The Time Traveler's Wife

by Audrey Niffenegger

  "Through thick and thin..."

  "The fact that there are bad times makes it more real. It's the reality that I want."

  Tell him, tell him.

  "Even reality can be pretty unreal..." If I'm ever going to say it, now's the time. He waits. I just. Can't.

  "Clare?" I regard him miserably, like a child caught in a complicated fib, and then I say it, almost inaudibly.

  "I slept with someone." Henry's face is frozen, disbelieving.

  "Who?" he asks, without looking at me,

  "Gomez."

  "Why?" Henry is still, waiting for the blow.

  "I was drunk. We were at a party, and Charisse was in Boston--"

  "Wait a minute. When was this?"

  "1990."

  He starts to laugh. "Oh, God. Clare, don't do that to me, shit. 1990. Jesus, I thought you were telling me something that happened, like, last week." I smile, weakly. He says, "I mean, it's not like I'm overjoyed about it, but since I just got through telling you to go out and experiment I can't really... I dunno." He's getting restless. He gets up and starts pacing around the studio. I am incredulous. For fifteen years I've been paralyzed with fear, fear that Gomez would say something, do something in his big lumbering Gomez callousness, and Henry doesn't mind. Or does he?

  "How was it?" he asks, quite casually, with his back to me as he messes with the coffeemaker.

  I pick my words with care. "Different. I mean, without getting real critical of Gomez--"

  "Oh, go ahead."

  "It was sort of like being a china shop, and trying to get off with a bull."

  "He's bigger than me." Henry states this as fact.

  "I wouldn't know about now, but back then he had no finesse at all. He actually smoked a cigarette while he was fucking me." Henry winces. I get up, walk over to him. "I'm sorry. It was a mistake." He pulls me to him, and I say, softly, into his collar, "I was waiting very patiently..." but then I can't go on. Henry is stroking my hair. "It's okay, Clare," he says. "It's not so bad." I wonder if he is comparing the Clare he has just seen, in 1989, with the duplicitous me in his arms, and, as if reading my mind he says, "Any other surprises?"

  "That was it."

  "God, you can really keep a secret." I look at Henry, and he stares back at me, and I can tell that I have altered for him somehow.

  "It made me understand, better...it made me appreciate..."

  "You're trying to tell me that I did not suffer by comparison?"

  "Yes." I kiss him, tentatively, and after a moment of hesitation Henry begins to kiss me back, and before too long we are on our way to being all right again. Better than all right. I told him, and it was okay, and he still loves me. My whole body feels lighter, and I sigh with the goodness of confessing, finally, and not even having a penance, not one Hail Mary or Our Father. I feel like I've walked away scot free from a totaled car. Out there, somewhere, Henry and I are making love on a green blanket in a meadow, and Gomez is looking at me sleepily and reaching for me with his enormous hands, and everything, everything is happening now, but it's too late, as usual, to change any of it, and Henry and I unwrap each other on the studio couch like brand new never before boxes of chocolate and it's not too late, not yet, anyway.

  Saturday, April 14, 1990 (Clare is 18) (6:43 a.m.)

  CLARE: I open my eyes and I don't know where I am. Cigarette smell. Venetian blind shadow across cracked yellow wall. I turn my head and beside me, sleeping, in his bed, is Gomez. Suddenly I remember, and I panic.

  Henry. Henry will kill me. Charisse will hate me. I sit up. Gomez's bedroom is a wreck of overfilled ashtrays, clothes, law textbooks, newspapers, dirty dishes. My clothes lie in a small, accusing pile on the floor beside me.

  Gomez sleeps beautifully. He looks serene, not like a guy who's just cheated on his girlfriend with his girlfriend's best friend. His blond hair is wild, not in its usual perfect controlled state. He looks like an overgrown boy, exhausted from too many boyish games.

  My head is pounding. My insides feel like they've been beaten. I get up, shakily, and walk down the hall to the bathroom, which is dank and mold-infested and filled with shaving paraphernalia and damp towels. Once I'm in the bathroom I'm not sure what I wanted; I pee and I wash my face with the hard soap sliver, and I look at myself in the mirror to see if I look any different, to see if Henry will be able to tell just by looking at me... I look kind of nauseous, but otherwise I just look the way I look at seven in the morning.

