The time traveler's wife (49 page)

"I want to go to the hospital," she
tells me.

"Maybe we should call a cab," I say.
"It's awfully late."

"Gomez said to call no matter what time it
was."

"Okay." I dial Gomez and Charisse.
The phone rings sixteen times, and then Gomez picks up, sounding like a man on
the bottom of the sea.

"Muh?" says Gomez.

"Hey, Comrade. It's time."

He mutters something that sounds like
"mustard eggs." Then Charisse sets on the phone and tells me that
they are on their way. I hang up and call Dr. Montague, and leave a message
with her answering service. Clare is crouched on all fours, rocking back and
forth. I get down on the floor with her.

"Clare?"

She looks up at me, still rocking.
"Henry...why did we decide to do this again?" "Supposedly when
it's over they hand you a baby and let you keep it." "Oh, yeah."

Fifteen minutes later we are climbing into
Gomez's Volvo. Gomez yawns as he helps me maneuver Clare into the back seat.
"Do not even think of drenching my car in amniotic fluid," he says to
Clare amiably. Charisse runs into the house for garbage bags and covers the
seats. We hop in and away we go. Clare leans against me and clenches my hands
in hers.

"Don't leave me," she says.

"I won't" I tell her. I meet Gomez's
eyes in the rearview mirror. "It hurts," Clare says. "Oh, God,
it hurts."

"Think of something else. Something
nice," I say. We are racing down Western Avenue, headed south. There's
hardly any traffic.

"Tell me... "

I cast about and come up with my most recent
sojourn into Clare's childhood. "Remember the day we went to the lake,
when you were twelve? And we went swimming, and you were telling me about
getting your period?" Clare is gripping my hands with bone-shattering
strength.

"Did I?"

"Yeah, you were sort of embarrassed but
also real proud of your-Setf- ?.. You were wearing a pink and green bikini, and
these yellow sunglasses with hearts molded into the frames."

"I remember—ah!—oh, Henry, it hurts, it
hurts!"

Charisse turns around and says, "Come on,
Clare, it's just the baby leaning on your spine, you've got to turn,
okay?" Clare tries to change her position.

"Here we are," Gomez says, turning
into Mercy Hospital's Emergency Unloading Zone.

"I'm leaking," Clare says. Gomez
stops the car, jumps out, and we gently remove Clare from the car. She takes
two steps and her water breaks.

"Good timing, kitten," Gomez says.
Charisse runs ahead with our paperwork, and Gomez and I walk Clare slowly
through ER and down long corridors to the OB wing. She stands leaning against
the nurses' station while they nonchalantly prepare a room for her.

"Don't leave me," Clare whispers.

"I won't" I tell her again. I wish I
could be sure about this. I am feeling cold and a little nauseous. Clare turns
and leans into me. I wrap my arms around her. The baby is a hard roundness
between us. Come out, come out wherever you are. Clare is panting. A fat blond
nurse comes and tells us the room is ready. We all troop in. Clare immediately
gets down on the floor on her hands and knees. Charisse starts putting things
away, clothes in the closet, toiletries in the bathroom. Gomez and I stand
watching Clare helplessly. She is moaning. We look at each other. Gomez shrugs.
Charisse says, "Hey Clare, how about a bath? You'll feel better in warm
water."

Clare nods. Charisse makes a motion with her
hands at Gomez that means shoo. Gomez says, "I think I'll go have a
smoke," and leaves.

"Should I stay?" I ask Clare.

"Yes! Don't go—stay where I can see
you."

"Okay." I walk into the bathroom to
run the bathwater. Hospital bathrooms creep me out. They always smell like
cheap soap and diseased flesh. I turn on the tap, wait for the water to get
warm.

"Henry! Are you there?" Clare calls
out. I stick my head back into the room. "I'm here."

"Stay in here," Clare commands, and
Charisse takes my place in the bathroom. Clare makes a sound that I have never
heard a human being make before, a deep despairing groan of agony. What have I
done to her? I think of twelve-year-old Clare laughing and covered with wet
sand on a blanket, in her first bikini, at the beach. Oh, Clare, I'm sorry, I'm
sorry. An older black nurse comes in and checks Clare's cervix.

