The time traveler's wife (3 page)

"Clare?"

"Yes?"

"Could we back up? Could we pretend that
this is a normal first date between two normal people?" "Okay."
Clare gets up and goes back to her side of the table. She sits up straight and
tries not to smile. "Um, right. Gee, ah, Clare, ah, tell me about
yourself. Hobbies? Pets? Unusual sexual proclivities?" "Find out for
yourself."

"Right. Let's see.. .where do you go to
school? What are you studying?"

"I'm at the School of the Art Institute;
I've been doing sculpture, and I've just started to study papermaking."
"Cool. What's your work like?"

For the first time, Clare seems uncomfortable.
"It's kind of...big, and it's about.. .birds." She looks at the
table, then takes a sip of tea.

"Birds?"

"Well, really it's about, um,
longing." She is still not looking at me, so I change the subject.
"Tell more about your family."

"Okay." Clare relaxes, smiles.
"Well...my family lives in Michigan, by a small town on the lake called
South Haven. Our house is in an unincorporated area outside the town, actually.
It originally belonged to my mother's parents, my Grandpa and Grandma Meagram.
He died before I was born, and she lived with us until she died. I was
seventeen. My grandpa was a lawyer, and my dad is a lawyer; my dad met my mom
when he came to work for Grandpa."

"So he married the boss's daughter."

"Yeah. Actually, I sometimes wonder if he
really married the boss's house. My mom is an only child, and the house is sort
of amazing; it's in a lot of books on the Arts and Crafts movement."

"Does it have a name? Who built it?"

"It's called Meadowlark House, and it was
built in 1896 by Peter Wyns."

"Wow. I've seen pictures of it. It was
built for one of the Henderson family, right?"

"Yes. It was a wedding present for Mary
Henderson and Dieter Bascombe. They divorced two years after they moved in and
sold the house."

"Posh house."

"My family is posh. They're very weird
about it, too." "Brothers and sisters?"

"Mark is twenty-two and finishing pre-law
at Harvard. Alicia is seventeen and a senior in high school. She's a
cellist." I detect affection for the sister and a certain flatness for the
brother. "You aren't too fond of your brother?"

"Mark is just like Dad. They both like to
win, talk you down until you submit."

"You know, I always envy people with
siblings, even if they don't like them all that much,"

"You're an only child?"

"Yep. I thought you knew everything about
me?"

"Actually I know everything and nothing. I
know how you look without clothes, but until this afternoon I didn't know your
last name. I knew you lived in Chicago, but I know nothing about your family
except that your mom died in a car crash when you were six. I know you know a
lot about art and speak fluent French and German; I had no idea you were a
librarian. You made it impossible for me to find you in the present; you said
it would just happen when it was supposed to happen, and here we are."

"Here we are," I agree. "Well,
my family isn't posh; they're musicians. My father is Richard DeTamble and my
mother was Annette Lyn Robinson."

"Oh—the singer!"

"Right. And he's a violinist. He plays for
the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. But he never really made it the way she did.
It's a shame because my father is a marvelous violin player. After Mom died he
was just treading water." The check arrives. Neither of us has eaten very
much, but I at least am not interested in food right now. Clare picks up her
purse and I shake my head at her. I pay; we leave the restaurant and stand on
Clark Street in the fine autumn night. Clare is wearing an elaborate blue
knitted thing and a fur scarf; I have forgotten to bring an overcoat so I'm
shivering.

"Where do you live?" Clare asks. Uh
oh. "I live about two blocks from here, but my place is tiny and really
messy right now. You?" "Roscoe Village, on Hoyne. But I have a
roommate."

"If you come up to my place you have to
close your eyes and count to one thousand. Perhaps you have a very
uninquisitive deaf roommate?"

"No such luck. I never bring anyone over;
Charisse would pounce on you and stick bamboo slivers under your fingernails
until you told all."

"I long to be tortured by someone named
Charisse, but I can see that you do not share my taste. Come up to my
parlor." We walk north along Clark. I veer into Clark Street Liquors for a
bottle of wine. Back on the street Clare is puzzled.

