The time traveler's wife (24 page)

Henry gravely replies, "To world enough
and time," and my heart skips and I wonder how he knows, but then I
realize that Marvell's one of his favorite poets and he's not referring to
anything but the future.

"To snow and Jesus and Mama and Daddy and
catgut and sugar and my new red Converse High Tops," says Alicia, and we
all laugh.

"To love," says Nell, looking right
at me, smiling her vast smile. "And to Morton Thompson, inventor of the
best eatin' turkey on the Planet Earth."

Henry: All through dinner Lucille has been
careening wildly from sadness to elation to despair. Her entire family has been
carefully navigating her mood, driving her into neutral territory again and
again, buffering her, protecting her. But as we sit down and begin to eat
dessert, she breaks down and sobs silently, her shoulders shaking, her head
turned away as though she's going to tuck it under her wing like a sleeping
bird. At first I am the only person who notices this, and I sit, horrified,
unsure what to do. Then Philip sees her, and then the whole table falls quiet.
He's on his feet, by her side. "Lucy?" he whispers. "Lucy, what
is it?" Clare hurries to her, saying "Come on, Mama, it's okay,
Mama... " Lucille is shaking her head, No, no, no, and wringing her hands.
Philip backs off; Clare says, "Hush," and Lucille is speaking
urgently but not very clearly: I hear a rush of unintelligableness, then
"All wrong," and then "Ruin his chances," and finally
"I am just utterly disregarded in this family," and
"Hypocritical," and then sobs. To my surprise it's Great Aunt Dulcie
who breaks the stunned stillness. "Child, if anybody's a hypocrite here
it's you. You did the exact same thing and I don't see that it ruined Philip's
chances one bit. Improved them, if you ask me." Lucille stops crying and
looks at her aunt, shocked into silence. Mark looks at his father, who nods,
once, and then at Sharon, who is smiling as though she's won at bingo. I look
at Clare, who doesn't seem particularly astonished, and I wonder how she knew
if Mark didn't, and I wonder what else she knows that she hasn't mentioned, and
then it is borne in on me that Clare knows everything, our future, our past,
everything, and I shiver in the warm room. Etta brings coffee. We don't linger
over it.

Clare: Etta and I have put Mama to bed. She
kept apologizing, the way she always does, and trying to convince us that she
was well enough to go to Mass, but we finally got her to lie down and almost
immediately she was asleep. Etta says that she will stay home in case Mama
wakes up, and I tell her not to be silly, I'll stay, but Etta is obstinate and
so I leave her sitting by the bed, reading St. Matthew. I walk down the hall
and peek into Henry's room, but it's dark. When I open my door I find Henry
supine on my bed reading A Wrinkle in Time. I lock the door and join him on the
bed.

"What's wrong with your mom?" he asks
as I carefully arrange myself next to him, trying not to get stabbed by my
dress.

"She's manic-depressive." "Has
she always been?"

"She was better when I was little. She had
a baby that died, when I was seven, and that was bad. She tried to kill
herself. I found her." I remember the blood, everywhere, the bathtub full
of bloody water, the towels soaked with it. Screaming for help and nobody was
home. Henry doesn't say anything, and I crane my neck and he is staring at the
ceiling.

"Clare," he finally says.

"What?"

"How come you didn't tell me? I mean,
there's kind of a lot of stuff going on with your family that it would have
been good to know ahead of time."

"But you knew...." I trail off. He
didn't know. How could he know? "I'm sorry. It's just—I told you when it
happened, and I forget that now is before then, and so I think you know all
about it... "

Henry pauses, and then says, "Well, I've
sort of emptied the bag, as far as my family is concerned; all the closets and
skeletons have been displayed for your inspection, and I was just surprised...
I don't know."

"But you haven't introduced me to
him." I'm dying to meet Henry's dad, but I've been afraid to bring it up.

"No. I haven't."

"Are you going to?"

"Eventually."

"When?" I expect Henry to tell me I'm
pushing my luck, like he always used to when I asked too many questions, but
instead he sits up and swings his legs off the side of the bed. The back of his
shirt is all wrinkled.

"I don't know, Clare. When I can stand it,
I guess."