  The house is quiet. There's a clock ticking somewhere nearby. Gomez shares this house with two other guys, friends who are also at Northwestern's Law School. I don't want to run into anyone. I go back to Gomez's room and sit on the bed.

  "Good morning." Gomez smiles at me, reaches out to me. I recoil, and burst into tears. "Whoa. Kitten! Clare, baby, hey, hey..." He scrambles up and soon I am weeping in his arms. I think of all the times I have cried on Henry's shoulder. Where are you? I wonder desperately. I need you, here and now. Gomez is saying my name, over and over. What am I doing here, without any clothes on, crying in the embrace of an equally naked Gomez? He reaches over and hands me a box of tissue, and I blow my nose, and wipe my eyes, and then I look at him with a look of unconditional despair, and he looks back at me in confusion.

  "Okay now?"

  No. How can I be okay? "Yeah."

  "What's wrong?"

  I shrug. Gomez shifts into cross-examining fragile witness mode.

  "Clare, have you ever had sex before?" I nod. "Is it Charisse? You feel bad about it 'cause of Charisse?" I nod. "Did I do something wrong?" I shake my head. "Clare, who is Henry?" I gape at him incredulously.

  "How do you know?..." Now I've done it. Shit. Son of a bitch.

  Gomez leans over and grabs his cigarettes from the bedside table, and lights one. He waves out the match and takes a deep drag. With a cigarette in his hand, Gomez seems more...dressed, somehow, even though he's not. He silently offers me one, and I take it, even though I don't smoke. It just seems like the thing to do, and it buys me time to think about what to say. He lights it for me, gets up, rummages around in his closet, finds a blue bathrobe that doesn't look all that clean, and hands it to me. I put it on; it's huge. I sit on the bed, smoking and watching Gomez put on a pair of jeans. Even in my wretchedness I observe that Gomez is beautiful, tall and broad and...large, an entirely different sort of beauty from Henry's lithe panther wildness. I immediately feel horrible for comparing. Gomez sets an ashtray next to me, and sits down on the bed, and looks at me.

  "You were talking in your sleep to someone named Henry."

  Damn. Damn. "What did I say?"

  "Mostly just 'Henry' over and over, like you were calling someone to come to you. And 'I'm sorry.' And once you said 'Well, you weren't here,' like you were really angry. Who is Henry?"

  "Henry is my lover."

  "Clare, you don't have a lover. Charisse and I have seen you almost every day for six months, and you never date anyone, and no one ever calls you."

  "Henry is my lover. He's been gone for a while, and he'll be back in the fall of 1991."

  "Where is he?" Somewhere nearby.

  "I don't know." Gomez thinks I am making this up. For no reason I am determined to make him believe me. I grab my purse, open my wallet, and show Gomez the photo of Henry. He studies it carefully.

  "I've seen this guy. Well, no: someone a lot like him. This guy is too old to be the same person. But that guy's name was Henry."

  My heart is beating like a mad thing. I try to be casual as I ask, "Where did you see him?"

  "At clubs. Mostly Exit, and Smart Bar. But I can't imagine that he's your guy; he's a maniac. Chaos attends his every move. He's an alcoholic, and he's just... I don't know, he's really rough on women. Or so I hear."

  "Violent?" I can't imagine Henry hitting a woman.

  "No. I don't know."

  "What's his last name?"

  "I don't know. Listen, kitten, this guy would chew you up and spit you out...he's not at all wha
t you need."

  I smile. He's exactly what I need, but I know that it is futile to go chasing through clubland trying to find him. "What do I need?"

  "Me. Except you don't seem to think so."

  "You have Charisse. What do you want me for?"

  "I just want you. I don't know why."

  "You a Mormon or something?"

  Gomez says very seriously, "Clare, I...look, Clare--"

  "Don't say it."

  "Really, I--"

  "No. I don't want to know." I get up, stub out my cigarette, and start to put my clothes on. Gomez sits very still and watches me dress. I feel stale and dirty and creepy putting on last night's party dress in front of Gomez, but I try not to let it show. I can't do the long zipper in the back of the dress and Gomez gravely helps me with it.

  "Clare, don't be mad."

  "I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at myself."

  "This guy must be really something if he can walk away from a girl like you and expect you to be around two years later."

  I smile at Gomez. "He is amazing." I can see that I have hurt Gomez's feelings. "Gomez, I'm sorry. If I was free, and you were free..." Gomez shakes his head, and before I know it, he's kissing me. I kiss back, and there's just a moment when I wonder... "I've got to go now, Gomez."

