EXPERIENCING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

Friday, May 7, 2004 (Henry is 40, Clare is 32)

HENRY: We are at the opening of Clare’s exhibit at the Chicago Cultural Center. She has been working nonstop for a year, building huge, ethereal bird skeletons out of wire, wrapping them in translucent strips of paper, coating them with shellac until they transmit light. Now the sculptures hang from the high ceiling, and squat on the floor. Some of them are kinetic, motorized: a few beat their wings, and there are two cock skeletons slowly demolishing each other in a corner. An eight-foot-tall pigeon dominates the entrance. Clare is exhausted, and ecstatic. She’s wearing a simple black silk dress, her hair is piled high on her head. People have brought her flowers; she has a bouquet of white roses in her arms, there’s a heap of plastic-wrapped bouquets next to the guest book. It’s very crowded. People circle around, exclaim over each piece, crane their heads back to look at the flying birds. Everyone congratulates Clare. There was a glowing review in this morning’s Tribune. All our friends are here, and Clare’s family has driven in from Michigan. They surround Clare now, Philip, Alicia, Mark and Sharon and their kids, Nell, Etta. Charisse takes pictures of them, and they all smile for her. When she gives us copies of the pictures, a few weeks from now, I will be struck by the dark circles under Clare’s eyes, and by how thin she looks.

I am holding Alba’s hand. We stand by the back wall, out of the crowd. Alba can’t see anything, because everyone is tall, and so I lift her on to my shoulders. She bounces.

Clare’s family has dispersed and she is being introduced to a very well-dressed elderly couple by Leah Jacobs, her dealer. Alba says, “I want Mama.”

“Mama’s busy, Alba,” I say. I am feeling queasy. I bend over and set Alba on the floor. She puts her arms up. “ No. I want Mama.” I sit on the floor and put my head between my knees. I need to find a place where no one can see me. Alba is pulling my ear. “Don’t, Alba,” I say. I look up. My father is making his way to us through the crowd. “Go,” I tell Alba. I give her a little push. “Go see Grandpa.” She starts to whimper. “I don’t see Grandpa. I want Mama.” I am crawling toward Dad. I bump into someone’s legs. I hear Alba screaming,“Mama!” as I vanish.

CLARE: There are masses of people. Everyone presses at me, smiling. I smile at them. The show looks great, and it’s done, it’s up! I’m so happy, and so tired. My face hurts from smiling. Everyone I know is here. I’m talking to Celia when I hear a commotion at the back of the gallery, and then I hear Alba screaming, “Mama!” Where is Henry? I try to get through the crowd to Alba. Then I see her: Richard has lifted her up. People part to let me through. Richard hands Alba to me. She locks her legs around my waist, buries her face in

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my shoulder, wraps her arms around my neck, “Where’s Daddy?” I ask her softly. “Gone,” says Alba.

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

NATURE MORTE

Sunday, July 11, 2004 (Clare is 33, Henry is 41)

CLARE: Henry is sleeping, bruised and caked with blood, on the kitchen floor. I don’t want to move him or wake him. I sit with him on the cool linoleum for a while. Eventually I get up and make coffee. As the coffee streams into the pot and the grounds make little exploding puffs, Henry whimpers and puts his hands over his eyes. It’s obvious that he has been beaten. One eye is swollen shut. The blood seems to have come from his nose. I don’t see any wounds, just radiant purple fist-sized bruises all over his body. He is very thin; I can see all his vertebrae and ribs. His pelvis juts, his cheeks are hollow. His hair has grown down almost to his shoulders, there is gray shot through it. There are cuts on his hands and feet, and insect bites everywhere on his body. He is very tanned, and filthy, grime under nails, dirt sweated into creases of his skin. He smells of grass, blood, and salt. After watching him and sitting with him for a while, I decide to wake him. “Henry,” I say very softly, “wake up, now, you’re home...I stroke his face, carefully, and he opens his eye. I can tell he’s not quite awake. ”Clare,“ he mumbles. ”Clare.“ Tears begin to stream from his good eye, he is shaking with sobbing, and I pull him into my lap. I am crying. Henry is curled in my lap, there on the floor, we shake tightly together, rocking, rocking, crying our relief and our anguish together.

Thursday, December 23, 2004 (Clare is 33, Henry is 41)

CLARE: It’s the day before Christmas Eve. Henry is at Water Tower Place, taking Alba to see Santa at Marshall Field’s while I finish the shopping. Now I’m sitting in the cafe at Border’s Bookstore, drinking cappuccino at a table by the front window and resting my feet with a pile of bulging shopping bags leaning against my chair. Outside the window the day is fading and tiny white lights describe every tree. Shoppers hurry up and down Michigan Avenue, and I can hear the muted clang of the Salvation Army Santa’s bell below me. I turn back to the store, scanning for Henry and Alba, and someone calls my name. Kendrick is coming toward me with his wife, Nancy, and Colin and Nadia in tow.

I can see at a glance that they’ve just come from FAO Schwarz; they have the shell-shocked look of parents freshly escaped from toy-store hell. Nadia comes running up to me squealing “Aunt Clare, Aunt Clare! Where’s Alba?” Colin smiles shyly and holds out his hand to show me that he has a tiny yellow tow truck. I congratulate him and tell Nadia that Alba’s visiting Santa, and Nadia replies that she already saw Santa last week. “What did you ask for?” I query. “A boyfriend,” says Nadia. She’s three years old. I grin at Kendrick and

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Nancy. Kendrick says something, sotto voce, to Nancy, and she says, “Come on, troops, we have to find a book for Aunt Silvie,” and the three of them go pelting off to the bargain tables. Kendrick gestures at the empty chair across from me. “May I?” Sure.

He sits down, sighing deeply. “I hate Christmas.” “You and Henry both.”

“Does he? I didn’t know that.” Kendrick leans against the window and closes his eyes. Just as I think that he’s actually asleep he opens them and says, “Is Henry following his drug regimen?”

“Um, I guess. I mean, as closely as he can, considering that he’s been time traveling a lot lately.”

Kendrick drums his fingers on the table. “How much is a lot?” “Every couple days.”

Kendrick looks furious. “Why doesn’t he tell me these things?” “I think he’s afraid you’ll get upset with him and quit.”