I hear footsteps outside the door that stop,
and the doorknob jiggles back and forth. "Clare?" my father says.
"Why is the door locked?" I get up and open the door. Daddy opens his
mouth and then sees Henry and beckons me into the hall.

"Clare, you know your mother and I don't
approve of you inviting your friend into your bedroom," he says quietly.
"There are plenty of rooms in this house—"

"We were just talking—"

"You can talk in the living room."

"I was telling him about Mama and I didn't
want to talk about it in the living room, okay?" "Honey, I really
don't think it's necessary to tell him about your mother—"

"After the performance she just gave what
am I supposed to do? Henry can see for himself that she's wacko, he isn't
stupid—" my voice is rising and Alicia opens her door and puts her finger
to her lips.

"Your mother is not 'wacko'," my
father says sternly.

"Yeah, she is," Alicia affirms,
joining the fray.

"Now stay out of this—"

"The hell I will—"

"Alicia!" Daddy's face is dark red
and his eyes are protruding and his voice is very loud. Etta opens Mama's door
and looks at the three of us with exasperation. "Go downstairs, if you
want to yell," she hisses, and closes the door. We look at each other,
abashed.

"Later," I tell Daddy. "Give me
a hard time later." Henry has been sitting on my bed this whole time,
trying to pretend he's not here. "Come on, Henry. Let's go sit in some
other room." Henry, docile as a small rebuked boy, stands and follows me
downstairs. Alicia galumphs after us. At the bottom of the stairs I look up and
see Daddy looking down at us helplessly. He turns and walks over to Mama's door
and knocks.

"Hey, let's watch It's a Wonderful
Life" Alicia says, looking at her watch. "It's on Channel 60 in five
minutes."

"Again? Haven't you seen it, like, two
hundred times already?" Alicia has a thing for Jimmy Stewart.

"I've never seen it," says Henry.
Alicia affects shock. "Never? How come?"

"I don't have a television."

Now Alicia really is shocked. "Did yours
break or something?"

Henry laughs. "No. I just hate them. They
give me headaches." They make him time travel. It's the flickering quality
of the picture. Alicia is disappointed. "So you don't want to watch?"

Henry glances at me; I don't mind.
"Sure," I say. "For a while. We won't see the end, though; we
have to get ready for Mass."

We troop into the TV room, which is off the
living room. Alicia turns on the set. A choir is singing It Came Upon the
Midnight Clear. "Ugh," she sneers. "Look at those bad yellow
plastic robes. They look like rain ponchos." She plops down on the floor
and Henry sits on the couch. I sit down next to him. Ever since we arrived I
have been worrying constantly about how to behave in front of my various family
members in terms of Henry. How close should I sit? If Alicia weren't here I
would lie down on the couch, put my head on Henry's lap. Henry solves my
problem by scooting closer and putting his arm around me. It's kind of a
self-conscious arm: we would never sit this way in any other context. Of
course, we never watch TV together. Maybe this is how we would sit if we ever
watched TV. The choir disappears and a slew of commercials comes on.
McDonald's, a local Buick dealership, Pillsbury, Red Lobster: they all wish us
a Merry Christmas. I look at Henry, who has an expression of blank amazement on
his face.

"What?" I ask him softly.

"The speed. They jump cut every couple
seconds; I'm going to be ill." Henry rubs his eyes with his fingers.
"I think I'll just go read for a while." He gets up and walks out of
the room, and in a minute I hear his feet on the stairs. I offer up a quick
prayer: Please, God, let Henry not time travel, especially not when we're about
to go to church and I won't be able to explain. Alicia scrambles onto the couch
as the opening credits appear on the screen.

"He didn't last long," she observes.

"He gets these really bad headaches. The
kind where you have to lie in the dark and not move and if anybody says boo
your brain explodes."

"Oh." James Stewart is flashing a
bunch of travel brochures, but his departure is cut short by the necessity of
attending a dance. "He's really cute."

"Jimmy Stewart?"

"Him too. I meant your guy. Henry."

I grin. I am as proud as if I had made Henry
myself. "Yeah."

