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

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 rny 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 Or 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.

I’m thrashing in grass, it’s cold, wind rushes over me, I’m naked and cold in darkness, there’s snow on the ground, I am on my knees in the snow, blood drips onto the snow and I reach out—

“My god, he’s bleeding—”

“How the hell did that happen?”

“Shit, he’s ripped off all the electrodes, help me get him back on the bed—”

I open my eyes. Kendrick and Dr. Larson are crouched over me. Dr. Larson looks upset and worried, but Kendrick has a jubilant smile on his face.

“Did you get it?” I ask, and he replies, “It was perfect.” I say, “Great,” and then I pass out.