CHRISTMAS EVE, THREE 4 page

“That’s a relief,” I tell her. “I’ve lost the receipt.” Laura, Ruth, and Nancy converge on us, looking determined, and interrogate us: how did we meet, what does Henry do for a living, where did he go to college, blah, blah, blah. I never expected that when Henry and I finally appeared in public together it would be simultaneously so nerve-racking and so boring. I tune in again just as Nancy says, “It’s so weird that your name is Henry.”

“Oh?” says Henry, “Why’s that?”

Nancy tells him about the slumber party at Mary Christina’s, the one where the Ouija board said that I was going to marry someone named Henry. Henry looks impressed. “Really?” he asks me.

“Um, yeah.” I suddenly have an urgent need to pee. “Excuse me,” I say, detaching myself from the group and ignoring Henry’s pleading expression. Helen is hot on my heels as I run upstairs. I have to shut the bathroom door in her face to stop her from following me in.

“Open up, Clare,” she says, jiggling the door knob. I take my time, pee, wash my hands, put on fresh lipstick. “Clare,” Helen grumbles, “I’m gonna go downstairs and tell your boyfriend every single hideous thing you’ve ever done in your life if you don’t open this door immed—” I swing the door open and Helen almost falls into the room.

“All right, Clare Abshire,” Helen says menacingly. She closes the door. I sit down on the side of the bathtub and she leans against the sink, looming over me in her pumps. “Fess up. What is really going on with you and this Henry person? I mean, you just stood there and told a big fat stack of lies. You didn’t meet this guy three months ago, you’ve known him for years! What’s the big secret?”

I don’t really know how to begin. Should I tell Helen the truth? No.

Why not? As far as I know, Helen has only seen Henry once, and he didn’t look that different from how he looks right now. I love Helen. She’s strong, she’s crazy, she’s hard to fool. But I know she wouldn’t believe me if I said, time travel, Helen. You have to see it to

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believe it.

“Okay,” I say, gathering my wits. “Yeah, IVe known him for a long time.” “How long?”

“Since I was six.”

Helen’s eyes bug out like a cartoon character’s. I laugh.

“Why.. .how come.. .well, how long have you been dating him?”

“I dunno. I mean, there was a period of time when things were sort of on the verge, but nothing was exactly going on, you know; that is, Henry was pretty adamant that he wasn’t going to mess around with a little kid, so I was just kind of hopelessly nuts about him...”

“But—how come we never knew about him? I don’t see why it all had to be such a hush hush. You could have told me.”

“Well, you kind of knew.” This is lame, and I know it.

Helen looks hurt. “That’s not the same thing as you telling me.” “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Hmpf. So what was the deal?” “Well, he’s eight years older than me.” “So what?”

“So when I was twelve and he was twenty, that was a problem.” Not to mention when I was six and he was forty.

“I still don’t get it. I mean, I can see you not wanting your parents to know you were playing Lolita to his Humbert Humbert, but I don’t get why you couldn’t tell us. We would have been totally into it. I mean, we spent all this time feeling sorry for you, and worrying about you, and wondering why you were such a nun—” Helen shakes her head. “And there you were, screwing Mario the Librarian the whole time—”

I can’t help it, I’m blushing. “I was not screwing him the whole time.” “Oh, come, on.”

“Really! We waited till I was eighteen. We did it on my birthday.”

“Even so, Clare,” Helen begins, but there’s a heavy knock on the bathroom door, and a deep male voice asks, “Are you girls about done in there?”

“To be continued,” Helen hisses at me as we exit the bathroom to the applause of the five guys standing in line in the hallway.

I find Henry in the kitchen, listening patiently as one of Laura’s inexplicable jock friends babbles on about football. I catch the eye of his blond, button-nosed girlfriend, and she hauls

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him off to get another drink.

Henry says, “Look, Clare—Baby Punks!” I look and he’s pointing at Jodie, Laura’s fourteen-year-old sister, and her boyfriend, Bobby Hardgrove. Bobby has a green Mohawk and the full ripped T-shirt/safety pin getup, and Jodie is trying to look like Lydia Lunch but instead just looks like a raccoon having a bad hair day. Somehow they seem like they’re at a Halloween party instead of a Christmas party. They look stranded and defensive. But Henry is enthusiastic. “Wow. How old are they, about twelve?”