Donna Reed is smiling radiantly at Jimmy
Stewart across a crowded room. Now they are dancing, and Jimmy Stewart's rival
has turned the switch that causes the dance floor to open over a swimming pool.
"Mama really likes him."

"Hallelujah." Donna and Jimmy dance
backwards into the pool; soon people in evening clothes are diving in after
them as the band continues playing.

"Nell and Etta approve, also."

"Great. Now we just have to get through
the next thirty-six hours without ruining the good first impression."
"How hard can that be? Unless—no, you wouldn't be that dumb..."
Alicia looks over at me dubiously. "Would you?" "Of course
not."

"Of course not," she echoes.
"God, I can't believe Mark. What a stupid fuck." Jimmy and Donna are
singing Buffalo Girls, won't you come out tonight while walking down the
streets of Bedford Falls resplendent in football uniform and bathrobe,
respectively. "You should have been here yesterday. I thought Daddy was
going to have a coronary right in front of the Christmas tree. I was imagining
him crashing into it and the tree falling on him and the paramedics having to
heave all the ornaments and presents off him before they could do CPR..."
Jimmy offers Donna the moon, and Donna accepts.

"I thought you learned CPR in
school."

"I would be too busy trying to revive
Mama. It was bad, Clare. There was a lot of yelling." "Was Sharon
there?"

Alicia laughs grimly. "Are you kidding?
Sharon and I were in here trying to chat politely, you know, and Mark and the
parentals were in the living room screaming at each other. After a while we
just sat here and listened."

Alicia and I exchange a look that just means So
what else is new? We have spent our lives listening to our parents yelling, at
each other, at us. Sometimes I feel like if I have to watch Mama cry one more
time I'm going to leave forever and never come back. Right now I want to grab
Henry and drive back to Chicago, where no one can yell, no one can pretend everything
is okay and nothing happened. An irate, paunchy man in an undershirt yells at
James Stewart to stop talking Donna Reed to death and just kiss her. I couldn't
agree more, but he doesn't. Instead he steps on her robe and she walks
obliviously out of it, and the next thing you know she's hiding naked in a
large hydrangea bush. A commercial for Pizza Hut comes on and Alicia turns off
the sound. "Um, Clare?"

"Yeah?"

"Has Henry ever been here before?"
Uh-oh. "No, I don't think so, why?"

She shifts uneasily and looks away for a
second. "You're gonna think I'm nuts."

"What?"

"See, I had this weird thing happen. A
long time ago... I was, like, about twelve, and I was supposed to be
practicing, but then I remembered that I didn't have a clean shirt for this
audition or something, and Etta and everybody were out someplace and Mark was
supposed to be baby-sitting but he was in his room doing bongs or whatever
       
Anyway, so I went downstairs, to the
laundry room, and I was looking for my shirt, and I heard this noise, you know,
like the door at the south end of the basement, the one that goes into the room
with all the bicycles, that sort of whoosh noise? So I thought it was Peter,
right? So I was standing in the door of the laundry room, sort of listening,
and the door to the bicycle room opens and Clare, you won't believe this, it
was this totally naked guy who looked just like Henry."

When I start laughing it sounds fake. "Oh,
come on."

Alicia grins. "See, I knew you would think
it was nuts. But I swear, it really happened. So this guy just looks a little
surprised, you know, I mean I'm standing there with my mouth hanging open and
wondering if this naked guy is going to, you know, rape me or kill me or
something, and he just looks at me and goes, 'Oh, hi, Alicia,' and walks into
the Reading Room and shuts the door."

"Huh?"

"So I run upstairs, and I'm banging on
Mark's door and he's telling me to buzz off, and so finally I get him to open
the door and he's so stoned that it takes a while before he gets what I'm
talking about and then, of course, he doesn't believe me but finally I get him
to come downstairs and he knocks on the Reading Room door and we are both
really scared, it's like Nancy Drew, you know, where you're thinking, 'Those
girls are really dumb, they should just call the police,' but nothing happens,
and then Mark opens the door and there's nobody there, and he is mad at me,
for, like, making it up, but then we think the man went upstairs, so we both go
and sit in the kitchen next to the phone with Nell's big carving knife on the
counter."