The time traveler's wife (52 page)

"You wound me. Come here and let me wipe
that smirk off your face."

"Uh-oh." In the next fifteen minutes
I'm proud to say that I have indeed removed all traces of superiority from
Clare's face. Unfortunately she's getting more and more tense, more..
.defended. In fourteen years and heaven only knows how many hours and days
spent happily, anxiously, urgently, languorously making love with Clare, this
is utterly new to me. I want, if at all possible, for her to feel the sense of
wonder I felt when I met her and we made love for what I thought (silly me) was
the first time. I sit up, panting. Clare sits up as well, and circles her arms
around her knees, protectively.

"You okay?"

"I'm afraid."

"That's okay." I'm thinking. "I
swear to you that the next time we meet you're going to practically rape me. I
mean, you are really exceptionally talented at this." I am?

"You are incandescent," I am
rummaging through the picnic basket: cups, wine, condoms, towels. "Clever
girl." I pour us each a cup of wine. "To virginity. ' Had we but
world enough, and time' Drink up." She does, obediently, like a small
child taking medicine. I refill her cup, and down my own.

"But you aren't supposed to drink."

"It's a momentous occasion. Bottoms
up." Clare weighs about 120 pounds, but these are Dixie cups. "One
more." "More? I'll get sleepy."

"You'll relax." She gulps it down. We
squash up the cups and throw them in the picnic basket. I lie down on my back
with my arms stretched out like a sunbather, or a crucifixion. Clare stretches
out beside me. I gather her in so that we are side by side, facing each other.
Her hair falls across her shoulders and breasts in a very beautiful and
touching way and I wish for the zillionth time that I was a painter.

"Clare?"

"Hmmm?"

"Imagine yourself as open; empty.
Someone's come along and taken out all your innards, and left only nerve
endings." I've got the tip of my index finger on her clit.

"Poor little Clare. No innards."

"Ah, but it's a good thing, you see,
because there's all this extra room in there. Think of all the stuff you could
put inside you if you didn't have all those silly kidneys and stomachs and
pancreases and what not."

"Like what?" She's very wet. I remove
my hand and carefully rip open the condom packet with my teeth, a maneuver I
haven't performed in years.

"Kangaroos. Toaster ovens. Penises."

Clare takes the condom from me with fascinated
distaste. She's lying on her back and she unfurls it and sniffs it. "Ugh.
Must we?"

Although I often refuse to tell Clare things, I
seldom actually lie to her. I feel a twinge of guilt as I say, '"Fraid
so." I retrieve it from her, but instead of putting it on I decide that
what we really need here is cunnilingus. Clare, in her future, is addicted to
oral sex and will leap tall buildings in a single bound and wash the dishes
when it's not her turn in order to get it. If cunnilingus were an Olympic event
I would medal, no doubt about it. I spread her out and apply my tongue to her
clit.

"Oh God," Clare says in a low voice.
"Sweet Jesus."

"No yelling," I warn. Even Etta and
Nell will come down to the Meadow to see what's wrong if Clare really gets
going. In the next fifteen minutes I take Clare several steps down the
evolutionary ladder until she's pretty much a limbic core with a few cerebral
cortex peripherals. I roll on the condom and slowly, carefully slide into
Clare, imagining things breaking and blood cascading around me. She has her
eyes closed and at first I think she's not even aware that I'm actually inside
her even though I'm directly over her but then she opens her eyes and smiles,
triumphant, beatific. I manage to come fairly quickly; Clare is watching me,
concentrating, and as I come I see her face turn to surprise. How strange
things are. What odd things we animals do. I collapse onto her. We are bathed
in sweat. I can feel her heart beating. Or perhaps it's mine. I pull out
carefully and dispose of the condom. We lie, side by side, looking at the very
blue sky. The wind is making a sea sound with the grass. I look over at Clare.
She looks a bit stunned.

"Hey. Clare."

