The time traveler's wife (29 page)

"Hey, Dad? You home?"

There's a pause, and then, "GO AWAY."

I walk up the stairs and Mrs. Kim shuts her
door.

The first thing that hits me is the smell:
something is rotting in here. The living room is devastated. Where are all the
books? My parents had tons of books, on music, on history, novels, in French,
in German, in Italian: where are they? Even the record and CD collection seems
smaller. There are papers all over, junk mail, newspapers, scores, covering the
floor. My mother's piano is coated with dust and there is a vase of long-dead
gladiolas mummifying on the windowsill. I walk down the hall, glancing in the
bedrooms. Utter chaos; clothes, garbage, more newspapers. In the bathroom a
bottle of Michelob lies under the sink and a glossy dry layer of beer varnishes
the tile. In the kitchen my father sits at the table with his back to me,
looking out the window at the river. He doesn't turn around as I enter. He
doesn't look at me when I sit down. But he doesn't get up and leave, either, so
I take it as a sign that conversation may proceed.

"Hi, Dad."

Silence.

"I saw Mrs. Kim, just now. She says you're
not doing too good." Silence.

"I hear you're not working."
"It's May."

"How come you're not on tour?"

He finally looks at me. Under the stubbornness
there is fright. "I'm on sick leave."

"Since when?"

"March."

"Paid sick leave?" Silence.

"Are you sick? What's wrong?"

I think he's going to ignore me, but then he
answers by holding out his hands. They are shaking as though they are in their
own tiny earthquake. He's done it, finally. Twenty-three years of determined
drinking and he's destroyed his ability to play the violin.

"Oh, Dad. Oh, God. What does Stan
say?"

"He says that's it. The nerves are shot,
and they aren't coming back."

"Jesus." We look at each other for an
unendurable minute. His face is anguished, and I'm beginning to understand: he
has nothing. There is nothing left to hold him, to keep him, to be his life.
First Mom, then his music, gone, gone. I never mattered much to begin with, so
my belated efforts will be inconsequential. "What happens now?"

Silence. Nothing happens now.

"You can't just stay up here and drink for
the next twenty years." He looks at the table.

"What about your pension? Workers' comp?
Medicare? AA?" He's done nothing, let everything slide. Where have I been?
"I paid your rent."

"Oh." He's confused. "Didn't I
pay it?"

"No. You owed for two months. Mrs. Kim was
very embarrassed. She didn't want to tell me, and she didn't want me giving her
money, but there's no sense making your problems her problems."

"Poor Mrs. Kim." Tears are coursing
down my father's cheeks. He is old. There's no other word for it. He's
fifty-seven, and he's an old man. I am not angry, now. I'm sorry, and
frightened for him.

"Dad." He is looking at me again.
"Look. You have to let me do some things for you, okay?" He looks
away, out the window again at the infinitely more interesting trees on the
other side of the water. "You need to let me see your pension documents
and bank statements and all that. You need to let Mrs. Kim and me clean this
place. And you need to stop drinking."

"No."

"No, what? Everything or just some of
it?"

Silence. I'm starting to lose my patience, so I
decide to change the subject. "Dad. I'm going to get married." Now I
have his attention.

"To who? Who would marry you?" He
says this, I think, without malice. He's genuinely curious. I take out my
wallet and remove a picture of Clare from its plastic pocket. In the picture
Clare is looking out serenely over Lighthouse Beach. Her hair floats like a
banner in the breeze and in the early morning light she seems to glow against a
background of dark trees. Dad takes the picture and studies it carefully.

"Her name is Clare Abshire. She's an
artist"

"Well. She's pretty," he says
grudgingly. This is as close as I'm going to get to a paternal blessing.

"I would like... 1 would really like to
give her Mom's wedding and engagement rings. I think Mom would have liked
that."

"How would you know? You probably hardly
remember her."

I don't want to discuss it, but I feel suddenly
determined to have my way. "I see her on a regular basis. I've seen her
hundreds of times since she died. I see her walking around the neighborhood,
with you, with me. She goes to the park and learns scores, she shops, she has
coffee with Mara at Tia's. I see her with Uncle Ish. I see her at Juilliard. I hear
her sing!" Dad is gaping at me. I'm destroying him, but I can't seem to
stop. "I have spoken to her. Once I stood next to her on a crowded train,
touching her." Dad is crying. "It's not always a curse, okay?
Sometimes time travel is a great thing. I needed to see her, and sometimes I
get to see her. She would have loved Clare, she would have wanted me to be
happy, and she would deplore the way you've fucked everything up just because
she died."

He sits at the kitchen table and weeps. He
cries, not covering his face, but simply lowering his head and letting the
tears stream from him. I watch him for a while, the price of losing my temper.
Then I go to the bathroom and return with the roll of toilet paper. He takes
some, blindly, and blows his nose. Then we sit there for a few minutes.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why didn't you tell me you could see her?
I would've liked.. .to know that."

Why didn't I tell him? Because any normal
father would have figured out by now that the stranger haunting their early
married life was really his abnormal, time-traveling son. Because I was scared
to: because he hated me for surviving. Because I could secretly feel superior
to him for something he saw as a defect. Ugly reasons like that.

"Because I thought it would hurt
you."

"Oh. No. It doesn't... hurt me; I...it's
good to know she's there, somewhere. I mean...the worst thing is that she's
gone. So it's good that she's out there. Even if I can't see her."

"She seems happy, usually."

"Yes, she was very happy.. .we were
happy."

"Yeah. You were like a different person. I
always wondered what it would have been like to grow up with you the way you
were, then."

