The time traveler's wife (4 page)

"I made coffee," I offer.

"Mmm, I can smell it. But first come and
say good morning."

I climb into bed still wearing his bathrobe. As
he slides his hand under it he stops for just a moment, and I see that he has
made the connection, and is mentally reviewing his bathroom vis-a-vis me.

"Does it bother you?" he asks. I
hesitate.

"Yes, it does. It does bother you. Of
course." Henry sits up, and I do, too. He turns his head toward me, looks
at me. "It was almost over, anyway."

"Almost?"

"I was about to break up with her. It's
just bad timing. Or good timing, I don't know." He's trying to read my
face, for what? Forgiveness? It's not his fault. How could he know? "We've
sort of been torturing each other for a long time—" He's talking faster
and faster and then he stops. "Do you want to know?" No.

"Thank you." Henry passes his hands
over his face. "I'm sorry. I didn't know you were coming or I'd have
cleaned up a little more. My life, I mean, not just the apartment."
There's a lipstick smear under Henry's ear, and I reach up and rub it out. He
takes my hand, and holds it. "Am I very different? Than you expected?"
he asks apprehensively.

"Yes...you're more..." selfish, I
think, but I say, "...younger."

He considers it. "Is that good or
bad?"

"Different." I run both hands over
Henry's shoulders and across his back, massaging muscles, exploring
indentations. "Have you seen yourself, in your forties?"

"Yes. I look like I've been spindled and
mutilated."

"Yeah. But you're less—I mean you are sort
of—more. I mean, you know me, so
          
"

"So right now you're telling me that I'm
somewhat gauche."

I shake my head, although that is exactly what
I mean. "It's just that I've had all these experiences, and you...I'm not
used to being with you when you don't remember anything that happened."

Henry is somber. "I'm sorry. But the
person you know doesn't exist yet. Stick with me, and sooner or later, he's
bound to appear. That's the best I can do, though."

"That's fair," I say. "But in
the meantime..."

He turns to meet my gaze. "In the
meantime?"

"I want... "

"You want?"

I'm blushing. Henry smiles, and pushes me
backward gently onto the pillows. "You know." "I don't know
much, but I can guess a thing or two."

Later, we're dozing warm covered with
midmorning October pale sun, skin to skin and Henry says something into the
back of my neck that I don't catch.

"What?"

"I was thinking; it's very peaceful, here
with you. It's nice to just lie here and know that the future is sort of taken
care of."

"Henry?" "Hmm?"

"How come you never told yourself about
me?" "Oh. I don't do that." "Do what?"

"I don't usually tell myself stuff ahead
of time unless it's huge, life-threatening, you know? I'm trying to live like a
normal person. I don't even like having myself around, so I try not to drop in
on myself unless there's no choice."

I ponder this for a while. "I would tell
myself everything."

"No, you wouldn't. It makes a lot of
trouble."

"I was always trying to get you to tell me
things." I roll over onto my back and Henry props his head on his hand and
looks down at me. Our faces are about six inches apart. It's so strange to be
talking, almost like we always did, but the physical proximity makes it hard
for me to concentrate.

"Did I tell you things?" he asks.

"Sometimes. When you felt like it, or had
to."

"Like what?"

"See? You do want to know. But I'm not
telling."

Henry laughs. "Serves me right. Hey, I'm
hungry. Let's go get breakfast."

Outside it's chilly. Cars and cyclists cruise
along Dearborn while couples stroll down the sidewalks and there we are with
them, in the morning sunlight, hand in hand, finally together for anyone to
see. I feel a tiny pang of regret, as though I've lost a secret, and then a
rush of exaltation: now everything begins.