"Good girl," she coos to Clare.
"Six centimeters."

Clare nods, smiles, and then grimaces. She
clutches her belly and doubles over, moaning louder. The nurse and I hold her.
Clare gasps for breath, and then starts to scream. Amit Montague walks in and
rushes to her.

"Baby baby baby, hush—" The nurse is
giving Dr. Montague a bunch of information that means nothing to me. Clare is
sobbing. I clear my throat. My voice comes out in a croak. "How about an
epidural?"

"Clare?"

Clare nods. People crowd into the room with
tubes and needles and machines. I sit holding Clare's hand, watching her face.
She is lying on her side, whimpering, her face wet with sweat and tears as the
anesthesiologist hooks up an IV and inserts a needle into her spine. Dr.
Montague is examining her, and frowning at the fetal monitor.

"What's wrong?" Clare asks her.
"Something's wrong."

"The heartbeat is very fast. She is
scared, your little girl. You have to be calm, Clare, so the baby can be calm,
yes?" "It hurts so much."

"That is because she is big." Amit
Montague's voice is quiet, soothing. The burly walrus-mustachioed
anesthesiologist looks at me, bored, over Claire's body. "But now we are
giving you a little cocktail, eh, some narcotics sonic analgesic, soon you will
relax, and the baby will relax, yes?" Clare nods, yes. Dr. Montague
smiles. "And Henry, how are you?"

"Not very relaxed." I try to smile. I
could use some of whatever it is they are giving Clare. I am experiencing
slight double vision; I breathe deeply and it goes away.

"Things are improving: see?" says Dr.
Montague. "It is like a cloud that passes over, the pain goes away, we
take it somewhere and leave it by the side of the road, all by itself, and you
and the little one are still here, yes? It is pleasant here, we will take our
time, there is no hurry
    
" The
tension has left Clare's face. Her eyes are fixed on Dr. Montague. The machines
beep. The room is dim. Outside the sun is rising. Dr. Montague is watching the
fetal monitor. "Tell her you are fine, and she is fine. Sing her a song,
yes?"

"Alba, it's okay," Clare says softly.
She looks at me. "Say the poem about the lovers on the carpet."

I blank, and then I remember. I feel
self-conscious reciting Rilke in front of all these people, and so I begin:
" Engell: Es ware ein Platz, den wir nicht wissen—"

"Say it in English," Clare
interrupts.

"Sorry." I change my position, so
that I am sitting by Clare's belly with my back to Charisse and the nurse and
the doctor, I slide my hand under Clare's button-strained shirt. I can feel the
outline of Alba through Clare's hot skin.

"Angel!" I say to Clare, as though we
are in our own bed, as though we have been up all night on less momentous
errands,

Angel!: If there were a place that we didn't
know of and there, on some unsayable carpet, lovers displayed what they could
never bring to mastery here— the bold exploits of their high-flying hearts,
their towers of pleasure, their ladders that have long since been standing
where there was no ground, leaning just on each other, trembling,— and could
master all this, before the surrounding spectators, the innumerable soundless
dead:

Would these, then, throw down their final,
forever saved-up, forever hidden, unknown to us, eternally valid coins of
happiness before the at last genuinely smiling pair on the gratified carpet?

"There," says Dr. Montague, clicking
off the monitor. "Everyone is serene." She beams at us all, and
glides out the door, followed by the nurse. I accidentally catch the eye of the
anesthesiologist, whose expression plainly says What kind of a pussy are you,
anyway?