  He nods.

  I leave.

  Friday, April 27, 1990 (Henry is 26)

  HENRY: Ingrid and I are at the Riviera Theater, dancing our tiny brains out to the dulcet tones of Iggy Pop. Ingrid and I are always happiest together when we are dancing or fucking or anything else that involves physical activity and no talking. Right now we are in heaven. We're way up front and Mr. Pop is whipping us all into a compact ball of manic energy. I told Ing once that she dances like a German and she didn't like it, but it's true: she dances seriously, like lives are hanging in the balance, like precision dancing can save the starving children in India. It's great. The Iggster is crooning "I'm all pent up, like this I can't stay..." and I know exactly how he feels. It's moments like this that I see the point of me and Ingrid. We slash and burn our way through Lust for Life, China Doll, Funtime. Ingrid and I have taken enough speed to launch a mission to Pluto, and I have that weird high-pitched feeling and a deep conviction that I could do this, be here, for the rest of my life and be perfectly content. Ingrid is sweating. Her white T-shirt has glued itself to her body in an interesting and aesthetically pleasing way and I consider peeling it off of her but refrain, because she's not wearing a bra and I'll never hear the end of it. We dance, Iggy Pop sings, and sadly, inevitably, after three encores, the concert finally ends. I feel great. As we file out with our fellow elated and pumped-up concertgoers, I wonder what we should do next, Ingrid takes off to go and stand in the long line for the ladies' room, and I wait for her out on Broadway. I'm watching a yuppie in a BMW argue with a valet-parking kid over an illegal space when this huge blond guy walks up to me.

  "Henry?" he asks. I wonder if I'm about to be served with a court summons or something.

  "Yeah?"

  "Clare says hello." Who the hell is Clare?

  "Sorry, wrong number." Ingrid walks up, looking once again like her usual Bond Girl self. She sizes up this guy, who's a pretty fine specimen of guyhood. I put my arm around her.

  The guy smiles. "Sorry. You must have a double out there." My heart contracts; something's going on that I don't get, a little of my future seeping into now, but now is not the moment to investigate. He seems pleased about something, and excuses himself, and walks away.

  "What was that all about?" says Ingrid.

  "I think he thought I was someone else." I shrug. Ingrid looks worried. Just about everything about me seems to worry Ingrid, so I ignore it. "Hey, Ing, what shall we do next?" I feel like leaping tall buildings in a single bound.

  "My place?"

  "Brilliant." We stop at Margie's Candies for ice cream, and soon we're in the car chanting "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream" and laughing like deranged children. Later, in bed with Ingrid, I wonder who Clare is, but then I figure there's probably no answer to that, so I forget about it.

  Friday, February 18, 2005 (Henry is 41, Clare is 33)

  HENRY: I'm taking Charisse to the opera. It's Tristan und Isolde. The reason I am here with Charisse and not Clare has to do with Clare's extreme aversion to Wagner. I'm not a huge Wagnerite either, but we have season tickets and I'd just as soon go as not. We were discussing this one evening at Charisse and Gomez's place, and Charisse wistfully said that she'd never been to the opera. The upshot of it all is that Charisse and I are getting out of a taxi in front of the Lyric Opera House and Clare is at home minding Alba and playing Scrabble with Alicia, who's visiting us this week.

  I'm not really in the mood for this. When I stopped at their house to collect Charisse, Gomez winked at me and said "Don't keep her out too late, son!" in his best clueless-parent voice. I can't remember the last time Charisse and I did anything by ourselves. I like Charisse, very much, but I don't have much of anything to say to her.

  I shepherd Charisse through the crowd. She moves slowly, taking in the splendid lobby, marble and sweeping high galleries full of elegantly understated rich people and students with faux fur and pierced noses. Charisse smiles at the libretto vendors, two tuxedoed gents who stand at the entrance to the lobby singing "Libretto! Libretto! Buy yourself a libretto!" in two-part harmony. No one I know is here. Wagnerites are the Green Berets of opera fans; they're made of sterner stuff, and they all know each other. There's a lot of air kissing going on as Charisse and I walk upstairs to the mezzanine.

