The Time Traveler's Wife Page 11

  I see how my mother is with me. Now she is pregnant, now they bring me home from the hospital, now she takes me to the park in a baby carriage and sits memorizing scores, singing softly with small hand gestures to me, making faces and shaking toys at me. Now we walk hand in hand and admire the squirrels, the cars, the pigeons, anything that moves. She wears cloth coats and loafers with Capri pants. She is dark-haired with a dramatic face, a full mouth, wide eyes, short hair; she looks Italian but actually she's Jewish. My mom wears lipstick, eye liner, mascara, blush, and eyebrow pencil to go to the dry cleaner's. Dad is much as he always is, tall, spare, a quiet dresser, a wearer of hats. The difference is his face. He is deeply content. They touch each other often, hold hands, walk in unison. At the beach the three of us wear matching sunglasses and I have a ridiculous blue hat. We all lie in the sun slathered in baby oil. We drink rum and Coke, and Hawaiian Punch.

  My mother's star is rising. She studies with Jehan Meck, with Mary Delacroix, and they carefully guide her along the paths of fame; she sings a number of small but gemlike roles, attracting the ears of Louis Behaire at the Lyric. She understudies Linea Waverleigh's Aida. Then she is chosen to sing Carmen. Other companies take notice, and soon we are traveling around the world. She records Schubert for Decca, Verdi and Weill for EMI, and we go to London, to Paris, to Berlin, to New York. I remember only an endless series of hotel rooms and airplanes. Her performance at Lincoln Center is on television; I watch it with Gram and Gramps in Muncie. I am six years old and I hardly believe that it's my mom, there in black and white on the small screen. She is singing Madama Butterfly.

  They make plans to move to Vienna after the end of the Lyric's '69-'70 season. Dad auditions at the Philharmonic. Whenever the phone rings it's Uncle Ish, Mom's manager, or someone from a record label.

  I hear the door at the top of the stairs open and clap shut and then slowly descending footsteps. Clare knocks quietly four times and I remove the straight-backed chair from under the doorknob. There's still snow in her hair and her cheeks are red. She is seventeen years old. Clare throws her arms around me and hugs me excitedly. "Merry Christmas, Henry!" she says. "It's so great you're here!" I kiss her on the cheek; her cheer and bustle have scattered my thoughts but my sense of sadness and loss remains. I run my hands over her hair and come away with a small handful of snow that melts immediately.

  "What's wrong?" Clare takes in the untouched food, my uncheerful demeanor. "You're sulking because there's no mayo?"

  "Hey. Hush." I sit down on the broken old La-Z-Boy and Clare squeezes in beside me. I put my arm around her shoulders. She puts her hand on my inner thigh. I remove it, and hold it. Her hand is cold. "Have I ever told you about my mom?"

  "No." Clare is all ears; she's always eager for any bits of autobiography I let drop. As the dates on the List grow few and our two years of separation loom large, Clare is secretly convinced she can find me in real time if I would only dole out a few facts. Of course, she can't, because I won't, and she doesn't.

  We each eat a cookie. "Okay. Once upon a time, I had a mom. I had a dad, too, and they were very deeply in love. And they had me. And we were all pretty happy. And both of them were really terrific at their jobs, and my mother, especially, was great at what she did, and we used to travel all over, seeing the hotel rooms of the world. So it was almost Christmas--"

  "What year?"

  "The year I was six. It was the morning of Christmas Eve, and my dad was in Vienna because we were going to move there soon and he was finding us an apartment. So the idea was that Dad would fly into the airport and Mom and I would drive out and pick him up and we would all continue on to Grandma's house for the holidays.

  "It was a gray, snowy morning and the streets were covered in sheets of ice that hadn't been salted yet. Mom was a nervous driver. She hated expressways, hated driving to the airport, and had only agreed to do this because it made a lot of sense. We got up early, and she packed the car. I was wearing a winter coat, a knit hat, boots, jeans, a pullover sweater, underwear, wool socks that were kind of tight, and mittens. She was dressed entirely in black, which was more unusual then than it is now."

  Clare drinks some of the milk directly from the carton. She leaves a cinnamon-colored lipstick print. "What kind of car?"

  "It was a white '62 Ford Fairlane."

  "What's that?"

  "Look it up. It was built like a tank. It had fins. My parents loved it--it had a lot of history for them.

