LESSONS IN SURVIVAL 4 page

“Yes.”

“Clare, what makes you think I can take on some huge jock half my age? Why were you even going out with someone like that?”

She shrugs. “At school, everybody’s been bugging me ‘cause I never date anyone. Ruth and Meg and Nancy—I mean, there are all these rumors going around that I’m a lesbian. Even Mama is asking me why I don’t go out with boys. Guys ask me out, and I turn them down. And then Beatrice Dilford, who is a dyke, asked me if I was, and I told her no, and she said that she wasn’t surprised, but that’s what everybody was saying, so then I thought, well, maybe I’d better go out with a few guys. So the next one who asked was Jason. He’s, like, this jock, and he’s really good looking, and I knew that if I went out with him everyone would know, and I thought maybe they would shut up.”

“So this was the first time you went out on a date?”

“Yeah. We went to this Italian restaurant and Laura and Mike were there, and a bunch of people from Theater class, and I offered to go Dutch but he said no, he never did that, and it was okay, I mean, we talked about school and stuff, football. Then we went to see Friday the 13th, Part VII, which was really stupid, in case you were thinking of seeing it,”

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

“I’ve seen it.”

“Oh. Why? It doesn’t seem like your kind of thing.” “Same reason you did; my date wanted to see it.” “Who was your date?”

“A woman named Alex.” “What was she like?”

“A bank teller with big tits who liked to be spanked.” The second this pops out of my mouth I realize that I am talking to Clare the teenager, not Clare my wife, and I mentally smack myself in the head.

“Spanked?” Clare looks at me, smiling, her eyebrows halfway to her hairline. “Never mind. So you went to a movie, and...?”

“Oh. Well, then he wanted to go to Traver’s.” “What is Traver’s?”

“It’s a farm on the north side.” Clare’s voice drops, I can hardly hear her. “It’s where people go to...make out.” I don’t say anything. “So I told him I was tired, and wanted to go home, and then he got kind of, urn, mad.” Clare stops talking; for a while we sit, listening to birds, airplanes, wind. Suddenly Clare says, “He was really mad.”

“What happened then?”

“He wouldn’t take me home. I wasn’t sure where we were; somewhere out on Route 12, he was just driving around, down little lanes, God, I don’t know. He drove down this dirt road, and there was this little cottage. There was a lake nearby, I could hear it. And he had the key to this place.”

I’m getting nervous. Clare never told me any of this; just that she once went on a really horrible date with some guy named Jason, who was a football player. Clare has fallen silent again.

“Clare. Did he rape you?”

“No. He said I wasn’t.. .good enough. He said—no, he didn’t rape me. He just—hurt me. He made me..” She can’t say it. I wait. Clare unbuttons her coat, and removes it. She peels her shirt off, and I see that her back is covered with bruises. They are dark and purple against her white skin. Clare turns and there is a cigarette burn on her right breast, blistered and ugly. I asked her once what that scar was, and she wouldn’t say. I am going to kill this guy. I am going to cripple him. Clare sits before me, shoulders back, gooseflesh, waiting. I hand her her shirt, and she puts it on.

“All right,” I tell her quietly. “Where do I find this guy?”

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

“I’ll drive you,” she says.

Clare picks me up in the Fiat at the end of the driveway, out of sight of the house. She’s wearing sunglasses even though it’s a dim afternoon, and lipstick, and her hair is coiled at the back of her head. She looks a lot older than sixteen. She looks like she just walked out of Rear Window, though the resemblance would be more perfect if she was blond. We speedthrough the fall trees, but I don’t think either of us notices much color. A tape loop of what happened to Clare in that little cottage has begun to play repeatedly in my head.

“How big is he?”

Clare considers. “A couple inches taller than you. A lot heavier. Fifty pounds?” “Christ.”

“I brought this.” Clare digs in her purse and produces a handgun. “Clare!”

“It’s Daddy’s.”

I think fast. “Clare, that’s a bad idea. I mean, I’m mad enough to actually use it, and that would be stupid. Ah, wait.” I take it from her, open the chamber, and remove the bullets and put them in her purse. “There. That’s better. Brilliant idea, Clare.” Clare looks at me, questioning. I stick the gun in my overcoat pocket. “Do you want me to do this anonymously, or do you want him to know it’s from you?”