“He’s the only test subject I have who can talk and he never tells me anything!” I laugh. “Join the club.”

Kendrick says, “I’m trying to do science. I need him to tell me when something doesn’t work. Otherwise we’re all just spinning our wheels.”

I nod. Outside it has started to snow. “Clare?”

“Hmm?”

“Why won’t you let me look at Alba’s DNA?”

I’ve had this conversation a hundred times with Henry. “Because first you’d just want to locate all the markers in her genes, and that would be okay. But then you and Henry would start to badger me to let you try out drugs on her, and that is not okay. That’s why.”

“But she’s still very young; she has a better chance of responding positively to the medication.”

“I said no. When Alba is eighteen she can decide for herself. So far, everything you’ve given Henry has been a nightmare.” I can’t look at Kendrick. I say this to my hands, tightly folded on the table.

“But we might be able to develop gene therapy for her—” “People have died from gene therapy.”

Kendrick is silent. The noise level in the store is overwhelming. Then from the babble I

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hear Alba calling, “Mama!” I look up and see her riding on Henry’s shoulders, clutching his head with her hands. Both of them are wearing coonskin caps. Henry sees Kendrick and for a brief moment he looks apprehensive and I wonder what secrets these two men are keeping from me. Then Henry smiles and comes striding toward us, Alba bobbing happily above the crowd. Kendrick rises to greet him, and I push the thought away.

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

BIRTHDAY

Wednesday, May 24, 1989 (Henry is 41, Clare is 18)

HENRY: I come to with a thud and skid across the painful stubble of the Meadow on my side, ending up dirty and bloody at Clare’s feet. She is sitting on the rock, coolly immaculate in a white silk dress, white stockings and shoes, and short white gloves. “Hello, Henry,” she says, as though I have just dropped in for tea.

“What’s up?” I ask. “You look like you’re on your way to your first communion.”

Clare sits up very straight and says, “Today is May 24, 1989.” I think fast. “Happy birthday. Do you happen to have a Bee Gees outfit squirreled away somewhere around here for me?” Without deigning to reply Clare glides off the rock and, reaching behind it, produces a garment bag. With a flourish she unzips it to reveal a tuxedo, pants, and one of those infernal formal shirts that require studs. She produces a suitcase containing underwear, a cummerbund, a bow tie, studs, and a gardenia. I am seriously alarmed, and not forewarned. I ponder the available data. “Clare. We’re not getting married today or anything insane like that, are we? Because I know for a fact that our anniversary is in the fall. October. Late October.”

Clare turns away while I am dressing. “You mean you can’t remember our anniversary? How male.”

I sigh. “Darling, you know I know, I just can’t get at it right now. But anyway. Happy Birthday.”

“I’m eighteen.”

“Heavens, so you are. It seems like only yesterday that you were six.”

Clare is intrigued, as always, with the notion that I have recently visited some other Clare, older or younger. “Have you seen me when I was six lately?”

“Well, just now I was lying in bed with you reading Emma. You were thirty-three. I am forty-one at the moment, and feeling every minute.” I comb through my hair with my fingers and run my hand over my stubble, “I’m sorry, Clare. I’m afraid I’m not at my best for your birthday.” I fasten the gardenia through the buttonhole of the tuxedo and start to do up the studs. “I saw you at six about two weeks ago. You drew me a picture of a duck.”

Clare blushes. The blush spreads like drops of blood in a bowl of milk. “Are you hungry? I made us a feast!”

“Of course I’m hungry. I’m famished, gaunt, and considering cannibalism.” “That won’t be necessary just yet.”

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There is something in her tone that pulls me up. Something is going on that I don’t know about, and Clare expects me to know it. She is practically humming with excitement. I contemplate the relative merits of a simple confession of ignorance versus continuing to fake it. I decide to let it go for a while. Clare is spreading out a blanket which will later end up on our bed. I carefully sit down on it and am comforted by its pale green familiarity. Clare unpacks sandwiches, little paper cups, silverware, crackers, a tiny black jar of supermarket caviar, Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies, strawberries, a bottle of Cabernet with a fancy label, Brie cheese which looks a bit melted, and paper plates.

“Clare. Wine! Caviar!” I am impressed, and somehow not amused. She hands me the Cabernet and the corkscrew. “Um, I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this, but I’m not supposed to drink. Doctor’s orders.” Clare looks crestfallen. “But I can certainly eat.. .I can pretend to be drinking. I mean, if that would be helpful.” I can’t shake the feeling that we are playing house. “I didn’t know you drank. Alcohol. I mean, I’ve hardly ever seen you drink any.”

“Well, I don’t really like it, but since this is a momentous occasion I thought it would be nice to have wine. Champagne probably would have been better, but this was in the pantry, so I brought it along.”

I open the wine and pour us each a small cup. We toast each other silently. I pretend to sip mine. Clare takes a mouthful, swallows it in a businesslike fashion, and says, “Well, that’s not so bad.”

“That’s a twenty-something-dollar bottle of wine.” “Oh. Well, that was marvelous.”

“Clare.” She is unwrapping dark rye sandwiches which seem to be overflowing with cucumbers. “I hate to be obtuse...I mean, obviously it’s your birthday....”

“My eighteenth birthday” she agrees.

“Um, well, to begin with, I’m really upset that I don’t have a present for you...” Clare looks up, surprised, and I realize that I’m warm, I’m on to something here, “but you know I never know when I’m coming, and I can’t bring anything with me...”

“I know all that. But don’t you remember, we worked it all out last time you were here; because on the List today is the last day left and also my birthday. You don’t remember?” Clare is looking at me very intently, as though concentration can move memory from her mind to mine.

“Oh. I haven’t been there yet. I mean, that conversation is still in my future. I wonder why I didn’t tell you then? I still have lots of dates on the list left to go. Is today really the last day? You know, we’ll be meeting each other in the present in a couple years. We’ll see each other then.”

“But that’s a long time. For me.”

