The time traveler's wife (27 page)

Clare: Laura's party is in full swing by the
time we arrive. Henry is tense and pale and heads for the liquor as soon as we
get our coats off. I still feel sleepy from the wine we drank at dinner, so I
shake my head when he asks me what I want, and he brings me a Coke. He's
holding on to his beer as though it's ballast. "Do not, under any
circumstances, leave me to fend for myself," Henry demands, looking over
my shoulder, and before I can even turn my head Helen is upon us. There is a
momentary, embarrassed silence.

"So, Henry" Helen says, "we hear
that you are a librarian. But you don't look like a librarian."

"Actually, I am a Calvin Klein underwear
model. The librarian thing is just a front."

I've never seen Helen nonplussed before. I wish
I had a camera. She recovers quickly, though, looks Henry up and down, and
smiles. "Okay, Clare, you can keep him," she says.

"That's a relief," I tell her.
"I've lost the receipt." Laura, Ruth, and Nancy converge on us,
looking determined, and interrogate us: how did we meet, what does Henry do for
a living, where did he go to college, blah, blah, blah. I never expected that
when Henry and I finally appeared in public together it would be simultaneously
so nerve-racking and so boring. I tune in again just as Nancy says, "It's
so weird that your name is Henry."

"Oh?" says Henry, "Why's
that?"

Nancy tells him about the slumber party at Mary
Christina's, the one where the Ouija board said that I was going to marry
someone named Henry. Henry looks impressed. "Really?" he asks me.

"Um, yeah." I suddenly have an urgent
need to pee. "Excuse me," I say, detaching myself from the group and
ignoring Henry's pleading expression. Helen is hot on my heels as I run
upstairs. I have to shut the bathroom door in her face to stop her from
following me in.

"Open up, Clare," she says, jiggling
the door knob. I take my time, pee, wash my hands, put on fresh lipstick.
"Clare," Helen grumbles, "I'm gonna go downstairs and tell your
boyfriend every single hideous thing you've ever done in your life if you don't
open this door immed—" I swing the door open and Helen almost falls into
the room.

"All right, Clare Abshire," Helen
says menacingly. She closes the door. I sit down on the side of the bathtub and
she leans against the sink, looming over me in her pumps. "Fess up. What
is really going on with you and this Henry person? I mean, you just stood there
and told a big fat stack of lies. You didn't meet this guy three months ago,
you've known him for years! What's the big secret?"

I don't really know how to begin. Should I tell
Helen the truth? No. Why not? As far as I know, Helen has only seen Henry once,
and he didn't look that different from how he looks right now. I love Helen.
She's strong, she's crazy, she's hard to fool. But I know she wouldn't believe
me if I said, time travel, Helen. You have to see it to believe it.

"Okay," I say, gathering my wits.
"Yeah, IVe known him for a long time."

"How long?"

"Since I was six."

Helen's eyes bug out like a cartoon
character's. I laugh. "Why.. .how come.. .well, how long have you been
dating him?"

"I dunno. I mean, there was a period of
time when things were sort of on the verge, but nothing was exactly going on,
you know; that is, Henry was pretty adamant that he wasn't going to mess around
with a little kid, so I was just kind of hopelessly nuts about him... "

"But—how come we never knew about him? I
don't see why it all had to be such a hush hush. You could have told me."

"Well, you kind of knew." This is
lame, and I know it. Helen looks hurt. "That's not the same thing as you
telling me."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Hmpf. So what was the deal?"

"Well, he's eight years older than
me."

"So what?"

"So when I was twelve and he was twenty,
that was a problem." Not to mention when I was six and he was forty.

"I still don't get it. I mean, I can see
you not wanting your parents to know you were playing Lolita to his Humbert
Humbert, but I don't get why you couldn't tell us. We would have been totally
into it. I mean, we spent all this time feeling sorry for you, and worrying
about you, and wondering why you were such a nun—" Helen shakes her head.
"And there you were, screwing Mario the Librarian the whole time—"

I can't help it, I'm blushing. "I was not
screwing him the whole time."

