 chaos. "Well, I do and I
don't. Chaos is more freedom; in fact, total freedom. But no meaning. I want to be
free to act, and I also want my actions to mean something."
"But, Henry, you're forgetting about God-why can't there be a God who
makes it mean something?" Clare frowns earnestly, and looks away across the
Meadow as she speaks.
I pop the last of the Bismarck into my mouth and chew slowly to gain time.
Whenever Clare mentions God my palms start to sweat and I have an urge to
hide or run or vanish.
"I don't know, Clare. I mean, to me things seem too random and meaningless
for there to be a God."
Clare clasps her arms around her knees. "But you just said before that
everything seems like it's all planned out beforehand."
"Hpmf," I say. I grab Clare's ankles, pull her feet onto my lap, and hold on.
Clare laughs, and leans back on her elbows. Clare's feet are cold in my hands;
they are very pink and very clean. "Okay," I say, "let's see. The choices we're
working with here are a block universe, where past, present and future all coexist
simultaneously and everything has already happened; chaos, where anything can
happen and nothing can be predicted because we can't know all the variables;
and a Christian universe in which God made everything and it's all here for a
purpose but we have free will anyway. Right?"
Clare wiggles her toes at me. "I guess."
"And what do you vote for?"
Clare is silent. Her pragmatism and her romantic feelings about Jesus and
Mary are, at thirteen, almost equally balanced. A year ago she would have said
God without hesitation. In ten years she will vote for determinism, and ten years
after that Clare will believe that the universe is arbitrary, that if God exists he
does not hear our prayers, that cause and effect are inescapable and brutal, but
meaningless. And after that? I don't know. But right now Clare sits on the
threshold of adolescence with her faith in one hand and her growing skepticism
in the other, and all she can do is try to juggle them, or squeeze them together
until they fuse. She shakes her head. "I don't know. I want God. Is that okay?"
I feel like an asshole. "Of course it's okay. That's what you believe."
"But I don't want to just believe it, I want it to be true."
I run my thumbs across Clare's arches, and she closes her eyes. "You and St.
Thomas Aquinas both," I say.
"I've heard of him," Clare says, as though she's speaking of a long-lost favorite
uncle, or the host of a TV show she used to watch when she was little.
"He wanted order and reason, and God, too. He lived in the thirteenth century
and taught at the University of Paris. Aquinas believed in both Aristotle and
angels."
"I love angels," says Clare. "They're so beautiful. I wish I could have wings
and fly around and sit on clouds."
"Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich.'"
Clare sighs, a little soft sigh that means I don't speak German, remember? "Huh?"
"'Every angel is terrifying.' It's part of a series of poems called The Duino
Elegies, by a poet named Rilke. He's one of our favorite poets."
Clare laughs. "You're doing it again!"
"What?"
"Telling me what I like." Clare burrows into my lap with her feet. Without
thinking I put her feet on my shoulders, but then that seems too sexual,
somehow, and I quickly take Clare's feet in my hands again and hold them
together with one hand in the air as she lies on her back, innocent and angelic
with her hair spread nimbus-like around her on the blanket. I tickle her feet.
Clare giggles and twists out of my hands like a fish, jumps up and does a
cartwheel across the clearing, grinning at me as if to dare me to come and get her.
I just grin back, and she returns to the blanket and sits down next to me.
"Henry?"
"Yeah?"
"You are making me different."
"I know"
I turn to look at Clare and just for a moment I forget that she is young, and that
this is long ago; I see Clare, my wife, superimposed on the face of this young girl,
and I don't know what to say to this Clare who is old and young and different
from other girls, who knows that different might be hard. But Clare doesn't seem
to expect an answer. She leans against my arm, and I put my arm around her
shoulders.
" Clare!" Across the quiet of the Meadow Clare's dad is bellowing her name.
Clare jumps up and grabs her shoes and socks.
"It's time for church " she says, suddenly nervous.
"Okay," I say. "Um, bye." I wave at her, and she smiles and mumbles goodbye
and is running up the path, and is gone. I lie in the sun for a while, wondering
about God, reading Dorothy Sayers. After an hour or so has passed I too am gone
and there is only a blanket and a book, coffee cups, and clothing, to show that we
were there at all.
AFTER THE END
Saturday, October 27, 1984 (Clare is 13, Henry is 43)
Clare: I wake up suddenly. There was a noise: someone called my name. It
sounded like Henry. I sit up in bed, listening. I hear the wind, and crows calling.