“I want to be there.” “Oh.”

She pulls into a private lane and stops. “I want to take him somewhere and I want you to hurt him very badly and I want to watch. I want him scared shitless.”

I sigh. “Clare, I don’t usually do this kind of thing. I usually fight in self-defense, for one thing.”

“Please.” It comes out of her mouth absolutely flat.

“Of course.” We continue down the drive, and stop in front of a large, new faux Colonial house. There are no cars visible. Van Halen emanates from an open second-floor window. We walk to the front door and I stand to the side while Clare rings the bell. After a moment the music abruptly stops and heavy footsteps clump down stairs. The door opens, and after a pause a deep voice says, “What? You come back for more?” That’s all I need to hear. I draw the gun and step to Clare’s side. I point it at the guy’s chest.

“Hi, Jason,” Clare says. “I thought you might like to come out with us.”

He does the same thing I would do, drops and rolls out of range, but he doesn’t do it fast

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

enough. I’m in the door and I take a flying leap onto his chest and knock the wind out of him. I stand up, put my boot on his chest, point the gun at his head. C’est magnifique mais ce n’estpas la guerre. He looks kind of like Tom Cruise, very pretty, all-American. “Whatposition does he play?” I ask Clare.

“Halfback.”

“Hmm. Never would of guessed. Get up, hands up where I can see them,” I tell him cheerfully. He complies, and I walk him out the door. We are all standing in the driveway. I have an idea. I send Clare back into the house for rope; she comes out a few minutes later with scissors and duct tape.

“Where do you want to do this?” “The woods.”

Jason is panting as we march him into the woods. We walk for about five minutes, and then I see a little clearing with a handy young elm at the edge of it. “How about this, Clare?”

“Yeah.”

I look at her. She is completely impassive, cool as a Raymond Chandler murderess. “Call it, Clare.”

“Tie him to the tree.” I hand her the gun, jerk Jason’s hands into position behind the tree, and duct tape them together. There’s almost a full roll of duct tape, and I intend to use all of it. Jason is breathing strenuously, wheezing. I step around him and look at Clare. She looks at Jason as though he is a bad piece of conceptual art. “Are you asthmatic?”

He nods. His pupils are contracted into tiny points of black. “I’ll get his inhaler,” says Clare. She hands the gun back to me and ambles off through the woods along the path we came down. Jason is trying to breathe slowly and carefully. He is trying to talk.

“Who...are you?” he asks, hoarsely.

“I’m Clare’s boyfriend. I’m here to teach you manners, since you have none.” I drop my mocking tone, and walk close to him, and say softly, “How could you do that to her? She’s so young. She doesn’t know anything, and now you’ve completely fucked up everything...”

“She’s a.. .cock.. .tease.”

“She has no idea. It’s like torturing a kitten because it bit you.”

Jason doesn’t answer. His breath comes in long, shivering whinnies. Just as I am becoming concerned, Clare arrives. She holds up the inhaler, looks at me. “Darling, do you know how to use this thing?”

“I think you shake it and then put it in his mouth and press down on the top.” She does this, asks him if he wants more. He nods. After four inhalations, we stand and watch him gradually subside into more normal breathing.

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

“Ready?” I ask Clare.

She holds up the scissors, makes a few cuts in the air. Jason flinches. Clare walks over to him, kneels, and begins to cut off his clothes. “Hey,” says Jason.

“Please be quiet,” I say. “No one is hurting you. At the moment.” Clare finishes cutting off his jeans and starts on his T-shirt. I start to duct tape him to the tree. I begin at his ankles, and wind very neatly up his calves and thighs. “Stop there,” Clare says, indicating a point just below Jason’s crotch. She snips off his underwear. I start to tape his waist. His skin is clammy and he’s very tan everywhere except inside a crisp outline of a Speedo-type bathing suit. He’s sweating heavily. I wind all the way up to his shoulders, and stop, because I want him to be able to breathe. We step back and admire our work. Jason is now a duct-tape mummy with a large erection. Clare begins to laugh. Her laugh sounds spooky, echoing through the woods. I look at her sharply. There’s something knowing and cruel in Clare’s laugh, and it seems to me that this moment is the demarcation, a sort of no-man’s-land between Clare’s childhood and her life as a woman.