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There is an awkward pause. It’s strange to think that right now I am in Chicago, twenty-five years old, going about my business, completely unaware of Clare’s existence, and for that matter, oblivious to my own presence here in this lovely Michigan meadow on a gorgeous spring day which is the eighteenth anniversary of her birth. We are using plastic knives to apply caviar to Ritz crackers. For a while there is much crunching and furious consumption of sandwiches. The conversation seems to have foundered. And then I wonder, for the first time, if perhaps Clare is being entirely truthful with me here, knowing as she does that I am on slippery terms with statements that begin “I never,” since I never have a complete inventory of my past handy at any given moment, since my past is inconveniently compounded with my future. We move on to the strawberries.

“Clare.” She smiles, innocently. “What exactly did we decide, the last time you saw me? What were we planning to do for your birthday?”

She’s blushing again. “Well, this ” she says, gesturing at our picnic. “Anything else? I mean, this is wonderful.”

“Well. Yes.” I’m all ears, because I think I know what’s coming. “Yes?”

Clare is quite pink but manages to look otherwise dignified as she says, “We decided to make love.”

“Ah.” I have, actually, always wondered about Clare’s sexual experiences prior to October 26, 1991, when we met for the first time in the present. Despite some pretty amazing provocation on Clare’s part I have refused to make love to her and have spent many amusing hours chatting with her about this and that while trying to ignore painful hard-ons. But today, Clare is legally, if perhaps not emotionally, an adult, and surely I can’t warp her life too much.. .that is to say, I’ve already given her a pretty weird childhood just by being in her childhood at all. How many girls have their very own eventual husband appearing at regular intervals buck naked before their eyes? Clare is watching me think this through. I am thinking about the first time I made love to Clare and wondering if it was the first time she made love to me. I decide to ask her about this when I get back to my present. Meanwhile, Clare is tidying things back into the picnic basket.

“So?”

What the hell. “Yes.”

Clare is excited and also scared. “Henry. You’ve made love to me lots of times....” “Many, many times.”

She’s having trouble saying it.

“It’s always beautiful,” I tell her. “It’s the most beautiful thing in my life. I will be very gentle.” Having said this I am suddenly nervous. I’m feeling responsible and Humbert

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Humbertish and also as though I am being watched by many people, and all of those people are Clare. I have never felt less sexual in my life. Okay. Deep breath. “I love you.”

We both stand up, lurching a bit on the uneven surface of the blanket. I open my arms and Clare moves into them. We stand, still, embracing there in the Meadow like the bride and groom on top of a wedding cake. And after all, this is Clare, come to my forty-one-year-old self almost as she was when we first met. No fear. She leans her head back. I lean forward and kiss her.

“Clare.”

“Mmmm?”

“You’re absolutely sure we’re alone?” “Everyone except Etta and Nell is in Kalamazoo.”

“Because I feel like I’m on Candid Camera, here.” “Paranoid. Very sad”

“Never mind.”

“We could go to my room.”

“Too dangerous. God, it’s like being in high school.” “What?”

“Never mind.”

Clare steps back from me and unzips her dress. She pulls it over her head and drops it on the blanket with admirable unconcern. She steps out of her shoes and peels off her stockings. She unhooks her bra, discards it, and steps out of her panties. She is standing before me completely naked. It is a sort of miracle: all the little marks I have become fond of have vanished; her stomach is flat, no trace of the pregnancies that will bring us such grief, such happiness. This Clare is a little thinner, and a lot more buoyant than the Clare I love in the present. I realize again how much sadness has overtaken us. But today all of that is magically removed; today the possibility of joy is close to us. I kneel, and Clare comes over and stands in front of me. I press my face to her stomach for a moment, and then look up; Clare is towering over me, her hands in my hair, with the cloudless blue sky around her.

I shrug off my jacket and undo the tie. Clare kneels and we remove the studs deftly and with the concentration of a bomb squad. I take off the pants and underwear. There’s no way to do this gracefully. I wonder how male strippers deal with this problem. Or do they just hop around on stage, one leg in, one out? Clare laughs. “I’ve never seen you get undressed. Not a pretty sight.”

“You wound me. Come here and let me wipe that smirk off your face.”

“Uh-oh.” In the next fifteen minutes I’m proud to say that I have indeed removed all

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traces of superiority from Clare’s face. Unfortunately she’s getting more and more tense, more.. .defended. In fourteen years and heaven only knows how many hours and days spent happily, anxiously, urgently, languorously making love with Clare, this is utterly new to me. I want, if at all possible, for her to feel the sense of wonder I felt when I met her and we made love for what I thought (silly me) was the first time. I sit up, panting. Clare sits up as well, and circles her arms around her knees, protectively.

“You okay?” “I’m afraid.”

“That’s okay.” I’m thinking. “I swear to you that the next time we meet you’re going to practically rape me. I mean, you are really exceptionally talented at this.” I am?

“You are incandescent,” I am rummaging through the picnic basket: cups, wine, condoms, towels. “Clever girl.” I pour us each a cup of wine. “To virginity. ‘ Had we but world enough, and time’ Drink up.” She does, obediently, like a small child taking medicine. I refillher cup, and down my own.

“But you aren’t supposed to drink.”

“It’s a momentous occasion. Bottoms up.” Clare weighs about 120 pounds, but these are Dixie cups. “One more.”

“More? I’ll get sleepy.”

“You’ll relax.” She gulps it down. We squash up the cups and throw them in the picnic basket. I lie down on my back with my arms stretched out like a sunbather, or a crucifixion. Clare stretches out beside me. I gather her in so that we are side by side, facing each other. Her hair falls across her shoulders and breasts in a very beautiful and touching way and I wish for the zillionth time that I was a painter.

“Clare?”

“Hmmm?”

“Imagine yourself as open; empty. Someone’s come along and taken out all your innards, and left only nerve endings.” I’ve got the tip of my index finger on her clit.

“Poor little Clare. No innards.”

“Ah, but it’s a good thing, you see, because there’s all this extra room in there. Think of all the stuff you could put inside you if you didn’t have all those silly kidneys and stomachs and pancreases and what not.”

“Like what?” She’s very wet. I remove my hand and carefully rip open the condom packet with my teeth, a maneuver I haven’t performed in years.

“Kangaroos. Toaster ovens. Penises.”

Clare takes the condom from me with fascinated distaste. She’s lying on her back and she

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unfurls it and sniffs it. “Ugh. Must we?”