He stands up, slowly. I remain seated, and he
walks unsteadily down the hall and into his bedroom. I hear him rummaging
around, and then he comes slowly back with a small satin pouch. He reaches into
it, and withdraws a dark blue jeweler's box. He opens it, and takes out the two
delicate rings. They rest like seeds in his long, shaking hand. Dad puts his
left hand over the right hand that holds the rings, and sits like that for a
bit, as though the rings are lightning bugs trapped in his two hands. His eyes
are closed. Then he opens his eyes, and reaches out his right hand: I cup my
hands together, and he turns the rings onto my waiting palms. The engagement
ring is an emerald, and the dim light from the window is refracted green and
white in it. The rings are silver, and they need cleaning. They need wearing,
and I know just the girl to wear them.

BIRTHDAY

Sunday, May 24, 1992 (Clare is 21, Henry is 28)

Clare: It's my twenty-first birthday. It's a
perfect summer evening. I'm at Henry's apartment, in Henry's bed, reading The
Moonstone. Henry is in the tiny kitchenette making dinner. As I don his bathrobe
and head for the bathroom I hear him swearing at the blender. I take my time,
wash my hair, steam up the mirrors. I think about cutting my hair. How nice it
would be to wash it, run a quick comb through it, and presto! all set, ready to
rock and roll. I sigh. Henry loves my hair almost as though it is a creature
unto itself, as though it has a soul to call its own, as though it could love
him back. I know he loves it as part of me, but I also know that he would be
deeply upset if I cut it off. And I would miss it, too.. .it's just so much
effort, sometimes I want to take it off like a wig and set it aside while I go
out and play. I comb it carefully, working out the tangles. My hair is heavy
when it's wet. It pulls on my scalp. I prop the bathroom door open to dissipate
the steam. Henry is singing something from Carmina Burana; it sounds weird and
off key. I emerge from the bathroom and he is setting the table. "Perfect
timing; dinner is served "

"Just a minute, let me get dressed."

"You're fine as you are. Really."
Henry walks around the table, opens the bathrobe, and runs his hands lightly
over my breasts.

"Mmm. Dinner will get cold."

"Dinner is cold. I mean, it's supposed to
be cold."

"Oh
   
Well,
let's eat." I'm suddenly exhausted, and cranky.

"Okay." Henry releases me without
comment. He returns to setting out silverware. I watch him for a minute, then
pick up my clothes from their various places on the floor and put them on. I
sit down at the table; Henry brings out two bowls of soup, pale and thick. "Vichyssoise.
This is my grandmother's recipe." I take a sip. It's perfect, buttery and
cool. The next course is salmon, with long pieces of asparagus in an olive oil
and rosemary marinade. I open my mouth to say something nice about the food and
instead say, "Henry—do other people have sex as much as we do?"

Henry considers. "Most people.. .no, I
imagine not. Only people who haven't known each other very long and still can't
believe their luck, I would think. Is it too much?"

"I don't know. Maybe." I say this
looking at my plate. I can't believe I'm saying this; I spent my entire
adolescence begging Henry to fuck me and now I'm telling him it's too much.
Henry sits very still.

"Clare, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize; I
wasn't thinking."

I look up; Henry looks stricken. I burst out
laughing. Henry smiles, a little guilty, but his eyes are twinkling. "It's
just—you know, there are days when I can't sit down."

"Well.. .you just have to say. Say'Not
tonight, dear, we've already done it twenty-three times today and I would
rather read Bleak House.'"

"And you will meekly cease and
desist?"

"I did, just then, didn't I? That was
pretty meek."

"Yeah. But then I felt guilty."

Henry laughs. "You can't expect me to help
you out there. It may be my only hope: day after day, week after week, I will
languish, starving for a kiss, withering away for want of a blow job, and after
a while you will look up from your book and realize that I'm actually going to
die at your feet if you don't fuck me immediately but I won't say a word. Maybe
a few little whimpering noises."

"But—I don't know, I mean, I'm exhausted,
and you seem...fine. Am I abnormal, or something?"

Henry leans across the table and holds out his
hands. I place mine in his.

"Clare."

"Yes?"

"It may be indelicate to mention this, but
if you will excuse me for saying so, your sex drive far outstrips that of
almost all the women I've dated. Most women would have cried Uncle and turned
on their answering machines months ago. But I should have thought.. .you always
seemed into it. But if it's too much, or you don't feel like it, you have to
say so, because otherwise I'll be tiptoeing around, wondering if I'm burdening
you with my hideous demands."

"But how much sex is enough?"

"For me? Oh, God. My idea of the perfect
life would be if we just stayed in bed all the time. We could make love more or
less continuously, and only get up to bring in supplies, you know, fresh water
and fruit to prevent scurvy, and make occasional trips to the bathroom to shave
before diving back into bed. And once in a while we could change the sheets.
And go to the movies to prevent bedsores. And running. I would still have to
run every morning." Running is a religion with Henry.

"How come running? Since you'd be getting
so much exercise anyway?"

He is suddenly serious. "Because quite
frequently my life depends on running faster than whoever's chasing me."

"Oh." Now it's my turn to be abashed,
because I already knew that. "But—how do I put this?—you never seem to go
anywhere—that is, since I met you here in the present you've hardly time
traveled at all. Have you?"

"Well, at Christmas, you saw that. And
around Thanksgiving. You were in Michigan, and I didn't mention it because it
was depressing."

"You were watching the accident?"

Henry stares at me. "Actually, I was. How
did you know?"

"A few years ago you showed up at
Meadowlark on Christmas Eve and told me about it. You were really upset."

"Yeah. I remember being unhappy just
seeing that date on the List, thinking, gee, an extra Christmas to get through.
Plus that was a bad one in regular time; I ended up with alcohol poisoning and
had to have my stomach pumped. I hope I didn't ruin yours."