  "So we got in the car. I sat in the front passenger seat, we both wore our seatbelts. And we drove. The weather was absolutely awful. It was hard to see, and the defrost in that car wasn't the greatest. We went through this maze of residential streets, and then we got on the expressway. It was after rush hour, but traffic was a mess because of the weather and the holiday So we were moving maybe fifteen, twenty miles an hour. My mother stayed in the right-hand lane, probably because she didn't want to change lanes without being able to see very well and because we weren't going to be on the expressway very long before we exited for the airport.

  "We were behind a truck, well behind it, giving it plenty of room up there. As we passed an entrance a small car, a red Corvette, actually, got on behind us. The Corvette, which was being driven by a dentist who was only slightly inebriated, at 10:30 a.m., got on just a bit too quickly, and was unable to slow down soon enough because of the ice on the road, and hit our car. And in ordinary weather conditions, the Corvette would have been mangled and the indestructible Ford Fairlane would have had a bent fender and it wouldn't have been that big of a deal.

  "But the weather was bad, the roads were slick, so the shove from the Corvette sent our car accelerating forward just as traffic slowed down. The truck ahead of us was barely moving. My mother was pumping the brakes but nothing was happening.

  "We hit the truck practically in slow motion, or so it seemed to me. In actuality we were going about forty. The truck was an open pickup truck full of scrap metal. When we hit it, a large sheet of steel flew off the back of the truck, came through our windshield, and decapitated my mother."

  Clare has her eyes closed. "No."

  "It's true."

  "But you were right there--you were too short!"

  "No, that wasn't it, the steel embedded in my seat right where my forehead should have been. I have a scar where it started to cut my forehead." I show Clare. "It got my hat. The police couldn't figure it out. All my clothes were in the car, on the seat and the floor, and I was found stark naked by the side of the road."

  "You time traveled."

  "Yes. I time traveled." We are silent for a moment. "It was only the second time it ever happened to me. I had no idea what was going on. I was watching us plow into this truck, and then I was in the hospital. In fact, I was pretty much unhurt, just in shock."

  "How...why do you think it happened?"

  "Stress--pure fear. I think my body did the only trick it could."

  Clare turns her face to mine, sad and excited. "So..."

  "So. Mom died, and I didn't. The front end of the Ford crumpled up, the steering column went through Mom's chest, her head went through the now empty windshield and into the back of the truck, there was an unbelievable amount of blood. The guy in the Corvette was unscathed. The truck driver got out of his truck to see what hit him, saw Mom, fainted on the road and was run over by a school bus driver who didn't see him and was gawking at the accident. The truck driver had two broken legs. Meanwhile, I was completely absent from the scene for ten minutes and forty-seven seconds. I don't remember where I went; maybe it was only a second or two for me. Traffic came to a complete halt. Ambulances were trying to come from three different directions and couldn't get near us for half an hour. Paramedics came running on foot. I appeared on the shoulder. The only person who saw me appear was a little girl; she was in the back seat of a green Chevrolet station wagon. Her mouth opened, and she just stared and stared."

  "But--Henry, you were--you said you don't remember. And how coul
d you know this anyway? Ten minutes and forty-seven seconds? Exactly?"

  I am quiet for a while, searching for the best way to explain. "You know about gravity, right? The larger something is, the more mass it has, the more gravitational pull it exerts? It pulls smaller things to it, and they orbit around and around?"

  "Yes..."

  "My mother dying...it's the pivotal thing...everything else goes around and around it... I dream about it, and I also--time travel to it. Over and over. If you could be there, and could hover over the scene of the accident, and you could see every detail of it, all the people, cars, trees, snowdrifts--if you had enough time to really look at everything, you would see me. I am in cars, behind bushes, on the bridge, in a tree. I have seen it from every angle, I am even a participant in the aftermath: I called the airport from a nearby gas station to page my father with the message to come immediately to the hospital. I sat in the hospital waiting room and watched my father walk through on his way to find me. He looks gray and ravaged. I walked along the shoulder of the road, waiting for my young self to appear, and I put a blanket around my thin child's shoulders. I looked into my small uncomprehending face, and I thought... I thought..." I am weeping now. Clare wraps her arms around me and I cry soundlessly into her mohair-sweatered breasts.

