A TREATISE ON LONGING

His forty-third year. His small time’s end. His time—

Who saw Infinity through the countless cracks

In the blank skin of things, and died of it.

— A. S. Byatt, Possession

She followed slowly, taking a long time,

as though there were some obstacle in the way; and yet: as though, once it was overcome,

she would be beyond all walking, and would fly.

— from Going Blind, Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Stephen Mitchell

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

Saturday, October 27, 1984/Monday, January 1, 2007 (Henry is 43, Clare is 35)

HENRY: The sky is blank and I’m falling into the tall dry grass let it be quick and even as I try to be still the crack of a rifle sounds, far away, surely nothing to do with me but no: I am slammed to the ground, I look at my belly which has opened up like a pomegranate, a soup of entrails and blood cradled in the bowl of my body; it doesn’t hurt at all that can’t be right but I can only admire this cubist version of my insides someone is running all I want is to see Clare before before I am screaming her name Clare, Clare and Clare leans over me, crying, and Alba whispers, “Daddy....”

“Love you...” “Henry—” “Always....”

“Oh God oh God—” “World enough....” “No!”

“And time...”

“Henry!”

CLARE: The living room is very still. Everyone stands fixed, frozen, staring down at us. Billie Holiday is singing, and then someone turns off the CD player and there is silence. I sit on the floor, holding Henry. Alba is crouching over him, whispering in his ear, shaking him. Henry’s skin is warm, his eyes are open, staring past me, he is heavy in my arms, so heavy, his pale skin torn apart, red everywhere, ripped flesh framing a secret world of blood. I cradle Henry. There’s blood at the corner of his mouth. I wipe it off. Firecrackers explode somewhere nearby. Gomez says, “I think we’d better call the police.”

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

DISSOLUTION

Friday, February 2, 2007 (Clare is 35)

CLARE: I sleep all day. Noises flit around the house—garbage truck in the alley, rain, tree rapping against the bedroom window. I sleep. I inhabit sleep firmly, willing it, wielding it, pushing away dreams, refusing, refusing. Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion. The phone rings and rings. I have turned off the machine that answers with Henry’s voice. It is afternoon, it is night, it is morning. Everything is reduced to this bed, this endless slumber that makes the days into one day, makes time stop, stretches and compacts time until it is meaningless.

Sometimes sleep abandons me and I pretend, as though Etta has come to get me up for school. I breathe slowly and deeply. I make my eyes still under eyelids, I make my mind still, and soon, Sleep, seeing a perfect reproduction of himself, comes to be united with his facsimile.

Sometimes I wake up and reach for Henry. Sleep erases all differences: then and now; dead and living. I am past hunger, past vanity, past caring. This morning I caught sight of my face in the bathroom mirror. I am paper-skinned, gaunt, yellow, ring-eyed, hair matted. I look dead. I want nothing.

Kimy sits at the foot of the bed. She says, “Clare? Alba’s home from school.. .won’t you let her come in, say hi?” I pretend to sleep. Alba’s little hand strokes my face. Tears leak from my eyes. Alba sets something, her knapsack? her violin case? on the floor and Kimy says, “Take off your shoes, Alba,” and then Alba crawls into bed with me. She wraps my arm around her, thrusts her head under my chin. I sigh and open my eyes. Alba pretends to sleep. I stare at her thick black eyelashes, her wide mouth, her pale skin; she is breathing carefully, she clutches my hip with her strong hand, she smells of pencil shavings and rosin and shampoo. I kiss the top of her head. Alba opens her eyes, and then her resemblance to Henry is almost more than I can bear. Kimy gets up and walks out of the room.

Later I get up, take a shower, eat dinner sitting at the table with Kimy and Alba. I sit at Henry’s desk after Alba has gone to bed, and I open the drawers, I take out the bundles of letters and papers, and I begin to read.