Although I often refuse to tell Clare things, I seldom actually lie to her. I feel a twinge of guilt as I say, ‘“Fraid so.” I retrieve it from her, but instead of putting it on I decide that what we really need here is cunnilingus. Clare, in her future, is addicted to oral sex and will leap tall buildings in a single bound and wash the dishes when it’s not her turn in order to get it. If cunnilingus were an Olympic event I would medal, no doubt about it. I spread her out and apply my tongue to her clit.

“Oh God,” Clare says in a low voice. “Sweet Jesus.”

“No yelling,” I warn. Even Etta and Nell will come down to the Meadow to see what’s wrong if Clare really gets going. In the next fifteen minutes I take Clare several steps down the evolutionary ladder until she’s pretty much a limbic core with a few cerebral cortex peripherals. I roll on the condom and slowly, carefully slide into Clare, imagining things breaking and blood cascading around me. She has her eyes closed and at first I think she’s not even aware that I’m actually inside her even though I’m directly over her but then she opens her eyes and smiles, triumphant, beatific.

I manage to come fairly quickly; Clare is watching me, concentrating, and as I come I see her face turn to surprise. How strange things are. What odd things we animals do. I collapse onto her. We are bathed in sweat. I can feel her heart beating. Or perhaps it’s mine.

I pull out carefully and dispose of the condom. We lie, side by side, looking at the very blue sky. The wind is making a sea sound with the grass. I look over at Clare. She looks a bit stunned.

“Hey. Clare.”

“Hey” she says weakly. “Did it hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Did you like it?”

“Oh, yes!” she says, and starts to cry. We sit up, and I hold her for a while. She is shaking.

“Clare. Clare. What’s wrong?”

I can’t make out her reply at first, then: “You’re going away. Now I won’t see you for years and years.”

“Only two years. Two years and a few months.” She is quiet. “Oh, Clare. I’m sorry. I can’t help it. It’s funny, too, because I was just lying here thinking what a blessing today was. To be here with you making love instead of being chased by thugs or freezing to death in some barn or some of the other stupid shit I get to deal with. And when I go back, I’m with you. And today was wonderful.” She is smiling, a little. I kiss her.

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“How come I always have to wait?”

“Because you have perfect DNA and you aren’t being thrown around in time like a hot potato. Besides, patience is a virtue.” Clare is pummel-ing my chest with her fists, lightly. “Also, you’ve known me your whole life, whereas I only meet you when I’m twenty-eight. So I spend all those years before we meet—”

“Fucking other women.”

“Well, yeah. But, unbeknownst to me, it’s all just practice for when I meet you. And it’s very lonely and weird. If you don’t believe me, try it yourself. I’ll never know. It’s different when you don’t care.”

“I don’t want anybody else.” “Good.”

“Henry just give me a hint. Where do you live? Where do we meet? What day?” “One hint. Chicago”

“More.”

“Have faith. It’s all there, in front of you.” “Are we happy?”

“We are often insane with happiness. We are also very unhappy for reasons neither of us can do anything about. Like being separated.”

“So all the time you’re here now you’re not with me then?”

“Well, not exactly. I may end up missing only ten minutes. Or ten days. There’s no rule about it. That’s what makes it hard, for you. Also, I sometimes end up in dangerous situations, and I come back to you broken and messed up, and you worry about me when I’m gone. It’s like marrying a policeman.” I’m exhausted. I wonder how old I actually am, in real time. In calendar time I’m forty-one, but with all this coming and going perhaps I’m really forty-five or -six. Or maybe I’m thirty-nine. Who knows? There’s something I have to tell her; what was it?

“Clare?”

“Henry.”

“When you see me again, remember that I won’t know you; don’t be upset when you see me and I treat you like a total stranger, because to me you will be brand new. And please don’t blow my mind with everything all at once. Have mercy, Clare.”

“I will! Oh, Henry stay!”

“Shh. I’ll be with you.” We lie down again. The exhaustion permeates me and I will be gone in a minute.

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“I love you, Henry. Thank you for.. .my birthday present.” “I love you, Clare. Be good.”

I’m gone.

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

SECRET

Thursday, February 10, 2005 (Clare is 33, Henry is 41)

CLARE: It’s Thursday afternoon and I’m in the studio making pale yellow kozo paper. Henry’s been gone for almost twenty-four hours now, and as usual I’m torn between thinking obsessively about when and where he might be and being pissed at him for not being here and worrying about when he’ll be back. It’s not helping my concentration and I’m ruining a lot of sheets; I plop them off the su and back into the vat. Finally I take a break and pour myself a cup of coffee. It’s cold in the studio, and the water in the vat is supposed to be cold although I have warmed it a little to save my hands from cracking. I wrap my hands around the ceramic mug. Steam wafts up. I put my face over it, inhale the moisture and coffee smell. And then, oh thank you, God, I hear Henry whistling as he comes up the path through the garden, into the studio. He stomps the snow off his boots and shrugs off his coat. He’s looking marvelous, really happy. My heart is racing and I take a wild guess: “May 24, 1989?”

“ Yes, oh, yes!” Henry scoops me up, wet apron and Wellingtons and all, and swings me around. Now I’m laughing, we’re both laughing. Henry exudes delight. “Why didn’t you tell me? I’ve been needlessly wondering all these years. Vixen! Minx!” He’s biting my neck and tickling me.

“But you didn’t know, so I couldn’t tell you.”

“Oh. Right. My God, you’re amazing.” We sit on the grungy old studio couch. “Can we turn up the heat in here?”

“Sure.” Henry jumps up and turns the thermostat higher. The furnace kicks in. “How long was I gone?”

“Almost a whole day.”

Henry sighs. “Was it worth it? A day of anxiety in exchange for a few really beautiful hours?”

“Yes. That was one of the best days of my life.” I am quiet, remembering. I often invoke the memory of Henry’s face above me, surrounded by blue sky, and the feeling of being permeated by him. I think about it when he’s gone and I’m having trouble sleeping.

“Tell me....”

“Mmmm?” We are wrapped around each other, for warmth, for reassurance. “What happened after I left?”

