The Time Traveler's Wife, Page 21

  "Yeah." Kimy is wistful. "He's such a nice guy, your dad; I don't know why he lets it get like this."

  "He's an alcoholic. That's what alcoholics do. It's in their job description: Fall apart, and then keep falling apart."

  She levels her devastating gaze at me. "Speaking of jobs..."

  "Yes?" Oh shit.

  "I don't think he's been working."

  "Well, it's the off-season. He doesn't work in May."

  "They are touring Europe and he's here. Also, he don't pay rent last two months."

  Damn damn damn. "Kimy, why didn't you call me? That's awful. Geez." I am on my feet and down the hall; I grab my backpack and return to the kitchen. I delve around in it and find my checkbook. "How much does he owe you?"

  Mrs. Kim is deeply embarrassed. "No, Henry, don't--he'll pay it."

  "He can pay me back. C'mon, buddy, it's okay. Cough it out, now, how much?"

  She's not looking at me. "$1,200.00," she says in a small voice.

  "That's all? What are you doing, buddy, running the Philanthropic Society for the Support of Wayward DeTambles?" I write the check and stick it under her saucer. "You better cash that or I'll come looking for you."

  "Well, then I won't cash it and you will have to visit me."

  "I'll visit you anyway." I am utterly guilt stricken. "I will bring Clare."

  Kimy beams at me. "I hope so. I'm gonna be your maid of honor, right?"

  "If Dad doesn't shape up you can give me away. Actually, that's a great idea: you can walk me down the aisle, and Clare will be waiting in her tux, and the organist will be playing Lohengrin..."

  "I better buy a dress."

  "Yow. Don't buy any dresses until I tell you it's a done deal." I sigh. "I guess I better go up there and talk to him." I stand up. In Mrs. Kim's kitchen I feel enormous, suddenly, as though I'm visiting my old grammar school and marveling over the size of the desks. She stands slowly and follows me to the front door. I hug her. For a moment she seems fragile and lost, and I wonder about her life, the telescoping days of cleaning and gardening and bridge playing, but then my own concerns crash back in again. I will come back soon; I can't spend my entire life hiding in bed with Clare. Kimy watches as I open Dad's door.

  "Hey, Dad? You home?"

  There's a pause, and then, "GO AWAY."

  I walk up the stairs and Mrs. Kim shuts her door.

  The first thing that hits me is the smell: something is rotting in here. The living room is devastated. Where are all the books? My parents had tons of books, on music, on history, novels, in French, in German, in Italian: where are they? Even the record and CD collection seems smaller. There are papers all over, junk mail, newspapers, scores, covering the floor. My mother's piano is coated with dust and there is a vase of long-dead gladiolas mummifying on the windowsill. I walk down the hall, glancing in the bedrooms. Utter chaos; clothes, garbage, more newspapers. In the bathroom a bottle of Michelob lies under the sink and a glossy dry layer of beer varnishes the tile.

  In the kitchen my father sits at the table with his back to me, looking out the window at the river. He doesn't turn around as I enter. He doesn't look at me when I sit down. But he doesn't get up and leave, either, so I take it as a sign that conversation may proceed.

  "Hi, Dad."

  Silence.

  "I saw Mrs. Kim, just now. She says you're not doing too good."

  Silence.

  "I hear you're not working."

  "It's May."

  "How come you're not on tour?"

  He finally looks at me. Under the stubbornness there is fright. "I'm on sick leave."

  "Since when?"

  "March."

  "Paid sick leave?"

  Silence.

  "Are you sick? What's wrong?"

  I think he's going to ignore me, but then he answers by holding out his hands. They are shaking as though they are in their own tiny earthquake. He's done it, finally. Twenty-three years of determined drinking and he's destroyed his ability to play the violin.

  "Oh, Dad. Oh, God. What does Stan say?"

  "He says that's it. The nerves are shot, and they aren't coming back."

  "Jesus." We look at each other for an unendurable minute. His face is anguished, and I'm beginning to understand: he has nothing. There is nothing left to hold him, to keep him, to be his life. First Mom, then his music, gone, gone. I never mattered much to begin with, so my belated efforts will be inconsequential. "What happens now?"