A Letter to Be Opened in the Event of My Death

December 10, 2006

Dearest Clare,

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

As I write this, I am sitting at my desk in the back bedroom looking out at your studio across the backyard full of blue evening snow, everything is slick and crusty with ice, and it is very still. It’s one of those winter evenings when the coldness of every single thing seems to slow down time, like the narrow center of an hourglass which time itself flows through, but slowly, slowly. I have the feeling, very familiar to me when I am out of time but almost never otherwise, of being buoyed up by time, floating effortlessly on its surface like a fat lady swimmer. I had a sudden urge, tonight, here in the house by myself (you are at Alicia’s recital at St. Lucy’s) to write you a letter. I suddenly wanted to leave something, for after. I think that time is short, now. I feel as though all my reserves, of energy, of pleasure, of duration, are thin, small. I don’t feel capable of continuing very much longer. I know you know.

If you are reading this, I am probably dead. (I say probably because you never know what circumstances may arise; it seems foolish and self-important to just declare one’s own death as an out-and-out fact.) About this death of mine—I hope it was simple and clean and unambiguous. I hope it didn’t create too much fuss. I’m sorry. (This reads like a suicide note. Strange.) But you know: you know that if I could have stayed, if I could have gone on, that I would have clutched every second: whatever it was, this death, you know that it came and took me, like a child carried away by goblins.

Clare, I want to tell you, again, I love you. Our love has been the thread through the labyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange life of mine that I could ever trust. Tonight I feel that my love for you has more density in this world than I do, myself: as though it could linger on after me and surround you, keep you, hold you.

I hate to think of you waiting. I know that you have been waiting for me all your life, always uncertain of how long this patch of waiting would be. Ten minutes, ten days. A month. What an uncertain husband I have been, Clare, like a sailor, Odysseus alone and buffeted by tall waves, sometimes wily and sometimes just a plaything of the gods. Please, Clare. When I am dead. Stop waiting and be free. Of me—put me deep inside you and then go out in the world and live. Love the world and yourself in it, move through it as though it offers no resistance, as though the world is your natural element. I have given you a life of suspended animation. I don’t mean to say that you have done nothing. You have created beauty, and meaning, in your art, and Alba, who is so amazing, and for me: for me you have been everything.

After my mom died she ate my father up completely. She would have hated it. Every minute of his life since then has been marked by her absence, every action has lacked dimension because she is not there to measure against. And when I was young I didn’t understand, but now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird.

If I had to live on without you I know I could not do it. But I hope, I have this vision of you walking unencumbered, with your shining hair in the sun. I have not seen this with my

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

eyes, but only with my imagination, that makes pictures, that always wanted to paint you, shining; but I hope that this vision will be true, anyway.

Clare, there is one last thing, and I have hesitated to tell you, because I’m superstitiously afraid that telling might cause it to not happen (I know: silly) and also because I have just been going on about not waiting and this might cause you to wait longer than you have ever waited before. But I will tell you in case you need something, after.

Last summer, I was sitting in Kendrick’s waiting room when I suddenly found myself in a dark hallway in a house I don’t know. I was sort of tangled up in a bunch of galoshes, and it smelled like rain. At the end of the hall I could see a rim of light around a door, and so I went very slowly and very quietly to the door and looked in. The room was white, and intensely lit with morning sun. At the window, with her back to me, sat a woman, wearing a coral-colored cardigan sweater, with long white hair all down her back. She had a cup of tea beside her, on a table. I must have made some little noise, or she sensed me behind her...she turned and saw me, and I saw her, and it was you, Clare, this was you as an old woman, in the future. It was sweet, Clare, it was sweet beyond telling, to come as though from death to hold you, and to see the years all present in your face. I won’t tell you any more, so you can imagine it, so you can have it unrehearsed when the time comes, as it will, as it does come. We will see each other again, Clare. Until then, live, fully, present in the world, which is so beautiful.

It’s dark, now, and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing. Henry

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

DASEIN

Saturday, July 12, 2008 (Clare is 37)

CLARE: Charisse has taken Alba and Rosa and Max and Joe roller skating at the Rainbo. I drive over to her house to pick Alba up, but I’m early and Charisse is running late. Gomez answers the door wearing a towel.

“Come on in,” he says, opening the door wide. “Want some coffee?”