"Hey" she says weakly.

"Did it hurt?"

"Yes."

"Did you like it?"

"Oh, yes!" she says, and starts to
cry. We sit up, and I hold her for a while. She is shaking. "Clare. Clare.
What's wrong?"

I can't make out her reply at first, then:
"You're going away. Now I won't see you for years and years."

"Only two years. Two years and a few
months." She is quiet. "Oh, Clare. I'm sorry. I can't help it. It's
funny, too, because I was just lying here thinking what a blessing today was.
To be here with you making love instead of being chased by thugs or freezing to
death in some barn or some of the other stupid shit I get to deal with. And
when I go back, I'm with you. And today was wonderful." She is smiling, a
little. I kiss her.

"How come I always have to wait?"

"Because you have perfect DNA and you
aren't being thrown around in time like a hot potato. Besides, patience is a virtue."
Clare is pummel-ing my chest with her fists, lightly. "Also, you've known
me your whole life, whereas I only meet you when I'm twenty-eight. So I spend
all those years before we meet—"

"Fucking other women."

"Well, yeah. But, unbeknownst to me, it's
all just practice for when I meet you. And it's very lonely and weird. If you
don't believe me, try it yourself. I'll never know. It's different when you
don't care."

"I don't want anybody else."

"Good."

"Henry just give me a hint. Where do you
live? Where do we meet? What day?"

"One hint. Chicago"

"More."

"Have faith. It's all there, in front of
you." "Are we happy?"

"We are often insane with happiness. We
are also very unhappy for reasons neither of us can do anything about. Like
being separated."

"So all the time you're here now you're
not with me then?"

"Well, not exactly. I may end up missing
only ten minutes. Or ten days. There's no rule about it. That's what makes it
hard, for you. Also, I sometimes end up in dangerous situations, and I come
back to you broken and messed up, and you worry about me when I'm gone. It's
like marrying a policeman." I'm exhausted. I wonder how old I actually am,
in real time. In calendar time I'm forty-one, but with all this coming and
going perhaps I'm really forty-five or -six. Or maybe I'm thirty-nine. Who
knows? There's something I have to tell her; what was it?

"Clare?"

"Henry."

"When you see me again, remember that I
won't know you; don't be upset when you see me and I treat you like a total
stranger, because to me you will be brand new. And please don't blow my mind
with everything all at once. Have mercy, Clare."

"I will! Oh, Henry stay!"

"Shh. I'll be with you." We lie down
again. The exhaustion permeates me and I will be gone in a minute. "I love
you, Henry. Thank you for.. .my birthday present." "I love you,
Clare. Be good." I'm gone.

SECRET

Thursday, February 10, 2005 (Clare is 33, Henry
is 41)

Clare: It's Thursday afternoon and I'm in the
studio making pale yellow kozo paper. Henry's been gone for almost twenty-four
hours now, and as usual I'm torn between thinking obsessively about when and
where he might be and being pissed at him for not being here and worrying about
when he'll be back. It's not helping my concentration and I'm ruining a lot of
sheets; I plop them off the su and back into the vat. Finally I take a break
and pour myself a cup of coffee. It's cold in the studio, and the water in the
vat is supposed to be cold although I have warmed it a little to save my hands
from cracking. I wrap my hands around the ceramic mug. Steam wafts up. I put my
face over it, inhale the moisture and coffee smell. And then, oh thank you,
God, I hear Henry whistling as he comes up the path through the garden, into
the studio. He stomps the snow off his boots and shrugs off his coat. He's
looking marvelous, really happy. My heart is racing and I take a wild guess:
"May 24, 1989?"

" Yes, oh, yes!" Henry scoops me up,
wet apron and Wellingtons and all, and swings me around. Now I'm laughing,
we're both laughing. Henry exudes delight. "Why didn't you tell me? I've
been needlessly wondering all these years. Vixen! Minx!" He's biting my
neck and tickling me.