  Silence. Nothing happens now.

  "You can't just stay up here and drink for the next twenty years."

  He looks at the table.

  "What about your pension? Workers' comp? Medicare? AA?"

  He's done nothing, let everything slide. Where have I been?

  "I paid your rent."

  "Oh." He's confused. "Didn't I pay it?"

  "No. You owed for two months. Mrs. Kim was very embarrassed. She didn't want to tell me, and she didn't want me giving her money, but there's no sense making your problems her problems."

  "Poor Mrs. Kim." Tears are coursing down my father's cheeks. He is old. There's no other word for it. He's fifty-seven, and he's an old man. I am not angry, now. I'm sorry, and frightened for him.

  "Dad." He is looking at me again. "Look. You have to let me do some things for you, okay?" He looks away, out the window again at the infinitely more interesting trees on the other side of the water. "You need to let me see your pension documents and bank statements and all that. You need to let Mrs. Kim and me clean this place. And you need to stop drinking."

  "No."

  "No, what? Everything or just some of it?"

  Silence. I'm starting to lose my patience, so I decide to change the subject. "Dad. I'm going to get married."

  Now I have his attention.

  "To who? Who would marry you?" He says this, I think, without malice. He's genuinely curious. I take out my wallet and remove a picture of Clare from its plastic pocket. In the picture Clare is looking out serenely over Lighthouse Beach. Her hair floats like a banner in the breeze and in the early morning light she seems to glow against a background of dark trees. Dad takes the picture and studies it carefully.

  "Her name is Clare Abshire. She's an artist"

  "Well. She's pretty," he says grudgingly. This is as close as I'm going to get to a paternal blessing.

  "I would like...1 would really like to give her Mom's wedding and engagement rings. I think Mom would have liked that."

  "How would you know? You probably hardly remember her."

  I don't want to discuss it, but I feel suddenly determined to have my way. "I see her on a regular basis. I've seen her hundreds of times since she died. I see her walking around the neighborhood, with you, with me. She goes to the park and learns scores, she shops, she has coffee with Mara at Tia's. I see her with Uncle Ish. I see her at Juilliard. I hear her sing!" Dad is gaping at me. I'm destroying him, but I can't seem to stop. "I have spoken to her. Once I stood next to her on a crowded train, touching her." Dad is crying. "It's not always a curse, okay? Sometimes time travel is a great thing. I needed to see her, and sometimes I get to see her. She would have loved Clare, she would have wanted me to be happy, and she would deplore the way you've fucked everything up just because she died."

  He sits at the kitchen table and weeps. He cries, not covering his face, but simply lowering his head and letting the tears stream from him. I watch him for a while, the price of losing my temper. Then I go to the bathroom and return with the roll of toilet paper. He takes some, blindly, and blows his nose. Then we sit there for a few minutes.

  "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Why didn't you tell me you could see her? I would've liked...to know that."

  Why didn't I tell him? Because any normal father would have figured out by now that the stranger haunting their early married life was really his abnormal, time-traveling son. Because I was scared to: because he hated me for surviving. Because I could s
ecretly feel superior to him for something he saw as a defect. Ugly reasons like that.

  "Because I thought it would hurt you."

  "Oh. No. It doesn't...hurt me; I...it's good to know she's there, somewhere. I mean...the worst thing is that she's gone. So it's good that she's out there. Even if I can't see her."

  "She seems happy, usually."

  "Yes, she was very happy...we were happy."

  "Yeah. You were like a different person. I always wondered what it would have been like to grow up with you the way you were, then."

  He stands up, slowly. I remain seated, and he walks unsteadily down the hall and into his bedroom. I hear him rummaging around, and then he comes slowly back with a small satin pouch. He reaches into it, and withdraws a dark blue jeweler's box. He opens it, and takes out the two delicate rings. They rest like seeds in his long, shaking hand. Dad puts his left hand over the right hand that holds the rings, and sits like that for a bit, as though the rings are lightning bugs trapped in his two hands. His eyes are closed. Then he opens his eyes, and reaches out his right hand: I cup my hands together, and he turns the rings onto my waiting palms.

