he streetlights it's like driving into an inkwell.
"Better turn on your brights, Clare," I say. She reaches forward and turns the
headlights off completely.
"Clare-!"
"Don't tell me what to do!" I shut up. All I can see are the illuminated
numbers of the clock radio. It's 11:36.I hear the air rushing past the car, the engine
of the car; I feel the wheels passing over the asphalt, but somehow we seem to be
motionless, and the world moves around us at forty-five miles per hour. I close
my eyes. It makes no difference. I open them. My heart is pounding.
Headlights appear in the distance. Clare turns her lights on and we are
rushing along again, perfectly aligned between the yellow stripes in the middle
of the road and the edge of the highway. It's 11:38.
Clare is expressionless in the reflected dashboard lights. "Why did you do
that?" I ask her, my voice shaking.
"Why not?" Clare's voice is calm as a summer pond.
"Because we could have both died in a fiery wreck?"
Clare slows and turns onto Blue Star Highway. "But that's not what happens"
she says. "I grow up and meet you and we get married and here you are."
"For all you know you crashed the car just then and we both spent a year in
traction."
"But then you would have warned me not to do it," says Clare.
"I tried, but you yelled at me-"
"I mean, an older you would have told a younger me not to crash the car."
"Well, by then it would have already happened."
We have reached Meagram Lane, and Clare turns onto it. This is the private
road that leads to her house. "Pull over, Clare, okay? Please?" Clare drives onto
the grass, stops, cuts the engine and the lights. It's completely dark again, and I
can hear a million cicadas singing. I reach over and pull Clare close to me, put
my arm around her. She is tense and unpliant.
"Promise me something."
"What?" Clare asks.
"Promise you won't do anything like that again. I mean not just with the car,
but anything dangerous. Because you don't know. The future is weird, and you
can't go around behaving like you're invincible-"
"But if you've seen me in the future-"
"Trust me. Just trust me."
Clare laughs. "Why would I want to do that?"
"I dunno. Because I love you?"
Clare turns her head so quickly that she hits me in the jaw,
"Ouch."
"Sorry." I can barely see the outline of her profile. "You love me?" she asks.
"Yes."
"Right now?"
"Yes."
"But you're not my boyfriend."
Oh. That's what's bugging her. "Well, technically speaking, I'm your husband.
Since you haven't actually gotten married yet, I suppose we would have to say
that you are my girlfriend."
Clare puts her hand someplace it probably shouldn't be. "I'd rather be your
mistress."
"You're sixteen, Clare." I gently remove her hand, and stroke her face.
"That's old enough. Ugh, your hands are all wet." Clare turns on the overhead
light and I am startled to see that her face and dress are streaked with blood. I
look at my palms and they are sticky and red. "Henry! What's wrong?"
"I don't know." I lick my right palm and four deep crescent-shaped cuts
appear in a row. I laugh. "It's from my fingernails. When you were driving
without the headlights."
Clare snaps off the overhead light and we are sitting in the dark again. The
cicadas sing with all their might. "I didn't mean to scare you."
"Yeah, you did. But usually I feel safe when you're driving. It's just-"
"What?"
"I was in a car accident when I was a kid, and I don't like to ride in cars."
"Oh-I'm sorry."
"'S okay. Hey, what time is it?"
"Oh my God." Clare flips the light on. 12:12. "I'm late. And how can I walk in
all bloody like this?" She looks so distraught that I want to laugh.
"Here." I rub my left palm across her upper lip and under her nose. "You
have a nosebleed."
"Okay." She starts the car, flips on the headlights, and eases back onto the
road. "Etta's going to freak when she sees me."
"Etta? What about your parents?"
"Mama's probably asleep by now, and it's Daddy's poker night." Clare opens
the gate and we pass through.
"If my kid was out with the car the day after she got her license I would be
sitting next to the front door with a stopwatch." Clare stops the car out of sight of
the house.
"Do we have kids?"
"Sorry, that's classified."
"I'm gonna apply for that one under the Freedom of Information Act."
"Be my guest." I kiss her carefully, so as not to disturb the faux nosebleed.
"Let me know what you find out." I open the car door. "Good luck with Etta."
"Good night."
"Night." I get out and close the door as quietly as possible. The car glides
down the drive, around the bend and into the night. I walk after it toward a bed
in the Meadow under the stars.
Sunday, September 27, 1987 (Henry is 32, Clare is 16)
Henry: I materialize in the Meadow, about fifteen feet west of the clearing. I feel
dreadful, dizzy and nauseated, so I sit for a few minutes to pull myself together.