“Fourteen.”

“Let’s see, fourteen, from ninety-one, that makes them...oh my god, they were born in 1977. I feel old. I need another drink.” Laura passes through the kitchen holding a tray of Jell-O shots. Henry takes two and downs them both in rapid succession, then makes a face. “Ugh. How revolting.” I laugh. “What do you think they listen to?” Henry says.

“Dunno. Why don’t you go over and ask them?” Henry looks alarmed. “Oh, I couldn’t. I’d scare them.” “I think you’re scared of them.”

“Well, you may be right. They look so tender and young and green, like baby peas or something.”

“Did you ever dress like that?”

Henry snorts derisively. “What do you think? Of course not. Those children are emulating British punk. I am an American punk. No, I used to be into more of a Richard Hell kind of look.”

“Why don’t you go talk to them? They seem lonely”

“You have to come and introduce us and hold my hand.” We venture across the kitchen with caution, like Levi-Strauss approaching a pair of cannibals. Jodie and Bobby have that fight or flight look you see on deer on the Nature Channel.

“Um, hi, Jodie, Bobby.”

“Hi, Clare,” says Jodie. I’ve known Jodie her whole life, but she seems shy all of a sudden, and I decide that the neo-punk apparel must be Bobby’s idea.

“You guys looked kind of, um, bored, so I brought Henry over to meet you. He likes your, um, outfits.”

“Hi,” says Henry, acutely embarrassed. “I was just curious—that is, I was wondering, what do you listen to?”

“Listen to?” Bobby repeats.

“You know—music. What music are you into?”

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Bobby lights up. “Well, the Sex Pistols,” he says, and pauses. “Of course,” says Henry, nodding. “And the Clash?”

“Yeah. And, um, Nirvana...” “Nirvana’s good,” says Henry.

“Blondie?” says Jodie, as though her answer might be wrong. “I like Blondie,” I say. “And Henry likes Deborah Harry.”

“Ramones?” says Henry. They nod in unison. “How about Patti Smith?” Jodie and Bobby look blank.

“Iggy Pop?”

Bobby shakes his head. “Pearl Jam,” he offers.

I intercede. “We don’t have much of a radio station up here,” I tell Henry. “There’s no way for them to find out about this stuff.”

“Oh,” Henry says. He pauses. “Look, do you want me to write some things down for you? To listen to?” Jodie shrugs. Bobby nods, looking serious, and excited. I forage for paper and pen in my purse. Henry sits down at the kitchen table, and Bobby sits across from him. “Okay,” says Henry. “You have to go back to the sixties, right? You start with the Velvet Underground, in New York. And then, right over here in Detroit, you’ve got the MC5, and Iggy Pop and the Stooges. And then back in New York, there were The New York Dolls, and The Heartbreakers—”

“Tom Petty?” says Jodie. “We’ve heard of him.”

“Um, no, this was a totally different band,” says Henry. “Most of them died in the eighties.”

“Plane crash?” asks Bobby.

“Heroin,” Henry corrects. “Anyway, there was Television, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids, and Patti Smith.”

“Talking Heads,” I add.

“Huh. I dunno. Would you really consider them punk?” “They were there.”

“Okay,” Henry adds them to his list, “Talking Heads. So then, things move over to England—”

“I thought punk started in London,” says Bobby.

“No. Of course,” says Henry, pushing back his chair, “some people, me included, believe that punk is just the most recent manifestation of this, this spirit, this feeling, you know, that

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things aren’t right and that in fact things are so wrong that the only thing we can do is to say Fuck It, over and over again, really loud, until someone stops us.”

“ Yes,” Bobby says quietly, his face glowing with an almost religious fervor under his spiked hair. “Yes.”

“You’re corrupting a minor,” I tell Henry.

“Oh, he would get there anyway, without me. Wouldn’t you?” “I’ve been trying, but it ain’t easy, here.”