“Sure.” I follow him through their chaotic living room to the kitchen. I sit at the table, which is still littered with breakfast dishes, and clear a space large enough to rest my elbows. Gomez rambles around the kitchen, making coffee.

“Haven’t seen your mug in a while.”

“I’ve been pretty busy. Alba takes all these different lessons, and I just drive her around.”

“You making any art?” Gomez sets a cup and saucer in front of me and pours coffee into the cup. Milk and sugar are already on the table, so I help myself.

“No.”

“Oh.” Gomez leans against the kitchen counter, hands wrapped around his coffee cup. His hair is dark with water and combed back flat. I’ve never noticed before that his hairline is receding. “Well, other than chauffeuring her highness, what are you doing?”

What am I doing? I am waiting. I am thinking. I am sitting on our bed holding an old plaid shirt that still smells of Henry, taking deep breaths of his smell I am going for walks at two in the morning, when Alba is safe in her bed, long walks to tire myself out enough to sleep. I am conducting conversations with Henry as though he were here with me, as though he could see through my eyes, think with my brain.

“Not much.” “Hmm.”

“How ‘bout you?”

“Oh, you know. Aldermanning. Playing the stern paterfamilias. The usual.”

“Oh.” I sip my coffee. I glance at the clock over the sink. It is shaped like a black cat: its tail twitches back and forth like a pendulum and its big eyes move in time with each twitch, ticking loudly. It’s 11:45,

“Do you want anything to eat?”

I shake my head. “No, thanks.” Judging from the dishes on the table, Gomez and Charisse

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

had honeydew melon, scrambled eggs, and toast for breakfast. The children ate Lucky Charms, Cheerios, and something that had peanut butter on it. The table is like an archeological reconstruction of a twenty-first-century family breakfast.

“Are you dating anybody?” I look up and Gomez is still leaning on the counter, still holding his coffee cup at chin level.

“No.” “Why not?”

None of your business, Gomez. “It never occurred to me.” “You should think about it.” He sets his cup in the sink. “Why?”

“You need something new. Someone new. You can’t sit around for the rest of your life waiting for Henry to show up.”

“Sure I can. Watch me.”

Gomez takes two steps and he’s standing next to me. He leans over and puts his mouth next to my ear. “Don’t you ever miss.. .this?” He licks the inside of my ear. Yes, I miss that. “Get away from me, Gomez,” I hiss at him, but I don’t move away. I am riveted in my seat by an idea. Gomez picks up my hair and kisses the back of my neck.

Come to me, oh! come to me!

I close my eyes. Hands pull me out of my seat, unbutton my shirt. Tongue on my neck, my shoulders, my nipples. I reach out blindly and find terrycloth, a bath towel that falls away. Henry. Hands unbutton my jeans, pull them down, bend me back over the kitchen table. Something falls to the floor, metallic. Food and silverware, a half-circle of plate, melon rind against my back. My legs spread. Tongue on my cunt. “Ohh...” We are in the meadow. It’s summer. A green blanket. We have just eaten, the taste of melon is still in my mouth.Tongue gives way to empty space, wet and open. I open my eyes; I’m staring at a half-full glass of orange juice. I close my eyes. The firm, steady push of Henry’s cock into me. Yes.

I’ve been waiting very patiently, Henry. I knew you’d come back sooner or later. Yes. Skinon skin, hands on breasts, push pull clinging rhythm deeper yes, oh—

“Henry—”

Everything stops. A clock is ticking loudly. I open my eyes. Gomez is staring down at me, hurt? angry? in a moment he is expressionless. A car door slams. I sit up, jump off the table, run for the bathroom. Gomez throws my clothes in after me.

As I’m dressing I hear Charisse and the kids come in the front door, laughing. Alba calls, “Mama?” and I yell “I’ll be out in a minute!” I stand in the dim light of the pink and black tiled bathroom and stare at myself in the mirror. I have Cheerios in my hair. My reflection looks lost and pale. I wash my hands, try to comb my hair with my fingers. What am I doing?

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

What have I allowed myself to become?

An answer comes, of sorts: You are the traveler now.