  "What? What, Henry?"

  "I thought, I should have died, too."

  We hold each other. I gradually get hold of myself. I have made a mess of Clare's sweater. She goes to the laundry room and comes back wearing one of Alicia's white polyester chamber music-playing shirts. Alicia is only fourteen, but she's already taller and bigger than Clare. I stare at Clare, standing before me, and I am sorry to be here, sorry to ruin her Christmas.

  "I'm sorry, Clare. I didn't mean to put all this sadness on you. I just find Christmas...difficult."

  "Oh, Henry! I'm so glad you're here, and, you know, I'd rather know--I mean, you just come out of nowhere, and disappear, and if I know things, about your life, you seem more...real. Even terrible things... I need to know as much as you can say." Alicia is calling down the stairs for Clare. It is time for Clare to join her family, to celebrate Christmas. I stand, and we kiss, cautiously, and Clare says "Coming!" and gives me a smile and then she's running up the stairs. I prop the chair under the door again and settle in for a long night.

  CHRISTMAS EVE, TWO

  Saturday, December 24, 1988 (Henry is 25)

  HENRY: I call Dad and ask if he wants me to come over for dinner after the Christmas matinee concert. He makes a half-hearted attempt at inviting me but I back out, to his relief. The Official DeTamble Day of Mourning will be conducted in multiple locations this year. Mrs. Kim has gone to Korea to visit her sisters; I've been watering her plants and taking in her mail. I call Ingrid Carmichel and ask her to come out with me and she reminds me, crisply, that it's Christmas Eve and some people have families to kowtow to. I run through my address book. Everyone is out of town, or in town with their visiting relatives. I should have gone to see Gram and Gramps. Then I remember they're in Florida. It's 2:53 in the afternoon and stores are closing down. I buy a bottle of schnapps at Al's and stow it in my overcoat pocket. Then I hop on the El at Belmont and ride downtown. It's a gray day, and cold. The train is half full, mostly people with their kids going down to see Marshall Field's Christmas windows and do last minute shopping at Water Tower Place. I get off at Randolph and Walk east to Grant Park. I stand on the IC overpass for a while, drinking, and then I walk down to the skating rink. A few couples and little kids are skating. The kids chase each other and skate backward and do figure eights. I rent a pair of more-or-less-my-size skates, lace them on, and walk onto the ice. I skate the perimeter of the rink, smoothly and without thinking too much. Repetition, movement, balance, cold air. It's nice. The sun is setting. I skate for an hour or so, then return the skates, pull on my boots, and walk.

  I walk west on Randolph, and south on Michigan Avenue, past the Art Institute. The lions are decked out in Christmas wreathes. I walk down Columbus Drive. Grant Park is empty, except for the crows, which strut and circle over the evening-blue snow. The streetlights tint the sky orange above me; it's a deep cerulean blue over the lake. At Buckingham Fountain I stand until the cold becomes unbearable watching seagulls wheeling and diving, fighting over a loaf of bread somebody has left for them. A mounted policeman rides slowly around the fountain once and then sedately continues south.

  I walk. My boots are not quite waterproof, and despite my several sweaters my overcoat is a bit thin for the dropping temperature. Not enough body fat; I'm always cold from November to April. I walk along Harrison, over to State Street. I pass the Pacific Garden Mission, where the homeless have gathered for shelter and dinner. I wonder what they're having; I wonder if there's any festivity, there, in the shelter. There are few cars. I don't have a watch, but I guess that it's about seven. I've noticed lately that my sense of time passing is different; it seems to run slower than other people's. An afternoon can be like a day to me; an El ride can be an epic journey. Today is interminable. I have managed to get through most of the day without thinking, too much, about Mom, about the accident, about all of it...but now, in the evening, walking, it is catching up with me. I realize I'm hungry. The alcohol has worn off. I'm almost at Adams, and I mentally review the amount of cash I have on me and decide to splurge on dinner at the Berghoff, a venerable German restaurant famous for its brewery.