"Oh, come, on."

"Really! We waited till I was eighteen. We
did it on my birthday."

"Even so, Clare," Helen begins, but
there's a heavy knock on the bathroom door, and a deep male voice asks,
"Are you girls about done in there?"

"To be continued," Helen hisses at me
as we exit the bathroom to the applause of the five guys standing in line in
the hallway. I find Henry in the kitchen, listening patiently as one of Laura's
inexplicable jock friends babbles on about football. I catch the eye of his
blond, button-nosed girlfriend, and she hauls him off to get another drink.
Henry says, "Look, Clare—Baby Punks!" I look and he's pointing at
Jodie, Laura's fourteen-year-old sister, and her boyfriend, Bobby Hardgrove.
Bobby has a green Mohawk and the full ripped T-shirt/safety pin getup, and
Jodie is trying to look like Lydia Lunch but instead just looks like a raccoon
having a bad hair day. Somehow they seem like they're at a Halloween party
instead of a Christmas party. They look stranded and defensive. But Henry is
enthusiastic. "Wow. How old are they, about twelve?"

"Fourteen."

"Let's see, fourteen, from ninety-one,
that makes them...oh my god, they were born in 1977. I feel old. I need another
drink." Laura passes through the kitchen holding a tray of Jell-O shots.
Henry takes two and downs them both in rapid succession, then makes a face.
"Ugh. How revolting." I laugh. "What do you think they listen
to?" Henry says.

"Dunno. Why don't you go over and ask
them?"

Henry looks alarmed. "Oh, I couldn't. I'd
scare them."

"I think you're scared of them."

"Well, you may be right. They look so
tender and young and green, like baby peas or something." "Did you
ever dress like that?"

Henry snorts derisively. "What do you
think? Of course not. Those children are emulating British punk. I am an
American punk. No, I used to be into more of a Richard Hell kind of look."

"Why don't you go talk to them? They seem
lonely"

"You have to come and introduce us and
hold my hand." We venture across the kitchen with caution, like
Levi-Strauss approaching a pair of cannibals. Jodie and Bobby have that fight
or flight look you see on deer on the Nature Channel.

"Um, hi, Jodie, Bobby."

"Hi, Clare," says Jodie. I've known
Jodie her whole life, but she seems shy all of a sudden, and I decide that the
neo-punk apparel must be Bobby's idea.

"You guys looked kind of, um, bored, so I
brought Henry over to meet you. He likes your, um, outfits."

"Hi," says Henry, acutely
embarrassed. "I was just curious—that is, I was wondering, what do you
listen to?"

"Listen to?" Bobby repeats.

"You know—music. What music are you
into?"

Bobby lights up. "Well, the Sex
Pistols," he says, and pauses.

"Of course," says Henry, nodding.
"And the Clash?"

"Yeah. And, um, Nirvana... "

"Nirvana's good," says Henry.

"Blondie?" says Jodie, as though her
answer might be wrong.

"I like Blondie," I say. "And
Henry likes Deborah Harry."

"Ramones?" says Henry. They nod in
unison. "How about Patti Smith?"

Jodie and Bobby look blank.

"Iggy Pop?"

Bobby shakes his head. "Pearl Jam,"
he offers. I intercede. "We don't have much of a radio station up
here," I tell Henry. "There's no way for them to find out about this
stuff."

"Oh," Henry says. He pauses.
"Look, do you want me to write some things down for you? To listen
to?" Jodie shrugs. Bobby nods, looking serious, and excited. I forage for
paper and pen in my purse. Henry sits down at the kitchen table, and Bobby sits
across from him. "Okay," says Henry. "You have to go back to the
sixties, right? You start with the Velvet Underground, in New York. And then,
right over here in Detroit, you've got the MC5, and Iggy Pop and the Stooges.
And then back in New York, there were The New York Dolls, and The
Heartbreakers—"

"Tom Petty?" says Jodie. "We've
heard of him."