Saturday, July 26, 2008 (Clare is 37)

CLARE: Alba’s reward for being patient at the galleries while Charisse and I look at art is to go to Ed Debevic’s, a faux diner that does a brisk tourist trade. As soon as we walk in the door it’s sensory overload circa 1964. The Kinks are playing at top volume and there’s signage everywhere:

“If you’re really a good customer you’d order more!!!” “Please talk clearly when placing your order.”

“Our coffee is so good we drink it ourselves!”

Today is evidently balloon-animal day; a gentleman in a shiny purple suit whips up a wiener dog for Alba and then turns it into a hat and plants it on her head. She squirms with joy. We stand in line for half an hour and Alba doesn’t whine at all; she watches the waiters and waitresses flirt with each other and silently evaluates the other children’s balloon animals. We are finally escorted to a booth by a waiter wearing thick horn-rimmed glasses and a name tag that says SPAZ. Charisse and I flip open our menus and try to find something we want to eat amidst the Cheddar Fries and the meatloaf. Alba just chants the word milkshake over and over. When Spaz reappears Alba has a sudden attack of shyness and hasto be coaxed into telling him that she would like a peanut butter milkshake (and a small order of fries, because, I tell her, it’s too decadent to eat nothing but a milkshake for lunch). Charisse orders macaroni and cheese and I order a BLT. Once Spaz leaves Charisse sings, “

Alba and Spaz, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G...” and Alba shuts her eyes and puts her handsover her ears, shaking her head and smiling. A waiter with a name tag that says BUZZ struts up and down the lunch counter doing karaoke to Bob Seger’s I Love That Old Time Rock and Roll.

“I hate Bob Seger ” Charisse says. “Do you think it took him more than thirty seconds to write that song?”

The milkshake arrives in a tall glass with a bendable straw and a metal shaker that contains the milkshake that couldn’t fit into the glass. Alba stands up to drink it, stands on tiptoe to achieve the best possible angle for sucking down a peanut butter milkshake. Her balloon wiener dog hat keeps sliding down her forehead, interfering with her concentration. She looks up at me through her thick black eyelashes and pushes the balloon hat up so that it is clinging to her head by static electricity.

“When’s Daddy coming home?” she asks. Charisse makes the sound that one makes when

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

one has accidentally gotten Pepsi up one’s nose and starts to cough and I pound her on the back until she makes hand gestures at me to stop so I stop.

“August 29th,” I tell Alba, who goes back to slurping the dregs of her shake while Charisse looks at me reproachfully.

Later, we’re in the car, on Lake Shore Drive; I’m driving and Charisse is fiddling with the radio and Alba is sleeping in the back seat. I exit at Irving Park and Charisse says, “Doesn’t Alba know that Henry is dead?”

“Of course she knows. She saw him” I remind Charisse. “Well, why did you tell her he was coming home in August?” “Because he is. He gave me the date himself.”

“Oh.” Even though my eyes are on the road I can feel Charisse staring at me. “Isn’t that..

.kind of weird?” “Alba loves it.” “For you, though?”

“I never see him.” I try to keep my voice light, as though I am not tortured by the unfairness of this, as though I don’t mourn my resentment when Alba tells me about her visits with Henry even as I drink up every detail.

Why not me, Henry? I ask him silently as I pull into Charisse and Gomez’s toy-littereddriveway. Why only Alba? But as usual there’s no answer to this. As usual, that’s just how it is. Charisse kisses me and gets out of the car, walks sedately toward her front door, which magically swings open, revealing Gomez and Rosa. Rosa is jumping up and down and holding something out toward Charisse, who takes it from her and says something, and gives her a big hug. Gomez stares at me, and finally gives me a little wave. I wave back. He turns away. Charisse and Rosa have gone inside. The door closes.

I sit there, in the driveway, Alba sleeping in the back seat. Crows are walking on the dandelion-infested lawn. Henry, where are you? I lean my head against the steering wheel. Help me. No one answers. After a minute I put the car in gear, back out of the driveway, andmake my way toward our silent, waiting home.