"I thought you aren't supposed to
drink?" I m not? "Dr. Kendrick was very strict about it."

"Who's he?" We are walking slowly
because Clare is wearing impractical shoes.

"He's your doctor; he's a big expert on
Chrono-Impairment."

"Explain."

"I don't know very much. Dr. David
Kendrick is a molecular geneticist who discovered—will discover why people are
chrono-impaired. It's a genetic thing; he figures it out in 2006." She
sighs. "I guess it's just way too early. You told me once that there are a
lot more chrono-impaired people about ten years from now."

"I've never heard of anyone else who has
this—impairment."

"I guess even if you went out right now
and found Dr. Kendrick he wouldn't be able to help you. And we would never have
met, if he could."

"Let's not think about that." We are
in my lobby. Clare precedes me into the tiny elevator. I close the door and
push eleven. She smells like old cloth, soap, sweat, and fur. I breathe deeply.
The elevator clangs into place on my floor and we extricate ourselves from it
and walk down the narrow hallway. I wield my fistful of keys on all 107 locks
and crack the door slightly. "It's gotten much worse during dinner. I'm
going to have to blindfold you." Clare giggles as I set down the wine and
remove my tie. I pass it over her eyes and tie it firmly at the back of her
head. I open the door and guide her into the apartment and settle her in the
armchair. "Okay, start counting."

Clare counts. I race around picking underwear
and socks from the floor, collecting spoons and coffee cups from various
horizontal surfaces and chucking them into the kitchen sink. As she says
"Nine hundred and sixty-seven," I remove the tie from her eyes. I
have turned the sleeper-sofa into its daytime, sofa self, and I sit down on it.
"Wine? Music? Candlelight?"

"Yes, please."

I get up and light candles. When I'm finished I
turn off the overhead light and the room is dancing with little lights and
everything looks better. I put the roses in water, locate my corkscrew, extract
the cork, and pour us each a glass of wine. After a moment's thought I put on
the EMI CD of my mother singing Schubert lieder and turn the volume low. My
apartment is basically a couch, an armchair, and about four thousand books.

"How lovely," says Clare. She gets up
and reseats herself on the sofa. I sit down next to her. There is a comfortable
moment when we just sit there and look at each other. The candlelight flickers
on Clare's hair. She reaches over and touches my cheek. "It's so good to
see you. I was getting lonely."

I draw her to me. We kiss. It's a very..
.compatible kiss, a kiss born of long association, and I wonder just exactly
what we've been doing in this meadow of Clare's, but I push the thought away.
Our lips part; usually at this point I would be considering how to work my way
past various fortresses of clothing, but instead I lean back and stretch out on
the sofa, bringing Clare along with me by gripping her under the arms and
pulling; the velvet dress makes her slippery and she slithers into the space
between my body and the back of the sofa like a velvet eel. She is facing me
and I am propped up by the arm of the sofa. I can feel the length of her body
pressing against mine through the thin fabric. Part of me is dying to go
leaping and licking and diving in, but I'm exhausted and overwhelmed.

"Poor Henry."

"Why 'Poor Henry?' I'm overcome with
happiness." And it's true.

"Oh, I've been dropping all these
surprises on you like big rocks." Clare swings a leg over me so she's
sitting exactly on top of my cock. It concentrates my attention wonderfully.

"Don't move," I say.

"Okay. I'm finding this evening highly
entertaining. I mean, Knowledge is Power, and all that. Also I've always been
hugely curious to find out where you live and what you wear and what you do for
a living."

" Voila!" I slide my hands under her
dress and up her thighs. She's bearing stockings and garters. My kind of girl.
"Clare?"

"Oui."

"It seems like a shame to just gobble
everything up all at once. I mean, a little anticipation wouldn't hurt
anything."

Clare is abashed. "I'm sorry! But, you
know, in my case, I've been anticipating for years. And, it's not like cake..
.you eat it and it's gone."

"Have your cake and eat it too."