A FIRST TIME
FOR EVERYTHING

Sunday, June 16, 1968

Henry: The first time was magical. How could I
have known what it meant? It was my fifth birthday, and we went to the Field
Museum of Natural History. I don't think I had ever been to the Field Museum
before. My parents had been telling me all week about the wonders to be seen
there, the stuffed elephants in the great hall, the dinosaur skeletons, the
caveman dioramas. Mom had just gotten back from Sydney, and she had brought me
an immense, surpassingly blue butterfly, Papilio ulysses, mounted in a frame
filled with cotton. I would hold it close to my face, so close I couldn't see
anything but that blue. It would fill me with a feeling, a feeling I later
tried to duplicate with alcohol and finally found again with Clare, a feeling
of unity, oblivion, mindlessness in the best sense of the word. My parents
described the cases and cases of butterflies, hummingbirds, beetles. I was so
excited that I woke up before dawn. I put on my gym shoes and took my Papilio
ulysses and went into the backyard and down the steps to the river in my
pajamas. I sat on the landing and hatched the light come up. A family of ducks
came swimming by, and a raccoon appeared on the landing across the river and
looked at me curiously before washing its breakfast and eating it. I may have
fallen asleep. I heard Mom calling and I ran back up the stairs, which were
slippery with dew, careful not to drop the butterfly. She was annoyed with me
for going down to the landing by myself, but she didn't make a big deal about
it, it being my birthday and all. Neither of them were working that night, so
they took their time getting dressed and out the door. I was ready long before
either of them. I sat on their bed and pretended to read a score. This was
around the time my musician parents recognized that their one and only
offspring was not musically gifted. It wasn't that I wasn't trying; I just
could not hear whatever it was they heard in a piece of music. I enjoyed music,
but I could hardly carry a tune. And though I could read a newspaper when I was
four, scores were only pretty black squiggles. But my parents were still hoping
I might have some hidden musical aptitude, so when I picked up the score Mom
sat down next to me and tried to help me with it. Pretty soon Mom was singing
and I was chiming in with horrible yowling noises and snapping my fingers and
we were giggling and she was tickling me. Dad came out of the bathroom with a
towel around his waist and joined in and for a few glorious minutes they were
singing together and Dad picked me up and they were dancing around the bedroom
with me pressed between them. Then the phone rang, and the scene dissolved. Mom
went to answer it, and Dad set me on the bed and got dressed. Finally, they
were ready. My mom wore a red sleeveless dress and sandals; she had painted her
toenails and fingernails so they matched her dress. Dad was resplendent in dark
blue pants and a white short-sleeved shirt, providing a quiet background for
Mom's flamboyance. We all piled into the car. As always, I had the whole
backseat to myself, so I lay down and watched the tall buildings along Lake
Shore Drive flicking past the window.

"Sit up, Henry" said Mom. "We're
here."

I sat up and looked at the museum. I had spent
my childhood thus far being carted around the capital cities of Europe, so the
Field Museum satisfied my idea of "Museum," but its domed stone
facade was nothing exceptional. Because it was Sunday, we had a little trouble
finding parking, but eventually we parked and walked along the lake, past boats
and statues and other excited children. We passed between the heavy columns and
into the museum. And then I was a boy enchanted. Here all of nature was
captured, labeled, arranged according to a logic that seemed as timeless as if
ordered by God, perhaps a God who had mislaid the original paperwork on the
Creation and had requested the Field Museum staff to help Him out and keep
track of it all. For my five-year-old self, who could derive rapture from a
single butterfly, to walk through the Field Museum was to walk through Eden and
see all that passed there. We saw so much that day: the butterflies, to be
sure, cases and cases of them, from Brazil, from Madagascar, even a brother of
my blue butterfly from Down Under. The museum was dark, cold, and old, and this
heightened the sense of suspension, of time and death brought to a halt inside
its walls. We saw crystals and cougars, muskrats and mummies, fossils and more
fossils. We ate our picnic lunch on the lawn of the museum, and then plunged in
again for birds and alligators and Neanderthals. Toward the end I was so tired
I could hardly stand, but I couldn't bear to leave. The guards came and gently
herded us all to the doors; I struggled not to cry, but began to anyway, out of
exhaustion and desire. Dad picked me up, and we walked back to the car. I fell
asleep in the backseat, and when I awoke We were home, and it was time for
dinner. We ate downstairs in Mr. and Mrs. Kim's apartment. They were our
landlords. Mr. Kim was a gruff, compact man who seemed to like me but never
said much, and Mrs. Kim (Kimy, my nickname for her) was my buddy, my crazy
Korean card-playing babysitter. I spent most of my waking hours with Kimy. My
mom was never much of a cook, and Kimy could produce anything from a souffle to
bi him bop with panache. Tonight, for my birthday, she had made pizza and
chocolate cake. We ate. Everyone sang Happy Birthday and I blew out the
candles. I don't remember what I wished for. I was allowed to stay up later
than usual, because I was still excited by all the things we'd seen, and
because I had slept so late in the afternoon. I sat on the back porch in my
pajamas with Mom and Dad and Mrs. and Mr. Kim, drinking lemonade and watching
the blueness of the evening sky, listening to the cicadas and the TV noises
from other apartments. Eventually Dad said, "Bedtime, Henry." I
brushed my teeth and said prayers and got into bed. I was exhausted but wide
awake. Dad read to me for a while, and then, seeing that I still couldn't
sleep, he and Mom turned out the lights, propped open my bedroom door, and went
into the living room. The deal was: they would play for me as long as I wanted,
but I had to stay in bed to listen. So Mom sat at the piano, and Dad got out
his violin, and they played and sang for a long time. Lullabies, lieder,
nocturnes; sleepy music to soothe the savage boy in the bedroom. Finally Mom
came in to see if I was asleep. I must have looked small and wary in my little
bed, a nocturnal animal in pajamas.