Saturday, September 3, 1990 (Henry is 27)

HENRY: Ingrid and I have lost the car and we are drunk. We are drunk and it is dark and we have walked up and down and back and around and no car. Fucking Lincoln Park. Fucking Lincoln Towing. Fuck.

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

Ingrid is pissed off. She walks ahead of me, and her whole back, even the way her hips move, is pissed off. Somehow this is my fault. Fucking Park West nightclub. Why would anyone put a nightclub in wretched yuppieville Lincoln Park where you cannot leave your car for more than ten seconds without Lincoln Towing hauling it off to their lair to gloat over it—

“Henry.”

“What?”

“There’s that little girl again.” “What little girl?”

“The one we saw earlier.” Ingrid stops. I look where she is pointing.

The girl is standing in the doorway of a flower shop. She’s wearing something dark, so all I see is her white face and her bare feet. She’s maybe seven or eight; too young to be out alone in the middle of the night. Ingrid walks over to the girl, who watches her impassively.

“Are you okay?” Ingrid asks the girl. “Are you lost?”

The girl looks at me and says, “I was lost, but now I’ve figured out where I am. Thank you,” she adds politely.

“Do you need a ride home? We could give you a ride if we ever manage to find the car.” Ingrid is leaning over the girl. Her face is maybe a foot away from the girl’s face. As I walk up to them I see that the girl is wearing a man’s windbreaker. It comes all the way down to her ankles.

“No, thank you. I live too far away, anyhow.” The girl has long black hair and startling dark eyes; in the yellow light of the flower shop she looks like a Victorian match girl, or DeQuincey’s Ann.

“Where’s your mom?” Ingrid asks her. The girl replies, “She’s at home.” She smiles at me and says, “She doesn’t know I’m here.”

“Did you run away?” I ask her.

“No,” she says, and laughs. “I was looking for my daddy, but I’m too early, I guess. I’ll come back later.” She squeezes past Ingrid and pads over to me, grabs my jacket and pulls me toward her. “The car’s across the street,” she whispers. I look across the street and there it is, Ingrid’s red Porsche. “Thanks—” I begin, and the girl darts a kiss at me that lands near my ear and then runs down the sidewalk, her feet slapping the concrete as I stand staring after her. Ingrid is quiet as we get into the car. Finally I say, “That was strange,” and she sighs and says, “Henry, for a smart person you can be pretty damn dense sometimes,” and she drops me off in front of my apartment without another word.

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

Sunday, July 29, 1979 (Henry is 42)

HENRY: It’s sometime in the past. I’m sitting on Lighthouse Beach with Alba. She’s ten. I’m forty-two. Both of us are time traveling. It’s a warm evening, maybe July or August. I’m wearing a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt I stole from a fancy North Evanston mansion; Alba is wearing a pink nightgown she took from an old lady’s clothesline. It’s too long for her so we have tied it up around her knees. People have been giving us strange looks all afternoon. I guess we don’t exactly look like an average father and daughter at the beach. But we have done our best; we have swum, and we have built a sand castle. We have eaten hotdogs and fries we bought from the vendor in the parking lot. We don’t have a blanket, or any towels, and so we are kind of sandy and damp and pleasantly tired, and we sit watching little children running back and forth in the waves and big silly dogs loping after them. The sun is setting behind us as we stare at the water.

“Tell me a story,” says Alba, leaning against me like cold cooked pasta. I put my arm around her. “What kind of story?”

“A good story. A story about you and Mama, when Mama was a little girl” “Hmm. Okay. Once upon a time—”

“When was that?”

“All times at once. A long time ago, and right now.” “Both?”

“Yes, always both.” “How can it be both?”

“Do you want me to tell this story or not?” “Yeah....”

“All right then. Once upon a time, your mama lived in a big house beside a meadow, and in the meadow was a place called the clearing where she used to go to play. And one fine day your mama, who was only a tiny thing whose hair was bigger than she was, went out to the clearing and there was a man there—”

“With no clothes!”

“With not a stitch on him” I agree. “And after your mama had given him a beach towel she happened to be carrying so he could have something to wear, he explained to her that he was a time traveler, and for some reason she believed him—”

“Because it was true!” .

