The Time Traveler's Wife, Page 29

  "Hi, Clare. That was close, huh?" I wrap my arms around him; he's shaking. "Have you got my clothes?"

  "Yeah, right here--oh hey, Kendrick is here."

  "What? Where?"

  "In the car."

  "Why?"

  "He saw you disappear and it seems to have affected his brain."

  Henry sticks his head in the driver's side door. "Hello." He grabs his clothing and starts to get dressed. Kendrick gets out of the car and trots around to us.

  "Where were you?"

  "1971. I was drinking Ovaltine with myself, as an eight-year-old, in my old bedroom, at one in the morning. I was there for about an hour. Why do you ask?" Henry regards Kendrick coldly as he knots his tie.

  "Unbelievable."

  "You can go on saying that as long as you want, but unfortunately it's true."

  "You mean you became eight years old?"

  "No. I mean I was sitting in my old bedroom in my dad's apartment, in 1971, just as I am, thirty-two years old, in the company of myself, at eight. Drinking Ovaltine. We were chatting about the incredulity of the medical profession." Henry walks around to the side of the car and opens the door. "Clare, let's vamoose. This is pointless."

  I walk to the driver's side. "Goodbye, Dr. Kendrick. Good luck with Colin."

  "Wait--" Kendrick pauses, collects himself. "This is a genetic disease?"

  "Yes," says Henry. "It's a genetic disease, and we're trying to have a child."

  Kendrick smiles, sadly. "A chancy thing to do."

  I smile back at him. "We're used to taking chances. Goodbye." Henry and I get into the car, and drive away. As I pull onto Lake Shore Drive I glance at Henry, who to my surprise is grinning broadly.

  "What are you so pleased about?"

  "Kendrick. He is totally hooked."

  "You think?"

  "Oh, yeah."

  "Well, great. But he seemed kind of dense."

  "He's not."

  "Okay." We drive home in silence, an entirely different quality of silence than we arrived with. Kendrick calls Henry that evening, and they make an appointment to begin the work of figuring out how to keep Henry in the here and now.

  Friday, April 12, 1996 (Henry is 32)

  HENRY: Kendrick sits with his head bowed. His thumbs move around the perimeter of his palms as though they want to escape from his hands. As the afternoon has passed the office has been illuminated with golden light; Kendrick has sat immobile except for those twitching thumbs, listening to me talk. The red Indian carpet, the beige twill armchairs' steel legs have flared bright; Kendrick's cigarettes, a pack of Camels, have sat untouched while he listened. The gold rims of his round glasses have been picked out by the sunlight; the edge of Kendrick's right ear has glowed red, his foxish hair and pink skin have been as burnished by the light as the yellow chrysanthemums in the brass bowl on the table between us. All afternoon, Kendrick has sat there in his chair, listening.

  And I have told him everything. The beginning, the learning, the rush of surviving and the pleasure of knowing ahead, the terror of knowing things that can't be averted, the anguish of loss. Now we sit in silence and finally he raises his head and looks at me. In Kendrick's light eyes is a sadness that I want to undo; after laying everything before him I want to take it all back and leave, excuse him from the burden of having to think about any of this. He reaches for his cigarettes, selects one, lights it, inhales and then exhales a blue cloud that turns white as it crosses the path of the light along with its shadow.

  "Do you have difficulty sleeping?" he asks me, his voice rasping from disuse.

  "Yes."

  "Is there any particular time of day that you tend to...vanish?"

  "No...well, early morning maybe more than other times."

  "Do you get headaches?"

  "Yes."

  "Migraines?"

  "No. Pressure headaches. With vision distortion, auras."

  "Hmm." Kendrick stands up. His knees crack. He paces around the office, smoking, following the edge of the rug. It's beginning to bug me when he stops and sits down again. "Listen," he says, frowning, "there are these things called clock genes. They govern circadian rhythms, keep you in sync with the sun, that sort of thing. We've found them in many different types of cells, all over the body, but they are especially tied to vision, and you seem to experience many of your symptoms visually. The suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus, which is located right above your optic chiasm, serves as the reset button, as it were, of your sense of time--so that's what I want to begin with."

