What does it matter? I have a closet.
Maybe I'll take up origami."

"Come on, seriously"

"I don't know." I twirl linguine onto
my fork. "I would make every maquette one hundred times bigger. I'd draw
on ten-foot-by-ten-foot pieces of cotton rag paper. I would wear roller skates
to get from one end of the studio to the other. I'd set up huge vats, and a
Japanese drying system, and a ten-pound Reina beater...." I'm captivated
by my mental image of this imaginary studio, but then I remember my real
studio, and I shrug. "Oh well. Maybe someday." We get by okay on
Henry's salary and the interest on my trust fund, but to afford a real studio I
would have to get a job, and then I wouldn't have any time to spend in the
studio. It's a Catch-22. All my artist friends are starving for money or time
or both. Charisse is designing computer software by day and making art at
night. She and Gomez are getting married next month. "What should we get
the Gomezes for a wedding present?"

"Huh? Oh, I dunno. Can't we just give them
all those espresso machines we got?"

"We traded those in for the microwave and
the bread-making machine."

"Oh, yeah. Hey, it's almost eight. Grab
your coffee, let's go sit in the living room." Henry pushes back his chair
and hoists the television, and I carry both our cups of coffee into the living
room. He sets the set on the coffee table and after messing around with an
extension cord and fussing with the knobs we sit on the couch watching a
waterbed commercial on Channel 9. It looks like it's snowing in the waterbed
showroom. "Damn," says Henry, peeking at the screen. "It worked
better in the Unique." The logo for the Illinois Lottery flashes on the
screen. Henry digs in his pants pocket and hands me a small white piece of
paper. "Hold this." It's a lottery ticket.

"My god. You didn't—"

"Shh. Watch." With great fanfare, the
Lottery officials, serious men in suits, announce the numbers on the randomly
chosen ping pong balls that pop one by one into position on the screen. 43,2,
26,51,10,11. Of course they match the numbers on the ticket in my hand. The
Lottery men congratulate us. We have just won eight million dollars. Henry
clicks off the TV. He smiles. "Neat trick, huh?"

"I don't know what to say." Henry
realizes that I am not jumping for joy.

"Say, 'Thank you, darling, for providing
the bucks we need to buy a house.' That would work for me."
"But—Henry—it's not real."

"Sure it is. That's a real lottery ticket.
If you take it to Katz's Deli, Minnie will give you a big hug and the State of
Illinois will write you a real check."

"But you knew."

"Sure. Of course. It was just a matter of
looking it up in tomorrow's Tribune." "We can't...it's
cheating."

Henry smacks himself dramatically on the
forehead. "How silly of me. I completely forgot that you're supposed to
buy tickets without having the slightest idea what the numbers will be. Well,
we can fix it." He disappears down the hall into the kitchen and returns
with a box of matches. He lights a match and holds the ticket up to it.

"No!"

Henry blows out the match. "It doesn't
matter, Clare. We could win the lottery every week for the next year if we felt
like it. So if you have a problem with it, it's no big deal." The ticket
is a little singed on one corner. Henry sits next to me on the couch.
"Tell you what. Why don't you just hang on to this, and if you feel like
cashing it we will, and if you decide to give it to the first homeless person
you meet you could do that—"

"No fair."

"What's no fair?"

"You can't just leave me with this huge
responsibility."

"Well, I'm perfectly happy either way. So
if you think we're cheating the State of Illinois out of the money they've
scammed from hard-working suckers, then let's just forget about it. I'm sure we
can think of some other way to get you a bigger studio."

Oh. A bigger studio. It dawns on me, stupid me,
that Henry could win the lottery anytime at all; that he has never bothered to
do so because it's not normal; that he has decided to set aside his fanatical
dedication to living like a normal person so I can have a studio big enough to
roller-skate across; that I am being an ingrate.

"Clare? Earth to Clare...."

"Thank you," I say, too abruptly.
Henry raises his eyebrows. "Does that mean we're going to cash in that
ticket?" "I don't know. It means 'Thank you.'"

"You're welcome." There is an
uncomfortable silence. "Hey, I wonder what's on TV?"
"Snow."

Henry laughs, stands up, and pulls me off the
couch. "Come on, let's go spend our ill-gotten gains." "Where
are we going?"

"I dunno." Henry opens the hall
closet, hands me my jacket. "Hey, let's buy Gomez and Charisse a car for
their wedding."