“I picked everything up and made myself more or less presentable and went back up to

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the house. I got upstairs without running into anyone and I took a bath. After a while Etta started hammering on the door wanting to know why I was in the tub in the middle of the day and I had to pretend I was sick. And I was, in a way...I spent the summer lounging around, sleeping a lot. Reading. I just kind of rolled up into myself. I spent some time down in the Meadow, sort of hoping you might show up. I wrote you letters. I burned them. I stopped eating for a while and Mom dragged me to her therapist and I started eating again. At the end of August my parents informed me that if I didn’t ‘perk up’ I wouldn’t be going to school that fall, so I immediately perked up because my whole goal in life was to get out of the house and go to Chicago. And school was a good thing; it was new, I had an apartment, I loved the city. I had something to think about besides the fact that I had no idea where you were or how to find you. By the time I finally did run into you I was doing pretty well; I was into my work, I had friends, I got asked out quite a bit—”

“Oh?”

“Sure.”

“Did you go? Out?”

“Well, yeah. I did. In the spirit of research.. .and because I occasionally got mad that somewhere out there you were obliviously dating other women. But it was all a sort of black comedy. I would go out with some perfectly nice pretty young art boy, and spend the whole evening thinking about how boring and futile it was and checking my watch. I stopped after five of them because I could see that I was really pissing these guys off. Someone put the word out at school that I was a dyke and then I got a wave of girls asking me out.”

“I could see you as a lesbian.”

“Yeah; behave yourself or I’ll convert.”

“I’ve always wanted to be a lesbian.” Henry is looking dreamy and heavy-lidded; not fair when I am wound up and ready to jump on him. He yawns. “Oh, well, not in this lifetime. Too much surgery.”

In my head I hear the voice of Father Compton behind the grille of the confessional, softly asking me if there’s anything else I want to confess. No, I tell him firmly. No, there isn’t. That was a mistake. I was drunk, and it doesn’t count. The good Father sighs, and pushes the curtain across. End of confession. My penance is to lie to Henry, by omission, as long as we both shall live. I look at him, happily postprandial, sated with the charms of my younger self, and the image of Gomez sleeping, Gomez’s bedroom in morning light flashes across my mental theater. It was a mistake, Henry, I tell him silently. I was waiting, and I got sideswiped, just once. Tell him, says Father Compton, or somebody, in my head. I can’t, I retort. He’ll hate me.

“Hey,” Henry says gently. “Where are you?” “Thinking.”

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“You look so sad.”

“Do you worry sometimes that all the really great stuff has already happened?”

“No. Well, sort of, but in a different way than you mean. I’m still moving through the time you’re reminiscing about, so it’s not really gone, for me. I worry that we aren’t paying close attention here and now. That is, time travel is sort of an altered state, so I’m more...aware when I’m out there, and it seems important, somehow, and sometimes I think that if I could just be that aware here and now, that things would be perfect. But there’s been some great things, lately.” He smiles, that beautiful crooked radiant smile, all innocence, and I allow my guilt to subside, back to the little box where I keep it crammed in like a parachute.

“Alba.”

“Alba is perfect. And you are perfect. I mean, as much as I love you, back there, it’s the shared life, the knowing each other....”

“Through thick and thin....”

“The fact that there are bad times makes it more real. It’s the reality that I want.” Tell him, tell him.

“Even reality can be pretty unreal...” If I’m ever going to say it, now’s the time. He waits. I just. Can’t.

“Clare?” I regard him miserably, like a child caught in a complicated fib, and then I say it, almost inaudibly.

“I slept with someone.” Henry’s face is frozen, disbelieving. “Who?” he asks, without looking at me,

“Gomez.”

“Why?” Henry is still, waiting for the blow.

“I was drunk. We were at a party, and Charisse was in Boston—” “Wait a minute. When was this?”

“1990.”

He starts to laugh. “Oh, God. Clare, don’t do that to me, shit. 1990. Jesus, I thought you were telling me something that happened, like, last week.” I smile, weakly. He says, “I mean, it’s not like I’m overjoyed about it, but since I just got through telling you to go out and experiment I can’t really...I dunno.” He’s getting restless. He gets up and starts pacing around the studio. I am incredulous. For fifteen years I’ve been paralyzed with fear, fear that Gomez would say something, do something in his big lumbering Gomez callousness, and Henry doesn’t mind. Or does he?

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“How was it?” he asks, quite casually, with his back to me as he messes with the coffeemaker.

I pick my words with care. “Different. I mean, without getting real critical of Gomez—” “Oh, go ahead.”

“It was sort of like being a china shop, and trying to get off with a bull.” “He’s bigger than me.” Henry states this as fact.

“I wouldn’t know about now, but back then he had no finesse at all. He actually smoked a cigarette while he was fucking me.” Henry winces. I get up, walk over to him. “I’m sorry. It was a mistake.” He pulls me to him, and I say, softly, into his collar, “I was waiting very patiently...” but then I can’t go on. Henry is stroking my hair. “It’s okay, Clare,” he says. “It’s not so bad.” I wonder if he is comparing the Clare he has just seen, in 1989, with the duplicitous me in his arms, and, as if reading my mind he says, “Any other surprises?”

“That was it.”

“God, you can really keep a secret.” I look at Henry, and he stares back at me, and I can tell that I have altered for him somehow.

“It made me understand, better...it made me appreciate...” “You’re trying to tell me that I did not suffer by comparison?”

“Yes.” I kiss him, tentatively, and after a moment of hesitation Henry begins to kiss me back, and before too long we are on our way to being all right again. Better than all right. I told him, and it was okay, and he still loves me. My whole body feels lighter, and I sigh with the goodness of confessing, finally, and not even having a penance, not one Hail Mary or Our Father. I feel like I’ve walked away scot free from a totaled car. Out there, somewhere, Henry and I are making love on a green blanket in a meadow, and Gomez is looking at me sleepily and reaching for me with his enormous hands, and everything, everything is happening now, but it’s too late, as usual, to change any of it, and Henry and I unwrap each other on the studio couch like brand new never before boxes of chocolate and it’s not too late, not yet, anyway.

Saturday, April 14, 1990 (Clare is 18) (6:43 a.m.)

CLARE: I open my eyes and I don’t know where I am. Cigarette smell. Venetian blind shadow across cracked yellow wall. I turn my head and beside me, sleeping, in his bed, is Gomez. Suddenly I remember, and I panic.