“I can appreciate that” says Henry. He’s adding to the list. I look over his shoulder. Sex Pistols, The Clash, Gang of Four, Buzzcocks, Dead Kennedys, X, The Mekons, The Raincoats, The Dead Boys, New Order, The Smiths, Lora Logic, The Au Pairs, Big Black, PiL, The Pixies, The Breeders, Sonic Youth...

“Henry, they’re not going to be able to get any of that up here.” He nods, and jots the phone number and address for Vintage Vinyl at the bottom of the sheet. “You do have a record player, right?”

“My parents have one,” Bobby says. Henry winces.

“What do you really like?” I ask Jodie. I feel as though she’s fallen out of the conversation during the male bonding ritual Henry and Bobby are conducting.

“Prince,” she admits. Henry and I let out a big Whoo! and I start singing 1999 as loud as I can, and Henry jumps up and we’re doing a bump and grind across the kitchen. Laura hears us and runs off to put the actual record on and just like that, it’s a dance party.

HENRY: We’re driving back to Clare’s parents’ house from Laura’s party. Clare says, “You’re awfully quiet.”

“I was thinking about those kids. The Baby Punks.” “Oh, yeah. What about them?”

“I was trying to figure out what would cause that kid—” “Bobby.”

“—Bobby, to revert, to latch on to music that was made the year he was born...”

“Well, I was really into the Beatles,” Clare points out. “They broke up the year before I was born.”

“Yeah, well, what is that about? I mean, you should have been swooning over Depeche Mode, or Sting or somebody. Bobby and his girlfriend ought to be listening to The Cure if they want to dress up. But instead they’ve stumbled into this thing, punk, that they don’t know anything about—”

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“I’m sure it’s mostly to annoy their parents. Laura was telling me that her dad won’t let Jodie leave the house dressed like that. She puts everything in her backpack and changes in the ladies’ room at school,” says Clare.

“But that’s what everybody did, back when. I mean, it’s about asserting your individualism, I understand that, but why are they asserting the individualism of 1977? They ought to be wearing plaid flannel.”

“Why do you care?” Clare says.

“It depresses me. It’s a reminder that the moment I belonged to is dead, and not just dead, but forgotten. None of this stuff ever gets played on the radio, I can’t figure out why. It’s like it never happened. That’s why I get excited when I see little kids pretending to be punks, because I don’t want it all to just disappear.”

“Well,” says Clare, “you can always go back. Most people are glued to the present; you get to be there again and again.”

I think about this. “It’s just sad, Clare. Even when I get to do something cool, like, say, go to see a concert I missed the first time around, maybe a band that’s broken up or somebody that died, it’s sad watching them because I know what’s going to happen.”

“But how is that different from the rest of your life?”

“It isn’t.” We have reached the private road that leads to Clare’s house. She turns in. “Henry?”

“Yeah?”

“If you could stop, now... if you could not time travel any more, and there would be no consequences, would you?”

“If I could stop now and still meet you?” “You’ve already met me.”

“Yes. I would stop.” I glance at Clare, dim in the dark car.

“It would be funny” she says, “I would have all these memories that you would never get to have. It would be like—well, it is like being with somebody who has amnesia. I’ve been feeling that way ever since we got here.”

I laugh. “So in the future you can watch me lurch along into each memory, until I’ve got the complete set. Collect ‘em all.”

She smiles. “I guess so.” Clare pulls into the circular driveway in front of the house. “Home sweet home.”

Later, after we have crept upstairs into our separate rooms and I have put on pajamas and brushed my teeth and sneaked into Clare’s room and remembered to lock the door this time

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and we are warm in her narrow bed, she whispers, “I wouldn’t want you to miss it.” “Miss what?”

“All the things that happened. When I was a kid. I mean, so far they have only halfway happened, because you aren’t there yet. So when they happen to you, then it’s real.”

“I’m on my way.” I run my hand over her belly, and down between her legs. Clare squeals.

“Shhh.”

“Your hand is icy.”