“What next?” I inquire. Part of me wants to turn him into hamburger and part of me doesn’t want to beat up somebody who’s taped to a tree.

Jason is bright red. It contrasts nicely with the gray duct tape. “Oh,” says Clare. “You know, I think that’s enough.”

I am relieved. So of course I say, “You sure? I mean there are all sorts of things I could do. Break his eardrums? Nose? Oh, wait, he’s already broken it once himself. We could cut his Achilles’ tendons. He wouldn’t be playing football in the near future.”

“No!” Jason strains against the tape. “Apologize, then,” I tell him.

Jason hesitates. “Sorry.” “That’s pretty pathetic—”

“I know,” Clare says. She fishes around in her purse and finds a Magic Marker. She walks up to Jason as though he is a dangerous zoo animal, and begins to write on his duct-taped chest. When she’s done, she stands back and caps her marker. She’s written an account of their date. She sticks the marker back in her purse and says, “Let’s go.”

“You know, we can’t just leave him. He might have another asthma attack.” “Hmm. Okay, I know. I’ll call some people.”

“Wait a minute,” says Jason. “What?” says Clare.

“Who are you calling? Call Rob.”

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

Clare laughs. “Uh-uh. I’m going to call every girl I know.”

I walk over to Jason and place the muzzle of the gun under his chin. “If you mention my existence to one human and I find out about it I will come back and I will devastate you. You won’t be able to walk, talk, eat, or fuck when I’m done. As far as you know, Clare is a nice girl who for some inexplicable reason doesn’t date. Right?”

Jason looks at me with hatred. “Right.”

“We’ve dealt with you very leniently, here. If you hassle Clare again in any way you will be sorry.”

“Okay.”

“Good.” I place the gun back in my pocket. “It’s been fun.” “Listen, dickface—”

Oh, what the hell. I step back and put my whole weight into a side kick to the groin. Jason screams. I turn and look at Clare, who is white under her makeup. Tears are running down Jason’s face. I wonder if he’s going to pass out. “Let’s go,” I say. Clare nods. We walk back to the car, subdued. I can hear Jason yelling at us. We climb in, Clare starts the car, turns, and rockets down the driveway and onto the street.

I watch her drive. It’s beginning to rain. There’s a satisfied smile playing around the edges of her mouth. “Is that what you wanted?” I ask.

“Yes,” says Clare. “That was perfect. Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” I’m getting dizzy. “I think I’m almost gone.”

Clare pulls onto a sidestreet. The rain is drumming on the car. It’s like riding through a car wash. “Kiss me,” she demands. I do, and then I’m gone.

Monday, September 28, 1987 (Clare is 16)

CLARE: At school on Monday, everybody looks at me but no one will speak to me. I feel like Harriet the Spy after her classmates found her spy notebook. Walking down the hall is like parting the Red Sea. When I walk into English, first period, everyone stops talking. I sit down next to Ruth. She smiles and looks worried. I don’t say anything either but then I feel her hand on mine under the table, hot and small. Ruth holds my hand for a moment and then Mr. Partaki walks in and she takes her hand away and Mr. Partaki notices that everyone is uncharacteristically silent. He says mildly, “Did you all have a nice weekend?” and Sue Wong says, “Oh, yes” and there’s a shimmer of nervous laughter around the room. Partaki is puzzled, and there’s an awful pause. Then he says, “Well, great, then let s embark on Billy

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

Budd. In 1851, Herman Melville published Moby-Dick, or, The Whale, which was greetedwith resounding indifference by the American public...” It’s all lost on me. Even with a cotton undershirt on, my sweater feels abrasive, and my ribs hurt. My classmates arduously fumble their way through a discussion of Billy Budd. Finally the bell rings, and they escape. I follow, slowly, and Ruth walks with me.

“Are you okay?” she asks. “Mostly.”

“I did what you said.” “What time?”

“Around six. I was afraid his parents would come home and find him. It was hard to cut him out. The tape ripped off all his chest hair.”