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Henry. Henry will kill me. Charisse will hate me. I sit up. Gomez’s bedroom is a wreck of overfilled ashtrays, clothes, law textbooks, newspapers, dirty dishes. My clothes lie in a small, accusing pile on the floor beside me.

Gomez sleeps beautifully. He looks serene, not like a guy who’s just cheated on his girlfriend with his girlfriend’s best friend. His blond hair is wild, not in its usual perfect controlled state. He looks like an overgrown boy, exhausted from too many boyish games.

My head is pounding. My insides feel like they’ve been beaten. I get up, shakily, and walk down the hall to the bathroom, which is dank and mold-infested and filled with shaving paraphernalia and damp towels. Once I’m in the bathroom I’m not sure what I wanted; I pee and I wash my face with the hard soap sliver, and I look at myself in the mirror to see if I look any different, to see if Henry will be able to tell just by looking at me.. .I look kind of nauseous, but otherwise I just look the way I look at seven in the morning.

The house is quiet. There’s a clock ticking somewhere nearby. Gomez shares this house with two other guys, friends who are also at Northwestern’s Law School. I don’t want to run into anyone. I go back to Gomez’s room and sit on the bed.

“Good morning.” Gomez smiles at me, reaches out to me. I recoil, and burst into tears. “Whoa. Kitten! Clare, baby, hey, hey...” He scrambles up and soon I am weeping in his arms. I think of all the times I have cried on Henry’s shoulder. Where are you? I wonder desperately. I need you, here and now. Gomez is saying rny name, over and over. What am I doing here, without any clothes on, crying in the embrace of an equally naked Gomez? He reaches over and hands me a box of tissue, and I blow my nose, and wipe my eyes, and then I look at him with a look of unconditional despair, and he looks back at me in confusion.

“Okay now?”

No. How can I be okay? “Yeah.” “What’s wrong?”

I shrug. Gomez shifts into cross-examining fragile witness mode.

“Clare, have you ever had sex before?” I nod. “Is it Charisse? You feel bad about it ‘cause of Charisse?” I nod. “Did I do something wrong?” I shake my head. “Clare, who is Henry?” I gape at him incredulously.

“How do you know?...” Now I’ve done it. Shit. Son of a bitch.

Gomez leans over and grabs his cigarettes from the bedside table, and lights one. He waves out the match and takes a deep drag. With a cigarette

in his hand, Gomez seems more...dressed, somehow, even though he’s not. He silently offers me one, and I take it, even though I don’t smoke. It just seems like the thing to do, and it buys me time to think about what to say. He lights it for me, gets up, rummages around in his closet, finds a blue bathrobe that doesn’t look all that clean, and hands it to me. I put it

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on; it’s huge. I sit on the bed, smoking and watching Gomez put on a pair of jeans. Even in my wretchedness I observe that Gomez is beautiful, tall and broad and...large, an entirely different sort of beauty from Henry’s lithe panther wildness. I immediately feel horrible for comparing. Gomez sets an ashtray next to me, and sits down on the bed, and looks at me.

“You were talking in your sleep to someone named Henry.” Damn. Damn. “What did I say?”

“Mostly just ‘Henry’ over and over, like you were calling someone to come to you. And ‘I’m sorry.’ And once you said ‘Well, you weren’t here,’ like you were really angry. Who is Henry?”

“Henry is my lover.”

“Clare, you don’t have a lover. Charisse and I have seen you almost every day for six months, and you never date anyone, and no one ever calls you.”

“Henry is my lover. He’s been gone for a while, and he’ll be back in the fall of 1991.” “Where is he?” Somewhere nearby.

“I don’t know.” Gomez thinks I am making this up. For no reason I am determined to make him believe me. I grab my purse, open my wallet, and show Gomez the photo of Henry. He studies it carefully.

“I’ve seen this guy. Well, no: someone a lot like him. This guy is too old to be the same person. But that guy’s name was Henry.”

My heart is beating like a mad thing. I try to be casual as I ask, “Where did you see him?”

“At clubs. Mostly Exit, and Smart Bar. But I can’t imagine that he’s your guy; he’s a maniac. Chaos attends his every move. He’s an alcoholic, and he’s just... I don’t know, he’s really rough on women. Or so I hear.”

“Violent?” I can’t imagine Henry hitting a woman. “No. I don’t know.”

“What’s his last name?”

“I don’t know. Listen, kitten, this guy would chew you up and spit you out.. .he’s not at all what you need.”

I smile. He’s exactly what I need, but I know that it is futile to go chasing through clubland trying to find him. “What do I need?”

“Me. Except you don’t seem to think so.”

“You have Charisse. What do you want me for?” “I just want you. I don’t know why.”

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“You a Mormon or something?”

Gomez says very seriously, “Clare, I.. .look, Clare—” “Don’t say it.”

“Really, I—”

“No. I don’t want to know.” I get up, stub out my cigarette, and start to put my clothes on. Gomez sits very still and watches me dress. I feel stale and dirty and creepy putting on last night’s party dress in front of Gomez, but I try not to let it show. I can’t do the long zipper in the back of the dress and Gomez gravely helps me with it.

“Clare, don’t be mad.”

“I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself.”

“This guy must be really something if he can walk away from a girl like you and expect you to be around two years later.”

I smile at Gomez. “He is amazing.” I can see that I have hurt Gomez’s feelings. “Gomez, I’m sorry. If I was free, and you were free...” Gomez shakes his head, and before I know it, he’s kissing me. I kiss back, and there’s just a moment when I wonder.... “I’ve got to go now, Gomez.”

He nods. I leave.

