The time traveler's wife (62 page)

"What are you saying?"

"My own personal fat lady is singing,
Gomez. Time's up. Game over."

"When?"

"Soon." "How soon?"

"I don't know," I lie. Very, very
soon. "Anyway, I just wanted to tell you—I know I've been a pain in the
ass every now and then," (Gomez laughs) "but it's been great" (I
pause, because I am on the verge of tears) "it's been really great"
(and we stand there, inarticulate American male creatures that we are, our
breath freezing in clouds before us, all the possible

words left unspoken now) and finally I say,
"Let's go in," and we do. As Gomez gently replaces me in the
wheelchair he embraces me for a moment, and then walks heavily away without
looking back.

(10:15 p.m.)

Clare: Henry isn't in the living room, which is
filled with a small but determined group of people trying to dance, in a
variety of unlikely ways, to the Squirrel Nut Zippers. Charisse and Matt are
doing something that looks like the cha-cha, and Roberto is dancing with
considerable flair with Kimy, who moves delicately but steadfastly in a kind of
fox trot. Gomez has abandoned Sharon for Catherine, who whoops as he spins her
and laughs when he stops dancing to light a cigarette. Henry isn't in the
kitchen, which has been taken over by Raoul and James and Lourdes and the rest
of my artist friends. They are regaling each other with stories of terrible
things art dealers have done to artists, and vice versa. Lourdes is telling the
one about Ed Kienholtz making a kinetic sculpture that drilled a big hole in
his dealer's expensive desk. They all laugh sadistically. I shake my finger at
them. "Don't let Leah hear you," I tease. "Where's Leah?"
cries James. "I bet she has some great stories—" He goes off in
search of my dealer, who is drinking cognac with Mark on the stairs. Ben is
making himself tea. He has a Ziplock baggie with all sorts of foul herbs in it,
which he measures carefully into a tea strainer and dunks into a mug of
steaming water. "Have you seen Henry?" I ask him.

"Yeah, I was just talking to him. He's on
the front porch." Ben peers at me. "I'm kind of worried about him. He
seems very sad. He seemed—" Ben stops, makes a gesture with his hand that
means I might be wrong about this "he reminded me of some patients I have,
when they don't expect to be around much longer
 
" My stomach tightens.

"He's been very depressed since his
feet... "

"I know. But he was talking like he was
getting on a train that was leaving momentarily, you know, he told me—"
Ben lowers his voice, which is always very quiet, so that I can barely hear
him: "he told me he loved me, and thanked me.. .I mean, people, guys don't
say that kind of thing if they expect to be around, you know?" Ben's eyes
are swimming behind his glasses, and I put my arms around him, and we stand
like that for a minute, my arms encasing Ben's wasted frame. Around us people
are chattering, ignoring us. "I don't want to outlive anybody" Ben
says. "Jesus. After drinking this awful stuff and just generally being a
bloody martyr for fifteen years I think I've earned the right to have everybody
I know file past my casket and say, 'He died with his boots on.' Or something
like that. I'm counting on Henry to be there quoting Donne, ' Death, be not
proud, you stupid motherfucker.' It'll be beautiful."

I laugh. "Well, if Henry can't make it,
I'll come. I do a mean imitation of Henry." I raise one eyebrow, lift my
chin, lower my voice: " 'One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And
Death shall be sitting in the kitchen in his underwear at three in the morning,
doing last week's crossword puzzle—'" Ben cracks up. I kiss his pale
smooth cheek and move on. Henry is sitting by himself on the front porch, in
the dark, watching it snow. I've hardly glanced out the window all day, and now
I realize that it's been snowing steadily for hours. Snowplows are rattling
down Lincoln Avenue, and our neighbors are out shoveling their walks. Although
the porch is enclosed it's still cold out here.

"Come inside," I say. I am standing
beside him, watching a dog bounding in the snow across the street. Henry puts
his arm around my waist and leans his head on my hip.

"I wish we could just stop time now,"
he says. I'm running my fingers through his hair. It's stiffer and thicker than
it used to be, before it went gray.

"Clare," he says.

"Henry."

"It's time..." He stops.

"What?"

"It's...I'm
        
"

"My God." I sit down on the divan,
facing Henry. "But—don't. Just— stay." I squeeze his hands tightly.

"It has already happened. Here, let me sit
next to you." He swings himself out of his chair and onto the divan. We
lie back on the cold cloth. I am shivering in my thin dress. In the house
people are laughing and dancing. Henry puts his arm around me, warming me.

"Why didn't you tell me? Why did you let
me invite all these people?" I don't want to be angry, but I am.

"I don't want you to be alone...after. And
I wanted to say goodbye to everyone. It's been good, it was a good last
hurrah... " We lie there silently for a while. The snow falls, silently.