“Good. Did a lot of people see him?”

“Yeah, everybody. Well, all the girls. No guys, as far as I know.” The halls are almost empty. I’m standing in front of my French classroom. “Clare, I understand why you did it, but what I don’t get is how you did it.”

“I had some help.”

The passing bell rings and Ruth jumps. “Oh my god. I’ve been late to gym five times in a row!” She moves away as though repelled by a strong magnetic field. “Tell me at lunch,” Ruth calls as I turn and walk into Madame Simone’s room.

“ Ah, Mademoiselle Abshire, asseyez-vous, s’il vous plait.” I sit between Laura and Helen. Helen writes me a note: Good for you. The class is translating Montaigne. We work quietly, and Madame walks around the room, correcting. I’m having trouble concentrating. The look on Henry’s face after he kicked Jason: utterly indifferent, as though he had just shaken his hand, as though he was thinking about nothing in particular, and then he was worried because he didn’t know how I would react, and I realized that Henry enjoyed hurting Jason, and is that the same as Jason enjoying hurting me? But Henry is good. Does that make it okay? Is it okay that I wanted him to do it?

“ Clare, attendez” Madame says, at my elbow.

After the bell once again everyone bolts out. I walk with Helen. Laura hugs me apologetically and runs off to her music class at the other end of the building. Helen and I both have third-period gym.

Helen laughs. “Well, dang, girl. I couldn’t believe my eyes. How’d you get him taped to that tree?”

I can tell I’m going to get tired of that question. “I have a friend who does things like that. He helped me out.”

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

“Who is ‘he’?”

“A client of my dad’s,” I lie.

Helen shakes her head. “You’re such a bad liar.” I smile, and say nothing. “It’s Henry, right?”

I shake my head, and put my finger to my lips. We have arrived at the girls’ gym. We walk into the locker room and abracadabra! all the girls stop talking. Then there’s a low ripple of talk that fills the silence. Helen and I have our lockers in the same bay. I open mine and take out my gym suit and shoes. I have thought about what I am going to do. I take off my shoes and stockings, strip down to my undershirt and panties. I’m not wearing a bra because it hurt too much.

“Hey, Helen,” I say. I peel off my shirt, and Helen turns.

“Jesus Christ, Clare!” The bruises look even worse than they did yesterday. Some of them are greenish. There are welts on my thighs from Jason’s belt. “Oh, Clare.” Helen walks to me, and puts her arms around me, carefully. The room is silent, and I look over Helen’s shoulder and see that all the girls have gathered around us, and they are all looking. Helen straightens up, and looks back at them, and says, “Well?” and someone in the back starts to clap, and they are all clapping, and laughing, and talking, and cheering, and I feel light, light as air.

Wednesday, July 12, 1995 (Clare is 24, Henry is 32)

CLARE: I’m lying in bed, almost asleep, when I feel Henry’s hand brushing over my stomach and realize he’s back. I open my eyes and he bends down and kisses the little cigarette burn scar, and in the dim night light I touch his face. “Thank you,” I say, and he says, “It was my pleasure,” and that is the only time we ever speak of it.

Sunday, September 11, 1988 (Henry is 36, Clare is 17)

HENRY: Clare and I are in the Orchard on a warm September afternoon. Insects drone in the Meadow under golden sun. Everything is still, and as I look across the dry grasses the air shimmers with warmth. We are under an apple tree. Clare leans against its trunk with a pillow under her to cushion the tree roots. I am lying stretched out with my head in her lap. We have eaten, and the remains of our lunch lie scattered around us, with fallen apples interspersed. I am sleepy and content. It is January in my present, and Clare and I are

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

struggling. This summer interlude is idyllic.

Clare says, “I’d like to draw you, just like that.” “Upside down and asleep?”

“Relaxed. You look so peaceful.”

Why not? “Go ahead.” We are out here in the first place because Clare is supposed to be drawing trees for her art class. She picks up her sketchbook and retrieves the charcoal. She balances the book on her knee. “Do you want me to move?” I ask her.

“No, that would change it too much. As you were, please.” I resume staring idly at the patterns the branches make against the sky.