  "Um, sure," I say, since he's looking at me as though he expects a reply. Kendrick gets up again and strides over to a door I haven't noticed before, opens it and disappears for a minute. When he returns he's holding latex gloves and a syringe.

  "Roll up your sleeve," Kendrick demands.

  "What are you doing?" I ask, rolling my sleeve above my elbow. He doesn't answer, unwraps the syringe, swabs my arm and ties it off, sticks me expertly. I look away. The sun has passed, leaving the office in gloom.

  "Do you have health insurance?" he asks me, removing the needle and untying my arm. He puts cotton and a Band-Aid over the puncture.

  "No. I'll pay for everything myself." I press my fingers against the sore spot, bend my elbow.

  Kendrick smiles. "No, no. You can be my little science experiment, hitchhike on my NIH grant for this."

  "For what?"

  "We're not going to mess around, here." Kendrick pauses, stands holding the used gloves and the little vial of my blood that he's just drawn. "We're going to have your DNA sequenced."

  "I thought that took years."

  "It does, if you're doing the whole genome. We are going to begin by looking at the most likely sites; Chromosome 17, for example." Kendrick throws the latex and needle in a can labeled BIOHAZARD and writes something on the little red vial of blood. He sits back down across from me and places the vial on the table next to the Camels.

  "But the human genome won't be sequenced until 2000. What will you compare it to?"

  "2000? So soon? You're sure? I guess you are. But to answer your question, a disease that is as--disruptive--as yours often appears as a kind of stutter, a repeated bit of code that says, in essence, Bad News. Huntington's disease, for instance, is just a bunch of extra CAG triplets on Chromosome 4."

  I sit up and stretch. I could use some coffee. "So that's it? Can I run away and play now?"

  "Well, I want to have your head scanned, but not today. I'll make an appointment for you at the hospital. MRI, CAT scan, and X-rays. I'm also going to send you to a friend of mine, Alan Larson; he has a sleep lab here on campus."

  "Fun," I say, standing up slowly so the blood doesn't all rush to my head.

  Kendrick tilts his face up at me. I can't see his eyes, his glasses are shiny opaque disks at this angle. "It is fun," he says. "It's such a great puzzle, and we finally have the tools to find out--"

  "To find out what?"

  "Whatever it is. Whatever you are." Kendrick smiles and I notice that his teeth are uneven and yellowed. He stands, extends his hand, and I shake it, thank him; there's an awkward pause: we are strangers again after the intimacies of the afternoon, and then I walk out of his office, down stairs, into the street, where the sun has been waiting for me. Whatever I am. What am I? What am I?

  A VERY SMALL SHOE

  Spring, 1996 (Clare is 24, Henry is 32)

  CLARE: When Henry and I had been married for about two years we decided, without talking about it very much, to see if we could have a baby. I knew that Henry was not at all optimistic about our chances of having a baby and I was not asking him or myself why this might be because I was afraid that he had seen us in the future without any baby and I just didn't want to know about that. And I didn't want to think about the possibility that Henry's difficulties with time travel might be hereditary or somehow mess up the whole baby thing, as it were. So I was simply not thinking about a lot of important stuff because I was completely drunk
with the notion of a baby: a baby that looked sort of like Henry, black hair and those intense eyes and maybe very pale like me and smelled like milk and talcum powder and skin, a sort of dumpling baby, gurgling and laughing at everyday stuff, a monkey baby, a small cooing sort of baby. I would dream about babies. In my dreams I would climb a tree and find a very small shoe. In a nest; I would suddenly discover that the cat/book/sandwich I thought I was holding was really a baby; I would be swimming in the lake and find a colony of babies growing at the bottom.

  I suddenly began to see babies everywhere; a sneezing red-haired girl in a sunbonnet at the A&P; a tiny staring Chinese boy, son of the owners, in the Golden Wok (home of wonderful vegetarian eggrolls); a sleeping almost bald baby at a Batman movie. In a fitting room in a JCPenney a very trusting woman actually let me hold her three-month-old daughter; it was all I could do to continue sitting in that pink-beige vinyl chair and not spring up and run madly away hugging that tiny soft being to my breasts.

  My body wanted a baby. I felt empty and I wanted to be full. I wanted someone to love who would stay: stay and be there, always. And I wanted Henry to be in this child, so that when he was gone he wouldn't be entirely gone, there would be a bit of him with me...insurance, in case of fire, flood, act of God.