It's chilly and gray, and I am submerged in the tall brown grass, which cuts into
my skin. After a while I feel a little better, and it's quiet, so I stand up and walk
into the clearing.
Clare is sitting on the ground, next to the rock, leaning against it. She doesn't
say anything, just looks at me with what I can only describe as anger. Uh oh, I
think. What have I done? She's in her Grace Kelly phase; she's wearing her blue
wool coat and a red skirt. I'm shivering, and I hunt for the clothes box. I find it,
and don black jeans, a black sweater, black wool socks, a black overcoat, black
boots, and black leather gloves, I look like I'm about to star in a Wim Wenders
film. I sit down next to Clare.
"Hi, Clare. Are you okay?"
"Hi, Henry. Here." She hands me a Thermos and two sandwiches.
"Thanks. I feel kind of sick, so I'll wait a little." I set the food on the rock. The
Thermos contains coffee; I inhale deeply. Just the smell makes me feel better.
"Are you all right?" She's not looking at me. As I scrutinize Clare, I realize that
she's been crying.
"Henry. Would you beat someone up for me?"
"What?"
"I want to hurt someone, and I'm not big enough, and I don't know how to
fight. Will you do it for me?"
"Whoa. What are you talking about? Who? Why?"
Clare stares at her lap. "I don't want to talk about it. Couldn't you just take my
word that he totally deserves it?"
I think I know what's going on; I think I've heard this story before. I sigh, and
move closer to Clare, and put my arm around her. She leans her head on my
shoulder.
"This is about some guy you went on a date with, right?"
"Yeah."
"And he was a jerk, and now you want me to pulverize him?"
"Yeah."
"Clare, lots of guys are jerks. I used to be a jerk-"
Clare laughs. "I bet you weren't as big of a jerk as Jason Everleigh."
"He's a football player or something, right?"
"Yes."
"Clare, what makes you think I can take on some huge jock half my age? Why
were you even going out with someone like that?"
She shrugs. "At school, everybody's been bugging me 'cause I never date
anyone. Ruth and Meg and Nancy-I mean, there are all these rumors going
around that I'm a lesbian. Even Mama is asking me why I don't go out with boys.
Guys ask me out, and I turn them down. And then Beatrice Dilford, who is a
dyke, asked me if I was, and I told her no, and she said that she wasn't surprised,
but that's what everybody was saying, so then I thought, well, maybe I'd better go
out with a few guys. So the next one who asked was Jason. He's, like, this jock,
and he's really good looking, and I knew that if I went out with him everyone
would know, and I thought maybe they would shut up."
"So this was the first time you went out on a date?"
"Yeah. We went to this Italian restaurant and Laura and Mike were there, and
a bunch of people from Theater class, and I offered to go Dutch but he said no, he
never did that, and it was okay, I mean, we talked about school and stuff,
football. Then we went to see Friday the 13th, Part VII, which was really stupid, in
case you were thinking of seeing it,"
"I've seen it."
"Oh. Why? It doesn't seem like your kind of thing."
"Same reason you did; my date wanted to see it."
"Who was your date?"
"A woman named Alex."
"What was she like?"
"A bank teller with big tits who liked to be spanked." The second this pops
out of my mouth I realize that I am talking to Clare the teenager, not Clare my
wife, and I mentally smack myself in the head.
"Spanked?" Clare looks at me, smiling, her eyebrows halfway to her hairline.
"Never mind. So you went to a movie, and...?"
"Oh. Well, then he wanted to go to Traver's."
"What is Traver's?"
"It's a farm on the north side." Clare's voice drops, I can hardly hear her. "It's
where people go to...make out." I don't say anything. "So I told him I was tired,
and wanted to go home, and then he got kind of, urn, mad." Clare stops talking;
for a while we sit, listening to birds, airplanes, wind. Suddenly Clare says, "He
was really mad."
"What happened then?"
"He wouldn't take me home. I wasn't sure where we were; somewhere out on
Route 12, he was just driving around, down little lanes, God, I don't know. He
drove down this dirt road, and there was this little cottage. There was a lake
nearby, I could hear it. And he had the key to this place."
I'm getting nervous. Clare never told me any of this; just that she once went on
a really horrible date with some guy named Jason, who was a football player.
Clare has fallen silent again.
"Clare. Did he rape you?"
"No. He said I wasn't.. .good enough. He said-no, he didn't rape me. He
just-hurt me. He made me.." She can't say it. I wait. Clare unbuttons her coat, and
removes it. She peels her shirt off, and I see that her back is covered with bruises.
They are dark and purple against her white skin. Clare turns and there is a
cigarette burn on her right breast, blistered and ugly. I asked her once what that
scar was, and she wouldn't say. I am going to kill t