“Well, yes, but how was she going to know that? Anyway, she did”“ believe him, and

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

then later on she was silly enough to marry him and here we are,” Alba punches me in the stomach. “Tell it right” she demands. “Ooof. How can I tell anything if you beat on me like that? Geez.”

Alba is quiet. Then she says, “How come you never visit Mama in the future?”

“I don’t know, Alba. If I could, I’d be there.” The blue is deepening over the horizon and the tide is receding. I stand up and offer Alba my hand, pull her up. As she stands brushing sand from her nightgown she stumbles toward me and says, “Oh!” and is gone and I stand there on the beach holding a damp cotton nightgown and staring at Alba’s slender footprints in the fading light.

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

RENASCENCE

Thursday, December 4, 2008 (Clare is 37)

CLARE: It’s a cold, bright morning. I unlock the door of the studio and stamp snow off my boots. I open the shades, turn up the heat. I start a pot of coffee brewing. I stand in the empty space in the middle of the studio and I look around me.

Two years’ worth of dust and stillness lies over everything. My drawing table is bare. The beater sits clean and empty. The molds and deckles are neatly stacked, coils of armature wire sit untouched by the table. Paints and pigments, jars of brushes, tools, books; all are just as I left them. The sketches I had thumbtacked to the wall have yellowed and curled. I untack them and throw them in the wastebasket.

I sit at my drawing table and I close my eyes.

The wind is rattling tree branches against the side of the house, A car splashes through slush in the alley. The coffeemaker hisses and gurgles as it spits the last spurt of coffee into the pot. I open my eyes, shiver and pull my heavy sweater closer.

When I woke up this morning I had an urge to come here. It was like a flash of lust: an assignation with my old lover, art. But now I’m sitting here waiting for.. .something.. .to come to me and nothing comes. I open a flat file drawer and take out a sheet of indigo-dyed paper. It’s heavy and slightly rough, deep blue and cold to the touch like metal. I lay it on the table. I stand and stare at it for a while. I take out a few pieces of soft white pastel and weigh them in my palm. Then I put them down and pour myself some coffee. I stare out the window at the back of the house. If Henry were here he might be sitting at his desk, might be looking back at me from the window above his desk. Or he might be playing Scrabble with Alba, or reading the comics, or making soup for lunch. I sip my coffee and try to feel time revert, try to erase the difference between now and then. It is only my memory that holds me here. Time, let me vanish. Then what we separate by our very presence can come together.

I stand in front of the sheet of paper, holding a white pastel. The paper is vast, and I begin in the center, bending over the paper though I know I would be more comfortable at the easel. I measure out the figure, half-life-sized: here is the top of the head, the groin, the heel of the foot. I rough in a head. I draw very lightly, from memory: empty eyes, here at the midpoint of the head, long nose, bow mouth slightly open. The eyebrows arch in surprise: oh, it’s you. The pointed chin and the round jawline, the forehead high and the ears only indicated. Here is the neck, and the shoulders that slope into arms that cross protectively over the breasts, here is the bottom of the rib cage, the plump stomach, full hips, legs slightly bent, feet pointing downward as though the figure is floating in midair. The points of measurement are like stars in the indigo night sky of the paper; the figure is a constellation. I indicate

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

highlights and the figure becomes three dimensional, a glass vessel. I draw the features carefully, create the structure of the face, fill in the eyes, which regard me, astonished at suddenly existing. The hair undulates across the paper, floating weightless and motionless, linear pattern that makes the static body dynamic. What else is in this universe, this drawing? Other stars, far away. I hunt through my tools and find a needle. I tape the drawing over a window and I begin to prick the paper full of tiny holes, and each pin prick becomes a sun in some other set of worlds. And when I have a galaxy full of stars I prick out the figure, which now becomes a constellation in earnest, a network of tiny lights, I regard my likeness, and she returns my gaze. I place my finger on her forehead and say, “Vanish,” but it is she who will stay; I am the one who is vanishing.