"Oh, baby. Still awake?"

I nodded.

"Dad and I are going to bed. Are you
okay?"

I said Yes and she gave me a hug. "It was
pretty exciting today at the museum, huh?" "Can we go back
tomorrow?"

"Not tomorrow, but we'll go back real
soon, okay?" Okay.

"G'night." She left the door open and
flipped off the hall light. "Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs
bite."

I could hear little noises, water running,
toilet flushing. Then all was quiet. I got out of bed and knelt in front of my
window. I could see lights in the house next door, and somewhere a car drove by
with its radio blaring. I stayed there for a while, trying to feel sleepy, and
then I stood up and everything changed.

Saturday, January 2, 1988, 4:03 a.m. /Sunday,
June 16, 1968, 10:46 p.m. (Henry is 24, and 5)

Henry: It's 4:03 a.m. on a supremely cold
January morning and I'm just getting home. I've been out dancing and I'm only
half drunk but utterly exhausted. As I fumble with my keys in the bright foyer
I fall to my knees, dizzy and nauseated, and then I am in the dark, vomiting on
a tile floor. I raise my head and see a red illuminated exit sign and as my
eyes adjust I see tigers, cavemen with long spears, cavewomen wearing
strategically modest skins, wolfish dogs. My heart is racing and for a long
liquor-addled moment I think Holy shit, I've gone all the way back to the Stone
Age until I realize that exit signs tend to congregate in the twentieth
century. I get up, shaking, and venture toward the doorway, tile icy under my
bare feet, gooseflesh and all my hairs standing up. It's absolutely silent. The
air is clammy with air conditioning. I reach the entrance and look into the
next room. It's full of glass cases; the white streetlight glow through the
high windows shows me thousands of beetles. I'm in the Field Museum, praise the
Lord. I stand still and breathe deeply, trying to clear my head. Something
about this rings a bell in my fettered brain and I try to dredge it up. I'm
supposed to do something. Yes. My fifth birthday... someone was there, and I'm
about to be that someone...I need clothes. Yes. Indeed. I sprint through beetle
mania into the long hallway that bisects the second floor, down the west
staircase to the first floor, grateful to be in the pre-motion-detector era.
The great elephants loom menacingly over me in the moonlight and I wave to them
on my way to the little gift shop to the right of the main entrance. I circle
the wares and find a few promising items: an ornamental letter opener, a metal
bookmark with the Field's insignia, and two T-shirts that feature dinosaurs.
The locks on the cases are a joke; I pop them with a bobby pin I find next to
the cash register, and help myself. Okay. Back up the stairs, to the third
floor. This is the Field's "attic," where the labs are; the staff have
their offices up here. I scan the names on the doors, but none of them suggests
anything to me; finally I select at random and slide my bookmark along the lock
until the catch pushes back and I'm in. The occupant of this office is one V.
M. Williamson, and he's a very untidy guy. The room is dense with papers, and
coffee cups and cigarettes overflow from ashtrays; there's a partially
articulated snake skeleton on his desk. I quickly case the joint for clothes
and come up with nothing. The next office belongs to a woman, J. F. Bettley. On
the third try I get lucky. D. W. Fitch has an entire suit hung neatly on his
coat rack, and it pretty much fits me, though it's a bit short in the arms and
legs and wide in the lapels. I wear one of the dinosaur T-shirts under the jacket.
No shoes, but I'm decent. D. W. also keeps an unopened package of Oreo cookies
in his desk, bless him. I appropriate them and leave, closing the door
carefully behind me. Where was I, when I saw me? I close my eyes and fatigue
takes me bodily, caressing me with her sleepy fingers. I am almost out on my
feet, but I catch myself and it comes to me: a man in silhouette walking toward
me backlit by the museum's front doors. I need to get back to the Great Hall.
When I get there all is quiet and still. I walk across the middle of the floor,
trying to replicate the view of the doors, and then I seat myself near the coat
room, so as to enter stage left. I can hear blood rushing in my head, the air
conditioning system humming, cars whooshing by on Lake Shore Drive. I eat ten
Oreos, slowly, gently prying each one apart, scraping the filling out with my
front teeth, nibbling the chocolate halves to make them last. I have no idea
what time it is, or how long I have to wait. I'm mostly sober now, and
reasonably alert. Time passes, nothing happens. At last: I hear a soft thud, a
gasp. Silence. I wait. I stand up, silently, and pad into the Hall, walking
slowly through the light that slants across the marble floor. I stand in the
center of the doors and call out, not loud: "Henry."