The Time Traveler's Wife

  "Clare." She is unwrapping dark rye sandwiches which seem to be overflowing with cucumbers. "I hate to be obtuse... I mean, obviously it's your birthday..."

  "My eighteenth birthday" she agrees.

  "Um, well, to begin with, I'm really upset that I don't have a present for you..." Clare looks up, surprised, and I realize that I'm warm, I'm on to something here, "but you know I never know when I'm coming, and I can't bring anything with me..."

  "I know all that. But don't you remember, we worked it all out last time you were here; because on the List today is the last day left and also my birthday. You don't remember?" Clare is looking at me very intently, as though concentration can move memory from her mind to mine.

  "Oh. I haven't been there yet. I mean, that conversation is still in my future. I wonder why I didn't tell you then? I still have lots of dates on the list left to go. Is today really the last day? You know, we'll be meeting each other in the present in a couple years. We'll see each other then."

  "But that's a long time. For me."

  There is an awkward pause. It's strange to think that right now I am in Chicago, twenty-five years old, going about my business, completely unaware of Clare's existence, and for that matter, oblivious to my own presence here in this lovely Michigan meadow on a gorgeous spring day which is the eighteenth anniversary of her birth. We are using plastic knives to apply caviar to Ritz crackers. For a while there is much crunching and furious consumption of sandwiches. The conversation seems to have foundered. And then I wonder, for the first time, if perhaps Clare is being entirely truthful with me here, knowing as she does that I am on slippery terms with statements that begin "I never," since I never have a complete inventory of my past handy at any given moment, since my past is inconveniently compounded with my future. We move on to the strawberries.

  "Clare." She smiles, innocently. "What exactly did we decide, the last time you saw me? What were we planning to do for your birthday?"

  She's blushing again. "Well, this," she says, gesturing at our picnic.

  "Anything else? I mean, this is wonderful."

  "Well. Yes." I'm all ears, because I think I know what's coming.

  "Yes?"

  Clare is quite pink but manages to look otherwise dignified as she says, "We decided to make love."

  "Ah." I have, actually, always wondered about Clare's sexual experiences prior to October 26, 1991, when we met for the first time in the present. Despite some pretty amazing provocation on Clare's part I have refused to make love to her and have spent many amusing hours chatting with her about this and that while trying to ignore painful hard-ons. But today, Clare is legally, if perhaps not emotionally, an adult, and surely I can't warp her life too much...that is to say, I've already given her a pretty weird childhood just by being in her childhood at all. How many girls have their very own eventual husband appearing at regular intervals buck naked before their eyes? Clare is watching me think this through. I am thinking about the first time I made love to Clare and wondering if it was the first time she made love to me. I decide to ask her about this when I get back to my present. Meanwhile, Clare is tidying things back into the picnic basket.

  "So?"

  What the hell. "Yes."

  Clare is excited and also scared. "Henry. You've made love to me lots of times..."

  "Many, many times."

  She's having trouble saying it.

  "It's always beautiful," I tell her. "It's the most beautiful thing in my life. I will be very gentle." Having said this I am suddenly nervous. I'm feeling responsible and Humbert Humbertish and also as though I am being watched by many people, and all of those people are Clare. I have never felt less sexual in my life. Okay. Deep breath. "I love you."

  We both stand up, lurching a bit on the uneven surface of the blanket. I open my arms and Clare moves into them. We stand, still, embracing there in the Meadow like the bride and groom on top of a wedding cake. And after all, this is Clare, come to my forty-one-year-old self almost as she was when we first met. No fear. She leans her head back. I lean forward and kiss her.

  "Clare."

  "Mmmm?"

  "You're absolutely sure we're alone?"

  "Everyone except Etta and Nell is in Kalamazoo."

  "Because I feel like I'm on Candid Camera, here."

  "Paranoid. Very sad"

  "Never mind."

  "We could go to my room."

  "Too dangerous. God, it's like being in high school."

  "What?"

  "Never mind."

  Clare steps back from me and unzips her dress. She pulls it over her head and drops it on the blanket with admirable unconcern. She steps out of her shoes and peels off her stockings. She unhooks her bra, discards it, and steps out of her panties. She is standing before me completely naked. It is a sort of miracle: all the little marks I have become fond of have vanished; her stomach is flat, no trace of the pregnancies that will bring us such grief, such happiness. This Clare is a little thinner, and a lot more buoyant than the Clare I love in the present. I realize again how much sadness has overtaken us. But today all of that is magically removed; today the possibility of joy is close to us. I kneel, and Clare comes over and stands in front of me. I press my face to her stomach for a moment, and then look up; Clare is towering over me, her hands in my hair, with the cloudless blue sky around her.

  I shrug off my jacket and undo the tie. Clare kneels and we remove the studs deftly and with the concentration of a bomb squad. I take off the pants and underwear. There's no way to do this gracefully. I wonder how male strippers deal with this problem. Or do they just hop around on stage, one leg in, one out? Clare laughs. "I've never seen you get undressed. Not a pretty sight."

  "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 o
pen 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 pummeling 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.

  "Alba."

  "Alba is perfect. And you are perfect. I mean, as much as I love you, back there, it's the shared life, the knowing each other..."