Clare: The sun is coming up and I am lying numb
on this strange bed in this pink room and somewhere in the foreign country that
is my uterus Alba is crawling toward home, or away from home. The pain has left
but I know that it has not gone far, that it is sulking somewhere in a corner
or under the bed and it will jump out when I least expect it. The contractions
come and go, remote, muffled like the peal of bells through fog. Henry lies
down next to me. People come and go. I feel like throwing up, but I don't.
Charisse gives me shaved ice out of a paper cup; it tastes like stale snow. I
watch the tubes and the red blinking lights and I think about Mama. I breathe.
Henry watches me. He looks so tense and unhappy. I start to worry again that he
will vanish. "It's okay," I say. He nods. He strokes my belly. I'm
sweating. It's so hot in here. The nurse comes in and checks on me. Amit checks
on me. I am somehow alone with Alba in the midst of everyone. It's okay, I tell
her. You're doing fine, you're not hurting me. Henry gets up and paces back and
forth until I ask him to stop. I feel as though all my organs are becoming
creatures, each with its own agenda, its own train to catch. Alba is tunneling
headfirst into me, a bone and flesh excavator of my flesh and bone, a deepener
of my depths. I imagine her swimming through me, I imagine her falling into the
stillness of a morning pond, water parting at her velocity. I imagine her face,
I want to see her face. I tell the anesthesiologist I want to feel something.
Gradually the numbness recedes and the pain comes back, but it's different pain
now. It's okay pain. Time passes. Time passes and the pain begins to roll in
and out as though it's a woman standing at an ironing board, passing the iron
back and forth, back and forth across a white tablecloth. Amit comes in and
says it's time, time to go to the delivery room. I am shaved and scrubbed and
moved onto a gurney and rolled through hallways. I watch the ceilings of the
hallways roll by, and Alba and I are rolling toward meeting each other, and
Henry is walking beside us. In the delivery room everything is green and white.
I smell detergent, it reminds me of Etta, and I want Etta but she is at
Meadowlark, and I look up at Henry who is wearing surgical scrubs and I think why
are we here we should be at home and then I feel as though Alba is surging,
rushing and I push without thinking and we do this again and again like a game,
like a song. Someone says Hey, where'd the Dad go? I look around but Henry is
gone, he is nowhere not here and I think God damn him, but no, I don't mean it
God, but Alba is coming, she is coming and then I see Henry, he stumbles into
my vision, disoriented and naked but here, he's here! and Amit says Sucre Dieu!
and then Ah, she has crowned, and I push and Alba's head comes out and I put my
hand down to touch her head, her delicate slippery wet velvet head and I push
and push and Alba tumbles into Henry's waiting hands and someone says Oh! and I
am empty and released and I hear a sound like an old vinyl record when you put
the needle in the wrong groove and then Alba yells out and suddenly she is
here, someone places her on my belly and I look down and her face, Alba's face,
is so pink and creased and her hair is so black and her eyes blindly search and
her hands reach out and Alba pulls herself up to my breasts and she pauses,
exhausted by the effort, by the sheer fact of everything. Henry leans over me
and touches her forehead, and says, "Alba."

Later:

Clare: It's the evening of Alba's first day on
earth. I'm lying in bed in the hospital room surrounded by balloons and teddy
bears and flowers with Alba in my arms. Henry is sitting cross-legged on the
foot of the bed taking pictures of us. Alba has just finished nursing and she
blows colostrum bubbles from her tiny lips and then falls asleep, a soft warm
bag of skin and fluid against my nightgown. Henry finishes the roll of film and
unloads the camera.

"Hey," I say, suddenly remembering.
"Where did you go? In the delivery room?"

Henry laughs. "You know, I was hoping you
hadn't noticed that. I thought maybe you were so preoccupied—" "Where
were you?"

"I was wandering around my old elementary
school in the middle of the night." "For how long?" I ask.

"Oh, god. Hours. It was beginning to get
light when I left. It was winter and they had the heat turned way down. How
long was I gone?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe five minutes?"

Henry shakes his head. "I was frantic. I
mean, I had just abandoned you, and there I was just drifting around uselessly
through the hallways of Francis Parker.... It was so...I felt so.." Henry
smiles. "But it turned out okay, hmm?"

I laugh. "'All's well that ends
well."

"'Thou speakest wiser than thou art ware
of.'" There is a quiet knock on the door; Henry says, "Come in!"
and Richard steps into the room and then stops, hesitant. Henry turns and says,
"Dad—" and then stops, and then jumps off the bed and says,
"Come in, have a seat." Richard is carrying flowers and a small teddy
bear which Henry adds to the pile on the windowsill.