The time traveler's wife (5 page)

Nothing. Good boy, wary and silent. I try
again. "It's okay, Henry. I'm your guide, I'm here to show you around.
It's a special tour. Don't be afraid, Henry."

I hear a slight, oh-so-faint noise. "I
brought you a T-shirt, Henry. So you won't get cold while we look at the
exhibits." I can make him out now, standing at the edge of the darkness.
"Here. Catch." I throw it to him, and the shirt disappears, and then
he steps into the light. The T-shirt comes down to his knees. Me at five, dark
spiky hair, moon pale with brown almost Slavic eyes, wiry, coltish. At five I
am happy, cushioned in normality and the arms of my parents. Everything
changed, starting now. I walk forward slowly, bend toward him, and speak
softly. "Hello. I'm glad to see you, Henry. Thank you for coming
tonight."

"Where am I? Who are you?" His voice
is small and high, and echoes a little off the cold stone.

"You're in the Field Museum. I have been
sent here to show you some things you can't see during the day. My name is also
Henry. Isn't that funny?"

He nods.

"Would you like some cookies? I always
like to eat cookies while I look around museums. It makes it more
multi-sensory." I offer him the package of Oreos. He hesitates, unsure if
it's all right, hungry but unsure how many he can take without being rude.
"Take as many as you want. I've already eaten ten, so you have some
catching up to do." He takes three. "Is there anything you'd like to
see first?" He shakes his head. "Tell you what. Let's go up to the
third floor; that's where they keep all the stuff that isn't on display.
Okay?"

"Okay."

We walk through darkness, up the stairs. He
isn't moving very fast, so I climb slowly with him. "Where's Mom?"

"She's at home, sleeping. This is a
special tour, only for you, because it's your birthday. Besides, grown-ups
don't do this sort of thing."

"Aren't you a grown-up?"

"I'm an extremely unusual grown-up. My job
is to have adventures. So naturally when I heard that you wanted to come back
to the Field Museum right away, I jumped at the chance to show you
around."

"But how did I get here?" He stops at
the top of the stairs and looks at me with total confusion.

"Well, that's a secret. If I tell you, you
have to swear not to say anything to anyone."

"Why?"

"Because they wouldn't believe you. You
can tell Mom, or Kimy if you want, but that's it. Okay?"

"Okay
"

I kneel in front of him, my innocent self, look
him in the eyes. "Cross your heart and hope to die?"

"Uh-huh
         
"

"Okay. Here's how it is: you time
traveled. You were in your bedroom, and all of a sudden, poof! you are here,
and it's a little earlier in the evening, so we have plenty of time to look at
everything before you have to go home." He is silent and quizzical.
"Does that make sense?"

"But...why?"

"Well, I haven't figured that out yet.
I'll let you know when I do. In the meantime, we should be moving along.
Cookie?"

He takes one and we walk slowly down the
corridor. I decide to experiment. "Let's try this one." I slide the
bookmark along a door marked 306 and open it. When I flick on the lights there
are pumpkin-sized rocks all over the floor, whole and halved, craggy on the
outside and streaked with veins of metal inside. "Ooh, look, Henry.
Meteorites."

"What's meteorites?"

"Rocks that fall from outer space."
He looks at me as though I'm from outer space. "Shall we try another
door?" He nods. I close the meteorite room and try the door across the
corridor. This room is full of birds. Birds in simulated flight, birds perched
eternally on branches, bird heads, bird skins. I open one of the hundreds of
drawers; it contains a dozen glass tubes, each holding a tiny gold and black
bird with its name wrapped around a foot. Henry's eyes are the size of saucers.
"Do you want to touch one?"

"Uh-huh."

I remove the cotton wadding from the mouth of a
tube and shake a goldfinch onto my palm. It remains tube-shaped. Henry strokes
its small head, lovingly. "It's sleeping?"

"More or less." He looks at me
sharply, distrusting my equivocation. I insert the finch gently back into the
tube, replace the cotton, replace the tube, shut the drawer. I am so tired.
Even the word sleep is a lure, a seduction. I lead the way out into the hall,
and suddenly I recollect what it was I loved about this night when I was
little.