“Sorry.” We fuck carefully, silently. When I finally come it’s so intense that I get a horrible headache, and for a minute I’m afraid I’m going to disappear, but I don’t. Instead I lie in Clare’s arms, cross-eyed with pain. Clare snores, quiet animal snores that feel like bulldozers running through my head. I want my own bed, in my own apartment. Home sweet home. No place like home. Take me home, country roads. Home is where the heart is. But my heart is here. So I must be home. Clare sighs, turns her head, and is quiet. Hi, honey, I’m home. I’m home.

CLARE: It’s a clear, cold morning. Breakfast has been eaten. The car is packed. Mark and Sharon have already left with Daddy for the airport in Kalamazoo. Henry is in the hall saying goodbye to Alicia; I run upstairs to Mama’s room.

“Oh, is it so late?” she asks when she sees me wearing my coat and boots. “I thought you were staying to lunch.” Mama is sitting at her desk, which as always is covered with pieces of paper which are covered with her extravagant handwriting.

“What are you working on?” Whatever it is, it’s full of scratched-out words and doodles.

Mama turns the page face down. She’s very secretive about her writing. “Nothing. It’s a poem about the garden under the snow. It isn’t coming out well at all.” Mama stands up, walks to the window. “Funny how poems are never as nice as the real garden. My poems, anyway.”

I can’t really comment on this because Mama has never let me read one of her poems, so I say, “Well, the garden is beautiful,” and she waves the compliment away. Praise means nothing to Mama, she doesn’t believe it. Only criticism can flush her cheeks and catch her attention. If I were to say something disparaging she would remember it always. There is an awkward pause. I realize that she is waiting for me to leave so she can go back to her writing.

“Bye, Mama,” I say. I kiss her cool face, and escape.

HENRY: We’ve been on the road for about an hour. For miles the highway was bordered by

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pine trees; now we are in flat land full of barbed-wire fences. Neither of us has spoken in a while. As soon as I notice it the silence is strange, and so I say something.

“That wasn’t so bad.” My voice is too cheerful, too loud in the small car. Clare doesn’t answer, and I look over at her. She’s crying; tears are running down her cheeks as she drives, pretending that she’s not crying. I’ve never seen Clare cry before, and something about her silent stoic tears unnerves me. “Clare. Clare, maybe—could you maybe pull over for a minute?” Without looking at me, she slows down and drives onto the shoulder, stops. We are somewhere in Indiana. The sky is blue and there are many crows in the field at the side of the road. Clare leans her forehead against the steering wheel and takes a long ragged breath.

“Clare.” I’m talking to the back of her head. “Clare, I’m sorry. Was it— did I fuck up somehow? What happened? I—”

“It’s not you,” she says under her veil of hair. We sit like this for minutes.

“What’s wrong, then?” Clare shakes her head, and I sit and stare at her. Finally I gather enough courage to touch her. I stroke her hair, feeling the bones of her neck and spine through the thick shimmering waves. She turns and I’m holding her awkwardly across the divided seats and now Clare is crying hard, shuddering.

Then she’s quiet. Then she says, “God damn Mama.”

Later we are sitting in a traffic jam on the Dan Ryan Expressway, listening to Irma Thomas. “Henry? Was it—did you mind very much?”

“Mind what?” I ask, thinking about Clare crying.

But she says, “My family? Are they—did they seem—?” “They were fine, Clare. I really liked them. Especially Alicia.”

“Sometimes I just want to push them all into Lake Michigan and watch them sink.”

“Um, I know the feeling. Hey, I think your dad and your brother have seen me before. And Alicia said something really strange just as we were leaving.”

“I saw you with Dad and Mark once. And Alicia definitely saw you in the basement one day when she was twelve.”

“Is that going to be a problem?”

“No, because the explanation is too weird to be believed.” We both laugh, and the tension that has ridden with us all the way to Chicago dissipates. Traffic begins to accelerate. Soon Clare stops in front of my apartment building. I take my bag from the trunk, and I watch as Clare pulls away and glides down Dearborn, and my throat closes up. Hours later I identify what I am feeling as loneliness, and Christmas is officially over for another year.

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Date: 2016-04-22; view: 451