Friday, April 27, 1990 (Henry is 26)

HENRY: Ingrid and I are at the Riviera Theater, dancing our tiny brains out to the dulcet tones of Iggy Pop. Ingrid and I are always happiest together when we are dancing or fucking or anything else that involves physical activity and no talking. Right now we are in heaven. We’re way up front and Mr. Pop is whipping us all into a compact ball of manic energy. I told Ing once that she dances like a German and she didn’t like it, but it’s true: she dances seriously, like lives are hanging in the balance, like precision dancing can save the starving children in India. It’s great. The Iggster is crooning “ Calling Sister Midnight: well, I’m an idiot for you...” and I know exactly how he feels. It’s moments like this that I see the point ofme and Ingrid. We slash and burn our way through Lust for Life, China Doll, Funtime. Ingrid and I have taken enough speed to launch a mission to Pluto, and I have that weird high-pitched feeling and a deep conviction that I could do this, be here, for the rest of my life and be perfectly content. Ingrid is sweating. Her white T-shirt has glued itself to her body in an interesting and aesthetically pleasing way and I consider peeling it off of her but refrain, because she’s not wearing a bra and I’ll never hear the end of it. We dance, Iggy Pop sings,

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and sadly, inevitably, after three encores, the concert finally ends. I feel great. As we file out with our fellow elated and pumped-up concertgoers, I wonder what we should do next, Ingrid takes off to go and stand in the long line for the ladies’ room, and I wait for her out on Broadway. I’m watching a yuppie in a BMW argue with a valet-parking kid over an illegal space when this huge blond guy walks up to me.

“Henry?” he asks. I wonder if I’m about to be served with a court summons or something. “Yeah?”

“Clare says hello.” Who the hell is Clare?

“Sorry, wrong number.” Ingrid walks up, looking once again like her usual Bond Girl self. She sizes up this guy, who’s a pretty fine specimen of guyhood. I put my arm around her.

The guy smiles. “Sorry. You must have a double out there.” My heart contracts; something’s going on that I don’t get, a little of my future seeping into now, but now is not the moment to investigate. He seems pleased about something, and excuses himself, and walks away.

“What was that all about?” says Ingrid.

“I think he thought I was someone else.” I shrug. Ingrid looks worried. Just about everything about me seems to worry Ingrid, so I ignore it. “Hey, Ing, what shall we do next?” I feel like leaping tall buildings in a single bound.

“My place?”

“Brilliant.” We stop at Margie’s Candies for ice cream, and soon we’re in the car chanting “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream” and laughing like deranged children. Later, in bed with Ingrid, I wonder who Clare is, but then I figure there’s probably no answer to that, so I forget about it.

Friday, February 18, 2005 (Henry is 41, Clare is 33)

HENRY: I’m taking Charisse to the opera. It’s Tristan und Isolde. The reason I am here with Charisse and not Clare has to do with Clare’s extreme aversion to Wagner. I’m not a huge Wagnerite either, but we have season tickets and I’d just as soon go as not. We were discussing this one evening at Charisse and Gomez’s place, and Charisse wistfully said that she’d never been to the opera. The upshot of it all is that Charisse and I are getting out of a taxi in front of the Lyric Opera House and Clare is at home minding Alba and playing Scrabble with Alicia, who’s visiting us this week.

I’m not really in the mood for this. When I stopped at their house to collect Charisse,

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Gomez winked at me and said “Don’t keep her out too late, son!” in his best clueless-parent voice. I can’t remember the last time Charisse and I did anything by ourselves. I like Charisse, very much, but I don’t have much of anything to say to her.

I shepherd Charisse through the crowd. She moves slowly, taking in the splendid lobby, marble and sweeping high galleries full of elegantly understated rich people and students with faux fur and pierced noses. Charisse smiles at the libretto vendors, two tuxedoed gents who stand at the entrance to the lobby singing “Libretto! Libretto! Buy yourself a libretto!” in two-part harmony. No one I know is here. Wagnerites are the Green Berets of opera fans; they’re made of sterner stuff, and they all know each other. There’s a lot of air kissing going on as Charisse and I walk upstairs to the mezzanine.

Clare and I have a private box; it’s one of our indulgences. I pull back the curtain and Charisse steps in and says, “Oh!” I take her coat and drape it over a chair, and do the same with mine. We settle ourselves. Charisse crosses her ankles and folds her small hands in her lap. Her black hair gleams in the low soft light, and with her dark lipstick and dramatic eyes Charisse is like an exquisite, wicked child, all dressed up, allowed to stay up late with the grown-ups. She sits and drinks in the beauty of the Lyric, the ornate gold and green screen that shields the stage, the ripples of cascading plaster that rim every arch and dome, the excited murmur of the crowd. The lights go down and Charisse flashes me a grin. The screen rises, and we are on a boat, and Isolde is singing. I lean back in my chair and lose myself in the current of her voice.

Four hours, one love potion, and a standing ovation later, I turn to Charisse. “Well, how did you like it?”

She smiles. “It was silly, wasn’t it? But the singing made it not silly.”

I hold out her coat and she feels around for the arm hole; finds it and shrugs on the coat. “Silly? I guess. But I’m willing to pretend that Jane Egland is young and beautiful instead of a three-hundred-pound cow because she has the voice of Euterpe.”

“Euterpe?”

“The muse of music.” We join the stream of exiting, satiated listeners. Downstairs we flow out into the cold. I march us up Wacker Drive a bit and manage to snare a cab after only a few minutes. I’m about to give the cabbie Charisse’s address when she says, “Henry, let’s go have coffee. I don’t want to go home yet.” I tell the cabbie to take us to Don’s Coffee Club, which is on Jarvis, at the northern edge of the city. Charisse chats about the singing, which was sublime; about the sets, which we both agree were not inspired; about the moral difficulties of enjoying Wagner when you know he was an anti-Semitic asshole whose biggest fan was Hitler. When we get to Don’s, the joint is jumping; Don is holding court in an orange Hawaiian shirt and I wave to him. We find a small table in the back. Charisse orders cherry pie a la mode and coffee, and I order my usual peanut butter and jelly sandwich and coffee. Perry Como is crooning from the stereo and there’s a haze of cigarette smoke

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drifting over the dinette sets and garage sale paintings. Charisse leans her head on her hand and sighs.

“This is so great. I feel like sometimes I forget what it was like to be a grown-up.” “You guys don’t go out much?”

Charisse mushes her ice cream around with her fork, laughs. “Joe does this. He says it tastes better if it’s mushy. God, I’m picking up their bad habits instead of them learning my good ones.” She eats a bite of pie. “To answer your question, we do go out, but it’s almost always to political stuff. Gomez is thinking about running for alderman.”