"Hey, Henry. Let's go to the
library." He shrugs. I walk, quickly now, and he runs to keep up. The
library is on the third floor, at the east end of the building. When we get
there, I stand for a minute, contemplating the locks. Henry looks at me, as
though to say, Well, that's that. I feel in my pockets, and find the letter
opener. I wiggle the wooden handle off, and lo, there's a nice long thin metal
prong in there. I stick one half of it into the lock and feel around. I can
hear the tumblers springing, and when I'm all the way back I stick in the other
half, use my bookmark on the other lock and presto, Open Sesame! At last, my
companion is suitably impressed. "How'd you do that?"

"It's not that hard. I'll teach you
another time. Entrez!" I hold open the door and he walks in. I flip on the
lights and the Reading Room springs into being; heavy wooden tables and chairs,
maroon carpet, forbidding enormous Reference Desk. The Field Museum's Library
is not designed to appeal to five-year-olds. It's a closed-stacks library, used
by scientists and scholars. There are bookcases lining the room, but they hold
mostly leather-bound Victorian science periodicals. The book I'm after is in a
huge glass and oak case by itself in the center of the room. I spring the lock
with my bobby pin and open the glass door. Really, the Field ought to get more
serious about security. I don't feel too terrible about doing this; after all,
I'm a bona fide librarian, I do Show and Tells at the Newberry all the time. I
walk behind the Reference Desk and find a piece of felt and some support pads,
and lay them out on the nearest table. Then I close and carefully lift the book
out of its case and onto the felt. I pull out a chair. "Here, stand on
this so you can see better." He climbs up, and I open the book. It's Audubon's
Birds of America, the deluxe, wonderful double-elephant folio that's almost as
tall as my young self. This copy is the finest in existence, and I have spent
many rainy afternoons admiring it. I open it to the first plate, and Henry
smiles, and looks at me. " 'Common Loon"' he reads. "It looks
like a duck."

"Yeah, it does. I bet I can guess your
favorite bird."

He shakes his head and smiles.

"What'll you bet?"

He looks down at himself in the T-Rex T-shirt
and shrugs. I know the feeling.

"How about this: if I guess you get to eat
a cookie, and if I can't guess you get to eat a cookie?"

He thinks it over and decides this would be a
safe bet. I open the book to Flamingo. Henry laughs.

"Am I right?" "Yes!"

It's easy to be omniscient when you've done it
all before. "Okay, here's your cookie. And I get one for being right. But
we have to save them 'til we're done looking at the book; we wouldn't want to
get crumbs all over the bluebirds, right?"

"Right!" He sets the Oreo on the arm
of the chair and we begin again at the beginning and page slowly through the
birds, so much more alive than the real thing in glass tubes down the hall.

"Here's a Great Blue Heron. He's really
big, bigger than a flamingo. Have you ever seen a hummingbird? I saw some
today!"

"Here in the museum?"

"Uh-huh."

"Wait 'til you see one outside—they're
like tiny helicopters, their wings go so fast you just see a blur...."
Turning each page is like making a bed, an enormous expanse of paper slowly
rises up and over. Henry stands attentively, waits each time for the new
wonder, emits small noises of pleasure for each Sandhill Crane, American Coot,
Great Auk, Pileated Woodpecker. When we come to the last plate, Snow Bunting,
he leans down and touches the page, delicately stroking the engraving. I look
at him, look at the book, remember, this book, this moment, the first book I
loved, remember wanting to crawl into it and sleep.

"You tired?"

"Uh-huh."