But what if it was Henry? I jump out of bed and I run, with no shoes I run
downstairs, out the back door, into the Meadow. It's cold, the wind cuts right
through my nightgown. Where is he? I stop and look and there, by the orchard,
there's Daddy and Mark, in their bright orange hunting clothes, and there's a man
with them, they are all standing and looking at something but then they hear me
and they turn and I see that the man is Henry. What is Henry doing with Daddy
and Mark? I run to them, my feet cut by the dead grasses, and Daddy walks to
meet me. "Sweetheart," he says, "what are you doing out here so early?"
"I heard my name" I say. He smiles at me. Silly girl, his smile says, and I look
at Henry, to see if he will explain. Why did you call me, Henry? but he shakes his
head and puts his finger to his lips, Shhh, don't tell, Clare. He walks into the
orchard and I want to see what they were looking at but there's nothing there and
Daddy says, "Go back to bed, Clare, it was just a dream." He puts his arm
around me and begins to walk back toward the house with me and I look back at
Henry and he waves, he's smiling, It's okay, Clare, I'll explain later (although
knowing Henry he probably won't explain, he'll make me figure it out or it will
explain itself one of these days). I wave back at him, and then I check to see if
Mark saw that but Mark has his back to us, he's irritated and is waiting for me to
go away so he and Daddy can go back to hunting, but what is Henry doing here,
what did they say to each other? I look back again but I don't see Henry and
Daddy says, "Go on, now, Clare, go back to bed," and he kisses my forehead. He
seems upset and so I run, run back to the house, and then softly up the stairs and
then I am sitting on my bed, shivering, and I still don't know what just happened,
but I know it was bad, it was very, very bad.
Monday, February 2, 1987 (Clare is 15, Henry is 38)
Clare: When I get home from school Henry is waiting for me in the Reading
Room. I have fixed a little room for him next to the furnace room; it's on the
opposite side from where all the bicycles are. I have allowed it to be known in
my household that I like to spend time in the basement reading, and I do in fact
spend a lot of time in here, so that it doesn't seem unusual. Henry has a chair
wedged under the doorknob. I knock four knocks and he lets me in. He has made
a sort of nest out of pillows and chair cushions and blankets, he has been reading
old magazines under my desk lamp. He is wearing Dad's old jeans and a plaid
flannel shirt, and he looks tired and unshaven. I left the back door unlocked for
him this morning and here he is.
I set the tray of food I have brought on the floor. "I could bring down some
books."
"Actually, these are great." He's been reading Mad magazines from the '60s.
"And this is indispensable for time travelers who need to know all sorts of
factoids at a moment's notice," he says, holding up the 1968 World Almanac.
I sit down next to him on the blankets, and look over at him to see if he's going
to make me move. I can see he's thinking about it, so I hold up my hands for him
to see and then I sit on them. He smiles. "Make yourself at home," he says.
"When are you coming from?"
"2001. October"
"You look tired." I can see that he's debating about telling me why he's tired,
and decides against it. "What are we up to in 2001?"
"Big things. Exhausting things." Henry starts to eat the roast beef sandwich I
have brought him. "Hey, this is good."
"Nell made it."
He laughs. "I'll never understand why it is that you can build huge sculptures
that withstand gale force winds, deal with dye recipes, cook kozo, and all that,
and you can't do anything whatsoever with food. It's amazing."
"It's a mental block. A phobia."
"It's weird."
"I walk into the kitchen and I hear this little voice saying, 'Go away.' So I do."
"Are you eating enough? You look thin."
I feel fat. "I'm eating." I have a dismal thought. "Am I very fat in 2001? Maybe
that's why you think I'm too thin."
Henry smiles at some joke I don't get. "Well, you're kind of plump at the
moment, in my present, but it will pass."
"Ugh."
"Plump is good. It will look very good on you."
"No thanks." Henry looks at me, worrying. "You know, I'm not anorexic or
anything. I mean, you don't have to worry about it."
"Well, it's just that your mom was always bugging you about it."
"'Was'?"
"Is."
"Why did you say was?"
"No reason. Lucille is fine. Don't worry." He's lying. My stomach tightens and
I wrap my arms around my knees and put my head down.
Henry: I cannot believe that I have made a slip of the tongue of this magnitude. I
stroke Clare's hair, and I wish fervently that I could go back to my present for just
a minute, long enough to consult Clare, to find out what I should say to her, at
fifteen, about her mother's death. It's because I'm not getting any sleep. If I was
getting some sleep I