I swallow my coffee the wrong way and start to cough. When I can talk again I say, “You’re joking. Isn’t that going over to the dark side? Gomez is always slamming the city administration.”

Charisse gives me a wry look. “He’s decided to change the system from within. He’s burned out on horrible child abuse cases. I think he’s convinced himself that he could actually improve things if he had some clout.”

“Maybe he’s right.”

Charisse shakes her head. “I liked it better when we were young anarchist revolutionaries. I’d rather blow things up than kiss ass.”

I smile. “I never realized that you were more radical than Gomez.”

“Oh, yeah. Actually, it’s just that I’m not as patient as Gomez. I want action.” “Gomez is patient?”

“Oh, sure. I mean, look at the whole thing with Clare—” Charisse abruptly stops, looks at me.

“What whole thing?” I realize as I ask the question that this is why we are here, that Charisse has been waiting to talk about this. I wonder what she knows that I don’t know. I wonder if I want to know what Charisse knows. I don’t think I want to know anything.

Charisse looks away, and then back at me. She looks down at her coffee, puts her hands around the cup. “Well, I thought you knew, but, like— Gomez is in love with Clare.”

“Yes.” I’m not helping her out with this.

Charisse is tracing the grain of the table’s veneer with her finger. “So.. .Clare has been telling him to take a hike, and he thinks that if he just hangs in there long enough, something will happen, and he’ll end up with her.”

“Something will happen...?”

“To you.” Charisse meets my eyes.

I feel ill. “Excuse me” I say to her. I get up and make my way to the tiny Marilyn

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Monroe-plastered bathroom. I splash my face with cold water. I lean against the wall with my eyes closed. When it becomes obvious that I’m not going anywhere I walk back into the cafe and sit down. “Sorry. You were saying?”

Charisse looks scared and small. “Henry,” she says quietly. “Tell me.” “Tell you what, Charisse?”

“Tell me you aren’t going anywhere. Tell me Clare doesn’t want Gomez. Tell me everything’s going to work out. Or tell me it’s all shit, I don’t know—just tell me what happens!” Her voice shakes. She puts her hand on my arm, and I force myself not to pull away.

“You’ll be fine, Charisse. It’ll be okay.” She stares at me, not believing and wanting to believe. I lean back in my chair. “He won’t leave you.”

She sighs. “And you?”

I am silent. Charisse stares at me, and then she bows her head. “Let’s go home,” she says, finally, and we do.

Sunday, June 12, 2005 (Clare is 34, Henry is 41)

CLARE: It’s a sunny Sunday afternoon, and I walk into the kitchen to find Henry standing by the window staring out at the backyard. He beckons me over. I stand beside him and look out. Alba is playing in the yard with an older girl. The girl is about seven. She has long dark hair and she is barefoot. She wears a dirty T-shirt with the Cubs’ logo on it. They are both sitting on the ground, facing each other. The girl has her back to us. Alba is smiling at her and gesturing with her hands as though she is flying. The girl shakes her head and laughs.

I look at Henry. “Who is that?” “That’s Alba.”

“Yes, but who’s with her?”

Henry smiles, but his eyebrows pull together so that the smile seems worried. “Clare, that’s Alba when she’s older. She’s time traveling.”

“My God.” I stare at the girl. She swivels and points at the house, and I see a quick profile and then she turns away again. “Should we go out there?”

“No, she’s fine. If they want to come in here they will.” “I’d love to meet her....”

“Better not—” Henry begins, but as he speaks the two Albas jump up and come racing

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toward the back door, hand in hand. They burst into the kitchen laughing. “Mama, Mama,” says my Alba, three-year-old Alba, pointing, “look! A big girl Alba!”

The other Alba grins and says, “Hi, Mama ” and I am smiling and I say, “Hello, Alba,” when she turns and sees Henry and cries out, “Daddy!” and runs to him, throws her arms around him, and starts to cry. Henry glances at me, bends over Alba, rocking her, and whispers something in her ear.

HENRY: Clare is white-faced; she stands watching us, holding small Alba’s hand, Alba who stands watching open-mouthed as her older self clings to me, weeping. I lean down to Alba, whisper in her ear: “ Don’t tell Mama I died, okay?” She looks up at me, tears clinging to her long lashes, lips quivering, and nods. Clare is holding a tissue, telling Alba to blow her nose, hugging her. Alba allows herself to be led off to wash her face. Small Alba, present Alba, wraps herself around my leg. “Why, Daddy? Why is she sad?” Fortunately I don’t have to answer because Clare and Alba have returned; Alba is wearing one of Clare’s T-shirts and a pair of my cutoffs. Clare says, “Hey, everybody. Why don’t we go get an ice cream?” Both Albas smile; small Alba dances around us yelling “I scream, you scream, I scream, you scream...” We pile into the car, Clare driving, three-year-old Alba in the front seat and seven-year-old Alba in the backseat with me. She leans against me; I put my arm around her. Nobody says a word except little Alba, who says, “Look, Alba, a doggie! Look, Alba, look, Alba...” until her older self says, “Yeah, Alba, I see.” Clare drives us to Zephyr; we settle into a blue glitter vinyl booth and order two banana splits, a chocolate malt, and a soft-serve vanilla cone with sprinkles, The girls suck down their banana splits like vacuum cleaners; Clare and I toy with our ice cream, not looking at each other. Clare says, “Alba, what’s going on, in your present?”

Alba darts a look at me. “Not much,” she says. “Gramps is teaching me Saint-Saens’ second violin concerto.”

“You’re in a play, at school,” I prompt. “I am?” she says. “Not yet, I guess.”

“Oh, sorry,” I say. “I guess that’s not till next year.” It goes on like this. We make halting conversation, working around what we know, what we must protect Clare and small Alba from knowing. After a while older Alba puts her head in her arms on the table. “Tired?” Clare asks her. She nods. “We’d better go,” I tell Clare. We pay, and I pick Alba up; she’s limp, almost asleep in my arms. Clare scoops up little Alba, who’s hyper from all the sugar. Back in the car, as we’re cruising up Lincoln Avenue, Alba vanishes. “She’s gone back ” I say to Clare. She holds my eyes in the rearview mirror for a few moments. “Back where, Daddy?” asks Alba. “Back wh

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 564