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

ALWAYS AGAIN

Thursday, July 24, 2053 (Henry is 43, Clare is 82)

HENRY: I find myself in a dark hallway. At the end of the hall is a door, slightly open with white light spilling around its edges. The hall is full of galoshes and rain coats. I walk slowly and silently to the door and carefully look into the next room. Morning light fills up the room and is painful at first, but as my eyes adjust I see that in the room is a plain wooden table next to a window. A woman sits at the table facing the window. A teacup sits at her elbow. Outside is the lake, the waves rush up the shore and recede with calming repetition which becomes like stillness after a few minutes. The woman is extremely still. Something about her is familiar. She is an old woman; her hair is perfectly white and lies long on her back in a thin stream, over a slight dowager’s hump. She wears a sweater the color of coral. The curve of her shoulders, the stiffness in her posture say here is someone who is very tired, and I am very tired, myself. I shift my weight from one foot to the other and the floor creaks; the woman turns and sees me and her face is remade into joy; I am suddenly amazed; this is Clare, Clare old! and she is coming to me, so slowly, and I take her into my arms.

Monday, July 14, 2053 (Clare is 82)

CLARE: This morning everything is clean; the storm has left branches strewn around the yard, which I will presently go out and pick up: all the beach’s sand has been redistributed and laid down fresh in an even blanket pocked with impressions of rain, and the daylilies bend and glisten in the white seven a.m. light. I sit at the dining room table with a cup of tea, looking at the water, listening. Waiting.

Today is not much different from all the other days. I get up at dawn, put on slacks and a sweater, brush my hair, make toast, and tea, and sit looking at the lake, wondering if he will come today. It’s not much different from the many other times he was gone, and I waited, except that this time I have instructions: this time I know Henry will come, eventually. I sometimes wonder if this readiness, this expectation, prevents the miracle from happening. But I have no choice. He is coming, and I am here.

Now from his breast into his eyes the ache

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

of longing mounted, and he wept at last, his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms,

longed for as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer spent in rough water where his ship went down

under Poseidon’s blows, gale winds and tons of sea.

Few men can keep alive through a big surf

to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:

and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband, her white arms round him pressed as though forever.

— from, The Odyssey

Homer translated by Robert Fitzgerald

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing is a private thing. It’s boring to watch, and its pleasures tend to be most intense for the person who’s actually doing the writing. So with big gratitude and much awe, I would like to thank everyone who helped me to write and publish The Time Traveler’s Wife:

Thank you to Joseph Regal, for saying Yes, and for an education in the wily ways of publishing. It’s been a blast. Thank you to the excellent people of MacAdam/Cage, especially Anika Streitfeld, my editor, for patience and care and close scrutiny. It is a great pleasure to work with Dorothy Carico Smith, Pat Walsh, David Poindexter, Kate Nitze, Tom White, and John Gray. And thank you also to Melanie Mitchell, Amy Stoll, and Tasha Reynolds. Many thanks also to Howard Sanders, and to Caspian Dennis.

The Ragdale Foundation supported this book with numerous residencies. Thank you to its marvelous staff, especially Sylvia Brown, Anne Hughes, Susan Tillett, and Melissa Mosher. And thank you to The Illinois Arts Council, and the taxpayers of Illinois, who awarded me a Fellowship in Prose in 2000.

Thank you to the librarians and staff, past and present, of the Newberry Library: Dr. Paul Gehl, Bart Smith, and Margaret Kulis. Without their generous help, Henry would have ended up working at Starbucks. I would also like to thank the librarians of the Reference Desk at the Evanston Public Library, for their patient assistance with all sorts of wacko queries.

Thank you to papermakers who patiently shared their knowledge: Marilyn Sward and Andrea Peterson.

Thanks to Roger Carlson of Bookman’s Alley, for many years of happy book hunting, and to Steve Kay of Vintage Vinyl for stocking everything I want to listen to. And thanks to Carol Prieto, realtor supreme.