  The engagement ring is an emerald, and the dim light from the window is refracted green and white in it. The rings are silver, and they need cleaning. They need wearing, and I know just the girl to wear them.

  BIRTHDAY

  Sunday, May 24, 1992 (Clare is 21, Henry is 28)

  CLARE: It's my twenty-first birthday. It's a perfect summer evening. I'm at Henry's apartment, in Henry's bed, reading The Moonstone. Henry is in the tiny kitchenette making dinner. As I don his bathrobe and head for the bathroom I hear him swearing at the blender. I take my time, wash my hair, steam up the mirrors. I think about cutting my hair. How nice it would be to wash it, run a quick comb through it, and presto! all set, ready to rock and roll. I sigh. Henry loves my hair almost as though it is a creature unto itself, as though it has a soul to call its own, as though it could love him back. I know he loves it as part of me, but I also know that he would be deeply upset if I cut it off. And I would miss it, too...it's just so much effort, sometimes I want to take it off like a wig and set it aside while I go out and play. I comb it carefully, working out the tangles. My hair is heavy when it's wet. It pulls on my scalp. I prop the bathroom door open to dissipate the steam. Henry is singing something from Carmina Burana; it sounds weird and off key. I emerge from the bathroom and he is setting the table.

  "Perfect timing; dinner is served."

  "Just a minute, let me get dressed."

  "You're fine as you are. Really." Henry walks around the table, opens the bathrobe, and runs his hands lightly over my breasts.

  "Mmm. Dinner will get cold."

  "Dinner is cold. I mean, it's supposed to be cold."

  "Oh... Well, let's eat." I'm suddenly exhausted, and cranky.

  "Okay." Henry releases me without comment. He returns to setting out silverware. I watch him for a minute, then pick up my clothes from their various places on the floor and put them on. I sit down at the table; Henry brings out two bowls of soup, pale and thick. "Vichyssoise. This is my grandmother's recipe." I take a sip. It's perfect, buttery and cool. The next course is salmon, with long pieces of asparagus in an olive oil and rosemary marinade. I open my mouth to say something nice about the food and instead say, "Henry--do other people have sex as much as we do?"

  Henry considers. "Most people...no, I imagine not. Only people who haven't known each other very long and still can't believe their luck, I would think. Is it too much?"

  "I don't know. Maybe." I say this looking at my plate. I can't believe I'm saying this; I spent my entire adolescence begging Henry to fuck me and now I'm telling him it's too much. Henry sits very still.

  "Clare, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize; I wasn't thinking."

  I look up; Henry looks stricken. I burst out laughing. Henry smiles, a little guilty, but his eyes are twinkling.

  "It's just--you know, there are days when I can't sit down."

  "Well...you just have to say. Say 'Not tonight, dear, we've already done it twenty-three times today and I would rather read Bleak House.'"

  "And you will meekly cease and desist?"

  "I did, just then, didn't I? That was pretty meek."

  "Yeah. But then I felt guilty."

  Henry laughs. "You can't expect me to help you out there. It may be my only hope: day after day, week after week, I will languish, starving for a kiss, withering away for want of a blow job, and after a while you will look up from your book and realize that I'm actually going to die at your feet if you don't fuck me immediately but I won't say a word. Maybe a few little whimpering noises."

  "But--I don't know, I mean, I'm exhausted, and you seem...fine. Am I abnormal, or something?"

  Henry leans across the table and holds out his hands. I place mine in his.

  "Clare."

  "Yes?"

  "It may be indelicate to mention this, but if you will excuse me for saying so, your sex drive far outstrips that of almost all the women I've dated. Most women would have cried Uncle and turned on their answering machines months ago. But I should have thought...you always seemed into it. But if it's too much, or you don't feel like it, you have to say so, because otherwise I'll be tiptoeing around, wondering if I'm burdening you with my hideous demands."

  "But how much sex is enough?"