"But you didn't know, so I couldn't tell
you."

"Oh. Right. My God, you're amazing."
We sit on the grungy old studio couch. "Can we turn up the heat in
here?" "Sure." Henry jumps up and turns the thermostat higher.
The furnace kicks in. "How long was I gone?" "Almost a whole
day."

Henry sighs. "Was it worth it? A day of
anxiety in exchange for a few really beautiful hours?"

"Yes. That was one of the best days of my
life." I am quiet, remembering. I often invoke the memory of Henry's face
above me, surrounded by blue sky, and the feeling of being permeated by him. I
think about it when he's gone and I'm having trouble sleeping.

"Tell me
         
"

"Mmmm?" We are wrapped around each
other, for warmth, for reassurance. "What happened after I left?"

"I picked everything up and made myself
more or less presentable and went back up to the house. I got upstairs without
running into anyone and I took a bath. After a while Etta started hammering on
the door wanting to know why I was in the tub in the middle of the day and I
had to pretend I was sick. And I was, in a way...I spent the summer lounging
around, sleeping a lot. Reading. I just kind of rolled up into myself. I spent
some time down in the Meadow, sort of hoping you might show up. I wrote you
letters. I burned them. I stopped eating for a while and Mom dragged me to her
therapist and I started eating again. At the end of August my parents informed
me that if I didn't 'perk up' I wouldn't be going to school that fall, so I
immediately perked up because my whole goal in life was to get out of the house
and go to Chicago. And school was a good thing; it was new, I had an apartment,
I loved the city. I had something to think about besides the fact that I had no
idea where you were or how to find you. By the time I finally did run into you
I was doing pretty well; I was into my work, I had friends, I got asked out
quite a bit—"

"Oh?"

"Sure."

"Did you go? Out?"

"Well, yeah. I did. In the spirit of
research.. .and because I occasionally got mad that somewhere out there you
were obliviously dating other women. But it was all a sort of black comedy. I
would go out with some perfectly nice pretty young art boy, and spend the whole
evening thinking about how boring and futile it was and checking my watch. I
stopped after five of them because I could see that I was really pissing these
guys off. Someone put the word out at school that I was a dyke and then I got a
wave of girls asking me out."

"I could see you as a lesbian."

"Yeah; behave yourself or I'll
convert."

"I've always wanted to be a lesbian."
Henry is looking dreamy and heavy-lidded; not fair when I am wound up and ready
to jump on him. He yawns. "Oh, well, not in this lifetime. Too much
surgery."

In my head I hear the voice of Father Compton
behind the grille of the confessional, softly asking me if there's anything
else I want to confess. No, I tell him firmly. No, there isn't. That was a mistake.
I was drunk, and it doesn't count. The good Father sighs, and pushes the
curtain across. End of confession. My penance is to lie to Henry, by omission,
as long as we both shall live. I look at him, happily postprandial, sated with
the charms of my younger self, and the image of Gomez sleeping, Gomez's bedroom
in morning light flashes across my mental theater. It was a mistake, Henry, I
tell him silently. I was waiting, and I got sideswiped, just once. Tell him,
says Father Compton, or somebody, in my head. I can't, I retort. He'll hate me.

"Hey," Henry says gently. "Where
are you?"

"Thinking."

"You look so sad."

"Do you worry sometimes that all the
really great stuff has already happened?"

"No. Well, sort of, but in a different way
than you mean. I'm still moving through the time you're reminiscing about, so
it's not really gone, for me. I worry that we aren't paying close attention
here and now. That is, time travel is sort of an altered state, so I'm
more...aware when I'm out there, and it seems important, somehow, and sometimes
I think that if I could just be that aware here and now, that things would be
perfect. But there's been some great things, lately." He smiles, that
beautiful crooked radiant smile, all innocence, and I allow my guilt to subside,
back to the little box where I keep it crammed in like a parachute.