  The Berghoff is warm, and noisy. There are quite a few people, eating and standing around. The legendary Berghoff waiters are bustling importantly from kitchen to table. I stand in line, thawing out, amidst chattering families and couples. Eventually I am led to a small table in the main dining room, toward the back. I order a dark beer and a plate of duck wursts with spaetzle. When the food comes, I eat slowly. I polish off all the bread, too, and realize that I can't remember eating lunch. This is good, I'm taking care of myself, I'm not being an idiot, I'm remembering to eat dinner. I lean back in my chair and survey the room. Under the high ceilings, dark paneling, and murals of boats, middle-aged couples eat their dinners. They have spent the afternoon shopping, or at the symphony, and they talk pleasantly of the presents they have bought, their grandchildren, plane tickets and arrival times, Mozart. I have an urge to go to the symphony, now, but there's no evening program. Dad is probably on his way home from Orchestra Hall. I would sit in the upper reaches of the uppermost balcony (the best place to sit, acoustically) and listen to Das Lied von der Erde, or Beethoven, or something similarly un-Christmasy. Oh well. Maybe next year. I have a sudden glimpse of all the Christmases of my life lined up one after another, waiting to be gotten through, and despair floods me. No. I wish for a moment that Time would lift me out of this day, and into some more benign one. But then I feel guilty for wanting to avoid the sadness; dead people need us to remember them, even if it eats us, even if all we can do is say I'm sorry until it is as meaningless as air. I don't want to burden this warm festive restaurant with grief that I would have to recall the next time I'm here with Gram and Gramps, so I pay and leave.

  Back on the street, I stand pondering. I don't want to go home. I want to be with people, I want to be distracted. I suddenly think of the Get Me High Lounge, a place where anything can happen, a haven for eccentricity. Perfect. I walk over to Water Tower Place and catch the #66 Chicago Avenue bus, get off at Damen, and take the #50 bus north. The bus smells of vomit, and I'm the only passenger. The driver is singing Silent Night in a smooth church tenor, and I wish him a Merry Christmas as I step off the bus at Wabansia. As I walk past the Fix-It shop snow begins to fall, and I catch the big wet flakes on the tips of my fingers. I can hear music leaking out of the bar. The abandoned ghost train track looms over the street in the sodium vapor glare and as I open the door someone starts to blow a trumpet and hot jazz smacks me in the chest. I walk into it like a drowning man, which is what I have come here to be.

  There are about ten people in the place, counting Mia, the bartender. Three musicians
, trumpet, standing bass, and clarinet, occupy the tiny stage, and the customers are all sitting at the bar. The musicians are playing furiously, swinging at maximum volume like sonic dervishes and as I sit and listen I make out the melody line of White Christmas. Mia comes over and stares at me and I shout "Whiskey and water!" at the top of my voice and she bawls "House?" and I yell "Okay!" and she turns to mix it. There is an abrupt halt to the music. The phone rings, and Mia snatches it up and says, "Get Me Hiiiiiiiiigh!" She sets my drink in front of me and I lay a twenty on the bar. "No," she says into the phone. "Well, daaaang. Well, fuck you, too." She whomps the receiver back into its cradle like she's dunking a basketball. Mia stands looking pissed off for a few moments, then lights a Pall Mall and blows a huge cloud of smoke at me. "Oh, sorry." The musicians troop over to the bar and she serves them beers. The rest-room door is on the stage, so I take advantage of the break between sets to take a leak. When I get back to the bar Mia has set another drink in front of my bar stool. "You're psychic," I say.

  "You're easy." She plunks her ashtray down and leans against the inside of the bar, pondering. "What are you doing, later?"

  I review my options. I've been known to go home with Mia a time or two, and she's good fun and all that, but I'm really not in the mood for casual frivolity at the moment. On the other hand, a warm body is not a bad thing when you're down. "I'm planning to get extremely drunk. What did you have in mind?"

  "Well, if you're not too drunk you could come over, and if you're not dead when you wake up you could do me a huge favor and come to Christmas dinner at my parents' place in Glencoe and answer to the name Rafe."

  "Oh, God, Mia. I'm suicidal just thinking about it. Sorry."

  She leans over the bar and speaks emphatically. "C'mon, Henry. Help me out. You're a presentable young person of the male gender. Hell, you're a librarian. You won't freak when my parents start asking who your parents are and what college you went to."

  "Actually, I will. I will run straight to the powder room and slit my throat. Anyway, what's the point? Even if they love me it just means they'll torture you for years with 'What ever happened to that nice young librarian you were dating?' And what happens when they meet the real Rafe?"