Stillness is a discipline. I can hold quite still for long stretches of time when I’m reading, but sitting for Clare is always surprisingly difficult.

Even a pose that seems very comfortable at first becomes torture after fifteen minutes or so. Without moving anything but my eyes, I look at Clare. She is deep in her drawing. When Clare draws she looks as though the world has fallen away, leaving only her and the object of her scrutiny. This is why I love to be drawn by Clare: when she looks at me with that kind of attention, I feel that I am everything to her. It’s the same look she gives me when we’re making love. Just at this moment she looks into my eyes and smiles.

“I forgot to ask you: when are you coming from?” “January, 2000.”

Her face falls. “Really? I thought maybe a little later.” “Why? Do I look so old?”

Clare strokes my nose. Her fingers travel across the bridge and over my brows. “No, you don’t. But you seem happy and calm, and usually when you come from 1998, or ‘99 or 2000, you’re upset, or freaked out, and you won’t tell me why. And then in 2001 you’re okay again.”

I laugh. “You sound like a fortune teller. I never realized you were tracking my moods so closely.”

“What else have I got to go on?”

“Remember, it’s stress that usually sends me in your direction, here. So you shouldn’t get the idea that those years are unremittingly horrible. There are lots of nice things in those years, too.”

Clare goes back to her drawing. She has given up asking me about our future. Instead she asks, “Henry, what are you afraid of?”

The question surprises me and I have to think about it. “Cold,” I say. “I am afraid of

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

winter. I am afraid of police. I am afraid of traveling to the wrong place and time and getting hit by a car or beat up. Or getting stranded in time, and not being able to come back. I am afraid of losing you.”

Clare smiles. “How could you lose me? I’m not going anywhere.”

“I worry that you will get tired of putting up with my undependableness and you will leave me.”

Clare puts her sketchbook aside. I sit up. “I won’t ever leave you,” she says. “Even though you’re always leaving me.”

“But I never want to leave you.”

Clare shows me the drawing. I’ve seen it before; it hangs next to Clare’s drawing table in her studio at home. In the drawing I do look peaceful. Clare signs it and begins to write the date. “Don’t,” I say. “It’s not dated.”

“It’s not?”

“I’ve seen it before. There’s no date on it.”

“Okay.” Clare erases the date and writes Meadowlark on it instead. “Done.” She looks at me, puzzled. “Do you ever find that you go back to your present and something has changed? I mean, what if I wrote the date on this drawing right now? What would happen?”

“I don’t know. Try it,” I say, curious. Clare erases the word Meadowlark and writes

September 11, 1988.

“There,” she says, “that was easy.” We look at each other, bemused. Clare laughs. “If I’ve violated the space-time continuum it isn’t very obvious.”

“I’ll let you know if you’ve just caused World War III.” I’m starting to feel shaky. “I think I’m going, Clare.” She kisses me, and I’m gone.

Thursday, January 13, 2000 (Henry is 36, Clare is 28)

HENRY: After dinner I’m still thinking about Clare’s drawing, so I walk out to her studio to look at it. Clare is making a huge sculpture out of tiny wisps of purple paper; it looks like a cross between a Muppet and a bird’s nest. I walk around it carefully and stand in front of her table. The drawing is not there.

Clare comes in carrying an armful of abaca fiber. “Hey.” She throws it on the floor and walks over to me. “What’s up?”

“Where’s that drawing that used to hang right there? The one of me?”

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

“Huh? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it fell down.” Clare dives under the table and says, “I don’t see it. Oh, wait here it is.” She emerges holding the drawing between two fingers. “Ugh, it’s all cobwebby.” She brushes it off and hands it to me. I look it over. There’s still no date on it.

“What happened to the date?” “What date?”

“You wrote the date at the bottom, here. Under your name. It looks like it’s been trimmed off.”

Clare laughs. “Okay. I confess. I trimmed it.” “Why?”

“I got all freaked by your World War III comment. I started thinking, what if we never meet in the future because I insisted on testing this out?”

“I’m glad you did.” “Why?”

“I don’t know. I just am.” We stare at each other, and then Clare smiles, and I shrug, and that’s that. But why does it seem as though something impossible almost happened? Why do I feel so relieved?

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 613