Part II: A Past That Is Also a Future — BABY DREAMS - The Time Traveler's Wife

September, 2000 (Clare is 29)

Clare: I dream I’m walking down stairs into my grandmother Abshire’s basement. The long soot mark from the time the crow flew down the chimney is still there on the left-hand wall; the steps are dusty and the handrail leaves gray marks on my hand as I steady myself; I descend and walk into the room that always scared me when I was little. In this room are deep shelves with rows and rows of canned goods, tomatoes and pickles, corn relish and beets. They look embalmed. In one of the jars is the small fetus of a duck. I carefully open the jar and pour the ducking and the fluid into my hand. It gasps and retches. “Why did you leave me?” it asks, when it can speak. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

I dream that my mother and I are walking together down a quiet residential street in South Haven. I am carrying a baby. As we walk, the baby becomes heavier and heavier, until I can barely lift it. I turn to Mama and tell her that I can’t carry this baby any farther; she takes it from me easily and we continue on. We come to a house and walk down the small walkway to its backyard. In the yard there are two screens and a slide projector. People are seated in lawn chairs, watching slides of trees. Half of a tree is on each screen. One half is summer and the other winter; they are the same tree, different seasons. The baby laughs and cries out in delight, I dream I am standing on the Sedgewick El platform, waiting for the Brown Line train. I am carrying two shopping bags, which upon inspection turn out to contain boxes of saltine crackers and a very small, stillborn baby with red hair, wrapped in Saran Wrap.

I dream I am at home, in my old room. It’s late at night, the room is dimly illuminated by the aquarium light. I suddenly realize, with horror, that there is a small animal swimming round and round the tank; I hastily remove the lid and net the animal, which turns out to be a gerbil with gills. “I’m so sorry” I say. “I forgot about you.” The gerbil just stares at me reproachfully.

I dream I am walking up stairs in Meadowlark House. All the furniture is gone, the rooms are empty, dust floats in the sunlight which makes golden pools on the polished oak floors. I walk down the long hall, glancing in the bedrooms, and come to my room, in which a small wooden cradle sits alone. There is no sound. I am afraid to look into the cradle. In Mama’s room white sheets are spread over the floor. At my feet is a tiny drop of blood, which touches the tip of a sheet and spreads as I watch until the entire floor is covered in blood.

Saturday, September 23, 2000 (Clare is 29, Henry is 37)

Clare: I’m living under water. Everything seems slow and far away. I know there’s a world up there, a sunlit quick world where time runs like dry sand through an hourglass, but down here, where I am, air and sound and time and feeling are thick and dense. I’m in a diving bell with this baby, just the two of us trying to survive in this alien atmosphere, but I feel very alone. Hello? Are you there? No answer comes back. He’s dead, I tell Amit. No, she says, smiling anxiously, no, Clare, see, there’s his heartbeat. T can’t explain. Henry hovers around trying to feed me, massage me, cheer me up, until I snap at him. I walk across the yard, into my studio. It’s like a museum, a mausoleum, so still, nothing living or breathing, no ideas here, just things, things that stare at me accusingly. I’m sorry, I tell my blank, empty drawing table, my dry vats and molds, the half-made sculptures. Stillborn, I think, looking at the blue iris paper-wrapped armature that seemed so hopeful in June. My hands are clean and soft and pink. I hate them. I hate this emptiness. I hate this baby. No. No, I don’t hate him. I just can’t find him.

I sit at my drawing board with a pencil in my hand and a sheet of white paper before me. Nothing comes. I close my eyes and all I can think of is red. So I get a tube of watercolor, cadmium red dark, and I get a big mop of a brush, and I fill a jar with water, and I begin to cover the paper with red. It glistens. The paper is limp with moisture, and darkens as it dries. I watch it drying. It smells of gum arabic. In the center of the paper, very small, in black ink, I draw a heart, not a silly Valentine but an anatomically correct heart, tiny, doll-like, and then veins, delicate road maps of veins, that reach all the way to the edges of the paper, that hold the small heart enmeshed like a fly in a spiderweb. See, there’s his heartbeat.

It has become evening. I empty the water jar and wash the brush. I lock the studio door, cross the yard, and let myself in the back door. Henry is making spaghetti sauce. He looks up as I come in.

“Better?” he asks.

“Better,” I reassure him, and myself.

Wednesday, September 27, 2000 (Clare is 29)

CLARE: It’s lying on the bed. There’s some blood, but not so much. It’s lying on its back, trying to breathe, its tiny ribcage quivering, but it’s too soon, it’s convulsing, and blood is gushing from the cord in time with the beating of its heart. I kneel beside the bed and pick it up, pick him up, my tiny boy, jerking like a small freshly caught fish, drowning in air. I hold him, so gently, but he doesn’t know I’m here, holding him, he is slippery and his skin is almost imaginary, his eyes are closed and I think wildly of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, of 911 and Henry, oh, don t go before Henry can see you! but his breath is bubbling with fluid, small sea creature breathing water and then he opens his mouth wide and I can see right through him and my hands are empty and he’s gone, gone.

I don’t know how long, time passes. I am kneeling. Kneeling, I pray. Dear God. Dear God. Dear God. The baby stirs in my womb. Hush. Hide.

I wake up in the hospital. Henry is there. The baby is dead.