  Sunday, October 2, 1966 (Henry is 33)

  HENRY: I am sitting, very comfortable and content, in a tree in Appleton, Wisconsin, in 1966, eating a tuna fish sandwich and wearing a white T-shirt and chinos stolen from someone's beautiful sun-dried laundry. Somewhere in Chicago, I am three; my mother is still alive and none of this chrono-fuckupedness has started. I salute my small former self, and thinking about me as a child naturally gets me thinking about Clare, and our efforts to conceive. On one hand, I am all eagerness; I want to give Clare a baby, see Clare ripen like a flesh melon, Demeter in glory. I want a normal baby who will do the things normal babies do: suck, grasp, shit, sleep, laugh; roll over, sit up, walk, talk in nonsense mumblings. I want to see my father awkwardly cradling a tiny grandchild; I have given my father so little happiness--this would be a large redress, a balm. And a balm to Clare, too; when I am snatched away from her, a part of me would remain.

  But: but. I know, without knowing, that this is very unlikely. I know that a child of mine is almost certainly going to be The One Most Likely to Spontaneously Vanish, a magical disappearing baby who will evaporate as though carried off by fairies. And even as I pray, panting and gasping over Clare in extremities of desire, for the miracle of sex to somehow yield us a baby, a part of me is praying just as vehemently for us to be spared. I am reminded of the story of the monkey's paw, and the three wishes that followed so naturally and horribly from each other. I wonder if our wish is of a similar order.

  I am a coward. A better man would take Clare by the shoulders and say, Love, this is all a mistake, let us accept it and go on, and be happy. But I know that Clare would never accept, would always be sad. And so I hope, against hope, against reason and I make love to Clare as though anything good might come of it.

  ONE

  Monday, June 3, 1996 (Clare is 25)

  CLARE: The first time it happens Henry is away. It's the eighth week of the pregnancy. The baby is the size of a plum, has a face and hands and a beating heart. It is early evening, early summer, and I can see magenta and orange clouds in the west as I wash the dishes. Henry disappeared almost two hours ago. He went out to water the lawn and after half an hour, when I realized that the sprinkler still wasn't on, I stood at the back door and saw the telltale pile of clothing sitting by the grape arbor. I went out and gathered up Henry's jeans and underwear and his ratty Kill Your Television T-shirt, folded them and put them on the bed. I thought about turning on the sprinkler but decided not to, reasoning that Henry won't like it if he appears in the backyard and gets drenched.

  I have prepared and eaten macaroni and cheese and a small salad, have taken my vitamins, have consumed a large glass of skim milk. I hum as I do the dishes, imagine the little being inside me hearing the humming, filing the humming away for future reference at some subtle, cellular level and as I stand there, conscientiously washing my salad bowl I feel a slight twinge somewhere deep inside, somewhere in my pelvis. Ten minutes later I am sitting in the living room minding my own business and reading Louis DeBernieres and there it is again, a brief twang on my internal strings. I ignore it. Everything is fine. Henry's been gone for more than two hours. I worry about him for a second, then resolutely ignore that, too. I do not start to really worry for another half hour or so, because now the weird little sensations are resembling menstrual cramps, and I am even feeling that sticky blood feeling between my legs and I get up and walk into the bathroom and pull down my underpants there's a lot of blood oh my god.

  I call Charisse. Gomez answers the phone. I try to sound okay, ask for Charisse, who gets on the phone and immediately says, "What's wrong?"

  "I'm bleeding."

  "Where's Henry?"

  "I don't know."

  "What kind of bleeding?"

  "Like a period." The pain is becoming intense and I sit down on the floor. "Can you take me to Illinois Masonic?"