"What time is it?"

I check my watch. "A little after
eleven." Oh, God. Henry grabs a blanket from the other chair, and we wrap
it around each other. I can't believe this. I knew that it was coming, soon,
had to come sooner or later, but here it is, and we are just lying here,
waiting—

"Oh, why can't we do something!" I
whisper into Henry's neck.

"Clare—" Henry's arms are wrapped
around me. I close my eyes,

"Stop it. Refuse to let it happen. Change
it,"

"Oh, Clare." Henry's voice is soft
and I look up at him, and his eyes shine with tears in the light reflected by
the snow. I lay my cheek against Henry's shoulder. He strokes my hair. We stay
like this for a long time. Henry is sweating. I put my hand on his face and
he's burning up with fever.

"What time is it?"

"Almost midnight."

"I'm scared." I twine my arms through
his, wrap my legs around his. It's impossible to believe that Henry, so solid,
my lover, this real body, which I am holding pressed to mine with all my
strength, could ever disappear:

"Kiss me!"

I am kissing Henry, and then I am alone, under
the blanket, on the divan, on the cold porch. It is still snowing. Inside, the
record stops, and I hear Gomez say, "Ten! nine! eight!" and everyone
says, all together, "seven! six! five! four! three! two! one! Happy New Year!"
and a champagne cork pops, and everyone starts talking all at once, and someone
says, "Where are Henry and Clare?" Outside in the street someone sets
off firecrackers. I put my head in my hands and I wait.

A TREATISE ON
LONGING

His forty-third year. His small time's end. His
time— Who saw Infinity through the countless cracks In the blank skin of
things, and died of it.

— A. S. Byatt, Possession

She followed slowly, taking a long time, as
though there were some obstacle in the way; and yet: as though, once it was
overcome, she would be beyond all walking, and would fly.

— from Going Blind, Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Stephen Mitchell

Saturday, October 27, 1984/Monday, January 1,
2007 (Henry is 43, Clare is 35)

Henry: The sky is blank and I'm falling into
the tall dry grass let it be quick and even as I try to be still the crack of a
rifle sounds, far away, surely nothing to do with me but no: I am slammed to
the ground, I look at my belly which has opened up like a pomegranate, a soup of
entrails and blood cradled in the bowl of my body; it doesn't hurt at all that
can't be right but I can only admire this cubist version of my insides someone
is running all I want is to see Clare before before I am screaming her name
Clare, Clare and Clare leans over me, crying, and Alba whispers,
"Daddy...."

"Love you... "

"Henry—"

"Always
         
"

"Oh God oh God—"

"World enough
           
"

"No!"

"And time... "

"Henry!"

Clare: The living room is very still. Everyone
stands fixed, frozen, staring down at us. Billie Holiday is singing, and then
someone turns off the CD player and there is silence. I sit on the floor,
holding Henry. Alba is crouching over him, whispering in his ear, shaking him.
Henry's skin is warm, his eyes are open, staring past me, he is heavy in my arms,
so heavy, his pale skin torn apart, red everywhere, ripped flesh framing a
secret world of blood. I cradle Henry. There's blood at the corner of his
mouth. I wipe it off. Firecrackers explode somewhere nearby. Gomez says,
"I think we'd better call the police."

DISSOLUTION

Friday, February 2, 2007 (Clare is 35)

Clare: I sleep all day. Noises flit around the
house—garbage truck in the alley, rain, tree rapping against the bedroom
window. I sleep. I inhabit sleep firmly, willing it, wielding it, pushing away
dreams, refusing, refusing. Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my
oblivion. The phone rings and rings. I have turned off the machine that answers
with Henry's voice. It is afternoon, it is night, it is morning. Everything is
reduced to this bed, this endless slumber that makes the days into one day,
makes time stop, stretches and compacts time until it is meaningless. Sometimes
sleep abandons me and I pretend, as though Etta has come to get me up for
school. I breathe slowly and deeply. I make my eyes still under eyelids, I make
my mind still, and soon, Sleep, seeing a perfect reproduction of himself, comes
to be united with his facsimile. Sometimes I wake up and reach for Henry. Sleep
erases all differences: then and now; dead and living. I am past hunger, past
vanity, past caring. This morning I caught sight of my face in the bathroom
mirror. I am paper-skinned, gaunt, yellow, ring-eyed, hair matted. I look dead.
I want nothing. Kimy sits at the foot of the bed. She says, "Clare? Alba's
home from school.. .won't you let her come in, say hi?" I pretend to
sleep. Alba's little hand strokes my face. Tears leak from my eyes. Alba sets
something, her knapsack? her violin case? on the floor and Kimy says,
"Take off your shoes, Alba," and then Alba crawls into bed with me.
She wraps my arm around her, thrusts her head under my chin. I sigh and open my
eyes. Alba pretends to sleep. I stare at her thick black eyelashes, her wide
mouth, her pale skin; she is breathing carefully, she clutches my hip with her
strong hand, she smells of pencil shavings and rosin and shampoo. I kiss the
top of her head. Alba opens her eyes, and then her resemblance to Henry is
almost more than I can bear. Kimy gets up and walks out of the room. Later I
get up, take a shower, eat dinner sitting at the table with Kimy and Alba. I
sit at Henry's desk after Alba has gone to bed, and I open the drawers, I take
out the bundles of letters and papers, and I begin to read.