  "For me? Oh, God. My idea of the perfect life would be if we just stayed in bed all the time. We could make love more or less continuously, and only get up to bring in supplies, you know, fresh water and fruit to prevent scurvy, and make occasional trips to the bathroom to shave before diving back into bed. And once in a while we could change the sheets. And go to the movies to prevent bedsores. And running. I would still have to run every morning." Running is a religion with Henry.

  "How come running? Since you'd be getting so much exercise anyway?"

  He is suddenly serious. "Because quite frequently my life depends on running faster than whoever's chasing me."

  "Oh." Now it's my turn to be abashed, because I already knew that. "But--how do I put this?--you never seem to go anywhere--that is, since I met you here in the present you've hardly time traveled at all. Have you?"

  "Well, at Christmas, you saw that. And around Thanksgiving. You were in Michigan, and I didn't mention it because it was depressing."

  "You were watching the accident?"

  Henry stares at me. "Actually, I was. How did you know?"

  "A few years ago you showed up at Meadowlark on Christmas Eve and told me about it. You were really upset."

  "Yeah. I remember being unhappy just seeing that date on the List, thinking, gee, an extra Christmas to get through. Plus that was a bad one in regular time; I ended up with alcohol poisoning and had to have my stomach pumped. I hope I didn't ruin yours."

  "No... I was happy to see you. And you were telling me something that was important, personal, even though you were careful not to tell any names or places. It was still your real life, and I was desperate for anything that helped me believe you were real and not some psychosis of mine. That's also why I was always touching you." I laugh. "I never realized how difficult I was making things for you. I mean, I did everything I could think of, and you were just cool as could be. You must have been dying."

  "For example?"

  "What's for dessert?"

  Henry dutifully gets up and brings dessert. It's mango ice cream with raspberries. It has one little candle sticking out of it at an angle; Henry sings Happy Birthday and I giggle because he's so off-key; I make a wish and blow out the candle. The ice cream tastes superb; I am very cheerful, and I scan my memory for an especially egregious episode of Henry baiting.

  "Okay. This was the worst. When I was sixteen, I was waiting for you late one night. It was about eleven o'clock, and there was a new moon, so it was pretty dark in the clearing. And I was kind of annoyed with you, because you were resolutely treating me like--a child, or a pal, or whatever--and I wa
s just crazy to lose my virginity. I suddenly got the idea that I would hide your clothes..."

  "Oh, no."

  "Yes. So I moved the clothes to a different spot..." I'm a little ashamed of this story, but it's too late now.

  "And?"

  "And you appeared, and I basically teased you until you couldn't take it."

  "And?"

  "And you jumped me and pinned me, and for about thirty seconds we both thought 'This is it.' I mean, it wasn't like you would've been raping me, because I was absolutely asking for it. But you got this look on your face, and you said 'No,' and you got up and walked away. You walked right through the Meadow into the trees and I didn't see you again for three weeks."

  "Wow. That's a better man than I."

  "I was so chastened by the whole thing that I made a huge effort to behave myself for the next two years."

  "Thank goodness. I can't imagine having to exercise that much willpower on a regular basis."

  "Ah, but you will, that's the amazing part. For a long time I actually thought you were not attracted to me. Of course, if we are going to spend our whole lives in bed, I suppose you can exercise a little restraint on your jaunts into my past."

  "Well, you know, I'm not kidding about wanting that much sex. I mean, I realize that it's not practical. But I've been wanting to tell you: I feel so different. I just...feel so connected to you. And I think that it holds me here, in the present. Being physically connected the way that we are, it's kind of rewiring my brain." Henry is stroking my hand with his fingertips. He looks up. "I have something for you. Come and sit over here."

  I get up and follow him into the living room. He's turned the bed into the couch and I sit down. The sun is setting and the room is washed in rose and tangerine light. Henry opens his desk, reaches into a pigeonhole, and produces a little satin bag. He sits slightly apart from me; our knees are touching. He must be able to hear my heart beating, I think. It's come to this, I think. Henry takes my hands and looks at me gravely. I've waited for this so long and here it is and I'm frightened.

  "Clare?"

  "Yes?" My voice is small and scared.

  "You know that I love you. Will you marry me?"

  "Yes... Henry." I have an overwhelming sense of deja vu. "But you know, really...1 already have."