  "I'll be right there, Clare." She hangs up, and I replace the receiver gently, as though I might hurt its feelings by handling it too roughly. I get to my feet with care, find my purse. I want to write Henry a note, but I don't know what to say. I write: "Went to IL Masonic. (Cramps.) Charisse drove me there. 7:20 p.m. C." I unlock the back door for Henry. I leave the note by the phone. A few minutes later Charisse is at the front door. When we get to the car, Gomez is driving. We don't talk much. I sit in the front seat, look out the window. Western to Belmont to Sheffield to Wellington. Everything is unusually sharp and emphatic, as though I need to remember as though there will be a test. Gomez turns into the Unloading Zone for the Emergency Room. Charisse and I get out. I look back at Gomez, smiles briefly and roars off to park the car. We walk through doors that open automatically as our feet press the ground, as in a fairy tale, as though we are expected. The pain has receded like an ebbing tide, and now it moves toward the shore again, fresh and fierce. There are a few people sitting abject and small in the brightly lit room, waiting their turn, encircling their pain with bowed heads and crossed arms, and I sink down among them. Charisse walks over to the man sitting behind the triage desk. I can't hear what she says, but when he says "Miscarriage?" it dawns on me that this is what is going on, this is what it is called, and the word expands in my head until it fills all crevices of my mind, until it has crowded out every other thought. I start to cry.

  After they've done everything they could, it happens anyway. I find out later that Henry arrived just before the end, but they wouldn't let him come in. I have been sleeping, and when I wake up it's late at night and Henry is there. He is pale and hollow-eyed and he doesn't say a word. "Oh," I mumble, "where were you?" and Henry leans over and carefully embraces me. I feel his stubble against my cheek and I am rubbed raw, not on my skin but deep in me, a wound opens and Henry's face is wet but with whose tears?

  Thursday, June 13 and Friday, June 14, 1996 (Henry is 32)

  HENRY: I arrive at the sleep lab exhausted, as Dr. Kendrick has asked me to. This is the fifth night I've spent here, and by now I know the routine. I sit on the bed in the odd, fake, home-like bedroom wearing pajama bottoms while Dr. Larson's lab technician, Karen, puts cream on my head and chest and tapes wires in place. Karen is young and blond and Vietnamese. She's wearing long fake fingernails and says, 'Oops, sorry,' when she rakes my cheek with one of them. The lights are dim, the room is cool. There are no windows except a piece of one-way glass that looks like a mirror, behind which sits Dr. Larson, or whoever's watching the machines this evening. Karen finishes the wiring, bids me good night, leaves the room. I settle into the bed carefully, close my eyes, imagine the spider-legged tracings on long streams of graph paper gracefully recording my eye movements, respiration, brain waves on the other side of the glass. I'm asleep within minutes.

>   I dream of running. I'm running through woods, dense brush, trees, but somehow I am running through all of it, passing through like a ghost. I burst into a clearing, there's been a fire...

  I dream I am having sex with Ingrid. I know it's Ingrid, even though I can't see her face, it is Ingrid body, Ingrid's long smooth legs. We are fucking in her parents' house, in their living room on the couch, the TV is on, tuned to a nature documentary in which a herd of antelope is running, and then there's a parade. Clare is sitting on a tiny float in the parade, looking sad while people are cheering all around her and suddenly Ing jumps up and pulls a bow and arrow from behind the couch and she shoots Clare. The arrow goes right into the TV and Clare claps her hands to her breast like Wendy in a silent version of Peter Pan and I leap up and I'm choking Ingrid, my hands around her throat, screaming at her--

  I wake up. I'm cold with sweat and my heart is pounding. I'm in the sleep lab. I wonder for a moment if there's something they're not telling me, if they can somehow watch my dreams, see my thoughts. I turn onto my side and close my eyes.

  I dream that Clare and I are walking through a museum. The museum is an old palace, all the paintings are in rococo gold frames, all the other visitors are wearing tall powdered wigs and immense dresses, frock coats, and breeches. They don't seem to notice us as we pass. We look at the paintings, but they aren't really paintings, they're poems, poems somehow given physical manifestation. "Look," I say to Clare, "there's an Emily Dickinson." The heart asks pleasure first; And then excuse from pain... She stands in front of the bright yellow poem and seems to warm herself by it. We see Dante, Donne, Blake, Neruda, Bishop; linger in a room full of Rilke, pass quickly through the Beats and pause before Verlaine and Baudelaire. I suddenly realize that I've lost Clare, I am walking, then running, back through the galleries and then I abruptly find her: she is standing before a poem, a tiny white poem tucked into a corner. She is weeping. As I come up behind her I see the poem: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.