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

Sunday, October 12, 1997 (Henry is 34, Clare is 26)

Henry: I wake up and smell iron and it’s blood. Blood is everywhere and Clare is curled up in the middle of it like a kitten.

I shake her and she says, “No.”

“ComeonClarewakeupyou’rebleeding.”

“I was dreaming...”

“Clare, please...”

She sits up. Her hands, her face, her hair are drenched in blood. Clare holds out her hand and on it reclines a tiny monster. She says, simply, “He died,” and bursts into tears. We sit together on the edge of the blood-soaked bed, holding each other, and crying.

Monday, February 16, 1998 (Clare is 26, Henry is 34)

Clare: Henry and I are just about to go out. It’s a snowy afternoon, and I’m pulling on my boots when the phone rings. Henry walks down the hall and into the living room to answer it. I hear him say,

“Hello?” and then “Really?” and then “Well, hot damn!” Then he says, “Wait, let me get some paper—” and there’s a long silence, punctuated once in a while with “Wait, explain that” and I take off my boots and my coat and pad into the living room in my socks. Henry is sitting on the couch with the phone cradled in his lap like a pet, furiously taking notes, I sit down next to him and he grins at me. I look at the pad; the top of the page starts off: 4 genes: pert, timeless!, Clock, new gene-time traveler?? Chrom-17 x 2, 4, 25, 200+ repeats TAG, sex linked? no, +too many dopamine recpts, what proteins???... and I realize: Kendrick has done it! He’s figured it out! I can’t believe it. He’s done it. Now what?

Henry puts down the phone, turns to me. He looks as stunned as I feel.

“What happens next?” I ask him.

“He’s going to clone the genes and put them into mice.”

“What?”

“He’s going to make time-traveling mice. Then he’s going to cure them.”

We both start to laugh at the same time, and then we are dancing, flinging each other around the room, laughing and dancing until we fall back onto the couch, panting. I look over at Henry, and I wonder that on a cellular level he is so different, so other, when he’s just a man in a white button-down shirt and a pea jacket whose hand feels like skin and bone in mine, a man who smiles just like a human. I always knew he was different, what does it matter? a few letters of code? but somehow it must matter, and somehow we must change it, and somewhere on the other side of the city Dr. Kendrick is sitting in his office figuring out how to make mice that defy the rules of time. I laugh, but it’s life and death, and I stop laughing and put my hand over my mouth.