Many thanks to friends, family, and colleagues who read, critiqued, and contributed their expertise: Lyn Rosen, Danea Rush, Jonelle Niffenegger, Riva Lehrer, Lisa Gurr, Robert Vladova, Melissa Jay Craig, Stacey Stern, Ron Falzone, Marcy Henry, Josie Kearns, Caroline Preston, Bill Frederick, Bert Menco, Patricia Niffenegger, Beth Niffenegger, Jonis Agee and the members of her Advanced Novel class, Iowa City, 2001. Thanks to Paula Campbell for her help with the French.

Special thanks to Alan Larson, whose unflagging optimism set me a good example. Last and best, thanks to Christopher Schneberger: I waited for you, and now you’re here.

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

AUDREY NIFFENEGGERis a visual artist and a professor in the Interdisciplinary Book ArtsMFA Program at the Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts, where she teaches writing, letterpress printing, and fine edition book production. She shows her artwork at Printworks Gallery in Chicago. The Time Traveler’s Wife is her first novel.

Copyright notice

MacAdam/Cage • 155 Sansome Street, Suite 550 • San Francisco, CA 94104 Copyright © 2003 by Audrey Niffenegger

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Library of Congress Cataloging-in Publication Data

Niffenegger, Audrey.

The time traveler’s wife / by Audrey Niffenegger. p. cm.

ISBN 1-931561-64-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. Time travel—Fiction.

2. Married people—Fiction. I. Title. PS3564.I362T56 2003

813’54-dc21 2003010159

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9876543

Book design by Dorothy Carico Smith.

Publisher’s Note. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

PERMISSIONS

Excerpt from Man & Time by J.B Priestley Copyright ©1964, Aldus Books Used by permission of Stanford Educational Corporation (formerly Ferguson Publishing Company). 200 West Jackson Boulevard. Chicago, IL 60606.

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

“Love After Love” from Collected Poems 1948-1984 by Derek Walcott. Copyright ©1986 by Derek Walcott Used by permission of Farrar. Straus and Giroux, LLC.

Excerpts from the ‘Duino Elegies’ and from “Going Blind , copyright ©1982 by Stephen Mitchell, from The Selected Poetry of Rattier Maria Rtlke by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell, copyright ©1982 by Stephen Mitchell Used by permission of Random House, Inc.

Excerpt from Gone Daddy Gone/I lust Want To Make Love To You‘“ written by Gordon Gano and Willie Dixon ©1980. Gorno Music (ASCAP) and Hoochie Coochie Music (BM1) Used by permission from Gorno Music (administered by Alan N Skiena, Esq ) and Hoochie Coochie Music (administered by Bug Music) For additional information on the genre of the blues please contact: The Blues Heaven Foundation (Founded by Willie Dixon in 1981) 2120 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago. IL 60616 (312) 808-1286.www.bluesheaven.com

Excerpt from “Gimme The Car” written by Gordon Gano ©1980, Gorno Music (ASCAP) Used by permission from Gorno Music Administered by Alan N Skiena, Esq.

Excerpt from “Add It Up‘ written by Gordon Gano © 1980, Gorno Music (ASCAP) Used by permission from Gorno Music. Administered by Alan N Skiena, Esq.

References to pharmaceutical products credited to the 2000 edition of the Physicians’ Desk Reference Used by permission of Thomson Medical Economics.

Lines by Emily Dickinson reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Ralph W Franklin, ed., Cambridge. Mass The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright ©1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College Copyright ©1951, 1955,1979 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

Quotations from the Dictionary of Given Names by Flora Haines Loughead Copyright ©1933 Used by permission of the Arthur H. Clark Company

Excerpt from “Pussy Power” written by Iggy Pop Copyright ©1990 James Osterberg Music (BMI)/Administered by BUG All rights reserved Used By Permission

Excerpt from “Yellow Submarine” copyright ©1966 (Renewed) Sony/ATV Tunes LLC. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN

The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

37203. All rights reserved Used by permission

Excerpt from Homer The Odyssey translated by Robert Fitzgerald Copyright ©1961, 1963 by Robert Fitzgerald Copyright renewed 1989 by Benedict R C Fitzgerald, on behalf of the Fitzgerald children Used by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC

Version history

V1.0—Quickly spell-checked and formatted. Not proofread.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 712