"That's my motto." She smiles a tiny
wicked smile and thrusts her hips back and forth a couple times. I now have an
erection that is probably tall enough to ride some of the scarier rides at
Great America without a parent.

"You get your way a lot, don't you?"

"Always. I'm horrible. Except you have
been mostly impervious to my wheedling ways. I've suffered dreadfully under
your regime of French verbs and checkers."

"I guess I should take consolation in the
fact that my future self will at least have some weapons of subjugation. Do you
do this to all the boys?"

Clare is offended; I can't tell how genuinely.
"I wouldn't dream of doing this with boys. What nasty ideas you
have!" She is unbuttoning my shirt. "God, you're so...young."
She pinches my nipples, hard. The hell with virtue. I've figured out the
mechanics of her dress. The next morning:

Clare: I wake up and I don't know where I am.
An unfamiliar ceiling. Distant traffic noises. Bookshelves. A blue armchair
with my velvet dress slung across it and a man's tie draped over the dress.
Then I remember. I turn my head and there's Henry. So simple, as though I've
been doing it all my life. He is sleeping with abandon, torqued into an
unlikely shape as though he's washed up on some beach, one arm over his eyes to
shut out the morning, his long black hair splayed over the pillow. So simple.
Here we are. Here and now, finally now. I get out of bed carefully. Henry's bed
is also his sofa. The springs squeak as I stand up. There's not much space
between the bed and the bookshelves, so I edge along until I make it into the
hallway. The bathroom is tiny. I feel like Alice in Wonderland, grown huge and
having to stick my arm out the window just so I can turn around. The ornate
little radiator is clanking out heat. I pee and wash my hands and my face. And
then I notice that there are two toothbrushes in the white porcelain toothbrush
holder. I open the medicine cabinet. Razors, shaving cream, Listerine, Tylenol,
aftershave, a blue marble, a toothpick, deodorant on the top shelf. Hand
lotion, tampons, a diaphragm case, deodorant, lipstick, a bottle of
multivitamins, a tube of spermicide on the bottom shelf. The lipstick is a very
dark red. I stand there, holding the lipstick. I feel a little sick. I wonder
what she looks like, what her name is. I wonder how long they've been going
out. Long enough, I guess. I put the lipstick back, close the medicine cabinet.
In the mirror I see myself, white-faced, hair flying in all directions. Well,
whoever you are, I'm here now. You may be Henry's past, but I'm his future. I
smile at myself. My reflection grimaces back at me. I borrow Henry's white
terrycloth bathrobe from the back of the bathroom door. Underneath it on the
hook is a pale blue silk robe. For no reason at all wearing his bathrobe makes
me feel better. Back in the living room, Henry is still sleeping. I retrieve my
watch from the windowsill and see that it's only 6:30. I'm too restless to get
back into bed. I walk into the kitchenette in search of coffee. All the
counters and the stove are covered with stacks of dishes, magazines, and other
reading material. There's even a sock in the sink. I realize that Henry must
have simply heaved everything into the kitchen last night, regardless. I always
had this idea that Henry was very tidy. Now it becomes clear that he's one of
those people who is fastidious about his personal appearance but secretly
slovenly about everything else. I find coffee in the fridge, and find the
coffee maker, and start the coffee. While I wait for it to brew, I peruse
Henry's bookshelves. Here is the Henry I know. Donne's Elegies and Songs and
Sonnets. Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe. Naked Lunch. Anne Bradstreet,
Immanuel Kant. Barthes, Foucault, Derrida. Blake's Songs of Innocence and
Experience. Winnie the Pooh. The Annotated Alice. Heidegger. Rilke. Tristram
Shandy. Wisconsin Death Trip. Aristotle. Bishop Berkeley. Andrew Marvell.
Hypothermia, Frostbite and Other Cold Injuries. The bed squeaks and I jump.
Henry is sitting up, squinting at me in the morning light. He's so young, so
before—. He doesn't know me, yet. I have a sudden fear that he's forgotten who
I am.

"You look cold" he says. "Come
back to bed, Clare."