  Clare and I have a private box; it's one of our indulgences. I pull back the curtain and Charisse steps in and says, "Oh!" I take her coat and drape it over a chair, and do the same with mine. We settle ourselves. Charisse crosses her ankles and folds her small hands in her lap. Her black hair gleams in the low soft light, and with her dark lipstick and dramatic eyes Charisse is like an exquisite, wicked child, all dressed up, allowed to stay up late with the grown-ups. She sits and drinks in the beauty of the Lyric, the ornate gold and green screen that shields the stage, the ripples of cascading plaster that rim every arch and dome, the excited murmur of the crowd. The lights go down and Charisse flashes me a grin. The screen rises, and we are on a boat, and Isolde is singing. I lean back in my chair and lose myself in the current of her voice.

  Four hours, one love potion, and a standing ovation later, I turn to Charisse. "Well, how did you like it?"

  She smiles. "It was silly, wasn't it? But the singing made it not silly."

  I hold out her coat and she feels around for the arm hole; finds it and shrugs on the coat. "Silly? I guess. But I'm willing to pretend that Jane Egland is young and beautiful instead of a three-hundred-pound cow because she has the voice of Euterpe."

  "Euterpe?"

  "The muse of music." We join the stream of exiting, satiated listeners. Downstairs we flow out into the cold. I march us up Wacker Drive a bit and manage to snare a cab after only a few minutes. I'm about to give the cabbie Charisse's address when she says, "Henry, let's go have coffee. I don't want to go home yet." I tell the cabbie to take us to Don's Coffee Club, which is on Jarvis, at the northern edge of the city. Charisse chats about the singing, which was sublime; about the sets, which we both agree were not inspired; about the moral difficulties of enjoying Wagner when you know he was an anti-Semitic asshole whose biggest fan was Hitler. When we get to Don's, the joint is jumping; Don is holding court in an orange Hawaiian shirt and I wave to him. We find a small table in the back. Charisse orders cherry pie a la mode and coffee, and I order my usual peanut butter and jelly sandwich and coffee. Perry Como is crooning from the stereo and there's a haze of cigarette smoke drifting over the dinette sets and garage sale paintings. Charisse leans her head on her hand and sighs.

  "This is so great. I feel like sometimes I forget what it was like to be a grown-up."

  "You guys don't go out much?"

  Charisse mushes her ic
e cream around with her fork, laughs. "Joe does this. He says it tastes better if it's mushy. God, I'm picking up their bad habits instead of them learning my good ones." She eats a bite of pie. "To answer your question, we do go out, but it's almost always to political stuff. Gomez is thinking about running for alderman."

  I swallow my coffee the wrong way and start to cough. When I can talk again I say, "You're joking. Isn't that going over to the dark side? Gomez is always slamming the city administration."

  Charisse gives me a wry look. "He's decided to change the system from within. He's burned out on horrible child abuse cases. I think he's convinced himself that he could actually improve things if he had some clout."

  "Maybe he's right."

  Charisse shakes her head. "I liked it better when we were young anarchist revolutionaries. I'd rather blow things up than kiss ass."

  I smile. "I never realized that you were more radical than Gomez."

  "Oh, yeah. Actually, it's just that I'm not as patient as Gomez. I want action."

  "Gomez is patient?"

  "Oh, sure. I mean, look at the whole thing with Clare--" Charisse abruptly stops, looks at me.

  "What whole thing?" I realize as I ask the question that this is why we are here, that Charisse has been waiting to talk about this. I wonder what she knows that I don't know. I wonder if I want to know what Charisse knows. I don't think I want to know anything.

  Charisse looks away, and then back at me. She looks down at her coffee, puts her hands around the cup. "Well, I thought you knew, but, like--Gomez is in love with Clare."

  "Yes." I'm not helping her out with this.

  Charisse is tracing the grain of the table's veneer with her finger. "So... Clare has been telling him to take a hike, and he thinks that if he just hangs in there long enough, something will happen, and he'll end up with her."

  "Something will happen...?"

  "To you." Charisse meets my eyes.

  I feel ill. "Excuse me" I say to her. I get up and make my way to the tiny Marilyn Monroe-plastered bathroom. I splash my face with cold water. I lean against the wall with my eyes closed. When it becomes obvious that I'm not going anywhere I walk back into the cafe and sit down. "Sorry. You were saying?"

  Charisse looks scared and small. "Henry," she says quietly. "Tell me."

  "Tell you what, Charisse?"