"Um, no, this was a totally different
band," says Henry. "Most of them died in the eighties."
"Plane crash?" asks Bobby.

"Heroin," Henry corrects.
"Anyway, there was Television, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids, and Patti
Smith." "Talking Heads," I add.

"Huh. I dunno. Would you really consider
them punk?" "They were there."

"Okay," Henry adds them to his list,
"Talking Heads. So then, things move over to England—" "I
thought punk started in London," says Bobby.

"No. Of course," says Henry, pushing
back his chair, "some people, me included, believe that punk is just the
most recent manifestation of this, this spirit, this feeling, you know, that
things aren't right and that in fact things are so wrong that the only thing we
can do is to say Fuck It, over and over again, really loud, until someone stops
us."

" Yes," Bobby says quietly, his face
glowing with an almost religious fervor under his spiked hair. "Yes."

"You're corrupting a minor," I tell
Henry.

"Oh, he would get there anyway, without
me. Wouldn't you?"

"I've been trying, but it ain't easy,
here."

"I can appreciate that" says Henry.
He's adding to the list. I look over his shoulder. Sex Pistols, The Clash, Gang
of Four, Buzzcocks, Dead Kennedys, X, The Mekons, The Raincoats, The Dead Boys,
New Order, The Smiths, Lora Logic, The Au Pairs, Big Black, PiL, The Pixies,
The Breeders, Sonic Youth...

"Henry, they're not going to be able to
get any of that up here." He nods, and jots the phone number and address
for Vintage Vinyl at the bottom of the sheet. "You do have a record
player, right?"

"My parents have one," Bobby says.
Henry winces.

"What do you really like?" I ask
Jodie. I feel as though she's fallen out of the conversation during the male
bonding ritual Henry and Bobby are conducting.

"Prince," she admits. Henry and I let
out a big Whoo! and I start singing 1999 as loud as I can, and Henry jumps up
and we're doing a bump and grind across the kitchen. Laura hears us and runs
off to put the actual record on and just like that, it's a dance party.

Henry: We're driving back to Clare's parents'
house from Laura's party. Clare says, "You're awfully quiet." "I
was thinking about those kids. The Baby Punks." "Oh, yeah. What about
them?" "I was trying to figure out what would cause that kid—"
"Bobby."

"—Bobby, to revert, to latch on to music
that was made the year he was born... "

"Well, I was really into the
Beatles," Clare points out. "They broke up the year before I was
born."

"Yeah, well, what is that about? I mean,
you should have been swooning over Depeche Mode, or Sting or somebody. Bobby
and his girlfriend ought to be listening to The Cure if they want to dress up.
But instead they've stumbled into this thing, punk, that they don't know
anything about—"

"I'm sure it's mostly to annoy their
parents. Laura was telling me that her dad won't let Jodie leave the house
dressed like that. She puts everything in her backpack and changes in the
ladies' room at school," says Clare.

"But that's what everybody did, back when.
I mean, it's about asserting your individualism, I understand that, but why are
they asserting the individualism of 1977? They ought to be wearing plaid
flannel."

"Why do you care?" Clare says.

"It depresses me. It's a reminder that the
moment I belonged to is dead, and not just dead, but forgotten. None of this
stuff ever gets played on the radio, I can't figure out why. It's like it never
happened. That's why I get excited when I see little kids pretending to be
punks, because I don't want it all to just disappear."

"Well," says Clare, "you can
always go back. Most people are glued to the present; you get to be there again
and again."

I think about this. "It's just sad, Clare.
Even when I get to do something cool, like, say, go to see a concert I missed
the first time around, maybe a band that's broken up or somebody that died,
it's sad watching them because I know what's going to happen."

"But how is that different from the rest
of your life?"

"It isn't." We have reached the
private road that leads to Clare's house. She turns in. "Henry?"

"Yeah?"

"If you could stop, now... if you could
not time travel any more, and there would be no consequences, would you?"
"If I could stop now and still meet you?" "You've already met
me."