"I think they gave us wine glasses."
We are galumphing down the stairs. Outside it's a perfect spring night. We
stand on the sidewalk in front of our apartment building, and Henry takes my
hand, and I look at him, and I raise our joined hands and Henry twirls me
around and soon we're dancing down Belle Plaine Avenue, no music but the sound
of cars whooshing by and our own laughter, and the smell of cherry blossoms
that fall like snow on the sidewalk as we dance underneath the trees.

Wednesday, May 18, 1994 (Clare is 22, Henry is
30)

Clare: We are attempting to buy a house.
Shopping for houses is amazing. People who would never invite you into their
homes under any other circumstances open their doors wide, allow you to peer
into their closets, pass judgment on their wallpaper, ask pointed questions
about their gutters. Henry and I have very different ways of looking at houses.
I walk through slowly, consider the woodwork, the appliances, ask questions
about the furnace, check for water damage in the basement. Henry just walks
directly to the back of the house, peers out the back window, and shakes his
head at me. Our realtor, Carol, thinks he is a lunatic. I tell her he is a
gardening fanatic. After a whole day of this, we are driving home from Carol's
office and I decide to inquire about the method in Henry's madness.

"What the hell," I ask, politely,
"are you doing?"

Henry looks sheepish. "Well, I wasn't sure
if you wanted to know this, but I've been in our home-to-be. I don't know when,
but I was—will be— there on a beautiful autumn day, late afternoon. I stood at
a window at the back of the house, next to that little marble topped table you
got from your grandmother, and looked out over the backyard into the window of
a brick building which seemed to be your studio. You were pulling sheets of
paper back there. They were blue. You wore a yellow bandanna to keep your hair
back, and a green sweater and your usual rubber apron and all that. There's a
grape arbor in the yard. I was there for about two minutes. So I'm just trying
to duplicate that view, and when I do I figure that's our house."

"Jeez. Why didn't you mention it? Now I
feel silly."

"Oh, no. Don't. I just thought you would
enjoy doing it the regular way. I mean, you seemed so thorough, and you read
all those books about how to do it, and I thought you wanted to, you know,
shop, and not have it be inevitable."

" Somebody has to ask about termites, and
asbestos, and dry rot, and sump pumps... "

"Exactly. So let us continue as we are,
and surely we will arrive separately at our mutual conclusion."

This does eventually happen, although there are
a couple tense moments before then. I find myself entranced with a white
elephant in East Roger's Park, a dreadful neighborhood at the northern
perimeter of the city. It's a mansion, a Victorian monster big enough for a
family of twelve and their servants. I know even before I ask that it's not our
house; Henry is appalled by it even before we get in the front door. The backyard
is a parking lot for a huge drug store. The inside has the bones of a truly
beautiful house; high ceilings, fireplaces with marble mantels, ornate
woodwork— "Please," I wheedle. "It's so incredible."

"Yeah, incredible is the word. We'd be
raped and pillaged once a week m this thing. Plus it needs total rehab, wiring,
plumbing, new furnace, probably a new roof.... It's just not it." His
voice is final, the voice of one who has seen the future, and has no plans to
mess with it. I sulk for a couple days after that. Henry takes me out for
sushi.

"Tchotchka. Amorta. Heart of my heart.
Speak to me."

"I'm not not speaking to you."

"I know. But you're sulking. And I would
rather not be sulked at, especially for speaking common sense."

The waitress arrives, and we hurriedly consult
our menus. I don't want to bicker in Katsu, my favorite sushi restaurant, a
place we eat at a lot. I reflect that Henry is counting on this, in addition to
the intrinsic happiness of sushi, to placate me. We order goma-ae, hijiki,
futomaki, kappamaki, and an impressive array of raw things on rice rectangles.
Kiko, the waitress, disappears with our order.

"I'm not mad at you." This is only
sort of true. Henry raises one eyebrow. "Okay. Good. What's wrong,
then?"

"Are you absolutely sure this place you
were in is our house? What if you're wrong and we turn down something really
great just because it doesn't have the right view of the backyard?"

"It had an awful lot of our stuff in it to
be anything but our house. I grant you that it might not be our first house—I
wasn't close enough to you to see how old you were. I thought you were pretty
young, but maybe you were just well-preserved. But I swear to you that it's
really nice, and won't it be great to have a studio in the back like that?"