"Should we go?" Okay. I close Birds
of America, return it to its glass home, open it to Flamingo, shut the case,
lock it. Henry jumps off the chair and eats his Oreo. I return the felt to the
desk and push the chair in. Henry turns out the light, and we leave the
library. We wander, chattering amiably of things that fly and things that
slither, and eating our Oreos. Henry tells me about Mom and Dad and Mrs. Kim,
who is teaching him to make lasagna, and Brenda, whom I had forgotten about, my
best pal when I was little until her family moved to Tampa, Florida, about
three months from now. We are standing in front of Bushman, the legendary
silverback gorilla, whose stuffed magnificence glowers at us from his little
marble stand in a first floor hallway, when Henry cries out, and staggers
forward, reaching urgently for me, and I grab him, and he's gone. The T-shirt
is warm empty cloth in my hands. I sigh, and walk upstairs to ponder the
mummies for a while by myself. My young self will be home now, climbing into
bed. I remember, I remember. I woke up in the morning and it was all a
wonderful dream. Mom laughed and said that time travel sounded fun, and she
wanted to try it, too. That was the first time.

FIRST DATE, TWO

Friday, September 23, 1977 (Henry is 36, Clare
is 6)

Henry: I'm in the Meadow, waiting. I wait
slightly outside the clearing, naked, because the clothes Clare keeps for me in
a box under a stone are not there; the box isn't there either, so I am thankful
that the afternoon is fine, early September, perhaps, in some unidentified
year. I hunker down in the tall grass. I consider. The fact that there is no
box full of clothes means that I have arrived in a time before Clare and I have
met. Perhaps Clare isn't even born yet. This has happened before, and it's a
pain; I miss Clare and I spend the time hiding naked in the Meadow, not daring
to show myself in the neighborhood of Clare's family. I think longingly of the
apple trees at the western edge of the Meadow. At this time of year there ought
to be apples, small and sour and munched by deer, but edible. I hear the screen
door slam and I peer above the grass. A child is running, pell mell, and as it
comes down the path through the waving grass my heart twists and Clare bursts
into the clearing. She is very young. She is oblivious; she is alone. She is
still wearing her school uniform, a hunter green jumper with a white blouse and
knee socks with penny loafers, and she is carrying a Marshall Field's shopping
bag and a beach towel. Clare spreads the towel on the ground and dumps out the
contents of the bag: every imaginable kind of writing implement. Old ballpoint
pens, little stubby pencils from the library, crayons, smelly Magic Markers, a
fountain pen. She also has a bunch of her dad's office stationery. She arranges
the implements and gives the stack of paper a smart shake, and then proceeds to
try each pen and pencil in turn, making careful lines and swirls, humming to
herself. After listening carefully for a while I identify her humming as the
theme song of "The Dick Van Dyke Show."

I hesitate. Clare is content, absorbed. She
must be about six; if it's September she has probably just entered first grade.
She's obviously not waiting for me, I'm a stranger, and I'm sure that the first
thing you learn in first grade is not to have any truck with strangers who show
up naked in your favorite secret spot and know your name and tell you not to
tell your mom and dad. I wonder if today is the day we are supposed to meet for
the first time or if it's some other day. Maybe I should be very silent and
either Clare will go away and I can go munch up those apples and steal some
laundry or I will revert to my regularly scheduled programming, I snap from my
reverie to find Clare staring straight at me. I realize, too late, that I have
been humming along with her.

"Who's there?" Clare hisses. She
looks like a really pissed off goose, all neck and legs. I am thinking fast,

"Greetings, Earthling," I intone,
kindly.

"Mark! You nimrod!" Clare is casting
around for something to throw, and decides on her shoes, which have heavy,
sharp heels. She whips them off and does throw them. I don't think she can see
me very well, but she lucks out and one of them catches me in the mouth. My lip
starts to bleed.

"Please don't do that." I don't have
anything to staunch the blood, so I press my hand to my mouth and my voice
comes out muffled. My jaw hurts.

"Who is it?" Now Clare is frightened,
and so am I.

"Henry. It's Henry, Clare. I won't hurt
you, and I wish you wouldn't throw anything else at me." "Give me
back my shoes. I don't know you. Why are you hiding?" Clare is glowering
at me. I toss her shoes back into the clearing. She picks them up and stands
holding them like pistols. "I'm hiding because I lost my clothes and I'm
embarrassed. I came a long way and I'm hungry and I don't know anybody and now
I'm bleeding."