A Letter to Be Opened in the Event of My Death
December 10, 2006 Dearest Clare, As I write this, I am sitting at my desk in
the back bedroom looking out at your studio across the backyard full of blue
evening snow, everything is slick and crusty with ice, and it is very still.
It's one of those winter evenings when the coldness of every single thing seems
to slow down time, like the narrow center of an hourglass which time itself
flows through, but slowly, slowly. I have the feeling, very familiar to me when
I am out of time but almost never otherwise, of being buoyed up by time,
floating effortlessly on its surface like a fat lady swimmer. I had a sudden
urge, tonight, here in the house by myself (you are at Alicia's recital at St.
Lucy's) to write you a letter. I suddenly wanted to leave something,

for after. I think that time is short, now. I
feel as though all my reserves, of energy, of pleasure, of duration, are thin,
small. I don't feel capable of continuing very much longer. I know you know. If
you are reading this, I am probably dead. (I say probably because you never
know what circumstances may arise; it seems foolish and self-important to just
declare one's own death as an out-and-out fact.) About this death of mine—I
hope it was simple and clean and unambiguous. I hope it didn't create too much
fuss. I'm sorry. (This reads like a suicide note. Strange.) But you know: you
know that if I could have stayed, if I could have gone on, that I would have
clutched every second: whatever it was, this death, you know that it came and
took me, like a child carried away by goblins. Clare, I want to tell you,
again, I love you. Our love has been the thread through the labyrinth, the net
under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange life of mine
that I could ever trust. Tonight I feel that my love for you has more density
in this world than I do, myself: as though it could linger on after me and
surround you, keep you, hold you. I hate to think of you waiting. I know that
you have been waiting for me all your life, always uncertain of how long this patch
of waiting would be. Ten minutes, ten days. A month. What an uncertain husband
I have been, Clare, like a sailor, Odysseus alone and buffeted by tall waves,
sometimes wily and sometimes just a plaything of the gods. Please, Clare. When
I am dead. Stop waiting and be free. Of me—put me deep inside you and then go
out in the world and live. Love the world and yourself in it, move through it
as though it offers no resistance, as though the world is your natural element.
I have given you a life of suspended animation. I don't mean to say that you
have done nothing. You have created beauty, and meaning, in your art, and Alba,
who is so amazing, and for me: for me you have been everything. After my mom
died she ate my father up completely. She would have hated it. Every minute of
his life since then has been marked by her absence, every action has lacked
dimension because she is not there to measure against. And when I was young I
didn't understand, but now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged
nerve, like a dark bird. If I had to live on without you I know I could not do
it. But I hope, I have this vision of you walking unencumbered, with your
shining hair in the sun. I have not seen this with my eyes, but only with my
imagination, that makes pictures, that always wanted to paint you, shining; but
I hope that this vision will be true, anyway. Clare, there is one last thing,
and I have hesitated to tell you, because I'm superstitiously afraid that
telling might cause it to not happen (I know: silly) and also because I have
just been going on about not waiting and this might cause you to wait longer
than you have ever waited before. But I will tell you in case you need
something, after. Last summer, I was sitting in Kendrick's waiting room when I
suddenly found myself in a dark hallway in a house I don't know. I was sort of
tangled up in a bunch of galoshes, and it smelled like rain. At the end of the
hall I could see a rim of light around a door, and so I went very slowly and
very quietly to the door and looked in. The room was white, and intensely lit
with morning sun. At the window, with her back to me, sat a woman, wearing a
coral-colored cardigan sweater, with long white hair all down her back. She had
a cup of tea beside her, on a table. I must have made some little noise, or she
sensed me behind her...she turned and saw me, and I saw her, and it was you,
Clare, this was you as an old woman, in the future. It was sweet, Clare, it was
sweet beyond telling, to come as though from death to hold you, and to see the
years all present in your face. I won't tell you any more, so you can imagine
it, so you can have it unrehearsed when the time comes, as it will, as it does
come. We will see each other again, Clare. Until then, live, fully, present in
the world, which is so beautiful. It's dark, now, and I am very tired. I love
you, always. Time is nothing. Henry